How China sees the world《孔子》買賣世界名牌店

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Leaders

The new world order

How China sees the world

Mar 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition

And how the world should see China

IT IS an ill wind that blows no one any good. For many in China even the buffeting by the gale that has hit the global economy has a bracing message. The rise of China over the past three decades has been astonishing. But it has lacked the one feature it needed fully to satisfy the ultranationalist fringe: an accompanying decline of the West. Now capitalism is in a funk in its heartlands. Europe and Japan, embroiled in the deepest post-war recession, are barely worth consideration as rivals. America, the superpower, has passed its peak. Although in public China’s leaders eschew triumphalism, there is a sense in Beijing that the reassertion of the Middle Kingdom’s global ascendancy is at hand (see article).

China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, no longer sticks to the script that China is a humble player in world affairs that wants to focus on its own economic development. He talks of China as a “great power” and worries about America’s profligate spending endangering his $1 trillion nest egg there. Incautious remarks by the new American treasury secretary about China manipulating its currency were dismissed as ridiculous; a duly penitent Hillary Clinton was welcomed in Beijing, but as an equal. This month saw an apparent attempt to engineer a low-level naval confrontation with an American spy ship in the South China Sea. Yet at least the Americans get noticed. Europe, that speck on the horizon, is ignored: an EU summit was cancelled and France is still blacklisted because Nicolas Sarkozy dared to meet the Dalai Lama.

Already a big idea has spread far beyond China: that geopolitics is now a bipolar affair, with America and China the only two that matter. Thus in London next month the real business will not be the G20 meeting but the “G2” summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. This not only worries the Europeans, who, having got rid of George Bush’s unipolar politics, have no wish to see it replaced by a Pacific duopoly, and the Japanese, who have long been paranoid about their rivals in Asia. It also seems to be having an effect in Washington, where Congress’s fascination with America’s nearest rival risks acquiring a protectionist edge.

Reds under the bed

Before panic spreads, it is worth noting that China’s new assertiveness reflects weakness as well as strength. This remains a poor country facing, in Mr Wen’s words, its most difficult year of the new century. The latest wild guess at how many jobs have already been lost—20m—hints at the scale of the problem. The World Bank has cut its forecast for China’s growth this year to 6.5%. That is robust compared with almost anywhere else, but to many Chinese, used to double-digit rates, it will feel like a recession. Already there are tens of thousands of protests each year: from those robbed of their land for development; from laid-off workers; from those suffering the side-effects of environmental despoliation. Even if China magically achieves its official 8% target, the grievances will worsen.

Far from oozing self-confidence, China is witnessing a fierce debate both about its economic system and the sort of great power it wants to be—and it is a debate the government does not like. This year the regime curtailed even the perfunctory annual meeting of its parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), preferring to confine discussion to back-rooms and obscure internet forums. Liberals calling for greater openness are being dealt with in the time-honoured repressive fashion. But China’s leaders also face rumblings of discontent from leftist nationalists, who see the downturn as a chance to halt market-oriented reforms at home, and for China to assert itself more stridently abroad. An angry China can veer into xenophobia, but not all the nationalist left’s causes are so dangerous: one is for the better public services and social-safety net the country sorely needs.

So China is in a more precarious situation than many Westerners think. The world is not bipolar and may never become so. The EU, for all its faults, is the world’s biggest economy. India’s population will overtake China’s. But that does not obscure the fact that China’s relative power is plainly growing—and both the West and China itself need to adjust to this.

For Mr Obama, this means pulling off a difficult balancing act. In the longer term, if he has not managed to seduce China (and for that matter India and Brazil) more firmly into the liberal multilateral system by the time he leaves office, then historians may judge him a failure. In the short term he needs to hold China to its promises and to scold it for its lapses: Mrs Clinton should have taken it to task over Tibet and human rights when she was there. The Bush administration made much of the idea of welcoming China as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. The G20 is a chance to give China a bigger stake in global decision-making than was available in the small clubs of the G7 and G8. But it is also a chance for China to show it can exercise its new influence responsibly.

The bill for the great Chinese takeaway

China’s record as a citizen of the world is strikingly threadbare. On a host of issues from Iran to Sudan, it has used its main geopolitical asset, its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, to obstruct progress, hiding behind the excuse that it does not want to intervene in other countries’ affairs. That, sadly, will take time to change. But on the more immediate issue at hand, the world economy, there is room for action.

Over the past quarter-century no country has gained more from globalisation than China. Hundreds of millions of its people have been dragged out of subsistence into the middle class. China has been a grumpy taker in this process. It helped derail the latest round of world trade talks. The G20 meeting offers it a chance to show a change of heart. In particular, it is being asked to bolster the IMF’s resources so that the fund can rescue crisis-hit countries in places like eastern Europe. Some in Beijing would prefer to ignore the IMF, since it might help ex-communist countries that have developed “an anti-China mentality”. Rising above such cavilling and paying up would be a small step in itself. But it would be a sign that the Middle Kingdom has understood what it is to be a great power.

周二英國主要報紙以大量篇幅報道了中國即將拍攝電影《孔子》，而功夫片明星周潤發將出演孔子的消息。

《獨立報》的整版報道配以周潤發在武打電影《臥虎藏龍》中的造型和孔子塑像說，孔子這位中國最知名思想家的哲學過去被看成 是共產主義的敵人，而今孔子又流行起來，以至國家出錢拍攝他的傳記片。不過文章也說，演慣了吳宇森動作片的周潤發這次只好放下手槍，拿起毛筆來表現人物 了。

文章說，中國當前的共產主義領導人為了解決現實的問題不得不放下意識形態，向孔子尋求答案。儘管毛澤東曾經說孔子是和馬克思主義唯物哲學格格不入的封建思想家，文革中的紅衛兵也曾盡一切努力消除孔子的影響，但今天的中國領導人採取了不同的方式。

文章特別提到中國國家主席胡錦濤對孔子的熱情，特別是他的"八榮八恥"社會主義道德標準就有著明顯的孔子學說痕跡。

中國的"心靈雞湯"

文章說，在利用孔子提高個人修養的理論創造社會和諧這個問題上，中共的想法已經和學者趨於一致。而且，隨著經濟的開放，孔 子的商業價值也日益明顯，深受媒體歡迎的孔子學者於丹關於《論語》的暢銷書成了中國的"心靈雞湯"。另外，中科院北京基因研究所也在用科學方法確定誰是孔 子正宗的後裔。

《泰晤士報》配發的則是周潤發手持雙槍，渾身是血的劇照，文章還用資料說明孔子學說和周潤發在他電影中的暴力台詞格格不入，不過文章承認，讓周潤發演孔子從票房收入考慮是個理想的選擇。

該報駐北京記者麥卡特尼在文章中感慨，孔子向當年統治者推銷不出去的仁政思想在21世紀的共產主義中國找到了知音，成了今天中國"和諧社會"口號的思想基礎，也成了中國掩飾仍在擴大的貧富差距努力的一部分。

《每日電訊報》報道的角度和上述兩報大同小異，不過，該報駐北京記者就這部電影採訪了目前任教清華大學的英國哲學家貝淡寧 （Daniel Bell）。貝淡寧談到，這部電影在今天中國孔子流行的背景下肯定大受歡迎，不過，孔子周遊列國時也經常批評各國當政者，還教育知識分子仗義執言，因此貝 淡寧指出，這部電影如何處理孔子思想的這部分"麻煩"內容值得關注。

奢侈品：買賣興隆

周末的《國際先驅論壇報》的一篇報道從北京的世界名牌店的角度細緻地描述了中國官場特有的收受貴重禮品現象。

文章說，每年三月"兩會"期間，北京的各家世界名牌店生意都很興隆。雖然像價值三萬美元的瑞士名表之類的禮品實際上是回扣 或賄賂，是違法的，但文章援引專家的話說，這方面的法律在中國是有選擇地執行的，給官員送品貴重禮品非常普遍，以致於奢侈品生產商已經把這部分業務視為日 益重要的收入來源。

中國的奢侈品銷售去年估計達到76億美元，給高官的禮品估計佔50%。文章說，雖然中國官員和人大代表們堅決否認有這種現 象，在中國的名牌店也不予置評，但一些名牌公司的營銷人員私下承認，通常公司會給重要人物及其家眷和情人開化名的特別戶頭，通常買禮品的錢會用某個私營企 業家的個人信用卡支付。

文章還透露說，通常名牌店的員工是出色的"禮品導購"，他們知道給官員選擇禮物"該"與"不該"。