西风压倒东风？
How the west has won
You’d almost think the west was in decline. In Syria, Qatar funds the rebels while Russia keeps the regime afloat. Eastern purchases of western brands roll on: Chinese bidders are now swallowing the French holiday company Club Med, and probably Smithfield, the world’s biggest pork producer. By 2016, China should be the world’s biggest economy. No wonder the British government frets about losing “the global race”.
你几乎会认为西方正走向衰落。在叙利亚，卡塔尔在为叛军提供资金，同时俄罗斯在维持巴沙尔政权不倒台。东方企业收购西方品牌的事件仍层出不穷：中国企业正在要约收购法国度假集团公司地中海俱乐部(Club Med)，或许还会收购全球最大的猪肉生产商史密斯菲尔德(Smithfield)。在2016年年底之前，中国应该会成为全球最大的经济体。难怪英国政府担心自己会输掉“这场全球竞赛”。
Yet looked at in another way, the west only gets more dominant. We are winning the battle of ideas. Our universities, media, books, celebrities, brands, our principal language, even our dreams dominate the global conversation. “Western culture” isn’t superior, but its stuff fills the average human being’s head. In the long run, that probably matters as much as economic might.
然而，如果从另一个角度看，西方在全球的影响力反而更大了。我们正赢得这场意识形态的战争。我们的大学、媒体、图书、名人、品牌、主要语言、乃至梦想，已成为主导全球的主要话题。“西方文化”并不比其他文化高级，但其内容却深入人心。长期而言，这或许和经济实力一样重要。
I noticed it visiting Moscow last month. Most western expatriates I met there had come for money (the Muscovite “salary bonus” and “tax bonus”) and had parked their wives and children back home. Meanwhile, rich Russians were sending their children to British boarding schools and American colleges. Neither group seemed to see their future in the country that paid them.
我上月在莫斯科逗留时注意到了这一点。在那里，我遇见的多数西方侨民都是为赚钱而只身来到莫斯科（莫斯科的“工资红利”和“税收红利”），把妻儿留在国内。与此同时，俄罗斯的有钱人都把孩子送进英国的寄宿学校和美国的大学。这两个群体似乎都没有把未来的希望寄托于这个为他们提供收入的国家。
You still don’t get many westerners grooming their kids for Russian or Chinese universities. Indeed, in the Shanghai rankings of the world’s best universities, American colleges and Oxbridge fill the top 19 positions. The best institute from an emerging economy, Moscow State University, ranks 80th.
仍然没有多少西方人把孩子送进俄罗斯或中国的大学培养。事实上，根据上海交通大学旗下研究中心发布的“世界大学学术排名”，前19名的大学中，除英国的牛津、剑桥之外，全部都是美国的大学。来自新兴经济体的大学中排名最靠前的一所是莫斯科国立大学(Moscow State University)，排名第80位。
In all sorts of fields, China, Russia and other rising economies still lack cultural influence. Their opening to the world has simply given western culture more lands to swallow. That partly reflects the dominance of English. The language continues to benefit from the triple whammy of its simplicity (except for spelling), the British empire and the American century. When you need to learn 3,500 characters just to read a Chinese newspaper, few people will bother. That’s why the world’s 35 most popular news websites in web information company Alexa’s rankings are in English. No wonder al-Qaeda staged its biggest recruiting event in an English-speaking media capital, New York, though even then its non-western ideas made few converts.
中国、俄罗斯以及其他新兴经济体在各领域仍然缺乏文化影响力。这些经济体对外开放，只是为西方文化提供了更多可供侵占的土地。这在一定程度上反映了英语的主导地位。英语有三大杀手锏：语言简单（拼写除外）、大英帝国的辉煌以及后来的“美国世纪”。这三点至今仍在让英语受益。仅是看懂一份中文报纸就需要认识3500个汉字，没有多少人会费那个劲。正因如此，根据网络信息公司Alexa的排名，全球最热门的35家新闻网站全部是英语网站。难怪基地组织(al-Qaeda)把招聘本土恐怖主义者的重头戏放在英语媒体之都纽约，尽管即便如此，它的非西方观点也没有多少改变。
It’s the same story in books. Translations from English fill shelves worldwide. Brazil’s three bestselling books in 2012, for instance, were the three volumes of E.L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy. Fourth was the American novel Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. Meanwhile, few Chinese books get translated at all. Even the most exportable bit of Chinese culture – its supposed devotion to education – had to be popularised in English by an American author of Chinese descent, “Tiger Mother” Amy Chua. Western brands rule too: no Chinese, Russian, Indian or Arab names make Forbes’ top 100 of the world’s strongest brands.
图书领域同样如此。世界各地充斥着英语图书译著。例如，巴西2012年畅销书排行榜前三名是E•L•詹姆斯(E.L. James)所著的《格雷的五十道阴影》(Fifty Shades Trilogy)三部曲。排名第四位的是乔治•R•R•马丁(George R.R. Martin)所著的美国小说《权力的游戏》(Game of Thrones)。与此同时，中文著作几乎没有被翻译成外文的。甚至连中华文化中最值得输出的部分——公认的对教育的重视——也不得不通过一位华裔美国作者“虎妈”蔡美儿(Amy Chua)用英语写就，才能成为畅销书。西方品牌同样占据主导地位：福布斯全球100强品牌中没有一个中国、俄罗斯、印度或阿拉伯品牌。
Western cultural products promote western celebrities. A British friend of mine reports a bearded student approaching him on the street in Isfahan, Iran, years ago and asking: “You are from England? After Israel and America, you are our biggest enemy. Do you think David Beckham should play on the right for Manchester United, or in the centre?’’
西方文化产品宣传西方的名人。我的一位英国朋友说，多年前在伊朗伊斯法罕的街上，一名留着胡须的学生走到他面前问道：“你来自英国？除了以色列和美国，你们是我们最大的敌人。你认为大卫•贝克汉姆(David Beckham)应该在曼联踢右路还是中场？”
Our universities, media, books, brands and celebrities combine to sell the western way of life – which implicitly includes democracy. The American dream remains a potent idea despite being no longer accessible to most Americans. The European dream – a lower-income version of the American dream but with more free time – is encapsulated in the Club Med brand. The Chinese purchase of it is the ultimate tribute.
我们的大学、媒体、图书、品牌和名人一起兜售西方生活方式——民主也暗含在这种生活方式中。“美国梦”依然是一个强大的理念，尽管对大多数美国人不再适用。“欧洲梦”（一个收入较低但自由时间较多版本的美国梦）集中体现在地中海俱乐部品牌上。中国人收购该品牌，是对这一梦想的终极致敬。
Meanwhile the new Beijing-pushed “Chinese dream” (a phrase the Chinese government apparently borrowed from the American columnist Thomas Friedman) has less appeal. You don’t get many people sneaking illegally into China, except from North Korea. If the aspiration offered by China and Russia is simply good incomes for ordinary people, then western countries remain decades ahead.
与此同时，中国政府新提出的“中国梦”并没有多少吸引力（中国政府的这个提法显然借用了美国专栏作家托马斯•弗里德曼(Thomas Friedman)的创意）。除朝鲜人以外，没有多少外国人偷渡到中国。如果中国和俄罗斯的梦想只是让普通人获得高收入，那么西方国家仍领先这两个国家数十年。
Western cultural dominance doesn’t depend merely on wealth, English and first-mover advantage. It’s also built on freedom (yes, the word deserves rescuing from its contamination by George W. Bush). Unfree countries rarely develop lifestyles that are envied abroad. Moreover, Russia and China actively discourage their people from producing ideas for the global conversation. That’s why the emerging countries with exportable cultural products are mostly democracies. South Korean, Mexican and Brazilian soap operas sell abroad, as do Korean pop and Indian movies. Admittedly, non-democratic tiny Qatar has created a more influential global TV station than either China or Russia, but it chiefly influences other Arabic-speaking countries.
西方文化占据的主导地位并非仅仅依赖财富、英语和先发优势。这种地位还建立在自由的基础之上（没错，这个被小布什(George W. Bush)玷污了的词值得我们为之正名）。缺乏自由的国家很少会发展出让外国人羡慕的生活方式。此外，俄罗斯和中国积极阻止本国民众创造可成为全球话题的思想。正因如此，能够对外输出文化产品的新兴国家大多是民主政体。韩国、墨西哥和巴西的肥皂剧远销海外，韩国流行音乐和印度电影也是如此。诚然，非民主政体的小国卡塔尔创造了一个比中国或俄罗斯都更具影响力的全球电视台，但这个电视台主要影响的是其他说阿拉伯语的国家。
China and Russia won’t easily gain more global cultural influence, unless they become English-speaking democracies. For now the west rules the global conversation. That matters. Although many dictators admire the Chinese political model, their subjects mostly prefer democracy. You don’t see anyone in Cairo, or for that matter New York, taking to the streets to demand that his country be led by an unelected communist party with a history of mass murder.
中国和俄罗斯不会轻易获得更大的全球文化影响力，除非成为说英语的民主国家。就目前而言，西方主导着全球的话题。这一点非常重要。尽管许多独裁者羡慕中国的政治模式，但他们的国民大多青睐民主。在开罗，以及在纽约，都不会有人走上街头，要求一个未经选举、且曾大开杀戒的共产主义政党来领导自己的国家。
China and Russia must worry that when their economies stall, this era will end much as the cold war did: the appeal of western life brought down the Berlin Wall.
中国和俄罗斯肯定在担心，当本国的经济陷入停滞，这个时代就会像冷战时期那样结束：西方生活方式的魅力推倒了柏林墙。
天之聪教育
2013-06-19
天之聪教育
264次
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