The Best Time

在2007年9月，我们一群奖学金生在莱茵河畔的Oberwesel参加一个论坛，主题是“亚洲的人权问题”。这本来就是一个很敏感和很让中国人反感的话题，但是一年12次论坛总得参加一次，这是唯一与亚洲有关的议题（可见在西方人心中亚洲的形象如何），所以还是勉强来参加了。据说将有一个波恩大学的教授要来做一个专题报告《中国人权》，kao…

比这更恶心的还在后面。在这个教授作报告之前一天，论坛主办者突然通知，在这个专题报告之后，专门给中国学生半小时的时间，回应“奥运会与中国人权”的议题。事先为什么不通知？因为他们知道，如果他们提前就通知，中国人一定会搜集很多的资料，把他们驳得颜面扫地。

但是他们错了。我们中国学生晚上紧急讨论。以我为首的鹰派要以激烈的言辞“战斗”，而其他众人大部分是鸽派，主张以温和的言语来“沟通”。双方各执己见，于是鹰派和鸽派各准备大约10分钟的演讲，到时以鸽派开头，然后鹰派补充攻击。

于是，我们从11点写到凌晨4点。鸽派代表ZL用德文写，而我的德文不好，又未带字典，因此直接以英文写成，反正他们都会说英文。

第二天，波恩大学的这个汉学教授来做报告了，照例又是把《中国人权状况白皮书》批了一通。我根本就懒得去听。一来我的德语不好，听起来不是不行，但很费劲；二是狗嘴里吐不出象牙来，听完他的开场我就知道他后面要怎么展开了；三是晚上准备演讲稿太晚，要保存体力以便后面继续战斗。那个教授唾沫横飞地讲了一个半小时，然后便是我们的部分了。

鸽派的温和发言当然没有什么特别的轰动，接下来便是我的激烈攻击了。

以下是我的演讲稿全文加上中文翻译。由于演讲稿直接以英文写成，翻译时为力求贴近原文，采用了一些非标准中文表达的方式，而尽量不用意译。

1         Historic review

Human right problem of China became a focal point to criticize China only after the foundation of PRC.  This was based on severe ideological conflict.  When china became a rising power, the western countries consider China as a strong potential enemy.  Human right becomes an important civil weapon against China.

2         Malicious strategy of the US

Since the iron curtain was established after the Second World War, the US started to lead the western party, fighting for its own global strategic profit against the communistic world.  After the disassembly of USSR, China became the only remaining potential enemy power against American global supremacy.  The US established a malicious strategy, putting china into a dilemma.

First, the US wanted to repeat the victory against the USSR – to force China racing on armament.  To achieve this, they apply deterrent (threatening) against china with extensive military pressure.  China was forced to develop its economy and military force as fast as possible.  China made his best to make economic and military wonder, but the price for this ultimate efficiency was the depression of social morality, unjust and severe environmental pollution.

Then, the US used the human rights as a moral weapon.  In one aspect, the human right was an effective factor to establish solidarity all over the world against china.  In western world, the mentality was similar.  Western people tend to pay more attention on individual rights.  With this method, the whole western world, from government to people, can be united against Chinese government.  In another aspect, the overflow of the criticism against human rights in china can provoke the attention of the Chinese people on the accumulating unjust.  This decreases the trust of people to the government, accumulating the anti-governmental force.

The power of china is based on its united reign and stable social community.  In Chinese history, none of the dynasties died because of being invaded.  They died because of the unstable society, and the invasions were just catalyst.  If the anti-governmental force is strong enough, the current Chinese government will be undermined, and this biggest potential enemy will be turned into a new colony of western countries.  This is proven by the history.

3        Popular psychology of western people

Western culture was based on nomad culture.  A very dominant feature of nomad culture is that when a tribe is strong enough, he will definitely invade other tribes to control more territories and more resources, because they will soon deplete their own resources in a limited time.  This means that every rising power will be a future enemy.  Actually, the history of china proved that china, based on agricultural culture, has never invaded other countries for more territories or resources.  But as western people don’t understand this because of the different basis of culture, severe misunderstanding exists.

Nomad cultures believe in jungle rule, while agricultural cultures don’t.  Based on this, the colonization history provides the western people an important mentality:  superiority over Chinese people (as well as almost all the asian people).  Because of this superiority and arrogance, they don’t want to make effort to understand asian cultures.

But the rapid development of china challenges the superiority of western people.  The daily life of western people is largely dependent on China.  The economy of western countries (especially Europe) is closely connected with China.  Nowadays, China is independent of western countries on most high technologies.  If you don’t sell a product to China, Chinese people will make it (even better ones) in a short time.  If you don’t sell a resource to China, we can find enough in our huge territory.  This kind of asymmetrical dependence, i.e. western countries depend on China while China is relatively independent on western countries, raised huge panic of western people.

Because of the misunderstanding of Chinese culture, western people believe that china is no more a potential enemy, but a practical enemy, an enemy against their superiority.  No one wants his enemy to live happily.  However, the life of western people is highly dependent on China.  They don’t have enough ability to change the situation in the near future.  So they dare not to see that China is already strong and prominent.  They dare not to confess that they are being exceeded by China.  They dare not to confess that any change on Chinese policy will deeply affect their life.  They dare not to see that China is developing.  In a word, they dare not to admit the fact that the former “lower class” China, is defeating them.  So they have to filter out all the positive facts in China.  They want to collect all the dark side of China to persuade themselves that “China is still very bad”.  This ostrich psychology can only relieve themselves from panic for a short while.

The best proof is that in the 1980s, when China is still very poor, and the ideological conflict was largely relieved, there were very less criticism on human rights problems in China.  When the time flies, in 1990s, there were more and more criticisms on human right problems.

4         Globalization:  strike to the self-confidence of western people

It seems unbelievable, but it’s true.

A couple of years ago, Hamburg lowered the salary standard of workers.  The reason was that some big companies wanted to move their factories to China, resulting tens of thousands of unemployment in Hamburg.  Everyone knows that China is the world factory because we have cheaper workers.  The Hamburg workers have to lower their salary in order to keep their job.  This is just an example of the general lowering of salaries in all western countries.  This is a natural result of globalization, because globalization makes the whole world as an entire market.  But lowering the salary means lowering the living standards.  Of course the western people complain.  It’s very likely that they believe that China is the reason why they live worse than before.

Actually, the western companies in China make many serious human rights problems:

They force Chinese workers to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week.

They pollute the environment in China.

They give extremely less salary to the workers, without paying any social insurance.

They lower the protection of the workers, resulting many irreversible industrial diseases, but the companies refuse to be responsible for that.

Obviously, these problems are based on the greedy western capitalists, not China.  They want to make more money, but they cause serious human rights in China, and also cause problems in western countries.  Of course, these greedy capitalists won’t confess that they are guilty for that.  In their own country, they mislead the public opinion against China.

Since they have caused a lot of human rights problems in China, this is a good excuse to blame China.

Because of the historic and practical reasons, the western world, from government to people, would like to criticize China, especially on the human rights problems.  Their aim of criticism is not to help Chinese people to live happier, but to try to make China poorer, less stable, less efficient, less developed, less challenging, less competent, and so on.

5         Sovereignty is the basis of human rights

The very basic human rights are the rights of survive, the right of development, and the right to keep his own dignity.  The first line of german constitution is “The dignity of human beings is protected.”  Without these very basic human rights, the other human rights are just Utopia.

In a country without its own sovereignty, the people there don’t have those very basic human rights.  We see the real examples in the history:

The US said that they wanted to bring human rights to Kosovo and Iraq.  The US defeated their government and controlled those areas.  But in those areas, do the inhabitants get more rights?  They worry if they will be robbed or killed tomorrow.  The US soldiers can torture man freely, rape women freely.  That is the life without sovereignty.

If these areas are so far away from us, let’s see the history of Germany in 1949-1950.  An old german lady told me a story.  After Germany was defeated, the French soldiers controlled her hometown.  The germans didn’t have any rights.  If the French soldiers were unhappy, they can catch any german freely and torture him or her, just for fun.  The French soldiers lived in their beautiful house, and her family was driven into the small, cold and humid basement.  She got serious problems in all of her joints – arthritis, till now.  The French soldiers robbed her food.  So her family was very often starved.  Her neighbor was even starved to death.  No one cares.  Till now, this lady is still afraid of fireworks, because this will revoke her tragic memory.  That is the life without sovereignty.

Besides the French soldiers, the Soviet soldiers raped over 2 million german women, according to the incomplete statistics.  That is the life without sovereignty.

China suffered this kind of tragedy 70 years ago.  We never forget that miserable history, and we don’t want that this tragedy happens again to us.  We don’t want to be the second Kosovo, the second Iraq, or the second Germany, because we don’t want a life without our own sovereignty.

Yes, you can write a long list, listing huge amount of cases that the individual human rights were broken in China.  But this is much better than the semi-colony period.  At least, now we have our very basic rights.  Our rights to survive and rights of dignity are secured by our military force.

6         Force is everything

Basically, Chinese culture is based on agricultural culture.  This basis determines that China won’t be an invading country; China won’t be an enemy against anyone, even when it’s strong.  But the western countries forced us to join the game of their jungle rule.  Just like Napoleon’s famous sentence “China is a sleeping lion.  Don’t wake him up.”  The western countries forced us to wake up.  And this lion roars.

In this world, if we come to the international affairs, we clearly see that there is no virtue and morality.  The only determinant is the force.  Of course, this force includes military, economy and culture.  Now China is accumulating strong force, and the other asian countries are also developing.  The Asian power is rising in the world.

The US also has many serious human rights problems.  They might be just a little bit better than in China – if at all.  Why the criticism against American human rights problems is so less in the world, comparing to the criticisms against China?  Very simple, because the US is very powerful, much more powerful than any other current power in the world.  So, according to the western philosophy and history, the best way of China to get rid of the criticism is that we develop our country until we are much stronger than any western country.  At that time, it’s our turn to criticize the western countries on the human rights, and no one dares to criticize us.

Yes, we have problems.  But we develop.  Not like the western countries, we don’t have colonies all over the world.  We have to accumulate every single cent by our effort.  We will solve these problems, but not immediately, not under the pressure of western countries.  We will solve these problems by ourselves.

We live happily in Asia.  We live happily without you western countries.  We welcome the communication with good will, of course.  But we have to keep our sovereignty, because this is the basis of all the other human rights.  We have our own culture and we have our own standards.  We don’t have to accept your standards.  We have our own way to develop.  We don’t have to follow your way.  The history has proven many times:  China is a very good friend to the friendly people, but will be definitely a nightmare to hostility.

If you really want to do something to help China to improve the human rights, please do three things:

1.       Stop your prejudice and hostility.  Throw away your arrogance.

2.       Come to respect, understand and experience our culture deeply.

3.       Make the US less hostile to China.

If you can’t do these, you, the western countries, should better shut up.  You won’t make things better.  This is none of your business.

Human right is not an issue to discuss.  Human right is an issue to fight for.

【中文译文】

1         历史回顾

    人权问题成为指责中国的焦点，是在中华人民共和国成立之后。当时，这是因为严重的意识形态冲突。当中国逐渐强大的时候，西方国家便把中国看成一个潜在的劲敌。人权成为西方国家攻击中国的一个重要武器。

2  美国的险恶用心

冷战的铁幕建立之后，美国开始为着自己的全球利益领导西方资本主义阵营，与共产主义阵营斗争。苏联解体之后，中国成为世界上仅存的可以挑战美国全球霸权的力量。美国于是开始进行一项战略部署，欲陷中国于两难境地中。

首先，美国希望重复和平演变苏联的成功经验，逼迫中国也参加军备竞赛。为了达到这个目标，美国围绕中国不断施加强大的军事压力和威胁。于是，中国被迫尽快发展经济和军事力量。中国也的确全力发展经济和军备，其速度之快堪称奇迹，但这极端效率的代价则是对社会道德的压制、不公平和严重的环境污染。

然后，美国就用人权作为道德武器。一方面，人权问题是一个团结反华阵营的有效因素。西方世界人们的思想方式相近，人们倾向于更多的关注个人利益而不是群体利益。因此，用人权（个人权利）作幌子，可以很容易的从政府到人民地团结起整个西方世界，使之反对中国政府。另一方面，对中国人权的连篇累牍的攻击会唤起中国民众对愈演愈烈的社会不公平现象的注意，因而造成人民对政府的不信任和不满。这在民间便可以积聚反政府力量。

中国力量的基础在于统一的王权和安定的社会。在中国历史上，没有哪一个王朝因为外敌入侵而覆灭，每个王朝都是因为社会的不稳定而覆灭，而外敌入侵充其量只能算是一个催化剂。如果反政府力量足够强，现在的中国政府将被颠覆，中国这个西方最大的敌人便可以被重新变成西方的殖民地。在历史上，这已经有过先例。

3  西方民众的普遍心理

西方文明基于游牧文明。游牧文明的显著特征是，当一个部落足够强大的时候，他一定会侵略邻近的部落以控制更大的领土和更多的资源，因为他们自己的资源在有限的时间内就将耗尽。也就是说，任何一个正在强大起来的部落或国家，都将必然地成为未来的敌人。事实上，中国的历史证明了以农耕文明为基础的中国文明从未侵略过其他的国家以获取更大的领土或更多的资源。但是西方民众并不了解这些，因为他们不了解中国文化——在东西方之间存在着巨大的误解。

游牧文明信奉丛林法则，但农耕文明并不。基于这一点，殖民时代的历史赋予西方民众一个很普遍的想法：他们自然认为他们拥有对中国人（乃至全体亚洲人）的优越感。因为这种优越感和傲慢，西方民众根本不愿意花精力去了解亚洲文化。

但是，中国的快速发展挑战着西方民众的优越感，西方民众的日常生活已经高度依赖于中国，西方国家（尤其是欧洲）的经济已经与中国紧密相连。如今，中国在大多数高科技领域已经不依赖于西方国家。如果你不卖给中国某种产品，中国人民在短时间内就可以研制出同样甚至更好的产品。这种不对称的依赖性，即西方对中国的高度依赖和中国对西方的不依赖，在西方民众心中引了巨大的恐慌。

由于对中国文化的误解，西方民众认为中国已经不是潜在的敌人，而是现实的敌人，是挑战他们优越感的现实的敌人。没有人希望他的敌人活得好好的，但西方民众的生活高度依赖于中国，他们也没有能力在短期内改变这一现状。所以，他们不敢正视中国已经强大，并且还在欣欣向荣的现实；他们不敢承认他们正在被中国超越；他们不敢承认中国政策的每一个变化都可能影响到他们的日常生活；他们不敢正视中国正在发展。一句话，他们不敢承认以前“低等”的中国，正在打败他们。因此，他们不得不过滤掉中国的所有正面信息。他们有意收集中国的黑暗面来说服他们自己“中国仍然非常差劲”。然而，这种鸵鸟心理只能在短时间内稍稍缓解一下他们心中的恐惧。

关于这一点最好的证明：在1980年代，当中国仍然贫穷的时候，即便当时仍然存在着较大的意识形态的冲突，西方对中国人权的指责也很少见到。然而到了90年代，中国日新月异地发展，对于中国人权的指责就一下子多了起来。

4  全球化对西方民众自信心的打击

听起来有些奇怪，但这是真实的。

几年前，汉堡的工人主动要求降低工资。原因是，一些大公司要把工厂搬到中国去，这将造成成千上万的德国工人失业。地球人都知道中国是世界工厂，因为中国的劳动力比欧美要便宜得多。汉堡的工人不得不主动要求降低工资，来保住他们的工作。而这仅仅是西方社会工资整体水平降低的一个例子罢了。这是全球化的必然结果之一，因为全球化将整个世界变成了一个统一的市场。显然，降低工资意味着降低生活水平，西方民众当然会抱怨。他们很容易就相信，正是因为中国，他们的生活今不如昔。

实际上，正是西方国家在中国制造了大量的人权问题：

l  他们强迫中国工人每天工作18个小时，每周工作7天。

l  他们污染了中国的环境。

l  他们给中国工人极低的工资，也不给中国工人支付任何保险。

l  他们不给中国工人以足够的劳动保护，造成许多的工伤和不可逆转的职业病，但企业拒绝支付任何补偿费用。

非常明显，这些问题的根源在于贪婪的西方资本家，而不在中国。他们想多赚钱，但他们在中国造成了严重的人权问题，同时在西方国家也造成了问题。当然，那些贪婪的资本家并不会承认他们对此负有罪责。在他们的国家里，他们将公众舆论误导，攻击中国。

由于他们已经在中国造成了许多人权问题，这正是一个诋毁中国的好借口。