跨越理解中国式现代化的知识鸿沟 (Bridging the knowledge gap in understanding Chinese-style modernization; originally pubished by中国社会科学院 [Chinese Social Sciences Net] on 13 February 2023)
February 13, 2023Comment by Zvonimir Stopić
中国在20世纪末到21世纪的崛起史无前例,可以被理解为人类普遍取得的重大成就之一:它作为一个伟大的案例,表明通过团结、正确的领导和集体的决心可以成就许多事业。中国的成功不只属于自身,也不仅仅是连续发展的历史中的孤立事件。中国的成功是经过几个世纪的发展和对抗后一个开展全球合作的故事,在充满挑战的冷战时期创造了一个惠及全球的机会。中国发挥重大作用下的全球合作机遇为世界带来了众多利好,如全球生产力提高、技术飞速进步、教育普及全球、许多国家的预期寿命延长、世界多个地区的贫困率降低、全球供应链扩展、全球生活水平提高及财富增长等。
但是,中国的发展道路是不容易理解的,也不容易将其准确地情景化。是考虑到当前和过去的现实,还是未来的可能性,理解中国的发展道路本身就是一个挑战。中国国内外学界需要努力研究,以便为全球共同的未来和人类的共同命运强基固本。
从中国的角度来看,中国的快速发展“纠正”了19—20世纪东西方文明碰撞造成的许多不平等。晚清时期中国内部积贫积弱,民国初期中国的政治和社会混乱无序,这些情况导致中国没有能力建立一个适当的科学框架、社会框架和政治框架来应对周遭世界的快速变化,甚至连认识论层面的框架也没有。不过,正是在这个内部斗争和对外抗日战争交织的艰难时期,中国人展现出了非凡的力量。中国的历史多次表明,中国在其“至暗时刻”是最强大的,尤其是在所有人都笃定混乱将吞噬中国的时候。如同秦汉、隋唐、宋、明、清王朝的建立使得社会由乱而治,20世纪中叶的中国再次证明了自己可以找到其“内在力量”,并克服一切困难重整旗鼓,走上伟大复兴的道路。在此过程中,毛泽东和中国共产党发挥了极其重要的作用,在毛泽东的领导下,中国共产党为新中国建立起一个社会和政治结构,邓小平、江泽民和胡锦涛等中国领导人得以在此基础上继续发展经济体系,使中国重新回到世界大国之列。今天,在习近平主席的领导下,中国成为一个有能力、独立自主、强大和有影响力的全球大国,主张以和平共处的理念塑造世界。
从外部——欧洲或美国——的角度看,中国的发展与欧美有相似之处但又不完全相同,可以说,大多数西方人仍将中国视作一个“谜”。中国的成功之路在西方很少得到恰当理解,他们往往只将中国的发展与自身进行直接比较,而忽视了过去40多年来中国历史进程的持久性、19—20世纪中国内部斗争的复杂性,以及中国所处的全球和区域地缘政治环境,遑论中国国内政治和社会发展的优势和局限性。这样的理解偏差并不出人意料,因为在人类历史的大部分时间里,欧洲和中国相距甚远,大多时候仅通过丝绸之路沿线的中间人或中介国产生联系。伊本·白图泰、鲁不鲁乞、马可·波罗和利玛窦等人仅仅将部分经过选择的关于中国的知识带回本国,而这些知识很少能融入欧洲普遍的思想流派中。奇怪的是,这种理解鸿沟很大程度上一直保留到今天,尤其是在政治和新闻领域,很多人每天仍在“发现”中国。尽管一些真正了解中国的专家和博学之人确实存在,但由于中国与西方的紧张局势常常一波未平一波又起,大多数人对中国的了解仍然是盲人摸象。这种了解方式阻碍了对中国的综合性认识,结果,不幸的是,这种理解更多是徒劳无功的。因此,虽然中国的现代化给世界带来了丰厚的利益,但世界上对中国知之甚少的国家仍将其视为某种“威胁”。
今天,我们生活在一个“声明”比“提问”更占上风的时代。在中国和西方两端,有太多的人没有意识到中国与西方之间存在知识和理解上的巨大分歧,他们宁愿做出符合自身对现实预想的局限性声明,也不愿提出问题来扩充对现实的理解和认识。此外,这些“声明”的形式往往是简短而狭隘的,很容易通过社交媒体来垄断人与人之间的互动交流。任何一方都不能幸免于此,因此,中国和西方应该努力克服这些挑战,以免彼此间理解的“裂痕”变成无法逾越的汪洋大海。为避免这种情况,双方应该致力于让未来的现代化进程尽可能地成为两者共同的进程。
China’s historically unprecedented rise in the late 20th and early 21st century can be understood as one of the major achievements of humanity in general: it is a monumental demonstration that much can be done through unity, proper leadership, and collective determination. China’s success, however, does not belong to China alone, nor it is an isolated event drawn from continuity of history. It is also story of global cooperation utilized after centuries of development and confrontation, which at the challenging Cold War times created an opportunity from which the entire World benefited tremendously. Rise of global productivity, exponential technology advancement, global spread of education, prolongation of life expectancy in many countries, reduction of the poverty rate in many parts of the world, expansion of supply chains across the world, as well as global rise in standard of living and rise global wealth, together with many other benefits, occurred because of this opportunity of global cooperation in which China played an immensely important role.
The understanding of the development of China, however, is not neither easy to achieve or properly contextualize. Whether regarding the current and past realities, or regarding the future possibilities. This alone is a challenge scientific community, both that of within and outside of China, need to diligently work on so that proper foundations for the common global future, common destiny of all mankind, can be strengthened.
Looking from the Chinese perspective, China’s rapid development “corrected” many of the inequities which were created as the East collided with the West in the 19th and 20th century. China’s apparent internal “weakness” during the late Qing dynasty, as well as China’s political and social disarray in the first decades of the Republic period, made China incapable to create a proper scientific, social, political, or even epistemological framework for dealing with the rapid changes world around it was going through. However, even though from the outside perspective China did perhaps seemed underpowered and disordered, it was precisely in this difficult moment, characterized with exhausting internal struggle and war with Japan, that Chinese people showed their exceptional strength. As Chinese history showed several times before, China is the strongest in its “darkest hour”, especially at that moment when all would bet on chaos to swallow China for good. As with the establishing Qin-Han, Sui-Tang, Song, Ming or Qing dynasty, in mid-20th century China showed once more that it can find “power within” and against all odds resurrect itself and set itself on the path to greatness. In this process, Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party played a tremendously important role by completing unification and providing New China with a social and political structure that in continuation enabled future Chinese leaders such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao to develop economic system which brought China back to the table of global powers. Today, under President Xi Jinping, China stands as a capable, independent, sovereign, strong and influential global power ready to shape the world under the pretext of global peaceful coexistence.
Looking from the outside, from the perspectives of Europe or the United States, which do have similarities but are not identical, one might say that most still see China as a sort of an “enigma”. China’s “road to success” in the West is rarely understood in proper terms, frequently solely in direct comparison with itself, often disregarding the longevity of the historic processes which preceded the last 40 years or so, the complexity of China’s internal struggle which lasted much of the 19th and 20th century, China’s global and regional geopolitical circumstances, let alone advantages and limitations of China’s internal political and social development. Such approach is not an unexpected one, since for most of the human history great distances divided Europe and China, connecting them mostly only indirectly through the intermediaries along the network of Silk roads. Individuals, such as Ibn Batuta, Willem van Rubroeck, Marko Polo, or even Matteo Ricci would only bring back selected knowledge on China which was rarely blended into the usual European streams of thought. Peculiarly, such approach was largely kept until this very day, with many, especially in a political or a journalism sphere, still “discovering” China daily. Even though true experts and knowledgeable people do exist, due to the fast pace of shifting from one tension to the next, most usually stand on the side-line of things. Such approach narrows general understanding, which is as a result subjected to directing, too much, unfortunately, toward unproductive trends. China’s modernization, thus, although it brought immense benefit to the world is presented as a certain threat to the part of the world which still understands China way too little.
Today we live in a time when “statements” have an advantage over “questions”. On each end, too many people, unaware of the vast rifts within the knowledge and understanding that exist between China and the “West” would rather make a finite statement that fits into their mostly already predesigned understanding of reality, rather than to ask a question so that reality and understanding might be expanded. Furthermore, these “statements” often exist in short and narrow forms, which are easily transmitted through social media which monopolized human interaction. Neither “side” in this is immune, and both should work diligently to overcome these challenges so the “rifts” would not become insurmountable oceans. Quite the opposite, both sides should work on making the future course of modernization as much as possible a common one.
![跨越理解中国式现代化的知识鸿沟 (Bridging the knowledge gap in understanding Chinese-style modernization; originally pubished by中国社会科学院 [Chinese Social Sciences Net] on 13 February 2023)](/static/cd907da0d887cdd03a55972f1da52a67/e4ce7/image-01.jpg)