这是一篇去年发在南华早报英文版上的评论员文章，作者是密西根大学中国研究中心的退休教授，里面提到一些在华语世界中鲜为人知的西方史实，我觉得值得翻译成中文。

在美国，攻击中国的根源是西方优越的迷思

马丁.鲍尔斯

在美国，如果说左右两方有任何一种双方都一致同意的东西的话，那就是，“中国是敌人“，这样一个深切的文化上的认识。

左派（也许？译者加）不容忍针对华人的暴力，但他们也许同样把那些用来合理化种族主义恶行的，非人化的迷思当成事实：华人有集体主义心理，是盲从的，等等。

作为一个研究中国迷思多年的历史学家，我相信一个比较深入的对这种中国攻击的来龙去脉的叙述，能对理解这种在美国心理中根深蒂固的执迷有所帮助。

中国的威胁

在他的有影响的十八世纪介绍中国的书中，J.B.杜哈尔德说，欧洲探险家们发现他们自己比所遇见的所有人都要高级，除了在中国之外。在中国，他们看到一个人口众多的大国，有富庶的城市，和一个宽容大度的社会，就连宗教战争都是闻所未闻的。

刚开始的时候，这些见闻被当作虚构的故事而置之不理：“我们不可能相信，在这么多的半野蛮的国度之外，在亚细亚极其偏远的地方，会有一个强大的国家，与任何管理得最好的欧洲国家相比起来，都不算差。“

这些见闻是对传统欧洲优越推定的挑战，但最后被发现在很大程度上是真实的。更糟糕的是，全球对中国商品，茶，瓷器和丝绸的需求，还导致了欧洲各地的贸易逆差。

弗朗索瓦·费内隆指控中国人是很狡猾的骗子，因为中国人不可能自己就能做到这些（译者按，莫非中国人的文化和东西是神给的？其实可能这就是真相，是神给的。中国人老说自己是龙的传人，中国是神州，其实的确是得了神族亲授的高级知识。这个扯远了，以后再聊）。但是因为欧洲人也从这些商品的贸易中赚了大钱，所以这种威胁，主要是针对欧洲人的脸面，而不是一种真正的敌对关系。

而脸面，结果被发现是个很严重的事情。路易·勒孔德（中文名李明，法国传教士，1684-1691在华，译者按），公开表示了对中国任人唯贤的社会制度的羡慕，于是他的书就被烧了。在饱受宗教战争折磨的欧洲，克里斯蒂安·沃尔夫（德国哲学家和数学家，译者按）表示了对中国世俗道德观的倾慕，他被要求在24小时内滚出城，否则就要被处以绞刑。

另一个威胁，是中国的后贵族社会。匿名的科举考试，减少了社会阶层，宗教和民族在官员选拔中的作用。这让人民对政治的参与比欧洲更平等。

荷兰，法国和英国的改革者们，借此来攻击贵族阶层的特权，说中国的经济成功，是他们任人唯贤的体制的成果（译者按，听上去好熟悉）。孟德斯鸠意识到这个对贵族制度的威胁，在《论法的精神》中对此展开了不遗余力的攻击。

我们的教科书告诉我们，拜伦是个“自由“的倡导者，但没有提，“自由“，在那个时代，是指贵族特权。我们也学到，他反对“专制“，但没被教，“专制“，指的是取消贵族们的“自由“。

显然，中国犯了这个（“专制的“，译者加）罪。在中国，任何受过教育的男子都可以当官。但孟德斯鸠坚持认为平民永远也不能当官。真正的改革者，比如阿贝.雷纳尔，一直坚持倡导中国式的平等权利，直到美国和法国的革命爆发，但孟德斯鸠的虚假信息也流传了下来。

革命之后，承认中国对自由思想的贡献更加威胁到了欧洲人的脸面，所以变得有必要来压制提起中国在文艺复兴争论中所起的作用。大卫·波特观察到，在西方现代主义者的叙事中，有“一种故意的遗忘症...在英国，被故意的，正好有利地遗忘掉的，是在18和19世纪这段时间，全球历史同时在发生的事情，特别是关于在欧亚大陆最东端的那个令人惊叹的高级文明的事情。“

黑格尔对制造出这个遗忘症产生了很大作用。他用充满种族主义色彩的话语来对中国人进行非人化描述。很多我们现在的刻板印象都来自于他的《历史哲学》一书。

在中国，匿名的科举考试让个人能力得以有突出的作用，而黑格尔却说中国人缺乏个体性。中国一直享有政治异议的传统，但黑格尔却号称中国人都是无脑顺从，但同时又是狡诈的人。他根本不能读中文，事实也完全与他宣称的不符，但他的刻板印象被流传了下来。

就在最近，主流媒体（时代周刊）告诉读者，亚洲人戴口罩不是因为有公德心，而仅仅是因为个人身份对他们来说不那么重要，这是种典型的黑格尔式污蔑。

（译者按，据我所知，这种黑格尔式污蔑，被现在一些心理学家加上了科学的外衣来合理化了。我知道的，就有密西根大学心理系Nisbet教授和他的学生，现中国清华大学心理系系主任彭凯平教授的博士论文工作。不知道彭教授知道了这个文化历史背景，对自己的博士研究工作，现在有何评论）。

这为什么重要

几个世纪以来，中国对西方优越迷思的威胁，让它很容易成为了种族诱饵。现在，中国拥抱绿色能源的举措，再次威胁到美国的面子，更不用说石油利润了。

当川普政府开始他的反华运动的时候，大家都认识到其目的是转移对他糟糕总统政绩的视线。即便如此，左派还是跳上了这个反华战车。

但反华攻击适得其反，给这个饱受管理不善弊端的国家带来了更多的破坏。已经有人（外交事务周刊）指出，更大的风险，是对中国成功的过度反应，但现政府（指拜登政府，译者按）的反应是加强反华攻击。

把什么都归罪于外种族是白人种族主义者的核心剧本，而如果川普怪罪于非裔美国人或者穆斯林的话，左派早就看穿他了。但对于中国，黑格尔的刻板印象继续被当成内幕知识来用。这非常不幸，不仅仅是因为美国的农民和汽车工人本可以从中国的市场得利，更因为，就如外交事务周刊观察到的那样，中国的科技工业也许会被发现是会对控制气候变化起关键作用的。

无论两国之间今天有什么分歧 - 而且现在越来越难歧视中国了- 中国曾经给予了西方自由派一个更平等的采用理性的政策来为公众服务的社会的一个模板。

要有一个对今天中国的理性的反应，要求我们区分它的好政策和那些我们也许会抛弃的政策，但在歇斯底里式的热情中，这些很难做到。现在也许是时候让双方都回顾一下那个共同的，相当现代的过去。

马丁.鲍尔斯写过三本关于中国社会公平的书。其中两本获得过莱文森前1900中国研究最佳书籍奖。他是前莎莉·迈克尔逊·戴维森讲座教授和中国研究中心主任，现在是密西根大学的名誉教授。

原链接要订阅南华早报才能看，所以我把英文原文也附在下面，

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3090305/us-china-bashing-rooted-myths-western-superiority

In the US, China-bashing is rooted in myths of Western superiority

Martin Powers

In the United States, if the right and left agree upon anything, it is that China is the enemy, at a deep, cultural level.

Liberals do not condone violence against Chinese people, but they may accept as fact the same dehumanising myths used to justify racist bullying: Chinese people have a collectivist mentality; are blindly obedient, and so on.

As a historian with years of research on China myths, I believe a deep history of China-bashing can help explain its tenacious hold on the American mind.

THE CHINA THREAT

In his preface to the most influential 18th-century book on China, J.B. Du Halde said European explorers saw themselves as superior to everyone they encountered, but in China they found a populous nation with prosperous cities and a society so tolerant that religious wars were unknown.

At first, these reports were dismissed as fiction: “We could not believe that beyond so many half-barbarous nations, and at the extremity of Asia, a powerful nation was to be found scarce inferior to any of the best governed states of Europe.”

These accounts challenged traditional presumptions of European superiority, but they turned out to be largely true. Worse yet, global demand for Chinese commodities such as tea, porcelain and silk had created trade deficits all over Europe.

François Fénelon accused the Chinese of being sneaky on the assumption they could not have achieved all this on their own, but because Europeans also made fortunes trading those commodities, the threat was not so much to the economy as to European face.

Face, it turns out, was serious business. Louis le Comte openly admired China’s meritocratic society; his book was burned. In a Europe torn by religious wars, Christian Wolff admired China’s secular morality. He was ordered to leave town in 24 hours or be hanged.

Another threat was China’s post-aristocratic society. Anonymous civil service exams reduced social class, religion or ethnicity as factors in official selection. This made participation in government more egalitarian than in Europe.

Dutch, French and English reformers seized on this to attack aristocratic privilege, arguing that China’s economic success was a product of its meritocratic system. Montesquieu recognised this as threatening to aristocracy and launched an all-out offensive in The Spirit of the Laws .

Our textbooks tell us the Baron was a champion of “liberty”, but fail to mention that “liberties” back then meant aristocratic privileges. We also learn he was opposed to “despotism”, but are not informed that “despotism” referred to stripping the nobility of their “liberties”.

Certainly, China was guilty of that. In China, any educated man could hold office, but Montesquieu insisted that commoners should never hold office. Genuine reformers like Abbe Raynal continued to promote China-style equality right up to the American and French Revolutions, but Montesquieu’s disinformation persisted as well.

After the Revolutions, acknowledging China’s contributions to liberal thought only further threatened European face, so it became necessary to suppress China’s role in Enlightenment debate. David Porter sees in the Western modernist narrative a “form of instrumental amnesia … What was deliberately and usefully forgotten in England over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the contemporaneity of global history, specifically that of the dauntingly advanced civilisation at the far end of the Eurasian landmass”.

Georg Wilhelm Hegel was influential in creating that amnesia, using racially-charged language to dehumanise Chinese people. Many of our current stereotypes can be traced to his Philosophy of History.

In China, anonymised civil service exams privileged individual talent, yet Hegel claimed the Chinese lacked individuality. China enjoyed a long tradition of political dissent, yet Hegel claimed the Chinese were mindlessly obedient, and sneaky as well. He could not read Chinese, and the record contradicts his claims, but his stereotypes persist.

Just recently, mainstream media (Time) informed readers that people in Asia do not wear masks from a sense of public responsibility; it is merely that personal identity is not as important for them as for us, a classic Hegelian smear.

WHY IT MATTERS

For centuries, China’s threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an easy target for race-baiting. Now, its embrace of green energy once again threatens American face, not to mention petro-profits.

When the Trump administration began its anti-China campaign, its purpose was recognised as distracting from the president’s disastrous policy failures, yet even liberals jumped on the bandwagon.

But the attacks have backfired, further visiting damage on a nation suffering from malmanagement. It has been argued (Foreign Affairs) that the greater risk may lie in overreacting to China’s success, yet the administration’s response has been to intensify the attacks.

Blaming alien races is a core strategy in the White Nationalist playbook, and if Trump had blamed African-Americans or Muslims, liberals would have seen through the ruse. With China, Hegel’s stereotypes continue to pass for insider knowledge. This is unfortunate, not merely because US farmers and auto workers could benefit from China markets, and not only because, as Foreign Affairs observed, China’s tech industry may be crucial for controlling climate change.

Whatever the differences between these two nations today – and that is getting harder to discriminate – China once provided Western liberals with a model of a less stratified society fostering rational policies for the public benefit.

A rational response to China today requires distinguishing between its beneficial policies and those we might reject, but in the heat of hysteria, that is difficult to do. This might be a good time for both sides to revisit that shared, cosmopolitan past.

Martin Powers has written three books on the history of social justice in China. Two of these won the Levenson Prize for best book in pre-1900 Chinese Studies. Formerly Sally Michelson Davidson Professor and Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies, he is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan