$ q1 {2 a3 ^' |5 C$ ` 中国人也没有不分青红皂白地把所有外国人都视为蛮夷。他们对外来者有很好的鉴别能力，尤其是唐朝，对外来事物有浓厚的兴趣和鉴赏力。外来者曾以各种各样的方法帮助中国塑造文明：中国人从北方游牧民族那里学到了很多关于战争和其他方面的知识，并且在中国历史上有两个覆盖全国的非汉族统治的朝代——元朝和清朝。 ' m* G5 ]' V0 r1 h. P 3 c9 l8 ]( \5 m& C* L9 J2 l 中国人对外界事物的反应也是多种多样的，从排挤到与之打交道、甚至仿效，无所不有。人们常常把长城视为中华民族对外防御的象征，而在历史上长城也是中国统治者与外族对抗或向外扩张领土的一个办法。明清两代学者就中国该如何与外界打交道掀起激烈的辩论。这种辩论持续到民国时期，并延续到今天。 - [* }& p4 p, R* P1 s
& b1 C8 ]7 \0 f; S% K$ Q* I9 c! w 如果我们要在未来的数十年间与日渐强大的中国打交道，我们就需要知道中国人是如何看待我们及他们自己在世界上的位置的，本书的建议是当谨慎为之。# i0 z( `# ~6 e$ L0 t
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China's uneasy relationship with the world2 I" o% p6 r" k+ x4 F& d- F
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Margaret Macmillan reviews The Dragon and the Foreign Devils: China and the World, 1100 BC to the Present by Harry G. Gelber * f; ]* J1 i( f& l6 a* d . i9 p1 ^4 f* J$ t9 i* c/ SThe Chinese government has just announced that it is increasing its defence spending for the coming year by nearly 18 per cent. Its spokesmen say this is for defensive purposes only, yet China has been increasingly assertive in staking out claims around the world to resources such as oil or in warning Taiwan against any hint of independence. In Washington, they talk increasingly of how China is the great challenger, perhaps even militarily, to the United States in the 21st century. All this makes it particularly timely to take a look at China's long and tangled relationship with the outside world and to see what we can learn for dealing with it in the future. 6 ~3 {/ F/ W1 d: G9 U1 }. F# ~& O/ [0 R* S
The Dragon and the Foreign Devils is nothing if not bold in its intended scope. Its author, Harry Gelber, is, he promises, going to cover the whole story, from the earliest known Chinese history of 3,000 years ago to the present. He will show the interplay between developments in China, population growth for example, and its external relations. Moreover, he will also deal with the 'relatively neglected' subject of the ways other states and societies have thought about and dealt with China. (At this point, I couldn't help thinking of that great classic by John King Fairbank, The United States and China.) 0 _* f5 I. O4 ], w" T& m6 N2 u 9 {8 `0 T' @* x% ~# s- J9 ~1 A( YWell, if you make big promises, you have to expect to be judged by how well you fulfil them. The answer in this case is not all that well.( t: V+ H }2 W2 {2 Y+ w" ~* N- w
1 c* S; G& { u" w9 N4 S* ZThe book, to be sure, gives a useful summary of China's history and will introduce newcomers to the field to the great cycles of dynastic change and to the enduring characteristics of Chinese society such as the family and centralised bureaucratic government. And it emphasises, rightly, the trauma which the Chinese suffered in the 19th century when their decaying order was broken up by the encounter with a strong and dynamic West. ) D2 M+ M- T6 w6 t) } " s% o) C, q: \' y# {Where it falls short is in not exploring sufficiently the many different ways the Chinese have dealt with the outside world. China has a rich tradition of statecraft and much experience in dealing with outside peoples and nations. It is not enough to refer, for example, to the tribute system, which positioned the Chinese emperor as ruler of the world and all others as his subordinates, without explaining that it had many nuances and worked differently in different eras. And what about the promise to look at outside attitudes to China? All sorts of peoples pop up - Mongols, Koreans, Tibetans, Japanese, Europeans, Americans - but we get very little of their ways of thinking about the Chinese.5 Z' \' a' `8 s4 _' z# E+ ?
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Too often Gelber drifts away from his own themes and seems unable to resist showing us the fruits of his industry. The text is dotted, in a distracting way, with what he calls 'intermezzos' - sidebars on subjects as varied as the odd career of General Charles Gordon, Mao's sex life, or how the US broke Japanese naval codes. We also get aphorisms worthy of fortune cookies: 'Crises usually offer opportunities' or 'Demography is destiny'. It is hard to see how any of this really helps us to understand China. $ a4 k8 v. ?3 O7 c/ a3 b8 f9 h3 P! f 5 `5 J x/ Z& u/ HThere are also worrying stylistic errors. Many sentences start with pronouns. Which can be irritating. Henry Kissinger was not advising Richard Nixon on foreign policy in 1958; in fact he was working for the Kennedys. Belgium did not separate from the Netherlands in 1834 but four years earlier. The Industrial Revolution did not take place, as implied, in the late 18th century.6 Z: p; P% |( M2 \
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More seriously Gelber flattens out the complexities of the Chinese past. Confucianism did not simply stress obedience to authority. Some of the greatest heroes in Chinese history are the Confucian scholars who stood up their rulers because the latter were immoral. As Mencius, the great follower of Confucius, famously said when a bad ruler named Chou was killed, 'I have heard that the fellow called Chou was put to death, but I have not heard that this was killing a sovereign.' . y: ~2 O4 k& I+ n3 g' N9 ?& k) P; B$ Z
Nor did the Chinese lump all foreigners together indiscriminately as barbarians. They were perfectly capable of making distinctions among outsiders and in the Tang dynasty in particular had great admiration for and interest in things foreign. Outsiders have helped to shape Chinese civilisation in a myriad of ways: the Chinese learned much about war, among other things, from the nomads along the northern frontiers and two of its dynasties - the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Ching - were themselves non-Chinese.: p4 A8 u- `* {$ U. ^/ _. ^1 W6 Y
) z4 |9 K- U1 F4 ^Chinese responses to the outside world have ranged from wanting to keep it away to dealing with it, even emulating it. The Great Wall itself (as Julia Lovell points out in her fascinating book of that title published last year ), which is often seen as the symbol of an inward-looking defensive China, is not really a single wall at all and much of it was built by one Chinese ruler against another or to stake out more territory along the frontier. In the last two dynasties, the Ming and the Qing, there were passionate debates among scholars about how China should deal with the wider world. The debates continued through the Republic of 1911-1949 and on into the present day. In the late 1980s a famous television documentary, River Elegy, argued passionately that China's perennial weakness was to look inwards and not to reach outwards. N4 s, E* A( G' s2 w# r$ W: B; H7 W6 c9 @- X5 z, E$ [
If we are to deal with a powerful China in the decades to come, we do indeed need to know about what the Chinese think about us and about their own place in the world. As far as this book goes, though, handle with caution.
