關於 經濟學人封面預言 ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

※ [本文轉錄自 nfsong 信箱]

作者: opie (F114473982 regwerherh54) 看板: Gossiping
標題: [爆卦] 來自經濟學人對中國的報導
時間: Tue Mar 6 15:44:54 2012

IN OUR nearly 170-year history, The Economist’s coverage of China’s Boxer
Uprising of 1900 was not a high point. On July 21st 1900, under the headline,
“The Situation in China”, we reported without a shred of doubt that the
Chinese government had “succeeded in murdering all the Ambassadors of all
the Powers who sent representatives to Pekin, with their wives, secretaries,
interpreters, and guards.” We adjudged that “China has deliberately
inflicted upon all Europe and Japan an insult without a precedent in history,
” and that Europe “must avenge it in some adequate way.”

在《經濟學人》近170年的刊史中，對1900年中國義和團運動的報導難稱能吸引人。1900
年7月21日的“中國形勢”一文以不容置疑的口吻寫道：“中國政府對向北京派駐代表的
強國舉起屠刀，殺害了所有國家的大使以及他們的夫人、秘書、翻譯和衛兵。”文章評論
道，“這是中國對歐洲國家和日本的前所未有的肆意侮辱”，歐洲“必須給予適當方式的
還擊”。

If you missed this unprecedented mass murder of diplomats in your history
books, that is because it did not happen (though the embassy district was
indeed under siege by the Boxers for 55 days); it was a fiction propagated by
Western newspapers, led by London’s Daily Mail and then the Times, with The
Economist joining in days later but no less ardently (the newspapers later
backtracked, without apology). The vicious and disproportionate response of
the troops of the Allied powers to the Boxer threat, just 11 years before the
downfall of the Qing dynasty, is now fixed in the Chinese lore of Western
oppression.

如果你在歷史課本中並沒有找到關於這次針對外交人員的空前大屠殺的隻言片語，那是因
為此事根本就從未發生過，雖然使館區確實被義和團圍困了55天。這件事情完全是西方媒
體的蓄意捏造，由《每日郵報》最先發起，《泰晤士報》接過大旗，後來加入的《經濟家
人》熱情也是絲毫不減（後來這些報紙對此事改口，但從未做過任何道歉）。滿清王朝滅
亡前11年八國聯軍對義和團危機的過激反應和喪心病狂、罪行滔天的惡性報復，作為西方
列強對中國殘酷迫害的苦難記憶，被深深地印在了中國人的腦海裡。

So it is with humility that we suggest that the quality of our reporting on
China has improved somewhat since then. One crucial improvement is that we
have our own feet on the ground in China, now numbering more than ever—three
pairs of them in Beijing, one pair soon in Shanghai, we hope, and more in
Hong Kong (as well as our colleagues in the Economist Intelligence Unit, our
sister company). Four weeks ago, we began devoting a section to China in the
print edition each week, the first time we have added an individual country
report since we added America 70 years ago. Now we have introduced this blog
on China as a companion to the expanded print coverage.

所以，懷著一絲歉意與惶恐，我們需要指出，自那以後，我們對於中國的報導的品質有所
提高。很重要的一個原因就是我們在中國有著自己的報導人員，如今他們的人數比以往任
何時候都多，我們在北京有3名記者，上海也很快會有一名，香港更多（還包括姐妹公司
“經濟學人智庫”的同事）。4周前，我們開始在每週的印刷版中開設中國專欄，這是70
年前加入美國專欄以來首次單獨為一個國家開設專欄。現在我們又開設了這個關於中國的
博客，以配合印刷版中的更多報導。

But even with fewer or no feet on the ground, The Economist has been opining
on this place since the newspaper’s first months of publication in 1843,
when updates from “Canton” arrived in the post, by way of a slow boat. The
first extended analysis of China came in the eighth issue, dated October 14th
1843. The subject may ring a bit familiar: the potential of China’s consumer
market to buy foreign imports. The Economist’s founding editor, the Scottish
businessman James Wilson (who in those days wrote virtually the entire
newspaper) was not bullish: “The truth is, it requires something more than
treaties between governments to make trade.” Mr Wilson observed trenchantly
that Chinese consumers have their own peculiar needs that are not met by
foreign products, and that their incomes will need to rise as well. “We must
not forget” of the Chinese, he wrote (without a byline, same as today), “…
the mere liberty or opportunity of buying our goods, does not confer on them
at once the ability to do so.” By 2012, it can now be noted, the consumer
market for foreign luxury goods developed rather nicely.

但即使是在缺少中國報導人員的時候，在1843年《經濟學人》創刊發行的頭幾個月裡，當
來自廣州的消息通過慢速郵輪抵達郵局，它就已經開始報導中國。首個關於中國的深入報
導出現在1843年10月14日的第8期，主題或許似曾相識：中國市場對進口產品的消費潛力
。《經濟學人》的創刊編輯，蘇格蘭商人詹姆斯‧威爾遜對此並不十分樂觀：“事實上，
要想進行貿易，需要的可不僅僅是政府條約”，他那時負責撰寫幾乎整張報紙。威爾遜敏
銳地注意到，中國消費者有著外國商品很難滿足的獨特需求，中國人的收入也有待提高。
他寫道（像今天一樣並未在標題下署名），“我們要明白，對於中國人來說，僅僅為他們
提供一個可以自由購買我們產品的機會並不等於就給了他們可以馬上購買的能力。”而到
了今天的2012年，中國的進口奢侈品市場發展的是不錯了。


The same 1843 article, headlined “Russian Trade Overland With China”,
observed that Russia had “a great moral superiority” over the British in
trade with China because they were not “engaged in the degrading trade in
opium”. For The Economist, this marked the beginning of an estimable record
in opposition to Britain’s and the other European powers’ exploitive,
militarily backed trade policy with China. In 1845, The Economist urged the
reduction of a steep tariff on Chinese tea, in line with the central founding
principle of the newspaper: free trade. In 1859, The Economist, very much
against the tide of national sentiment, castigated Britain’s arrogant
treatment of China and argued in vain against waging what would become known
as the Second Opium War: “There is nothing like the arrogance with which
Englishmen are disposed to treat the great Oriental nations,” the newspaper
wrote in one edition, going on to “record our emphatic protest against a
false and arrogant tone of dictatorial ignorance which is growing up in
England with regard to Oriental States…” This moral outrage against
intervention in China did not come without patronising arrogance of The
Economist’s own, including this, also from 1859: “No nation in the world is
so slow as the Chinese in taking in new ideas; and their prejudices are so
deep-rooted that nothing but time can alter them.”

同樣是1843年的文章“俄國和中國的陸路貿易”稱，俄國人同中國人的貿易與英國人相比
“在道德上有著巨大的優勢”，因為他們不做“可恥的鴉片貿易”。這標誌著《經濟學人
》對英國和其他歐洲強國對中國的以武力為支撐的掠奪性的貿易政策的反對態度的開始，
這種反對態度在當時實在難能可貴。《經濟學人》創刊之初就秉承自由貿易的理念，基於
此，1845年《經濟學人》呼籲降低對中國茶葉徵收的高額關稅。1859年《經濟學人》不管
全英國人的感情，痛斥英國對中國的野蠻態度，雖然起不了任何作用卻也義無反顧地反對
發動後來所說的“第二次鴉片戰爭”，“英國人對這個偉大的東方國家所表現出的傲慢無
人可比，”《經濟學人》在某一期寫道，“英國對東方國家的態度正變得越來越專橫和無
知，這極其錯誤、極其自大，我們強烈反對……”《經濟學人》的這種對入侵中國的道德
譴責中也帶有一種以施恩者自居的傲慢，例如這段同樣出自於1859年的話：“在接受新事
物方面，世界上沒有哪個國家像中國這樣愚鈍和遲緩，中國人頑固的偏見，要想使之改變
，恐怖也只有時間。”

Not only did the newspaper argue against military intervention in China, it
also at almost the same time threw in its lot with the authoritarian Qing
regime in Beijing against the Taiping rebels who nearly toppled the dynasty
in more than a decade of carnage. The Economist demonstrated a bias in favour
of regime stability in 1862 that would be comforting to the leaders running
China today: “The Government of the Emperor,—which we fear that England has
done too much to shake and injure,—bad as it is, is not a destructive
Government. All its vices have been the vices of a corrupt and greedy
bureaucracy, not of a desolating anarchy.” Meanwhile, “the Tae-pings are a
mere horde of depredators.” (A new book by Stephen R. Platt, “Autumn in the
Heavenly Kingdom”, offers a dramatically different assessment of both sides
in that bloody civil war, which the Manchu Qing ultimately won with the help
of the British and American governments).

《經濟學人》不僅反對對中國的武力入侵，同時也支援北京的清政府對太平天國叛亂的鎮
壓。太平天國在十多年的屠戮中幾乎將清王朝推翻。《經濟學人》1862年表現出的對穩定
政局的偏愛應該會比較合當前中國政府的口味：“滿清王朝（我們甚至擔心英國對它造成
了太多的動搖和傷害）雖然糟糕，但起碼還不是破壞性的政府，它的罪行充其量只是政權
的腐敗和官僚的貪婪，而不是令人絕望的動亂。”另一方面，“太平軍只是一群只知道殺
人放火的烏合之眾。”（斯蒂芬R.普拉特的新書《天國的秋天》對這場血腥內戰的雙方都
給予了顛覆性的評價，得到英美政府支持的滿清政府最終獲得了勝利。）

Such 19th century insights were hindered greatly by the fact that The
Economist relied heavily on the Foreign Office and on other press reports for
its information. After the Qing dynasty fell in 1911, this began to change.
Accounts from a “special correspondent” in Beijing in 1913 accurately
conveyed the sorry and tenuous state of the young Republican government of
that period. In June 1949, when Mao Zedong and his band of revolutionaries
were on the verge of establishing the People’s Republic, the newspaper’s “
special correspondent” in Hong Kong relayed the discipline that prevailed
among Communist soldiers, the transformation of its media into “organs of
propaganda”, and the nervous mood of some among the public, in a long
article titled, “China under the Communists”:

19世紀的見解受制於資訊獲取管道，《經濟學人》主要依靠外交部和其他媒體報導來獲取
資訊。1911年清王朝倒臺後這一局面開始有所改變。1913年一個“特派記者”發自北京的
報導準確地描述了共和政府初生時的無助和脆弱。1949年當毛澤東和他的革命者即將建立
人民共和國時，《經濟學人》在香港的“特派記者”在一篇題為“共產黨的中國”的長篇
報導中轉述了共產黨軍隊的紀律，記載了黨的媒體向“宣傳工具”的轉變和部分民眾的不
安情緒：



There has been no terror yet in Peking or Tientsin, and it is probably too

early to say whether Communist China will develop into another police

state…Nevertheless, the Chinese wealthier and middle-classes and all those
who

had any contact with the nationalist regime are in a state of considerable

anxiety about the

future.

北平和天津尚未出現恐慌，共產黨的中國是否會成為另一個極權國家還不得而知……不過
，中國的富裕階級、中產階級和所有與國民政府有任何聯繫的人目前都處於對未來的極度
焦慮之中。



The reporter also wisely dismissed the persistently sanguine view of some
British merchants in Hong Kong, who held that not much would change under the
Communists. Astutely, the correspondent believed it more likely “that what
is happening is something completely without precedent in Chinese history of
the past one hundred, or one thousand, years.”

報導者也反對了香港一些英國商人的盲目樂觀，這非常明智，這些商人固執地認為共產黨
治下的情況不會有太多改變。記者敏銳地注意到，“目前發生的事情在中國歷史上過去一
百年甚至一千年間都不曾有過。”

Since Mao’s death and China’s opening, The Economist has been able to
report more knowledgeably from inside the country. The newspaper first took
full advantage of this in December 1977, with 24 pages of reportage and
insight on China from Ms MacFarquhar and two other senior staffers, with the
cover title “Chairman Hua’s China”. Given that Hua Guofeng, who was Mao
Zedong’s hand-picked successor, would not last another year in power, some
predictions understandably hit well wide of the mark, and there were some
grave underestimations of the damage done to China during Mao’s rule. This
included the judgment that “most Chinese are rightly grateful for what their
government has done since 1949”. Such are the hazards of contemporaneous
writing.

隨著毛澤東的去世和中國的開放，《經濟學人》得以從中國大陸發回更為豐富的報導。這
一優勢首次體現在1977年，麥克法誇爾女士和其他兩名資深記者用24頁的篇幅對中國做了
深入報導，封面標題是“華主席的中國”。考慮到毛澤東欽定的接班人華國鋒後來不到一
年就喪失了統治權，也就不難理解為什麼當時的一些預測偏得離譜。當時的報導也嚴重低
估了毛澤東的統治對中國造成的破壞程度，包括如下評價：“大部分中國人有理由感激他
們的政府自1949年以來所做的一切”。這就是同時代的新聞報導的危害之處。

We know today with the benefit of a longer lens that many Chinese are more
grateful instead for what their government has done since those words were
written. As it happens, Norman Macrae, the then-deputy editor of The
Economist, predicted this would be the case. His prescient contribution to
that 1977 report, beginning under the title, “A miracle has been postponed”
, predicted that Chinese leaders would soon reinterpret Mao as they liked
(while not abandoning him in name), liberalise the economy and launch decades
of 10% annual economic growth. Fifteen years later, in 1992, Jim Rohwer
explained in another special report how the reforming Chinese economy was
even more vibrant than outsiders supposed, and was poised to keep booming for
yet another 20 years.

今天借助更長的歷史廣角鏡我們得知，恰恰相反，事實上許多中國人更加感謝1977年的那
些文字碼出來之後政府的所作所為。《經濟學人》當時的副主編諾曼‧麥克雷正好預言出
這一情況。他在1977年的報導中的那篇先驗性的文章“遲來的奇跡”中預言，中國領導人
將很快按照他們的理解重新詮釋毛澤東（但不會將其完全趕下神壇），發動經濟自由化改
革，開始數十年的高達10%的經濟增長。15年後的1992年，吉姆‧羅沃在另一篇特別報導
中稱，改革中的中國經濟比外界的猜測更具活力，中國即將迎來另一個繁榮的20年。

The newspaper was sometimes too close to the action to get the underlying
story right: On May 20th 1989, The Economist (and other Western media) almost
wrote Deng Xiaoping’s political obituary, swayed by rumours just hours
before our publishing deadline that he was stepping down in the face of
student protests; the newspaper noted the 84-year-old Deng’s shaky use of
chopsticks on the occasion of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit that
week. “And while Mr Deng grew older and feebler, the China around him
changed, too,” we wrote. Weeks later, Deng was in as firm control of power
as ever, and the newspaper would lament the bloody crackdown near Tiananmen
Square that proved it so.

有時候《經濟學人》也會由於對事件跟進過快而變得當局者迷，忽略了潛在的真相：1989
年5月20日，由於在出版前幾小時聽到了鄧小平迫于抗議學生的壓力而辭職的傳言，《經
濟學人》（還有其他西方媒體）差點發佈了鄧小平的政治蔔告；《經濟學人》注意到那一
周在為到訪的蘇聯領導人米哈伊爾‧戈巴契夫舉行的接待會上，84歲高齡的鄧小平握著筷
子的手不住顫抖。我們寫道，“隨著鄧小平的日益老去和衰弱，他周圍的中國也隨之發生
著改變，”幾周以後，鄧小平像以前一樣緊握政權，不久後《經濟學人》則對以嗜血的方
式證明了這一事實的天安門慘案致以了哀悼。

The Economist established a permanent China bureau in Beijing in 1997 (the
application was first made in 1994; the authorities were in no hurry to
approve it). From that perch, the newspaper chronicled the historic
transformation of the economy and China’s place in the world that has
compelled so many news organisations, including ours, to expand our presence.
The country’s transformation continues: in this week’s China section, we
note that economic development of interior cities like Chengdu and Chongqing
has progressed to the point that history’s largest in-country migration of
workers is now reversing its flow. Both in print and here at Analects, we
endeavour to convey a fuller picture of a China that has changed dramatically
since we began paying attention in 1843—politically, socially, culturally
and economically. Certainly, the story has developed beyond the narrow scope
that the newspaper conceived in that first article about China, in October
1843:

1997年《經濟學人》在北京設立了永久性辦事處（首次申請在1994年就已提出，政府批准
過程拖了很久）。《經濟學人》在這裡記錄下了中國的經濟和國際地位的歷史巨變，這一
轉變促使包括我們在內的許多新聞機構擴大它們在中國的規模。中國的變化仍在持續：在
本周《經濟學人》的中國專欄裡，我們注意到了成都和重慶等內地城市的經濟發展達到這
樣的程度“史上規模最大的國內民工流出現回潮”。在印刷版和本“論語”博客中，我們
都努力展現出一個更為全面的中國，自從我們1843年首次給予關注以來，它已在政治、社
會、文化經濟方面發生了翻天覆地的變化。當然了，故事的發展早已超出了《經濟學人》
1843年10月在第一篇關於中國的文章中考慮問題的狹小視野：



…that our demand for their produce will stimulate increased industry,

produce among them more wealth and more ability to consume our goods, is

certain; and a large and regularly increasing trade with this extraordinary

people may be experienced for many years to come, and in the course of

time…arrive at an amount at present little thought

of.

……我們對他們產品的需求將會刺激工業增長，使他們擁有更多的財富和能力消費我們的
商品，這是毫無疑問的；與這一非凡民族的大規模貿易將會在未來許多年持續增長，隨著
時間的推移……達到目前無法想像的規模。

Little thought of indeed. Allowing for grievous errors like the account of
the Boxer Uprising, we have done our best to provide worthwhile reporting and
analysis on China in our pages for nearly 170 years. Long may useful
fragments continue to find their way into print, and into these Analects.

確實一點也沒有想到。除了關於義和團運動的報導的嚴重錯誤，《經濟學人》在近170年
的歷史中都力求提供有價值的中國報導和分析。但願印刷版和本“論語”博客中能夠一如
即往地刊登有價值的小文。
https://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/02/economist-china

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※ 轉錄者: nfsong (36.224.30.186), 時間: 08/26/2012 11:01:28