Yasheng Huang on the Development of the Chinese State (Ep. 173)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
Today I am here with Yasheng Huang, who is professor of management at the MIT Sloan School.
今天我和麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院管理学教授黄亚生一起来到这里。
He has written the famous book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, on the history of Chinese economic reforms.
他撰写了关于中国经济改革史的著名著作《中国特色资本主义》。
He has a forthcoming book coming out, which I found fascinating.
他即将出版一本新书，我觉得这本书很有趣。
It is called The Rise and Fall of the East: Examination, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology, due out this summer.
该书名为《东方的兴衰：考试、独裁、稳定和技术》，将于今年夏天出版。
Yasheng, welcome.
亚生，欢迎光临。
Thank you, Tyler.
谢谢你，泰勒。
So good to be with you on the podcast.
很高兴能在播客上和你在一起。
I have so many questions about China.
我对中国有很多疑问。
Let’s start with one.
让我们从一个开始。
Why did the Chinese state fiscally centralize so late in its development?
为什么中国国家在发展过程中这么晚才实行财政集权？
Well, you could say that the Chinese state .
嗯，你可以说是中国政府。
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It depends on your definition of development.
这取决于你对发展的定义。
In one definition, you can say it was overdeveloped in the sense that you essentially only have the state, and you don’t really have private economy.
在一种定义中，你可以说它是过度发达的，因为你基本上只有国家，而没有真正的私营经济。
You didn’t have a real meaningful society.
你们没有一个真正有意义的社会。
You didn’t have independent intellectual class — intelligentsia in Russian word — and you didn’t have organized religion.
你们没有独立的知识分子阶层——“俄语中的知识分子”——也没有有组织的宗教。
All you had was the state, and there were pockets of the society the state was not able to reach.
你所拥有的只是国家，而社会的某些部分是国家无法触及的。
That’s true, but where the state was able to reach, it was all-domineering.
话是这么说，但是国家能够到达的地方，却是霸道的。
In that sense, the Chinese state was overdeveloped.
从这个意义上说，中国的国家已经过度发展了。
I think it was probably underdeveloped in a sense that, in part because of this dominance of the state, it didn’t really develop the kind of administrative capacity to tax the population.
我认为，从某种意义上说，它可能是不发达的，部分原因是国家的主导地位，它并没有真正发展出对人民征税的行政能力。
It didn’t develop the institutionalized support for public services, even though the state did provide some public services comparable to what was available in Europe.
尽管国家确实提供了一些与欧洲相当的公共服务，但它并没有为公共服务提供制度化的支持。
It was not able to, for example, have a proper army.
例如，它无法拥有一支适当的军队。
That’s why China’s history was full of northern nomadic tribes taking over the country.
这就是为什么中国历史上充满了北方游牧部落接管国家的情况。
It was not that professionalized in the modern sense of the word.
它并不是现代意义上的专业化。
It was underdeveloped in that sense.
从这个意义上说，它还不够发达。
Let’s take, say, the middle of the 1990s—what percentage of GDP is federal government revenue in China?
以20世纪90年代中期为例，中国联邦政府收入占GDP的比例是多少？
Well, it was very small and —
嗯，它很小而且 ——
What would be a number, say?
比如说，数字是多少？
I don’t know the number, but if you go to the economic historians’ work on Qing Dynasty — their rough estimate is that China had a much smaller state in terms of the physical capacity as compared with Europe during that comparable period of time.
我不知道具体数字，但如果你去看看经济史学家关于清朝的著作，他们的粗略估计是，与同期的欧洲相比，中国的物质能力要小得多。
To some extent, we struggle with the same issue today.
在某种程度上，我们今天也面临着同样的问题。
If you look at the tax revenue relative to GDP, even China today is not an excessively high ratio, but if you look at the ownership role of the state, it has a big state sector.
如果你看税收收入相对于GDP的比例，即使是今天的中国，这个比例也不是过高，但如果你看国家的所有制角色，它有一个很大的国有部门。
It has a big influence over the private sector.
它对私营部门有很大影响。
I would argue that the Chinese state in the 19th century did not derive all its power from taxation.
我认为，19 世纪的中国政府的全部权力并非来自税收。
It had the power to appoint officials.
它有任命官员的权力。
It had the power to control the private sector, control the merchants.
它有权力控制私营部门、控制商人。
That kind of administrative power was quite substantial.
这种行政权力是相当大的。
Let’s say, when China needs to fight Britain in the Opium Wars, or come the 1920s — is that lack of fiscal capacity what’s holding back China?
比方说，当中国需要在鸦片战争中与英国作战时，或者到了 20 年代时，财政能力的缺乏是否阻碍了中国的发展？
Well, the overall lack of economic development and the lack of physical capacity was a part of that.
嗯，整体经济发展的缺乏和体能的缺乏是其中的一部分。
But the bigger picture is, by our own data, the Chinese state .
但根据我们自己的数据，更大的图景是中国政府。
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In the 19th century, China was no longer inventive.
19世纪的中国不再具有创造力。
It forgot the inventions that it was able to make many, many centuries before.
它忘记了许多个世纪前它能够创造的发明。
It didn’t have a naval power as it used to have back in the Song Dynasty .
它不像宋朝那样拥有海军力量。
In the Ming Dynasty , there was a famous event, the Seven Voyages, where the Chinese ships were able to travel to Africa, to Arabia.
明代有一个著名的事件——七下西洋，中国的船只能够到达非洲、到达阿拉伯。
China relinquished all that naval power by the 19th century.
到 19 世纪，中国放弃了所有海军力量。
I read so many experts insisting that China should rebalance its economy toward consumption, yet China never seems to do this.
我读到很多专家坚持认为中国应该重新平衡经济，转向消费，但中国似乎从未这样做。
Are the experts right?
专家们说得对吗？
Is China right?
中国是对的吗？
No, the experts are not wrong, but the problem is that the low consumption to GDP is a symptom.
不，专家们没有错，但问题是消费占GDP的比重较低只是一个症状。
It is not a cause of the imbalances of the Chinese economy.
这不是中国经济失衡的原因。
The bigger issue, I believe, is the fact that the household income share of the GDP is very low.
我认为，更大的问题是家庭收入占GDP的比例非常低。
You have to save a fixed proportion of your household income.
您必须将家庭收入的固定比例储蓄起来。
When the household income relative to GDP is low — and at some point, it was declining — the consumption, out of the mathematical necessity, is accounting for a smaller and smaller share of the GDP.
当家庭收入相对于 GDP 较低时——并且在某个时候，它正在下降——出于数学上的必然性，消费在 GDP 中所占的份额会越来越小。
The issue is really the household income.
问题实际上是家庭收入。
If you look at the government and the corporate sector and the household, the household sector, as a proportion to the GDP, was never high.
如果你看看政府、企业部门和家庭，就会发现家庭部门占GDP的比例从来都不是很高。
During certain periods in Chinese history, it was a losing sector relative to the other sectors of the economy.
在中国历史的某些时期，相对于其他经济部门，它是一个亏损部门。
That gets to a deeper issue about, essentially, the power of the government vis-à-vis the household, the power of the corporate sector vis-à-vis the household.
这涉及到一个更深层次的问题，本质上是政府相对于家庭的权力，企业部门相对于家庭的权力。
That’s a bigger political economy question rather than a narrow fiscal issue.
这是一个更大的政治经济问题，而不是一个狭隘的财政问题。
What’s the biggest misunderstanding that American business elites have about the Chinese economy?
美国商界精英对中国经济最大的误解是什么？
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest, but one of them is that they look at the Chinese R&D spending, and they look at, for example, some of the impressive technological progress the country has made, and then they drew the conclusion that the Chinese economy is driven by productivity and innovations.
嗯，我不会说这是最大的，但其中之一是他们着眼于中国的研发支出，例如，他们着眼于该国取得的一些令人印象深刻的技术进步，然后他们得出的结论是，中国经济是由生产力和创新驱动的。
In fact, studies show that the total productivity contributions to the GDP have been declining in the last decade and even more.
事实上，研究表明，过去十年甚至更长时间里，总生产力对GDP的贡献一直在下降。
As China has begun to invest more in R&D, the economic contributions coming from technology, coming from productivity have been actually declining.
随着中国开始加大研发投入，来自技术、来自生产力的经济贡献实际上一直在下降。
In the economic sense, it’s not a productivity-driven economy.
从经济意义上来说，这不是生产力驱动的经济。
It is an overwhelmingly investment-driven economy.
这是一个绝大多数由投资驱动的经济。
I think that’s one of the biggest misunderstandings of Chinese economy.
我认为这是对中国经济最大的误解之一。
It entails implications about the future prospects of the country, whether or not you can sustain this level of economic growth purely on the basis of massive investments.
这关系到国家的未来前景，是否能够纯粹依靠大规模投资来维持这种经济增长水平。
Why don’t the Chinese want to have more children?
为什么中国人不愿意多生孩子？
Urban areas, the TFR can be below one even, right?
城市地区，生育率甚至可以低于一，对吗？
Yes.
是的。
You’re lucky if it’s one.
如果是的话你就很幸运了。
By the way, this is an East Asian phenomenon, as well.
顺便说一句，这也是东亚现象。
Part of it is the socialization of the norm, because of the one-child policy that they instituted in the late 1970s, and they only lifted that policy in 2015.
部分原因是规范的社会化，因为他们在 20 世纪 70 年代末制定了独生子女政策，直到 2015 年才取消了该政策。
Essentially, you had many, many years in which people were socialized in the norm that one child is the norm.
从本质上讲，在很多年的时间里，人们都遵循着一个孩子就是常态的社会规范。
South Korea has done the same, right?
韩国也做了同样的事情吧？
They didn’t have a one-child policy.
他们没有独生子女政策。
Yes, I know.
是的，我知道。
That’s the point I was trying to get.
这就是我想要表达的观点。
Japan didn’t have a one-child policy.
日本没有独生子女政策。
Japan has a very low fertility rate.
日本的生育率非常低。
For some reason, it’s comparing apples with oranges.
出于某种原因，它正在将苹果与橙子进行比较。
Japan is a much more developed society.
日本是一个更加发达的社会。
The per capita GDP is much higher.
人均GDP要高得多。
Essentially, the fertility rate would probably be lower naturally as a result of that difference in per capita GDP.
从本质上讲，由于人均国内生产总值的差异，生育率可能自然会降低。
But I think it’s probably more than that.
但我认为可能还不止于此。
The nature of the Chinese economy and Japanese economy is very land intensive, so the urban costs of living are very high because of the very high housing costs.
中国经济和日本经济的本质是土地密集型，因此由于住房成本非常高，城市生活成本非常高。
So, the common complaint we hear from young people in China is that they cannot afford the children.
因此，我们从中国年轻人那里听到的常见抱怨是他们养不起孩子。
There’s a cultural norm that you need to have your own housing to be able to get married, and that may also deter family formation and, therefore, production of children.
有一种文化规范认为，你需要有自己的住房才能结婚，这也可能阻碍家庭的形成，从而阻碍生育孩子。
What’s the future of immigration into China as population declines?
随着人口减少，移民到中国的未来会怎样？
And it just started declining.
而且它刚刚开始下降。
Who wants to go there?
谁想去那里？
Well, it’s not a very attractive country to go to now.
嗯，现在这不是一个非常有吸引力的国家。
Look at what happened during the COVID public health crisis, and this erratic policy from Zero-COVID to essentially no policy in place to control any kind of virus transmission.
看看新冠公共卫生危机期间发生的事情，以及从零新冠病毒到基本上没有任何政策来控制任何类型的病毒传播的不稳定政策。
And now China is reporting 60,000 deaths related to COVID, and most people believe that’s a vast underestimate of what the true number is.
现在中国报告有 6 万人因新冠肺炎死亡，大多数人认为这个数字大大低估了真实数字。
The erratic policy on economic management is also incredibly jarring.
不稳定的经济管理政策也令人难以置信。
It undermines the credibility of the policy management of the government.
它损害了政府政策管理的可信度。
I think that the bigger worry is foreign capital, ahead of foreign migrants.
我认为更大的担忧是外国资本，其次是外国移民。
Foreign capital, the reorganization of the supply chain, and China used to be a factory for the world.
外资、供应链重组，中国曾经是世界工厂。
Now many companies are rethinking about whether or not they should rely so heavily on supply chain in China.
现在，许多企业正在重新思考是否应该如此严重依赖中国的供应链。
For example, if you look at the recent iPhone 14, parts of it are made in India rather than in China.
例如，如果你看一下最近推出的 iPhone 14，你会发现它的一部分是在印度制造的，而不是在中国制造的。
I have heard from many companies that they are going to move out the part of production that caters to the world market to other countries.
我从很多公司那里听说他们要把面向世界市场的部分生产转移到其他国家。
They are going to have the production catering to the domestic market stay in China.
他们将把面向国内市场的生产留在中国。
China increasingly is becoming a factory for itself rather than factory for the world.
中国越来越成为自己的工厂，而不是世界的工厂。
From the immediate economic perspective, the reluctance of foreign capital is a bigger concern than the lack of immigration.
从直接的经济角度来看，不愿接受外国资本比缺乏移民更令人担忧。
In the long run, probably the labor supply is becoming an issue, and they may rethink about the immigration policy.
从长远来看，劳动力供应可能正在成为一个问题，他们可能会重新考虑移民政策。
What are the possible Chinese origins of the phrase laissez-faire?
自由放任一词的中国起源可能是什么？
Well, I’m not a historian, per se.
好吧，我本身不是历史学家。
I’m not a historian of that particular phrase, but there is at least this belief that that phrase originated from China in a sense that there was a European belief that the Chinese meritocracy conferred a lot of autonomy on meritocrats.
我不是这个特定短语的历史学家，但至少有这样的信念，即该短语起源于中国，从某种意义上说，欧洲人相信中国的精英政治赋予了精英很多自主权。
They could do the things that they wanted to do without the close supervision from the emperor.
他们可以在没有皇帝密切监督的情况下做自己想做的事情。
One version of the origin of that word is the Chinese meritocrats, the Chinese court officials, the Confucian mandarins enjoyed a lot of operational autonomy, and they could do whatever they wanted to do.
这个词的起源的一个版本是中国的精英、中国的朝廷官员、儒家官员享有很大的运作自主权，他们可以做任何他们想做的事。
We know, for a fact, that’s just not true.
事实上，我们知道这不是真的。
The Chinese court officials didn’t have any operating autonomy, nor did they have any ideological autonomy.
中国法院官员没有任何运作自主权，也没有任何思想自主权。
Why did Chinese literacy appear to stagnate in the 19th century?
为什么中国的识字率在19世纪似乎停滞不前？
Yes.
是的。
This is a deeply puzzling development.
这是一个令人深感困惑的发展。
Let me make the argument why there was a potential for China to raise its literacy.
让我谈谈为什么中国有潜力提高识字率。
They implemented the examination system back in the 6th century, and the state began to provide not universal education, but something closer to universal education.
他们早在六世纪就实行了考试制度，国家开始提供的不是普及教育，而是更接近普及的教育。
It was more like a preparatory education for boys and men to be able to take the civil service examination.
这更像是对男孩和男人进行的预备教育，以便能够参加公务员考试。
The costs were subsidized by the state, and the apparatus, the infrastructure was quite widespread and developed.
费用由国家补贴，设备、基础设施相当普遍和发达。
There was a cultural premium placed on being able to read and write.
阅读和写作的能力受到文化的重视。
They have all the conditions for further literacy and even universal literacy.
他们具备进一步识字乃至全民识字的一切条件。
A number of factors hindered the further development of literacy.
许多因素阻碍了识字能力的进一步发展。
One of the bigger factors was that this entire system was designed for half of the population only, for the male half of the population.
更大的因素之一是整个系统是为一半人口设计的，即一半人口的男性。
The females didn’t have access to the preparatory schools, and they couldn’t take the civil service examination.
女性无法进入预科学校，也无法参加公务员考试。
Also, there was some spillover from the male to the female in terms of basic literacy, but the scale was not that big.
此外，在基本识字能力方面，男性对女性也有一定的溢出效应，但规模并不大。
The other was that the entire education was organized around memorization rather than teaching people how to think.
另一个是整个教育都是围绕记忆来组织的，而不是教人们如何思考。
One problem with that was that there was never any liberalizing value that came from rote memorization, memorization of the Confucian texts, and those texts were usually extremely conservative and backward looking.
其中的一个问题是，死记硬背、背诵儒家文本从来没有任何自由化的价值，而且这些文本通常是极其保守和向后看的。
So, not only the female half of the population didn’t benefit from that, but there was no liberal value that came from this apparatus of education that would, over time, advocate for universal education beyond the male half of the population.
因此，不仅一半的女性人口没有从中受益，而且随着时间的推移，这种教育机构也没有带来自由主义价值，无法倡导超越男性一半人口的全民教育。
There was almost a self-contained restriction on the scale of the literacy to the male sector of the population.
对人口中男性的识字规模几乎存在一种自足的限制。
I think the third reason is economics.
我认为第三个原因是经济。
Chinese economy didn’t develop, commercialization didn’t develop at a scale that we saw in Europe.
中国经济没有发展，商业化没有发展到我们在欧洲看到的规模。
And that didn’t really increase the demand for human capital, for basic skills.
这并没有真正增加对人力资本和基本技能的需求。
If you run a bureaucracy for a country the size of China, you may need 10,000 people, 20,000 people, 40,000 people, 100,000 people, but if you run a commercial economy, you need millions.
如果你管理一个像中国这么大的国家的官僚机构，你可能需要一万人、两万人、四万人、十万人，但如果你经营一个商业经济，你需要数百万人。
You need tens of millions of people working in factories and doing this and that and producing this and that.
你需要数以千万计的人在工厂里工作，做这做那，生产这个那个。
The demand for human capital when you don’t really have a commercial economy is always going to be limited if all you need is the human capital to run the bureaucracy.
当你没有真正的商业经济时，如果你需要的只是管理官僚机构的人力资本，那么对人力资本的需求总是有限的。
I will say that all these factors combined together restricted what could have been an earlier literacy revolution that failed to occur in China.
我想说的是，所有这些因素加在一起限制了一场原本可能在中国发生的早期扫盲革命。
If you look at, for example, going back to the 16th century, China had a decent literacy compared with some European countries.
例如，如果你回顾一下16世纪，与一些欧洲国家相比，中国的识字率还不错。
But the difference is that in Europe, you had this explosion of literacy, whereas in China, it stayed at the same level.
但不同之处在于，在欧洲，识字率呈爆炸式增长，而在中国，识字率保持在同一水平。
The initial level didn’t translate into a higher level, whereas in Europe it did.
最初的水平并没有转化为更高的水平，而在欧洲却做到了。
Now, you argue in your new book that the imperial exam system weakened the horizontal structure of Chinese society, prevented China from developing civil society.
现在，您在新书中提出，科举制度削弱了中国社会的横向结构，阻碍了中国公民社会的发展。
What’s the mechanism for how that works?
其运作机制是什么？
I can see that the exams might pull away some smart people, but there are still plenty of people left in China.
我知道考试可能会带走一些聪明人，但中国仍然留下很多人。
Why don’t the remaining people develop some kind of civil society?
为什么剩下的人不发展某种公民社会呢？
But the norms are shared beyond the select few who eventually succeeded at the exam.
但除了最终在考试中取得成功的少数人之外，这些规范也是共享的。
It’s the bottom of the pyramid.
这是金字塔的底部。
It is not that the people at the bottom of the pyramid didn’t aspire to become a bureaucrat, didn’t aspire to excel at the exam.
金字塔底层的人并不是不渴望成为官僚，不渴望在考试中出类拔萃。
They all wanted to become a bureaucrat.
他们都想成为一名官僚。
They all wanted to be educated in Confucian ideology.
他们都想接受儒家思想的教育。
Why are the norms so homogeneous?
为什么规范如此同质？
You go back to the Song Dynasty — southern China’s extremely commercial, very diverse.
你回到宋朝——中国南方极其商业化，非常多样化。
The whole world passes through China, the Silk Road.
全世界都经过中国，丝绸之路。
Why did the norms end up so stultified, so homogenizing?
为什么规范最终变得如此愚蠢、如此同质化？
I didn’t quite say it in my book, but I think this is a plausible explanation.
我在书中没有完全说出来，但我认为这是一个合理的解释。
What the examination system did was, it was homogenizing the smartest people.
考试制度的作用是同质化最聪明的人。
Essentially, the smartest people were socialized, and their ideology was homogenized into this very stultifying Confucianist ideology.
本质上，最聪明的人被社会化了，他们的意识形态被同质化为这种非常愚蠢的儒家意识形态。
If you begin with a worldview that smart people are the people who begin to make breakthroughs in ideas, in the organization of the politics, in the organization of the economy, those people in China — the smartest people in China — were completely homogenized.
如果你从一个世界观开始，认为聪明人是那些在思想、政治组织、经济组织上开始取得突破的人，那么中国的那些人————中国最聪明的人——是完全同质化的。
Yes, you have a lot of other people that were not able to be part of this system, but they were not the ones that were naturally disposed toward making transformational changes, toward coming up with revolutionary ideas, toward coming up with a new religion, a new way of thinking.
是的，还有很多人无法成为这个系统的一部分，但他们并不是那些自然地倾向于做出变革、提出革命性想法、提出新宗教、新思维方式的人。
So, in that sense, the civil service examination system was incredibly successful.
所以，从这个意义上说，公务员考试制度是非常成功的。
Even though the number that eventually made it is not that big, the bottom of the pyramid is big, and the people who are most at risk of making societal ideological breakthroughs are completely homogenized.
尽管最终成功的人数不多，但金字塔底层却很大，而最有可能实现社会意识形态突破的人却完全同质化了。
Does the history of civil service exams in Korea and Vietnam run the same way, or is that different?
韩国和越南的公务员考试历史是相同的还是不同的？
Yes, they were less watertight as compared with the Chinese system.
是的，与中国的体系相比，它们的密封性较差。
They were probably less well-organized than the Chinese system.
他们的组织可能不如中国的体系好。
In Japan, they also had a version of the civil service examination system, but they didn’t really continue the system beyond the 12th century, 13th century.
在日本，他们也有一个版本的科举制度，但他们并没有真正延续这个制度到12世纪、13世纪以后。
Essentially, in the 19th century, when Japan embarked upon modernization, it was a Japan similar to China at the very beginning stage of the civil service examination system, rather than toward the end of the civil service examination system, when the exam system was extremely watertight, was extremely homogeneous, was extremely well organized.
本质上，日本在19世纪步入近代化之际，是一个与中国类似的科举制初期的日本，而不是科举制末期的日本，那时的考试制度极其无懈可击，极其同质化，极其组织化。
Japan evolved into a modern society with a looser system of the Chinese system, as compared with China in the 19th century, which responded to the challenges from the West from a very, very rigid system that China began to consolidate around the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty.
日本演变成一个现代社会，与19世纪的中国相比，中国的制度更加松散，中国从明朝和清朝左右开始巩固的非常非常严格的制度来应对西方的挑战。
If I think of China, economically speaking, in the 17th century, it still seems broadly on a par with Western Europe, and by the 19th century, that has changed.
如果我想到中国，从经济角度来说，在17世纪，它似乎仍然与西欧大致持平，而到了19世纪，情况发生了变化。
Is it that the civil service exam system in China became more negative, more dangerous?
是不是中国的公务员考试制度变得更加消极、更加危险？
Or is it simply Europe raced ahead and China stayed put?
或者仅仅是欧洲领先而中国原地踏步？
I think there are debates about whether, in the 17th century, China was really on a par with Europe.
我认为关于17世纪的中国是否真的与欧洲处于同一水平还存在争议。
There was a famous California school that made that point.
加州有一所著名的学校提出了这一点。
Their argument was, it is not right to compare the whole of China with Europe.
他们的论点是，将整个中国与欧洲进行比较是不正确的。
You need to compare the most developed part of China with Europe.
你需要将中国最发达的地区与欧洲进行比较。
If you do that, the level of economic development was comparable with each other.
如果这样做的话，经济发展水平是可以比较的。
I think there’s some recent research that challenges that view, using better data, more fine-grained data that shows that per capita GDP by the 17th century in China was much lower than per capita GDP in Europe, even among the most developed regions of China.
我认为最近有一些研究挑战了这个观点，用更好的数据、更细粒度的数据表明，到17世纪中国的人均GDP远低于欧洲的人均GDP，甚至在中国最发达的地区也是如此。
Our own data do not support the view that China in the 17th century was comparable to Europe.
我们自己的数据并不支持17世纪的中国与欧洲可比的观点。
We don’t use economic data; we use inventions data.
我们不使用经济数据；我们使用发明数据。
By the 17th century, China was already not very inventive as compared with the 6th century.
到了17世纪，与6世纪相比，中国的创造力已经不强了。
The level of inventions declined dramatically in the 17th century, so I tend to lean toward the view that by the 17th century, China was already quite backward.
17世纪发明水平急剧下降，所以我倾向于认为到17世纪，中国已经相当落后了。
If I think of the Chinese exam system today — not just for civil service, but more generally — it seems fairly meritocratic to me.
如果我想到今天的中国考试制度——“不仅仅是公务员，而是更普遍的考试制度”——对我来说，它似乎相当任人唯贤。
I often meet smart Chinese graduate students.
我经常遇到聪明的中国研究生。
I ask, “Where are you from?” The answer is not, “I’m from a wealthy family in Shanghai.” They’re from some part of China I’ve never heard of.
我问：“你是哪里人？”答案不是“我来自上海的一个富裕家庭”。他们来自我从未听说过的中国某个地方。
Am I wrong to think that it’s currently quite meritocratic?
我认为目前的精英制度是错误的吗？
No, you’re not wrong at all.
不，你一点都没有错。
It is one of my central points in the book, that the power of the Chinese civil service examination system was, in a very narrow sense, very meritocratic, very well proctored.
我在书中的中心观点之一是，中国公务员考试制度的权力在非常狭隘的意义上是非常精英化的，并且受到很好的监督。
There was public corruption, but the corruption was not endemic.
公共腐败确实存在，但腐败现象并不普遍。
There were guard rails making sure that the integrity of the exam was at a level sufficient to attract the interest and the participation from the masses of the people.
有护栏确保考试的完整性足以吸引人民群众的兴趣和参与。
We showed that family background — and this is from the data from the Ming Dynasty, 14th century, 15th century — the family backgrounds didn’t affect the performance of the candidates who took the exam, which is quite remarkable.
我们发现，家庭背景 ——这是来自明朝、14世纪、15世纪的数据 ——家庭背景并没有影响参加考试的考生的表现，这是相当了不起的。
If you think about SAT today, even today there’s some correlation between exam performance and the backgrounds of the people who take the exam.
如果你想想今天的 SAT，即使在今天，考试成绩和参加考试的人的背景之间也存在一些相关性。
The Chinese had a very well-developed system to make sure that the economics didn’t affect the performance through a subsidy program, through a very well-administered protocol of the civil service examination system.
中国有一个非常发达的制度，可以通过补贴计划、通过管理良好的公务员考试制度来确保经济状况不会影响绩效。
Anonymization — China invented a double anonymization system.
匿名化—— 中国发明了双重匿名系统。
The examiner didn’t know who the examinee was; the examinee didn’t know who the examiner was.
考官不知道考生是谁；考生不知道考官是谁。
It was a very sophisticated system.
这是一个非常复杂的系统。
They also hired scribes to copy the exam papers to make sure that the handwriting did not provide any information about the identity of the candidates.
他们还聘请抄写员抄写试卷，以确保笔迹不会提供任何有关考生身份的信息。
From that tradition, China now has a college examination system which is very, very tough, which is very, very strict.
从这个传统来看，中国现在有一个非常非常严格的高考制度。
One of the justifications for having that system is that because China is so corrupt, this is one of the few areas where corruption has not affected the outcome, and therefore, we should keep the system.
建立这个制度的理由之一是，因为中国太腐败了，这是腐败没有影响结果的少数几个领域之一，因此，我们应该保留这个制度。
When you make the argument that maybe we should change the examination system to allow more creative thinking, less emphasis on memorization, the pushback has always been, “Look at the country.
当你提出也许我们应该改变考试制度以允许更多创造性思维、减少对记忆的重视时，反对的声音一直是，“看看这个国家。
It’s so corrupt.
太腐败了。
Corruption is so pervasive.
腐败如此普遍。
This is one area that is not corrupt.
这是一个没有腐败的领域。
Let’s not destroy that isolated area of cleanliness and capabilities.”
我们不要破坏这个孤立的清洁和能力区域。”
So, I have no problem with what you have just said, which is that the Chinese exam system is very meritocratic.
所以，我对你刚才说的没有问题，就是中国的考试制度是非常任人唯贤的。
If I look at China today, I’m never quite sure how much civil society I should think China has.
如果我看看今天的中国，我永远不确定中国应该有多少公民社会。
One sees the Zero-COVID policy being repealed quite suddenly, possibly because of all the demonstrations.
人们认为零新冠政策被突然废除，可能是因为所有的示威活动。
Could it be there’s a lot of civil society in China?
难道中国有很多公民社会吗？
It much more often takes the form of demonstrations, which are highly numerous and frequent in China, at least before Zero-COVID.
它更常见的是示威游行，这种示威活动在中国数量众多且频繁，至少在“零新冠”之前是这样。
Then a lot of the rest of it takes place on WeChat, which is not quite visible.
然后剩下的很多事情都发生在微信上，不太明显。
But isn’t Chinese civil society much stronger than it looks if we apply, say, Western benchmarks?
但如果我们采用西方基准的话，中国的公民社会不是比看上去强大得多吗？
No, actually, if you apply Western benchmarks, it is a very weak civil society.
不，实际上，如果你应用西方的基准，它是一个非常薄弱的公民社会。
There’s a difference between a civil society consisting of isolated individual actions and a civil society that consists of organized activities that have a program, that have financial support, that have the capability to operate independently.
由孤立的个人行动组成的公民社会与由有组织的活动组成的公民社会是有区别的，这些活动有计划、有财政支持、有能力独立运作。
By the second criterion, China has none of that.
按照第二个标准，中国根本不具备这些。
If you look at the recent protests against Zero-COVID controls, let’s keep one number in perspective.
如果你看看最近针对零新冠控制的抗议活动，让我们正确看待一个数字。
By various estimates, in 2022 there were probably 400 million people under some sort of long-term quarantine.
根据各种估计，到 2022 年，可能有 4 亿人处于某种长期隔离状态。
And let me just concretize that word quarantine.
让我具体说明一下隔离这个词。
That means you’re essentially locked up in your home, sometimes for weeks, and in some cases, for two months.
这意味着你基本上被锁在家里，有时长达数周，有时甚至长达两个月。
That’s the level of the suffering, and sometimes you can’t get food.
这就是痛苦的程度，有时你甚至得不到食物。
Sometimes you cannot get patients into the emergency room because the hospitals also shut down, refused to take in patients who are tested positive or who cannot show a negative test on COVID.
有时，您无法将患者送入急诊室，因为医院也会关闭，拒绝接收检测结果呈阳性或新冠病毒检测结果无法呈阴性的患者。
Some people have died.
有些人已经死了。
There are suicides, there are fires, and all these collateral damages from the Zero-COVID control.
有自杀、有火灾，以及所有这些零新冠控制带来的附带损害。
Relative to that, China experienced a wave of protests — by one estimate, in 17 cities.
与此相对，中国经历了一波抗议浪潮——据估计，抗议浪潮席卷了 17 个城市。
I don’t really have a good idea how many people were involved, but we are not talking about millions of people.
我不太清楚有多少人参与其中，但我们谈论的不是数百万人。
We’re talking about maybe 10,000 people, or tens of thousands of people.
我们谈论的可能是一万人，或者几万人。
Contrast that with Iran.
与伊朗相比。
In the case of Iran, one woman died in the hands of the moral police.
就伊朗而言，一名妇女死于道德警察之手。
There were other grievances, but that was the trigger.
还有其他的不满，但这就是导火索。
The protests are still going on.
抗议活动仍在继续。
Millions of the people took to the street.
数百万人走上街头。
In Iran, religion played a big role.
在伊朗，宗教发挥了重要作用。
If you look at the color revolution in Tunisia, it started with a peddler whose assets were confiscated by the government official, and then he committed suicide.
如果你看看突尼斯的颜色革命，它是从一个小贩的财产被政府官员没收，然后他自杀开始的。
That sparked the color revolution.
从而引发了颜色革命。
Those kinds of brutalities toward small peddlers happen almost on a daily basis in China.
这种针对小商贩的暴行在中国几乎每天都在发生。
It’s very important to specify, relative to the grievances and the level of the misery .
相对于不满和痛苦的程度，明确说明这一点非常重要。
.
。
.
。
We’re not talking about large-scale social movements here.
我们这里谈论的不是大规模的社会运动。
These are individual actions.
这些都是个人行为。
These are spontaneous actions.
这些都是自发的行为。
The complaints on WeChat — these are not organized.
微信上的投诉 ——这些都是没有组织的。
These are essentially individuals expressing their frustrations.
这些本质上是表达他们的挫败感的个人。
They are not really using WeChat to coordinate their actions.
他们并没有真正使用微信来协调他们的行动。
Maybe they’re implicitly coordinating their messages by supporting each other, but we don’t really see any evidence of organized activity.
也许他们通过互相支持来隐含地协调他们的信息，但我们并没有真正看到任何有组织活动的证据。
In that sense, the civil society is quite weak.
从这个意义上说，公民社会是相当薄弱的。
The CCP and the governments — the local governments — they are quite responsive to citizens on some, but not all, issues, right?
中共和政府 ——地方政府 ——他们在一些但不是全部问题上对公民的反应相当积极，对吧？
There’s an embedded civil society where a message is sent.
有一个嵌入的公民社会在其中发送信息。
You don’t need to do all the organizing.
您不需要做所有的组织工作。
You get a fair amount of response, and it’s a kind of shadow civil society.
你会得到相当多的回应，这是一种影子公民社会。
Yes, but that’s a different framing.
是的，但那是一个不同的框架。
This is about a government.
这是关于政府的。
Even though it is autocratic, it is still reasonably responsive to the demands of the citizens.
尽管它是专制的，但它仍然合理地响应公民的要求。
And therefore, the argument is that you don’t really need organized civil society to press their demands, to press their policy preferences.
因此，争论的焦点是，你并不真的需要有组织的公民社会来推动他们的要求、推动他们的政策偏好。
I think in some sense, that’s correct.
我认为从某种意义上来说，这是正确的。
If you look at what the CCP has been doing, it is actually quite clever.
如果你看看中共的做法，其实还是很聪明的。
It’s not the case that they don’t take input from the society.
他们并不是不听取社会的意见。
They create portals, they create websites, and they create phone numbers for the citizens to call in.
他们创建门户网站，创建网站，并创建电话号码供公民拨打。
They also do surveys.
他们还进行调查。
What they want to do is, they want to solicit opinions and information from the citizens without creating conditions for the citizens to get organized.
他们想要做的是，他们想要征求公民的意见和信息，而不为公民组织起来创造条件。
If you think about all these opinions expressed to the government through the government control portals, you are doing it as an individual.
如果你考虑通过政府控制门户网站向政府表达的所有这些意见，那么你就是作为个人这样做的。
You’re not doing it as a member of a larger group.
你不是作为一个更大团体的成员来这样做的。
The CCP has no problem with that, and sometimes those opinions can be quite negative.
中共对此没有任何问题，有时这些意见可能相当负面。
The CCP has no problem with that.
中共对此没有任何问题。
The beauty of the system is that once you express those opinions, convey that information, as a CCP official, I have a number of choices.
这个制度的美妙之处在于，一旦你表达了那些意见，传达了那些信息，作为一名中共官员，我有很多选择。
I can act on them to alleviate your concerns, and I also make sure that you don’t find it necessary to organize protests and demonstrations.
我可以采取行动来减轻你们的担忧，我也确保你们觉得没有必要组织抗议和示威。
That’s only true on traffic, pollution, things like that.
这只适用于交通、污染等问题。
The big difference between Zero-COVID and these other issues, such as traffic and pollution, is that so many people are affected by the policies simultaneously and to a similar extent.
“零新冠”与交通和污染等其他问题的最大区别在于，有如此多的人同时受到政策的影响，而且影响程度相似。
Therefore, they can relate with each other much, much more than in the previous situation, when you think about your own treatment mostly as an isolated, individual situation rather than something that you can generalize.
因此，当你将自己的治疗主要视为一种孤立的、个体的情况而不是你可以概括的事情时，它们之间的联系比以前的情况要多得多。
That, I believe, is the main reason why you see this level of demonstrations and protests.
我相信，这就是您看到这种程度的示威和抗议的主要原因。
Yes, China has had a lot of protests, but those protests tend to happen in rural areas, in less urban settings, in isolated situations, and on single issues.
是的，中国发生了很多抗议活动，但这些抗议活动往往发生在农村地区、城市较少的地区、偏僻的地区以及针对单一问题。
Usually, in the 1990s, it was about the land that the government took away.
通常，在 20 世纪 90 年代，这是关于政府征用的土地。
And then it was about the salary, that employers were late in paying my salary, so there were protests about that — very single-issue, very focused.
然后是关于工资的问题，雇主迟付了我的工资，所以有人对此提出抗议——非常单一的问题，非常集中。
This time around, you’re talking about people demanding the CCP to step down, demanding Xi Jinping to step down.
这次你说的是人们要求中共下台、要求习近平下台。
That’s just something entirely different from what we saw before.
这与我们之前看到的完全不同。
Now, in your book, you write of what you call Tullock’s curse— Gordon Tullock having been my former colleague — namely, embedded succession conflict in an autocracy.
现在，在你的书中，你写了所谓的“塔洛克诅咒”——戈登·塔洛克是我以前的同事——即专制制度中嵌入的继承冲突。
Why has Chinese succession been so stable up to now?
为什么中国的继承至今如此稳定？
And will we see Tullock’s curse whenever Xi steps down, passes on, whatever happens there?
每当习近平下台、去世时，无论那里发生什么，我们都会看到塔洛克的诅咒吗？
I do want to modify the word that you use, stable.
我确实想修改一下你用的词，稳定。
There are two ways to use that term.
有两种使用该术语的方法。
One is to describe the succession process itself.
一是描述继承过程本身。
If that’s the situation we’re trying to describe, it is not stable at all.
如果这就是我们试图描述的情况，那么它根本不稳定。
If you look at the entire history of the PRC, there have been so many succession plans that failed, and at a catastrophic level.
如果你看看中华人民共和国的整个历史，就会发现有很多失败的继任计划，而且都达到了灾难性的程度。
One potential successor was persecuted to death.
一名潜在的继任者被迫害致死。
Another fled and died in a plane crash.
另一人逃离并在飞机失事中丧生。
Others were unceremoniously dismissed, and one was put under house arrest for almost 15 years, and he died —
其他人被毫不客气地解雇，还有一个人被软禁了近15年，然后就死了 ——
But no civil war, right?
但没有内战，对吗？
Yes, that’s right.
是的，没错。
No civil war.
没有内战。
That’s right.
这是正确的。
There’s another way to talk about stability, which is stability at the system level, and that, you are absolutely right.
还有另一种方式来谈论稳定性，那就是系统层面的稳定性，你是绝对正确的。
Despite all these problems with these successions, the system as a whole has remained stable.
尽管这些继承存在所有这些问题，但整个系统仍然保持稳定。
The CCP is in power.
中共掌权了。
There’s no coup, and there were not even demonstrations on the street associated with the succession failures.
没有发生政变，甚至没有与继任失败相关的街头示威活动。
So, we do need to distinguish between these two kinds of stability.
所以，我们确实需要区分这两种稳定性。
By one criterion, it was not stable.
根据一项标准，它并不稳定。
By the other criterion, it is quite stable.
从另一个标准来看，它是相当稳定的。
The reason for that is, I think — although it’s a little bit difficult to generalize because we don’t really have many data points — one reason is the charisma power of individual leaders, Mao and Xiaoping.
我认为，原因是“尽管由于我们没有太多数据点而很难一概而论”，但其中一个原因是毛泽东和小平等领导人的个人魅力。
These were founding fathers of the PRC, of the CCP, and they had the prestige and — using Max Weber’s term — charisma, that they could do whatever they wanted while being able to contain the spillover effects of their mistakes.
他们是中华人民共和国、中国共产党的缔造者，他们拥有威望和——用马克斯·韦伯的术语——魅力，他们可以为所欲为，同时能够控制自己错误的溢出效应。
The big uncertain issue now is whether Xi Jinping has that kind of charisma to contain future spillover effects of succession failure.
现在最大的不确定问题是，习近平是否有足够的魅力来遏制未来继任失败的溢出效应。
This is a remarkable statistic: Since 1976, there have been six leaders of the CCP.
这是一个了不起的统计数据：自1976年以来，中共已出现六位领导人。
Of these six leaders, five of them were managed either by Mao or by Deng Xiaoping.
在这六位领导人中，有五位是由毛泽东或邓小平领导的。
Essentially, the vast majority of the successions were handled by these two giants who had oversized charisma, oversized prestige, and unshakeable political capital.
实质上，绝大多数的继任者都是由这两位拥有超强魅力、超强威望和不可动摇政治资本的巨头处理的。
Now we have one leader who doesn’t really have that.
现在我们有一位领导人并不真正具备这一点。
He relies mostly on formal power, and that’s why he has accumulated so many titles, whereas he’s making similar succession errors as the previous two leaders.
他主要依靠正式权力，这就是他积累了如此多头衔的原因，而他却犯了与前两位领导人类似的继任错误。
Obviously, we don’t know — because he hasn’t chosen a successor — we don’t really know what will happen if he chooses a successor.
显然，我们不知道 —— 因为他还没有选择继任者 —— 我们真的不知道如果他选择继任者会发生什么。
But my bet is that the ability to contain the spillover effect is going to be less, rather than more, down the road, because Xi Jinping does not match, even in a remote sense, the charisma and the prestige of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
但我敢打赌，遏制溢出效应的能力在未来将会减弱，而不是增强，因为即使在遥远的意义上，习近平的魅力和威望也无法与毛泽东和邓小平相媲美。
There’s no match there.
那里没有匹配项。
In Chinese history, if we look at the years 220 AD to 581 AD, why is that your favorite period in Chinese history?
在中国历史上，如果我们看看公元220年到公元581年，为什么这是您最喜欢的中国历史时期？
Some people may say that’s my European bias.
有些人可能会说这是我的欧洲偏见。
That period was quite similar to Europe after the Western Roman Empire collapsed.
那段时期与西罗马帝国崩溃后的欧洲颇为相似。
China at that time was more of a federation of states rather than a unified empire.
当时的中国更像是一个国家联盟，而不是一个统一的帝国。
It had multiple governments rapidly replacing each other or simultaneously existing parallel with each other.
它有多个政府迅速相互取代或同时平行存在。
There was a lot of human capital moving around.
有大量的人力资本在流动。
The intellectual environment was quite free.
知识环境相当自由。
There was not one dominant ideology lording over other ideas and other ideologies.
没有一种主流意识形态凌驾于其他思想和意识形态之上。
Confucianism was powerful, but it was first among equals rather than a monopoly ideology.
儒家思想虽然强大，但它是平等的，而不是垄断的意识形态。
In fact, there were many intellectuals at the time who openly challenged the authenticity and legitimacy of a Confucianist ideology.
事实上，当时有很多知识分子公开质疑儒家思想的真实性和合法性。
It was also a period of enormous creativity in terms of poetry, in terms of humanities, and crucially, in our measure, in terms of technological creativity.
这也是一个在诗歌、人文学科以及最重要的技术创造力方面具有巨大创造力的时期。
China reached its peak in terms of inventions divided by population during that period.
在此期间，中国的发明量与人口数达到了顶峰。
Why so few female emperors in Chinese history?
为什么中国历史上女皇帝这么少？
Let me answer that question by relating my answer to your prior question.
让我通过将我的答案与您之前的问题联系起来来回答这个问题。
During the period we were talking about, Buddhism was a formidable ideology competing with Confucianism.
在我们所说的那个时期，佛教是一种与儒家竞争的强大意识形态。
Buddhism was actually quite friendly to the female half of the population.
佛教实际上对占人口一半的女性相当友好。
Formally, there were some female regents, but the only formalized emperor who was female was a Buddhist.
正式上，有一些女性摄政王，但唯一正式的女性皇帝是佛教徒。
Also, during that period of time, there were other East Asian states that had female rulers.
此外，在那段时期，其他东亚国家也有女性统治者。
Then Confucianism took control, weaponized by the civil service examination system.
然后儒家思想占据了主导地位，并以科举制度为武器。
Confucianism was extremely hierarchical, extremely hostile toward women, and very rigid in terms of the social hierarchy, in terms of gender treatment.
儒家思想是极其等级森严的，对女性极其敌视，在社会等级方面、在性别待遇方面非常僵化。
It marginalized the women.
它使妇女边缘化。
You can actually see that according to art historians.
根据艺术史学家的说法，你实际上可以看到这一点。
You can see the evolution of Chinese art from painting women in relatively free style in the Tang Dynasty to a very, very paternalistic portrayal of women beginning in 10th century, 11th century.
你可以看到中国艺术的演变，从唐代相对自由风格的女性绘画，到10世纪、11世纪开始的非常非常家长式的女性描绘。
Then the civil service examination system chose one of the most chauvinistic versions of Confucianism as its curriculum, starting around 14th century or maybe even 13th century.
然后，公务员考试制度选择了最具沙文主义版本的儒家思想之一作为其课程，大约从14世纪甚至13世纪开始。
Then that curriculum continued until the civil service examination system was itself dismantled in 1905.
此后，该课程一直持续到 1905 年公务员考试制度被废除为止。
I think it was really because of the ideological hold of the stringent version of Confucianism that prevented the emergence of any liberalizing forces, women being one of them, but also liberalizing other ideas.
我认为这实际上是因为严格的儒家思想在意识形态上的束缚，阻止了任何自由化力量的出现，女性就是其中之一，但也使其他思想自由化。
Going back to our earlier discussion, the civil service examination system contributed to the male dominance of Chinese politics in society.
回到我们之前的讨论，科举制度促成了中国政治在社会中的男性主导地位。
Why do Chinese like ghost stories so much?
为什么中国人这么喜欢鬼故事？
I think it’s at least in part related to the ancestor worship, essentially a backward-looking way of looking at the world rather than a forward-looking way of looking at the world.
我认为这至少部分与祖先崇拜有关，本质上是一种向后看世界的方式，而不是一种向前看世界的方式。
You always think about what happened in the past.
你总是会想起过去发生的事情。
It could be your ancestor.
这可能是你的祖先。
It could be Confucius.
可能是孔子。
Ghost is a negative version of that because ghosts typically emerge from dead people.
鬼魂是它的负面版本，因为鬼魂通常是从死人身上出现的。
That would be my very simplistic explanation why ghost story is popular.
这就是我对鬼故事为何流行的非常简单的解释。
I’m not a fan of ghost story.
我不喜欢鬼故事。
Where’s the best food in China?
中国最好吃的地方在哪里？
Where?
在哪里？
Where — you pick your favorite.
在哪里 — 您可以选择您最喜欢的。
I say Yunnan province, but of course, opinions differ.
我说的是云南省，当然，意见不同。
Yes, opinions differ on that.
是的，对此有不同的看法。
I like Yunnan food.
我喜欢云南菜。
My parents — one came from Hubei, one came from Hunan, and they eat very spicy food.
我的父母——一个是湖北人，一个是湖南人，吃的东西很辣。
But I grew up in Beijing.
但我是在北京长大的。
I didn’t eat very spicy food, so Hunan food is a little bit too spicy for me.
我不太吃辣，所以湖南菜对我来说有点太辣了。
I like food in the Yangtze Delta area.
我喜欢长三角地区的美食。
It is a little bit gentle on your tongue.
它对你的舌头有点温和。
I also like Cantonese food.
我也喜欢粤菜。
There’s more variety.
还有更多种类。
The problem that I have with spicy food is that it overwhelms every other sense that you have.
我对辛辣食物的问题是它压倒了你所有的其他感觉。
It’s a little bit homogeneous, whereas the Cantonese food is very rich.
有点同质化，而粤菜却很丰富。
The Yangtze River Delta food is very, very rich.
长三角的食物非常非常丰富。
You can have spicy food, but you can also have salty food.
可以吃辣的食物，但也可以吃咸的食物。
I like variety.
我喜欢多样性。
I like the food from that area.
我喜欢那个地区的食物。
Culturally, why do you think that Chinese and Chinese Americans have done so much less well becoming top CEOs of American companies than Indians and Indian Americans?
从文化角度来看，为什么您认为华人和华裔美国人在成为美国公司的首席执行官方面比印度人和印裔美国人做得差得多？
Yes.
是的。
That’s a running topic among Chinese American professionals like me and many others.
这是像我和其他许多美籍华人专业人士经常讨论的话题。
I actually have a colleague, Jackson Liu, who has systematically studied this issue, and his conclusion is not surprising, but his method is quite innovative.
我其实有一个同事，刘杰克逊，他系统地研究过这个问题，他的结论并不奇怪，但他的方法相当有创新。
His conclusion is, basically, everything comes down to communication.
他的结论是，基本上，一切都归结为沟通。
Chinese Americans are less able to communicate their ideas, place less value and premium on communications.
华裔美国人交流想法的能力较差，对交流的重视和重视程度较低。
They are technically very competent, very capable, very accomplished academics.
他们是技术上非常有能力、非常有能力、非常有成就的学者。
But this is something I have noticed among my friends who are engineers and who are scientists.
但我在我的工程师和科学家朋友中注意到了这一点。
They are very systematic when they are talking about chemistry, when they are talking about physics.
当他们谈论化学、谈论物理时，他们都是非常系统的。
But once you take them out from their discipline, they are actually not that systematic in the way that they describe the world, in the way they analyze the world.
但一旦你把它们从学科中拿出来，你会发现它们实际上在描述世界、分析世界的方式上并不是那么系统化。
If you ask them to analyze food, analyze sports, analyze politics, analyze international relations, analyze economy, the way that they approach these topics is not that different from someone who has not gone through a PhD program in physics and PhD program in chemistry.
如果你让他们分析食物、分析体育、分析政治、分析国际关系、分析经济，他们处理这些话题的方式与那些没有读过物理学博士和化学博士的人没有什么不同。
Whereas, when I talk to my Indian friends who are in science and technology, they apply the same scientific mindset and methodology to social issues, to political issues.
然而，当我与从事科学技术的印度朋友交谈时，他们将同样的科学思维和方法论应用于社会问题、政治问题。
That gives you a lot of mileage in America, where you need to communicate with a broad spectrum of the people, not just your fellow academics, or maybe they’re fellow academics, but they are not academics strictly in your discipline.
这让你在美国有很大的发展空间，在那里你需要与广泛的人交流，而不仅仅是你的学者同事，或者也许他们是学者同事，但严格来说他们并不是你所在学科的学者。
If you want to be a leader, you have to learn how to communicate with all sorts of people, not just with other people in your own discipline.
如果你想成为领导者，你必须学习如何与各种各样的人沟通，而不仅仅是与你自己学科的其他人沟通。
My view is that we Chinese have a lot to learn in this regard.
我的看法是，我们中国人在这方面有很多值得学习的地方。
I think one reason is that we grew up in a homogeneous society and in a society that does not place very high premium on trying to convince others of your point of view.
我认为原因之一是我们在一个同质的社会中长大，并且在一个不太重视试图说服他人观点的社会中。
Xi Jinping doesn’t need to score points on debate to get his policy preferences executed, right?
习近平不需要在辩论中得分来执行他的政策偏好，对吧？
He may execute people, but he doesn’t need the communication skills to get his policy preferences through.
他可以处决人，但他不需要沟通技巧来表达他的政策偏好。
He can just order.
他可以直接点菜。
He can just issue commands.
他只需发出命令即可。
It’s a command-driven society.
这是一个命令驱动的社会。
We don’t need to convince people who disagree with you to come to your point of view.
我们不需要说服那些不同意你观点的人接受你的观点。
We didn’t grow up in that society.
我们不是在那个社会长大的。
Whereas Indians operating in a democratic society, a very noisy, what Amartya Sen calls argumentative society — to get people behind you, you need to convince them of your point of view.
印度人生活在一个民主社会，一个非常喧闹的社会，阿马蒂亚·森称之为“争论社会”——为了让人们支持你，你需要让他们相信你的观点。
To be able to do that, you need to rely on some framework that both sides rely on.
为了能够做到这一点，您需要依赖双方都依赖的某种框架。
That usually is logic, evidence, and the systematic way of thinking.
这通常是逻辑、证据和系统的思维方式。
I think Indians are better than us Chinese in part because of that.
我认为印度人比我们中国人更好，部分原因在于这一点。
Let’s say you had an educated American friend.
假设您有一位受过良好教育的美国朋友。
The person had been to Beijing, to Shanghai, and you were planning a two-week trip through China for them.
这个人去过北京、上海，而你正在为他们计划为期两周的中国旅行。
Where would you send them?
你会把他们送到哪里？
I would urge them to go to Xi’an, the city that has the famous terracotta sculptures.
我建议他们去西安，这座拥有著名兵马俑的城市。
It’s not just because of that.
不仅仅是因为这个。
I think what’s very interesting about Chinese political geography and economic geography is that the political geography is heavily northern.
我认为中国政治地理和经济地理的一个非常有趣的地方是，政治地理很大程度上是北方的。
The economic geography is heavily southern.
经济地理主要偏南。
You think about Shanghai.
你想想上海。
You think about Guangzhou, Shenzhen.
你想想广州、深圳。
These are heavy economic heavyweights.
这些都是经济重量级人物。
They are in the southern part of the country.
他们位于该国南部。
Beijing is in northern part of the country.
北京位于该国北部。
It’s a political capital.
这是一个政治资本。
Xi’an used to be the capital of imperial China for many, many centuries.
许多世纪以来，西安一直是中国帝国的首都。
To understand the political mindset — and by the way, Xi Jinping has very deep roots in that province — to understand the political mindset of China, you need to go to that part of the country.
要了解政治心态 ——顺便说一句，习近平在那个省份有很深的根基—— 要了解中国的政治心态，你需要去那个地方。
It is a part of the country that is heavily influenced by natural disasters, by flooding, by arid environment, very harsh environment that doesn’t grow, doesn’t cultivate agriculture very successfully, right?
这是该国受自然灾害、洪水、干旱环境影响严重的地区，非常恶劣的环境无法生长，农业种植得不太成功，对吗？
It is maybe a little bit like Ohio or places like that — very inward looking.
它可能有点像俄亥俄州或类似的地方——非常内向。
No matter how modern the Chinese economy is, the politics is heavily colored by that particular perspective.
无论中国经济多么现代化，政治都会受到这种特殊观点的影响。
It is a little bit paranoid.
这有点偏执。
It is suspiciously looking at the rest of the world.
它正用怀疑的眼光审视着世界其他地方。
It also has this very fond memory of China many centuries before, when China was a unified empire that had that part of the country be the capital of the country, right?
它也对许多世纪前的中国有着美好的记忆，当时中国是一个统一的帝国，以该国的那部分地区为首都，对吗？
I think to understand Chinese ideology and political mindset, we need to go there.
我认为要了解中国的意识形态和政治思维，我们需要去那里。
For the next week, where do you send them then?
下周，你要把他们送到哪里？
For the next week?
下周？
Let’s say that’s week one.
假设这是第一周。
You have two weeks.
你有两周的时间。
Where do they go?
他们去哪里？
You buy the ticket.
你买票。
I was talking about one week, and then I will send them to Shenzhen, just as an incredible contrast.
我说的是一个星期，然后我会把他们送到深圳，就像一个令人难以置信的对比。
Shenzhen was basically created by economic reforms.
深圳基本上是通过经济改革创建的。
It is the economic capital of private entrepreneurship, of innovations, and of the incredible supply chains that China has been able to create in the last 30 years.
它是中国在过去30年里创造的私营企业精神、创新和令人难以置信的供应链的经济资本。
To understand the economic side of China, you need to go to Shenzhen, close to Hong Kong, just next to Hong Kong.
要了解中国经济的一面，你需要去深圳，靠近香港，就在香港旁边。
I would argue that you go to Xi’an first to understand their political mentality, and then you go to Shenzhen.
我认为你先去西安了解一下他们的政治心态，然后再去深圳。
Then ask yourself the question, can these two things co-exist with each other for a long period of time?
然后问自己一个问题，这两件事可以长期共存吗？
Under what conditions can they co-exist with each other for a sustainable period of time?
在什么条件下它们可以可持续共存一段时间？
My own view is that these two things cannot co-exist with each other for a long period of time.
我个人的看法是，这两件事不能长期共存。
One of them has to give.
其中之一必须给予。
Do you have a prediction?
你有预测吗？
I have the prediction that Xi’an is going to give, and I think the economic side is going to win rather than the political side.
我对西安的预测是，我认为经济方面会获胜，而不是政治方面。
It’s not automatic.
这不是自动的。
It’s not the view that economics automatically advances political progress.
这并不是经济会自动推动政治进步的观点。
It is also because of a lack of political progress, the regime tends to make mistakes.
也正是因为政治上缺乏进步，政权才容易犯错误。
It is those mistakes that will have a bigger educational effect on the Chinese middle class, on university students in how they think about whether or not the current political system is viable and desirable.
正是这些错误将对中国中产阶级、大学生如何思考当前的政治制度是否可行和可取产生更大的教育影响。
I have three final questions, all about you.
我还有最后三个问题，都是关于你的。
First, how was it that you decided to come to the United States?
首先，您是怎么决定来美国的？
For young people in China, even today, despite the tensions between the US and China, the US is always the dream country to come to.
对于中国的年轻人来说，即使在今天，尽管中美关系紧张，美国仍然是他们梦想的国家。
I never really asked myself that question.
我从来没有真正问过自己这个问题。
Of course, if you want to get educated, if you want to achieve, accomplish something, you try to go to the United States.
当然，如果你想接受教育，如果你想有所成就、有所成就，你可以尝试去美国。
Although, a lot of my friends have decided to go back to China because they see commercial opportunities there.
尽管如此，我的很多朋友还是决定回到中国，因为他们看到了那里的商机。
They typically get a Western education and then go back to China to start businesses, and they have been extremely successful.
他们通常接受西方教育，然后返回中国创业，并且取得了巨大成功。
I have chosen to stay because I’m an academic, and I don’t think China is the right country for an academic, not for a social science academic.
我选择留下来是因为我是一名学者，而且我认为中国不适合学者，更不适合社会科学学者。
Maybe if you’re a scientist you get support from the government, but not as a social scientist.
也许如果你是一名科学家，你会得到政府的支持，但作为社会科学家却不会。
Second question: what did you learn from János Kornai?
第二个问题：你从亚诺什·科尔奈身上学到了什么？
János Kornai taught generations of not just Chinese students, but many students from European countries, from Russia, that there is a basic illogic with socialism.
亚诺什·科尔奈（János Kornai）不仅向几代中国学生，而且向来自欧洲国家和俄罗斯的许多学生表明，社会主义存在着根本的不逻辑。
Before János Kornai, we tended to think about socialist system in vague, general, and sometimes ideological terms.
在亚诺什·科尔奈之前，我们倾向于用模糊的、笼统的、有时甚至是意识形态的术语来思考社会主义制度。
János Kornai taught us that it is rooted in the system.
亚诺什·科尔奈（János Kornai）告诉我们，它植根于制度之中。
The investment hunger, the self-budget constraints.
投资饥渴，自我预算受限。
It really gave us a new way of thinking about the socialist system and central planning system in that particular perspective.
它确实为我们提供了一种从特定角度思考社会主义制度和中央计划制度的新方式。
That really was revolutionary because you don’t have to be an ideologue to be critical of central planning.
这确实是革命性的，因为你不必成为一个理论家才能批评中央计划。
You can be a good empiricist and good system thinker to be critical of central planning.
你可以成为一个优秀的经验主义者和优秀的系统思考者来批评中央计划。
We didn’t have that kind of language until János Kornai provided that language, right?
在 János Kornai 提供这种语言之前我们没有这种语言，对吧？
The investment hunger, the soft budget constraints, and now soft budget constraints are being used not just by people who study central planning, but also by people who study other types of economic systems, and that was remarkable.
投资饥渴、软预算约束以及现在的软预算约束不仅被研究中央计划的人们所利用，而且还被研究其他类型经济体系的人们所利用，这是值得注意的。
A lot of Chinese students think why China was different from other centrally planned economies in terms of soft budget constraints.
很多中国学生思考为什么中国在预算软约束方面与其他中央计划经济体不同。
China seemed to have harder budget constraints as compared with the Soviet Union, and there were a lot of debates about why this was the case.
与苏联相比，中国似乎有更严格的预算限制，并且对于为什么会出现这种情况存在很多争论。
That led us to look at the history of reforms in China, look at the Great Leap Forward, look at the decentralized organization of the economy, even before the economic reforms in 1978.
这引导我们审视中国的改革历史，审视大跃进，审视经济的分权组织，甚至在 1978 年经济改革之前。
I’ll again mention your forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the East: Examination, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology, which I found one of the most interesting books on China.
我会再次提到您即将出版的书《东方的兴衰：考试、专制、稳定和技术》，我发现这是关于中国最有趣的书之一。
To close, just tell us, what do you plan to do next?
最后，请告诉我们，您下一步打算做什么？
I am collaborating with a number of professors — and some of them are based in China — on a book project looking at the history of Chinese technology, using the dataset that I already used for this forthcoming book.
我正在与一些教授（其中一些教授来自中国）合作开展一个研究中国技术史的图书项目，使用的数据集是我在即将出版的书中使用的数据集。
But we are going to devote the entire book to this topic.
但我们将用整本书来讨论这个主题。
The title of the book is The Needham Question.
书名是《李约瑟问题》。
Joseph Needham famously asked the question in 1969, how come China failed to take off and have its own industrial revolution, even though it had a very advanced technology, very advanced signs?
李约瑟在1969年提出了一个著名的问题：尽管中国拥有非常先进的技术、非常先进的标志，但为什么中国却未能腾飞并拥有自己的工业革命？
We’re trying to answer that question using the database that we have constructed.
我们试图使用我们构建的数据库来回答这个问题。
I just learned from the Princeton University Press that they’re going to award a contract to us, and we already have three chapters finished.
我刚刚从普林斯顿大学出版社得知他们将授予我们一份合同，我们已经完成了三章。
We hope to finish the book by the end of this year.
我们希望在今年年底前完成这本书。
Congratulations, Yasheng Huang.
恭喜黄亚生。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
Thank you, Tyler.
谢谢你，泰勒。
This is such a wonderful conversation.
这是一次非常精彩的对话。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
Photo credit: MIT Sloan School
图片来源：麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院