卡尔-马克思说，完全孤立是保存旧中国的首要条件

对于中国这样一个伟大的国家来说，香港是一块小小的飞地。

然而，它在心理上和政治上的重要性是巨大的。

人们有时会忘记，俄罗斯和日本比任何西方国家都更多地攫取了清帝国的领土。

但是，在19世纪40年代被称为鸦片战争的旷日持久的冲突中，英国夺取了香港，以及后来英法联军烧毁了北京的颐和园，对中国人的心理造成了最大的伤害。

十九世纪的外国入侵打碎了文化优势的假设。

它们对君主主义者和革命者都产生了创伤性的影响。

 

For a nation as great as China, Hong Kong was a tiny enclave. Yet it had outsize psychological and political importance. It is sometimes forgotten that Russia and Japan took greater bites of the Qing Empire’s territory than any western power. But it was the British seizure of Hong Kong in the drawn-out conflict in the 1840s known as the Opium Wars, and the later Anglo-French expedition which burnt down the Summer Palace in Beijing, that inflicted greatest damage on the Chinese psyche. The foreign incursions of the nineteenth century shattered assumptions of cultural superiority. Their effects were traumatic upon monarchists and revolutionaries alike.

这就是为什么今天在香港发生的关于自由、秩序和进步的争斗会在首都唤起古老的恐惧。

在一个巨大的躯体中存在着微小的外来容器，总是有一些反应。

它们可以作为催化剂，也可以作为腐烂的媒介。

卡尔-马克思说，完全孤立是保存旧中国的首要条件。

他说："这种隔绝通过英国的媒介猛烈地结束了，"他说，"只要让它接触到开放的空气，它的解体就一定会像任何小心翼翼地保存在密封的棺材里的木乃伊一样。

 

That is why today’s battles over freedom, order and progress in Hong Kong revive ancient fears in the capital. There is always something reactive about the presence of tiny foreign vessels in a huge body. They can act as catalysts or as agents of decay. Karl Marx said that complete isolation was the prime condition for the preservation of the old China. ‘That isolation having come to a violent end by the medium of England,’ he said, ‘dissolution must follow as surely as that of any mummy carefully preserved in a hermetic coffin, whenever it is brought into contact with the open air.’

马克思的这些话是针对最后一个皇朝--清朝写的，但他的箴言被认为适用于任何建立在隔离和仪式上的专制制度。

近年来，许多人认为，在经过数十年正义的隐居之后，外国对中国国家的影响将再次证明马克思是正确的，接触资本主义和自由将加速其衰落。

治理中国的人并不打算允许这样。

在不到半个世纪的时间里，他们的国家成为世界上仅次于美国的第二大经济体。

它的崛起是第二次世界大战以来最具破坏性的全球转型。

他们认为，它的持续上升取决于坚定的统治和炽热的民族自豪感，需要不断提醒人们注意过去的弱点和耻辱。

 

Marx wrote those words about the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, but his dictum was taken to apply to any autocracy built on isolation and ritual. In recent years many have thought that foreign influence on the Chinese state after decades of righteous seclusion would prove Marx right again and that exposure to capitalism and liberty would hasten its decline. The men who governed China had no intention of allowing that. In less than half a century their nation became the second largest economy in the world after the United States. Its rise was the most disruptive global transformation since the Second World War. Its continued ascent depended, they believed, on firm rule and a burning national pride, requiring the constant reminder of past weakness and shame.

 

2012年后掌握中国最高权力的共产党领导人习近平是这样说的。

'只有了解鸦片战争后国家的屈辱历史，才能理解中国人民对民族复兴的强烈渴望。

 

Xi Jinping, the Communist leader who took supreme power in China after 2012, put it like this: ‘Only by knowing the nation’s history of humiliation after the Opium War can one understand the Chinese people’s strong yearning for national rejuvenation.’

实际上，这可以追溯到比这更远的地方。

 

Actually, it goes back an awful lot further than that.