那里的化妆学校好:中国，迷人而矛盾的地方

　　纽约时报专栏作家纪思道周日在该报发表文章，题为“中国超越美国之处”，以独特角度观察中国民众社会生活变化，指出中国是一个既迷人而又矛盾的地方。文章摘译如下。

　　一个你未必了解的的事实是：目前居住在上海的中国人均寿命已经超越美国，前者是82岁，后者79岁（全中国人均寿命73岁，并在稳步上升）。仅仅25年前，上海还是个残旧的城市，然而现在上海居民的出生婴儿死亡率是千分之二点九，远远低于纽约的千分之五点三（如更公平对比，将在沪民工包括在内的话，数据仅比纽约稍高一点。）

　　上海的孩童享受世界一流的公立学校教育——据最近一项涉及65国教育调查称是最好的。当然中国的学校亦有其问题，比如作弊与扼杀创造力。联合国儿童基金会资料显示，自1990年以来，中国降低婴儿死亡率54%。以中国的规模，这意味着每年挽救了36万名儿童的生命。

　　中国如此迷人而又充满矛盾。中共未开放政治自由改革，同时却极大地令国民富裕。我的直觉是，倘若中共举行自由选举，将一面倒获胜，特别在乡村。

　　一位哈佛学者表示，当今的中国令人感到矛盾重重，这与我的想法相近。

　　我上个世纪八、九十年代在中国居住的时候，与我的中国朋友之间存在尴尬的经济不平衡。我开轿车，他们踏单车。一起用餐都是我请客，就因为我太有钱了。而现在产生新的不平衡，同样是这些朋友他们有司机开着豪华轿车，而我搭出租车。他们带我去豪华餐厅，价格贵得令人头痛。我的一位朋友家中有室内网球场和私人影院。另一方面，贫富差距不断加大，官方数据显示，3.2亿乡村居民尚无安全用水。

　　还有，部分经济繁荣归功于泡沫经济特别是房地产。一些巨额财富与贪污的政府官员有关。

　　明年美国将举行总统选举，加之中国领导层2012年权力移交，有可能加剧中美两国关系紧张。

　　面对未来中美关系紧张程度或有升高可能，任何以简单的黑或白的观点看待中国可能是对的，然而也会是不全面并会带来误导的。

英文原文：

　　OP-ED COLUMNIST

　　Where China Outpaces America

　　By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

　　Published: April 30, 2011

　　SHANGHAI

　　Here's a fact about China that you may not know: people in Shanghai today have a longer life expectancy than Americans.

　　A child in Shanghai is expected to live 82 years. In the United States, the figure is not quite 79 years. (For all of China, including rural areas, life expectancy is lower, 73 years - but rising steadily.)

　　The harsh repression in China these days rightly garners headlines, but health data reflect another side of a nation that could scarcely be more complex and contradictory.

　　For those who remember Shanghai a quarter-century ago as a dilapidated city where farmers would collect night soil from families without sanitation, it's extraordinary that among permanent residents of Shanghai, infant mortality is 2.9 deaths per 1,000 births. That is well below the rate of 5.3 in New York City. (Include migrant laborers living in Shanghai, perhaps a fairer comparison, and the rate climbs to a bit higher than in New York.)

　　That Shanghai child enjoys a world-class education in a public school - the best school system of any in a recent 65-nation survey, although it's also true that Chinese schools have their own problems such as widespread cheating and stifling of creativity.

　　Since 1990, the country has reduced infant mortality rates by 54 percent, according to Unicef statistics. On a Chinese scale, that represents more than 360,000 children's lives saved each year.

　　That's what makes China such a fascinating and contradictory place. Other countries, from Egypt to North Korea, oppress and impoverish their people. But the Chinese Communist Party in the reform era has been oppressive politically - even worse lately, with the harshest clampdown in two decades - while hugely enriching its people.

　　President Hu Jintao and other top Communist Party officials are autocrats, yes, but unusually competent autocrats. Polls show Chinese citizens pretty happy with their lot by international standards, although there's some doubt about how meaningful these polls are. My hunch is that if the Communist Party did hold free elections, it would win by a landslide - especially in rural areas.

　　A Harvard scholar once told me that today's China is best approached with ambivalence, and that seems about right to me. The crackdown that I deplored in my last column is real, and so is the stunning level of official corruption. But the same government that throws small numbers of dissidents in prison also provides new opportunities to hundreds of millions.

　　What's the trade-off between imprisoning a brilliant Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident like Liu Xiaobo and saving hundreds of thousands of babies' lives each year through improved health care? There isn't one. The two sides of China are incommensurate. They are the yin and yang of 21st-century China.

　　The United States tends to perceive China through a Manichaean lens - either the economic juggernaut overcoming poverty and investing brilliantly in alternative energy, or the Darth Vader that tortures dissidents. In fact, both are equally real. Likewise, China abuses trade pacts, but it has also been appreciating its currency (mostly through inflation) much more than Americans give it credit for.

　　We face a period in which Chinese-American tensions are likely to rise, aggravated by the American presidential election and the Chinese leadership transition in 2012, as well as by the crackdown that was the topic of my last column.

　　When I lived in China in the 1980s and '90s, there was always an awkward economic imbalance between me and my Chinese friends. I had a car, and they had bicycles. I paid for our meals together because I was so much better off.

　　Now there's a new imbalance: Some of those same people ride around in chauffeured limousines while I get around in taxis. They take me to fancy restaurants whose prices give me headaches.

　　One Chinese friend took me to a home with private indoor basketball court and personal movie theater. It was a tribute to the stunning improvement in the country's standard of living. But it also speaks to growing income gaps at a time when, by official figures, 320 million rural Chinese do not even have access to safe water.

　　Moreover, some of the economic boom appears attributable to a bubble, particularly in real estate. And some of the grand fortunes are linked to corruption by government officials. One friend, the son of a Politburo member, once told me that he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by a Chinese company just to be on its board. That way, the company could persuade local governments to give it land at reduced prices.

　　What are we to make of such a country?

　　That it contains multitudes. And that at this time of rising China-United States tensions, any simplistic black or white view of it may well be right - but also incomplete and misleading.