economist阅读写作分析--How China sees the world--March.23.2009--tuziduidui

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The new world order
How China sees the world
Mar 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition
And how the world should see China

IT IS an ill wind that blows no one any good. For many in China eventhe buffeting by the gale that has hit the global economy has a bracingmessage. The rise of China over the past three decades has beenastonishing. But it has lacked the one feature it needed fully tosatisfy the ultranationalist fringe: an accompanying decline of theWest. Now capitalism is in a funk in its heartlands. Europe and Japan,embroiled in the deepest post-war recession, are barely worthconsideration as rivals. America, the superpower, has passed its peak.Although in public China’s leaders eschew triumphalism, there is asense in Beijing that the reassertion of the Middle Kingdom’s globalascendancy is at hand.

China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, no longer sticks to the scriptthat China is a humble player in world affairs that wants to focus onits own economic development. He talks of China as a “great power” andworries about America’s profligate spending endangering his $1 trillionnest egg there. Incautious remarks by the new American treasurysecretary about China manipulating its currency were dismissed asridiculous; a duly penitent Hillary Clinton was welcomed in Beijing,but as an equal. This month saw an apparent attempt to engineer alow-level naval confrontation with an American spy ship in the SouthChina Sea. Yet at least the Americans get noticed.（我觉得这句话以后是可以用的，而且yet我以前用的很少） Europe, that speckon the horizon, is ignored: an EU summit was cancelled and France isstill blacklisted because Nicolas Sarkozy （之前我是不知道萨科奇的名字应该是这么拼的） dared to meet the Dalai Lama.     
   
  Already a big idea （貌似很傻的用法可却是高见的意思，不过好像是口语用法） has spread far beyond China: that geopolitics isnow a bipolar affair, with America and China the only two that matter.Thus in London next month the real business will not be the G20 meetingbut the “G2” summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao （就是想提醒下自己美国总统名字的具体拼法，而且有没有发现咱主席的名字并不是Jintao Hu）. Thisnot only worries the Europeans （这里可以这么用？）, who, having got rid of George Bush’sunipolar politics （布什同志的单极主义政治的说法，我以前不知道）, have no wish to see it replaced by a Pacificduopoly, and the Japanese, who have long been paranoid about theirrivals in Asia. It also seems to be having an effect in Washington,where Congress’s fascination with America’s nearest rival risksacquiring a protectionist edge.

Reds under the bedBefore panic spreads, it is worth noting that China’s newassertiveness reflects weakness as well as strength. This remains apoor country facing, in Mr Wen’s words, its most difficult year of thenew century. The latest wild guess at how many jobs have already beenlost—20m—hints at the scale of the problem. （这句话我还是没有看明白。高人解释一下吧！）The World Bank has cut itsforecast （大概我比较菜啦，知道一个除去decrease以外的用法了。）for China’s growth this year to 6.5%. That is robust comparedwith almost anywhere else, but to many Chinese, used to double-digitrates, it will feel like a recession. Already there are tens ofthousands of protests each year: from those robbed of their land fordevelopment; from laid-off workers; from those suffering theside-effects （原来副作用是这么说的啊！）of environmental despoliation. Even if China magicallyachieves its official 8% target, the grievances will worsen.


Far from oozing self-confidence, China is witnessing a fierce debateboth about its economic system and the sort of great power it wants tobe—and it is a debate the government does not like. This year theregime curtailed even the perfunctory annual meeting of its parliament,the National People’s Congress (NPC) （这是不是就是人民代表大会的说法啊？）, preferring to confine discussionto back-rooms and obscure internet forums. Liberals calling for greateropenness are being dealt with in the time-honoured （由来已久的，我觉得会有用的） repressive fashion.But China’s leaders also face rumblings of discontent from leftistnationalists, who see the downturn as a chance to halt market-orientedreforms at home, and for China to assert itself more stridently abroad.An angry China can veer into xenophobia, but not all the nationalistleft’s causes are so dangerous: one is for the better public servicesand social-safety net the country sorely （我比较孤陋寡闻，这词以前没见过） needs.

So China is in a more precarious situation than many Westernersthink. The world is not bipolar and may never become so. The EU, forall its faults, is the world’s biggest economy. India’s population willovertake China’s. But that does not obscure the fact that China’srelative power is plainly growing—and both the West and China itselfneed to adjust to this. （我也不知道我到底看明白没有，觉得这段转折了一下）


  For Mr Obama, this means pulling off a difficult balancing act. Inthe longer term, if he has not managed to seduce China (and for thatmatter India and Brazil) more firmly into the liberal multilateralsystem by the time he leaves office, then historians may judge him afailure. （这句我没有特别明白，什么叫做reduce China, hehe 希望高人指导一下。）In the short term （汗，原来就眼前来说英文是这么说的啊！） he needs to hold China to its promises andto scold it for its lapses: Mrs Clinton should have taken it to taskover Tibet and human rights when she was there. The Bush administrationmade much of the idea of welcoming China as a “responsible stakeholder”in the international system. The G20 is a chance to give China a biggerstake in global decision-making than was available in the small clubsof the G7 and G8. But it is also a chance for China to show it canexercise its new influence responsibly.

The bill for the great Chinese takeawayChina’s record as a citizen of the world is strikingly threadbare.（有没有人能解释一下，什么叫做strikingly threadbare?醒目的陈旧？）On a host of （学习） issues from Iran to Sudan, it has used its maingeopolitical asset, its permanent seat on the United Nations SecurityCouncil, to obstruct progress, hiding behind the excuse that it doesnot want to intervene in other countries’ affairs. That, sadly, willtake time to change. But on the more immediate issue at hand, the worldeconomy, there is room for action. （我觉得如果我没有理解错的话，这句是说中国有地方施展自己的影响力了?)


Over the past quarter-century no country has gained more fromglobalisation than China. Hundreds of millions of its people have beendragged out of subsistence into the middle class. China has been agrumpy taker in this process. It helped derail the latest round ofworld trade talks. The G20 meeting offers it a chance to show a changeof heart. In particular, it is being asked to bolster the IMF’sresources so that the fund can rescue crisis-hit countries in placeslike eastern Europe. Some in Beijing would prefer to ignore the IMF,since it might help ex-communist countries that have developed “ananti-China mentality”. Rising above such cavilling and paying up wouldbe a small step in itself. But it would be a sign that the MiddleKingdom has understood what it is to be a great power.


第一篇，不知道到底什么是有用的和好的，就把自己认为还不错或者自己不知道的做了标记，呵呵，做得不太好见谅啦！本来想把不认识的单词也放上来，不过发现太多了，还是放弃了，因为并不主要是GRE词汇，我要好好学习才是了。
慢慢改进。