作者：Kishore Mahbubani
出版社：PublicAffairs
1、
The word noncontradiction is rarely used in Western discourse. The Western mind is used to black-and-white distinctions. One side is right; one side is wrong. The Chinese mind is different. Both black and white can be right. This mind-set of dualism is best captured in the concepts of yin and yang. In the Western worldview, either yin or yang would be right. In the Chinese worldview, both yin and yang can be right.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 3543-3546). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-13 16:01
2、
The outcome of the forthcoming contest, like the Cold War, will depend on the “spiritual vitality” of America and on America’s success in avoiding “exhibitions of indecision, disunity and internal disintegration.” In short, it will be domestic factors, not external threats, that will determine how well America does.
2022-01-13 14:51
3、
In theory, good geopolitical thinking should be driven by cold, hardheaded evaluations of geopolitical realities. Reason should always trump emotion in geopolitical analysis and behavior.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 3425-3426). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-13 12:17
4、
However, since the American people nurture the illusion that they can change their political system, they are inclined to support it. This makes the American political system more stable than the Chinese political system, since the American people have no fundamental desire to change a system that they believe they control.
P204 / 2022-01-11 12:44
5、
There is a paradox in this American worship of freedom. In theory, the profound difference between the American political system and the Chinese political system is that the American people are free to change their political system while the Chinese people are not free to do so. In reality, at this point in their history, the American people have as little freedom as the Chinese people to fundamentally change or alter their political system to ensure that it benefits the majority.
P204 / 2022-01-11 12:41
6、
Since any curbs on freedom of speech are unacceptable in American society, any curbs on using money in election campaigns are also unacceptable.
P202 / 2022-01-11 12:34
7、
The corrupting effect of money on political processes should bemore prominently highlighted in American political discourse. In most societies, when individuals or corporations use money to influence public policy decisions, it is called out as corruption. Even people inthird world countries that suffer from wide spread corruption know it is illegal, though they often do not have the means to oppose it. But in America, it is not considered corruption to use money to influence public policy decisions because the Supreme Court legalized it.
P195 / 2022-01-11 12:33
8、
In a society where there is real equality of opportunity, where there is a level playing field for all young people to compete in and to grow and thrive, we should not have seen such a dramatic divergence between the incomes of the top 1 percent and the bottom 50 percent,
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2690-2692). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-11 12:29
9、
A successful society is a progress machine. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. America’s machine is broken.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2658-2659). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-11 12:29
10、
“the Supreme Court’s perverse 2010 ‘Citizens United’ decision held that companies are persons and money is speech. That has proved a big step on the journey of the US towards becoming a plutocracy.”*
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2609-2611). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
P190 / 2022-01-11 12:29
11、
when America promotes democracy in China, it is not trying to strengthen China. It is trying to bring about a more disunited, divided China, a China beset by chaos. If that was China’s fate, America could continue to remain the number one unchallenged power for another century or more.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2471-2473). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 15:49
12、
Yet, the American security establishment continues to promote the export of democracy to China. Why? Because in practice, democracy promotion can have the opposite effect of what the theory suggests. It can destabilize and weaken societies, instead of strengthening them.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2461-2462). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 15:48
13、
One key goal of the current American security establishment is to maintain American primacy for as long as possible. So it would then clearly be against America’s national interests to promote democracy in China if democracy was such a growth engine.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2457-2459). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 15:48
14、
the United States doesn’t always support democracy. America has always had a vital national interest in having a stable regime in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt. Hence, when America had to choose between promoting its ideals or its interests, it chose to set democracy aside. This may have been wise; it was certainly not idealistic.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2438-2440). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 15:48
15、
As a country, America has aunique ability to act both ethically, when it comes to supporting color revolutions, and unethically, when it comes to walking away from the consequences of them. In the collective memory of many thoughtful Americans, the ethical dimensions of intervention are remembered, but the unethical dimensions of walking away are soon forgotten. In short, most of the democratic revolutions failed to deliver broad-based prosperity and democracy.
P167 / 2022-01-10 14:04
16、
India was an open society with a closed mind, whereas China was a closed society with an open mind. The same observation may well apply to American society.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2260-2261). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:54
17、
Is it wise to believe that there is only one road for all societies to travel on if they want to grow and progress? Are we now turning a new corner of human history where alternative models of social and economic development are emerging?
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2257-2258). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:54
18、
There is one aspect of the Chinese mind that the Western mind finds difficult to relate to: the Chinese like order. And they like measures that lead to greater order.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2224-2226). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:54
19、
Once an American legal consultant, in an effort to be helpful, told a Chinese judge that China should consider abolishing the death penalty for all crimes except murder. The Chinese judge wisely replied that the implementation of this rule would result in China’s judicial system becoming like the American judicial system, with only poor people, not rich people, being sent to the gallows.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2220-2223). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:54
20、
repression is not the sole reason why the Chinese middle classes are basically calm. Most of them accept an implicit social contract between the Chinese people and the Chinese government. As long as the Chinese government continues to deliver economic growth (with improvements in living conditions, including better environmental living conditions) and social and political stability, the Chinese people will accept the rule of the CCP.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2160-2163). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:54
21、
A wise Chinese government in the twenty-first century knows that it has to balance three partially contradictory goals to ensure a healthy Chinese society. The three goals are growth, stability, and personal freedom.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2124-2126). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:53
22、
In the last thirty years, as documented in this volume, America is the only developed society where the average income of the bottom 50 percent of the population has gone down over the past thirty years. In the same period, the Chinese people have experienced the greatest improvement in their standard of living ever seen in Chinese history.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2087-2090). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:53
23、
Yet, history also teaches us that when the masses, especially the working classes, demonstrate, they are primarily driven by socioeconomic grievances, not ideals. This is sadly true in Hong Kong. Even though the Hong Kong economy has done well in recent decades, the bottom 50 percent in Hong Kong (unlike the bottom 50 percent in China) have seen no improvement in their living standards. Instead, they have worsened, with the bottom 50 percent struggling to access basic housing.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 2062-2065). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:53
24、
The more powerful China has become, the less it has intervened in the affairs of other states.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 1980-1981). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:40
25、
If China were to make a sudden transformation into a democracy, the political voices that would dominate the political landscape would not be the calm and soothing voices of democratic leaders like John F. Kennedy or Barack Obama but the angry nationalist voices, like those of Donald Trump or Teddy Roosevelt.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 1906-1909). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 13:40
26、
If China were to make a sudden transformation into a democracy, the political voices that would dominate the political landscape would not be the calm and soothing voices of democratic leaders like John F. Kennedy or Barack Obama but the angry nationalist voices, like those of Donald Trump or Teddy Roosevelt.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 1906-1909). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 09:34
27、
It is also fundamentally different from America in another regard. It does not believe that it has a “universal” mission to promote Chinese civilization and encourage everyone else in humanity to emulate it.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 1218-1219). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 09:34
28、
China, historically, has been clumsy at explaining or defending its points of view. Given the rigidities of the Chinese political system, it is hard to find a good spokesman who can, with humor and sharp insights, explain the Chinese perspective effectively.
Kishore Mahbubani. Has China Won? (Kindle 位置 1117-1119). PublicAffairs. Kindle 版本.
2022-01-10 09:34
29、
it is NOT true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who says this is, indeed, a political infant.
P137 / 2022-01-09 17:45
30、
Although China’s rapidly growing economy and its dynamism are enormous advantages that will help promote the international use of its currency, its low level of financial market development is a major constraint on the likelihood of the renminbi attaining reserve currency status. Moreover, in the absence of an open capital account and convertibility of the currency, it is unlikely that the renminbi will become a prominent reserve currency, let alone challenge the dollar’s status as the leading one.
P56 / 2022-01-07 08:42
31、
“Reserve currency status had long been a perk of imperial might—and an economic elixir. By generating a steady flow of customers who want to hold the currency, often in the form of government bonds, it allows the privileged country to borrow cheaply abroad and fund a lifestyle well beyond its means.”
P54 / 2022-01-07 08:26
32、
Foreign import barriers and exports subsidies are not the reason for the US deficit … the real reason is that Americans are spending more than they produce … blaming others won’t alter that fact.
P53 / 2022-01-06 23:27
33、
Hence, in the case for China, it should attract American, and Western, investments out of strategic necessity. The strategic reason for doing so is to create a major stabilizer in China’s relations with America and with the Western world. This is why China should, like Singapore, set up a one-stop investment agency, like the EDB, to attract and facilitate investments in China.
P46 / 2022-01-06 11:47
34、
any American effort to decouple itself from China could well result in America decoupling itself from the world.
P44 / 2022-01-06 11:46
35、
The common cause of the massive blindness of the Chinese officials in the nineteenth century was a huge Chinese philosophical assumption that China was a great self-sufficient Middle Kingdom that did not need to engage the world.
P42 / 2022-01-06 11:45
36、
One reason the West can no longer dominate the world is that the rest have learned so much from the West. They have imbibed many Western best practices in economics, politics, science, and technology. As a result, while many parts of Western civilization (especially Europe) seem exhausted, lacking drive and energy, other civilizations are just getting revved up.
P11 / 2022-01-04 12:33
37、
is America making a fundamental error of perception when it views the CCP as a Chinese Communist Party? This would imply that the soul of the CCP is embedded in its communist roots. Yet, in the eyes of many objective Asian observers, the CCP actually functions as the “Chinese Civilization Party’. Its soul is not rooted in the foreign ideology of Marxism-Leninism but in the Chinese civilization.
P7 / 2022-01-04 12:09
38、
“Loss of temper and self-control” is a sign of weakness.
P7 / 2022-01-04 12:06