用中国的眼光看特朗普

Jan 10, 2017 Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

欧文—当唐纳德·特朗普在11月赢得美国总统竞选时，他拥有大量中国“粉丝”。但此后特朗普受欢迎程度暴跌，因为他在台湾和南海等争议问题上的言论——通常通过Twitter发表——让中国人很不高兴。这不是第一次中国对美国领导人的态度急转直下。

中国对特朗普的看法的急剧改变让人想起了一个世纪前美国总统伍德罗·威尔逊连任后的情景。当时，包括毛泽东在内的许多中国知识分子敬仰身为政治学家、普林斯顿大学前校长的威尔逊。到了1919年，威尔逊支持凡尔赛和约，和约将德国在山东省的殖民地移交给日本而不是归还中国。威尔逊因此立刻失去了他的中国拥趸。

转变是相似的——但原因大不相同。一个世纪前，中国因为自身的孱弱而支持、后来又憎恨威尔逊。如今，影响中国对美国总统态度的是中国的强大。

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j. von Hettlingen Jan 14, 2017

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom highlights the fraught relations Trump has with China, even before he takes office. During his campaign, Chinese policy advisers were sanguine about future US-China relations. "He had a lot of Chinese fans," despite insulting remarks: "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country." Trump accused Beijing of currency manipulation, damaging businesses, creating global warming as a “hoax” to undermine US competitiveness etc. Since his election his popularity has nosedived, "owing to his statements - often via Twitter - on contentious issues, such as Taiwan and the South China Sea."
The author points out "this isn’t the first time China’s view of a US leader has deteriorated rapidly" and describes how the Sino-American relationship was like a century ago under Woodrow Wilson. The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 coincided with Wilson's election. The fledgling republic was in anarchy, governed by unruly warlords. Chinese intellectuals were impressed by Wilson's "fourteen points" address, which laid out the principle of justice: that all peoples and nationalities had the right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they were strong or weak.
During his second term Wilson was so popular in China that everything relating to his speeches and ideals was published.The American Revolutionary ideals and political system became desirable models for China. The Chinese thought that the US under Wilsono's leadership would help China overcome decades of defeat and humiliation, and hoped that "the US might deepen its involvement in Asia in ways that would help protect China from the predations of Imperial Japan."
In 1919 the Chinese tried to use the Versailles peae conference to change their country's weak status and recover their sovereignty and independence. They had great faith in Wilson, who, however supported the Treaty of Versailles and handed Germany's former colony in China over to Japan, rather than back to its rightful owner. China was bitterly disappointed, seeing it as a "profound betrayal." Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to create the League of Nations. Later that year, he suffered a massive stroke. He refused to resign, but was unable to function adequately for the rest of his presidential term."
There is a huge difference between Trump and Wilson, who had a successful academic career at Princeton. He was responsible for increasing American involvement in world affairs and his idealistic vision led to the creation of the League of Nations. Trump heeds his gut feelings and sees America's commitments abroad through the prism of a businessman.
China is a completely different country today than it was in 1919. It seeks to defy the US and doesn't needs its "protection." The author says, what Beijing has wanted is a president who would be preoccupied with "domestic issues," that he wouldn't be "much concerned with constraining China’s rise, as Barack Obama was." This would allow China to sort out its "power relationships in Asia for its own benefit, without having to worry about American interference."
During the campaign Trump was favoured by China over Hillary Clinton because of his "apparent lack of interest in foreign policy," that would "leave China alone." As he would be "less committed" than his predecessors to upholding ties with long-time allies, like South Korea and Japan, it "was music to Chinese nationalists’ ears, as much as his questioning of American commitments to NATO was music to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s."
No doubt Trump will be dogged by domestic turmoil concerning the legitimacy of his election, his pick of people in the cabinet, his strife with Congress etc. that he would have little interest in and time for geopolitics, allowing Putin and Xi Jinping to divide their turfs around the world. Nevertheless Trump might still pick up a fight with China, especially if he needs a scapegoat, and wouldn't "get out of its way - at least not without throwing a few elbows."
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lt lee Jan 13, 2017

Different Chinese, of course, have different views on Trump. However, most will agree that Trump is not the best possible American to serve as US president. Whether he would benefit or harm China's rise is too early to tell. Judging from the last 2 months, he will disappoint a lot of Americans, including those who vote for him.
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Cal Bengoshi Jan 11, 2017

While it is reasonable to conclude that those in China who did not like Clinton were happy to see her lose, a claim that a political candidate who regularly vilified China during the presidential campaign "had a lot of Chinese fans" strains credulity.

For that matter, I think it strains credulity for an American professor who lives in California to claim that he knows "Trump Through Chinese Eyes." One would think that someone who works for the Chinese government, or at least someone who lives in China and actually is Chinese, would be a better source of information regarding how the Chinese view Donald Trump.
- lt lee Jan 13, 2017
  
  The article is about "Chinese Through Wasserstrom's Eyes".
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Jan 11, 2017

Prof. Wasserstrom,
You said in China In The 21st Century, "a 2 + 2 = 5 style" of the Chinese logic. I am not good at arithmetic but I am afraid it may be more comprehensive and accurate to say, "2 + 2 ≠ 4," in the sense that 2 + 2 can be any numbers except 4.
A Japanese sinologist, Kojiro Yoshikawa (KY) said, perhaps a little before October, 1949, "Chinese communists are leaving the countryside and entering urban areas. Every Chinese dynasty had its social and political bases in cities. What will they do?"
George F. Kennan talked with a group of people of Kyoto University in 1964. KY was there. Kennan said that Chinese leaders were refined in manners and speech but that we should not be decieved by that. A Kyoto University professor said to him, perhaps what he had heard from his father who was a renowned sinologist, "Chinese depise flowers such as daisies; you look down and see them. They admire flowers (blossoms) that come out on a tall tree; you look up and see them."
According to Edwin O. Reischauer/The Japanese, "For one thing, the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelins of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt. The Japanese nostalgia for China has been a classic case of unrequited love. Moreover, Japan and China were culturally very different countries already in the early nineteenth century, and since then they have followed quite different courses of development, drifting ever farther apart." (Japan admired and respected the modern Wester values, developing democracy and social norms based on human rights, etc. even in pre-war days. The key-tone of its diplomacy had been taking into consideration and making important compromises with the interests of the two Anglo-Saxon countries. President Wilson, so much encased in his own blind, ego-centric self-righteousness as to be forgetful of America's own imperialism in the Pacifc area, saw Japan in a dark, negative light. For instance, as you did not refer to the Washington Conference, Japan threw up most of the little it had got soon after the World War I.)
According to Terumasa Nakanishi, a professor emeritis of Kyoto University, two event most shocked the diplomatic circle of China in the twentieth century. One was that the Japanese delegation sat on the same side of the table as the American and European delegations at the Peace Conference of Beijing after the Boxers' Rebellion. The other was that Japan had a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations while China did not. It was all sacrilegious.

I understand the people of the West have not a small difficulty in telling Japan/a Japanese apart from China/a Chinese. I could tell two easy ways but I do not like this comment any further now.

The pan-Asian sentiments of the Japanese themselves were felt largely for Chinese and applied little to other Asians...They (Chinese) may themselves have had pan-Asian sentimente
- Yoshimichi Moriyama Jan 11, 2017
  
  The professor who said to Kennan, "The Chinese depise flowers like daisies...," was Takeo Kuwabara, 桑原武夫、and his father was Jitsuzo Kuwabara, 桑原隲蔵.
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