“The [Chinese] people’s wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible.” Fighting words, indeed. They could quite easily have come from Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese activist serving an 11-year prison sentence for subversion who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of his long record of calling for gradual political change. Instead, they were spoken by Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, in an interview he gave last week to CNN before the Nobel announcement.
“（中国）人民对民主自由的诉求是不可抗拒的。”的确是相当激进的话语吧。它们完全可能来自刘晓波，一名因“煽动颠覆国家政权罪”正在服11年徒刑的中国活动人士，上周五他被授予诺贝尔和平奖，以表彰他为呼吁渐进式政治改革而作出的长期努力。但其实，这是上周诺贝尔奖宣布之前，中国总理温家宝接受美国CNN采访时说的话。
China’s economic success has been so dramatic and sustained that it can feel as if the big political questions about how the country should be governed, which came to a head in Tiananmen Square two decades ago, have simply faded into irrelevance. Yet Mr Wen’s remarks show that debates about Chinese political reform do not take place only in Oslo – even some of the country’s senior leaders admit there is unfinished business.
惊人而持久的经济成就也许使中国觉得，20年前在天安门事件中达到白热化的有关国家治理方式的重大政治问题渐渐变得无关紧要了。然而，温家宝的言论表明，关于中国政治改革的辩论不仅在奥斯陆进行——就连中国的一些高层领导人都承认这是一项未尽事宜。
Certainly, many will question whether it is the Nobel committee’s job to promote political change by embarrassing Beijing. For the Chinese authorities, the immediate instinct is to make this a straight conflict between China and the west, which wants to slow its rise. “The Nobel Peace Prize has been reduced to a political tool of western interests,” the Global Times, a tabloid with close connections to the Communist party, thundered over the weekend. “What they’re doing now is using the Peace Prize to tear a hole in Chinese society.”
诚然，许多人会质疑，通过让北京难堪来推动政治改革，并不是诺贝尔奖委员会的职责。中国政府的第一反应，是将此描述为中国与希望减缓其崛起速度的西方之间的正面冲突。“诺贝尔和平奖已经沦为服务于西方利益的政治工具，”与共产党关系密切的《环球时报》周末发表的评论怒斥道。“他们现在能做的就是用和平奖给中国社会撕开个口子。”
And it is not just overt nationalists who will resent the outside interference. There are plenty of educated Chinese who feel that the country does not get enough credit for its economic progress or the very real expansion in personal freedoms over the past 30 years.
而且并不只是公开的民族主义分子才对外来干涉感到反感。在中国，许多受过教育的人都觉得，过去30年中国经济取得长足进步，个人自由得到十分切实的扩大，这些都没有得到足够认可。
There is also a certain amount of trepidation about how the regime will respond. Celebration banquets in Beijing were broken up by the police with supporters of Mr Liu temporarily detained. China has a plethora of non-governmental organisations in areas such as the environment, which have won space to operate in recent years and often adopt an almost radical pragmatism when it comes to politics, sticking strictly within the limits of the possible. Many will fear a backlash from a wounded Beijing and maybe resent the provocation that the prize represents.
人们也对政府会作何反应感到一定程度的不安。在北京举行的庆祝宴会被警方打断，刘晓波的支持者被暂时拘留。在环境等领域，中国拥有大量的非政府组织，近年来，他们赢得了运作空间，而在政治方面往往奉行相当彻底的实用主义，决不越雷池一步。现在，许多这样的组织担心恼羞成怒的中国政府会打压到自己头上，因而可能对诺贝尔和平奖的挑衅意味感到反感。
Yet the Nobel for Mr Liu could also have all sorts of powerful ripple effects in a fast-changing society. China might not be seething with people who openly support multi-party elections and who want to see the Communist party swept from power but growing sections of society believe strongly in freedoms of the press, of assembly and of protest – the very rights notionally protected in the Chinese constitution that the Nobel Prize committee highlighted. And they expect the Communist party to honour more of those rights.
然而，颁给刘晓波的诺贝尔和平奖，也有可能在这个快速转型的社会产生强大的涟漪效应。在中国，公开支持多党选举以及希望共产党下台的人或许还不是很多，但社会中越来越多的群体强烈信奉媒体、集会以及抗议自由——诺贝尔奖委员会也特别指出了这些名义上得到中国《宪法》保护的权利。人们期望共产党能够尊重更多此类权利。
Jailed for 11 years for organising a pro-democracy petition, Mr Liu is a standard-bearer for political reform but in many ways he is not the main challenge for the authorities. A writer-intellectual in the mould of Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president who nominated him for the Nobel, Mr Liu is part of an older generation of dissidents who have been marginalised since Tiananmen. Few ordinary Chinese have heard of him.
刘晓波因组织一次呼吁民主的请愿活动而被判入狱11年，他是政治改革的旗手，但在许多方面，他并不是政府面临的主要威胁。和提名他的捷克前总统瓦茨拉夫•哈维尔(Vaclav Havel)一样，刘晓波是一名知识分子作家，属于老一代异见人士，天安门事件之后他们遭到排挤。普通的中国民众很少有人听说过他。
Instead, the pressure is more diffuse but from a broader range of sources. There are the well-to-do suburban residents who happily organise large protests when their property rights are affected and make sure television cameras are there to watch them. China’s fast-growing legal community is full of people – from judges to citizens with a grievance – who are trying to build more independent courts.
相反，中国政府面临的压力更加分散，但来源广泛。当自身产权受到侵害时，富裕的市郊居民乐此不疲地组织起大规模抗议活动，并确保电视摄像机的镜头对准自己。中国的法律界也迅速壮大，许多人——从法官到怀有冤情的公民——都在努力建设更加独立的审判制度。
And then there is the internet, which, in spite of all the efforts of the authorities to censor and mould discussion, is also a deep well of rebellious irony. One of the more commented online subjects over the past week has been Mr Wen’s CNN interview and the fact that it was barely covered in the mainstream media.
还有互联网。尽管政府尽一切努力来审查网络、操纵舆论导向，互联网仍然是一口深井，充斥着叛逆者的冷嘲热讽。过去一周，网上得到较多评论的话题就是温家宝接受CNN采访，而中国主流媒体对此几乎一字未提。
The Chinese party-state is such a blizzard of activity, that it is often easy to overlook the increasingly vibrant society emerging from behind its Leninist shadow. Many members of this new society spent the weekend quietly thanking the Nobel committee for its show of support.
中国“党国体制”的活动令人眼花缭乱，以至于常常很容易忽视在其列宁主义影子的背后，一个日益充满活力的社会正在崛起。过去的这个周末，这个新社会中的许多成员都在默默感谢诺贝尔委员会给予的支持。
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