If china’s rulers ever decide to invade Taiwan—a grim but not impossible prospect—they will need good answers to two questions.First, would the People’s Liberation Army win? The consensus in Taipei is that the pla is close to that goal but is not “100%sure” of victory. Second, would ordinary Taiwanese submit?Chinese leaders have limited patience for Taiwanese opinion.
如果中国的当权者曾经想过入侵台湾（一个可怕的但不是不可能的预想），他们需要先想出两个问题的答案。首先，会是中国共产党赢吗？台北的共识是解放军极有可能，但并非肯定胜利。其次，普通台湾百姓会投降吗？中国领导层对于台湾人的意见可没有什么耐心。
Their offer to the democratic island of 23m is ostensibly generous.Under the slogan “One Country, Two Systems”, Taiwan is promised lots of autonomy alongside access to China’s vast market. This is backed by honeyed words about unifying a family sundered for 70 years, since China’s civil war ended with the losing Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (kmt) retreating to what they hoped would be temporary exile on Taiwan.
他们对于这个拥有2300万人口的领土的开价表面上很大方。在“一国两制”的标语下，台湾可以在进入中国大陆庞大市场的同时维持自主权。因为中国内战以国民党战败、退回到他们希望被暂时流放的台湾告终，中国就用“让分离了70年的家庭团聚”甜蜜的话来支持这个行为。
Still, China is committed to using force to block any bid for formal independence. Chinese optimists call time their ally, as Taiwan’s population ages and its economy slows. Chaguan visited Taiwan recently. It is true that China’s gleaming coastal cities make Taipei’s 1980s skyscrapers look shabby. But time is China’s foe too, says Freddy Lim, a heavy-metal rock star and legislator for Taiwan’s pro-independence New Power Party. Mr Lim cites polls showing that youngsters increasingly identify as Taiwanese and consider China another country, albeit one where they like to do business.
然而，中国大陆正致力于用一切方法来阻止中国台湾的正式独立的任何尝试。随着台湾的人口逐渐老龄化并且经济放缓，中国大陆的乐观派呼吁集结他们的同盟国。茶馆最近拜访了台湾。中国大陆闪闪发光的海岸风景确实使台北1980年代的摩天大楼显得黯淡无光。但廉Freddy说道，时间也是中国的敌人。廉Freddy是一位重金属摇滚歌手，也是台湾促进独立时代力量的立法委员。廉先生指出票选结果表明青年一代更多地将自己认定为台湾人，将中国大陆视为另一个国家，虽然他们非常愿意和中国大陆做生意。
Embrace the motherland, or else Put bluntly, China’s proposals sound creepy to many young, urban Taiwanese. In effect, they hear a demand to submit to marriage with a stern cousin, arranged decades ago: “I am rich now, let me cherish you—or I will kill you.” Taiwanese defiance may anger China’s leaders. But they cannot safely ignore it. Any Chinese victory would need to be quick, with Taiwan’s will to fight broken so swiftly that calls for an American rescue become moot. Taiwanese security experts are frank about what they fear: a psychological collapse among the public, for instance after initial waves of Chinese missiles wreck more than half the island’s defences, or blow up oil and gas terminals to cut power supplies. Then there is the question of what happens the day after China wins. Politicians predict mass protests in Taiwanese cities.
拥抱祖国大陆，或粗暴地说，中国的提议对于许多当地的年轻台湾人来说是令人害怕的。这就像在数十年前的约定下，要求他们去和一个严肃的表亲结婚一样：“我现在有钱了，让我爱护你吧，或者我就杀了你”（译者忍不住吐槽外国作者真的是很能煽动大众，用的比喻很有代入感啊）。台湾人的抵抗可能会惹怒中国大陆的领导人，但他们不会简单地忽视掉。中国的胜利一直都是很快的，使得台湾想抵抗而寻求美国的帮助的愿望变得没有了意义。（说法真不要脸）台湾的安全专家坦白出他们害怕的事情：比如在中国导弹摧毁台湾一半防线后，或点燃油站和煤气站来切断电力系统后的，大众心理防线的坍塌。接下来就是中国胜利之后会发生什么的问题了。政治家预测会有台湾城市的大面积抗议。
Would China send tanks to subdue its sullen new satrapy? Alas, China has closed off avenues to answering such questions. Communist bosses growl that they will only engage with Taiwanese who agree that their island is part of China. That excludes President Tsai Ing-wen and her ruling Democratic Progressive Party (dpp). The dpp says that the island they govern is a country in its own right, though to avoid a crisis they fudge what they mean by that. In their desire to teach Taiwanese voters that dpp rule brings pain and isolation, China has sought to ostracise the party since Ms Tsai won election in 2016.
中国会派出坦克来制服新领地吗？哎，中国已经关闭了回答这种问题的途径。共产党领导人们咆哮着说他们只会和同意他们是中国一部分的台湾人合作。这就排除了台湾领导人蔡英文和她的民进党。民进党表示他们治理下的土地是拥有自主权的国家，即使为了避免灾难他们回避了他们的说法。他们认为为了让台湾选民认为民进党上台会带来痛苦和孤立，中国自从蔡英文在2016年赢得大选后一直在排斥民进党。
Government-to-government contacts have been limited to such technical subjects as airtraffic control, food safety and some police co-operation, for instance when one side seeks the return of a fleeing murderer. Chinese pressure is blamed for sharp declines in tourism from the mainland and in short-term exchanges by mainland students, though about 3,500 Chinese students remain in Taiwan on degree courses. Even scholars close to the dpp have been blacklisted from travel to China, among them Tseng Chien-yuan of Chung Hua University. He adds that Chinese academics he has known for decades are now barred from formal contacts with him. “I worry about this situation, because if the Chinese government only hears what it wants to know, they can never understand Taiwan,” says Mr Tseng.
政府间的交流被限制在了诸如空中交通管制、食品安全以及一些警务合作方面（如一边需要引渡回逃犯）的技术交流。大陆到台湾旅游以及短期交换学习人数的剧烈减少应由中国方面的压力负责，但仍有3500位中国学生仍在台湾继续攻读学位。甚至亲近民进党的学者也已经被拒绝进入中国旅游，这其中就有中华大学的曾建元。他表示与他认识多年的中国学者都已经被限制与他进行正式的交流，他说：“我担心这种情形，因为如果中国政府只听他想听到的，他们永远也不可能真正了解台湾。”
China does hear from conservative supporters of the kmt, which backs closer ties with China, although not unification. About 370,000 mainlanders married to Taiwanese live on the island. Those who vote lean kmt. Equally, at any moment there are a million Taiwanese in China, including 400,000 long-term residents. Tales abound of Chinese officials offering economic rewards to Taiwanese businessmen who endorse unification. Wang Ting-yu, a dpp legislator who sits on the parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committees, says that China’s intelligence services gather information about Taiwan from “between 10,000 and 100,000” agents and informers. Fewer than 5,000 are professional spies, he estimates.
中国确实听到了支持与中国建立更亲密的关系、虽然并非同一的国民党保守支持者的说辞。大约37万的大陆人与居住在岛上的台湾人结婚，他们都偏向国民党。同样地，中国一直有超过100万的台湾人在中国大陆，包括40万的长期居住居民。到处充斥着中国官员会给支持统一的台湾商人以经济回报的传说。一位负责国会外国事项以及防务委员会的委员，王庭宇说道：“中国的情报机构从大约1万到10万个机构以及情报员那里收集台湾的信息，其中不足5000人是专业的间谍。”
Chinese informers might be Taiwanese gangsters on the hustle in southern China, or Taiwanese businessmen looking for favours. Mr Wang cautions that China may not learn much from its spies. (Taiwan’s spooks are underwhelming when he asks about China, he notes, either because they do not trust parliamentarians or because “they don’t know anything”.) A big danger is that ignorance leads to impatience. There are over 140 students from both sides of the straits at the Graduate Institute for Taiwan Studies at the University of Xiamen, a handsome port city with close geographic and cultural links to Taiwan. Chen Xiancai, a professor at the institute, says many arrive knowing little about the other side.
中国的情报员可能是中国南部靠小偷小摸为生的台湾混混，或者寻求好处的台湾商人。王先生警告中国并不会从间谍那里知道多少情报。（他指出当他问到中国的时候台湾的间谍们不愿回应，因为他们不相信国会议员，或者因为他们根本不知道。）危险的是无知会带来焦躁。厦门大学有一间针对台湾研究的研究所，其中有超过140名两岸的学生。陈贤才是研究所的一名教授，他表示许多刚到研究所的人对对面其实毫无了解。
Mainland students point to China’s strength and ask: “Why haven’t we unified yet?” His Taiwanese students retort: “Why are you in such a hurry?” The institute’s scholars stand out for their professionalism, visiting Taiwan often to conduct fieldwork. The professor leads a dpp study centre opened within the institute in 2017. But he is cautious about describing its work, saying it is focused on building a database of academic papers. Still, he is sometimes berated by online nationalists, who complain that the dpp should be “exterminated”, not studied.
大陆的学生指出中国的强大并问：“我们为什么还没有统一？”他的台湾同学反驳道：“你们急什么？”研究所的学者们以专业性著称，经常为了实地考察拜访台湾。这位教授主持开展了研究所内部在2017年开始的国民党研究中心。但他在描述他的工作时显得很小心，他指出他的工作主要集中在建立学术论文的数据库上。然而，他有时会被网友指责，他们抱怨国民党是用来根除的，不是研究的。（瞎说！国民党也是我们中国人好吗！）
Sherry Yu, a Taiwanese student in Xiamen, comes from a family that votes for the kmt. She wants a career in China but still laments that Chinese classmates—reared on jingoistic schoolbooks and censored news—cannot comprehend why Taiwanese would vote for the dpp or resist unification, insisting that they must simply want to humiliate China. Ms Yu thinks that Taiwanese just want to preserve their freedoms. When politics comes up, she often starts with “we”, then sadly finds herself using “you” and “me”
在厦门学习的一位台湾同学于Sherry,她的家庭支持国民党。她想要在中国寻求一份工作，但仍表示为中国同学感到悲哀，他们只接收到充满侵略意味的教材和经过审查的新闻，他们并不能理解为什么台湾人会投票给国民党或者拒绝统一，只是强调台湾人只是想要羞辱中国大陆。于同学认为台湾人只是想保留自由。当提到政治时，她总是会以“我们”开头，但之后也会遗憾地发现自己使用了“你”和“我”。
TIPS:斜体是我翻译的觉得有问题的地方， 粗体是生词，欢迎大家指正！
翻译后的感受：译者对于政治也了解不多，知道我们目前接收到的消息都是经过“过滤”后的新闻，经济学人作为国外比较权威的杂志，对于台湾问题都处于如此丑化中国形象、为台湾塑造可怜形象的状态，不知道是我们对于政治现状了解地太少，还是外国媒体已经到了十分严重的地步。我只想说我们要多吸收外国的新闻，听听不同的观点，但也不要妄自菲薄，毕竟我们自己是中国的一份子，自己家的情况只有自己最了解。不听信任何媒体的一面之词，综合分析，以独立个体的身份去思考，不做乌合之众。
网友评论