译者按：本文作者为Ismail Bashmori伊斯梅尔·巴什莫里，他是一名旅居加拿大的埃及观察家，这篇文章最早于2021年发表于美版问答网站Quora，问题名为《What do you think about China?》（你对中国有什么看法？）并做自答，后被《马来西亚每日快报》（Daily Express ）以《West can’t believe nor accept China’s progress》为题转载刊发，引起巨大反响，之后又被中国驻巴基斯坦大使馆文化参赞兼巴基斯坦中国文化中心主任张和清先生在社交平台推荐。

这篇文章，是通过一名第三世界国家的年轻观察家视角看到并描述的世界，包含了他对所有第三世界国家和对世界的期盼，个人认为实属好文，特转载翻译，以飨共勉。

为了阅读方便，没有使用一段一段的对照

（问号向读者致敬）

原文：

AS an Egyptian, I have been studying China intensely for the past year — its government, society, history, and transformation.

I’ve spoken to hundreds of Chinese and China-haters and heard everything they had to say. By now I’ve learned roughly as much about China as anyone can learn without knowing the language or living in the country, and I’ve reached my conclusion. China attracts a lot of haters, know-nothings and armchair experts.

The truth is that China is the greatest country on the face of the earth. It makes all other countries look insignificant and contemptible. It is the most brilliant, most industrious, most ambitious, most educated, meritocratic and technocratic, most modern, sophisticated, and civilised, and best-governed by far. 

It is the first nonwhite, non-Western country to reach this status since the 1600s. The determination of this country is indescribable. Supernatural. There is no force that can stop it from accomplishing anything it wants to do. 

Forty years ago a flush toilet in China was a luxury. Today it has its own Space Station. This is a tiny example of China’s capabilities.

It doesn’t matter who we are. Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Indians, Africans, even Americans. Next to the Chinese, we are pathetic. We can’t do what they do. We would have a mountain, an Everest of changes to make, and we would whine and bicker and fail at every one of them. China’s story since the 1980s has been one of an almost divine metamorphosis. 

Next to China the entire Western world from Alaska to New Zealand has stagnated. Next to China the entire developing world from Brazil to Madagascar has progressed only at a crawl. 

China is the mother of all gargantuan bullet trains. Every day it manages to create something new and astonishing. And unlike the United States, unlike the British Empire, unlike the French, Dutch, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese or any other Western nation that had its turn at being a superpower in the past four centuries, China doesn’t need to run anybody over or take something from somebody else, to rise majestically.

China is also standing up to the West all by herself. The West can’t believe their four-hundred-year-old global supremacy is being challenged. They hoped that the more China developed, the more it would submit to their influence, interests, and leadership. That didn’t happen. So now they will do anything possible, short of a nuclear war, to make China end. 

Their goal is to destroy this country. That’s why, although the United States has killed several million people and turned several regions of the earth into hellscapes. 

China is the worst fear of our planet’s Western masters. They want you to despise and dread a country that’s done nothing to you, that hasn’t invaded anyone, bombed or sanctioned anyone, that hasn’t overthrown any foreign government, or used its military on anything since 1979.

China is the only major country in the nonwhite developing world, to stand up to the West. To look it in the eye when challenged or threatened.

The Global South are simply Western puppets who submitted long ago. Even the most powerful ones. Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India.

The 1500s—1000s BC were Egypt’s time. Antiquity belonged to the Greeks and Romans. The 1700s belonged to France, and the 1800s to Britain. From 1945 to the present, the world has been under American overlordship. And they call it the Pax Americana but there isn’t much Pax in it. 

There’s plenty of Pax if you’re in Europe or Australia. But the Middle East? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Yemen in the past 20 years. Latin America? They’ve destroyed that part of the world beyond any hope of recovery. Africa? It’s only been spared because of disinterest. The US sees Africa as nothing. The whole West does.

But in the twenty-first century, we are witnessing the rise of China. We are decades away from China becoming the greatest power on earth. This will be China’s time, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Attack China all you want, curse her and monger rumours and hysteria — but the truth is that none of your accusations are backed up by evidence. The Western press is under the thumb of Western governments that want to stay on top of the world for eternity. And the truth is that China is not affected by the noise and maneuvers of her enemies. 

For her first thirty years, from 1949 to 1979, China was basically blockaded and isolated economically and politically by the West. It didn’t even have a seat in the UN General Assembly. And it was dirt-poor in those days, barely a speck of the global economy, a tiny fraction of Japan’s or Germany’s GDP — not even able to prevent famine. And it still didn’t submit to pressure or take any orders. Why on earth would it do that now?

China will be the next global power. There’s nothing that can be done about that. The first stage is that its economy only needs to grow at 4.7 percent per year to become the world’s largest by 2035. That means the usual, historical bare-minimum of 6 percent is already overkill. The US can build as many bases as it wants, slap as many sanctions as it wants, recognise whatever bogus genocides it wants. That’s what it’s been doing all along. Has any of it made a difference? China can adapt to any situation. It took China a mere ten years to go from being barred by the US Congress from participating in the “International” Space Station, to building its own Space Station from zero. 

See, the US has an $800-billion war budget, 800 military bases, 13,000 aircraft, 500 warships, 6,000 nukes — but it doesn’t have what China has: invincible national resolve. It takes the US about 5 years to renovate a bridge, and it takes China 43 hours. There’s simply no competing with that.

China doesn’t need to be a military superpower or empire. That was never part of the plan. US troops, God bless their souls, will continue sitting in their bases, scratching their balls, costing their government $800 billion a year to do nothing. Meanwhile, China will continue to actually develop. 

That’s the part of the equation that America totally missed, because it has barely developed since Reagan’s day. China is a better place to live today than at any time in its previous 5,000 years; Americans saw their highest standard of living in the 1960s and those days will never come back.

So yes, China will be the next global power, and the Chinese are vastly superior to us in every way. This is a fact that everyone can attack but that nobody can change, like the theory of evolution. 

Look at you silly buggers, talking about China like it’s going to be the next Nazi Germany. Even many Middle Easterners I know fit in this foolish category. Did you notice when the US invaded or overthrew the governments of 20 countries in the past 32 years (my lifetime)? Did you even know? You think just because you’re ready to forget all that because of Beyoncé and Game of Thrones and Snapchat and other US cultural exports, it didn’t happen.  

Aren’t you at least curious to see what a world with a nonwhite, non-Western leader might look like, after 400 years? Because God knows that leader won’t be us. It won’t be Brazil or Africa, or the Middle East or India or Indonesia or Nigeria or Pakistan. We’re a mess. 

China was a mess too. But we remain a mess many decades after we achieved independence, and the Chinese went their own way, disentangled their mess and created their destiny. We’re not made of what the Chinese are made of. 

I see China as hope. Hope that a colonised, brutalised, primitive and humiliated country, can rise above its past — refuse to be weak any longer — rebuild itself from nothing, with iron resolve, and become too strong to be overrun by the West again!

Hope that a nonwhite, non-Western country can look deep within itself and find its own solutions to its problems — proving that (foolishly) trusting the West to guide us isn’t necessary! Proof that if we can do what the Chinese did, there will be no limits for us.

Imagine a world where the US, France, Britain, Australia, are no more important than Uzbekistan or Paraguay. 

A world where the World Court might be headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, the World Bank in New Delhi, the United Nations in Jakarta, the IMF in Cairo. 

A world liberated from the US banking system and the dollar as its reserve currency, so that Washington can no longer tell 200 other countries who they can and can’t trade with. 

A world where an American can be tried for war crimes at the Hague, not just an Iraqi or Liberian or Serb.

A world where we don’t hear about a non-Western-made vaccine and grunt to ourselves, Oh, it must be poison. A world where we don’t have to immigrate to the same countries that turned ours into hellholes, to work as sales clerks or taxi drivers, or even if we’re brilliantly employed — to drain our brains from our homelands in the best of cases, and use them to reinforce Western riches and supremacy in exchange for a fat paycheck, instead of using them to make our own countries semi-habitable. 

When I hear that China has built its own Space Station, landed a rover on Mars, ended extreme poverty, built the Earth’s biggest city, dam, telescope, 5G network, highway, air purifier, or whatever the heck it is that will come tomorrow — I feel the same pride as if I were Chinese. 

It’s not happening for all of us, but it’s happening for one of us and that’s a start. There’s got to be such a thing as developing-country nationalism — a common nationalism for all the countries that were colonised and plundered, and remain economically and politically captured by their ex-rulers. 

A nationalism for the Global South. We are too divided, too brainwashed, too fooled and weak — most of us still worship the countries that destroyed us, are non-Western on the outside and Western on the inside, are hating and fearing and buying all the lies about the only one of us that’s made it, and are leaving our countries in droves to let them burn while we “make a better life for ourselves” in the West. 

Do you want to live on a Western-dominated Earth for another 400 years? If you do, keep doing what you’re doing. But I don’t!

You know what’ll happen for all of us if America’s sick wishes come true and its global thuggery does make China collapse? Nothing. Eternal repetition of the status quo. More enslavement, hijacking of our resources and weak corrupt governments, neo-colonialism, invasion, regime change, sanctions, MISERY. 

Haven’t we already seen this? Libya, Cuba, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. Rest in peace. Even FRANCE and JAPAN for God’s sake. What does the United States do when any other country says NO, or simply becomes too powerful, too good at honest competition? 

Japan was a Western-style democracy crawling with US troops, with a US-authored pacifist constitution and almost no military and an extremely pro-US government and populace, and it STILL got crushed when it looked like it would become the #1 economy in the 80s.

I remember 10–15 years ago when China was still relatively poor and impotent, and Bush and Obama would talk about China as sweetly as swans. In 2015, while in China, Obama called China a crucial partner of the United States and said the US welcomed China’s rise.; it was all horseshit. 

America has taken off its mask.

China made it, it wasn’t supposed to make it, so now it must die. What a difference 5 years can make. China went from “crucial partner” to “number one threat.”

We should be helping and supporting China to keep climbing to the top, and giving her some serious solidarity as she withstands the new Cold War of Western imperialism. It’s been a long 400 years. China is the first non-Western country to even come close to reaching a status of ultimate global importance. She is akin to the the first member of an impoverished family to go to university. That is our family of nations. 

And when China gets to the top, believe me, it won’t be a repeat of the French, British, or American Empire. Not a single developing country on earth will be worse-off because of China becoming #1. There will be something good in this for all of us, so let’s wake up.

- Ismail Bashmori is an Egyptian China watcher

翻译：

作为一个埃及人，在过去的一年里，我一直在深入研究中国——它的政府、社会、历史和转型。

我与数百名中国人和憎恨中国的人交谈过，倾听他们讲述的所有事情。直至目前，我算是达到了不了解中国语言也不曾在中国生活的情况下，对于中国所能了解的最大程度，得出了结论——中国吸引了许多仇恨者、无知的人和“砖家”。

真相是，中国，是地球上最伟大的国家。它使所有其他国家看起来微不足道、不值一提。中国是迄今为止最辉煌、最刻苦勤奋、最具雄心壮志、受过最多教育、最按功绩和技术才能选拔的、最现代且时尚、精细且复杂、文明且有礼、治理得最好的国家。

自17世纪以来，中国是第一个达到以上地位的非白人非西方的国家。这个国家的决心难以形容，不可思议，没有任何力量可以阻止它完成任何它想做的事情。

在四十年前的中国，抽水马桶是一种奢侈品，而今天，它拥有自己的空间站，当然这只是展示出中国能力的一个微不足道的小例子。

我们是谁并不重要。埃及人、叙利亚人、巴基斯坦人、印度人、非洲人，甚至包括美国人。在中国人旁边，我们是可悲的。我们无法做到他们所做的事情。我们将面临一座巨山，一座珠穆朗玛峰般的变革之山，但我们只会抱怨，争吵直至失败。可是中国自1980年以后，却已经经历了一次神圣的变革。

从阿拉斯加到新西兰的所有西方世界，从巴西到马达加斯加的所有发展中国家，与中国相比像是爬行一样缓慢。

中国拥有最宏伟的高铁，惊人壮举每天都在被创造出来。与过去四个世纪中曾经是超级大国的西方诸国——美国、英国、法国、荷兰、德国、西班牙、葡萄牙不同，中国并没有通过碾压和夺取他国来实现自己的崛起。

中国在完全靠自己的勇敢抵抗来面对西方世界，令西方世界难以置信的是，它们四百年以来的全球霸权正在面临挑战。它们原本希望中国发展得越多，就越会屈服于西方的影响、利益和领导。但是，这一切没有发生。现在，它们将除了动用核战争这一选项之外，不遗余力地采取任何可能的手段来终止中国崛起。

它们的目标是摧毁这个国家，这就是为什么尽管美国已经杀死了数百万人，将地球上的几个地区变得如同地狱，它们仍然继续这么做的原因。

我们这颗星球的西方主宰的最大恐惧来源是中国。西方主人们希望你鄙视和惧怕中国，但中国没有对你做过什么，没有入侵任何国家、轰炸或制裁任何国家，自1979年以来也没有对任何事情使用过其军事力量。

中国是非白人控制的发展中国家，唯一个敢于对抗西方霸权的主要国家，在面临挑战和威胁时敢于直视西方的眼睛。

全球南方国家只是西方霸权的傀儡，早在很久以前就已经屈服，即便是最强大的——沙特阿拉伯、巴西、印度也没有例外。

公元前1500年到公元前1000年是埃及的盛世，之后属于希腊和罗马，18世纪属于法国，19世纪属于英国。从1945年到现在，世界一直处于美国霸权统治之下，人们称之为“美国和平”，但实际上其中又有几多“和平”。

如果你身处于欧洲或澳大利亚，那么你会感受到很多“和平”，但对于中东、阿富汗、伊拉克、利比亚、叙利亚、伊朗和也门，这些国家在过去20年中所遭受的破坏来说，就不会有太多的“和平”了。而对于拉丁美洲，它们已经毁掉了那个地区，摧毁得无以复加。最后仅仅因为缺乏兴趣，非洲才得以幸存，美国和整个西方认为非洲毫无意义和价值。

但是，在21世纪，我们正在见证到中国的崛起。距离中国成为世界上最强大的国家还有几十年的时间。这将是中国的时代，没人能改变这一点。不管你想怎么攻击中国，诅咒她，散播谣言和恐慌，但事实是，你们的指责抹黑都没有证据支持。西方媒体受到想要永远保持世界领先地位的西方政府的控制，但是真相不会撒谎，中国不会受到敌人的这种噪音和手段的影响。

在她的前三十年，从1949年到1979年，中国被西方从经济和政治上封锁和孤立。甚至没有在联合国大会上获得席位。当时中国一贫如洗，在全球经济中不值一提，只占日本或德国的国内生产总值的一小部分，甚至连饥荒都无法阻止。

但是，她仍然不屈服于西方压力，不接受任何来自强权的命令。

那么，现在的她，又有何种理由放弃崛起？

中国将不可避免的成为下一个全球强国，第一阶段，中国经济只需要每年4.7%的增长率，就能在2035年成为世界上最大的经济体。这意味着她根本用不着一直以来的最低的6%的增长率。

美国可以建造任意数量的军事基地，实施各种各样的制裁，宣传任何它想要的虚假种族灭绝，当然这是它一直在做的事情。但这些产生过任何影响吗？中国可以适应任何情况，她自从被美国国会禁止参与“国际”空间站，到从零开始建设自己的空间站，而这仅仅用了十年时间。

确实，美国拥有着8000亿刀乐的战争预算、800个军事基地、13000架飞机、500艘军舰和6000枚核弹。但它没有中国所拥有的：无敌的民族决心。对于美国来说，修复一座桥需要大约5年的时间，而中国只需要43个小时。美国根本不可能与中国竞争。

中国不需要成为一个军事超级大国或帝国，这从来不是计划的一部分。美国军队，上帝保佑他们的灵魂，它们将继续坐在军事基地里挠蛋玩，花费它们的政府每年的8000亿刀乐来无所事事。与此同时，中国将继续实打实地发展。

是的，中国将成为下一个全球大国，中国人在各个方面都比我们优越。就像进化论一样是可以被攻击却又无法阻挡的事实。

你们这些愚蠢之人，把中国说得像是下一个二战德国。甚至我认识的许多中东人也有这种愚蠢的想法。

难道你没有注意到过去的32年里，美国入侵或推翻了20个国家的政府吗？

知道吗？仅仅因为塞到你脑子里的像碧昂斯、权游和阅后即焚（PS:美国社交软件）等等美国的文化输出，就可以忘记这一切了吗？

难道你一点都不好奇，在400 年后，一个非白人、非西方所领导的世界会是什么样子吗？因为上帝知道，领导者不会是我们。它不会是巴西或非洲，也不会是中东、印度或印度尼西亚或尼日利亚或巴基斯坦，因为我们一团糟。

中国也曾是一团糟，但是我们实现独立几十年后还是一团糟，而中国人理清掉烂摊子走出了自己的路，改变了她的命运。可我们与中国人不同，没那么坚强。

我看到了中国，她是希望，任何一个曾被殖民、残酷、原始所羞辱的国家，能够超越过去，拒绝再次变弱，从无到有地重建自己，用钢铁般的决心，变得足够强大，不再被西方侵略！

希望任何一个非白人、非西方国家，能够深入地自我反省，找到解决自身问题的方法——证明自己完全没必要愚蠢盲目地信任西方，被它们所指导！证明我们如果能够像中国人那样，就不再有发展的极限！

可以想象这样一个世界，在这个世界中，美国、法国、英国、澳大利亚和乌兹别克斯坦或巴拉圭同等地位。

这个世界中，世界法院总部设在吉隆坡，世界银行设在新德里，联合国设在雅加达，国际货币基金组织设在开罗。

这个世界中，已经从美国银行体系和美元作为储备货币中解放出来，这样华盛顿就不能再告诉其他200个国家他们可以和谁交易，不能和谁交易。

这个世界中，一个美国人可以在海牙受审，而不仅仅是一个伊拉克人、利比里亚人或塞尔维亚人。

这个世界中，我们不会一听到疫苗是非西方国家研制的，就自言自语地嘟囔：“哦，这一定是毒药”。

这个世界中，我们不必移民到那些将自己祖国变成地狱的国家，成为售货员或出租车司机。

这个世界中，我们即使因为出色而成为高级人材，可以获得优渥的待遇，也不必将我们的智慧和能力从祖国抽离，用来增强西方的财富和霸权，仅仅只是为了换取一份丰厚的薪水——那样最终只会使我们的祖国勉强在生存线上挣扎。

当我得知中国建造自己的空间站、探测器在火星登陆、消除了极端贫困、建造了世界上最大的城市、大坝、望远镜、5G网络、高速公路、空气净化器或者无论明天会推出什么——我感觉我就像是一名中国人一样的自豪。

崛起已经开始发生，虽然没有发生在所有国家身上，但是有的国家已经站了出来。我们需要有一个发展中国家的民族主义——是所有曾经被殖民掠夺、如今仍然在经济和政治上受到前任统治者掌控的国家的共同民族主义。

这是属于全球南方国家的民族主义。

我们太过分裂、太过洗脑、太容易上当和软弱了——我们大多数人仍然崇拜摧毁我们祖国的国家。

我们外表上是非西方人，内心则是西方式。仇恨、恐惧并笃信“我们中有一个成功者”的谎言，成群结队离开祖国，跑到西方“过上更好的生活”。

你想要在一个由西方主导的地球上再过400年吗？如果你想，那你继续，但我不想！

你要明白，如果美国的病态扭曲的愿望成真，其全球暴行真的使中国崩溃，那将会发生什么吗？

回答是：什么也不会发生，只是现状被永远重复——更多的奴役、更多的资源被窃取、薄弱腐败的政府、新殖民主义、入侵、政权更迭、制裁、苦难。

我们难道没见过这些吗？利比亚、古巴、委内瑞拉、南斯拉夫、白俄罗斯、伊拉克、伊朗、越南、苏联，甚至包括法国和日本，安息吧。

想想吧，当其他任何国家说“不”，或者变得过于强大，在公正的竞争中胜出的时候，美国会怎么做？

日本，是一个到处爬满了美军的西式民主国家、拥有由美国制定的和平宪法、几乎没有军队、政府和民众都极度亲美。但在80年代，在它即将成为世界第一经济体时，仍然被玩垮碾碎。

我记得10-15年前，当时中国还相对贫弱，布什和奥巴马就像天鹅一样优雅温柔地谈论中国。奥巴马在2015年称中国是美国的重要伙伴，并表示美国欢迎中国崛起，但这一切都是胡说八道。

美国已经摘下面具——中国做到了她本不应该做到的事，所以她现在必须死。五年，可以带来多么大的变化，中国可以从“关键伙伴”变成“头号威胁”。

我们，应该为中国攀登到顶峰提供帮助和团结，并在她抵挡西方帝国主义的新冷战时，给予她真正的支持。

漫长的400年，中国是第一个接近达到全球最重要地位的非西方国家。她就像一个贫困家庭中第一个上大学的成员，那就是由我们组成的国际大家庭。

当中国到达顶峰，相信我，它不会重复法、英或美帝国的覆辙。地球上没有一个发展中国家会因为中国成为第一而变得更糟。

这对我们所有人都有好处，所以，让我们醒来。

——伊斯梅尔·巴什莫里，一位埃及的中国观察家。