Remarkable Upward Mobility But Relentless Downward Mobility
The vast majority of Chinese might be impoverished peasants, but for those with ability and luck, the possibilities of upward mobility were quite remarkable in what was an essentially classless society. The richer strata of each village possessed the wealth to give their most able children a classical education in hopes of preparing them for the series of official examinations. If the son of a rich peasant or petty landlord were sufficiently diligent and intellectually able, he might pass such an examination and obtain an official degree, opening enormous opportunities for political power and wealth.

五、顯著的向上流動(dòng)，又無情的向下流動(dòng)
“中國絕大多數(shù)人可能是貧困農(nóng)民，但對(duì)于那些有能力和有運(yùn)氣的人來說，在一個(gè)基本上無階級(jí)的社會(huì)中向上流動(dòng)的可能性相當(dāng)顯著。每個(gè)村莊的富裕階層都擁有財(cái)富，讓他們最有能力的孩子接受傳統(tǒng)教育，希望為他們參加一系列的科舉考試做好準(zhǔn)備。如果富農(nóng)或小地主的兒子足夠勤奮和聰明，他可能會(huì)通過這樣的考試并獲得官方學(xué)位，為獲得政治權(quán)力和財(cái)富打開巨大的機(jī)會(huì)。”

For the Ming (1368–1644) and Ch’ing (1644–1911) dynasties, statistics exist on the social origins of the chin-shih class, the highest official rank, and these demonstrate a rate of upward mobility unmatched by almost any Western society, whether modern or premodern. Over 30 percent of such elite degree-holders came from commoner families that for three previous generations had produced no one of high official rank, and in the data from earlier centuries, this fraction of “new men” reached a high of 84 percent. Such numbers far exceed the equivalent figures for Cambridge University during all the centuries since its foundation, and would probably seem remarkable at America’s elite Ivy League colleges today or in the past. Meanwhile, downward social mobility was also common among even the highest families. As a summary statistic, across the six centuries of these two dynasties less than 6 percent of China’s ruling elites came from the ruling elites of the previous generation.

“明清兩代，進(jìn)士階層（最高官階）的社會(huì)出身都有統(tǒng)計(jì)，這些統(tǒng)計(jì)表明，進(jìn)士階層的向上流動(dòng)率幾乎是任何西方社會(huì)（無論是現(xiàn)代還是前現(xiàn)代）都無法比擬的。超過 30% 的進(jìn)士出身于平民家庭，而這些家庭在前三代中從未出過高官，根據(jù)更早幾個(gè)世紀(jì)的數(shù)據(jù)，這一比例高達(dá) 84%。這一數(shù)字遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過了劍橋大學(xué)自建校以來幾個(gè)世紀(jì)的相應(yīng)數(shù)字，在當(dāng)今或過去的美國精英常春藤盟校中，這一數(shù)字可能顯得非常驚人。與此同時(shí)，即使是最高階層的家庭，向下流動(dòng)也很常見。作為一個(gè)總結(jié)性統(tǒng)計(jì)數(shù)據(jù)，在這兩個(gè)朝代的六個(gè)世紀(jì)中，中國統(tǒng)治精英中只有不到 6% 的人來自上一代統(tǒng)治精英。”

The founding philosophical principle of the modern Western world has been the “Equality of Man,” while that of Confucianist China was the polar opposite belief in the inherent inequality of men. Yet in reality, the latter often seemed to fulfill better the ideological goals of the former. Frontier America might have had its mythos of presidents born in log-cabins, but for many centuries a substantial fraction of the Middle Kingdom’s ruling mandarins did indeed come from rural rice-paddies, a state of affairs that would have seemed almost unimaginable in any European country until the Age of Revolution, and even long afterward.

“現(xiàn)代西方世界的奠基哲學(xué)原則是‘人人平等’，而儒家中國則信奉截然相反的“人天然不平等”的理念。然而，事實(shí)上，后者往往似乎更能實(shí)現(xiàn)前者的意識(shí)形態(tài)目標(biāo)。美國可能有總統(tǒng)出生在小木屋里的神話，但幾個(gè)世紀(jì)以來，中國統(tǒng)治官員中相當(dāng)一部分確實(shí)來自農(nóng)村稻田，這種情況在任何歐洲國家都是難以想象的，直到革命時(shí)代，甚至在很久之后也是如此。”
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://top-shui.cn 轉(zhuǎn)載請(qǐng)注明出處


Such potential for elevation into the ruling Chinese elite was remarkable, but a far more important factor in the society was the open possibility of local economic advancement for the sufficiently enterprising and diligent rural peasant. Ironically enough, a perfect descxtion of such upward mobility was provided by com...st revolutionary leader M Zedong, who recounted how his father had risen from being a landless poor peasant to rich peasant status…

如此有可能晉升為中國統(tǒng)治精英，這非常了不起，但社會(huì)上一個(gè)更重要的因素是，足夠有進(jìn)取心和勤奮的農(nóng)村農(nóng)民有機(jī)會(huì)在當(dāng)?shù)亟?jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展。諷刺的是，***革命領(lǐng)袖毛澤東對(duì)這種向上流動(dòng)進(jìn)行了完美的描述，他講述了他的父親如何從無地貧農(nóng)一躍成為富農(nóng)……

M’s account gives no indication that he regarded his family’s rise as extraordinary in any way; his father had obviously done well, but there were probably many other families in M’s village that had similarly improved their lot during the course of a single generation. Such opportunities for rapid social mobility would have been almost impossible in any of the feudal or class-ridden societies of the same period, in Europe or most other parts of the world.

毛澤東的敘述沒有表明他認(rèn)為自己家族的崛起在任何方面都非同尋常；他的父親顯然很成功，但毛澤東村里可能還有許多其他家庭在一代人的時(shí)間里也同樣改善了他們的命運(yùn)。這種快速的社會(huì)流動(dòng)機(jī)會(huì)在當(dāng)時(shí)的任何（其他）封建或階級(jí)社會(huì)中幾乎是不可能的，無論是在歐洲還是世界上大多數(shù)其他地方。

However, the flip-side of possible peasant upward mobility was the far greater likelihood of downward mobility, which was enormous and probably represented the single most significant factor shaping the modern Chinese people. Each generation, a few who were lucky or able might rise, but a vast multitude always fell, and those families near the bottom simply disappeared from the world. Traditional rural China was a society faced with the reality of an enormous and inexorable downward mobility: for centuries, nearly all Chinese ended their lives much poorer than had their parents.
The strong case for such downward mobility was demonstrated a quarter century ago by historian Edwin E. Moise,[24] whose crucial article on the subject has received far less attention than it deserves, perhaps because the intellectual climate of the late 1970s prevented readers from drawing the obvious evolutionary implications.

“然而，農(nóng)民向上流動(dòng)的反面是向下流動(dòng)的可能性要大得多，而且數(shù)量巨大，可能是塑造現(xiàn)代中國人最重要的因素。每一代，少數(shù)幸運(yùn)或有能力的人可能會(huì)上升，但絕大多數(shù)人總是會(huì)倒下，那些處于底層的家庭就會(huì)從世界上消失。傳統(tǒng)的中國農(nóng)村社會(huì)面臨著巨大而不可避免的向下流動(dòng)的現(xiàn)實(shí)：幾個(gè)世紀(jì)以來，幾乎所有中國人在去世時(shí)都比他們的父母窮得多。
25 年前，歷史學(xué)家埃德溫·莫伊斯就這種向下流動(dòng)提出了強(qiáng)有力的論據(jù)，他關(guān)于這一主題的重要文章沒有得到應(yīng)有的關(guān)注，也許是因?yàn)?20 世紀(jì) 70 年代末的知識(shí)氛圍阻礙了讀者得出明顯的進(jìn)化含義?！?/b>

Furthermore, the forces of downward mobility in rural Chinese society were greatly accentuated by fenjia, the traditional system of inheritance, which required equal division of property among all sons, in sharp contrast to the practice of primogeniture commonly found in European countries.
If most or all of a father’s property went to the eldest son, then the long-term survival of a reasonably affluent peasant family was assured unless the primary heir were a complete wastrel or encountered unusually bad fortune. But in China, cultural pressures forced a wealthy man to do his best to maximize the number of his surviving sons, and within the richer strata of a village it was not uncommon for a man to leave two, three, or even more male heirs, compelling each to begin his economic independence with merely a fraction of his father’s wealth. Unless they succeeded in substantially augmenting their inheritance, the sons of a particularly fecund rich landlord might be middle peasants—and his grandchildren, starving poor peasants.[29] Families whose elevated status derived from a single fortuitous circumstance or a transient trait not deeply rooted in their behavioral characteristics therefore enjoyed only fleeting economic success, and poverty eventually culled their descendants from the village.

“此外，中國農(nóng)村社會(huì)向下流動(dòng)的力量因傳統(tǒng)的繼承制度而大大加劇，這種制度要求所有兒子平等分配財(cái)產(chǎn)，這與歐洲國家常見的長子繼承制形成鮮明對(duì)比。
如果父親的大部分或全部財(cái)產(chǎn)都?xì)w長子所有，那么一個(gè)相當(dāng)富裕的農(nóng)民家庭就能長期生存，除非主要繼承人是個(gè)徹頭徹尾的敗家子或遭遇異常厄運(yùn)。但在中國，文化壓力迫使富人盡最大努力讓兒子的數(shù)量最大化，在村莊較富裕的階層中，一個(gè)男人留下兩個(gè)、三個(gè)甚至更多的男性繼承人并不罕見，這迫使每個(gè)人只能從父親的一小部分財(cái)富開始經(jīng)濟(jì)獨(dú)立。除非他們成功地大幅增加繼承額，否則一個(gè)特別多產(chǎn)的富裕地主的兒子可能會(huì)成為中農(nóng)——而他的孫子孫女則是饑餓的貧農(nóng)。一些家庭的地位提高只是因?yàn)榕既坏臋C(jī)遇或并非根深蒂固于其行為特征中的短暫特質(zhì)，因此只能享受短暫的經(jīng)濟(jì)成功，貧困最終會(huì)使他們的后代從村子里消失?！?/b>

The members of a successful family could maintain their economic position over time only if in each generation large amounts of additional wealth were extracted from their land and their neighbors through high intelligence, sharp business sense, hard work, and great diligence. The penalty for major business miscalculations or lack of sufficient effort was either personal or reproductive extinction.

“成功家族的成員要想長期保持其經(jīng)濟(jì)地位，必須通過高智商、敏銳的商業(yè)意識(shí)、辛勤工作和勤奮工作，從其土地和鄰居那里獲取大量額外財(cái)富。重大商業(yè)失算或缺乏足夠努力的懲罰是個(gè)人或生殖的滅絕?！?/b>
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://top-shui.cn 轉(zhuǎn)載請(qǐng)注明出處


As American observer William Hinton graphically described:
Security, relative comfort, influence, position, and leisure [were] maintained amidst a sea of the most dismal and frightening poverty and hunger—a poverty and hunger which at all times threatened to engulf any family which relaxed its vigilance, took pity on its poor neighbors, failed to extract the last copper of rent and interest, or ceased for an instant the incessant accumulation of grain and money. Those who did not go up went down, and those who went down often went to their deaths or at least to the dissolution and dispersal of their families.

“正如美國觀察家威廉·辛頓生動(dòng)地描述的那樣：
在最悲慘、最可怕的貧窮和饑餓的海洋中，人們維持著安全、相對(duì)舒適、影響力、地位和閑暇——貧窮和饑餓隨時(shí)威脅著吞噬任何一個(gè)放松警惕、憐憫窮苦鄰居、沒有提取最后一分錢的租金和利息、或者一刻停止不斷積累糧食和金錢的家庭。那些沒有上升的人就會(huì)下降，而那些下降的人往往會(huì)死亡，或者至少是妻離子散。”

However, under favorable circumstances, a family successful in business might expand its numbers from generation to generation until it gradually squeezed out all its less competitive neighbors, with its progeny eventually constituting nearly the entire population of a village. For example, a century after a couple of poor Yang brothers arrived in a region as farm laborers, their descendants had formed a clan of 80–90 families in one village and the entire population of a neighboring one.[31] In a Guangdong village, a merchant family named Huang arrived and bought land, growing in numbers and land ownership over the centuries until their descendants replaced most of the other families, which became poor and ultimately disappeared, while the Huangs eventually constituted 74 percent of the total local population, including a complete mix of the rich, middle, and poor.

“然而，在有利的環(huán)境下，一個(gè)生意興隆的家族可能會(huì)一代一代地?cái)U(kuò)大其人口，直到逐漸擠掉所有競爭力較弱的鄰居，其后代最終幾乎構(gòu)成了整個(gè)村莊的人口。例如，一對(duì)貧窮的楊氏兄弟以農(nóng)場工人的身份來到一個(gè)地區(qū)，一個(gè)世紀(jì)后，他們的后代在一個(gè)村莊里形成了一個(gè)由 80-90 個(gè)家庭組成的家族，并構(gòu)成了鄰近村莊的全部人口。[31] 在廣東的一個(gè)村莊，一個(gè)姓黃的商人家庭來到這里購買土地，幾個(gè)世紀(jì)以來，他們的人口和土地所有權(quán)不斷增長，直到他們的后代取代了大多數(shù)其他家庭，這些家庭變得貧窮并最終消失，而黃氏家族最終占當(dāng)?shù)乜側(cè)丝诘?74%，其中包括富人、中產(chǎn)階級(jí)和窮人?！?/b>

The Implications for the Chinese People and for American Ideology
In many respects, the Chinese society portrayed by our historical and sociological sources seems an almost perfect example of the sort of local environment that would be expected to produce a deep imprint upon the characteristics of its inhabitants. Even prior to the start of this harsh development process, China had spent thousands of years as one of the world’s most advanced economic and technological civilizations. The socioeconomic system established from the end of the sixth century A.D. onward then remained largely stable and unchanged for well over a millennium, with the sort of orderly and law-based society that benefited those who followed its rules and ruthlessly weeded out the troublemaker.

對(duì)中國人民和美國意識(shí)形態(tài)的影響
“在許多方面，我們的歷史和社會(huì)學(xué)資料所描繪的中國社會(huì)似乎是一個(gè)近乎完美的例子，它體現(xiàn)了當(dāng)?shù)丨h(huán)境對(duì)當(dāng)?shù)鼐用裥愿癞a(chǎn)生深刻影響的典型特征。即使在這個(gè)艱難的發(fā)展過程開始之前，中國也已經(jīng)作為世界上最先進(jìn)的經(jīng)濟(jì)和技術(shù)文明之一度過了數(shù)千年。從公元六世紀(jì)末開始建立的社會(huì)經(jīng)濟(jì)體系在一千多年的時(shí)間里基本保持穩(wěn)定和不變，這種有序、以法為基礎(chǔ)的社會(huì)使那些遵守規(guī)則的人受益，并無情地清除了惹是生非的人?！?/b>
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://top-shui.cn 轉(zhuǎn)載請(qǐng)注明出處


During many of those centuries, the burden of overpopulation placed enormous economic pressure on each family to survive, while a powerful cultural tradition emphasized the production of surviving offspring, especially sons, as the greatest goal in life, even if that result might lead to the impoverishment of the next generation. Agricultural efficiency was remarkably high but required great effort and diligence, while the complexities of economic decision-making—how to manage land, crop sextion, and investment decisions—were far greater than those faced by the simple peasant serf found in most other parts of the world, with the rewards for success and the penalties for failure being extreme. The sheer size and cultural unity of the Chinese population would have facilitated the rapid appearance and spread of useful innovations, including those at the purely biological level.

“在那幾個(gè)世紀(jì)中，人口過剩的負(fù)擔(dān)給每個(gè)家庭帶來了巨大的經(jīng)濟(jì)生存壓力，而強(qiáng)大的文化傳統(tǒng)則強(qiáng)調(diào)繁衍后代，尤其是兒子，是人生的最大目標(biāo)，即使這一結(jié)果可能會(huì)導(dǎo)致下一代貧困。
農(nóng)業(yè)效率非常高，但需要付出巨大的努力和勤奮，而經(jīng)濟(jì)決策的復(fù)雜性——如何管理土地、選擇作物和投資決策——遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)高于世界其他大多數(shù)地方的簡單農(nóng)奴所面臨的復(fù)雜性，成功的回報(bào)和失敗的懲罰都是極端的。中國人口的龐大規(guī)模和文化統(tǒng)一性促進(jìn)了有用的創(chuàng)新的迅速出現(xiàn)和傳播，包括純生物學(xué)層面的創(chuàng)新。”

It is important to recognize that although good business ability was critical for the long-term success of a line of Chinese peasants, the overall shaping constraints differed considerably from those that might have affected a mercantile caste such as the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe or the Parsis of India. These latter groups occupied highly specialized economic niches in which a keen head for figures or a ruthless business sense might have been all that was required for personal success and prosperity. But in the world of rural Chinese villages, even the wealthier elements usually spent the majority of the lives in backbreaking labor, working alongside their families and their hired men in the fields and rice paddies. Successful peasants might benefit from a good intellect, but they also required the propensity for hard manual toil, determination, diligence, and even such purely physical traits as resistance to injury and efficiency in food digestion. Given such multiple sextive pressures and constraints, we would expect the shift in the prence of any single one of these traits to be far slower than if it alone determined success, and the many centuries of steady Chinese sextion across the world’s largest population would have been required to produce any substantial result.

“重要的是要認(rèn)識(shí)到，盡管良好的商業(yè)能力對(duì)于中國農(nóng)民的長期成功至關(guān)重要，但總體塑造限制與影響東歐阿什肯納茲猶太人或印度帕西人等商業(yè)階層的限制大不相同。后者占據(jù)著高度專業(yè)化的經(jīng)濟(jì)領(lǐng)域，在這些領(lǐng)域中，敏銳的數(shù)字思維或無情的商業(yè)意識(shí)可能就是個(gè)人成功和繁榮所需的全部條件。但在中國農(nóng)村的世界里，即使是較富裕的人，通常一生中的大部分時(shí)間也要從事艱苦的勞動(dòng)，與家人和雇工一起在田間和稻田里工作。成功的農(nóng)民可能受益于良好的智力，但他們還需要艱苦的體力勞動(dòng)、決心、勤奮，甚至一些純粹的身體特征，如抗傷害和消化食物的效率。鑒于如此多重的選擇壓力和限制，我們預(yù)計(jì)，任何單一特征的流行程度的變化都會(huì)比其單獨(dú)決定成功的速度要慢得多，而且需要中國這個(gè)世界最大人口群進(jìn)行數(shù)百年的穩(wěn)定選擇，才能產(chǎn)生任何實(shí)質(zhì)性的結(jié)果?！?/b>

The impact of such strong sextive forces obviously manifests at multiple levels, with cultural software being far more flexible and responsive than any gradual shifts in innate tendencies, and distinguishing between evidence of these two mechanisms is hardly a trivial task. But it seems quite unlikely that the second, deeper sort of biological human change would not have occurred during a thousand years or more of these relentlessly shaping pressures, and simply to ignore or dismiss such an important possibility is unreasonable. Yet that seems to have been the dominant strain of Western intellectual belief for the last two or three generations.

“如此強(qiáng)大的選擇力量的影響顯然體現(xiàn)在多個(gè)??層面，文化軟件比任何先天傾向的逐漸轉(zhuǎn)變都更加靈活和靈敏，區(qū)分這兩種機(jī)制的證據(jù)絕非易事。但第二種更深層次的生物人類變化似乎很可能在一千年或更長時(shí)間內(nèi)發(fā)生，而簡單地忽略或否定這種重要的可能性是不合理的。然而，這似乎恰恰是過去兩三代西方知識(shí)分子信仰的主流觀點(diǎn)?！?/b>

Sometimes the best means of recognizing one’s ideological blinders is to consider seriously the ideas and perspectives of alien minds that lack them, and in the case of Western society these happen to include most of our greatest intellectual figures from 80 or 90 years ago, now suddenly restored to availability by the magic of the Internet. Admittedly, in some respects these individuals were na?ve in their thinking or treated various ideas in crude fashion, but in many more cases their analyses were remarkably acute and scientifically insightful, often functioning as an invaluable corrective to the assumed truths of the present. And in certain matters, notably predicting the economic trajectory of the world’s largest country, they seem to have anticipated developments that almost none of their successors of the past 50 years ever imagined. This should certainly give us pause.

“有時(shí)，認(rèn)清自己意識(shí)形態(tài)盲點(diǎn)的最好方法是認(rèn)真考慮那些沒有這些盲點(diǎn)的外來思想家的思想和觀點(diǎn)。在西方社會(huì)，這些盲點(diǎn)恰好包括我們 80 或 90 年前最偉大的知識(shí)分子，現(xiàn)在由于互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的魔力，他們突然又可以重見天日。不可否認(rèn)，在某些方面，這些人的思維很幼稚，或者對(duì)各種觀點(diǎn)的處理方式很粗暴，但在更多情況下，他們的分析非常敏銳，具有科學(xué)的洞察力，常常起到糾正當(dāng)前假定真理的寶貴作用。在某些問題上，尤其是預(yù)測世界最大國家的經(jīng)濟(jì)軌跡時(shí)，他們似乎預(yù)見到了過去 50 年里幾乎沒有繼任者能想象到的發(fā)展。這顯然應(yīng)該讓我們停下來思考?！?br /> （未完待續(xù)）