【每日一翻】为何中国在带领人民脱贫方面取得巨大成功的同时,依然受到西方媒体持续不断的攻击?

问:作为一个拥有 14 亿人口的国家,”红色”中国在带领人民脱贫方面取得了巨大成功。而这种成功是在世界上其他地方从来没有出现过的,然而中国却依然受到西方媒体持续不断的攻击,这是为什么呢?

高分答案: 我很喜欢这个问题,因为它点出了中西方文化差异中的一个关键点。西方国家不断的用详细事例来说明他们认为中国在侵犯人权方面的举动。而中国却反驳说西方国家没有看到中国大大提升了数亿人的生活质量,因此中国质疑西方世界从来没有把这件事考量进去。

当年我在中国的高中里教授辩论课的时候,也曾经看到过这种价值观的冲突。我们会教他们为辩论提供一个框架,或者一个定义、观察价值观的系统。这样会更容易比较论点并框定辩论的范围。而中国学生一定会使用功利主义框架。但是我们作为讲师,就是教授辩手如何争辩和推翻所有的价值体系,以构建他们可以用来赢得比赛的工具包。所以我借助了“电车难题”,来尝试教他们作出道义论证,问题如下:

一辆失控的电车正沿着轨道向一个岔口前进,有五个人在岔口前方的轨道上,片刻后就会被电车撞死。而你是一个和此事无关的旁观者,正目睹这一切的发生。这时你意识到,如果你拉下你旁边的开关,电车就会在叉口处开向另一个方向,然而那个方向的轨道上也有一个人,电车会把那个人撞死。基于道德你应该怎么选择,你会拉下那个开关吗?

当你拿这个问题去问中国人的时候,他们几乎百分百会选择拉下那个开关——毕竟,这样可以多救 4 个人。而你让这些人以”为什么不应该拉下开关“来展开辩论,他们会觉得非常困难。所以对于我的学生来说,持有这个观点展开辩论几乎算是一个不可逾越的挑战。最终导致这些学生很难在辩论赛中打败那些同样持有功利主义观点的人。

我和我的学生们持有不同的价值观,很大原因是由于我们生长的社会环境不同。在中国,法院判决的定罪率是**99.99%*。与美国相比,中国的暴力犯罪事件和因枪支导致的死亡事件都很少。因为中国人更推崇”宁可错杀一百,不可放过一个“。而中国的法律和伏尔泰*那一套也不一样——中国人更乐于为保持一个更安全的社会付出一些其他代价。相比之下,美国举证责任很高,被告的权利也很强。

在这样两个完全相反的社会中长大,也难怪西方人和中国人之间产生误解。中国更关注整体的幸福感、生活质量,因此觉得牺牲一部人人权是可以接受的。而西方媒体却觉得这是不对的。他们会对那些会拉下开关的人说,某些行为从根本上来说就是错误的,因为整体的幸福感或社会财富在这种状况下并不重要。

原文出自一个不存在的网站,内容如下:

China has a population of 1.4 billion people. “Red” China has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system yet why is it constantly attacked in the Western media when it was extremely successful in poverty reduction?
I like this question because this argument highlights a key cultural difference among China and Western countries. Western countries constantly detail what they consider to be human rights abuses in China, while China points to the massive increase in quality of life for hundreds of millions and is incredulous about that not being taken into consideration.
I saw this same conflict in value systems when I taught debate to Chinese high school students. We would teach them to give the debate a framework, or a system of definitions, observations, and values that make it easier to compare arguments and “frame” the debate. Without fail, Chinese students used a utilitarian framework. Our job as instructors is to teach debaters how to argue for and against all value systems to build their toolkit that they can use to win rounds, so I tried to teach them to make deontological arguments. We started with the trolley problem.
A runaway trolley is speeding toward a fork in the track. Five people are in the trolley’s path, certain to be hit and killed. You, an innocent and neutral bystander, see this happening and realize that if you pull a switch right now the trolley will change to a different track with one person in the way, who will perish instead. What is the ethical choice to make? Do you pull the switch?
Ask a Chinese person and they will almost certainly tell you to pull the switch—after all, you save a net of 4 lives. If you ask them to craft an argument for why they shouldn’t pull the switch, they may have a very difficult time doing so. For my students it was almost always an insurmountable challenge to argue for the opposite viewpoint, which made it in turn very difficult for them to defeat the common utilitarian arguments they faced in debate rounds.
My students and I did not derive our different value systems out of nothing; the society in which we were raised played a huge part. In China, where the courts have a 99.93% conviction rate[1], there are very few violent crimes and gun deaths per capita compared to America. It is not considered good here that 100 guilty men go free rather than convict one innocent. In China, whose laws are not traced back to Voltaire, they would gladly pay the price of a few wrongful convictions for the reward of a safer society at large. By contrast, American burdens of proof are high and the rights of the accused are strong.
Raised in such opposite societies, it is no wonder that we can misunderstand one another. China looks at change in overall happiness, quality of life, and well being and says, “How about THAT for human rights?” The Western media criticizes them anyhow and says, as they may say to the person who would pull the lever and change the trolley, that certain acts are wrong in and of themselves and should never be performed because it is not the total life or wealth or happiness at the end that is important.