英国《金融时报》评论：中国的精英群体比民众更有影响力
《金融时》 （Financial Times）
中国的精英群体比民众更有影响力 （Elite groups can drown out Chinese voices）
By Geoff Dyer in Beijing
Published: September 23 2010
译文：
距中国上一次为反日情绪撼动已有五年。当时，上海的数千名年轻人于一个周六上午举行了示威游行，抗议日本的部分历史教科书将日本战时暴行排除在外的做外。抗议者们向日本餐馆扔鞋，警方则袖手旁观看笑话。一个还在上高中的小女孩站在警戒线外咆哮道：“我们就是恨日本！”
似曾相识的场景上周末在北京再次上演，又一场示威游行迫使日本使馆区周边活动陷于停滞。这次游行因两周前日本海岸警卫署逮捕了一艘中国渔船船长而引发。
本次示威很温和：大约一百来号人，举着零星的中国国旗和横幅；但却有大批警察到场，看上去示威者与警方的人数比例至少达到一比三，显示出这个国家正高度敏感于任何与日本有关的争论。
本周中国提高了抗议声调，推出了包括取消中日政府间高级别接触在内的升级举措。这些举动使人们不禁要问，指导中国外交政策的基础究竟是什么？是北京强硬捍卫自身利益的决心呢，还是领导层向公众民族主义情绪的示好？
互联网已经成为中国人公共生活中的强大力量。大多数情况下，中国网民充其量也许会是些常发出刺耳声音的群众，但只要当话题有一丁点牵扯到诸如日本这样的历史死敌时，网上情绪就变得异常激烈。许多中国分析人士认为，在法国总统萨科奇会见达赖喇嘛之后，中国做出取消2008年中-欧峰会的决定，即是为着回应和平息网上的怒火。
中国官员常常十分乐意告诉他们的外国同事，他们要面对怎样的公众舆论压力。
然而我们可能很容易过分高估公众舆论对中国外交政策的影响力。北京对于网路上的舆情喧哗向来有着娴熟的驾驭技巧。网络审查制度使当局可以用直言不讳的指令回避某一个主题的讨论。但该制度也有其巧妙的运用方式，即允许人民就某一主题痛快宣泄，而一旦怒火平息又令其戛然而止。
因此，尽管2005年发生了大规模反日示威活动，中国国家主席胡锦涛还是在三年后与日方签署了能源开采合作协议，覆盖海域正位于本次冲突发生地。无论公众对某件事抱有何种反感抵触，北京都显示出它具有这样的能力，即待民间狂怒渐平后改变政策方向——且很可能又回到原先轨道上。
更关键地，太过重视公众舆论会让我们忽视中国社会其它正期待影响外交政策的利益群体。如果说目前中国正在世界范围内表现得愈发盛气凌人，那么促使它如此行事的就不仅是网民群众，还有大量持有实际利益的精英分子。
“中国的新贵们普遍感觉到，中国在世界舞台上占据一席之地的时代来临了”，琳达·雅各布森如是说道。她供职于斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所，同时也是一份告的，该告专门研究游说团体如何影响中国外交政策制定。中国在过去十年投资开采国外自然资源的浪潮已经让这个国家最大型的国有企业变得愿意支持一种更加独立的外交政策。一个象征性的例子是，就在美国总统奥巴马去年访华的同一周，作为中国一小搓最高级决策官员之一和中石油前领导人的周永康，率领一支代表团访问了苏丹，实地考察中国在那里的石油投资，并与苏丹总统奥马尔·巴希尔举行了友好会谈。中国甚至有了自己版本的军事新闻分析师，同样角色常为美国电视节目带来精彩内容。人民解放军的一位上校刘明福，因自己一本号召中国建设世界领先军队的书，而成为本年度的小小明星。
北京在国际事务的处理上正变得愈发自信坚定，这在驻中国的外交官和分析人士中间已成老生常谈。若果真如此，中国领导层的决定就不仅仅是在回应公共舆论，也是受制于党国体制内部的权势集团而不得不然。（膏沐容 译）
原文：
It is five years since China was last convulsed by anti-Japanese sentiment. Several thousand young people demonstrated in Shanghai one Saturday morning about Japanese wartime atrocities being excluded from some history schoolbooks. The protesters were throwing bottles at Japanese restaurants, as the police looked on laughing. One young girl who was still in high school yelled, on the sidelines: “We just hate the Japanese.”
There was a déjà vu moment in Beijing last weekend when another demonstration brought the neighbourhood near the Japanese embassy to a standstill, this time over the arrest a fortnight ago of a Chinese fishing boat captain by the Japanese coast guard.
The protest itself was modest – maybe 100 people and a smattering of Chinese flags and banners. But the large police presence, which seemed to leave demonstrators outnumbered by at least three to one, underlined the sensitivity that surrounds any dispute with Japan.
The escalation in tensions with Japan this week, including the cancellation of top-level government contacts, has raised an important question about how China conducts its foreign policy: is Beijing playing hard to defend its interests or is the leadership running to keep ahead of nationalist public opinion
The internet has become a powerful force in Chinese public life. Online commentators in China can be a rough crowd at the best of times but when there is a perceived slight from a historical rival such as Japan, emotions become particularly intense. Many Chinese analysts believe Beijing’s decision to cancel the 2008 EU-China summit after Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president met the Dalai Lama was a response to online fury.
Chinese officials are often happy to tell their foreign counterparts about the pressure they face from public opinion.
Yet it is easy to overstate the impact that public opinion really exerts on foreign policy. For all the internet noise, Beijing is highly skilled at steering public debate. Censorship in China can take the form of blunt instructions to avoid a subject. But it also has a more subtle side, allowing people to blow off steam over a subject but closing the conversation once tempers have cooled.
In spite of large anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005, Hu Jintao, the president, signed an agreement with Japan three years later over energy co-operation in the very area which is the flashpoint for the latest dispute. Whatever the popular antipathy about certain subjects, Beijing has shown it can shift its policy once the furore has died down – and might well do so again.
Most of all, the focus on public opinion ignores all the other groups in Chinese society that are now looking to influence foreign policy. If China is throwing its weight around more in the world these days, the pressure is coming not just from the internet but from plenty of elite vested interests.
“There is a feeling among these new actors that it is time for China to take its place on the world stage,” said Linda Jakobson at the Stockholm International Peace Institute and author of a report on foreign policy lobbying in China. The wave of Chinese investment in foreign natural resources over the past decade has transformed the country’s biggest state-owned companies into powerful supporters of a more independent foreign policy. In one symbolic example, on the very week that Barack Obama, the US president, made his first trip to China last year, Zhou Yongkang, one of the handful of most senior officials in the country and a former PetroChina chief, led a large delegation to Sudan to inspect China’s oil investments and to hold a friendly meeting with Omar al-Bashir, the country’s president. China even has its own version of the television generals who are a staple of US cable shows. Liu Mingfu, a colonel in the Peoples’ Liberation Army, became a minor celebrity this year with his book calling on China to build the world’s leading military.
It has become commonplace among diplomats and analysts in China to say that Beijing is becoming more assertive in international affairs. If that is so, the leadership is not just responding to public opinion, it is also being prodded by powerful groups within the party-state system.
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