2017年9月30日，解读中国工作室以“中国道路与前景”为主题，邀请斯洛文尼亚前总统达尼洛·图尔克、埃及前总理伊萨姆·沙拉夫、吉尔吉斯斯坦前总理卓奥玛尔特·奥托尔巴耶夫、英国国际发展部国务大臣麦克·贝茨进行了TED演讲。

4位学者的演讲题目分别是：麦克•贝茨：中国奇迹是如何发生的？卓奥玛尔特•奥托尔巴耶夫：“一带一路”将给世界带来什么？伊萨姆•沙拉夫：什么是中国梦？达尼洛•图尔克：中国道路与发展前景。

微信公众号“解读中国”（ID：ChinaReview2015），10月18日全文翻译了首篇TED演讲《中国奇迹是如何发生的？》，演讲者为英国国际发展部国务大臣麦克•贝茨。

麦克•贝茨是谁？

他曾先后担任英国保守党副主席、英国上议院副议长、内政部国务大臣等要职。尤其值得一提的是，他还是一个标准的“中国女婿”，夫人李雪琳是旅居英国近30年的浙江妹子。

2015年，麦克•贝茨曾在中国进行为期三个月的徒步旅行。2015年10月20日，习近平主席在英国议会演讲中对麦克•贝茨徒步中国的行为给与高度评价——最近，英国议会上院议员贝茨勋爵在中国开展了为期两个多月的慈善徒步行走，他顶着烈日步行约1700公里，将募捐来的善款投入中国慈善事业，并呼吁人们珍爱和平。

正是在中国三个多月的徒步旅行中，麦克•贝茨对中国有了更深刻的认识，他对中国奇迹的真正原因也有了自己的答案。

在他眼中，这个答案是什么？让我们通过他的TED演讲来了解吧！

图：解读中国

演讲全文：

Well, thank you very much and it’s a great privilege to share the platform with such inspirational speakers as you’ve already heard this evening. Of course as it was mentioned I have a particular perspective on China. I’ve fallen in love with China in particular one part of it occupied by Xuelin Li and my wife.

非常感谢大家，我很荣幸能在今晚与这些鼓舞人心的演讲者们同台。当然刚刚也提到了，我对中国有与众不同的看法。我爱上了中国，其中的一部分原因是我的妻子李雪琳。

Of all the statistics that are presented about China, the one which always inspires me is that no country in human history has ever lifted more people out of poverty than China. Seven hundred million, three quarters of the total lifted out of poverty between 2000 and 2010 were here in China. That should make us celebrate and take note and try to understand. My perspective of understanding was not analysis of the economics. It was to walk through China, to walk a thousand miles.

所有关于中国的数据中，让我最受鼓舞的是，人类历史上没有任何一个国家的脱贫人口数量超过中国，整整七亿人。2000年至2010年，中国的脱贫人口占世界脱贫人口总数的四分之三。这是值得我们庆祝的，我们要加以关注并深入了解。我不是从经济学角度加以分析理解的，我选择走遍中国，在中国徒步行走一千英里。

Originally, it was meant to be from Beijing, the northern capital to Nanjing, the southern capital. But I walked a little bit too fast and I got there three weeks early and Xuelin said you’ve arrived three weeks early, well, now you can walk on to my home city, which is Hangzhou and that’s how it became that we walk for peace to Nanjing and love for Hangzhou. And that was an amazing time.I remember one afternoon, we’ve been walking for three weeks out of Beijing, I have to say many things that are said about walking, but often walking as I found when I set off through Beijing, I was overtaking the traffic as I walked down through the various ring roads to the five, six ring road.

最初，我们打算从北京一路走到南京。但我走的太快了点，我提前三周走完了全程。雪琳说既然我提前了三周完成目标，我可以继续往南去她的家乡杭州。这也是为什么我到南京的这段旅程是和平之旅，而后又开启了前往杭州的爱情之旅。这是一个很棒的时刻。我记得有一天下午，那时候我们已经从北京出发走了三周了，我得说一说我走出北京以后的一些事。我一路走来发现我的速度比北京路上的各种交通工具更快。我沿着各种环形路走到五环六环。

And we walked about three weeks and it was during the August, so it was very hot temperatures.We started to climb high to the Taian mountains in Shandong province and we moved into Shandong province and into the Taian mountains. And it was beautiful countryside. It’s one of the things worth remembering about China is, of course, that a lot of people are looking China and saying, well, it’s an economic miracle, well, it’s already been mentioned. This miracle has actually been happening almost every century for the past three thousand years. We arrived in a small village called Shenjiatun, I just pictured in the mountains nowhere around, hardly a road to be seen.

我们走了大约三周，那时候是八月份，气温很高。我们开始爬山东省泰安的山脉。我们进入山东省，进入泰安山脉。那是一个非常美丽的乡村。关于中国,不可不提的当然是很多人都认为中国是一个经济奇迹，这已经被多次提到。在过去的三千年里，这个奇迹几乎在每个世纪都会发生。我们来到一个叫沈家屯的小村庄。它位于山中，比较偏僻，几乎看不到路。

图：解读中国

A few local houses around a local square. In the middle of the square, a great tree, an oak tree. And beside the oak tree, there was a well. We sat down from the heat of the temperatures of about 40 degrees. Xuelin and I sat down beside the well and underneath the tree, and not long before people start coming to join us and start to talk about what we were doing, why we were doing, what we were doing.And as we sat there, they explain that the tree that was providing the shade was some five hundred years old, that the well just beside this was seven hundred years old. And we were getting very nostalgic about this and I said to the few people over there. I said have you had many visitors to your village? Many foreigners come to your village? And they looked at each other and they said no.

有一些房屋建在当地的一个广场上。广场中央有一棵巨大的橡树。橡树旁边有一口井。我们坐在橡树下躲避40度左右的高温。我和雪琳在井边坐下来，就在树下。过了一会儿人们开始加入到我们中间来，问我们在做什么以及为什么这样做。当我们坐在那里时，他们说提供树荫的树已经有五百年的历史了，它旁边的那口井已经有七百年的历史了。我觉得很怀旧，我和那边的几个人开始攀谈。我问他们是不是有很多游客，很多外国人到他们村子里来。他们相互看了看，告诉我说没有。

And I start really excited.I thought I discovered somewhere new and they said but we were not quite sure. But the person who would know is the old man of the village. He’s 95 years old. He’s lived here all of his life, apart from two years in 1943 when he went off to fight to liberate Jinan which was under Japanese occupation at the time, but he’s lived here all his life. So they went into the field and they brought him and he sat under the tree and they said has anybody, any foreigner visited at this village before. He said no, no, this man is the first.

我开始感到很兴奋。我觉得我发现了新大陆。他们告诉我他们不是很确定。但是村里有个老人会知道。老人已经95岁了，在这里住了一辈子，除了1943年的时候，他外出两年去解放当时在日本占领下的济南，他一辈子都住在这里。他们就到田间去把他领过来。他坐在树下，他说这个村子以前没有外国人来过。这个外国人是第一个。

I was amazed. I felt like Marco Polo. And to capture the moment, I said to Xuelin, I said do you think that they will be OK if we actually took a photograph, a photograph. I thought hang on, they will get a little bit worry, perhaps they don’t know what a camera is, let alone the camera can now be found on the phone. And so they all lined up and Xuelin ask him to take a photograph and they took a photograph with her phone.

我很惊讶。我觉得自己就像是马可波罗。为了捕捉这一刻，我对雪琳说，你认为他们会愿意拍一张照片吗？我一直觉得他们会有一点担心，也许他们不知道相机是什么，更不用说在手机上的相机了。他们都站好队，雪琳用自己的手机给他们拍了一张照片。

And this was an amazing time. I thought I will give talks about this, just this experience in Shenjiatun for many many years to come. And then as the photograph has finished, everybody, including the old man, pulled out their smart phones and started to go to Shelin to ask her for her QS code, so they could join her WeChat group and get copies of the photograph. I thought that were amazed. But to me it was the perfect beautiful illustration of the ancient and the modern, the old and the new resting together here in China. It was an extraordinary thing.

这是一个惊人的时刻。我想我会在许多年后谈到自己在沈家屯的经历。拍完照片后每个人，包括那个老人，都拿出自己的智能手机，开始问雪琳的微信号，想要加她微信，接收照片。我感到很惊讶。但对我来说这是古代与现代的完美勾勒，新旧事物共存于中国。这是一件非同寻常的事。

As we continued walking, we visited many of the places that the previous speakers talked about the Confucian tradition which is so important I think to help people understand what China is about and where those traditions come from, just as much as trying to understand European civilization without understanding the importance of the Greek philosophers, Socrates, Aristoteles, Plato, all the Christian religion in that part of our culture development. Confucius is critical.

我们继续赶路，参观了许多地方。前面的发言者们谈到儒家传统。我想儒家思想非常重要，它能帮助人们了解中国以及那些传统的来源。就像试图理解欧洲文明就不能不了解希腊哲学家，如苏格拉底、亚里士多德和柏拉图以及基督教在我们的文化发展中的重要性。孔子至关重要。

And so when we were in Qufu, and we actually saw the place where he was born, the beds where he was raised and the place where he was finally laid to rest. We began to understand the importance which is put not on self, but on others. And this was important to remember. It was this drive to serve others, to work hard to be good for others, which was a really important lesson to learn. Everywhere we went, as we walked through small villages, often at the end of a hard day of walk, Xuelin and I would wonder where we were staying and we were going to search some dumplings or some tea in the local market square.

当我们在曲阜的时候，我们看到了孔子出生的地方，长大的地方和他最后安息的地方。我们开始认识到儒家思想注重的不是自我，而是别人。这一点很重要。积极为他人服务，努力为他人带来福祉，这是我们学到的重要一课。我们四处走走看看，穿过各个小村庄。常常在一天辛苦的徒步结束后，我和雪琳会思考接下来要待在哪里，我们会在当地市场的广场上找地方吃饺子或喝茶。

And in the local square, what would we see. Well, in western countries often you won’t see anyone other than young people, because the squares are associated with alcohol and pubs and often they will be places that the very old and very young wouldn’t go. But not so in China. We would see the line dancing. In fact, we used to join in with various dancers dancing in the squares with the more senior experienced dancers at the front and the less experienced watching and taking the note and the children sitting there in front of them and the man sitting to the side playing chesses. It was a wonderful picture. But what reminded us was that young people and children are the center of attention for the Chinese.