西方媒体对中国扶贫成果报道的“悲伤五阶段”
Editor's note: Maitreya Bhakal is an Indian commentator who writes about China, India, U.S. and global issues. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
编者按：梅特利亚·巴卡尔是印度评论员，主要针对中国、印度、美国和全球问题撰写评论。本文仅为作者本人观点，不一定代表CGTN立场。
The West sees itself as rich and numero uno. If other nations wish to live long and prosper, they must become obedient to the U.S. This takes myriad forms – ranging from oil suppliers like Saudi Arabia to permanent aircraft carriers like Japan.
西方世界以富有的世界老大自居。如果其他国家想要长治久安，繁荣昌盛，就必须对美国低眉俯首。这种姿态的表现形式多种多样。比如沙特为西方提供石油，再比如日本允许美国航母永久驻扎。
China refuses to be subservient. So the U.S. seeks to dominate it. Propaganda remains a key vector in its strategy of hybrid war. Every Chinese misfortune is celebrated, every failure criticized disproportionately, and every success downplayed.
中国拒绝屈服，于是美国便试图控制它。对外宣传一直是美国混合战战略的重要手段，因此中国的所有不幸都会引发欢呼，所有失误都会招来恶评，所有成就都会遭到淡化。
When China recently announced the eradication of absolute poverty, the propaganda machine swung into action. The anti-China propaganda showed signs of the standard five stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
中国近期宣布彻底消除绝对贫困后，西方宣传机器再次开足马力。反华宣传展现出了心理学上的“悲伤五阶段”特征，即否认、愤怒、讨价还价、沮丧和接受。
Denial and anger
否认和愤怒
The first step, as with any success in China, was to simply lie about it. They questioned whether China had really eradicated poverty. They gleefully pointed out that China's poverty line was lower than that of the World Bank, thus portraying China's success as the illegitimate result of statistical manipulation. This was the same tactic used to deny China's COVID-19 success by questioning its statistics.
第一步，也是对待中国成就的一贯策略，便是撒谎。他们质疑中国是否真正消除了贫困。他们欢欣雀跃地指出，中国的贫困线低于世界银行设定的标准，如此一来，他们把中国的成功描绘成是通过操纵数据得出的不实结论。这与通过质疑统计数字来否定中国抗疫成果的手法如出一辙。
Yet, the World Bank itself states that "a country's national poverty line is far more appropriate for underpinning policy dialogue or targeting programs to reach the poorest." Moreover, income is not the only indicator of poverty; access to healthcare, housing, education, electricity and other public services is equally important. The World Bank admits that its poverty line "does not currently take these multiple dimensions of poverty into account." China's poverty eradication program targets all these factors, but that was relatively ignored by the haters.
然而，世界银行却表示：“一个国家自身设定的贫困线更适合用来开展政策对话或制定能够惠及最贫困人口的针对性计划。”此外，收入并不是衡量贫困的唯一指标；医疗、住房、教育、电力和其他公共服务资源的普及程度也同样重要。世界银行承认其贫困线标准“并未将贫困问题所涉及的所有方面考虑在内。”中国的扶贫项目涵盖了贫困问题的方方面面，而这一点却几乎被仇中者忽略。
This again had echoes in their COVID-19 propaganda, when they had similarly downplayed China's strict lockdown measures (only to change their minds when people in their own countries started dying). One expert quoted in the New York Times questioned, "But I don't know if it's sustainable...Have they really contained the virus? Or have they just suppressed it?" This was the day after Wuhan had reported just one COVID-19 case.
这样的立场同样反映在西方针对新冠肺炎疫情的宣传中。他们对中国严格的封城举措不屑一顾（直到自己国家的死亡人数开始攀升时才改变想法）。《纽约时报》曾引述一位专家的评论称“我不知道这是不是可以持续的手段……他们真的控制住了病毒吗？还是只是暂时压制?”就在此前一天，武汉的单日新增病例降至了1例。
The parallels were uncanny: The Telegraph claimed earlier this week that China's poverty eradication efforts were not "sustainable" and that China was "simply kicking the problem down the road."
这与针对中国扶贫成就的报道有着惊人的相似之处。本周早些时候，《每日电讯报》称中国的扶贫行动是“不可持续”的，中国“只是搁置了问题，留给以后解决”。
Children hold lambs in Pumaqangtang Township of Nagarze County in Shannan, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, April 15, 2020. /Xinhua
Bargaining
讨价还价
Another tactic was simply cherry picking facts - anything to lessen their grief. Thus, with 100 million people lifted out of poverty in the last eight years, they found the handful of people who were somewhat less better off than others, portraying those exceptional cases as representative examples.
讨价还价的手段之一是精挑细选，只选择那些有助于减轻自己哀伤情绪的事实报道。因此，西方媒体把中国在过去8年中帮助一亿人口摆脱贫困的事实放在一边，只挑选了一些因为种种原因生活未能得到大幅改善的人群进行报道，把这些例外情况描述为典型事例。
"Not all poor people are feeling better off," declared LA Times, another Sinophobic U.S. propaganda outlet. "Xi Jinping's war drives some to riches, but leaves others behind," brayed AFP.
另一家美国反华宣传媒体《洛杉矶时报》写道，“并非所有穷人都认为生活得到了改善。”法新社则宣称 “习近平的扶贫攻坚战只让一部分人走上致富道路，但忽略了其他人”。
Yet, you can always find some exceptions to everything if you look hard enough. People looking for exceptions generally end up finding them (and if not, they can always be invented). But for Western media, every rule has exceptions, and those exceptions make the rules.
但只要观察得够仔细，你就会发现一切皆有例外。想要鸡蛋里挑骨头的人基本上总能如愿（即便找不到也可以编造）。但对于西方媒体来说，例外并不是事物的附带属性，而是事物本身。
A second tactic of bargaining was to point out the cost of China's poverty eradication. The New York Times predicted with authority (presumably the same authority with which it once predicted WMDs in Iraq) that China may "struggle to sustain" its anti-poverty drive. This was again a lazy rehash of its COVID-19 propaganda, where it had once proclaimed "China may be beating the coronavirus, at a painful cost" early last year.
讨价还价的另一个手段是指责中国扶贫成果背后的代价。《纽约时报》以权威的口吻（可能和当初预测伊拉克存在大规模杀伤性武器一样权威）指出，中国的扶贫行动可能“难以持续”。这又是对其疫情叙事的旧调重弹。去年初，该媒体称“中国或许击败了新冠病毒，但付出了沉痛的代价”。
Depression and acceptance
沮丧和接受
Any good news from China makes the West highly depressed. After centuries of trying to contain China, whether by gunboats or opium smuggling or economic sanctions, it is understandably difficult to see Chinese lives improving. Thus, perhaps the most significant achievement in human economic history - the elimination of poverty for nearly 100 million people - receives less attention in their "free" media than say, a single court case in Hong Kong.
有关中国的任何好消息都能让西方世界感到万分沮丧。几个世纪以来，西方一直企图通过炮舰、鸦片走私、经济制裁等种种手段遏制中国。所以可想而知，看到中国人的生活得到改善对他们来说有多么难以接受。因此，虽然中国成功帮助一亿人口摆脱了贫困，创下了或许是人类经济史上最为卓越的成就，但西方“自由”媒体对此给予的关注还不及一场香港的法庭诉讼。
Acceptance will be even harder. Many in the West believe that their "democracy" is the only legitimate political system for all nations. Any acceptance – let alone admiration – of China's successes would require admitting that China's socialist system represents not only an alternative, but perhaps a better one; that China achieved in a few decades what the West took centuries of imperialist wealth hoarding to accomplish. It would require admitting that maybe one size does not fit all.
接受就更难了。西方的许多人认为，西式“民主”才是世界上唯一正当的政治制度。因此，不要说赞扬，哪怕是接受中国取得了成功这一事实也意味着承认中国的社会主义制度不仅是另一条可行道路，甚至是一条更好的道路；意味着承认中国在几十年的时间里便取得了西方通过数个世纪的帝国主义财富掠夺才取得的成就；意味着承认民主或许并不是放之四海而皆准的真理。
The contrast between America and China today couldn't be starker. While America resembles a nation it just invaded – with people dropping dead by the thousands every day (only due to a disease this time instead of a bomb) – and while real wages for most U.S. workers have stagnated for decades, Chinese people's lives keep getting better. And that's a tough pill for Western supremacists to swallow.
今日的美国和中国形成了巨大反差。美国就像它曾经侵略过的国家，每天数千人（因为疾病而非炮弹）失去生命。大多数美国工人的工资数十年来止步不前，而中国人的生活却越过越好。这对于西方至上主义者来说，确实是不可承受之重。