Robin Daverman, world traveler“Why didn't ancient China produce great conquerors similar to Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great?”
Robin Daverman，世界旅行者“为什么古代中国没有出现像凯撒和亚历山大这样伟大的征服者？”
Where is Caesar’s empire now? And where is Alexander’s empire now?And where is China now?
凯撒的帝国如今在哪？亚历山大的帝国又在哪？而中国可还健在呢。
Just because Caesar and Alexander were lionized, doesn’t mean that these guys were indeed good for their country, or their people, or even their own family. Objectively, they started a process that over-taxed their national wealth, over-glorified violence, and bled too much the blood of their young men. And you know what they say: live by the sword, die by the sword. They set up an incentive system where you got paid by killing other people. So their own families went genetically extinct pretty soon, wiped out by their own “family and friends”, and their empires died in a firestorm of violence.
仅仅因为凯撒和亚历山大被奉若神明，大家才认为他们是伟大的征服者。然而这并不意味着那些举动对他们的国家、人民和家庭有好处。客观地说，他们过度消耗了国家财富，过度美化暴力，消耗了过多年轻的血液。你知道他们的格言：依剑生，与剑死。他们甚至建立了一个鼓励杀人的机制，所以他们自己的家庭很快就被从基因上灭绝了，被自己的“家人和朋友”消灭了，而他们的帝国在一场暴力风暴中崩溃。
It’s like playing Monopoly. If you spend all your money occupying “property”, leaving nothing to “develop the property”, you go bankrupt pretty quickly. The Chinese never had the urge to take territories it can not develop, and developing a place usually takes at least ten times more time, effort, and money than just conquering it. Pretty much every single Chinese emperor who started a war, stopped the war and returned the state back to peaceful state within his own reign, urgently halting the cycle of violence and destruction. All the places the Chinese went, they immediately started making farmland, building roads, planting fruit trees, setting up schools, marrying with the local people, and appointing local officials selected through national exams, who would then be uated on the composite KPI right away. And keep doing it for the next 300 years at least. They ended up with developed land and civilized people, making them cash cows instead of money sinks. Basically, the way the KPIs were set up in ancient China, is that you really only get paid if the place you manage became rich, peaceful, and filled with learned people. Otherwise it’s not worth it. All successful Chinese dynasties ended up with their direct offspring numbering in millions, or even tens of millions, today.
这就像玩大富翁。如果你把所有的钱都花在占有“财产”上，没有别的东西来开发它，你很快就会破产。中国人从来没想要去占领他无法开发的领土，开发一个地方比征服它至少要多花上十倍的时间、精力和金钱。几乎每一位发动战争的中国皇帝都在他的统治时期停止了战争，让国家重回和平状态，紧急制止了暴力和破坏的循环。中国人每到一个地方，就会立刻开始修建农场，种植果树，铺设道路，建立学校，与当地人通婚，任命通过了国家考试选出的官员来管理此地，并对这些综合性的关键绩效指标（KPI）进行评估。接下来（指占领后）的300年里他们会一直这样做。300年后，他们收获了得以充分开发的土地和文明的民众，让此地成为国家的摇钱树而不是无底洞。基本上，中国古代的KPI计算方式就是，要是你管理的地方变得富有、和谐、人民智慧知礼，你才能得到报酬，不然就别想升官了。每个成功的朝代在结束时，都能拥有数百万甚至数千万的人口。
The funny thing is that 2,000 years later, each still behaves in the same way. Places like Afghanistan, next door to China, even if you PAY the Chinese, they wouldn’t take it. And you have NATO staying there for 16 years already, bleeding and paying the Taliban not to attack them, and allowing their own homeland to be filled with Afghan refugees and awash with Afghan-grown Heroin! That’s how they “defend Europe” 5,000 km’s away!
有趣的是，在2000年后的今天，中国人仍是这么干的。像中国隔壁的阿富汗这种地方，你就算倒贴给中国人，他们也不会要。北约已经在阿富汗呆了16年，在那里流了数不尽的血，还付钱给塔利班求他们别攻击你。你们让自己的家园充满了阿富汗难民和阿富汗种植的海洛因，这就是所谓的在5000公里外 “保卫欧洲”？
French outcry over claim Italian payments masked Taliban threat
法国强烈要求意大利支付塔利班蒙面威胁的勒索
Afghanistan opium production jumps 87 per cent to record level – UN survey
阿富汗的鸦片产量跃升87%再创新高——联合国调查
The Plot is so ridiculous you can’t even sell it to a Hollywood studio, and yet here we are, in real life.PS: The sudden drop of Opium production in 2001 was due to Taliban banning it. Taliban's Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides Say
这种剧情太扯了，卖给好莱坞都没人要，但它却切切实实的发生在我们的现实生活中。PS：上图中2001年鸦片产量突然下降是由于塔利班的禁止。
Brandon Li, I have enough of an education to know how to use Google and the libraryThe problem is that too many people accept the Chinese national myth that China is a peaceful nation that has never attacked others. This is patently false. China didn’t emerge from the primordial muck fully formed as the third largest nation on the planet. It became so large by conquering and integrating land that was inhabited by other peoples.
Brandon Li，接受了足够的教育懂得如何使用Google和图书馆这个问题实际上是太多人相信了中国宣传的神话，认为中国是一个从未攻击他人的和平国家。这明显是错的嘛，中国从原始时期变成如今世界第三大的国家的过程并没比别人干净到哪里去，他们征服和合并了其他民族的土地，使得他们的领土如此之大。
The first great conqueror of China was Ying Zheng, the king of Qin. Roughly contemporaneous with Alexander of Macedon, he conquered all the states of the North China Plain by 220 BC at age 38 and proclaimed himself Qin Shihuang. In the next few years, he campaigned southwards and expanded the Chinese world further than it had ever reached. By the time he died, the Qin Empire stretched from the edge of the Eurasian steppe into the jungles of Vietnam. This realm was similar in size to Alexander’s empire and had a similar aftermath. Neither empire outlasted its founder’s death for long, but although the expanded Hellenic world created by Alexander collapsed within 300 years, the Sinosphere continued to expand over millennia.
中国第一位伟大的征服者是秦王嬴政。大致与马其顿的亚历山大在同一时期，他于公元前220年征服了华北平原的所有国家，并在38岁时自称秦始皇。接下来的几年里，他向南推进并进一步扩大了中国的领土。在他去世时，秦帝国从欧亚大草原的边缘一直延伸到越南的丛林。他的帝国与亚历山大大帝的的帝国幅员相仿，结局也差不多。这两个帝国都没有在它们的创始人死后维持多久，但亚历山大创造的希腊世界在300年内崩溃了，中华文化圈却在几千年里一直不断扩大。
Later emperors would rule even larger polities. For example, Li Shimin, who founded the Tang Dynasty alongside his father whom he would go on to depose went on to rule an empire even larger than Rome’s. Tang soldiers occupied swathes Korea, the jungles of Vietnam, and even marched across thousands of miles of desert and mountains to subjugate territories in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Although the Tang never settled the Mongolian steppe to their north, they succeeded in annihilating the Eastern Turkic Khaganate that ruled it, eliminating the nomad threat for generations. All of this was accomplished in a single lifetime.
之后的皇帝会统治更大的政体。比如和其父一起建立唐朝的李世民，统治了一个比罗马更大的帝国。唐朝军队占领了韩国、越南丛林，甚至穿越数千英里的沙漠和山脉，征服了阿富汗和中亚的领土。尽管唐朝没有扩张到北方的蒙古草原，但他们成功摧毁了草原上的东突厥汗国，消除了世世代代的游牧威胁。所有的一切都是在李世民的一生中完成的。
The Tang are in yellow while the subjugated polities on their borders are in brown
唐朝为黄色，周边被征服的政体为棕色
The real issue is the over lionization of certain Western military figures. The campaigns of Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and Alexander have been studied and repeated so often that they have attained a certain mythic aura around them. They were certainly some of the most gifted military minds in human history, but the rest of the world held some serious talent too. Men like Cyrus, Khalid ibn al-Walid, Chandragupta Maurya, and Li Shimin conquered huge tracts of land and helped build long lasting empires, but are often left by the wayside in discussions of great conquerors out of no fault of their own.
真正的问题是某些西方军事人物被过分拔高了。汉尼拔、凯撒和亚历山大的历史被无数次研究，以至于他们已经被加上了某种神秘的光环。他们无疑是人类历史上最具天赋的军事天才，但世界上其他国家也有人才。建立波斯帝国的居鲁士、“安拉之剑”哈立德、建立孔雀王朝的旃陀罗笈多、李世民等人征服了大片土地，并建立或帮助建立了长久的帝国，但他们常常在“伟大征服者”的讨论中被忽视。
Zhou Wenda, studied at University of Science and Technology of China (2014)Nam Viet killed envoy of Han, it was massacred and now administrated as nine counties.King of Yuan (today’s Fergana Valley) killed envoy of Han, his head is now hanged on the north gate of our capital.Joseon (Korea) killed envoy of Han, it was annihilated instantly.The same fate yet only remains to fall on Xiongnu (Huns)!You clearly know I shall not surrender. Your threat to me with death indicates that you are ploting another war between Han and Xiongnu.Then after me, Xiongnu is doomed!—— Biography of Su Wu, Book of Han Dynasty
Zhou Wenda，曾就读于中国科学技术大学（2014）南越杀汉使者，屠为九郡；宛王杀汉使者，头县北阙；朝鲜杀汉使者，即时诛灭。独匈奴未耳！若知我不降明，欲令两国相攻。匈奴之祸，自我始矣！——《汉书·苏武传》
Su Wu was an envoy of Han. He had been put under detention by Xiongnu for 19 years (100BC-81BC) before his return. It was easy to understand why the Huns kept Su Wu alive. Although he was very incooperative, Xiongnu had no desire to join with NamViet, Yuan and Joseon.
苏武是汉朝出使匈奴的特使，在他回国之前被匈奴拘留了19年（公元前100年-公元前81年）。我们可以很容易就理解为什么匈奴会让这个不配合的使节活着：匈奴不想成为南越、大宛和朝鲜（那样被剿灭）。
Su Wu was released as a gesture for seeking peace when Emperor Zhang of Han succeed the throne. However, Han refused to set aside the enmity. The 5th Emperor of Western Han Dynasty was just as determined as his father, Emperor Wu the Great, in continuing the Hundred Years War against Xiongnu.
当汉章帝登基时，匈奴摆出了寻求和平的姿态，释放了苏武。但是汉朝不肯放下敌意，西汉的第五位皇帝和他的父亲——伟大的汉武帝一样，决心继续抗击匈奴的百年战争。（译注：这里原作者有些事实上的错误，苏武是在汉昭帝在位时被释放的，昭帝是西汉第六位皇帝）
Carried out by 5 emperors, after 130 years (200BC-71BC) of clash on desert and steppe, Xiongnu was rooted out from the southern side of Gobi Desert. Things weren’t over yet. 161 years later (91AD), in Altay Mountains, Eastern Han Dynasty eventually destroyed the very last Xiongnu khanate. Huns were driven into a long migration towards the other side of Euroasia.
经过五位皇帝的努力，历经130年（公元前200年-公元前71年）的沙漠和草原冲突后，匈奴从戈壁沙漠的南侧被连根拔起。这还不算完，161年后（公元91年），在阿勒泰山脉，东汉最终摧毁了最后的匈奴汉国。匈奴人被驱赶到欧亚大陆的另一边。
（译注：如果说是《汉书·匈奴传》中所称的“是后，匈奴远遁，而幕(漠)南无王庭“，则是在公元前119年由霍去病率领的汉军大破匈奴左贤王之战，属于武帝时期。西汉时期灭北匈奴则是在公元前36年，陈汤灭郅支单于，“犯我强汉者，虽远必诛”的豪言壮语就出自此战。北匈奴最后出现在中国古书中，是在公元89年-公元91年的依附于汉朝的南匈奴与汉朝夹击北匈奴之战，自此北匈奴被迫西迁）
Talk about “conquerors” in front of such a war. If you read ancient Chinese history books, you will find they were blood-soaked. You can easily smell it between the lines. What makes you think that in such bloodshed the outstanding military genius wouldn’t spring up?
在这样的战争面前谈论所谓“征服者”，呵呵。如果你读过中国古代的历史书籍，你会发现它们字里行间是如此血腥。是什么让你觉得在这样的流血中没有杰出的军事天才？
People shouldn’t interpret the self-claim “China is a peace loving country” in a naive way. China is a civilized nation, not a pacifism nation. Proven by history fact, “we Chinese love peace” actually means “we have no interest in hemorrhage as long as peace still works”.
人们不应该幼稚的理解“中国是爱好和平的国家”这一主张。中国是一个文明国家，而不是和平主义国家。历史证明，“我们中国人爱好和平”实际意味着“如果和平有效的话，我们对流血就不那么感兴趣。”
Do you remember Art of War by Sun Tsu in 6th century BC? It’s probably the earliest cookbook about how to dissect an unfriendly country step by step on planet Earth. Just think about it: Without given more than enough practicing experience, how could such delicate experience be summarized?
你还记得公元前就出现的《孙子兵法》吗？这可能是地球上最早出现的，如何料理一个不友善国家的食谱了。试想一下，如果没有足够的实践，怎么能总结出这些精妙的经验呢？
In the earliest dynasty of China, it was something like this in 21st century BC: (Red was the presumptive territory of Xia, other colors were sphere of influence)
在公元前21世纪，那时的中国是这样的：（红色是夏朝的推测领土，其他颜色是其影响范围）
In 21st century AD, the map of China is something like this:
而在公元21世纪，中国是这样的：
Any rational people would agree that there must be some reasons China could grow from pic1 to pic2. Based on common sense, it should take a load of “great counquerers” to expand territory like what China had done.
任何理智的人都会赞同中国在从图1变成图2的过程中发生了一些小故事。根据常识，这里面有一大群“伟大的征服者”对中国的版图做出了贡献。
I shall make it short for the wrong premise of your question.China had not only “Alexander and Caesar” type of conquerors,but also another type of conqueror which was much superior than the previous ones: They managed to deeply assimilate the place they counquered with China. That was something the over-lionized Hellene and Roman were not capable to do.Today, Roman is a historical if not archaeological topic.Today, Macedonia is a small country with 1 million population.Today, China is… you know, just China.The conquer from ancient China was something much more thoroughly than what westerners familiar to. Caesar and Alexander flaunted “I’m standing on top of you” in their lifetime, but their greatness became nuance of history just several generations later.On the contrary, those great conquerers in ancient China, backed by their military accomplishment, they had achieved something higher:“Now, we are one.”
我会简单的回答你这个前提就不对的问题。中国不仅有“亚历山大和凯撒式”的征服者，还有远比这厉害的地方：他们把与之为敌的地方都同化为自己的一部分了。这是那些被吹上天的希腊人和罗马人做不到的地方。今天，罗马只存在于考古发现的历史里。今天，马其顿只是一个100万人口的小国。今天，中国是……，你知道的，它还是中国。中国古代的征服比西方人所熟悉的那一套要彻底的多。凯撒和亚历山大在他们的有生之年标榜“我站在你们头顶”，但他们的伟大成就将在几代人后成为历史的尘埃。相反，中国古代伟大的征服者在他们的军事成就之外，取得了更高的成就。“现在，我们是天命所归。“
转自西诺网
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