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3分鐘編者按:環球時報英文版4月17日刊發“變局”專欄第33篇,作者中國人民大學重陽金融研究院執行院長王文期待這場新冠疫情的深刻教訓,能夠產生新的文藝復興,帶領人類走進新的、以生態安全、人的安全為重心的新文明。
本文英文版在Global Times的版面截圖
在埃塞俄比亞國家博物館,最著名的展覽品是叫“露西”的人類最早骨骼化石,據今約320萬。她被稱為人類的祖母。我三次去參觀,都在這個展櫃前駐足,希望能提醒自己常懷謙卑之心。
如果把地球46億年曆史濃縮為24小時,人類是最後2秒鐘才出現的新生物。遺憾的是,人類總是狂妄到想征服地球,既忘了自己是地球的寄生者,也忽視了自己身體上的寄生物隨時會摧毀和重塑人類。
從雅典斯巴達爭霸到羅馬帝國崩潰,從14世紀黑死病肆虐重塑歐洲教會體系到17世紀三十年戰爭的慘烈,從1812年拿破崙遠征莫斯科失敗到1918年西班牙大流感導致1億人的死亡,人類歷史上那些重大的國家興衰、文明再造事件背後都是那些看不到瘟疫、天花、麻疹、傷寒等傳染病毒。在被霍布斯鮑姆稱為“極端年代”的20世紀,戰爭死亡了1.1億人,而傳染病導致14億人的死亡。
很可惜,幾乎所有政治、經濟、社會、軍事學科的最聰明大腦們都在研究世界變局時集體忽視了傳染病這個變量。教授們總是希望去總結歸納那些看似有規律性的影響因素,而傳染病的不可琢磨性,成了社會科學研究界被刻意迴避的變量。
從這個角度看,我倒期望這次新冠疫情能夠喚醒人類的敬畏心,尤其是重塑社會科學界最聰明大腦們研究傳染病未來衝擊力的新範式。
20世紀以來,人類瘋狂地追求經濟發展,導致了人類需求與地球供給的失衡。森林、荒原、草地、高山、湖泊都被無情地破壞,原始生態系統中寄生的病菌被釋放,形成了對人類前所未有的報復。資料顯示,過去半個世紀以來,新出現的30多種新型傳染病(如艾滋病等),每年造成了全球國民生產總值超過2%以上的衝擊,實際上是抹平了各國試圖通過財政、金融、投資等政策形成的經濟增長成果。
糟糕的是,人口激增與遷移加速,包括旅遊、留學等的人口全球化,打破了原有的空間平衡感,極大加速了病毒傳播。每天約有300萬人跨越國界,病毒的傳播速度超過想象。1918年西班牙大流感,病毒傳播地球一圈需要半年;而現在,新冠病毒傳播至地球的每個角落只需要幾天。
人們以為科學的進步可以宣告傳染病的滅絕,實際的情況是,病毒變異正在產生對人類研發新抗生素的抗藥性。 目前數百萬醫務人員與醫學家們都在聚焦新冠病毒,但人們驚愕地發現,病毒在變異,疫苗與特效藥的發明顯得困難重重。
令我擔心的是,新冠疫情可能正在迎來第三波震中的爆發。在第一波以東亞為震中的疫情得到基本控制、第二波以歐美為震中的疫情即將峰值之後,非洲、南亞居住著超過30億人口的區域可能成為新的震中。很難想象,那些貧困人口更多、人口更為密集、醫療設備更缺乏的發展中國家與地區,該如何應對大規模的疫情?
現在,人類需要的不僅是國家治理能力的革命,讓那些政府行為、地方治理方式出現應對公共衛生危機的轉型與調整,幫助更多貧困地區能儘可能避免成為病毒的溫床,還需要全球治理觀念的範式與思維革命。
很明顯,那些僅關注國界安全的思維是有侷限的。在疫情的全球災難之前,相互指責,同樣顯得短視。傳染病已不再是單純的醫學問題,也不再是單單一個國家的問題,而是全球的思想觀念問題,正如同面對黑死病的蔓延,人類重新思考人與世界,推動了文藝復興,併產生了現代文明。我期待這場新冠疫情的深刻教訓,能夠產生新的文藝復興,帶領人類走進新的、以生態安全、人的安全為重心的新文明。
以下為英文版
Post-pandemic may be more enlightened era
The National Museum of Ethiopia's most famous exhibit is Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old fossil skeleton of an ancestor to humans. I've visited her three times and each time I would stop and remind myself to remain humble.
If we condense the 4.6 billion years of the earth's history into 24 hours, humans only emerged in the last two seconds. Regrettably, human behavior is so unbridled as if they are conqueror to the earth. They forget they are the parasites of the earth, and ignore that the parasites in their own bodies that could destroy them.
From the Peloponnesian War to the collapse of the Roman Empire, from the Black Death pandemic that reshaped the course of European religion in the 14th century to the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century, from the failure of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 to the 1918 Spanish flu that caused the death of 100 million people, these major historical events led to the rise and fall of countries and the reconstruction of civilizations and all were ended by invisible viruses. During the 20th century - labeled "The ages of extremes" by British Marxist Eric Hobsbawm - 110 million people were killed in wars, while infectious diseases took the lives of more than 1.4 billion.
Pitifully, when all the world's smartest brains in politics, economics, sociology and military cast their focus on changing world patterns, they ignore infectious diseases as a major factor. Professors often summarize the obvious factors that have caused transformative change, while the intrinsic nature of infectious diseases, an unpredictable factor, is deliberately neglected.
In this regard, I expect to see the awe of humanity aroused by the pandemic, and new paradigms of research on the impact of infectious diseases. Since the 20th century, nature has been subjected to humanity's excessive zeal for economic development, which has resulted in an imbalance between human needs and desires, and what the earth can supply. The natural environment has been ruthlessly plundered, and some bacteria, which are part of the original ecosystem, have been released and are taking vengeance on the human race.
Over the past decades, dozens of new infectious diseases have caused considerable global economic losses, erasing the economic growth obtained by many countries using various fiscal, financial and investment policies.
What's worse, the population explosion and the increasing ability of humans to travel have greatly accelerated the spread of viruses. Each day millions of people move across national borders, spreading a virus faster than anyone ever could have imagined. The 1918 influenza pandemic took half a year to spread around the globe, but just 100 years later the coronavirus needed only a few weeks to gain a foothold in just about every corner of the earth.
Many people believe that the advancement of science will be able to declare the death of infectious diseases. But viruses continue to mutate to become resistant to new antibiotics developed by humans. Millions of medical staff and scientists are now fully focused on the coronavirus, and are surprised to find how the virus is mutating, making the development of vaccines and special drugs appears to be increasingly more difficult.
What worries me is that a third epicenter of COVID-19 may appear.The epidemic in East Asia, the first epicenter, has been basically controlled and the epidemic in the US, the second epicenter, is about to peak. Africa and South Asia, with a population of more than 3 billion people, may become a new epicenter. For developing countries and regions with more poor people, denser populations and fewer medical resources, it is hard to imagine how they will deal with large-scale outbreaks.
What humanity now needs is not only a revolution in national governance capacity. We need transformation and adjustment of government behavior and local governance methods to deal with public health crises. We need to help more poverty-stricken areas to avoid becoming a hotbed of viruses. Moreover, we need a revolution in the concept and mind-set of global governance.
Obviously, focusing only on one's national borders is limited. It's also shortsighted to play the blame game during a global pandemic. Infectious diseases are no longer a simple medical problem, nor a problem of one country. Instead, it is a problem of global ideology. When facing the spread of the Black Death, humans rethought their relations with the world, which lead to the Renaissance and produced modern civilization.
I look forward to learning the profound lessons of COVID-19 and hope it will lead to a new Renaissance that brings us a new civilization that focuses on ecological and human safety.
The author is professor and executive dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, and executive director of China-US People-to-People Exchange Research Center. His latest book is Great Power's Long March Road.
《數字中國:區塊鏈、智能革命與國家治理的未來》(王文 劉玉書 著)中信出版社(請點擊購買)
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中國人民大學重陽金融研究院(人大重陽)成立於2013年1月19日,是重陽投資董事長裘國根先生向母校捐贈並設立教育基金運營的主要資助項目。
作為中國特色新型智庫,人大重陽聘請了全球數十位前政要、銀行家、知名學者為高級研究員,旨在關注現實、建言國家、服務人民。目前,人大重陽下設7個部門、運營管理4箇中心(生態金融研究中心、全球治理研究中心、中美人文交流研究中心、中俄人文交流研究中心)。近年來,人大重陽在金融發展、全球治理、大國關係、宏觀政策等研究領域在國內外均具有較高認可度。
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