2011年12月28日，中国社会科学院国际学部举行国际热点、焦点问题研讨会。来自中国社科院8个国际问题研究所的多名专家学者围绕世界经济形势、大国政治发展趋势以及地区热点问题等议题展开广泛探讨。会议期间，中国社会科学网记者刘悦就占领华尔街问题采访了中国社会科学院美国研究所所长黄平。
On December 28th 2011, the CASS Academic Division of International Studies (a group of institutes in the fields of international affairs and regional studies under CASS) held the “International Hot Issues Seminar” in Beijing. Scholars from 8 institutes of international studies of CASS discussed topics such as the world economic situation, the development trends of power politics and regional hot issues. During the seminar, Liu Yue, reporter of CSSN, interviewed Huang Ping, Director of Institute of American Studies, on how to see the issue of “Occupying Wall Street.”
记 者：您如何看待美国的“占领华尔街”运动？
Reporter: How do you think of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement?
黄 平：我认为这是一个在美国长期未出现的社会运动了，如果不把西雅图和反对伊拉克战争运动包括在内的话，此类事件自从（上世纪）60年代起就没有出现过了。在那个年代里曾出现过反对越南战争运动、学生运动和马丁•路德•金领导的社会运动。对于美国来说，这是个非同寻常的事件。当然，这其中是有原因和根源的，包括社会的、经济的和财政的，特别是现今的高失业率、政党的异常极化和连续不断的金融危机，（使得）人们感到现状不佳。但这一运动也存在一些特殊的地方，比如我们在运动的背后并未见到任何组织和政治议程，但它仍在继续，我们不知道它将持续多久。有些人说因为圣诞节、冬季的到来或是大选的即将到来，它将马上消失。也有些人争辩说它并不是仅仅占领华尔街，它在美国的许多城市都在进行着，特别是在周末；甚至在世界其它地方的城市中也在进行着，特别是在欧洲。（这种现象）能很容易地被追溯到北非、中东，从突尼斯到埃及现象。所以，这是对现今的国内国际秩序、货币、经济、金融、政治秩序的社会和政治挑战。作为社会科学工作者，我们应对这个有趣的现象予以关注。
Huang Ping: I think this is some kind of social movement, which we haven’t seen for quite a long time in the US, if we don’t include Seattle and also the campaign against the Iraq war, then we didn’t see such things since the Sixties. In those years we had the movement against the Vietnam War, student movements and the social movements led by Martin Luther King. So for the US it’s a quite extraordinary thing. Of course there are many causes and roots, social, economic and financial, especially the current high unemployment rate, the quite unusual polarization of political parties, the ongoing financial crisis, and therefore people have feel badly about the current status quo. But also there are some special features, for instance we didn’t see any kind of organization behind the movement, we also didn’t see a sort of political agenda for the campaign, and of course it is still going on, we don’t know how long this will last, and some say that because of Christmas, because of winter or because of the coming elections, it may quite soon disappear. But others argue it’s not just occupy Wall Streets, it is going on in many cities in the US, especially in the weekends, and even in some cities in other parts of the world, especially in Europe. And you can also easily trace it back to North Africa, the middle east, from Tunisia to the Egyptian phenomena, so it’s a kind of social and political challenge to the current not only national but also the international order, monetary, economic and financial political order, so as social scientists, we should definitely pay our attention because this is quite an interesting phenomenon.
记 者：您如何评论奥巴马政府在美国金融危机期间的表现？相关的政策是否有效缓解了危机？
Reporter: Could you evaluate the Obama administration’s conducts during the U.S. financial crisis? Have its related policies eased the crisis?
黄 平：危机在奥巴马进入白宫之前就存在了，因此奥巴马并不走运。他在成为总统时就遇到了第一个问题，这几乎使得其它的许多议程停滞，例如应对气候变化，利用新能源、可持续性回收利用等，特别是如何改革公众健康和医疗等等。危机的出现并不是他的错；其次，应对危机也并不容易，无论谁是总统；第三，奥巴马和他的团队并未做好应对危机的充分准备，在早期进入白宫执政的第一年，他们并未看到深层次的结构性原因，他或许认为这与政策更为相关。第四，民众对此类问题缺乏经验，我指的是整个一代人。最后一次危机是在（上世纪）70年代初，当时奥巴马和他的同事们都尚年轻或还是孩子，甚至可以追溯到大萧条时期，人们还未出生，所以具有很少的经验或根本没有经验。现在能看到一些恢复增长的迹象，但是看不到失业率的真正变化以及改善结构、改变危机的真正原因的系统变化。因此，就政策而言，现在能看到短期或一边倒的政策或做法，而不是解决办法。
Huang Ping: The crisis was there before Obama got into the white house, so to this extent Obama didn’t have good luck, because when he became the president he had the first problem, which actually almost put a stop to many of his other agendas, such as handling the climate change, and also making use of new sources of energy, more sustainable recycling and such, and in particular also how to deal with reforming public health, medical care etc.. It’s not his fault that we had the crisis, and secondly it’s not easy to handle the crisis, whoever is the president, and thirdly Obama and all his team were not really prepared for the crisis, so in the early stage before they got into the White House, they didn’t’ really see the deep structural reasons, so in the first years when he was in administration, he might have thought this was more to do with policies than with the structure within the US and internationally. Fourthly people had less experience with this kind of issue, and I am talking about the whole generation. The last time we had such a crisis was the early seventies, when Obama and his colleagues were quite young or even children, and you can even go back to the Great Depression, when people were not born yet, so people have very little or even no experience. Now you see some kind of recovery in terms of growth but you don’t see any real change in terms of both unemployment and also in how to structure improvements or change in the system which is the real cause for the crisis, so in terms of policies you now see many short term or one sided policies or approaches instead of a solution.
记 者：您认为美国现在面临的最大的问题是什么，是贫富差距引起的美国人民对美国社会普遍缺乏信心吗？
Reporter: Which are the biggest problems the US faces right now? Do you think that US people have generally lost the confidence in their society because of the gap between rich and poor?
黄 平：如果看看公众意见中心的连续的民意调查，只有在60年代甚至1945年开始的一小段时间里，美国大部分民众对政府和社会抱有较大信心。近50多年来，美国民众对未来的信心和政府管理能力的信心在降低。他们对整个社会怀有一种抱怨和不满的情绪，至少对联邦政府怀有这样一种。近些年来，特别是在布什时期，这种情绪较为常见。人们对许多国内和国际的政策不满，因此对奥巴马和新政府的管理抱有相当大的期望。这就是为什么他拥有许多支持者和投票者。但是正如我所说，在这么多困难—不仅仅是经济困难，也有社会困难面前，包括那些支持者在内的民众感到相当失望。这是失业和贫富差距指数所反映不出来的。这些情况是真实的，这就是为什么人们感到不满或失望的一部分原因。但是人们对目前的现状有一个总体的（负面）感觉，这将更难处理。如何恢复公众的信心和信任？我认为这将是个长期问题，参考欧洲和其它主要国家，冷战期间和冷战后不久人们将这些国家视为典范。还有许多新的挑战，现行制度并不能很好地应对新挑战，同时仍存在诸如失业之类的旧的挑战。如何应对呢？让我们看看，有时候事件也能改变民众的态度。例如“9.11”事件，一方面它是给民众带来灾难的恐怖袭击，另一方面在短期内使民众团结在了一起。所以让我们看看明年会发生什么，明年会有更多的事件发生，不仅仅是美国大选，也包括整个世界的事件。
Huang Ping: Well I would say that if you look at the continuous opinion polls by the PO center, since the sixties or even since 1945 there were only very short periods of time during which the US majority had a higher confidence in its government and society. For already more than 50 years it is actually going down in terms of people’s confidence in their future, in the administration’s capacity, so they have this kind of feelings towards if not the whole society, at least the federal Government. In recent years you can also see that especially during the Bush period, people felt unhappy with many policies, both domestic and international, so they had quite high expectations from Obama and the new administration. That is why he had such a lot support and voters, but like I said, in front of so many difficulties, not only economic but also social, people felt quite disappointed including those supporters. It goes beyond just the indicators on how many jobs lost, and the gap. These things are true, they are some of the reasons why people feel unhappy or disappointed, but there is a general feeling towards the current status quo, and this will be more difficult to handle. How can people recover their confidence as well as their trust? I think this will be a problem for quite some time, if you look today at Europe and some other major countries, which people took as a model especially during and just after the cold war. There are some new challenges, and the existing system does not work well in handling the new challenges, but we also have some very old challenges such as unemployment, so how to handle this? Let’s see, sometimes events can also change people’s attitudes. Like September the 11th, on the one hand it was an attack, but on the other hand over the short period people felt quite united, so let’s see what happens next year, there will be even more events, not just the elections, but events in the whole world.
翻译：王筱冉
