布鲁金斯学会主席约翰·桑顿来中国的时候，我采访过他，他说“中国人了解美国比美国人了解中国更多”，您同意这种观点吗？
我认为是这样，而且有很多原因使然。福尔布莱特议员曾是美国参议院外交关系委员会的主席，我在美国做出版行业时不只做中国项目，他晚年时为我工作。他说过一句话，非常启发我，他说：“美国人总是想忘了别人想记住的东西。”他的意思是说，美国人的历史观很淡薄。美国是一个非常富有的国家，如果做错了事，他们就把这件事抹去，而且他们没有在战争中受过害，他们没有被入侵过。但是那些受过他国进攻的国家或者穷国，或人民在战争中受过伤害的国家，他们会记住他们都做过什么，他们会有较强的历史感。
有历史感是很重要的事。去了解中国人从历史中吸取的知识，会帮助你看透世界运作中的某些必然，看透某些必然的不公。是，在美国也能看到一些不公，比如种族歧视，但是美国对于历史是健忘的。你是可以忘记历史，但这是很危险的，因为如果你忘记历史，你就可能不会掌控权利。
[Transcript]
I think that’s true and true for many reasons. Senator Fulbright, who was the former chairman of the foreign relations committee, and I worked in publishing in many areas besides China, and he was in my office in later years. He had a line that I very much thought with, he said, “Americans tend never to remember what other people don’t tend to forget.” And what he meant by that is Americans have very little sense of history. It’s a very wealthy country, when mistakes are made, they wipe them out, they had not been victimized by war; they’ve not been invaded. But people who have been on the receiving end of other powers or have been poor countries, or have been victimized, they remember the deeds that have been done, they have that kind of sense of history.
And it’s an important thing, when one looks at the knowledge the Chinese have, of what has happened in their own history, that provides an insight into certain ways which the world actually works, into certain injustices that are there. Americans, yes we have our injustices, to anybody who looks, racial and others, but there’s a certain kind of historical amnesia in the US. You can forget the past, and that’s a very dangerous thing to do because if you forget the past, you probably cannot control power.
