ted英语演讲稿-用骇客思维学习

ted英语演讲稿-用骇客思维学习 ted英语演讲稿:用骇客思维学习 ok3w_ads(“s004”); ok3w_ads(“s005”); 篇一:TED精彩演讲稿:坠机让我学到的三件事 (双语) 灾难到来时，我们会发现看似普通的日常生活是多么可 贵。2009年1月15日，全美航空1549号班机迫降纽约哈德 逊河，Ric Elias 就坐在第一排的位置。听他分享在“人生最 后一刻” 学到了什么。 Imagine a big explosion as you climb through 3,000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary。 想像一个大爆炸，当你在三千多英尺的高空;想像机舱内 布满黑烟，想像引擎发出喀啦、喀啦、喀啦、喀啦、喀啦的 声响，听起来很可怕。 Well I had a unique seat that day. I was sitting in 1D. I was the only one who can talk to the flight attendants. So I looked at them right away, and they said, "No problem. We probably hit some birds." The pilot had already turned the plane around, and we weren't that far. You could see Manhattan。 那天我的位置很特別，我坐在1D，我是唯一可以和空服 员说话的人，于是我立刻看着他们，他们说，“没问题，我们 可能 撞上鸟了。” 机长已经把机头转向，我们离目的地很近， 已经可以看到曼哈顿了。 Two minutes later, 3 things happened at the same time. The pilot lines up the plane with the Hudson River. That's usually not the route. He turns off the engines. Now imagine being in a plane with no sound. And then he says 3 s-the most unemotional 3 words I've ever heard. He says, "Brace for impact." 两分钟以后，三件事情同时发生:机长把飞机对齐哈德逊 河，一般的航道可不是这样。他关上引擎。想像坐在一架没 有声音的飞机上。然后他说了几个字，我听过最不带情绪的 几个字，他说，“即将迫降，小心冲击。” I didn't have to talk to the flight attendant anymore. I could see in her eyes, it was terror. Life was over。我不用再问 空服员什么了。我可以在她眼神里看到恐惧，人生结束了。 Now I want to share with you 3 things I learned about myself that day。 现在我想和你们分享那天我所学到的三件事。 I leant that it all changes in an instant. We have this bucket list, we have these things we want to do in life, and I thought about all the people I wanted to reach out to that I didn't, all the fences I wanted to mend, all the experiences I wanted to have and I never did. As I thought about that later on, I came up with a saying, which is, "collect bad wines". Because if the wine is ready and the person is there, I'm opening it. I no longer want to postpone anything in life. And that urgency, that purpose, has really changed my life。 在那一瞬间内，一切都改变了。我们的人生目标，那 些我们想做的事，所有那些我想联络却没有联络的人，那些 我想修补的围墙，人际关系，所有我想经历却没有经历的事。 之后我回想那些事，我想到一句话，那就是，“我收藏的酒都 很差。” 因为如果酒已成熟，分享对象也有，我早就把把酒 打开了。我不想再把生命中的任何事延后，这种紧迫感、目 标性改变了我的生命。The second thing I learnt that day - and this is as we clear the George Washington bridge, which was by not a lot - I thought about, wow, I really feel one real regret, I've lived a good life. In my own humanity and mistaked, I've tired to get better at everything I tried. But in my humanity, I also allow my ego to get in. And I regretted the time I wasted on things that did not matter with people that matter. And I thought about my relationship with my wife, my friends, with people. And after, as I reflected on that, I decided to eliminate negative energy from my life. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better. I've not had a fight with my wife in 2 years. It feels great. I no longer try to be right; I choose to be happy。 那天我学到的第二件事是，正当我们通过乔治华盛顿大 桥，那也没过多久，我想，哇，我有一件真正后悔的事。虽 然我有人性缺点，也犯了些错，但我生活得其实不错。我试 着把每件事做得更好。但因为人性，我难免有些自我中心， 我后悔竟然花了许多时间，和生命中重要的人讨论那些不重 要的事。我想到我和妻子、朋友及人们的关系，之后，回想 这件事时，我决定除掉我人生中的负面情绪。还没完全做到， 但确实好多了。过去两年我从未和妻子吵架，感觉很好，我 不再尝试争论对错，我选择快乐。The third thing I learned - and this's as you mental clock starts going, "15, 14, 13." You can see the water coming. I'm saying, "Please blow up." I don't want this thing to break in 20 pieces like you've seen in those documentaries. And as we're coming down, I had a sense of, wow, dying is not scary. It's almost like we've been preparing for it our whole lives .But it was very sad. I didn't want to go. I love my life. And that sadness really framed in one thought, which is, I only wish for one thing. I only wish I could see my kids grow up。 我所学到的第三件事是，当你脑中的始终开始倒数“15， 14，13”，看到水开始涌入，心想，“拜托爆炸吧～” 我不希 望这东西碎成20片，就像纪录片中看到的那样。当我们逐 渐下沉，我突然感觉到，哇，死亡并不可怕，就像是我们一 生一直在为此做准备，但很令人悲伤。我不想就这样离开， 我热爱我的生命。这个悲伤的主要来源是，我只期待一件事， 我只希望能看到孩子长大。 About a month later, I was at a perfmance by my daugter - first-grade, not much artistic talent... yet. And I 'm balling, I'm crying, like a little kid. And it made all the sense in the world to me. I realized at that point by connecting those two dots, that the only thing that matters in my life is being a great dad. Above all, above all, the only goal I have in life is to be a good dad。 一个月后，我参加女儿的表演，她一，没什么艺术天 份，就算如此。我泪流满面，像个孩子，这让我的世界重新 有了意义。 篇二:你不必沉迷英语 TED演讲稿 I know what you're thinking. You think I've lost my way, and somebody's going to come on the stage in a minute and guide me gently back to my seat. (Applause) I get that all the time in Dubai. "Here on holiday are you, dear?" (Laughter) "Come to visit the children? How long are you staying?" 我知道你们在想什么，你们觉得我迷路了，马上就会有人 走上台温和地把我带回我的座位上。(掌声)。我在迪拜总会 遇上这种事。“来这里度假的吗，亲爱的,”(笑声)“来探望 孩子的吗,这次要待多久呢," Well actually, I hope for a while longer yet. I have been living and teaching in the Gulf for over 30 years. (Applause) And in that time, I have seen a lot of changes. Now that statistic is quite shocking. And I want to talk to you today about language loss and the globalization of English. I want to tell you about my friend who was teaching English to adults in Abu Dhabi. And one fine day, she decided to take them into the garden to teach them some nature vocabulary. But it was she who ended up learning all the Arabic words for the local plants, as well as their uses -- medicinal uses, cosmetics, cooking, herbal. How did those students get all that knowledge? Of course, from their grandparents and even their great-grandparents. It's not necessary to tell you how important it is to be able to communicate across generations. 恩，事实上，我希望能再待久一点。我在波斯湾这边生活 和教书已经超过30年了。(掌声)这段时间里，我看到了很 多变化。现在这份数据是挺吓人的，而我今天要和你们说的 是有关语言的消失和英语的全球化。我想和你们谈谈我的朋 友，她在阿布达比教成人英语。在一个晴朗的日子里，她决 定带她的学生到花园去教他们一些大自然的词汇。但最后却 变成是她在学习所有当地植物在阿拉伯语中是怎么说的。还 有这些植物是如何被用作药材，化妆品，烹饪，香草。这些 学生是怎么得到这些知识的呢,当然是从他们的祖父母，甚 至曾祖父母那里得来的。不需要我来告诉你们能够跨代沟通 是多么重要。 But sadly, today, languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. A language dies every 14 days. Now, at the same time, English is the undisputed global language. Could there be a connection? Well I don't know. But I do know that I've seen a lot of changes. When I first came out to the Gulf, I came to Kuwait in the days when it was still a hardship post. Actually, not that long ago. That is a little bit too early. But nevertheless, I was recruited by the British Council along with about 25 other teachers. And we were the first non-Muslims to teach in the state schools there in Kuwait. We were brought to teach English because the government wanted to modernize the country and empower the citizens through education. And of course, the U.K. benefited from some of that lovely oil wealth. 但遗憾的是，今天很多语言正在以前所未有的速度消失。每 14天就有一种语言消失，而与此同时，英语却无庸置疑地成 为全球性的语言。这其中有关联吗,我不知道。但我知道的 是，我见证过许多改变。初次来到海湾地区时，我去了科威 特。当时教英文仍然是个困难的工作。其实，没有那么久啦， 这有点太久以前了。总之，我和其他25位老师一起被英国 文化协会聘用。我们是第一批非穆斯林的老师，在科威特的 国立学校任教。我们被派到那里教英语，是因为当地政府希 望国家可以现代化并透过教育提升公民的水平。当然，英国 也能得到些好处，产油国可是很有钱的。 Okay. Now this is the major change that I've seen -- how teaching English has morphed from being a mutually beneficial practice to becoming a massive international business that it is today. No longer just a foreign language on the school curriculum. And no longer the sole domain of mother England. It has become a bandwagon for every English-speaking nation on earth. And why not? After all, the best education -- according to the latest World University Rankings -- is to be found in the universities of the U.K. and the U.S. So everybody wants to have an English education, naturally. But if you're not a native speaker, you have to pass a test. 言归正传，我见过最大的改变，就是英语教学的蜕变如何 从一个互惠互利的行为变成今天这种大规模的国际产业。英 语不再是学校课程里的外语学科，也不再只是英国的专利。 英语(教学)已经成为所有英语系国家追逐的潮流。何乐而 不为呢,毕竟，最好的教育来自于最好的大学，而根据最新 的世界大学排名，那些名列前茅的都是英国和美国的大学。 所以自然每个人都想接受英语教育，但如果你不是以英文为 母语，你就要通过考试。 Now can it be right to reject a student on linguistic ability alone? Perhaps you have a computer scientist who's a genius. Would he need the same language as a lawyer, for example? Well, I don't think so. We English teachers reject them all the time. We put a stop sign, and we stop them in their tracks. They can't pursue their dream any longer, till they get English. Now let me put it this way, if I met a Dutch speaker who had the cure for cancer, would I stop him from entering my British University? I don't think so. But indeed, that is exactly what we do. We English teachers are the gatekeepers. And you have to satisfy us first that your English is good enough. Now it can be dangerous to give too much power to a narrow segment of society. Maybe the barrier would be too universal. 但仅凭语言能力就拒绝学生这样对吗,譬如如果你碰到 一位天才计算机科学家，但他会需要有和律师一样的语言能 力吗,我不这么认为。但身为英语老师的我们，却总是拒绝 他们。我们处处设限，将学生挡在路上，使他们无法再追求 自己的梦想，直到他们通过考试。现在容我换一个方式说， 如果我遇到了一位只会说荷兰话的人，而这个人能治愈癌 症，我会阻止他进入我的英国大学吗,我想不会。但事实上， 我们的确在做这种事。我们这些英语老师就是把关的。你必 须先让我们满意，使我们认定你的英文够好。但这可能是危 险的。把太多的权力交由这么小的一群人把持，也许会令这 种障碍太过普及。 Okay. "But," I hear you say, "what about the research? It's all in English." So the books are in English, the journals are done in English, but that is a self-fulfilling . It feeds the English requirement. And so i t goes on. I ask you, what happened to translation? If you think about the Islamic Golden Age, there was lots of translation then. They translated from Latin and Greek into Arabic, into Persian, and then it was translated on into the Germanic languages of Europe and the Romance languages. And so light shone upon the Dark Ages of Europe. Now don't get me wrong; I am not against teaching English, all you English teachers out there. I love it that we have a global language. We need one today more than ever. But I am against using it as a barrier. Do we really want to end up with 600 languages and the main one being English, or Chinese? We need more than that. Where do we draw the line? This system equates intelligence with a knowledge of English which is quite . 于是，我听到你们问"但是研究呢?研究都要用英 文。”的确，研究论著和期刊都要用英文发表，但这只是一种 理所当然的现象。有英语要求，自然就有英语供给，然后就 这么循环下去。我倒想问问大家，为什么不用翻译呢,想想 伊斯兰的黄金时代，当时翻译盛行，人们把拉丁文和希腊文 翻译成阿拉伯文或波斯文，然后再由拉伯文或波斯文翻译为 欧洲的日耳曼语言以及罗曼语言。于是文明照亮了欧洲的黑 暗时代。但不要误会我的意思，我不是反对英语教学或是在 座所有的英语老师。我很高兴我们有一个全球性的语言，这 在今日尤为重要。但我反对用英语设立障碍。难道我们真希 望世界上只剩下600种语言，其中又以英文或中文为主流 吗,我们需要的不只如此。那么我们该如何拿捏呢,这个体 制把智能和英语能力画上等号这是相当武断的。 And I want to remind you that the giants upon whose shoulders today's stand did not have to have English, they didn't have to pass an English test. Case in point, Einstein. He, by the way, was considered remedial at school because he was, in fact, dyslexic. But fortunately for the world, he did not have to pass an English test. Because they didn't start until 1964 with TOEFL, the American test of English. Now it's exploded. There are lots and lots of tests of English. And millions and millions of students take these tests every year. Now you might think, you and me, those fees aren't bad, they're okay, but they are prohibitive to so many millions of poor people. So immediately, we're rejecting them. 我想要提醒你们，扶持当代知识分子的这些“巨人肩膀 "不必非得具有英文能力，他们不需要通过英语考试。 爱因斯坦就是典型的例子。顺便说一下，他在学校还曾被认 为需要课外补习，因为他其实有阅读障碍。但对整个世界来 说,很幸运的当时他不需要通过英语考试，因为他们直到1964 年才开始使用托福。现在英语测验太泛滥了，有太多太多的 英语测验，以及成千上万的学生每年都在参加这些考试。现 在你会认为，你和我都这么想，这些费用不贵，价钱满合理 的。但是对数百万的穷人来说，这些费用高不可攀。所以， 当下我们又拒绝了他们。 It brings to mind a headline I saw recently: "Education: The Great Divide." Now I get it, I understand why people would focus on English. They want to give their children the best chance in life. And to do that, they need a Western education. Because, of course, the best jobs go to people out of the Western Universities, that I put on earlier. It's a circular thing. 这使我想起最近看到的一个新闻标题:“教育:大鸿沟”现 在我懂了。我了解为什么大家都重视英语，因为他们希望给 孩子最好的人生机会。为了达成这目的，他们需要西方教育。 毕竟，不可否认，最好的工作都留给那些西方大学毕业出来 的人。就像我之前说的，这是一种循环。 Okay. Let me tell you a story about two scientists, two English scientists. They were doing an experiment to do with genetics and the forelimbs and the hind limbs of animals. But they couldn't get the results they wanted. They really didn't know what to do, until along came a German scientist who realized that they were using two words for forelimb and hind limb, whereas genetics does not differentiate and neither does German. So bingo, problem solved. If you can't think a thought, you are stuck. But if another language can think that thought, then, by cooperating, we can achieve and learn so much more. 好，我跟你们说一个关于两位科学家的:有两位 英国科学家在做一项实验，是关于遗传学的，以及动物的前、 后肢。但他们无法得到他们想要的结果。他们真的不知道该 怎么办，直到来了一位德国的科学家。他发现在英文里前肢 和后肢是不同的二个字，但在遗传学上没有区别。在德语也 是同一个字。所以，叮～问题解决了。如果你不能想到一个 念头，你会卡在那里。但如果另一个语言能想到那念头，然 后通过合作我们可以达成目的，也学到更多。 My daughter, came to England from Kuwait. She had studied science and mathematics in Arabic. It's an Arabic medium school. She had to translate it into English at her grammar school. And she was the best in the class at those subjects. Which tells us that, when students come to us from abroad, we may not be giving them enough credit for what they know, and they know it in their own language. When a language dies, we don't know what we lose with that language. 我的女儿从科威特来到英格兰，她在阿拉伯的学校学习科 学和数学。那是所阿拉伯中学。在学校里，她得把这些知识 翻译成英文，而她在班上却能在这些学科上拿到最好的成 绩。这告诉我们，当外籍学生来找我们，我们可能无法针对 他们所知道的给予赞赏，因为那是来自于他们母语的知识。 当一个语言消失时，我们不知道还有什么也会一并失去。 This is -- I don't know if you saw it on CNN recently -- they gave the Heroes Award to a young Kenyan shepherd boy who couldn't study at night in his village like all the village children, 篇三:李世默TED演讲稿(中英文) 李世默TED: 中国崛起与“元叙事”的终结 Good morning. My name is Eric Li, and I was born here. But no, I wasn’t born there. This was where I was born: Shanghai, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. My grandmother tells me that she heard the sound of gunfire along with my first cries. When I was growing up, I was told a story that explained all I ever needed to know that humanity. It went like this. All human societies develop in linear progression, beginning with primitive society, then slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and finally, guess where we end up? Communism! Sooner or later, all of humanity, regardless of culture, language, nationality, will arrive at this final stage of political and social development. The entire world’s peoples will be unified in this paradise on earth and live happily ever after. But before we get there, we’re engaged in a struggle between good and evil, the good of socialism against the evil of capitalism, and the good shall triumph. That, of course, was the meta-narrative distilled from the theories of Karl Marx. And the Chinese bought it. We were taught that grand story day in and day out. It became part of us, and we believed in it. The story was a bestseller. About on third of the entire world’s population lived under that meta narrative. Then, the world changed overnight. As for me, disillusioned by the failed religion of my youth, I went to America and became a Berkeley hippie. Now, as I was coming of age, something else happened. As if one big story wasn’t enough, I was told another one. This one was just as grand. It also claims that all human societies develop in a linear progression towards a singular end. This one went as follows. All societies, regardless of culture, be it Christian, Muslim, Confucian, must progress from traditional societies in which groups are the basic units to modern societies in which atomized individuals are the sovereign units, and all these individuals are, by definition, rational, and they all want one thing: the vote. Because they all rational, once given the vote, they produce good government and live happily ever after. Paradise on earth, again. Sooner or later, electoral democracy will be the only political system for all countries and all peoples, with a free market to make them all rich. But before we get there, we’re engaged in a struggle between good and evil. The good belongs to those who are democracies and are charged with a mission of spreading it around the globe, sometimes by force, against the evil of those who do not hold elections. Now. This story also became a bestseller. According to the Freedom House, the number of democracies went from 45 in 1970 to 115 in 2010. In the last 20years, Western elites tirelessly trotted around the globe selling this prospectus: multiple parties fight for political power and everyone voting on them is the only path to salvation to the long-suffering developing world. Those who buy the prospectus are destined for success. Those who do not are doomed to fail. But this time, the Chinese didn’t buy it. Fool me once… The rest is history. In just 3p years, China went from one of the poorest agricultural countries in the world to its second-largest economy. Six hundred fifty million people were lifted out of poverty. Eighty percent of the entire world’s poverty alleviation during that period happened in China. In other words, all the new and old democracies put together amounted to a mere fraction of what a single, one-party state did without voting. See, I grew up on this stuff: food stamps. Meat was rationed to a few hundred grams per person per month at one point. Needless to say, I ate my grandmother’s portions. So I asked myself, what’s wrong with this picture? Here I am in my hometown, my business growing leaps and bounds. Entrepreneurs are starting companies every day. Middle class is expanding in speed and scale unprecedented in human history. Yet, according to the grand story, none of this should be happening. So I went and did the only thing I could. I studied it. Yes, China is a one-party state run by the Chinese Communist Party, the Party, and they don’t hold elections. There assumptions are made by the dominant political theories of our time. Such a system is operationally rigid, politically closed, and morally illegitimate. Well, the assumptions are wrong. The opposites are true. Adaptability, meritocracy, and legitimacy are the three defining characteristics of China’s one-party system. Now, most political scientists will tell us that a one-party system is inherently incapable of self-correction. It won’t last long because it cannot adapt. Now here are the facts. In 64 years of running the largest country in the world, the range of the party’s policies has been wider than any other country in recent memory, from radical land collectivization to the Great Leap Forward, then privatization of farmland, then the Cultural Revolution, then Deng Xiaoping’s market reform, then successor Jiang Zemin took the giant political step of opening up party membership to private businesspeople, something unimaginable during Mao’s rule. So the party self-corrects in rather dramatic fashions. Institutionally, new rules get enacted to correct previous dysfunctions. For example, term limits. Political leaders used to retain their positions for life, and they used that to accumulate power and perpetuate their rules. Mao was the father of modern China, yet his prolonged rule led to disastrous mistakes. So the party instituted term limits with mandatory retirement age of 68 to 70. One thing we often hear is political reforms have lagged far behind economic reforms and China is in dire need of political reform. But this claim is a rhetorical trap hidden behind a political bias. See, some have decided a priori what kinds of changes they want to see, and only such changes can be called political reform. The truth is, political reforms have never stopped. Compared with 30 years ago, 20 years, even 10 years ago, every aspect of Chinese society, how the country is governed, from the most local level to the highest center, are uecognizable today. Now such changes are simply not possible without political reforms of the most fundamental kind. Now I would venture to suggest the Party is the world’s leading expert in political reform. The second assumption is that in a one-party state, power gets concentrated in the hands of the few, and bad governance and corruption follow. Indeed, corruption is a big problem, but let’s first look at the larger context. Now, this maybe be counterintuitive to you. The party happens to be one of the most meritocratic political institutions in the world today. China’s highest ruling body, the Politburo, has 25 members. In the most recent one, only five of them came from a background of privilege, so-called Princelings. The other 20, including the President and the Premier, came from entirely ordinary backgrounds. In the larger central committee of 300 or more, the percentage of those who were born into power and wealth was even smaller. The vast majority of senior Chinese leaders worked and competed their way to the top. Compare that with the ruling elites in both developed and developing countries, I think you’ll find the Party being near the top in upward mobility. The question then is, how could that be possible in a system run by one party? New we come to a powerful political institution, little-known to Westerners: the Party’s Organization Department. The Department functions like a giant human resource engine that would be the envy of even some of the most successful corporations. It operates a rotation pyramid made up of there components: civil service, state-owned enterprises, and social organizations like a university or a community program. The form separate yet integrated career paths for Chinese officials. They recruit college grads into entry-level positions in all three tracks, and they start from the bottom, called Keyuan Then they could get promoted through four increasingly elite ranks: fuke, ke, fuchu, and chu. Now these are not moves from karate kids, okay? It’s serious business. The range of positions is wide, from running health care in a village to foreign investment in a city district to manager in a company. Once a year, the department reviews their performance. They interview their superiors, their peers, their subordinates. They vet their personal conduct. They conduct public opinion surveys. Then they promote the winners. Throughout their careers, these cadres can move through and out of all three tracks. Over time, the food ones move beyond the four base levels to the fuju and ju, levels. There, they enter high, officialdom. By that point, a typical assignment will be to manage a district with population in the millions or a company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Just to show you how competitive the system is, in 2012, there were 900000 fuke and ke levels, 600000 fuchu and chu levels, and only 40000 fuju and ju levels. After the ju levels, the best few move further up several more ranks, and eventually make it to the Central Committee. The process takes two to three decades. Does patronage play a role? Yes of course. But merit remains the fundamental driver. In essence, the Organization Department runs a modernizes version of China’s centuries-old mandarin system. China’s new President Xi Jinping is son of a former leader, which is very unusual, first of his kind to make the top job. Even for him, the career took 30 years. He started as a village manager, and by the time he entered the Politburo, he had managed areas with total population of 150 million people and combined GDPs of 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars. Now, please don’t get me wrong, okay? This is not a putdown of anyone. It’s just a statement of fact. George W. Bush, remember him? This is not a putdown. Before becoming Governor of Texas, or Barack Obama before running for President, could not make even a small county manager in China’s system. Winston Churchill once said that democracy is a terrible system except for all the rest. Well, apparently he hadn’t heard of the Organization Department. Now, Westerners always assume that multi-party election with universal suffrage is the only source of political legitimacy. I was asked once, “The Party wasn’t voted in by election. Where is the source of Legitimacy?” I said, “How about competency?”: We all know the facts. In 1949, when the Party took power, China was mired in civil wars, dismembered by foreign aggression, average life expectancy at that time, 42 years old. Today, it’s the second largest economy in the world, an industrial powerhouse, and its people live in increasing prosperity. Pew Research polls Chinese public attitudes, and here are the numbers in recent years. Satisfaction with the direction of the country: 85 percent. Those who think they’re better off than five years ago, 70%. Those who expects the future to be better, a whopping 82 percent. Financial Times polls global youth attitudes and these numbers, brand new, just came from last week. Ninety-three-percent of China’s GenerationY are optimistic about their country’s future. Now, if this is not legitimacy, I’m not sure what is. In contrast, most electoral democracies around the world are suffering from dismal performance. I don’t need to elaborate for this audience how dysfunctional it is from Washington to European capitals. With a few exceptions, the vast number of developing countries that have adopted electoral regimes are still suffering from poverty and civil strife. Governments get elected, and then they fall below 50 percent approval in a few months and stay there and get worse until the next election. Democracy is becoming a perpetual cycle of elect and regret. At this rate, I’m afraid it is democracy, not China’s one-party system, that is in danger of losing legitimacy. Now, I don’t want to create the misimpression that China’s hunky-dory on the way to some kind of superpowerdom. The country faces enormous challenges. Social and economic problems that come with wrenching change like this are mine-boggling. Pollution is one. Food safety. Population issues. On the political front, the worst problem is