When we think of "treaties", we can always think of a series of unequal treaties signed between the Manchu Qing government and the Western powers more than a hundred years ago, which caused great humiliation to our country and also made our country step by step into a semi-colonial country.
Zeng Shiqiang once said: The whole world does not dare to use Chinese in making treaties.
Friends who know about treaties may find that from the late Qing Dynasty to the modern era, the various treaties signed by countries around the world rarely or never use Chinese, so what is the reason for this?
The reason why treaties signed in the late sunshine period do not adopt Chinese
After 1840, the Manchu Qing government signed numerous unequal treaties with the Western powers, the most famous of which were the Treaty of Nanking, the Treaty of Beijing, the Treaty of Maguan, and the Treaty of Xinugu.
Without exception, none of these treaties in which we participated did use our country's orthodox script, Chinese characters, but were written in English, which was commonly used in the world at that time, and then translated into Chinese signed.
In fact, in the social environment at that time, this problem was not difficult to understand. The Manchu Qing government at that time was cowardly and incompetent, and the Western powers controlled the world pattern. Since ancient times, weak countries have no diplomacy, and we have signed some unequal treaties, so how can the Western powers use our Chinese to sign treaties?
At the same time, Chinese characters at that time were only popular in China and some surrounding countries, and they were not common in the world, and many countries did not recognize Chinese characters.
Under the influence of British colonialism, English spread to most corners of the world and became the world's most common language. Therefore, it was natural to use the world's common language, English, rather than Chinese characters, to sign various treaties at that time.
To this day, countries around the world still do not use Chinese in signing treaties
If it is said that in the late Qing Dynasty, the countries of the world did not use Chinese to sign treaties because China was too backward at that time, and the unequal treaties signed were also unequal treaties, and it was understandable not to use Chinese signing, then the series of treaties signed by China after the fall of the Manchu Qing government still did not use Chinese which made us very confused.
After the fall of the Manchu Qing government to this day, no matter what treaties were signed between the countries of the world, whether there was our participation or not, and whether they signed equal or unequal treaties, the treaties used by all countries in the world were drawn up in English or French, and there was never a Chinese treaty.
For example, the "Svalbard" treaty signed by the Beiyang government in order to obtain the right to use the Svalbard Peninsula during the Republic of China period, the "Potsdam Proclamation" signed by China with the United States and Britain in order to end the Pacific War as soon as possible during World War II, or the various international treaties that China participates in signing today.
There is no doubt that these treaties are equal treaties signed between our country and the rest of the world, and our country has now long since shed the title of "sick man of East Asia" and is back on the top of the world, but the treaties we have signed are still drawn up in English or French, and our country has never expressed an opinion on this.
To understand the real reason for this, we must first understand what the treaty really is and what its requirements are!
Treaties have existed since ancient times and are an agreement to determine the relationship between the rights and obligations of the parties. Internationally, it is a series of agreements between countries on economic, military and other rights and obligations. At the same time, the treaty is extremely binding on the signatory parties, and the International Treaty Practice stipulates that if the two parties to the treaty are found to have violated the treaty, the United Nations will have the right to coordinate, and if the coordination is ineffective, enforcement measures can be taken.
Therefore, in order to ensure the accuracy and legitimacy of the treaty after signing, the treaty formulated by the two sides must be very rigorous and cannot have the slightest flaw, and the rigor of this treaty is the main reason why it is difficult for Chinese treaty to enter the world stage!
Chinese the reason why treaties are difficult to appear on the world stage - the rigor of treaties
As we all know, Chinese, as the only ideograph in the world, is much more complex than the phonetic scripts such as English and French. For example, Chinese characters have many polysyllabic characters and polysythic characters, and these polysyllabic characters and polysylems will affect the rigor of the treaty.
As far as polysyllabic characters are concerned, "chaoyang" has two meanings, if you read "chao" it means facing the sun, and if you read "zhao", the meaning is completely different, it means the rising sun in the morning. For example, we are particularly familiar with the word "score", which may be the first thing we see at a glance is the score obtained on the test, but if you think about it, you will find that it also has the meaning of fractions of a fraction of the fraction in mathematical terms.
Homophones and synonyms, in addition to influencing the meaning of words, can also cause misunderstandings about sentences. One of the most famous contract disputes was caused by homophones that gave a sentence a double meaning.
The course of the case is like this, Party A borrowed 100,000 yuan from Party B for emergency because of the rush to use money, and set up an IOU, and then Party A returned 100,000 yuan to Party B after having enough money, and wrote in the contract that "Huan owes 100,000 yuan". Party B looked at this contract and had a bad thought, he took this contract to the court to tell Party A that he "repaid (hai) owed 100,000 yuan" and asked Party A to return the arrears.
Party A was confused after hearing the summons of the court, and had to explain to the court repeatedly that this was a return, and that he had already returned 100,000 yuan to Party B, but Party B always insisted on repaying himself 100,000 yuan through the loophole of polysyllabic characters. The two sides argued in court, and in the end the judge had no choice but to compromise and let both parties bear half of it, so that Party A inexplicably lost fifty thousand yuan because of a polysyllabic word.
For civil contracts, the personal loss is some money, and if such an accident occurs in an international treaty, the country can lose far more than that, and sometimes even we ourselves can not accurately use Chinese characters, let alone foreigners.
Therefore, considering the rigor of the treaty internationally, in order to avoid the occurrence of Chinese character word games, most of them use English or French to formulate treaties!
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