'Three no's' essential

In managing our own affairs, President Hu Jintao mentioned "sanbu" (三不), or "three no's", in his speech in celebration of the 30th anniversary of reform and opening up on Dec 18 as best representing the general guidelines for what this country should and will do in the near future.

They were bu dongyao (不动摇), bu xiedai (不懈怠) and bu zheteng (不折腾)in Chinese, meaning don't waver, don't relent and don't make much ado about nothing. They are laconic, vivid and easy to remember, but quite connotative in meaning.

"Don't waver" explicitly expresses the resolution of the Chinese government that the reform and opening up policy will be maintained in its drive to rejuvenate the nation.

"Don't relent" points to the fact that the country cannot afford to relax its efforts in pushing reforms despite the achievements it has made in the past three decades.

The last one, bu zheteng, is the richest in meaning and also the most difficult to translate into English.

Zheteng is a colloquial expression and its meaning varies. It can mean to do something repeatedly without any result. If it is used as a transitive verb, it means to make someone suffer or bring someone unnecessary trouble. On many occasions, it means doing something useless or the waste of something.

Even in different tones, the meaning "bu zheteng" can be quite different, it can be an order for someone to stop doing something meaningless or absurd, or an appeal for someone to stop bothering about something that will have hardly any result.

So there are different English translations of this phrase: Don't make trouble, don't flip-flop, don't move sideways, don't get sidetracked, don't hassle over ideology or avoid self-inflicted setbacks, and so on. Some even suggest that Chinese phonetic symbols are used with English explanations.

I believe the Chinese expression here is not necessarily an objective description of an action, and neither is it a judgment on the motivation of a particular action. Rather, it is a subjective judgment of the consequence of an action.

So here zheteng refers to a disastrous consequence of a particular action, no matter how good the motivation may be.

So I suggest bu zheteng be translated into "don't make much ado about nothing". This English phrase is almost the same as xia zheteng (瞎折腾), meaning to do something meaningless and possibly bring about disastrous results.

"Don't make much ado about nothing" makes sense when the priority before us right now is to turn the financial crisis into an opportunity to better manage our affairs and help the world shake off the shadow of financial woes as quickly as possible.

The author, Gao Zhikai, is director of China National Association of International Studies

(China Daily February 7, 2009)