Say what you will about the Chinese, but they know how to make wholesale changes, and sometimes those changes are inarguably for the good. As noted in an editorial in The Lancet last week, the life span of the average person in China in 1950 was 40 years; by 2011 it was around 76. (The average life span in the United States in 2011 was 79.)

不管你怎么说中国人，他们的确知道该如何实现大规模变化；有时候，这些变化是无可争辩的好事。正如《柳叶刀》(The Lancet)杂志上周在一篇社论中指出的，1950年，中国人的平均寿命为40岁，而到2011年这一数字已经达到76岁左右（2011年美国人的平均寿命为79岁）。

The causes of this near doubling of life span are no secret: China has developed public health programs that have reduced communicable diseases to a manageable level. This is certainly good news. But it means that people are now dying of noncommunicable diseases, or chronic diseases that are largely preventable. These diseases, most common in wealthier nations, are caused not by malnutrition in the classic sense but by overconsumption of disease-causing foods as well as lack of exercise and environmental dangers.

寿命几乎延长一倍的原因，倒也不是什么秘密：中国开展了把传染病减少到可控水平的公共卫生项目。这当然是个好消息。但它也意味着，人们现在死于很大程度上可以预防的非传染性疾病或慢性疾病。这些疾病在富国最常见，它们不是由传统意义上的营养不良造成的，而是源于过度消耗致病食品，以及缺乏运动和环境危害。

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