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头痛医头 | tóu tòng yī tóu

Xi spoke at the opening ceremony of the 86th INTERPOL General Assembly on Sept. 26 in Beijing. He described international security as a problem interwoven with politics, economics, culture, race, and religion. Xi said a seemingly simple security problem often isn’t easily handled, but — if it were — we’d fall into a habit of reacting to the problem rather than proactively working towards preventing it. Offering terrorism as an example of a complex security problem, Xi pointed out that reliance on a single method or addressing only one facet of terrorism fails to resolve the root cause of terrorism.

MEANING

To treat the symptoms; reactive (rather than proactive)

ORIGINAL

一个看似单纯的安全问题,往往并不能简单对待,否则就可能陷入头痛医头、脚痛医脚的困境。

SOURCE

https://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2017-09/26/c_1121726066.htm

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