本帖最后由 migmig 于 2012-2-27 12:23 编辑
History can be a fickle and merciless judge. The view it will take of Deng Xiaoping, who died on February 19th at the age of 92, will depend on just when that view is being taken. In five years time it could well be harsh, and justly so. But in 15 years Mr. Deng may be seen as one of the greatest political leaders of the 20th century, a man who set under way the biggest improvement in the living standards and personal freedoms of the largest number of people in all of human history, as well as launching the most important shift in economic and political power the world has seen for a century or more. For the verdict on Mr. Deng will depend at least as much on what happens in China now as on what happened while this peppery old man was in charge.
历史可以是反复无常、冷酷无情的裁判。历史对2月19日离世、享年92岁的邓小平看法如何,则取决于何时来作评价。5年内历史对其评价将是严苛的,并且理所当然;而再过15年,邓则可被视为20世纪最伟大的政治领袖之一。他改善了人类有史以来最多人口的生活水平和个人自由,同时推进了一个多世纪以来世界所见到的一次最重要的经济和政治改革。想要对邓小平盖棺定论需要了解这位有脾气的老人当权时中国发生过什么,至少需要了解中国当前正发生着什么。
Mr. Deng’s creative hands were stained with the blood of many Chinese, in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere. But there are two powerful, additional reasons why history’s judgment is so uncertain. The first is that Mr. Deng won the real power to change China so late in his life. Although this farmer’s son and Long Marcher lived through, and helped shape, almost a century of China’s tumultuous history, the part that he will be judged by began in 1978 when he was already 74 years old. That was the moment when, two years after the death of Mao Zedong, the Communist Party agreed to Mr. Deng’s proposals to begin experimenting on the country’s Stalinist economy with market tools: freer prices, the profit motive, increased competition and a new openness to the outside world. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Mr. Deng was to call it.
邓小平有创造力的双手上沾满了许多中国人的血——在天安门或在其他地方。不过为何历史判决如此不确定,则有两个有力的附加原因。首先,邓赢得改变中国的实际权力时已是暮年。尽管这位农民的儿子、参加过长征的人经历并帮着形成了几乎一个世纪中国混乱的历史,但邓将接受裁判则始于1978年,其时他已经74岁了。当时,毛泽东去世已有两年,共产党同意邓的建议,开始用市场工具对中国的斯大林式经济进行试验,所用的市场工具有:更为自由的价格、利润驱动、增加竞争以及对外开放。“有中国特色的社会主义”,邓小平如是说。
The result was extraordinary. Economic growth since then has averaged about 9% a year, transforming China’s economy from basket-case to boomtown. A society that had become bitter and stultified took on new life as power, or at least some of it, was decentralized and workers were allowed to move around. A China that had been isolated since Mao’s revolution of 1949 suddenly rejoined the world. It had since multiplied its foreign trade tenfold to become the developing world’s biggest destination for foreign direct investment. While China was closed, it was as if the economic map of Asia had a huge area blacked out. Once it had opened, and the region’s natural economic geography began to reassert itself, China grew in political influence too.
这样一来的效果是相当惊人的。中国从那时起平均每年经济增长速度保持在9%,经济从一穷二白走向繁荣。随着权力——或部分权力下放,工人们允许流动,过去近乎瘫痪的中国呈现新的面貌。一个自1949年毛泽东革命时跟世界隔离的中国重新融入了世界。自此,中国的外贸增加了10倍,已成为发展中国家里国外投资最大目标国。当中国闭关锁国时,亚洲的经济地图上出现了一块巨大的空白,当中国开启国门时,该地区的自然经济地理让世人刮目相看,政治影响力也在加强。
Yet this transformation from communism to capitalism, from third world to first world, remains inevitably incomplete. And that brings in the second , potentially fatal, flaw of the Deng legacy. He has left behind no legitimate means for choosing a successor, beyond party fiat and cabal. The hardest thing about power is knowing when to let go. And the next hardest, at least in a dictatorship, is knowing whom to hand over to. Mr. Deng failed on both counts.
不过这种从共产主义到资本主义、从第三世界到第一世界的转变的不彻底依然难以避免。这就为邓小平的遗产带来第二个最可能的致命性缺点。除了党的授权或政治阴谋,邓没有留下选择继任者的合法方式。关于权力,最难的是知道何时放手,第二难的是——至少在专制制度下——该把权力交给谁。邓小平在这两个问题上都失败了。
The first failure was clear on the night of June 3rd 1989, when Mr. Deng ordered the army to turn its guns on the protesters in Tiananmen Square who were demanding more freedom. For all his reforming ways, Mr. Deng would tolerate no challenge to party authority – or indeed to his own. The failure to choose a successor compounded his failure to make way.
第一个失败在1989年6月3日晚上就相当清楚了。当时邓小平下令军队对天安门广场上要求更多自由的抗议者们开枪。尽管邓搞了许多改革,但他无法容忍对党的权威——或实际上他自己——的挑战。选择继任者的失败加剧了其移交权力的失败。
Officially, power has already passed on smoothly to a new team of leaders: Jiang Zemin, the Communist Party’s general secretary; Li Peng, the conservative prime minister; Zhu Rongji, occupant of most of the important economic jobs; and others. Mr. Jiang likes to present himself as first among equals in this collective leadership. Yet, after Mao died, the “Gang of Four”, who had taken more and more power in the Great Helmsman’s final years, were arrested within weeks. His designated successor, Hua Guofeng, lasted only two years. China is in many ways a more stable place now, but a power struggle may yet ensue.
官方意义上,权力已经平稳过渡到新一届领导团体:江泽民为共产党总书记,李鹏为保守总理,朱镕基负责所有重要经济工作,此外还有其他一些人。江泽民喜欢表明自己是集体领导核心。在毛去世后,在伟大舵手晚年攫取越来越多权力的“四人帮”们在不到一星期内被捕。毛指定的接班人华国锋维持了不到两年。从多方面看,中国更加稳定了,但是权力斗争可能依然会存在。
The tensions at the top have long been apparent. Although inflation has been brought under tighter control, action to solve many problems, particularly in the budget-draining state enterprises, seems to have been shelved. Instead of competing to carry forward reform, the nervous contenders for Deng’s mantle have been trying to outdo one another in shrill nationalist rhetoric, over China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and over the fate of Taiwan.
长期以来,高层紧张显而易见。尽管针对通胀采取了更为严格的管控,解决许多问题——尤其是消耗预算的国有企业的行动被放在一边。觊觎邓小平权力的竞争者们不是去推动改革,而是接连不断地在对中国南海领土要求和台湾命运的民族主义华丽的辞藻上较劲。
A legacy of instability
不稳定的遗产
At one time, Mr. Deng thought he could avoid such elbowing among his heirs. After the anarchy of the cultural revolution and the lunacies of the Gang of Four, he set out to replace rule by personal whim with the stable order of party law. Yet he scuppered his own plans for an orderly succession in 1987 by sacrificing the then party boss, Hu Yaobang, to placate conservatives angered by student unrest. Two years later Hu’s replacement, Zhao Ziyang, went the same way. When students occupied Tiananmen Square and cheekily called for greater party accountability, Mr. Zhao had the temerity to think that the party could afford to loosen up a little and listen. By toppling Mr. Zhao, Mr. Deng discredited those who followed and exposed his own reforms to conservative attack.
曾有段时间,邓小平认为自己可以避免来自继任者之间的挤兑。在文化大革命的无政府主义和四人帮的精神错乱之后,在统治中国问题上,他寻求用稳定的党法来取代个人心血来潮。尽管如此,为安抚被学生动荡激怒的保守派们,1987年,他让时任党总书记胡耀邦下台,把自己有序过渡的计划毁于一旦。两年后,接替胡耀邦的赵紫阳以同样的方式下台。当学生们占领天安门广场、无礼地要求更多的党内问责时,赵紫阳冒失地认为共产党应该放松一些、听听学生们的意见。通过打倒赵紫阳,邓小平让自己的追随者感到羞辱,其改革方案暴露在保守派的攻击之下。
For the time being, all China’s leaders pay lip-service to reform. But China is seething with jealousies and ambitions unleashed by Mr. Deng. The great economic strength of democracy, that people can depend on the rule of law and the maintenance of their property rights, is entirely absent. In such a climate, history would be right to reserve its judgment.
一直以来,中国的领导人对于改革都是嘴上说说。不过在邓小平解开绳索以后,中国社会充满了警惕和野心。民主带来巨大经济实力、人们能够依靠法律、拥有产权,都十分遥远。在这样的氛围下,历史保留其判断或许是正确的。