二十年前，金大中在与李光耀就民主与亚洲价值相容性进行辩论时，表示他对亚洲民主前景持乐观主义态度的根本理由是：“亚洲人自身日益提升对民主和人权重要性的认知。”对民主价值的这种奉献深度，没有什么比刘晓波的生命和勇敢抗争体现得更强有力，他在1989年天安门屠杀后成为世界上争取民主和人性自由最激昂雄辩的声音。
刘晓波明白，他作为一个反抗中国专制权力的民主异议人士，所面临挑战的艰巨性。他哀悼天安门镇压的受害者们，说那是他 “生命的重大转折时刻”；他意识到崛起的中国强权可能会抹去受害者的遗产。但他仍然对中国的民主前景充满希望，因为他看到中国极权主义的经济、思想和政治支柱正在现代化和技术变革力量的影响下腐坏。他认为，这些力量不仅在改变中国的体制，也在改变人民的意识。
刘晓波在2006年发表的名篇《通过改变社会来改变政权》中写道，异议人士不会再屈服于蛮横官权， “政治迫害可以让被害者在经济上受损，可以剥夺人身自由，却无法使受害者的社会信誉受损，更无法把受害者置于四面楚歌的社会孤立之中，也就无法在人格上尊严上精神上打垮被害者，反而逐渐变成了对被迫害者的道义成全，受害者被奉为‘民间良知’或‘真话英雄 ’……” 。
中国当局在法庭审判中使用了这篇文章要改变政权的标题，作为“煽动颠覆国家政权罪”的证据。当局还指控刘晓波是《零八宪章》的领头作者和组织者，《零八宪章》是逾万中国公民冒着极大个人风险签署争取民主和宪政的宣言。但是，刘晓波远没有被摧毁，他遭监禁只是提升了他的地位，使他成为“民间良知” ，正如他所说的那样。因此，他也享誉国际，并荣获2010年诺贝尔和平奖。
在刘晓波及夫人刘霞都未获准出席的诺贝尔颁奖仪式上，挪威女演员丽芙•乌尔曼朗读了刘晓波在法庭上的最后陈述，他说：“中国终将变成人权至上的法治国”。在陈述中，刘晓波还呼吁结束“毒化一个民族的精神，煽动起你死我活的残酷斗争，毁掉一个社会的宽容和人性，阻碍一个国家走向自由民主的进程”的“政权的敌人意识”。
这个陈述并非刘晓波首次指出政权敌意的危险。他不断呼吁结束仇恨和“阶级斗争思维”，尤其是（1989年）他在天安门广场撰写的《六•二绝食宣言》中，而政府在两天后强力粉碎了那场非暴力义举。他认为，中国当局煽起这种敌意所造成的有毒文化，阻碍了他的同胞成为投入的负责任的公民。
刘晓波力图“以爱化解恨”来回应，但他远非一位天真臆想的理想主义者。他看到如果中国没有民主化，并继续以独裁在经济和军事上崛起，那么对中国和世界都是可怕的危险。他担心“在人类历史上，凡是独裁崛起的大国，……希特勒的德国、明治天皇的日本、斯大林的苏联，不仅无一例外地衰落了，而且无不给人类文明带来巨大的灾难。”他警告说：“如果它的独裁崛起……重蹈历史覆辙，其结果，不仅是中国人的灾难，也将殃及自由民主的全球化进程。”因此，他相信，“将世界上最庞大的人质从奴役下解救出来”，正符合所有民主国家和爱好自由的人民的重大利益。
刘晓波发出这一警讯——中国作为独裁国家崛起对自由民主和全球安全构成威胁，已有十多年了。西方几乎没有人留意他的警讯，因为当时绝大多数主流观点认为，中国崛起是值得欢迎和无可忌惮的。美国（前）副国务卿罗伯特•佐利克 (Robert Zoellick)曾表达了普遍看法，他说将中国纳入基于规则的自由国际秩序，将使其成为国际体系中的一名“负责任的利益相关者”，而且经济增长将产生一个要求政治参与和改革的中产阶级，使中国无可阻挡地自由化。
但是，中国引人瞩目的经济增长，却产生了与促进自由化相反的效应，强化了中国当局对国家主导经济模式的合法性和优越性的自信。而且，中国以经济增长所积累的财富，已经使它得以在国际上发挥更武断得多的作用，完全消解了那种认为中国成长有利于民主和基于规则的全球秩序的错觉。前国务院亚洲事务主管库尔特•坎贝尔(Kurt Campbell)最近表达了这种美国外交政策建制的幻灭，指出：“自由国际秩序并没有像预期那样强有力地诱导或约束中国。 ”在习近平于今年2月宣布中国宪法将改变为允许他无限期地继续担任主席后，《经济学家》杂志坦率地说：“西方对中国所下的25年赌注已经输掉了。”
刘晓波在监狱中直到2017年去世，因此在他最后几年中国实力增长时，他的声音被压制了，传播范围落到西方领导人和政策制定者视线之外。虽然他无法评论这些年来中国崛起的后果，但在他较早作品中曾有所预料，包括以下几点：
毛泽东式个人统治在习近平治下恢复，使习近平得以控制国家和共产党的所有各级权力，包括军队和警察。
一种高压监控国的建立，使用数字成像、面部识别技术，以及关于人们财务和社会互动状况的空前大量数据，来监视所有人的行为，并根据他们对国家忠诚度来管控他们获取经济和社会利益的机会。
中国的万亿美元“一带一路”倡议，比战后欧洲的马歇尔计划大七倍，利用在64个国家中的大规模基础设施开发来推进中国的军事和地缘政治目标，包括获取战略资源，通过中国国有企业获得战略港口和车站的控制权，利用与各种政府和国家媒体合作以出口中国国家监控技术和传播中国媒体内容，建立“一带一路”项目争议解决机制，推进中国规则以替代 西方法律规范。
无视国际法庭的裁决，继续在有争议的南沙群岛强化岛礁。美国太平洋司令部司令菲利普•戴维森海军上将说，“中国现在有能力在不与美国交战的一切情况下控制南中国海”。
随着习近平激进的权力集中，中国的持续崛起并非不可阻挡的发展。他们在未来的时期可能会遇到挫折和困难。谢淑丽（Susan Shirk）最近在《民主杂志》上发表的文章《重回个人统治》（The Return to Personalistic Rule）中指出，在习近平治下，“一个领导人表现得越独裁专制，其他政客就越有可能试图拉他下台。”因此，一个如此规模的权力游戏，可能会激发来自对立领导人的精英冲突和抗拒，从而可能导致回归集体领导，甚至为改革导致出乎意料的政治开放。
此外，中国为获取全球领导力的推动，已经产生了《经济学家》称之为“现代地缘政治中最严重逆转”的反弹，导致美国和其他国家反对和遏制中国扩张主义的提案和倡议增值。 其中包括支持亚洲国家和澳大利亚在南中国海和其它潜在冲突地区平衡中国军事的努力。还包括呼吁实施“互惠”政策，即采用单一标准与中国打交道，例如筛选中国在美国的投资，以美国公司被拒绝进入中国的同样方式，来阻止中国公司进入美国。还包括呼吁监督孔子学院等文化项目，以确保它们不被用作具有政治影响的锐实力工具，并呼吁允许美国文化机构得以同等地进入中国大学。
至今，对中国作为崛起的专制强权的反应是被动防御性的。毫不奇怪，重点是中国在越来越多的潜在冲突地区采取武断行动所导致的安全威胁，以及中国提出的政治挑战。这些挑战包括中国利用经济杠杆和锐实力来要求遵从其在西藏和台湾等问题上的立场。然而，没有得到解决的是刘晓波认为决定性的核心问题 ——中国是否能够采取一条更民主的不同道路，而非目前困扰于注重在国内实行独裁控制和在国外追求地缘政治霸权。
现在，中国要扭转目前的道路极不可能。在习近平治下，北京大大加强了镇压，打击公民社会活动人士、网络博主和记者，逮捕了数百名维权律师，通过了压制网络言论自由的新法律，并使国际非政府组织受到中国安全机关的空前控制，严重加大了对维吾尔和西藏少数民族的镇压，加紧了对香港基本自由的控制，包括一家独立书店五名员工的强迫“失踪”。
但如此压制虽然旨在加强中央政府的力量，但实际上体现了中国当局的深度不安全感，它认为任何独立的声音都是对其权力和社会秩序本身的危险威胁。如果中国当局对其权力和合法性真有信心，那么它就不需要使异议作家如刘晓波（甚至其遗孀刘霞）消声，也不需要使维权律师如李柏光消失，或者要使对1989年天安门义举的任何记忆消除。
中国最近通过对中国共产党过去“英雄烈士”批评予以定罪的新法律，没有什么比这个更清楚地暴露了中国当局的不安全感。实际上，这部法律是企图粉饰诸毛主义的灾难，如“大跃进”导致大饥荒和数千万人死亡，以及“精神大屠杀”的“文化大革命”期间使中国陷入混乱、群众暴力（超过百万人死亡，数千万人遭受酷刑和侮辱）和思想疯狂。
著名汉学家林培瑞指出，“英雄烈士保护法”与保护历史毫不相干，“完全只与维持党的权力和控制相关。”他最近指出，刘晓波的灵感取自历史人物如林昭、遇罗克、张志新等，他们都在文化大革命期间被处决，只因他们“表达了党不想听到的真相。现在这个法律与保护那些（真正的）烈士毫不相干的事实，显示了人们需要了解这个法律目的一切。”习近平反对这些恐怖事件的诚实描述，并称之为纵容损害共产党合法性的“历史虚无主义”。换言之，党要求否认真相并重写历史以求生存。
这并非一项能够长期发挥作用的战略，因为它取决于中国当局将其真实版本强加于每个所涉者的能力，从它的国内对象到外国商业领袖、政府官员和学者。合法性不能通过强制来实现，它需要有能力提出具有说服力并吸引真正忠诚度的理念和价值观。著名的（中共中央）九号文件的披露揭示，中国当局已对诸如普世价值、公民社会和自由媒体等所谓西方理念宣战，它把这些看作是对共产党社会基础的威胁。但是，如果中国当局想压制如此理念，就将需要有取代它们的替代理念。问题在于中国当局没有任何理念，这就是为何它要引发民族主义，以填补共产主义意识形态死亡所留下的空白。
沈大伟（David Shambaugh）写道：“在中国发展出具有普世吸引力的价值观之前，它将缺乏全球领导力的一个核心特征。”在此之前，它将继续是一个全球恶霸，力图将其意志强加于一个懦夫，而不信任国际社会。它会试图在内部维持绝对控制，担心整个体制会在它松开铁爪的时刻散开。
刘晓波看到了如此体制的脆弱性，因此他写道：当人们决定对它“反抗到底”时，“专制主义再残暴也不会长久。”中国有些人就有如此决心，如果对中国好战的警报说服了世界民主国家，维护中国的民主派不仅符合我们的价值观，而且也符合我们的利益，有如此决心者的人数就会增加。这曾是刘晓波的核心信息 ——我们的自由与他的自由相连，延至与中国的自由相连。在回忆刘晓波时，我们正在确认并维护我们的共同未来。
卡尔•格什曼是美国国家民主基金会总裁。
Remembering a Hero and a Martyr
Carl GERSHMAN
Carl Gershman is the President of the National Endowment for Democracy.
In the debate over the compatibility of democracy and Asian values that Kim Dae-jung had with Lee Kuan Yew two decades ago, Kim said that his fundamental reason for optimism about the prospect for democracy in Asia was “this increasing awareness of the importance of democracy and human rights among Asians themselves.” Nothing demonstrates more powerfully the depth of this commitment to democratic values than the life and courageous struggle of Liu Xiaobo, who in the years following the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 became the world’s most eloquent and impassioned voice for democracy and human freedom.
Liu understood the enormity of the challenge he faced as a dissident democrat defying the power of the authoritarian Chinese state. He mourned the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown, which he said was “the major turning point” in his life; and he realized that rising Chinese power could blot out their legacy. But he remained hopeful about the prospect for democracy in China because he saw the economic, ideological, and political pillars of Chinese totalitarianism eroding under the impact of the forces of modernization and technological change. He believed that such forces were changing not just the institutions of China but also the consciousness of the people.
In his famous essay “To Change a Regime by Changing a Society,” published in 2006, Liu wrote that dissidents could no longer be cowed into submission by the repressive regime. “Political persecution can still bring economic loss and the loss of personal freedom, but it can no longer destroy a person’s reputation or turn a person into a political leper. Indeed, today it can have the opposite effect – not merely failing to destroy one’s dignity or spirit but actually helping a person to achieve spiritual wholeness, and even, in the view of others, to rise to the status of ‘conscience of the people’ or ‘hero of truth.’”
This essay, with its reference in the title to changing the regime, was used by the Chinese authorities at Liu’s trial as evidence of his guilt of “the crime of inciting subversion of state power.” The regime also charged that he was the lead author and organizer of Charter 08, a manifesto for democracy and constitutional government that was signed at great personal risk by more than 10,000 Chinese citizens. But far from destroying him, his imprisonment only increased his stature and made him into the “conscience of the people,” as he had said that it would. As a result, he also became renowned internationally and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.
At the Nobel ceremony, which neither Liu nor his wife Liu Xia was permitted to attend, Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann read Liu’s final statement at his trial, in which he said, “China will in the end become a nation ruled by law, where human rights reign supreme.” He also called for an end to “the enemy mentality of the regime” that “poisons” the spirit of the nation, “incite[s] cruel mortal struggles,” destroys the society’s tolerance and humanity, and hinders the country’s progress toward freedom and democracy.
This statement was not the first time that Liu had pointed to the danger of regime-fomented enmity. He had continuously called for an end to hatred and “class-struggle thinking,” most notably in “The June 2nd Hunger Strike Declaration” that he authored in Tiananmen Square less than two days before the regime crushed the nonviolent uprising with massive force. The poisonous culture created by the regime’s stoking of such enmity, he believed, prevented his fellow countrymen from becoming engaged and responsible citizens.
Liu responded by trying to “dispel hatred with love.” But he was far from a naïve or quixotic idealist. He saw a terrible danger coming for both China and the world if China failed to democratize and continued to rise economically and militarily as a dictatorship. He worried that “the great powers in human history that rose as dictatorships – …Hitler’s Germany, the Meiji Emperor’s Japan, and Stalin’s Soviet Union – all eventually collapsed, and in doing so brought disaster to human civilization.” And he warned that “if the Communists succeed in…leading China down a disastrously mistaken historical road, the results will not only be another catastrophe for the Chinese people but likely also a disaster for the spread of liberal democracy in the world.” He believed, therefore, that it was in the vital interest of all democratic countries and freedom-loving people “to rescue the world’s largest hostage population from enslavement.”
It’s been more than a decade since Liu issued this warning about the danger that China’s rising as a dictatorship posed to liberal democracy and global security. Virtually no one in the West heeded Liu’s warning because the overwhelmingly dominant view at the time was that China’s rise was something to be welcomed and not feared. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick voiced the conventional wisdom when he said that bringing China into the rules-based liberal international order would make it a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system, and that economic growth would inexorably liberalize China by producing a middle class that would demand political participation and reform.
But instead of promoting liberalization, China’s dramatic economic growth has had the opposite effect of reinforcing the regime’s belief in the legitimacy and superiority of its state-driven economic model. In addition, the wealth that China has amassed as a result of its economic growth has enabled it to play a much more assertive role internationally, totally upending the delusion that China’s growth would be good for democracy and the rules-based global order. Reflecting the disillusionment of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment, former State Department Asia hand Kurt Campbell recently observed that “the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected. China has instead pursued its own course, belying a range of American expectations in the process.” Following Xi Jinping’s announcement last February that the Chinese constitution would be changed to allow him to remain as president indefinitely, The Economist magazine bluntly stated, “The West’s 25-year bet on China has failed.”
Liu Xiaobo was in prison until his death in 2017, and so his voice was silenced during his final years when China’s power grew and the scales fell from the eyes of Western leaders and policy-makers. Though he could not comment on the consequences of China’s rise during these years, they were anticipated in his earlier writings and include:
- The restoration under Xi Jinping of Mao-like personalistic rule, which enables Xi to control all the levers of power in the state and the Communist Party, including the military and the police.
- The establishment of a repressive surveillance state that uses digital imaging, facial recognition technology, and unprecedented amounts of data about people’s financial and social interactions to monitor the behavior of all individuals and to regulate their access to economic and social benefits according to their loyalty degree to the state.
- China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), seven times larger than the Marshall Plan in postwar Europe, which uses massive infrastructure development in 64 countries to advance Chinese military and geopolitical goals, including securing access to strategic resources, gaining control by Chinese state-owned enterprises of strategic ports and terminals, using partnerships with governments and national media to export Chinese techniques of state surveillance and to disseminate Chinese media content, and establishing a system of dispute resolution for BRI projects that promotes Chinese rules as an alternative to Western legal norms.
- Its continued fortification of reefs in the disputed Spratly Islands, in defiance of a ruling by an international tribunal, leading Admiral Philip Davidson of the U.S. Pacific Command to say, “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”
- Its comprehensive economic and military buildup, which a recent Pentagon study (mentioned in an article by David Ignatius entitled “China’s Plan to Rule the World”) described as “perhaps the most ambitious grand strategy undertaken by a single nation-state in modern times.”
- In sum, China’s emergence as a political and ideological rival of the West, using economic leverage, military power, and sharp-power information tools to promote its model of authoritarian development as an alternative to democracy – “a new option for other countries,” as Xi Jinping declared at the 19th Party Congress.
China’s continued rise, along with Xi’s radical centralization of power, are not inexorable developments. They could encounter setbacks and complications in the period ahead. As Susan Shirk noted in her recent article in the Journal of Democracy, “The Return to Personalistic Rule,” under Xi Jinping “the more autocratically a leader behaves, the more likely other politicians are to try to bring him down.” A power play of this magnitude, therefore, may spark elite conflict and resistance from rival leaders, which could lead to a return to collective leadership and even to an unanticipated political opening for reform.
In addition, China’s push for global leadership has already produced a backlash that The Economist has called “the starkest reversal in modern geopolitics.” This has led to a proliferation of proposals and initiatives in the United States and other countries to counter and contain China’s expansionism. These range from supporting the efforts of Asian countries and Australia to balance China militarily in the South China Sea and other potential conflict zones to calls for a policy of “reciprocity” that would apply a single standard to dealings with China – from screening its investments in the U.S. in order to block access to Chinese companies that is denied to U.S. companies in China, to monitoring cultural programs like Confucius Institutes to ensure that they are not used as sharp-power tools of political influence and insisting that America cultural centers have equal access to Chinese universities.
So far the response to China as a rising authoritarian power has been reactive and defensive. The focus, not surprisingly, has been on the security threat posed by assertive Chinese actions in a growing number of potential conflicts zones, as well as on the political challenge that China presents, which includes its use of economic leverage and sharp power to demand compliance with its position on issues like Tibet and Taiwan. What is not being addressed, though, is the issue that Liu Xiaobo considered to be the central and decisive question – whether China could take a different and more democratic path than the current obsession with concentrating dictatorial control at home and pursuing geopolitical hegemony abroad.
Right now, it’s extremely unlikely that China will reverse its current path. Under Xi Jinping, Beijing has stepped up repression dramatically, cracking down on civil society activists and online bloggers and journalists; arresting hundreds of human rights lawyers; passing new laws that suppress online freedom of expression and subject international NGOs to unprecedented control by the Chinese security services; severely increasing repression over the Uyghur and Tibetan minorities; and tightening control over basic freedoms in Hong Kong, including the forcible “disappearance” of five employees of an independent bookstore.
But such repression, while intended to strengthen the hand of the central government, actually demonstrates its deep insecurity, which considers any independent voice to be a dangerous threat to its power and to the social order itself. Were the regime really confident about its power and legitimacy, it wouldn’t need to silence a dissident writer like Liu Xiaobo (and even his widow Liu Xia), or to eliminate a human-rights lawyer like Li Baiguang, or to expunge any memory of the Tiananmen uprising in 1989.
Nothing more clearly exposes the regime’s deep insecurity than a new law it recently passed criminalizing criticism of the “heroes and martyrs” of China’s communist past. In effect, the law is an attempt to whitewash such Maoist disasters as the Great Leap Forward, which led to massive famine and tens of millions of deaths, as well as the Cultural Revolution, a “spiritual holocaust” during which China descended into chaos, mass violence (over one million people were killed and tens of millions were tortured and humiliated), and ideological madness.
Perry Link has noted that the “Heroes and Martyrs Protection Act” has nothing to do with protecting history “and everything to do with maintaining the party’s power and control today.” He said that Liu Xiaobo drew inspiration from historical figures such as Lin Zhao, Yu Luoke, and Zhang Zhixin, all of whom were executed during the Cultural Revolution “for expressing truths the party did not want to hear. The fact that the present law will have nothing to do with protecting the reputations of those [true] martyrs says all one needs to know about the purpose of the law.” Xi has campaigned against any honest accounting of these horrors, calling it an indulgence in “historical nihilism” that would damage the legitimacy of the Communist Party. The Party, in other words, requires the denial of truth and the rewriting of history in order to survive.
This is not a strategy that can work in the long run since it depends upon the Chinese regime’s ability to impose its version of the truth on everyone it deals with, from its subjects at home to foreign business leaders, government officials, and academics. Legitimacy cannot be achieved through coercion. It requires the capacity to project ideas and values that are persuasive and attract genuine loyalty. The disclosure of the famous Document No. 9 revealed that the regime has declared war on so-called Western ideas such as universal values, civil society, and free media, which it sees as a threat to the Communist Party’s social foundation. But if it wants to suppress such ideas, it will need alternative ideas with which to replace them. The problem is that it has no ideas, which is why it has stoked nationalism to fill the void left by the death of communist ideology.
David Shambaugh has written, “Until China develops values that appeal universally, it will lack one of the core features of global leadership.” Until then, it will continue to be a global bully, forcibly trying to impose its will on a cowed but disbelieving international community. And it will try to maintain absolute control internally, fearful that the whole system will unravel the moment that it loosens its iron grip.
Liu Xiaobo saw the vulnerabilities of such a system, which is why he wrote that “even the most vicious tyranny will be short-lived” the moment that people decide to oppose it “to the bitter end.” There are people in China who have such determination, and their numbers could grow if the alarm over China’s belligerence persuades the world’s democracies that defending democrats in China is consistent not just with our values but with our interests as well. This was Liu’s central message – that our freedom is linked to his and, by extension, to freedom in China. In remembering Liu Xiaobo, we are affirming and defending our common future.
转自：民主中国