【09.10.12 纽约客】What If China Had a Second Political Party Tomorrow?

渔音谦谦

October 12, 2009
What If China Had a Second Political Party Tomorrow?
At age eighty-eight, Sidney Rittenberg has had a singularly remarkable life. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, he joined the Army, studied Chinese, and was posted to China in 1944. He stayed after the war ended and became the only American citizen to join the Chinese Communist Party. He came to know Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other senior leaders, though it didn’t prevent him being imprisoned twice amid China’s turmoil, first in 1949, and again in 1968. (For a keen account of the political pressure on foreigners in China in that period, see this piece by Michael Donohue.) In total, Rittenberg served sixteen years in solitary confinement. He now lives near Seattle, where he is on the faculty at Pacific Lutheran University, but he returns to China frequently. With his wife, Wang Yulin, he operates Rittenberg & Associates, a business consulting firm.
I saw Rittenberg speak in Beijing yesterday, and his comments, on topics ranging from nationalism to corruption to Tibet policy, were perceptive. Highlights:
On the prospects for multi-party democracy:
If you had a second party alternative in China now, I think it would be an anti-foreign party. What else could you see as a platform to challenge the Communist Party, but to oppose the foreigners who are “buying up Chinese resources”?… There has to be a period of generally unfolding democracy. Not bang, all at once. And I think that will happen. I think it’s happening much too slowly.
On the Chinese government’s responsibility to whistleblowers who expose corruption:
Protect whistleblowers, protect journalists and those who expose wrongdoing.
You have to protect those who expose [wrongdoing], or talk of fighting corruption is just talk.
On a recent article in the People’s Daily that named Bo Xilai, a senior Party figure who is now mayor of Chongqing, and questioned his campaign against corruption:
It just said, “Bo Xilai,” three characters [without his title]. Bad news. If I saw my name like that—three characters—I would start looking for someplace to hide…. It doesn’t mean he is going to be fired, it doesn’t mean he is going to be punished. But it means that the dream of going to a city and making a splash, and then coming back to the center, is probably not going to happen.
On China’s public denunciation of the Dalai Lama:
Why is a country that can be so good at managing its diplomacy, so good at managing its Taiwan policy, so bad at ethnic policy?
On resilience:
When I first went to teach at Chapel Hill, they put a sign on the door that said, “S. Rittenberg. History.” So, I wrote, “Not yet.”




原文地址：http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2009/10/sidney-rittenberg.html

鬼雄

我领了。

鬼雄

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