[2022-07-03] The Economist - 共产主义之路 —— 三步通天

 

CHINA / THE PATH TO COMMUNISM
Three steps to heaven
China still claims to be moving towards communism. Some want it to pick up the pace
中国 / 共产主义之路
三步通天
中国仍然声称正在走向共产主义。 有些人希望它加快步伐

 

In a poor, communist country, the phrase sounded like a truism. But in the early 1980s China’s admission that it was still only in the “initial stage of socialism” was an ideological bombshell. The use of those words meant the country had become “totally freed from the restrictions of orthodox socialist principles”, recalled Zhao Ziyang, who took over as Communist Party chief later that decade and championed the term. It allowed China to introduce capitalism (a stage Marx viewed as essential) and repudiate Maoist madness. Many Chinese were delighted by the weakening of ideology’s grip on decision-making. China’s dramatic economic growth owes much to the licence it gave.
在一个贫穷的共产主义国家，这句话听起来像是老生常谈。 但在 1980 年代初期，中国承认仍处于“社会主义初级阶段”是意识形态的重磅炸弹。 使用这些词意味着这个国家已经“完全摆脱了正统社会主义原则的限制”，赵紫阳回忆说，他在那个十年后期接任共产党总书记并拥护这个词。 它允许中国引入资本主义（马克思认为必不可少的阶段）并否定腊肉的疯狂。 许多中国人对意识形态对决策的控制力减弱感到高兴。 中国经济的飞速增长很大程度上归功于它给予的许可。

In today’s China, Zhao’s description of this liberating effect would sound like heresy (Zhao died in 2005 while under house arrest for being too soft on pro-democracy protesters in 1989). The current party leader, Xi Jinping, talks with great enthusiasm about orthodox principles. Far from scaling back the party’s involvement in economic affairs, as Zhao tried to do, Mr Xi has ramped it up. In businesses, party committees are flexing their muscles again. Over the past couple of years bosses of big private enterprises have been quaking as Mr Xi uses government regulators to bash their companies. Talk of the need for “common prosperity” has raised fears among the rich that the party has them in its sights.
在今天的中国，赵对这种解放效应的描述听起来像是异端邪说（赵于1989年因对民主抗议者过于软弱而被软禁于 2005 年去世）。 现任党的领导人希望以极大的热情谈论正统原则。 希望并没有像赵试图那样缩减党对经济事务的参与，而是加大了力度。 在企业中，党委再次大展拳脚。 在过去的几年里，随着希望利用政府监管机构抨击他们的公司，大型私营企业的老板们一直在发抖。 谈及“共同富裕”的必要性，让富人担心党已经盯上了他们。

Among Chinese academics, including the staff of party schools where officials are trained, there are some who favour a debate about when the initial stage should end and what should follow it. Their articles about these questions appear in official publications, which suggests the party sees no harm in exploring the topic. In January 2021 Mr Xi himself mentioned the goal of “forging ahead to a higher level” of socialism (meaning, apparently, another stage of it short of a communist utopia). He often urges party members to have faith in the “lofty ideal” of communism—though what a truly communist China will look like he does not spell out.
在中国学者中，包括培养官员的党校的工作人员，有些人赞成就初始阶段何时结束以及接下来应该如何进行辩论。 他们关于这些问题的文章出现在官方出版物上，这表明党认为探索这个话题没有害处。 2021 年 1 月，希望本人提到了社会主义“迈向更高水平”的目标（显然，这意味着社会主义乌托邦的另一个阶段）。 他经常敦促党员要对共产主义的“崇高理想”抱有信心——尽管他没有详细说明一个真正的共产主义中国会是什么样子。

When the party adopted the initial-stage idea, its leaders clearly hoped to clear the ideological air. Before Mao’s death in 1976 it had been filled with feverish talk of communism’s swift arrival. China’s cold war with the Soviet Union had fuelled competition to attain this nirvana. At the party’s 13th congress in 1987 Zhao (with the backing of Deng Xiaoping, the country’s paramount leader) said that “basic completion of socialist modernisation” would take at least 100 years, beginning from the mid-1950s when the newly victorious party nationalised most industry and forced farmers to pool their land into “co-operatives”. During this time, he said, China would remain in the initial stage. Communism was kicked into the long grass.
当党采纳初期的想法时，其领导人显然希望清除意识形态的氛围。 在腊肉于 1976 年去世之前，关于共产主义迅速到来的热议充斥着它。 中国与苏联的冷战加剧了争夺这一必杀技的竞争。 在 1987 年的党的十三大上，赵（在国家最高领导人稻上飞的支持下）说，“基本完成社会主义现代化”至少需要 100 年，从 1950 年代中期开始 工业并迫使农民将他们的土地集中到“合作社”中。 他说，在此期间，中国仍处于起步阶段。 共产主义被踢进了长草。

But much has changed. China’s development was quicker than Deng envisaged. By the time he died in 1997 China had already fulfilled the economic targets he had set for the end of that century. In 1980 China’s economy was half the size of Britain’s (at market exchange rates); now it is the world’s second largest. That year most farmers were extremely poor. In 2020 China declared that extreme poverty had been eliminated. At the party’s 19th congress in 2017, Mr Xi announced that socialist modernisation would be “basically complete” by 2035, 15 years earlier than planned.
但发生了很多变化。 中国的发展比稻上飞预想的要快。 到他 1997 年去世时，中国已经完成了他为那个世纪末设定的经济目标。 1980 年中国的经济规模只有英国的一半（按市场汇率计算）； 现在它是世界第二大。 那一年，大多数农民都极度贫困。 2020年，中国宣布消除极端贫困。 在 2017 年的党的十九大上，希望宣布，到 2035 年，社会主义现代化建设将“基本完成”，比原计划提前 15 年。

So ideological questions that Deng preferred to avoid are bubbling up again. In an article this year Hu Angang, a staunchly pro-party scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, wrote that China could progress to an “intermediate stage” of socialism in 2035. China, he said, had already “basically completed the main tasks” of the initial phase. In January last year the Economic Daily, a newspaper in Beijing, trumpeted Mr Xi’s reference to a new stage. It also pointed to 2035, suggesting the party’s achievements by then would provide a “realistic basis” for an upgrade (though it did not make clear whether that should be the year to launch it).
因此，稻上飞宁愿回避的意识形态问题再次浮出水面。 北京清华大学坚定的亲党学者胡鞍钢今年在一篇文章中写道，中国可以在2035年进入社会主义“中间阶段”。他说，中国已经“基本完成了主要任务” 的初始阶段。 去年1月，北京的一家报纸《经济日报》大肆宣扬希望提到了一个新阶段。 它还指出了 2035 年，暗示到那时党的成就将为升级提供“现实基础”（尽管它没有明确是否应该在这一年启动它）。

Those impatient for a new label have met pushback, though. In 2018 Study Times, a newspaper published by the Central Party School, criticised “some people” who, it said, had begun to argue that the initial-stage description was no longer fitting. Apparently referring to the violence and chaos caused by Maoist utopianism, it said a “big historical price” had been paid for deviating from the initial stage. In an interview published by an academic journal in 2020, Liu Jianjun, a Marxism expert at Renmin University in Beijing, suggested the country could remain in the initial period until the end of the 21st century.
不过，那些对新品牌不耐烦的人遇到了阻力。 2018年，中央党校出版的《学习时报》批评了“一些人”，称他们已经开始争辩说最初的描述不再合适。 显然是指毛主义乌托邦主义造成的暴力和混乱，它说偏离初始阶段已经付出了“巨大的历史代价”。 北京人民大学马克思主义专家刘建军在一份学术期刊2020年发表的采访中表示，中国可以保持在初始阶段，直到21世纪末。

Mr Xi, for his part, declared the start of “a new stage of development” in 2020. But he says this will last 30 years and form part of the initial stage of socialism—implying that China will not move to the next level at least until 2050. His officials keep trying to reassure private businessfolk that the party values their contributions to the economy (for good reason: their firms provide more than 80% of urban jobs today, compared with less than 4% when Zhao was purged). In November the party’s Central Committee said China’s 97m Communists must “soberly recognise” that the country will remain in the initial stage of socialism “for a long time”. This implied that capitalism would still be given room to flourish and that the party was in no hurry to move to the next stage of fulfilling Marx’s vision of a world with no private property.
就他而言，希望宣布 2020 年将进入“新的发展阶段”。但他表示，这将持续 30 年，是社会主义初级阶段的一部分——这意味着中国不会在 至少要到 2050 年。他的官员一直试图向私营企业人士保证，党重视他们对经济的贡献（有充分的理由：他们的公司提供了今天超过 80% 的城市工作岗位，而赵被清洗时还不到 4%）。 11月，中共中央表示，中国9700万共产党人必须“清醒地认识到”，中国将“长期”处于社会主义初级阶段。 这意味着资本主义仍将有蓬勃发展的空间，党并不急于进入下一个阶段，以实现马克思关于没有私有财产的世界的愿景。

Despite Mr Xi’s reassurances, debate is likely to grow about what the next stage should be. No mainstream scholars openly suggest that it should be full-blown communism. They often propose an intermediate stage focusing on common prosperity—code for reducing the gap between rich and poor. This has always been a goal of the initial stage. Officially, common prosperity should be “basically” in place by 2050. But only recently has Mr Xi begun to stress this task. His eagerness has caused jitters among the wealthy, who fear it could mean more taxes. They should be relieved, however, that Mr Xi shows little appetite for more radical interpretations of socialism’s next stage. Last year he denounced “welfarism”, saying that in some countries it had “raised a group of ‘sluggards’ and people who get paid for doing nothing”, draining government finances. He has not endorsed a claim in 2011 by the since-deceased party chief of Huaxi village in the eastern province of Jiangsu that its residents have already entered the intermediate phase. They live in villas and drive cars provided by the village’s business conglomerate. Last year reports circulated in local media that Huaxi was in economic trouble. ■
尽管希望做出了保证，但关于下一阶段应该是什么的争论可能会越来越多。没有主流学者公开建议它应该是成熟的共产主义。他们经常提出一个关注共同富裕的中间阶段——缩小贫富差距的代码。这一直是初期的目标。官方认为，到 2050 年应该“基本”实现共同富裕。但直到最近，希望才开始强调这一任务。他的渴望引起了富人的不安，他们担心这可能意味着更多的税收。然而，他们应该感到宽慰的是，希望对对社会主义下一阶段进行更激进的解释几乎没有兴趣。去年，他谴责“福利主义”，称在一些国家，它“培养了一群‘懒惰者’和无所事事的人”，耗尽了政府财政。 2011年，江苏省华西村已故村党委书记声称该村居民已进入中期阶段，他并未对此表示支持。他们住在别墅里，开着村里的商业集团提供的汽车。去年，当地媒体流传华西陷入经济困境的报道。 ■

标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。

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