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这阵子某些媒体对卡斯特罗的健康状况异常关心，前几天CCTV的播音员满脸喜色地向中国人报告：卡斯特罗的手术成功了。同时还播放了一段古巴官方的一段讲话。可能CCTV的心情不错，这条新闻用了不少时间。

在有报道称卡斯特罗身体不佳的时候，还有媒体强压悲伤的心情，说是古巴医生鉴定卡斯特罗能活140岁。这颗为卡斯特罗善祷善颂的孝心，足以惊天地泣鬼神。

昨天又有媒体兴奋地宣布卡斯特罗的手术非常成功，挫败了美国的阴谋。天啊，又不是美国人给他做手术，手术成功不成功关美国人屁事。再细细一看，原来是说卡斯特罗的健康可以抵御美国人在古巴推行民主的企图。

不由得再次想起CCTV经常播放的一首歌，那首歌颂封建皇帝的歌唱道：我还想再活500年。中国人的气魄着实了得，卡斯特罗已经从1959年1月1日起执政古巴至今47年了，卡氏曾经表示自己只想执政到100岁，也就是说再执政20年，然后退休用40年的时间颐养天年。这样的话，卡斯特罗将一共执政67年，美国不知道换了多少总统。中国人是想执政500多年，哪是古巴这蕞尔小国能比的。

某些中国媒体对卡斯特罗健康的关心，远远超过了对本国人健康的关心，包括本国领导人健康的关心，让人不禁想问：卡斯特罗是你爹么？

卡斯特罗在讲到为什么古巴要由他执政时说：“当我不再执掌古巴政权时，美国肯定会想尽一切办法来瓦解或者演变古巴。”

原来是为了古巴红色江山不变色，可惜，就算是卡斯特罗手术真的很成功，就算是卡斯特罗真能再执政20年，就算是卡斯特罗能活到140岁，最终他还是要死的。

无非就是多抵御个几十年吧。

任何国家如果把某种希望寄托在一个人身上都是令人悲哀的，因为人总是要死的。CCTV之流，就是天天为卡斯特罗爹祈祷祝福也仅仅是起到还能多撑几年的安慰作用。

但世界潮流终究还是会来的。

如果不是痛恨那句著名的废话: 经济基础决定上层建筑, 上层建筑反过来影响经济基础–我不会想到来讨论这个大题目, 因为很显然, 这种大题目不是一篇短文所能承载的. 不过开始思考这个题目并跟朋友们做简单的交流之后, 我发现当这个题目以改头换面的形式出场的时候,一些莫名其妙的说法在很多人的认知中有相当高的”市场占有率”, 典型的有,”只要经济发展,专制政权就能维持”, “经济发展购买政治稳定”, “中共的政治合法性建立在经济发展之上”,权势阶层自己似乎认同这种说法, “发展是硬道理“ , 这种浅薄的实用主义哲学甚至演绎成为只要GDP增长达到8%, 中共统治就是稳固的. 

这种论断的推论就是经济发展不但产生不了民主, 甚至是阻碍了民主政治的发展. 这就不是什么决定什么的废话了,这已经是公然侮辱我们常识的胡话了. 这种胡话让人无法接受. 

分析这种说法， 很明显就看出这种论断的逻辑贫乏: 经济发展是事实, 中共继续维持统治是事实, 硬生生的把两个事实扯到一起, 并赋予因果联系, 这大概是一些人认知的通病. 再没有比这种逻辑更可笑的.

何增科先生的一段论述作为结尾.

“经济发展是民主政治发展最重要的动力机制。经济发展是现代化的核心内容，它促成了工业化、城市化、教育的普及、通讯的便捷、人口的大规模流动、收入水平的提高等。经济发展缔造了现代的工业社会。现代工业社会要求产生新的与之相适应的政治管理模式，传统的与农业社会相适应的政治管理模式的变革势在必行。源自经济发展的内在要求，成为推动政治发展与变革的决定性因素。同时，经济发展提高了大众的教育和文化水平，信息网络技术的发展和大众传播媒介的发达提高了公众的组织能力和行为能力，经济发展也为政治的发展与变革提供了物质技术基础。经济发展还加速了社会动员，后者是指人们所承担的绝大多数旧的社会、经济和心理义务受到侵蚀而崩溃，并开始逐渐获得新的社会化模式和行为模式的过程。城市化的发展，识字率的增加，大众传媒的商业化，交通通讯技术日益发达，深刻地改变着人们的生活方式和生活内容，人们开始告别传统，逐渐接受现代行为模式和价值观，并用现代价值观来评判政府和官员的行为和积极要求参与政治生活。社会动员所造就的新的政治生态，为政治系统的重新整合提供了基础、契机和动力。”

Racing against Terror

By Zhou Qing

Honorable Mr. President,
Honorable Delegates of PEN Centers
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Good Afternoon. I am very much grateful to the Italian PEN for your invitation of me to this conference in such a beautiful city – Milan. It is the first time for me to have attended a conference as a writer after 17 years of being labeled as a dangerous element by the Communist Party in China since I was arrested in the wake of June Fourth Massacre in 1989. The reason that I am here emphasizing my identity as a writer is not only because this opportunity may be considered as a comfort and compensation to my inhuman life in the jail for two years and eight months, where I lost six teeth and got a permanent cripple arm, but also because my personality have been defined as a fearful carrier of viruses in the society of China. As a matter of fact, I started writing in early 1980s and got a prize for my publication even at my teenage. I have never stopped my writing since my release from jail, and ever nominated for some International literature awards for several times.
Since I was released from jail, my name has not been allowed to appear in the media in Mainland China for a considerably long time. When it appeared for the first time, the character of my given name had to be split into two parts as Jing-li. Chinese literati had been known to preserve a tradition that one should not change ones name in whatsoever situation. In todays China, however, the authorities have screened the names of many writers as carefully as to prevent the pestilences from occurring. More dreadfully, a few members of the Independent Chinese PEN have been severely sentenced in prison just for their different opinions from those of the Chinese Communist authority.
On the contrary, if one could behave oneself obediently toward the Chinese communist authority, a writer in such a corrupted state of authoritarianism would get unthinkable material comforts and spiritual debauchery from it. For instance, a woman communist writer is said to have got a authors remuneration 10 times higher than the normal one for a short story of hers despite being a privileged author who has already enjoyed, even if she would do nothing any more, a good salary, a big apartment, a full job insurance and other benefits which the most of Chinese citizens cannot have. What would such a writer say about the situation in China? What would the Chinese Communist regime do for such a kind of hack writers? To the second question, the cultural and propaganda departments of the Chinese Communist regime have done utmost to support and propagandize them both in China and abroad. There are famous writers, such as Yu Hua and Mo Yan, who have being written the complementary works without any troubles in China, and who, at the same time, have also be nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. Their identities as a member of the Chinese Communist Party, or even a member of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultation Committee, have however be completely ignored by the Western society. Therefore, they have chances to eat every thing, enjoying not only the governmental banquets at the Peoples Congress in China but also the great culture meals abroad. An extreme case is Mr. Yu Hua who visited Italy not long ago, as you might have known. He announced to the Italian media that publication in China is now very liberal, and that his publication has never been censored at all, bla, bla. That was of cause a ridiculous announcement. Hence, I would like to express my respect to Italy PEN again for giving this opportunity to a member of Chinese Independent PEN in the present Italian-Chinese Culture Year.
When I am now writing this, as a matter of fact, I am still wondering whether or not I will finally be present at thi conference. It is well known that many Chinese writers, particularly members of our Chinese Independent PEN Center, such as our president Dr. Liu Xiaobo, are not permitted by the Chinese government to be abroad for participation in any activity or even for a private tour. At the end of 1999 when I returned from a visit to Russia, I was detained at the border in Xinjiang Autonomous Region for more than ten days. The reason could be only that I was not supposed to have returned to China.
I believe that terrifying and lying are the two most important tools that all the totalitarian states have employed to maintain their legitimacy and continuity. The dictators can always take their advantages in controlling the resources almost in a whole society to occupy, override and threaten the private spaces of the society and its citizens at any costs. Those in power have just made use of the common fears of publics to protect their interests obtained from corruption and preserve their sources of continual corruption. Meanwhile, they constantly produce lies to distort the history and reality. The terrors and lies are spreading over whole China so as to seriously pollute and drug the people in various social groups and the society as a whole. Hence, I define it as the State Terrorism.
It is during the past 17 years since June Forth Massacre in 1989 that this State Terrorism has been getting more and more threatening so as to reach the peak of degenerating Chinese people as a whole. The State Terrorism behaves like a carrier of virus. As it extends and expands without limitation, it will finally devour all the living spaces of the people, freedom of expression, and future as well as spiritual development. Now, I will tell you the story of my life during the past 17 years, both inside and outside jail to explain State Terrorism. I believe that my case should be a vivid example for realizing and understanding the situation in China, particularly for a writer there.
In 1989, I was studying in a class of writers at university before the massacre. When the student petition movement was touched off by the death of the former Party General Secretary Mr. Hu Yaobang, my indifferent and indolent life was turned to become intensive and meaningful accordingly. I wrote and put up a poster to protest the editorial of Peoples Daily published on the 26th of April 1989 that condemned the student petition movement. This poster became therefore the root for later persecution against me. When I was sentenced to jail, the first item of my crime in my court verdict was that I had illegally published a newsletter of Democracy and Freedom, for which I was the chief editor, with a printout of 1000 copies. Moreover, I had drafted several posters for the students, mobilizing the students strike, etc. Obviously, this is a typical case of persecution because of expressing ones opinion.
In the wake of the June Forth Massacre, I fled though completely penniless. A student gave me some money from the earlier donation. An unlettered peasant couple also helped me on my way of fleeing and said: We can see that you must be a student, and so please hide at our home. If the police come, we will let our dogs face them while you will escape from our back door to the mountains. However, I was aimless in my fleeing and also very much worried about my girlfriend at the Xian Jiaotong University. Therefore I decided to return to Xian, just for a look at her.
I was beaten down in front of the gate of the University. What I faced was various types of guns pointing at me. I was immediately punished by handcuffing my thumbs. Seeing the blood full of my face, my girlfriend helplessly screamed for help, A student being arrested! A student being arrested! but none of the students playing football nearby appeared to care of it.
My first place in jail was the detention center at the Fifth Department of Xian Public Security Bureau. That was the most infamous one amongst all the ails in China where most of the prisoners had handcuffs and shackles for they were waiting to be executed. There I accompanied more than 30 of them.
The director of the detention center had a nickname as Tiger Wang. He often broadcasted like this: I will make you a subject for three changes! Your wife will change her husband
, your son will change his surname, and you from dog fucking will change your mind!
As so many were locked up in the same cell, fights, tortures and sexual attacks among the prisoners have frequently been happening. There were many prisoners sentenced to death for different types of crimes who enjoyed overriding, beating and humiliating the others. The student prisoners like me were often the victims of those attacks. We had to fight back to defend ourselves since the detention administration often neglected those attacks intentionally. Once with a wooden piece, I broke the head of a death-sentenced prisoner who had always humiliated the student prisoners. However, the police punished me by handcuffing my hands tightly behind my back. I could neither eat nor sleep. The only way to survive was to be fed up by kind roommates. After six days of such punishment, I could hardly withdraw my hands from my back.
There were many different kinds of tortures amongst the prisoners. It is never possible for anyone in a normal and rational society to imagine how brutal these tortures could be. One of the tortures was called vaccination carried out during the summer time. It was to make a cut on an arm of the victim, and then put many fleas, bugs and cooties into the wound. After several days, the victim became vaccinated with a reluctance swelling on the wound like a tomato. But there were hundreds of visible bugs moving inside. It was really terrible.
Another brutal torture was beating ones buttocks with a plastic hose until they became heavy swelled. I witnessed that a prisoner was tortured in this way to a very severe extent just for his smoking without permission. He died of the infection of his wound but his death was certified as a natural one due to some disease.
On 26th of September, 1990, I was transferred to a Labor Camp for so called Reeducation-through-Labor (Laodong Jiaoyang) in Fengxiang County, Shaanxi Province. There had been more than one hundred prisoners in its June Forth Special Team, prior to my arrival. The prisoners were teachers, engineers, students, workers as well as hoboes and beggars. In November of the same year, I learnt from the only newspaper available in jail that the Communist regime made its most efforts for the prolongation of so-called Most-Favored-Nation statue from USA. They pulished such a statement day by day as to claim that nobody was locked up in jail any more for the June Forth Movement. Due to the lack of information in jail, I thought that the international society must have been cheated by such a lie and that Chinese intellectuals had been too weak and obidient to do anything againt it. Under such a completely closed circumstance, this radical mentality of mine became more emotional. Then I made an extrem decision that I should set a presendent to escape from the Labor Camp and then flee abroad. Then I could tell the world the truth.
Accordingly I started looking for partners of jailbreak. Mr. He was a group leader among the prisoners. He told me that he wanted to escape as well, because he was missing his girlfriend. I thought he maight be a good partner since he was a group leader who had much more convienience to get necessary tools than I had. There was another man who was just arrested from a former jailbreak. So there became a team of three persons for jailbreak.
The plane for jailbreak was carried out as such. The group leader, Mr. He, was able to get a piece of steel-saw hidden in a sausage transported into the jail. My responsibility was to saw off the sticks of the security fence on the window. I had also utilized my bed heet, to make an eight-meters long rope together with my two partners, which would be utilized to get over the high wall of the prison.
All in a sudden, four hours before the planed moment, a group of fierce policemen rushed into our cell. They easily discovered the off-sawed window fence, as well as the eight-meters-long rope. I was immediately put into a isolated cell with heavy guards. The rest of the prisoners held a meeting, and decided to burden me for any charge. I realized later on that the so-called team of three for jailbreak was a trap from the beginning.
The consequence of this attempt of jailbreak was obvious. I was guarded in an isolation cell for a long time, and then punished with a prolongation of my imprisonment for five months. The reasons for prolongation of imprisonment were given as follows:
· Bad and stubborn attitude in the isolation cell;
· Refusing to confess my crime of jailbreak;
· Singing and shouting loudly to disturb the integrations;
· Spreading continuously in the Labor Camp my arguments against the June Forth Massacre in 1989;
· Collecting a name list of imprisoned students and teachers and trying to get it out of the Labor Camp.
Hence, I spent two years and eight months in jail.
As soon as I was released from the jail, I was carefully watched in the society. For instance, I was told that I must stay at home for several days because the President Bill Clinton was visiting China. I became furious and told the police, Bill Clintons visit must not disturb my ordinary life. If you continue to tail me, I will disturb Mr. Clinton as well! Later on, a kind neighbor told me that there had been several new peddlers and strange cars around our house during these days. They were all from the security police.
It has been rather often that I was forced to have a tourist trip escorted by policemen outside Xian during the so-called sensitive periods. They just guarded my door to prevent my disappearance from their sight. I tried once to travel to Zhangjiajie city located in another province, without telling anybody. However, I surprisingly encountered two policemen who were in charge of my case in Xian, on the third days after my arrival. This was not an easy job for them to find me in such a city with a population of three million people. However, they got plenty of policemen to trace me with my photo in hands.
Last year when I tried to help a friend from USA to publish a series of books on Christianity, the police questioned all the related persons, including a car driver.
The policemen watched me as careful as possible. They told me that their attitudes ware never to believe me for any of my publications. At the middle of 1990s, I was in charge of publishing a newspaper entitled Historical Tale. Then they threatened me to shut down the newspaper immediately. Otherwise they would do it themselves, because I was not worth to be trusted, even if there are full pages of a slogan such as Long live the Chinese Communist Party on my newspaper.
In short, I have suffered fears and turbulence day by day in the past 17 years. Yet, all of my family members and friends suffered from inquisition, disturbing and even threats. Naturally, I have to continue to face with the terrors, in the future.
I am telling the stories of my experience just for a surprising and unbelievable truth that I found by chance, that is, all of my sufferings for so many years have been related to the words. I therefore realize that whenever the writers are subjected to terror in a country, the regime must be based on a national terrorism. This has been thoroughly proved in history, from Hitlers Germany to Stalins Soviet Union, from Mao Zedongs China to Saddam Husseins Iraq, as well as todays Cuba, North Korea and my homeland.
My opinion is that it is much more important to recover and repair the humanity which has been distorted by the dictatorship, than to face with the ational terrorism. Please allow me to explain with the example of the Pro-democratic Movement in 1989. During the Movement, there was a very special period from 15th April to the end of May. The people appeared to be extremely self-disciplined though no police carried out their duty by intention. There was not a single case of serious crime happed almost in the whole country during such a long time. Even the thiefs published poster of suspending stealing in order to support the students.
Nonetheless, The extreme high sel
f-discipline society turned immediately into a prosecution movement, as soon as the gun fire broke out against the students. In the prosecutions, people disclosed and betraied each other, so that it became a new kind of terrors among the people. Homo lupus homini One is a wolf to other. This has been the strategy of the Chinese nation. This is also the great success of the long-term rule over China by the Communist Party. All the people became slaves of the dictatorship system. I therefore believe that the dictatorship is the natural enemy of the civilized society. It is also the most terrible threats against democracy, freedom and global orders.
To live in China at the moment means that one must race with terror, particularly for a writer. We utilize our ration to face and struggle against the terrors, so as to achieve the slight improvement. Chinese Independent PEN Center and its Writers in Prison Committee have just been organized for such a racing with terror. It makes its best effort to care and rescue the writers from the terrors.
Finally, I believe that there must be a public space in human society which is shared by everybody. In this space, the strengths of goodness and evil are always competing. As a writer, I believe that any kind of freedom is first and foremost derived from the expression of freedom. To write in freedom is also a challenge against the living status under the dictatorship. Though we fail often, we will continue to fight for the freedom of writing and expression!
Thank you!

(Translated by Dr. Minhai Gui)

曾 鹏
浙江工商大学公共管理学院讲师，社会工作博士生
戴利朝
江西师范大学助理研究员，社会学博士
罗观翠
中