1988.05 方励之。中国的安德烈-萨哈罗夫

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方励之。中国的安德烈-萨哈罗夫
天体物理学家方励之的演讲激发了学生的热情，为中国的政治话语提供了新的深度，尽管他已被开除出中国共产党，但他的影响力却丝毫不减。

作者：Orville Schell
1988年5月号



1986年秋天，当我在离开6个月后回到北京时，很难不为政治气候的突然变化而感到迷茫。在过去的春天和夏天，政治和知识界的生活开始解冻，其程度是中国共产党在1949年执政以来前所未有的。在中国最高领导人邓小平于1978年发起的经济改革和对外开放的大胆计划之后，党对经济、知识和政治生活的控制有所放松，这使中国人充满了令人振奋的新的可能性。对个人主义和言论自由的日益宽容反映了中国新一代具有改革意识的领导人令人惊讶但又日益坚定的信念，即除非能找到一些戏剧性的方法来重新激发人民的活力并赢得他们对经济发展新动力的自愿参与，否则他们的国家在现代化的努力中永远不会成功。政治改革和民主化成为他们新的号召力。但是，对于老一辈的强硬派毛泽东主义者来说，他们一生都在为一种非常不同的革命而奋斗--一种强调中央集权和党的纪律，而不是个人主动性和民主的革命--这种最新的改革浪潮充其量只是一种不受欢迎的破坏，最坏的情况是一种危险的叛教形式。当年轻的改革者热情地注视着官方出版物开始绽放出主张言论和新闻自由、政府权力分离和保护人权的文章，当知识分子公开呼吁中国生活的几乎所有方面实现民主化时，革命的强硬派不高兴地看着，等待一个有利的时机进行反击。


许多高级知识分子对过于自由的言论怀有深深的戒心，而镇压则以一种可怕的必然性结束了中国共产党历史上所有的自由主义插曲。虽然到了秋天，可接受的政治话语的界限确实比以前更宽了，但大多数知识分子还是谨慎地继续努力保持在党的宽容的难以捉摸的范围内。但也有少数人，似乎不顾自己的前途，敢于公开发表意见。其中最有发言权的是一位名叫方励之的五十二岁的国际知名天体物理学家，到去年，他已经成为整个中国的传奇人物，因为他有力地呼吁民主，并直言不讳地公开他的信念。

去年秋天，当我在方励之的北京公寓里第一次见到他时，他给我留下的印象是他的好脾气和无耻。他笑得很轻松--一种富有感染力的笑声，在毫无预谋的欢笑声中，自发地变成了一种类似抱怨的声音，带着一切。他穿得很简单，一件针织衫，一件斜纹软呢大衣，和一条永久性的冲压长裤。玳瑁色的眼镜让他看起来有点像猫头鹰。他给人的最初印象是平凡无奇--直到他开始说话。然后我立刻感觉到，我面前的这个人不仅有敏锐的智慧和信念，而且有无畏的精神。我和他在一起的时间越长，这种品质就越让我吃惊。方舟子的无畏远不是作为一种抵制恐吓的手段而采取的研究姿态，他的无畏似乎深深扎根于他的个性中，尽管他有明显的自信，但却没有任何傲慢的暗示。我很少见过这样一个人，尽管他处于激烈和危险的全国性争论的中心--共产党把前一个冬天的学生示威归咎于他经常对学生团体的演讲，他在演讲中公开倡导西方民主--但他缺乏那种论战的能量，这种能量往往使较小的狂热者变得尖锐和自我辩解。虽然方明远显然非常关心中国的民主事业，但他不是一个把它强加给任何人的人；虽然他一生都在政治上受到迫害，但他的政治中没有一丝怨恨或不满。他所支持的东西比他所反对的东西更有优势，以至于敌人的概念在他的知识、政治和情感词汇中似乎完全陌生。

我在中国的经历中，与他在一起的时候，奇怪的是他完全没有自我审查，而这种自我审查使他那一代的许多中国知识分子无法说出自己的想法。方舟子从不以通常的微妙（而且经常是无意识的）对当时官方政治路线的屈服来压制他的思想和感受，他如此公开地谈论他的想法和他的信念，以至于人们不得不抑制住警告他这种坦率的危险的冲动。

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事实上，这样的警告来自很多方面，但方舟子对这些警告不以为然。"我说过的每句话都是公开的，"方明远告诉我。"我没有什么可隐藏的。既然我已经在公开场合多次说过我所相信的一切，那么现在在私下里试图隐藏事情又有什么意义呢？"

讲述这许多次就是讲他的人生故事，他的人生始于1936年的北京，当时他出生在一个来自杭州的邮递员家庭。他于1952年进入北京大学（北大），作为理论和核物理的学生，尽管他很快就作为一个异常有能力的科学家脱颖而出，但政治对他来说与他的学业同样重要。1955年2月的一天，在共青团大学部（一个为年轻人安排政治和娱乐活动的组织，任何想成为党员的人都必须加入）的成立大会上，他第一次与政治异见者有了接触的记录。在北大行政楼的礼堂里，物理系的团支部书记在集会上发言，刚开始讨论团组织在激发中国青年的理想主义方面的作用时，当时19岁的学生方励志冲上台去，表示他想发言。

"我们物理系的一些学生认为会议太沉闷了，只是很多形式主义的发言，"方立志说。"所以我们决定让气氛活跃一些。当我们的支部书记发言的时候，他让我表达我的意见，因为我的声音最大。" 从书记手中接过舞台，方明远将讨论转向了中国教育系统的一般议题。"我说，这样的会议完全没有意义。我问我们在培养什么样的人，而我们应该做的是训练人们独立思考。仅仅拥有三好[健康、良好的学习方法和良好的工作]是一个如此令人沮丧的概念，几乎不足以激励任何人。

"我发言后，会议完全陷入了混乱。第二天，作为北京大学学生思想工作的最高负责人，党委书记讲了一整天。他说，虽然独立思考当然很好，但学生应该静下心来学习。"

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尽管他对政治有吸引力，但事实上，方舟子确实安下心来学习，在北大获得了全优成绩。在那里，他遇到了他未来的妻子李淑贤，她是物理系的同学，她最终加入了物理系成为一名教员。1956年，20岁的方舟子从北大毕业，被分配到中国科学院的现代物理研究所工作。但一年后，反右运动开始了，在之前的百花运动中发声的中国知识分子受到了无情的迫害。因为他写了一篇长篇纪念文章，论述了改革中国教育制度的必要性，以便政治不会扼杀科学研究，方舟子受到了严厉的批评。与其他许多受到压力的知识分子不同，他拒绝否认他被指控的错误行为，并于1957年被开除出党。

"在反右运动后的很长一段时间里，我继续相信共产主义，"方舟子告诉我。"即使在我被开除出党后，我仍然对毛主席有信心，相信一定是我错了。"

无论是否错误，作为一个有前途的年轻科学家，他在中国早期的工业化努力中非常需要，并被允许保留他在现代物理研究所的职位。最终他甚至被派去帮助组织科技大学（科大讯飞，简称科大）的一个新的物理系，当时科大刚刚在北京成立。在接下来的几年里，在教授量子力学和电磁学课程的同时，方舟子还进行了固态和激光物理学的研究。尽管他以前有政治麻烦，但由于他在其领域的明显天赋，1963年他被提升为讲师。

但是，当方舟子的生活和事业开始恢复正常时，文化大革命在1966年爆发了，像许多其他中国知识分子一样。方舟子再次触犯了政治。这一次，他被作为一个 "反动分子 "进行 "斗争"，并被监禁在牛棚，或 "牛棚"--一种红卫兵经常为 "臭九类"（毛派将中国社会分为九类）的知识分子选择的单独监禁形式。经过一年的监禁，他被释放并被 "下放到 "安徽省的农村，与农民一起工作。在这里，由于可获得的科学书籍太少，他被迫改变了学术工作的重点，专注于相对论和理论天体物理学的研究。

"我只带了一本书--苏联物理学家Lev Landau的《经典场论》，"方舟子告诉我。"六个月来，我什么都没做，只是一遍又一遍地读这本书。仅仅是这个奇怪的偶然事件，就使我从固体物理学转向了宇宙学领域。

"就在那时，我开始感觉到，也许毛泽东对国家并不是那么好。但因为当时我们大多数知识分子仍然相信共产主义，所以我们就有了一个困难的问题。如果不跟随毛泽东，我们应该跟随谁？当然，没有其他人，他是所有理想主义的化身。

"文化大革命开始后，一切都变得更加清晰了。我意识到，党没有说实话，他们实际上一直在欺骗人们，我不应该再相信他们。你看，在我年轻的时候，对国家的义务感、责任感和忠诚度就已经被灌输给我了，但我看到周围的情况，让我觉得领导人并没有同样关心国家，没有对人民承担起责任。"

1969年，当科学院开始将科大的几个本科系从北京迁往安徽省会合肥时，方舟子和其他几十位被打上右派标签的学者一起被流放。在合肥，方舟子开始研究和教授天体物理学，但由于笼罩在他头上的政治阴云，他只能用假名发表他的研究成果。


直到1978年，四人帮倒台两年后，他才完全恢复名誉。此时，他重新获得了党员身份，并在科大获得了终身教职，此后不久成为中国最年轻的正教授。从科学的角度来看，接下来的几年也许是他最具创造性的时期。方舟子对早期宇宙学越来越感兴趣，开始频繁地发表关于这个主题的文章，现在以他自己的名字发表。(1980年，他在科大的声望导致他被选为基础物理系主任，在教员的120张选票中占90%以上。然而，他在政治上的进步观点和直言不讳的态度继续导致党内对他的不信任。由于一位教授的秘密报告指责他的政治可靠性，方舟子虽然多次被提名为科技大学的副校长，但被拒绝。

最终对方舟子影响最深的是他对政治的阅读和他在国外的旅行，由于邓小平的开放政策，这成为可能。1978年，方舟子第一次离开中国，参加在慕尼黑举行的相对论天体物理学会议。随后的旅行把他带到了梵蒂冈，参加一个宇宙学会议；到哥伦比亚的波哥大参加另一个会议；到意大利，作为罗马大学的访问教授；到英国，作为剑桥大学天文学研究所的高级访问学者；到日本，作为京都大学基础物理研究所的访问教授；最后到美国，从1986年3月到7月，他在普林斯顿高等研究所居住。这些海外旅行深深影响了方舟子看待中国社会主义制度和知识分子在其中的作用的方式。


尽管多年来受到政治骚扰，并不时地与世界科学界几乎完全隔绝，方舟子现在已经成为来自人民共和国的极少数科学家之一，得到了如此的国际科学关注和赞誉。方舟子对教育、哲学和政治以及科学的兴趣更加不同寻常--这些兴趣来自于他的信念，即在任何真正有创造力的头脑中，科学和哲学（他认为政治是其延伸）是不可分割地结合在一起。

正如科学研究是见证自然界真理的一种方式一样，方文山认为，知识和政治探索也是见证政治和社会世界真理的方式。

1986年12月，作家戴晴在《光明日报》上接受采访时，解释了他希望科学家作为知识分子在现代中国的发展中发挥特殊作用的概念。他指出，就他自己而言，具有预言性的是，"几乎总是自然科学家最先意识到每一次社会危机的出现。然后，他显然是在套用爱因斯坦的话，宣称："科学家必须表达他们对社会各个方面的感受，特别是当不合理的、错误的或邪恶的事情出现时。如果他们不这样做，他们将被认为是帮凶。"

方舟子对大多数中国教育机构幽闭的知识氛围的补救措施是诚实和无情地审查其缺点。"他对戴晴说："新理论的出现和发展需要在大学里创造一种民主和自由的气氛。"在大学里，不应该有任何东西......不允许质疑它必须坚持的原因。不应允许任何学说以先验的方式占据领导或指导地位。"

当他试图发挥他作为 "文明的良心 "的作用时，方舟子开始公开说的最令人震惊的事情之一是，社会主义作为一种意识形态对中国来说是过时的。"当我第一次说这句话时，早在1980年，主管科学和技术的副总理方毅把我叫去，批评了我，"有一天，方励之笑着告诉我。"他说，'你怎么能说这样的话？我回答说，'我说了，因为我相信它。他说，'好吧，我甚至可以说，我同意你的观点，但一个人不能直接说出来，说这样的话！'"

方立志成为领导人

1984年，方励之终于被提升为科技大学副校长，物理学同事关维扬被任命为校长。很明显，方立志的明星现在正在上升。中国中央领导层中的自由改革派很快就努力提名方舟子担任省级高级职务，甚至授予他党的中央委员会成员资格--尽管他拒绝维护党的纪律和宣传党的神话。

第二年，教育部发布了一份报告，"中国教育结构改革"，呼吁对中国的大学系统进行巨大的改革。报告建议由学术委员会选举行政人员担任高级职务，而不是由党任命。方和关设计并提出了一个激进的计划，在科大横向重新分配权力。与其将所有权力集中在高层管理者手中，让他们控制研究经费、学位授予和教师晋升，不如将这些职能分散到特别委员会和各系本身。

计划中提出的第二项改革涉及建立教职员工对所有行政会议进行审计的权利。方明远认为，既然社会主义制度声称让人民成为自己国家的主人，人民就应该有权知道他们的领导人在做什么。这对方明远来说是一个特别重要的概念，因为他认为中国社会的一个主要缺陷是，在缺乏监督规定的情况下，问题和怨气堆积起来得不到解决，直到任何特定的情况成为爆炸性事件。

方志敏和管仲关注的第三个改革领域是自由言论。他们希望坚定地确立学生和教职员工的权利，不仅是在校园里发表言论，而且要保持不受更微妙但不一定是更糟糕的意识形态压制。方和关希望在科大创造一个开放的学术和政治环境，因为在他们看来，多样性是需要培养的，而不是压制的，他们坚信，任何人都应该能够在校园里张贴传单和举行活动，而不必事先寻求某些更高的当局的批准。

这的确是对学术自由的大胆设想，是中华人民共和国从未了解过的。但方和关并没有就此止步。为了促进具有世界性的开放，他们还寻求与外部世界建立尽可能多的联系。到1986年底，有900多名科大的教师和学生被派往国外访问、讲学和学习，有200多名外国学者访问了科大。与美国、日本、英国、意大利和法国的教育机构建立了交流项目。

方舟子在这一改革进程中的经历使他相信，他在中国能够承担的最有意义的任务不是科学研究，而是推动国家教育系统的变革。"当被问及他的未来计划时，他以其一贯的直接态度说："我决心创造知识和学术自由--这将是我的首要任务。在西方民主国家，知识和学术自由等传统被认为是理所当然的，这样的声明可能听起来很平常，但在中国刚刚结束文化大革命的时候，从一个大学副校长口中说出来，他的话有向党的强硬派抛出橄榄枝的效果。

此外，当方明远在科大帮助制定这些教育改革时，他绝不是将自己与整个国家更广泛的政治问题和潮流隔绝。事实上，在1985年和1986年，无论何时何地，只要有公开的政治讨论或发酵，方志敏似乎就会出现，这种习惯一定会引起党内那些强硬派的惊愕，他们对 "群众路线 "的概念从未包括激进的教育改革，更不用说由方志敏这样的自由思想家领导的自发的中国生活民主化的政治运动。

1985年11月4日，在一个激动人心的、自由的、有时甚至是幽默的演讲中，方舟子鼓励学生坚持他们的社会关注和政治活动，如果在中国找不到的话，就到西方寻找新的知识承诺模式。在谈到中国落后的大问题和他对中国未来的希望时，方舟子宣称

"......今天我们的国家存在着一种社会弊病，其主要原因是党员的不良榜样。党的领导人的不道德行为尤其应该受到谴责。这种情况显然需要知识分子采取行动，...."
"......我们有义务为改善社会而努力....，这要求我们在必要时打破社会约束的束缚。在过去的三十年里，创造性没有得到鼓励，因为它符合中国的传统。令人遗憾的是，因此，中国还没有产生值得考虑获得诺贝尔奖的作品。为什么会这样呢......"
造成这种情况的一个原因是我们的社会环境。我们中许多去过外国学习或工作的人都同意，我们在国外可以比在中国更有效、更有成效地工作....，外国人并不比我们中国人更聪明。那么，为什么我们不能产生一流的工作？我们无法发挥潜力的原因在于我们的社会制度....[本译文及后面几译文为《中国之春文摘》所译]"。
将中国的落后归咎于其社会的封闭性，方舟子继续说。

"......我们有些人不敢说出来。但是如果我们都说出来，就没有什么好怕的了。这肯定是我们缺乏理想主义和纪律的一个重要原因。
"另一个原因是，多年来我们对共产主义的宣传有严重的缺陷，....，必须为人类文明中表现出来的各种优秀的东西留出空间。我们狭隘的宣传似乎暗示，....，在我们之前出现的任何东西都没有任何优点。这是最没有价值和破坏性的宣传形式。宣传可以用来赞美共产主义英雄，但不应该用来拆毁其他英雄....。
"我们共产党员应该对不同的思维方式持开放态度。我们应该对不同的文化持开放态度，并愿意采纳那些明显具有优势的文化元素。在学院和大学里应该允许思想的极大多样性。因为如果所有的思想都是狭隘和简单的，创造力就会消亡。目前，肯定有一些当权者仍然坚持按照自己狭隘的原则对他人发号施令，....
"我们决不能害怕公开谈论这些事情。事实上，这是我们的责任。如果我们保持沉默，我们就会辜负我们的责任。"
北大的学生们以前从未听过一位受人尊敬的教员这样公开讲话，而方的效果是令人振奋的。此外，这只是方立志在接下来的一年里所做的许多演讲中的一个，因为他在其他城市旅行，很快就为自己赢得了中国最重要的自由思想家的声誉。方励之是后毛泽东时代中国的一个奇特人物。他的演讲内容使人很难记住他仍然是中国共产党的一员，在那里，纪律和服从是一如既往的关键词。

同时，方和关在科大的改革是如此成功，以至于官方的党报《人民日报》被中国新的民主思想所吸引，在1986年10月和11月连续发表了五篇文章，以最赞美的方式描述他们，此举相当于给他们盖上了党的印章。事实上，作者卢方对他在科大的所见所闻印象深刻，从第一篇文章的第一句话开始，他似乎就无法控制自己的热情。他没有像这种类型的新闻专题所要求的那样，用一连串的事实和统计数字来介绍他的主题，而是直接进入主题，开始说："在我的科达之行中，我到处都呼吸着民主的空气。" 吕先生接着赞扬了大学的开放性和 "不受约束的氛围"，在这种氛围中，学生和教师一起工作。

在那些民主对话的光辉岁月里，即使是中国最温暖的政治气候也会突然结冰，《人民日报》在那年秋天发表了另一篇文章，反问人们是否担心科大的教育改革激进实验有一天会被打成 "全盘西化"，这是党内强硬派用来描述任何明显的西方现象的贬义词。"也许有人会提出这个问题，"文章继续回答自己。"在运用'分权制衡'的制度来管理一所大学时，难道不总是有一些被怀疑为模仿西方资本主义的危险？但是，科大采用的方法实际上是符合党中央关于'把民主化实际应用到社会生活的各个方面'的指示。它们符合规定了学术自由的宪法。这[民主]并不是在这里'偷偷摸摸地走后门'。我们不应该对此有任何怀疑"。

人民日报》上的这些文章的效果是把科大变成了一个官方的新的后毛泽东时代的示范大学，并把关和方提升到半官方的民族英雄的地位。聚光灯的照射，远没有像一些知识分子那样让方舟子陷入沉默，似乎也没有让他感到不安。11月，上海的《世界经济导报》刊登了一篇文章，引用方舟子的话说，中国的知识分子 "缺乏自己的独立心态和价值标准，总是屈服于权力，把自己的前途与官场生涯联系在一起......而一旦他们自己成为官员，许多知识分子的态度就会从对上级的绝对服从变成绝对自负。他们压制和攻击其他知识分子"。

方舟子继续呼吁知识分子重塑自己，不要一味地顺从上面的人，而要 "挺直他们弯曲的腰杆"。然后，仿佛他已经对老一代人感到绝望，他最后呼吁中国人 "把希望寄托在那些在1980年代成长起来的年轻知识分子身上"。

讨伐教育改革是一回事，甚至讨论民主、人权或抽象的制衡也是一回事，但在这里，方励之含蓄地呼吁年轻的知识分子（也包括他的学术同行）对党的权力形成强有力的新制衡。这的确是一个大胆的挑战，因为方立志似乎在暗示，党未能从内部进行改革，现在有理由从外部施加压力。

学生们把方志敏的任务当作自己的任务

任何人都可以明显看出，学生们被方明远深深吸引，不仅因为他的智慧、坦率和不敬业，还因为他愿意说出名字。从来没有一个领导人对他们如此毫无顾忌地谈论党的浮夸、偏袒、偏见，甚至腐败。党可能会容忍他对明显的虚伪行为，如宪法保障了它不准备捍卫的权利，但它几乎不能容忍他对高级官员的直接攻击。

例如，1985年，方明远公开谴责北京副市长张百发，因为他试图加入一个科学代表团，该代表团被邀请出席在纽约州举行的同步辐射会议。方志敏了解到这一情况，因为中国唯一的同步辐射器是由他自己的大学和北京的高能物理研究所共同运作的。方舟子拒绝忽视党内精英的这种公费旅游和铺张浪费行为，并愿意将此类案件提交给学生活动家注意，使他成为对此类行为感到厌恶的年轻知识分子的最爱。

当党的高级领导人批评他的亵渎行为时，方舟子回答说："至于张百发侵占本应属于大学的会议席位，我只想问问他对同步加速器了解多少？他是否愿意接受测试？" 由于他对副市长的攻击，方舟子原计划于1986年1月前往高等研究院的行程突然被取消。直到两个月后，仍然拒绝忏悔的方舟子终于被允许离开中国。

当年秋末从美国回到中国时，正值政治改革的呼吁达到高潮，方舟子前往中国几个城市，发表演讲，举行讨论小组，并接受采访。他对民主的呼吁比以往任何时候都更大胆、更不妥协，他的无畏精神也更加明显。11月期间，特别是在学生圈子里，方励志的名字被越来越多地提及。在北京、合肥、杭州、宁波、上海--无论他在哪里演讲--年轻人都在聆听、记录，甚至手抄他的演讲，并把它们发给全中国的朋友和学生团体，甚至发给在美国和欧洲学习的同事。中国学生几乎完全失去了他们父母那一代人在中国共产主义革命早期阶段的那种社会主义理想主义，现在似乎正处在一个全新的信仰体系的悬崖边。在20世纪80年代的意识形态真空中，他们渴求有人和有东西可以相信。就像这些年轻的中国人崇拜西方的电器、风格、文化和技术一样，现在他们开始着迷于西方的政治思想和 "主义"。在这些年轻的中国知识分子中，有许多人被方励之所宣扬的民主福音所吸引，这一点最能说明马列主义和毛泽东思想的贫乏性。

当党组织一再敦促方立志淡化他的信息时，他拒绝了，甚至对邓小平神圣的四项基本原则开了一两枪，这些原则坚持社会主义、人民民主专政、共产党的领导，以及马列主义-毛泽东思想。当被问及如何看待这些原则时，他回答说，尽管他意识到这些原则是 "政治领导层的信仰条款"，但他更喜欢四项不同的原则，即 "科学、民主、创造和独立"。他接着说，如果他的原则与党的原则相冲突，那只是因为后者 "主张迷信而不是科学，独裁而不是民主，保守而不是创造，依赖而不是独立。"

11月，方励之在上海发表了几次演讲。11月18日，他出现在同济大学的校园里，就民主、改革和现代化的主题向一群学生发表演讲，激起了他们反复的掌声。"我们现在对在中国实现现代化有一种强烈的紧迫感，"他对学生说。

"......中国的知识生活、物质文明、道德品质和政府都处于水深火热之中....，事实上，中国世界的各个方面都需要现代化....，就我自己而言，我认为全面开放是现代化的唯一途径。[值得注意的是，方舟子声称自己一直使用quanfangwei kaifang（"全方位开放"）一词，而不是quanpan xifanghua（"全盘西化"）。我相信这种彻底和全面的自由化，因为中国文化不仅在某个方面落后，而且在整体意义上是原始的，....，我们仍然远远落后于世界其他国家。 [长时间的掌声。]这不仅仅是我的观点，这是大家都能看到的。社会主义正处于低潮期。第二次世界大战后的社会主义国家没有一个是成功的，我们自己长达三十多年的社会主义试验也是如此，这是无法回避的事实......我在这里告诉大家，从马克思和列宁到斯大林和毛泽东的社会主义运动都是失败的....，清除我们头脑中所有的马克思主义教条是第一步...."
在对中国的社会主义守护神进行了这一毫不妥协的攻击之后，方舟子继续宣称。

"......我们必须通过吸收所有文化的影响来重塑我们的社会。我们不能做的是孤立自己，让我们的自负使我们相信，只有我们是正确的....。"
对于方舟子来说，民主的最 "关键部分 "是人权。

"....人权是人们从出生起就拥有的基本特权，如思考和受教育的权利，结婚的权利，等等。但我们中国人认为这些权利是危险的。虽然人权是普遍而具体的，但我们中国人把自由、平等和兄弟情谊与资本主义混为一谈，并以同样的措辞批评它们。如果我们是我们所说的民主国家，这些权利在这里应该比其他地方更强大，但目前它们不过是一个抽象的概念。[热烈的掌声] 。
"我觉得民主化的第一步应该是承认人权....，但是[在中国]民主化已经意味着上级对下级的执行，这是对民主的严重误解。[热烈的掌声。]我们的政府并没有仅仅通过放松我们的束缚来给我们民主。这只给了我们足够的自由，让我们的身体蠕动一下。[热烈的掌声。]通过法令获得的自由不适合被称为民主，因为......它不能提供最基本的人权....。
"在一个民主国家，民主源于个人，政府对他有责任....，我们必须让我们的政府认识到，它在经济上依赖于其公民，因为这是民主的基础。但中国的封建传统仍然很强；社会关系是由上级发起，下级接受的....
"其他社会的人认为，因偶然的怀疑而产生的刑事指控会损害人的尊严和隐私。另一方面，在中国，我向你告密不仅是正常的......而且被认为是一种积极的美德。尽管我不尊重民主和人权，但我的警觉性和对阶级斗争的贡献会受到赞扬，....。"
在重申了他的信念，即民主使人民而不是政府拥有主权之后，他继续重新定义了大学在中国社会的地位。

"......要把自己从政府和其他非智力机构的奴役中解放出来，只需要把知识看作是一个独立的有机体。但在中国却不是这样。我们的大学培养的是工具，而不是受过教育的人。[掌声）我们的毕业生不能为自己思考。他们很乐意成为别人的目的的温顺的工具。中国的知识分子还没有洗脱这种倾向....，知识应该独立于权力。它决不能屈服，因为知识一旦屈服于权力，就会失去其价值...."。
关于党对他直言不讳的压力，方舟子说。

"我已经听到了关于我的政治观点的抱怨，这很好。但我根本不会接受对我的科学研究的任何干预....，除非整个科学界都充满这种精神，否则民主将得不到保护。科学知识的产品应该用科学标准来评价。我们不应该被权力之风所动摇。只有这样，我们才能实现现代化，也只有这样，我们才能有真正的民主。"
方舟子的讲话，把他的许多同事的想法变成了文字，但却不敢在公开场合说出来，就像在整个党的思想控制的大厦下引爆了炸弹。在三十五年间，几乎所有的替代性或反对性思想都被压制，终于有一个人在发言时没有努力审查被禁止的内容，也没有把他的思想分成私人和公共的部分。由于方舟子和其他少数持不同政见者，包括刘宾雁和王若望，这些作家在党的持续迫害下，继续写下对党的渎职和愚蠢行为的揭露和批评，继续发言并提出看待党、中国和世界的其他方式，中国的政治话语获得了一个新的领域深度，一个三维空间，其中党的正统观念至少暂时失去了其垄断。

那年初冬，正当方舟子和许多其他中国知识分子开始表现出某种希望，认为中国可能在政治上成功地走向更大的民主化时，发生了一系列没有人预料的事件。从12月5日的合肥开始，到1月1日的北京，中国20个大城市突然出现了学生要求加快政治改革的示威活动。数以万计的抗议者手持标语牌和横幅涌入中国城市的街道，上面写着不要民主化，不要现代化，以及民有、民治、民享这样的口号。校园里挂满了宣扬反党情绪的墙报，如我有一个梦想，一个自由的梦想。我有一个民主的梦想。我有一个被赋予人权的生活的梦想。希望有一天，所有这些都不再是梦想。

党对政治混乱的幽灵感到震惊，反射性地采取行动，平息动乱，找出并根除其原因。在毛主义强硬派的怂恿下，党迅速发动了反击，因为学生起义是他们对改革最担心的体现。

党对方志敏和抗议活动的反应

去年1月初，学生示威刚刚结束，《安徽日报》（在科大所在地合肥出版）刊登了一篇文章，就像预先炮击软化敌人的目标一样，似乎是在为接下来更大的政治运动做准备。文章对最近的示威活动采取了出人意料的柔和路线，说学生 "对我们国家的命运和改革的未来的热情和关注是可以理解的。" 文章认为，最近动乱的真正责任在于其他方面--即 "极少数人煽动'资产阶级自由化'的潮流，宣传反对四项基本原则的观点，利用学生的热情和缺乏社会经验来达到他们的政治目的。"

就在前一年，《光明日报》还兴高采烈地宣称："我们的社会主义制度不仅不惧怕人们的言论，而且还鼓励他们这样做"，现在却气势汹汹地抨击过度西化的民主观念。1月11日，该报刊登了一篇标题为 "政治上的'全盘西化'意味着抛弃社会主义 "的评论，认为学生们是被某个不知名的 "某大学的副校长同志 "操纵着进行示威的。

1月12日，中国共产党中央委员会委员、中国科学院副院长周光召召集凯达学院的教师们开了一个特别会议。在大会议厅前排的最中央，有两个显眼的空座位。当会场陷入沉默时，周光召宣布，党中央和国务院已决定解除该校校长关维扬和副校长方励之的职务，并将他们分别调到首都的物理研究所和北京天文台。

在宣布这一政变后，周光召指责方立志 "散布了许多反映'资产阶级自由化'的错误言论"，并且背离了四项基本原则。他继续攻击说，方的 "试图摆脱党的领导，背离社会主义道路的办学思想给科大造成了极其恶劣的后果。这些错误的思想在最近这所大学的学生制造的骚乱中充分暴露出来"。

安徽省委书记李贵鲜的评价更加极端。他声称方舟子 "诽谤党的干部和领导，否定党在过去几十年的事业，诽谤和歪曲社会主义制度，在党和知识分子，特别是青年知识分子之间的关系中播下了不和谐的种子"。然后，以所有中国人都能识别的毛泽东方式，李克强开始直接对观众席上方的前同事说话，似乎提供了理解，但实际上提供了一个威胁。"应该指出的是，科大的大多数干部和教师都不赞成，而且许多同志坚决反对方励志的错误言行。有些同志在方励之的影响下可能发表了一些错误的言论，但今天他们认识到了自己的错误，并且改正了，这是一件好事。那几个到现在还没有这样做的同志，允许他们花一些时间来认识自己的错误，但必须遵守纪律。"


在接下来的几天里，官方媒体的文章对方志敏进行了抨击。这些攻击是如此无情、重复和夸张，以至于有时似乎党对说服自己的成员，更不用说其他知识分子，相信其行动的正义性感到绝望，除了通过其言辞的力量和数量。在方志敏被解职的第二天，邓小平在与当时的日本自民党秘书长、现在的日本总理竹下登会面时，点名批评了方志敏，以及刘宾雁和王若望，这消除了任何关于方志敏被解职的命令是否来自党的最高层的疑虑。

方志敏的下台在科大立即引起了反应。学生们组织了一次请愿活动，抗议他被解雇，并打出横幅："中国不能接纳像方励之这样的学者是中国的耻辱，先生。关先生和方先生。方先生，你们已经做出了牺牲。我们想念你们，希望我们能再次见到你们。当局宣布上访活动结束，并撕毁了横幅。

1月16日，在方志敏被解职的四天后，中国人震惊地听到党的总书记、被广泛认为是邓小平选定的接班人的胡耀邦被免职。但党并没有就此罢休。一周后，1月19日（似乎方志敏被开除在科大的职务还不足以使中国的系统摆脱他），安徽省委副书记徐乐义出现在晚间电视上，完成了新的清洗。在半小时的新闻广播中，有七分钟是他宣读安徽省委的声明，宣布方励志不仅失去了工作，还被开除出中国共产党。在随后的公报中，党组织列举了现在人们所熟悉的方立志的一连串 "极其严重 "的错误，每一个错误都有一串违规的语录作为支持。


方励之事件迅速成为中国的一个热点。在他被解职的几天内，外国媒体和北京的外交界人士都把他称为中国的萨哈罗夫。中国的知识分子，即使是那些不完全同意方舟子对国家民主的不妥协看法的人，也为他坚定不移的勇气而喝彩。中国共产党急于阻止这种对方志敏的崇拜，在媒体上对他进行了无情的宣传。即使是《人民日报》，在两个月前还因为方志敏和关国强在科大创建了一所模范大学而大加赞赏，现在却嘲笑他们，声称他们 "打着以民主方式办大学的旗号 "是 "把鱼目混珠"，让 "硫化铜伪装成黄金"。这当然不是中国出版物第一次被迫改变自己--当然，没有什么知识分子的堕落比一个作家或编辑被迫否定热情洋溢的公开表达的信念更糟糕--以保持其政治立场与党的路线平行。

方舟子对民主和人权的直言不讳的支持使党陷入困境，并使其显得严重的不一致。在过去的几年里，党曾在不同时期大力培养知识分子，不断呼吁更大的自由和民主，但现在似乎又打算再次迫害他们，这不能不使中国知识界的成员想起五十年代中期毛泽东号召百花运动后的反右派运动。有时，党似乎找不到 "黄金分割点"（zhongyong）--中国古典政治哲学家所推崇的中间道路--至少希望通过在两个极端之间快速来回摇摆，交替呵护和惩罚其知识分子来创造一种温和的视觉错觉。几个月后，我问方舟子，他是否相信在目前的条件下，民主化能够在中国发生，他回答说。"在中国，民主化的概念往往不过是权力游戏中的一个筹码。也许还有一些理想主义的领导人，但总的来说，大多数人都专注于权力斗争，他们把民主这样的概念作为击败对手的另一种手段。一方会说：'我支持改革，而你不支持，所以你不应该在这里！' 另一方会说，'不！改革是错误的，所以你不应该在这里！' 最后受害的是中国人民，因为他们被当作玩物。"

党对方的处理指出了其整个现代化计划中的矛盾，也指出了其过去的矛盾。如果中国要实现现代化，党就迫切需要把那些多年来与它疏远的学生和知识分子召集到它的事业中来。这一动员过程的关键因素包括给予他们更多的自由和打开中国对外的大门。党发现自己所处的困境是，伴随着外国资本、技术、科学、语言和管理技术而来的是外国的政治思想和价值观，这些思想和价值观在本质上挑战了一党统治的霸权，并导致了新毛主义的强硬反应，而方舟子和中国共产党历史上许多知识分子一样，都是这种反应的受害者。党该怎么做？是允许民主、自由和人权等颠覆性的异端邪说肆意蔓延，还是压制学生和知识分子，冒着失去他们的创造性能量的风险来完成发展中国的首要任务？

这两种选择似乎都不能接受。迫切需要找到一些妥协的立场，党做了它唯一能做的事情：它的行为前后不一。通过打倒方励志，它发出了一个信号：虽然知识分子被赋予了前所未有的新自由，但公共政治讨论并不在其中。然而，通过将其惩罚行动限制在党的历史标准的温和范围内，它同时还试图向知识分子保证，中国不会回到政治黑暗时代。实际上，这个信息是这样的。"只要你们愿意让共产党的至高地位不受挑战，我们就会给你们相当大的自由。如果你挑战党和作为其官方教规的社会主义，你将受到惩罚--但不会像以前那样严厉。" 党内的改革者正试图在现代化的需要和控制的需要之间保持一种微妙的平衡。但在那年1月，当它被前一个月动荡的学生示威活动之后的新的派系斗争所震撼时，它正在不祥地摇摆着。

意外的宣传

在方励之被解职、开除党籍并被勒令回京担任北京天文台研究员（他的妻子仍在北京大学任教）大约一个月后，我偶然去了我一个朋友的家，他是一名长期的党员，是一家国营企业的新晋官员。他和他的妹妹（也是一名党员）和我一直在吃干柿子和西瓜籽，聊天，并半信半疑地看一个关于中国猪群引进的新品系的电视节目，这时我的朋友突然消失在他的卧室里。几分钟后，他再次出现，带着阴谋的微笑，递给我一叠厚厚的复印文件。令我惊讶的是，这里面有91页方励之的讲话和访谈，用粗大的字体打印，即使是视力不好的人也能在昏暗的灯光下读到，并按时间顺序排列，从1985年3月到1986年12月，还有一个目录。

由于目前党对方志敏和所有非法出版活动的态度都不好，我对看到方志敏非常有争议的讲话以看起来像出版的形式印出来表示惊讶。我问我的朋友是否在某个户外书摊上发现了这套书，认为它可能是由持不同政见者的地下网络偷偷推出的，就像1978年和1979年民主墙时期流传的杂志那样。

我的朋友回答说："完全不是，我是从党内得到的，"他显然很享受我的惊讶。"这套书是一个neibu["内部"，指的是不能在受限制的党内圈子里展示的文件]，我们党内所有的人都被要求研究和批评。"

他的姐姐冷笑着拍了拍那一叠纸，告诉我，党已经给每个党支部送去了方志敏作品选的副本，以便所有党员可以召开学习会议，"批评他错误的资产阶级自由主义路线"。

"那你们有没有召开这样的会议？" 我问道。

"你知道，"我朋友的姐姐回答说，她的笑脸变成了饱满的笑容，"在党下达这个文件之前，我们单位没有人真正了解方励志，只知道他在科大当过副校长，而且他在学生示威活动中与党发生了一些矛盾。很少有人关注他，我们也不太清楚他到底代表什么。然而，在党将这些讲话汇编成册，分发给每个党支部，然后实际要求党员阅读之后，我们当然对他有了更好的了解，很多人突然开始说："嗯。这个人方不坏！"。事实上，他说得很有道理！' 在我知道发生了什么之前，我单位的许多人不仅对方的言论相当感兴趣，而且对他也相当同情。"

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"讨论会议的结果究竟如何？"

他们都笑了。"不幸的是，在我单位组织学习会批评小芳是我的责任。"我的朋友说，往上翻了翻眼睛。"我能做什么呢？由于看了文件，很多人最后都同意了方明远的观点，而他们本该聚在一起批评的人，所以我们几乎不可能召开会议。"

"那么你做了什么？"

"太荒唐了！我最后说：'算了吧！'。我最后只是说，'算了吧！'，写了一份报告，寄给我的上级，说我们都读了规定的文件，从彼此的批评中学到了很多东西。"

"你所知道的任何单位是否真的举行过批评会议？"

"可能吧。但我想这种戏法在党内其他地方也有。"

"你的同事们现在对这类学习会的态度如何？" 我问道。


"当然，我们不像以前那样经常开这种会议了。"我的朋友回答时有一种尴尬的意味。"但是当文件从中央下来时，我们必须聚在一起表演仪式。通常会有很多人开玩笑，因为我们的态度是，如果领导人想在他们之间争论意识形态，那是他们的事，但他们不应该用大量的宣传和学习会议把我们其他人拖进这些斗争中。我们已经厌倦了，也很反感。"

"但是，由于最近的政治镇压，人们现在不是比以前更警惕了吗？"

"尽管过去几年情况有所松动，但人们又开始害怕太明显地越过官方的界限，"我朋友的姐姐承认。"在学生示威之前，人们更不小心。现在，至少在公开场合，大多数人又开始表现得顺从于党，尽管他们不再相信党。虽然情况仍然远不如文化大革命期间那么糟糕，但每个人都知道，一个错误的举动仍然可能影响他们的生活。毕竟，谁不记得过去呢？我们办公室有几个人的父母和朋友在文革期间被指责为右派和走资派而自杀。"

这种老式的宣传方式的天真无邪是令人敬佩的。党的宣传机构非但没有赢得追随者，反而成了巨大的、自毁的不满情绪的发动机，导致越来越多的中国年轻人在领导层需要的支持下，几乎自动地反对党支持的任何事情。越来越多的中国年轻人不仅不渴望成为党员，也不以成为党员为荣，而是希望尽可能地与党保持距离。尽管许多雄心勃勃的年轻人努力争取并保持着党员身份，但他们这样做往往只是因为没有党员身份就不可能在政府或国有企业中获得晋升，也因为党员身份经常为他们提供宝贵的福利，如使用汽车、更好的住房和旅行的机会。但是，特别是在中国受过外国教育的新精英中，越来越多的人认为重要的不是党，而是他们越来越认同的外部世界。

通过将方励之以及随后不久的持不同政见的作家刘宾雁和王若望等人从他们中间驱逐出去，党的老一辈领导人可能享受到了暂时的净化假象，但实际上他们只是将自己与他们急需的支持来源进一步隔离开来，以获得可信度。事实上，当涉及到信任问题--一个政府与人民之间的基本纽带--时，很少有人，尤其是在知识界，还对党的公正或公平抱有很大的信心。1987年的中国共产党与当年的中国共产党确实相差甚远，当时党员的身份赋予了中国人可以想象的最高社会地位，而且人们对党的领导层抱有盲目的敬畏。

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尽管党的力量仍然非常强大，但由于其最近的历史，以及中国人现在有了其他的晋升途径，党的地位已经下降了。例如，一个人可以自己做生意，或者到国外学习和生活。或者，一个人可以呆在家里，或多或少地沉浸在自我利益的个人主义生活中，即使不是 "自我实现"。方舟子让政治机构如此紧张的原因之一是，他正是在为创造这些不属于党的管辖范围的新的生活层面做出贡献。他正在帮助创造一种风气，在这种风气中，异议不仅是可以思考的，而且是值得称赞的。因此，在方舟子被开除后，他收到了大量同情他的邮件，这一定让党的强硬派感到愤怒，甚至可以说是震惊。

"收到这么多表达或支持的信件，非常令人感动，"方舟子告诉我。"有些人的纸条只写了'方励志，北京'，但他们还是寄给了我！"。但我和妻子特别感动的是那些寄来的明信片，他们不仅表达了对我失去工作和被赶出党的愤怒，还签上了自己的名字，写上了回信地址，似乎是在藐视审查员，向他们表明他们拒绝被吓倒而保持沉默。"

然后，方舟子带着困惑但满意的微笑，补充说："在1月底和2月，我被开除后，这些信件大量涌现。然后，在它们慢慢减弱之后，发生了一件奇怪的事情。突然间，一个全新的浪潮开始到来。这一次，人们写的东西要复杂得多。他们的信并不只是对我被驱逐表示同情或愤怒，而是包含了对我所讲的民主的更多评论。起初我不知道发生了什么。后来我明白了。他们是由党内传阅我的演讲稿进行批评而引发的。" 方舟子发出了他那毫无顾忌的笑声。


当我问方舟子是否会考虑第三次入党时，他坐了一会儿没有说话，好像在思考一个谜题。最后他说："好吧，如果那一刻到来，我首先想看看当时的情况是怎样的。我当然不觉得应该由我来改革自己。但如果党发生变化，那么我可能会考虑重新加入党。"

方舟子重出江湖

一旦被清除出党，方励之和作家刘宾雁、王若望就从公众视野中消失了一段时间，尽管很难从中国知识分子的意识中消失。在这三个人中，方立志在党的宣传中受到了最频繁和最严厉的批评，他被指控几乎一手煽动了全国性的学生示威。虽然这三个人的活动都受到严格限制，但他们被允许接待朋友，继续他们的工作，并参加某些公共活动。方舟子甚至被允许出国参加一个科学会议。但是，当党内各派别为争夺意识形态的优势和政治权力而进行缓慢的斗争时，他们仍然处于一种不稳定的状态。

尽管方舟子被允许教授有限的课程并会见朋友，但他被明确禁止会见任何西方记者。但是，对于方舟子，党有一个问题，它对刘和王都没有问题。方舟子已经经常出国旅行，从而成为极少数在外国科学界获得认可的中国科学家之一。事实上，在他被驱逐后，当北京的西方人开始把他称为中国的萨哈罗夫（对中国比苏联更开放的自诩的一种隐性反驳），一些人开始猜测方舟子是否会成为中国第一个诺贝尔奖获得者。

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方明远的情况也因另一个原因而独特。当他被迫离开合肥时，他不得不放弃他刚刚在当地区人民代表大会秋季选举中赢得的席位。然而，他的妻子李淑贤后来赢得了海淀区的一个席位，该区是北京许多大学的所在地。她利用自己新的名人身份，告诉外国记者，她认为党解雇她的丈夫是错误的，在适当的时候，历史将 "证明他是正确的"。在随后的几个月里，李淑贤成为当地人民的代言人，大声疾呼她丈夫处境的不公，倡导人权，并代表她的学生选民进行抗议，他们经常受到骚扰，被突击搜查宿舍，有时甚至被保安拘留。

2月28日，方舟子在北京首次公开露面，他出现在中国物理学会第四次全国代表大会上，发表题为 "现代宇宙学的进展 "的论文。中国媒体广泛报道了他的回归，以及会议由他在科大的老朋友关维扬主持的事实。显然，这是党自我安慰的一次尝试，让科学家们相信炼狱之后还有生命。

6月，在方舟子的出国申请得到党的最高领导层的批准后，方舟子被允许短暂离开中国，参加在的里雅斯特举行的国际理论物理中心的年度会议。然而，他被拒绝前往英国参加纪念艾萨克-牛顿《原理》出版三百周年的会议。方舟子刚走出中国，就被满怀希望的采访者盯上了。方文山没有隐瞒，而是像过去秋天在中国所做的那样，无畏地向他们阐述了他的政治观点。


当他的朋友Tiziano Terzani，明镜周刊的前北京分社社长，在意大利与他会面，问他的下一个政治目标是什么时，方舟子用一个词回答："马克思主义"。特尔扎尼似乎对他的大胆感到惊讶，方舟子补充说："马克思主义不再有任何价值，这是一个无法否认的事实，....，它是过去的东西--对理解上个世纪的问题有用，但对今天的问题没有用....，它就像一件破旧的衣服，应该被丢弃。" 当被问及他将把哪些成功归功于中国共产主义革命时，方舟子回答说："在中国，共产党从未取得过任何成功。在过去的三十年里，它没有产生任何积极的结果....，这就是为什么改革的愿望如此强烈，为什么对党的信仰，特别是年轻人的信仰消失了....，在中国，党不仅想管理政治，而且还想控制一切，包括人们思考和生活的方式....，为了在中国创造一个真正的经济民主，党必须减少这种政治控制--正是它所担心的。"

海外中文报纸《皇后日报》刊登了对方舟子的采访，当被问及为什么他被允许出国而刘宾雁不被允许接受爱荷华大学国际写作项目的邀请时，方舟子面带微笑地回答说："这个国家显然只需要在科学和技术方面向西方学习，而不是在人文方面。" 然后他继续重申他的信念，即中国宪法必须优先于党的意志，中国的未来在于争取 "言论自由和新闻自由，以及本宪法规定的其他自由"。他说："因为只有言论自由才能打破'一党之声'的暴政，实现政治多元化。"

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令人惊讶的是，在方志敏回国后，这些直言不讳的采访并没有立即引起政治反响。到了去年秋天，对党内知识分子采取的惩罚措施比全面清洗的性质更明显，更像是拍打手腕。强硬派的努力最终只会使他们的反对者在中国被赋予准神话般的地位，并吸引国际社会对他们希望压制的思想的关注。去年冬天，外国记者突然对这些勇敢的中国言论自由和民主的捍卫者进行了赞美。强硬派似乎低估了西方对印有党的迫害印记的共产主义集团知识分子的贪婪胃口。随着政治气候的再次回暖，在某些关键的改革领导人的幕后支持下，许多在那个冬天受到党内不良影响的中国知识分子开始离开中国，到国外考察，在那里他们被当作英雄对待。刘宾雁被邀请去哈佛大学成为尼曼研究员，还为他的自传赢得了与一家美国出版社签订的有利可图的出书合同。方励之收到剑桥和美国大学的邀请，成为访问学者，并在香港和台湾出版了他的演讲集。

当我去年9月在北京最后一次见到方立志时，我对他被允许自由地进行社交活动和学术生活感到惊讶。诚然，他被禁止发表政治演讲或接受媒体采访，他的电话被窃听，他的行动被严密监视；但也诚然，他能够在首都过着忙碌的生活，教学，参加科学会议，与朋友，包括一些外国人私下会面。11月，他甚至被允许回到凯达发表四次演讲，尽管他一直受到保安人员的严密监视。


有一个场合特别说明了党在镇压后对方的政策出乎意料的宽松。在与方舟子和李淑贤在首都的一家西式酒店用餐后，我和妻子将他们介绍给美国全国广播公司的主播汤姆-布罗考，他当时正在北京参加该电视台为期一周的关于中国的系列广播节目。碰巧的是，布罗考前一天刚刚采访了总理兼代理党总书记赵紫阳，赵紫阳详细地谈到了方舟子的情况，这似乎是向外界保证方舟子和其他中国知识分子的自由不会被进一步限制的又一次努力。在见到方舟子时，布罗考问他是否愿意看赵本山的采访录像，该录像没有安排在中国电视上播放。

这肯定是我在中国多年来最不寻常的经历之一，我们很快发现自己坐在NBC的放映室里，看着中国国家元首通过美国网络新闻采访与中国头号异见人士对话。比这一情况本身更奇怪的是赵本山对方的评价。

"最近，一些共产党员被开除出党，而另一些人则被劝说退党，"赵本山和蔼地告诉布罗考，不时地从一杯青岛啤酒中喝上几口，这并没有出现在电视采访中。"也许美国的一些人认为这是一种镇压，是对知识分子的压迫。我并不同意。我想大概你已经熟悉方励之先生的名字了。" 当赵国栋说出他的名字时，我瞥了一眼方立志，他猛地坐直了身体，仿佛在关注着什么。他的嘴角带着一丝微笑，脸上带着不慌不忙的表情，完全沉浸在赵的讲话中。"他是一位教授，也是一位很有成就的物理学家。在过去的几年里，他发表了许多言论和演讲，并撰写文章，批评中国政府和我们党的政策。有时他甚至提到了我国的领导层。他在大学也在其他地方发表过这样的演讲。但他仍然在一个非常重要的岗位上工作，不久前他甚至出国参加了一个国际学术会议。此外，最近他还接受了来自台湾的两名记者的采访。[他们是大约四十年来第一个从台湾访问大陆的记者。］ 但他仍然坚持自己原来的立场和想法。他在过去是一名党员。但是，由于他有这样的信仰，他不能再继续当共产党员。但是，他仍然是一个知识分子和科学家，而且，他也因此受到尊重。因此，他仍然能够在科学和技术领域发挥自己的作用"。

继续对身为党员的知识分子和非党员的知识分子的义务进行了区分，赵本山说："如果一个人入了党，就必须遵守法规、党章和党纲....，如果有人不能遵守，就会被要求离开....，我认为党本身应该有决定某人是否应该留在党内的自由。但当知识分子离开党时，他们仍然会受到尊重，仍然能够以自己的[专业]身份发挥自己的作用。我不认为你可以把这称为镇压"。

赵本山的讲话充满了自信和信念，他的话似乎很让人放心，以至于让人很难想起，尽管他在前年冬天曾保证过党对知识分子的骚扰将停止，但那年夏天又出现了一波惩罚性行动。

虽然对赵本山的新的温和态度感到欣慰，无疑也对党的改革者成功地将中国从似乎是边缘的地方拉回来的方式感到欣慰，但方舟子对中国的民主需要仍然持不妥协的态度。当我问他，他这一代人可以给中国的年轻人留下什么遗产时，他的回答很简单："共产主义是行不通的。虽然不能说马克思列宁主义的每句话都是错的，但必须承认其基本原理是不正确的。"


"党内还有马克思主义的忠实信徒吗？" 我问。

"他们是非常少的。现在中国的整个气氛非常糟糕。没有道德和宗教，或者说，没有人负责我们的道德教育。以前，党在某种程度上是这样做的，但是现在对党和马克思主义的信仰已经完全崩溃了。当你问年轻人他们相信什么时，他们会告诉你，他们不知道。他们已经对当代中国文化失去了信心。他们没有什么值得骄傲的地方。除了那些因为开始转向民主而仍有理想主义的年轻人，有一个文化和政治真空。"

"你对党内有改革意识的领导人抱有希望吗？"

"也许有少数人是有理想的，但总的来说，他们主要关心的是权力问题。

当我继续追问方是否真的怀疑从内部进行改革有任何希望时，他终于稍稍松了口气。"即使领导人没有诚意，我们也必须接受事情会变成这样，"他说。"我们不能说成功是绝对不可能的。但目前，由于中国共产党是唯一的掌权者，没有其他民主渠道开放，我们只能让这些领导人来领导，并希望改革者取得成功。"


然后，他的目光变得明亮起来，补充说："中国共产党现在发现自己与戈尔巴乔夫和他的格拉斯诺思想处于一种奇怪的竞争之中。这两个社会主义国家现在似乎在相互争夺，看哪一个国家能够最开放，并通过类比，成为最现代化。中国党的领导人不希望似乎被戈尔巴乔夫超越，特别是有些人把我的情况比作苏联物理学家安德烈-萨哈罗夫的情况，而他的情况现在已经大大改善。就我而言，这种竞争不仅对我，而且对中国知识分子和整个中国来说都是一件非常好的事情。艰难的现实是，现在没有办法让中国共产党下台。试图取代他们，甚至劝说他们采用其他政治制度，都是不可能的。这就是中国的持不同政见者与西方的不同之处--持不同政见的反对派可以完全渴望取代某些领导人。因此，现在大多数中国人觉得，向前迈进的唯一途径是希望共产党能够改变方向，为国家做好服务。也许下一代会使用不同的策略，改变政治形式，但这将取决于他们。现在，这种事情是不可能的。"

11月，当党的第十三次代表大会闭幕时，具有改革思想的赵紫阳稳坐党的总书记的位置，毛主义强硬派再次受到遏制，许多中国知识分子松了一口气。随着学生示威和随之而来的对方舟子及其同事的驱逐从记忆中消失，随着党的官方出版物重新焕发出对政治改革和民主化的呼吁，中国似乎确实已经完成了另一个看似无尽的政治循环。1988年2月，方舟子被授予从四级到二级的教授职位，党允许他接受《纽约时报》的简短采访。自由派的朋友们在前一个冬天还对中国政治改革的前景感到忧郁，现在却充满了新的乐观主义。

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但是，由于先前的许多改革努力流产，方对未来仍持怀疑态度。当香港杂志《百行百业》问及他如何看待大会的结果和赵本山在党内明显具有改革意识的讲话时，他回答说："确实，赵的报告非常激昂。但在他自己的时代，毛泽东的讲话甚至更加激动人心。" 在列举了党继续以不民主的方式行事的一系列方式之后，方明远继续警告说："仅仅在报纸上读到的讲话是不够的。人们必须始终关注现实......仍然有太多的例子，当局说一套做一套。"

Orville Schell是亚洲协会美中关系中心的Arthur Ross主任。



Fang Lizhi: China's Andrei Sakharov
The speeches of the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi have galvanized students and given political discourse in China a new depth of field, and although he has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party his influence is undiminished

By Orville Schell
MAY 1988 ISSUE
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WHEN I returned to Beijing in the fall of 1986, after an absence of six months, it was hard not to feel disoriented by the sudden change in political climate. During the previous spring and summer, political and intellectual life had begun to thaw to an extent unprecedented since the Chinese Communist Party had come to power, in 1949. Following on the heels of a bold program of economic reform and of opening up to the outside world, which China's paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, had launched in 1978, this relaxation of Party control over economic, intellectual, and political life had filled the Chinese with a heady new sense of possibility. The increasing tolerance of individualism and freedom of expression reflected the surprising but growing conviction among China's new generation of reform-minded leaders that their country would never be successful in its efforts to modernize unless some dramatic way could be found to re-energize its people and win their willing participation in a new drive toward economic development. Political reform and democratization became their new rallying cries. But to the older, hard-line Maoists, who had spent their lives fighting for a very different kind of revolution--one that stressed centralization and Party discipline, rather than individual initiative and democracy--this latest wave of reform appeared as at best an unwelcome disruption and at worst a dangerous form of apostasy. While young reformers watched enthusiastically as official publications began to bloom with articles advocating freedom of speech and the press, the separation of governmental powers, and the protection of human rights, and as intellectuals publicly called for the democratization of almost all aspects of Chinese life, revolutionary hard-liners looked on with displeasure, waiting for an auspicious moment to counterattack.


A deep wariness of speaking too freely had been burned into many senior intellectuals by the crackdowns that had, with a horrifying inevitability, terminated all previous interludes of liberalism in Chinese Communist history. While it was true that fall that the boundaries of acceptable political discourse were broader than ever, most intellectuals nonetheless prudently continued to try to stay within the elusive margins of Party tolerance. But there were a few who, seemingly without regard for their future, dared speak out openly. The most vocal of these was a fifty-two-year-old astrophysicist of international stature named Fang Lizhi, who by last year had become legendary throughout China for his forceful calls for democracy and his forthrightness in publicly saying what he believed.

When I first met Fang, in his Beijing apartment last fall, what impressed me about him was his good cheer and guilelessness. He laughed easily--an infectious laugh that spiraled spontaneously into something like a whinny carrying everything with it in a burst of unpremeditated mirthfulness. He was dressed simply, in a knit shirt, a tweed coat, and permanent-press slacks. Tortoise-shell glasses gave him a slightly owlish look. He made an initial impression of ordinariness--until, that is, he began to talk. Then I instantly sensed that I was in the presence of a man of not only keen intelligence and conviction but fearlessness. The longer I was with him, the more the quality struck me. Far from being a studied posture adopted as a means of resisting intimidation, Fang's fearlessness appeared deeply rooted in his personality, which in spite of its manifest self-confidence betrayed no suggestion of arrogance. Seldom have I met a man who, although at the center of an intense and dangerous national controversy--the Communist Party had laid the blame for the student demonstrations of the previous winter on his frequent speeches to student groups, in which he openly advocated Western democracy--so lacked the kind of polemical energy that often makes zealots of a lesser kind shrill and self justifying. Although Fang obviously cared deeply about the cause of democracy in China, he was not one to thrust it upon anyone; and although he had been politically persecuted throughout his life, there was no hint of rancor or resentment in his politics. What he was for was so much ascendant over what he was against that the notion of enemies seemed utterly alien to his intellectual, political, and emotional vocabulary.


What made being with him strangely uncharacteristic of my experiences in China was his complete lack of the self-censorship that renders many other Chinese intellectuals of his generation incapable of speaking their minds. Never overriding his thoughts and feelings with the usual subtle (and frequently unconscious) genuflections to the official political line of the moment, Fang spoke so openly about what he was thinking and what he believed that one had to suppress the urge to warn him of the dangers of such candor.

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Such warnings have in fact come from many quarters, but Fang is impervious to them. "Everything I have ever said is open," Fang told me. "I have nothing to hide. And since I have already said everything that I believe many times in public, what is the point of trying to hide things now, in private?"

To recount those many times is to tell the story of his life, which began in Beijing in 1936, when he was born into the family of a postal clerk from the city of Hangzhou. He entered Beijing University (Beida) in 1952, as a student of theoretical and nuclear physics, and although he quickly distinguished himself as an unusually capable scientist, politics was as important to him as his studies. His first recorded brush with political dissent occurred one February day in 1955, during the founding meeting of the university chapter of the Communist Youth League (an organization that arranges political and recreational activities for young people and that anyone who intends to become a Party member must join). The league branch secretary from the physics department had been addressing the gathering, in the auditorium of Beida's administration building, and had just begun discussing the role of the league in stimulating idealism among China's youth when Fang Lizhi, then a nineteen-year-old student, dashed up onto the stage, indicating his desire to speak.

"Some of us students in the physics department thought the meeting was too dull, just a lot of formalistic speeches," Fang has said. "So we decided to liven things up a bit. When it came time for our branch secretary to speak, he let me express my opinion, since I had the loudest voice." Taking over the stage from the secretary, Fang redirected the discussion to the general subject of the Chinese educational system. "I said that this kind of meeting was completely meaningless. I asked what kind of people we were turning out when what we should have been doing was training people to think independently. Just having the Three Goods [good health, good study practices, and good work] is such a depressing concept and hardly enough to motivate anyone.


"After I spoke, the meeting fell into complete disorder. The next day the Party committee secretary, who was the top person in charge of ideological work for students at Beijing University, spoke all day. He said that although independent thinking was, of course, all well and good, students should settle down and study."

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In spite of his attraction to politics, Fang did in fact settle down to study, earning straight As at Beida. There he met his future wife, Li Shuxian, who was a fellow student in the physics department, which she ultimately joined as a faculty member. In 1956, at the age of twenty, Fang graduated from Beida and was assigned to work at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Modern Physics Research. But a year later the Anti-Rightist Campaign began, and Chinese intellectuals who had spoken up during the previous Hundred Flowers Movement were ruthlessly persecuted. Because he had written a lengthy memorial on the need to reform China's educational system so that politics would not stifle scientific research, Fang was severely criticized. Unlike many other intellectuals under pressure, he refused to recant his alleged misdeeds and was expelled from the Party in 1957.

"For a long time after the Anti-Rightist Campaign, I continued to believe in communism," Fang told me. "Even after I was expelled from the Party, I continued to have faith in Chairman Mao and believed that it must have been I who was wrong."


Wrong or not, as a promising young scientist he was greatly needed by China in its early efforts to industrialize and was allowed to keep his position at the Institute of Modern Physics Research. He was ultimately even sent to help organize a new department of physics at the University of Science and Technology (Kexue Jishu Daxue, or Keda for short), which was just then being set up in Beijing. During the next few years, while teaching classes in quantum mechanics and electromagnetics, Fang also conducted research on solid-state and laser physics. Despite his previous political troubles, and because of his obvious talent in his field, in 1963 he was promoted to the position of lecturer.

But no sooner had Fang's life and career begun to resume a more normal course than the Cultural Revolution broke out, in 1966, and like so many other Chinese intellectuals. Fang once more ran afoul of politics. This time he was "struggled against" as a "reactionary" and incarcerated in a niupeng, or "cow shed"--a form of solitary confinement often chosen by the Red Guards for intellectuals of the "stinking ninth category" (Maoists had divided Chinese society into nine categories). After a year's imprisonment he was released and "sent down" to the countryside in Anhui province to work with the peasantry. Here, because of the paucity of scientific books available to him, he was forced to change the focus of his scholarly work and to concentrate on the study of relativity and theoretical astrophysics.

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"I had only one book with me--the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's Classical Theory of Fields," Fang told me. "For six months I did nothing but read this book over and over again. It was this curious happenstance alone that caused me to switch fields from solid-state physics to cosmology.

"It was then that I began to feel that perhaps Mao was not so good for the country. But because at the time most of us intellectuals still believed in communism, we were left with a difficult question: If not Mao, whom should we follow? There was, of course, no one else, and he was the embodiment of all idealism.

"After the Cultural Revolution started, everything became much clearer. I realized that the Party had not been telling the truth, that they had in fact been deceiving people, and that I should not believe them anymore. You see, a sense of duty, responsibility, and loyalty to the country had been inculcated within me as a youth, but what I saw around me made me feel that the leaders weren't similarly concerned about the country and weren't shouldering responsibility for its people."

In 1969, when the Academy of Sciences began to move several of the undergraduate departments of Keda from Beijing to the provincial capital of Hefei, in Anhui, Fang, along with several dozen other academics who had been stigmatized with rightist labels, was exiled with them. In Hefei, Fang began to study and teach astrophysics, but because of the political cloud hanging over him, he was able to publish the results of his research only under a pseudonym.


His full rehabilitation did not come about until 1978, two years after the fall of the Gang of Four. At this time he regained his Party membership and received tenure at Keda, shortly thereafter becoming China's youngest full professor. The next few years were perhaps his most creative, from a scientific point of view. Fang, who was increasingly interested in the cosmology of the early universe, began to publish frequently on this subject, now under his own name. (By 1986 he had more than 130 articles to his credit.) In 1980 his popularity at Keda led to his being elected director of the fundamental-physics department, with more than 90 percent of the faculty's 120 votes. However, his politically progressive views and outspokenness continued to cause the Party to distrust him. Because of secret reports from a fellow professor impugning his political reliability, Fang, though nominated several times for the post of vice-president of the University of Science and Technology, was rejected.

What was ultimately to have the profoundest impact on Fang was his readings in politics and his travels abroad, which became possible as a result of Deng Xiaoping's open-door policy. In 1978 Fang left China for the first time, to attend a conference on relativistic astrophysics in Munich. Subsequent trips took him to the Vatican, for a cosmology conference; to Bogota, Colombia, for another conference; to Italy, as a visiting professor at the University of Rome; to England, as a senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University; to Japan, as a visiting professor at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Fundamental Physics; and finally to the United States, where he was in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, from March through July of 1986. These trips abroad were to influence deeply the way that Fang looked at the Chinese socialist system and the role of intellectuals within it.


In spite of many years of political harassment and periodic near-total isolation from the world scientific community, Fang had now become one of the very few scientists from the People's Republic ever to have received such international scientific attention and acclaim. Fang was even more unusual for his interest in education, philosophy, and politics, as well as science--interests that grew out of his conviction that in any truly creative mind science and philosophy, of which he took politics to be an extension, were indissolubly bound together.

Just as scientific research was a way of bearing witness to truths about the natural world, so, Fang believed, intellectual and political inquiry were ways of bearing witness to truths about the political and social world.

Interviewed by the writer Dai Qing in the newspaper Guangming Daily in December of 1986, Fang explained his notion of the special role that he hoped scientists, as intellectuals, would play in the development of a modern China. He noted, prophetically in his own case, that "almost invariably, it has been the natural scientists who have been the first to become conscious of the emergence of each social crisis." Then, evidently paraphrasing Einstein, he declared, "Scientists must express their feelings about all aspects of society, especially when unreasonable, wrong, or evil things emerge. If they do otherwise, they will be considered accomplices."

Fang's remedy for the claustrophobic intellectual climate of most Chinese educational institutions was to scrutinize their shortcomings both honestly and relentlessly. "The emergence and development of new theories necessitates creating an atmosphere of democracy and freedom in the university," he told Dai Qing. "In the university there should be nothing that...allows no questioning of why it must be upheld. There should be no doctrine allowed to hold a leading or guiding position in an a priori way."

As he tried to play his part as a "conscience of civilization," one of the most shocking things that Fang began to say publicly was that socialism as an ideology was passe for China. "When I first said this, back in 1980, Fang Yi, the Vice-Premier in charge of science and technology, called me in and criticized me," Fang Lizhi told me with an impish smile one day. "He said, 'How could you say a thing like that?' And I replied, 'I said it because I believe it.' He said, 'Well, I might go even so far as to say that I agree with you, but one can't just come right out and say such a thing!'"

FANG EMERGES AS LEADER

In 1984 Fang Lizhi was finally promoted to the position of vice-president of the University of Science and Technology, and Guan Weiyan, a colleague in physics, was appointed president. Clearly, Fang's star was now rising. There were soon efforts among the liberal reform faction in China's central leadership to nominate Fang for high provincial office, and even to confer upon him membership in the Party's central Committee--all this despite his refusal to maintain Party discipline and promote its mythology.

The next year the Ministry of Education issued a report, "The Reform of China's Educational Structure," calling for dramatic changes in the country's university system. It recommended that administrators be elected to top positions by committees of academics, rather than being appointed by the Party. Fang and Guan designed and proposed a radical plan to redistribute power horizontally at Keda. Instead of keeping all authority concentrated in the hands of top-level administrators, allowing them to control research funding, the awarding of degrees, and faculty promotions, these functions would be spread out among special committees and the departments themselves.

A second reform proposed in the plan involved establishing the right of faculty and staff members to audit all administrative meetings. Fang held that since the socialist system claimed to have made the people the masters of their own country, the people should have the right to know what their leaders were up to. This was an especially important concept for Fang, because he believed that a major defect of Chinese society was that in the absence of oversight provisions, problems and grievances piled up unsolved until any given situation became explosive.

A third area of reform that concerned Fang and Guan was free speech. They wished to establish firmly the right of students and faculty members not only to speak out on campus but also to remain free from subtler but not necessarily less crippling forms of ideological repression. Fang and Guan wished to create an open academic and political environment at Keda, and since in their view diversity was something to be cultivated, not suppressed, it was their conviction that anyone should be able to put up a handbill and hold an event on campus without having to seek prior approval from some higher authority.

This was indeed a bold vision of academic freedom, such as the People's Republic of China had never known. But Fang and Guan did not stop there. To foster openness with a cosmopolitan dimension, they also sought to establish as much contact as possible with the outside world. By the end of 1986 more than 900 faculty members and students from Keda had been sent abroad to visit, lecture, and study, and more than 200 foreign scholars had visited Keda. Exchange programs had been set up with educational institutions in the United States, Japan, Britain, Italy, and France.

Fang's experience with this reform process convinced him that the most meaningful task he could undertake in China was not scientific research but pressing for change in the country's educational system. "I am determined to create intellectual and academic freedom--this will be my top priority," he said, with his usual directness, when asked about his future plans. In the context of a Western democracy, where traditions like intellectual and academic freedom are taken for granted, such a declaration might sound commonplace, but coming from a university vice-president in China just as it emerged from the Cultural Revolution, his words had the effect of throwing down a gauntlet to Party hard-liners.

Moreover, while Fang was helping to fashion these educational reforms at Keda, he was by no means shutting himself off from the broader political issues and currents of the country at large. In fact, in 1985 and 1986 Fang seemed to turn up whenever and wherever there was open political discussion or ferment, a habit that must have caused consternation among those hard-liners in the Party hierarchy whose conception of the "mass line" had never included radical educational reform, much less a spontaneous political campaign for the democratization of Chinese life, led by roaming freethinkers like Fang.

On November 4, 1985, in a stirring, free-ranging, and sometimes even humorous talk that held his Beida audience spellbound, Fang encouraged the students to hold on to their social concern and political activism and to look to the West for new models of intellectual commitment if none could be found in China. Addressing himself to the larger issues of China's backwardness and his hopes for its future, Fang declared,

"...There is a social malaise in our country today, and the primary reason for it is the poor example set by Party members. Unethical behavior by Party leaders is especially to blame. This is a situation that clearly calls for action on the part of intellectuals...."
"...We are obligated to work for the improvement of society....This requires that we break the bonds of social restraint when necessary. Creativity has not been encouraged over the past three decades as being in keeping with Chinese tradition. It is a shame that, as a result, China has yet to produce work worthy of consideration for a Nobel Prize. Why is this?..."
One reason for this situation is our social environment. Many of us who have been to foreign countries to study or work agree that we can perform much more efficiently and productively abroad than in China....Foreigners are no more intelligent than we Chinese. Why, then, can't we produce first-rate work? The reasons for our inability to develop our potential lie within our social system....[This translation and several that follow are those of the China Spring Digest.]"
Placing the blame for China's backwardness on the closed nature of its society, Fang continued,

"...Some of us dare not speak out. But if we all spoke out, there would be nothing to be afraid of. This is surely one important cause of our lack of idealism and discipline.
"Another cause is that over the years our propaganda about communism has been seriously flawed....Room must be made for the great variety of excellence that has found expression in human civilization. Our narrow propaganda seems to imply that....nothing that came before us has any merit whatsoever. This is the most worthless and destructive form of propaganda. Propaganda can be used to praise Communist heroes, but it should not be used to tear down other heroes....
"We Communist Party members should be open to different ways of thinking. We should be open to different cultures and willing to adopt the elements of those cultures that are clearly superior. A great diversity of thought should be allowed in colleges and universities. For if all thought is narrow and simplistic, creativity will die. At present there are certainly some people in power who still insist on dictating to others according to their own narrow principles....
"We must not be afraid to speak openly about these things. In fact, it is our duty. If we remain silent, we will fail to live up to our responsibility."
The Beida students had never heard a respected faculty member speak publicly like this before, and Fang's effect was electrifying. Moreover, it was only one of many talks that Fang would give over the next year, as he traveled to other cities, quickly earning himself the reputation of being China's foremost freethinker. Fang Lizhi is a singular figure in post-Mao China. The content of his speeches made it difficult to remember that he was still a member of the Chinese Communist Party, where, as ever, the watchwords were discipline and obedience.

Meanwhile, so successful were Fang and Guan's reforms at Keda that the official Party newspaper, the People's Daily, caught up in China's new dalliance with democratic thinking, ran a series of five articles, in October and November of 1986, describing them in the most adulatory way, a move tantamount to giving them the Party's seal of approval. In fact, the writer, Lu Fang, was so impressed by what he had seen at Keda that from the very first sentence of the first article he seemed unable to control his enthusiasm. Instead of reciting a litany of facts and statistics to introduce his subject, as this genre of news feature often calls for, he dove right in and began, "During my trip to Keda, everywhere I breathed the air of democracy." Lu went on to praise the openness and "unconstrained atmosphere" of the university in which students and faculty members worked together.

Still mindful during those halcyon days of democratic dialogue that even the warmest political climate in China can suddenly frost over, the People's Daily published another article that fall asking rhetorically if it were not a concern that the radical experiments in educational reform at Keda might someday be branded as "wholesale Westernization," a derogatory term used by Party hard-liners to describe any overtly Western phenomenon. "Perhaps someone will bring up the question," the article went on to answer itself. "In applying a system of 'separate and balanced powers' to run a college, is there not always some danger of being suspected of imitating Western capitalism? But the methods used at Keda are actually in accordance with the directions of Party Central regarding the 'practical application of democratization to every aspect of social life.' They are in accordance with the Constitution which prescribes academic freedom. It [democracy] is not something that is being 'sneaked in the back door' here. We should have no suspicion about that."

The effect of these articles in the People's Daily was both to transform Keda into an official new post-Mao model university and to elevate Guan and Fang to the status of semi-official national heroes. The glare of the spotlight, far from cowing Fang into silence as it might some intellectuals, seemed hardly to faze him. In November, Shanghai's World Economic Herald ran an article that quoted Fang as declaring that China's intellectuals "lack their own independent mentality and a standard of value, always yield to power, and link their futures to an official career...And once they become officials themselves, many intellectuals change their attitude from being absolutely obedient to higher levels to being absolutely conceited. They suppress and attack other intellectuals."

Fang went on to call on intellectuals to remake themselves and, instead of being slavishly obedient to those above them, to "straighten out their bent backs." And then, as if he had despaired of the older generation, he ended with an appeal to Chinese to "place their hopes in those younger intellectuals who are growing up during the nineteen eighties."

It was one thing to crusade for educational reforms, even to discuss democracy, human rights, or checks and balances in the abstract, but here was Fang Lizhi implicitly appealing to youthful intellectuals (and also his academic peers) to form a powerful new check against Party power. This was a bold challenge indeed, for Fang seemed to be implying that the Party's failure to reform itself from within now justified pressure from without.

STUDENTS TAKE FANG'S MANDATE AS THEIR OWN

It was obvious to anyone watching that students were powerfully drawn to Fang, not only by his intelligence, candor, and irreverence but also by his willingness to name names. Never had a leader spoken to them so unguardedly about Party pomposity, favoritism, prejudice, even corruption. The Party might have tolerated his tweaking its tail over such apparent hypocrisies as a Constitution that guaranteed rights it was not prepared to defend, but it could hardly countenance his outright attack on high-ranking officials.

In 1985, for instance, Fang publicly denounced the vice-mayor of Beijing, Zhang Baifa, for contriving to join a scientific delegation that had been invited to attend a conference on synchrotron radiation in New York state. Fang had learned of the case because China's lone synchrotron was jointly operated by his own university and the Institute of High Energy Physics, in Beijing. Fang's refusal to overlook this kind of junketing and feather-bedding by the Party elite, and his willingness to bring such cases to the attention of student activists, made him an even greater favorite of young intellectuals disgusted with such behavior.

When criticized by ranking Party leaders for his lese majeste, Fang replied, "As for Zhang Baifa appropriating the conference seats that should have gone to the University, I just want to ask him what he knows about synchrotrons. Is he willing to take a test?" As a result of his attack on the vice-mayor, Fang's trip to the Institute of Advanced Study, planned for January, 1986, was suddenly canceled. It was not until two months later that Fang, still refusing to recant, was finally allowed to leave the country.

Upon returning to China from the United States late that fall, just as appeals for political reform reached a crescendo, Fang traveled to several Chinese cities, making speeches, holding discussion groups, and giving interviews. His calls for democracy were bolder and more uncompromising than ever, and his fearlessness more pronounced. During November, particularly in student circles, Fang Lizhi's name was spoken more and more often. In Beijing, Hefei, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai--wherever he spoke--young people listened, recorded, and even transcribed his talks by hand, and sent them on to friends and student groups all across China, and even to colleagues studying in the United States and Europe. Chinese students, who had almost completely lost the kind of socialist idealism that had so distinguished their parents' generation during earlier phases of the Chinese Communist Revolution, now seemed perched on the precipice of a whole new system of beliefs. In the ideological vacuum of the 1980s they thirsted for someone and something to believe in. Just as these young Chinese had come to worship the West for its appliances, style, culture, and technology, now they were becoming entranced with its political ideas and "isms." Nowhere was the threadbare nature of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought more evident than in the way many of these young Chinese intellectuals found themselves drawn to the gospel of democracy as preached by Fang Lizhi.

When the Party repeatedly urged Fang to tone down his message, he refused, and even fired a salvo or two at Deng's sacred Four Cardinal Principles, which upheld socialism, the people's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Communist Party, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought. When asked what he thought of them, he replied that although he realized they were "articles of faith among the political leadership," he preferred four different principles--namely, "science, democracy, creativity, and independence." He went on to observe that if his principles conflicted with those of the Party, it was only because the latter "advocated superstition instead of science, dictatorship instead of democracy, conservatism instead of creativity, and dependency rather than independence."

In November, Fang Lizhi gave several speeches in Shanghai. Appearing on the campus of Tongji University on November 18, he addressed a crowd of students on the subject of democracy, reform, and modernization, rousing them to repeated rounds of applause. "We now have a strong sense of urgency about achieving modernization in China," he told the students.

"...Chinese intellectual life, material civilization, moral fiber, and government are in dire straits....The truth is that every aspect of the Chinese world needs to be modernized....As for myself, I think that all-around openness is the only way to modernize. [It is interesting to note that Fang claims to have consistently used the term quanfangwei kaifang ("all-around openness") rather than quanpan xifanghua ("wholesale Westernization").] I believe in such a thorough and comprehensive liberalization because Chinese culture is not just backward in a particular respect but primitive in an overall sense....We are still far behind the rest of the world. And, frankly, I feel we lag behind because the decades of socialist experimentation since Liberation have been--well, a failure! [Long applause.] This is not just my opinion, it is clear for all to see. Socialism is at a low ebb. There is no getting around the fact that no socialist state in the post-Second World War era has been successful, nor has our own thirty-odd-year-long socialist experiment...I am here to tell you that the socialist movement from Marx and Lenin to Stalin and Mao Zedong has been a failure....Clearing our minds of all Marxist dogma is the first step...."
After this uncompromising attack on China's socialist patron saints, Fang went on to proclaim:

"...We must remold our society by absorbing influences from all cultures. What we must not do is isolate ourselves and allow our conceit to convince us that we alone are correct...."
For Fang, the most "critical component" of democracy was human rights.

"....Human rights are fundamental privileges that people have from birth, such as the right to think and be educated, the right to marry, and so on. But we Chinese consider these rights dangerous. Although human rights are universal and concrete, we Chinese lump freedom, equality and brotherhood together with capitalism and criticize them all in the same terms. If we are the democratic country we say we are, these rights should be stronger here than elsewhere, but at present they are nothing more than an abstract idea. [Enthusiastic applause.]
"I feel that the first step toward democratization should be the recognition of human rights....But [in China] democratization has come to mean something performed by superiors on inferiors--a serious misunderstanding of democracy. [Loud applause.] Our government does not give us democracy simply by loosening our bonds a bit. This gives us only enough freedom to writhe a little. [Enthusiastic applause.] Freedom by decree is not fit to be called democracy, because...it fails to provide the most basic human rights....
"In a democratic nation democracy flows from the individual, and the government has responsibilities toward him....We must make our government realize that it is economically dependent on its citizens, because such is the basis of democracy. But feudal traditions are still strong in China; social relations are initiated by superiors and accepted by inferiors....
"People of other societies believe that criminal accusations arising from casual suspicion harm human dignity and privacy. In China, on the other hand, it is not only normal for me to inform on you...but considered a positive virtue. I would be praised for my alertness and contribution to class struggle in spite of my disrespect for democracy and human rights...."
Having reiterated his belief that democracy made the people rather than the government sovereign, he went on to redefine the position of a university in Chinese society.

"...To liberate oneself from the slavery of governmental and other nonintellectual authorities, one need only view knowledge as an independent organism. But this is not so in China. Our universities produce tools, not educated men. [Applause.] Our graduates cannot think for themselves. They are quite happy to be the docile instruments of someone else's purposes. China's intelligentsia has still not cleansed itself of this tendency....Knowledge should be independent of power. It must never submit, for knowledge loses its value as soon as it bows to power...."
About Party pressure against his outspokenness, Fang said,

"I have heard grumbling about my political ideas, and that is fine. But I simply will not accept any interference in my scientific research....Democracy will have no protection until the entire scientific community is filled with this spirit. The products of scientific knowledge should be appraised by scientific standards. We should not be swayed by the winds of power. Only then can we modernize, and only then will we have real democracy."
Fang's speeches, putting into words what many of his colleagues thought but dared not utter in public, were like detonations beneath the whole edifice of Party thought control. Here at last, after thirty-five years during which almost all alternative or oppositional thoughts had been suppressed, was a man who when he spoke made no effort to censor the forbidden or divide his thoughts between the private and the public. Because Fang and a small number of other dissidents, including Liu Binyan and Wang Ruowang, writers who in spite of almost constant Party persecution had continued to write exposes and critiques of Party malfeasance and stupidity, continued to speak and to suggest alternative ways of looking at the Party, China, and the world, political discourse in China had acquired a new depth of field, a three-dimensionality in which Party orthodoxy at least momentarily lost its monopoly.

Early that winter, just as Fang and many other Chinese intellectuals began evincing some sense of hope that China might succeed after all in evolving politically toward greater democratization, a series of events that no one had anticipated took place. Beginning in Hefei, at Fang's own university on December 5, and ending in Beijing on January 1, twenty large Chinese cities were suddenly racked by demonstrations in which students demanded a speed-up in political reform. Tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets of urban China carrying placards and banners emblazoned with such slogans as NO DEMOCRATIZATION, NO MODERNIZATION and GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE PEOPLE. Campuses were festooned with wall posters proclaiming anti-Party sentiments like I HAVE A DREAM, A DREAM OF FREEDOM. I HAVE A DREAM OF DEMOCRACY. I HAVE A DREAM OF LIFE ENDOWED WITH HUMAN RIGHTS. MAY THE DAY COME WHEN ALL THESE ARE MORE THAN DREAMS.

Alarmed by the specter of political chaos, the Party reflexively acted to quell the disturbances and to locate and root out their causes. Urged on by Maoist hard-liners, for whom the student uprising had been the embodiment of their worst fears about reform, the Party launched a swift counterattack.

THE PARTY REACTS TO FANG AND THE PROTESTS

In early January of last year, just after the student demonstrations had ended, the Anhui Daily (published in Hefei, the home of Keda) ran an article that, like advance artillery fire softening up an enemy target, seemed to be preparing its readers for a larger political campaign to follow. Taking a surprisingly soft line on the recent demonstrations, the article said that student "enthusiasm and concern about the fate of our nation and the future of reforms is understandable." The real blame for the recent upheavals, it suggested, lay elsewhere--namely, in the hands of that "very small number of people who had spurred on the trend of 'bourgeois liberalization,' propagated opinions against the Four Cardinal Principles, and taken advantage of the students' enthusiasm and lack of experience in society to achieve their political aims."

The Guangming Daily, which just the previous year had jubilantly proclaimed, "Our socialist system not only does not fear people speaking out but encourages them to do so," now lashed out menacingly against overly Westernized notions of democracy. On January 11 it ran a commentary with the headline "THE ESSENCE OF POLITICAL 'WHOLESALE WESTERNIZATION' MEANS DISCARDING SOCIALISM," which suggested that the students had been manipulated into demonstrating by a certain unnamed "Vice-President comrade of a university."

On January 12 Zhou Guangzhao, a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, summoned the Keda faculty to a special meeting. In the very center of the front row of the large meeting hall were two conspicuously empty seats. When the room fell silent, Zhou Guangzhao announced that the Party Central Committee and the State Council had decided to remove Guan Weiyan, the president of the university, and Fang Lizhi, the vice-president, from office and to reassign them, respectively, to the Institute of Physics and the Beijing Observatory, both in the capital.

After announcing this coup, Zhou Guangzhao accused Fang of having "disseminated many erroneous statements reflecting 'bourgeois liberalization'" and of having departed from the Four Cardinal Principles. He continued his attack by saying that Fang's "ideas of running the school by attempting to shake off the Party leadership and departing from the socialist road had resulted in extremely nasty consequences for Keda. These erroneous ideas were fully revealed in the recent disturbance created by students of this university."

The assessment made by the secretary of the Anhui Provincial Party Committee, Li Guixian, was even more extreme. He claimed that Fang had "defamed the Party's cadres and leadership, and negated the cause of the Party over the past few decades, slandered and distorted the socialist system, and sown discord in the relations between the Party and intellectuals, especially among young intellectuals." Then, in that Maoist way so recognizable to all Chinese, Li began to speak directly to Fang's former colleagues in the audience, seeming to offer understanding while actually delivering a threat. "It should be noted that most cadres and teachers at Keda disapprove of, and many comrades resolutely reject, Fang Lizhi's erroneous words and deeds. Some comrades may have made some erroneous remarks under Fang Lizhi's influence, but it is a good thing that today they have realized their mistakes and corrected themselves. Those few comrades who up to now have failed to do so are allowed to take some time to realize their mistakes, but they must observe discipline."


Over the next few days articles in the official press railed against Fang. These attacks were so relentless, repetitive, and overblown that it sometimes seemed as if the Party despaired of convincing even its own members, not to mention other intellectuals, of the righteousness of its actions, except by the sheer force and volume of its rhetoric. Any lingering uncertainties about whether the orders for Fang's ouster had come from the very top of the Party were dispelled when, a day after Fang's dismissal, Deng Xiaoping himself denounced Fang Lizhi, along with Liu Binyan and Wang Ruowang, by name during a meeting with Noboru Takeshita, then the Secretary General of the Japanese Liberal-Democratic Party and now Japan's Premier.

Fang's ouster set off an immediate reaction at Keda. Students organized a petition drive to protest his dismissal and put up banners saying, IT IS CHINA'S SHAME THAT IT CANNOT EMBRACE SUCH A SCHOLAR AS FANG LIZHI, and MR. GUAN AND MR. FANG, YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE YOUR SACRIFICES. WE MISS YOU AND HOPE WE WILL SEE YOU AGAIN. Authorities quashed the petition drive and tore down the banners.

On January 16, four days after Fang's dismissal, the Chinese were stunned to hear that Hu Yaobang, the Party general Secretary and the man widely considered to be Deng Xiaoping's chosen successor, had been removed from office. But the Party did not stop even here. A week later, on January 19 (as if Fang's dismissal from his position at Keda had not sufficiently rid China's system of him), Xu Leyi, a deputy Party secretary in Anhui province, appeared on evening television and completed the new purge. For seven minutes of the half-hour news broadcast he was shown reading a statement from the Anhui Provincial Party Committee announcing that Fang Lizhi had not only lost his job but also been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party. In the communique that followed, the Party enumerated the now familiar litany of Fang's "extremely serious" mistakes, each one backed up by a list of offending quotations.


The Fang Lizhi affair quickly became a cause celebre in China. Within days of his dismissal, members of the foreign press and the diplomatic community in Beijing were referring to him as China's Sakharov. Chinese intellectuals, even those who did not completely agree with Fang's uncompromising vision of democracy for their country, applauded him for his unwavering boldness. The Party, desperate to stem this hagiographic treatment of Fang, was relentless in its media campaign against him. Even the People's Daily, which only two months earlier had lionized Fang and Guan for having created a model university at Keda, now ridiculed them, claiming that in "waving the banner of running universities in a democratic way" they were "passing fish eyes off as pearls" and letting "vulcanized copper masquerade as gold." This was certainly not the first time that a Chinese publication had been forced to reverse itself--and surely there are few kinds of intellectual debasement worse than the forced repudiation by a writer or an editor of passionately held and publicly expressed beliefs--to keep its political position parallel to the careening Party line.

Fang's outspoken espousal of democracy and human rights had put the Party in a difficult bind, and made it appear grossly inconsistent. Having vigorously tried to cultivate intellectuals at various times during the previous years with ever wider calls for ever greater freedom and democracy, it now seemed bent on persecuting them again in a way that could not but remind members of the Chinese intelligentsia of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, which had followed Mao's call for the Hundred Flowers Movement, in the mid-fifties. Sometimes it appeared as if the Party, unable to find the "golden mean" (zhongyong)--the middle way revered by classical Chinese political philosophers--hoped at least to create an optical illusion of moderation by oscillating back and forth rapidly between the extremes, alternately coddling and punishing its intellectuals. When, some months later, I asked Fang if he believed that democratization could ever take place in China under the prevailing conditions, he replied. "In China the concept of democratization has often been nothing more than a poker chip in what is really a game of power. Maybe there are still a few idealistic leaders, but on the whole most are preoccupied with the struggle for power, and they use such concepts as democracy as just another means of defeating their opponents. One side will say, 'I stand for reform and you don't, so you shouldn't be here!' The other will say, 'No! Reform is wrong, so you shouldn't be here!' In the end it is the Chinese people who suffer, because they get used as playthings."


The Party's treatment of Fang pointed up the contradiction embedded within its whole modernization program and within its past as well. If China was to modernize, the Party urgently needed to rally to its cause those students and intellectuals who had been alienated from it for so many years. The key element of this mobilization process included both granting them more freedom and opening China's doors to the outside world. The predicament in which the Party found itself was that along with foreign capital, technology, science, languages, and management techniques came foreign political ideas and values that by their nature challenged the hegemony of one-party rule and led to the kind of hard-line neo-Maoist reaction to which Fang, like so many intellectuals before him in Chinese Communist history, had fallen prey. What was the Party to do? Allow such subversive heresies as democracy, freedom, and human rights to spread unchecked, or crush the students and intellectuals and risk losing their creative energies for the paramount task of developing China?

Neither alternative seemed acceptable. Desperately needing to find some compromise position, the Party did the only thing it could: it acted inconsistently. By slapping down Fang Lizhi it sent out a signal that while intellectuals were being granted unprecedented new freedoms, public political discourse was not to be among them. However, by limiting its punitive actions to what by historical Party standards were mild ones, it sought at the same time to reassure intellectuals that China was not returning to the political dark ages. In effect, the message was this: "As long as you are willing to leave the supremacy of the Communist Party unchallenged, we will grant you considerable freedom. If you challenge the Party and socialism as its official canon, you will be punished--but not as harshly as before." The reformers in the Party were trying to keep a delicate balance between the imperatives of modernization and those of control. But that January when it was rocked by renewed factional struggle after the tumultuous student demonstrations of the previous month, it was teetering ominously.

UNINTENDED PROPAGANDA

About a month after Fang Lizhi was dismissed from his job, expelled from the Party and ordered back to the capital to take up the post of researcher at the Beijing Observatory (his wife still taught at Beijing University), I happened to stop by the house of a friend of mine, a longtime Party member who is an up-and-coming official in a state-run enterprise. He, his sister (also a Party member) and I had been eating dried persimmons and watermelon seeds, chatting, and half-heartedly watching a television program about new strains of purebred swine that were being introduced into Chinese herds, when my friend suddenly disappeared into his bedroom. Moments later he reappeared and, with a conspiratorial smile, handed me a thick sheaf of photocopied papers. To my surprise it consisted of ninety-one pages of speeches and interviews with Fang Lizhi, printed in bold, oversize characters that even the sight-impaired could have read in a dim light, and arranged in chronological order from March, 1985, through December, 1986, complete with a table of contents.

Since the Party was at present ill disposed toward both Fang and all illegal publishing ventures, I expressed amazement at seeing Fang's very controversial speeches printed up in what looked like published form. I asked if my friend had found the collection at some outdoor bookstall, thinking it might have been put out surreptitiously by an underground network of dissidents, as were journals that had circulated in 1978 and 1979, during the Democracy Wall period.

"Not at all--I got these from the Party itself," my friend replied, clearly enjoying my surprise. "The collection is a neibu ['internal,' a designation for documents not to be shown outside restricted Party circles] that all of us in the Party are being required to study and criticize."

Smirking, his sister slapped the sheaf of paper and told me that the Party had sent every Party branch copies of Fang's selected works so that all members might hold study meetings to "criticize his erroneous bourgeois liberal line."

"And did you hold such meetings?" I asked.

"You know," my friend's sister replied, her smirk breaking into a full smile, "before the Party handed down this document, no one in our unit really knew much about Fang Lizhi except that he had been vice-president at Keda and that he had run into some trouble with the Party over the student demonstrations. Few people had paid much attention to him, and we didn't have much of an idea what he really stood for. However, after the Party compiled these speeches, disseminated them to every Party branch, and then actually required members to read them, we of course got a better sense of him, and an awful lot of people suddenly started saying, 'Hmmm. This guy Fang isn't bad! In fact, he makes a lot of sense!' Before I knew what was happening, many people in my unit became not only quite interested in what Fang had to say but quite sympathetic toward him as well."

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"How did the discussion sessions actually work out?"

They both laughed. "Unfortunately, it was my responsibility to organize the study meeting to criticize Fang at my unit," my friend said, rolling his eyes upward. "What could I do? As a result of reading the document, so many people had ended up agreeing with Fang, the very person they were supposed to get together to criticize, that it became next to impossible for us to hold a meeting."

"So what did you do?"

"It was ridiculous! I finally just said, 'Forget it!,' wrote a report, and sent it on up to my superiors, saying that we had all read the required documents and had learned much from one another's criticisms."

"Did any units you know of actually hold criticism meetings?"

"Probably. But I imagine this kind of charade went on elsewhere in the Party too."

"What's the attitude of your co-workers now toward these kinds of study meetings?" I asked.


"Well, of course, we don't have them as often as we used to," my friend replied with a suggestion of embarrassment. "But when documents do come down from Central, we have to get together to act out the ritual. Usually there's a lot of joking around, because our attitude is that if the leaders want to fight among themselves about ideology, that's their business, but they shouldn't drag the rest of us into these struggles with a lot of propaganda and study meetings. We're tired of it and resent it."

"But aren't people now a little warier than they used to be, because of the recent political crackdown?"

"Even though things loosened up over the past few years, people have become fearful again about stepping too obviously over official boundaries," my friend's sister acknowledged. "Before the student demonstrations people were much more careless. Now, at least in public, most people have started to act obedient to the Party again, even though they no longer believe in it. Although the situation is still nowhere near as bad as it was during the Cultural Revolution, everyone knows that a wrong move could still affect their lives. After all, who doesn't remember the past? Several people in our office had parents and friends who committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution after they were accused of being rightists and capitalist-roaders."

The naivete of such old-fashioned propagandizing was sublime. Rather than winning adherents, the Party propaganda organs had become huge, self-defeating engines of disaffection, which caused more and more of the very young Chinese whose support the leadership needed to react almost automatically against anything the Party supported. Far from aspiring to, or being proud of, Party membership, a growing number of young Chinese now wished to distance themselves as much as possible from the Party. Although many ambitious young people worked for and maintained membership, often they did so simply because advancement was impossible in the ranks of government or in state-owned enterprises without it, and because it frequently provided them with valuable perks such as the use of cars, better housing, and opportunities for travel. But, particularly among China's new, foreign educated elite, there was a growing sense that what was important was not the Party but the outside world, with which they increasingly identified.

By expunging from their midst people like Fang Lizhi and shortly thereafter the dissident writers Liu Binyan and Wang Ruowang, the older leaders of the Party may have enjoyed a temporary illusion of purification, but actually they were just isolating themselves further from the very sources of support they so urgently needed for credibility. In fact, when it came to questions of trust--the fundamental bond between a government and its people--it was rare to find anyone, particularly in intellectual circles, who still put much faith in the justice or fairness of the Party. The Chinese Communist Party of 1987 was indeed a far cry from that of the days when Party membership conferred on a Chinese the highest social status imaginable and when the Party's leadership was looked up to with blind reverence.

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The Party, though still awesomely powerful, had been cut down in stature both because of its recent history and because Chinese now had alternative avenues of advancement. For instance, one could go into business for oneself or go abroad to study and live. Or one could stay home and sink into a more or less individualistic life of self-interest, if not "self-fulfillment." One of the reasons that Fang made the political establishment so nervous was that he was contributing to the creation of exactly these new dimensions of life that fell outside the Party's aegis. He was helping to create an ethos in which dissent was not only thinkable but laudable. So it must have been infuriating, not to say alarming, for Party hard-liners to learn that after his expulsion Fang received an avalanche of sympathetic mail.

"It was very heartwarming to get so many expressions or support," Fang told me. "Some addressed their notes simply to 'Fang Lizhi, Beijing,' and still they got to me! But my wife and I were particularly touched by those people who sent postcards on which they not only expressed their outrage about my loss of job and ouster from the Party but also signed their names and wrote their return addresses, as if to defy the censors and show them that they refused to be cowed into silence."

Then, with a bemused but satisfied smile, Fang added, "There was a great flood of these letters in late January and February, right after my expulsion. Then, after they had slowly tapered off, a curious thing happened. Suddenly a whole new wave began to arrive. And this time what people wrote was much more complex. Their letters did not simply express sympathy or outrage at my expulsion but contained longer comments on what I had been saying about democracy. At first I couldn't figure out what was going on. Then it dawned on me. They were triggered by the Party's circulation of my speeches for criticism." Fang gave one of his guileless laughs.


When I asked Fang if he would consider joining the Party a third time, he sat for a while without speaking, as if he were pondering a riddle. Finally he said, "Well, should that moment ever arrive, I would first want to see what the situation was like at the time. I certainly don't feel that it is up to me to reform myself. But if the Party changes, well, then I might consider rejoining it."

FANG REAPPEARS

Once purged from the party, Fang Lizhi and the writers Liu Binyan and Wang Ruowang disappeared for a while from public view, although hardly from the consciousness of Chinese intellectuals. Of the three, Fang came in for the most frequent and strenuous criticism in Party propaganda, being accused of having almost single-handedly incited the nationwide student demonstrations. Although the activities of all three men were severely limited, they were allowed to receive friends, to continue their work, and to attend certain public functions. Fang was even allowed to go abroad for a scientific meeting. But they remained in a sort of limbo as the contending factions within the Party waged their slow-motion struggle for ideological supremacy and political power.

Although Fang was allowed to teach a limited number of classes and to see friends, he was explicitly forbidden to meet any Western journalists. But with Fang the Party had a problem that it did not have with either Liu or Wang. Fang had already made frequent trips abroad, and thereby had become one of the very few Chinese scientists to gain recognition in foreign scientific circles. In fact, after his expulsion, when Westerners in Beijing began to refer to him as China's Sakharov (an implicit rebuke to pretensions that China was more open than the Soviet Union), some began speculating as to whether Fang might not become China's first Nobel laureate.

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Fang's situation was unique for another reason as well. When he was forced to leave Hefei, he had to forfeit the seat he had just won in the fall elections for the local district People's Congress. However, his wife, Li Shuxian, later won a seat in Haidian, the Beijing district in which many of the city's universities are situated. Taking advantage of her new celebrity status, she told foreign reporters that she believed the Party had been wrong to discharge her husband and that, in due course, history would "prove that he was right." In the months that followed, Li Shuxian came to serve as a kind of local people's advocate, speaking out about the injustice of her husband's situation, championing human rights, and protesting on behalf of her student constituents, who were frequently harassed with unannounced searches of their dormitories and sometimes even detention by security guards.

On February 28 Fang made his first post-purge public appearance, in Beijing, when he showed up at the Fourth National Congress of the Chinese Physics Society to deliver a paper titled "Progress in Modern Cosmology." His return was widely reported in the Chinese press, as was the fact that the meeting was chaired by none other than his old friend at Keda, Guan Weiyan. Clearly, this was an all too self-conscious attempt by the Party to reassure scientists that there was now life after purgatory.

In June, after Fang's application to go abroad had been approved at the very highest level of Party leadership, Fang was allowed to leave China briefly to take part in the annual meeting of the International Center for Theoretical Physics, being held in Trieste. He was refused permission, however, to go on to Great Britain for a conference commemorating the tercentenary of the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia. No sooner had Fang gotten out of China than he was descended upon by hopeful interviewers. Instead of holding back, Fang expounded to them on his political views as fearlessly as he had done the past fall in China.


When his friend Tiziano Terzani, the former Beijing bureau chief for Der Spiegel, met with him in Italy and asked him what his next political target would be, Fang answered with one word: "Marxism." Terzani appeared surprised by his boldness, and Fang added, "That Marxism no longer has any worth is a truth that cannot be denied....It is a thing of the past--useful to understand problems of the last century, but not those of today....It is like a worn-out dress that should be discarded." When asked what successes he would attribute to the Chinese Communist Revolution, Fang replied, "In China the Communist Party has never had any success. Over the past thirty years it has produced no positive results....That is why the desire for a reformation is so strong, why faith in the Party, especially among young people, has disappeared....In China the Party wants not only to manage politics but to have everything under its control as well, including the way people think and live....To create a real economic democracy in China the Party must diminish this political control-- precisely what it fears."

When asked by Lu Keng, whose interview with Fang appeared in the overseas Chinese newspaper Queens Daily, why he had been allowed to go abroad while Liu Binyan had not been allowed to accept an invitation from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Fang replied facetiously, "The country apparently needs to learn from the West only in science and technology, but not in the humanities." Then he went on to reiterate his belief that the Chinese Constitution must prevail over the will of the Party, and that China's future lay in striving for "freedom of speech and freedom of the press, among other freedoms which are provided for by this Constitution." He said, "For only freedom of speech will be able to break the tyranny of a 'one-Party voice' and bring about the realization of political pluralism."

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Surprisingly enough, after Fang's return to China there were no immediate political repercussions from these outspoken interviews, By last fall it had become clearer than ever that the punitive measures taken against Party intellectuals were more in the nature of a wrist-slapping than a full-fledged purge. The efforts of the hard-liners ended up only rebounding on them by imbuing their opponents with quasi-mythical status within China and attracting international attention to the very men whose ideas they wished to suppress. Last winter foreign journalists were suddenly writing adulatory accounts of these courageous Chinese defenders of free speech and democracy. The hard-liners seemed to have underestimated the voracious appetite of the West for Communist-bloc intellectuals stamped with the imprimatur of Party persecution. As the political climate once again warmed up, and with the behind-the-scenes support of certain key reform leaders, many Chinese intellectuals who had been in bad Party graces that winter began to leave China for tours abroad, where they were treated like heroes. Liu Binyan was invited to go to Harvard University to become a Nieman Fellow, and also won a lucrative book contract with an American publisher for his autobiography. Fang Lizhi received invitations from Cambridge and American universities to be a visiting scholar and had his collected speeches published in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

When I last saw Fang last September in Beijing, I was surprised by the freedom with which he was allowed to socialize and go about his academic life. It was true that he had been forbidden to make political speeches or give interviews to the press, that his phone was bugged, and that his movements were closely watched; but it was also true that he was able to lead a busy life in the capital, teaching, attending scientific meetings, and meeting privately with friends, including some foreigners. In November he had even been allowed to return to Keda to deliver four lectures, although he was watched closely by security guards at all times.


One occasion in particular illustrated the surprisingly permissive post-crackdown policy of the Party toward Fang. After dining with Fang and Li Shuxian at one of the capital's Western hotels, my wife and I introduced them to the NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw, who was in Beijing for the network's week-long series of broadcasts on China. As it happened, Brokaw had just the day before interviewed Zhao Ziyang, the Premier and acting Party General Secretary, and Zhao had spoken about Fang's situation at some length in what appeared to be yet another effort to reassure the outside world that Fang and other Chinese intellectuals would not have their freedom circumscribed any further. Upon meeting Fang, Brokaw asked him if he would like to see the tape of the Zhao interview, which was not scheduled to be shown on Chinese television.

In what was surely one of the most unusual experiences of my many years in China, we soon found ourselves sitting in an NBC screening room, watching China's head of state speak to China's number-one dissident via an American network-news interview. Even stranger than the situation itself was what Zhao was saying about Fang.

"Recently some Communist Party members were expelled from the Party, while others were persuaded to leave the Party," Zhao told Brokaw amiably, taking periodic swigs from a glass of Qingdao beer, which did not appear on the televised interview. "Maybe some people in the U.S. view this as a crackdown, as oppression against intellectuals. I do not agree. I think probably you are already familiar with the name of Mr. Fang Lizhi." As Zhao spoke his name, I glanced over at Fang, who sat bolt upright, as if at attention. He had a slight smile on his lips and a nonplussed expression on his face, and was utterly absorbed in what Zhao was saying. "He is a professor and a well-accomplished physicist. Over the last few years he has made many remarks and speeches and written articles criticizing the Chinese government and the policies of our Party. Sometimes he has even referred to the leadership in our country. He delivered such speeches at universities and also at other places. But he is still working in a very important post, and not long ago he even went abroad for an international academic conference. Moreover, recently he gave an interview to two journalists from Taiwan. [They had been the first journalists in some four decades to visit the mainland from Taiwan.] But he still maintains his original position and ideas. He was a Party member in the past. However, since he has such beliefs, he could no longer remain a Communist Party member. However, he is still an intellectual and a scientist, and is, moreover, respected for this. As such, he is still able to play his role in scientific and technological areas."


Going on to draw a distinction between the obligations of intellectuals who are Party members and those who are not, Zhao said, "If one joins the Party, one has to observe the regulations, the Party Constitution, and the Party program....If someone cannot observe them, he will be asked to leave....I think the Party itself should have the freedom to decide whether someone should remain in or not. But when intellectuals leave the Party, they will still be respected and will still be able to play their own roles in their own [professional] capacities. I don't think you could call this a crackdown."

Zhao spoke with confidence and conviction, and his words seemed so reassuring that it was difficult to remember that even though he had given his word the previous winter that Party harassment of intellectuals would cease, another wave of punitive action had followed that summer.

Although heartened by Zhao's new moderation and doubtless also by the way Party reformers had managed to bring China back from what seemed to be the brink, Fang remained uncompromising in his attitude about the need for democracy in China. When I asked him what his own generation might leave by way of a legacy to China's youth, he replied simply "That communism doesn't work. Although one cannot say that every sentence of Marxism-Leninism is wrong, one must admit that its basics are incorrect."


"Are there any Marxist true believers left in the Party?" I asked.

"They are very few. The whole atmosphere in China now is very bad. There is no morality or religion, or, for that matter, anyone in charge of our moral education. Formerly, the Party did this to some extent, but now belief in the Party and Marxism has literally collapsed. When you ask young people what they believe in, they tell you that they don't know. They have lost confidence in contemporary Chinese culture. They have nothing to be proud of. Except for those young people who are still idealistic because they have started to turn to democracy, there is a cultural and political vacuum."

"Do you put any hope in the Party's reform-minded leaders?"

"Perhaps there are a few who are idealistic, but on the whole they are primarily concerned with the question of power.

When I continued to press Fang as to whether he truly doubted that there was any hope for reform from within, he finally relented a bit. "Even if the leaders are not sincere, we must accept that this is the way things are going to be," he said. "One cannot say that success is absolutely impossible. But for now since the Chinese Communist Party is all there is in power and there are no other democratic channels open, we can only allow these leaders to lead and hope for the success of the reformers."


Then, brightening somewhat, he added, "The Chinese Communist Party now finds itself in a curious kind of competition with Gorbachev and his idea of glasnost. The two socialist countries now seem to be vying with each other to see which one can be most open and, by analogy, be most modern. China's Party leaders do not want to seem to be outdone by Gorbachev, particularly since some people have likened my situation to that of the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, and his situation has now improved so greatly. As far as I am concerned, this kind of competition is a very good thing not only for me but for Chinese intellectuals and China in general. The hard reality is that there is no way now to get the Chinese Communist Party out of power. To try to replace them, or even to persuade them to adopt some other political system, is impossible. This is the difference between dissidence in China and in the West--that dissident opposition can aspire completely to replace certain leaders. So now most Chinese feel that the only way to move forward is to hope that the Communist Party will be able to change its direction and do well by the country. Maybe the next generation will use different tactics and changed political forms, but this will be up to them. Right now, such things are impossible."

In November, when the Thirteenth Party Congress closed, with the reform-minded Zhao Ziyang firmly ensconced as Party General Secretary and with the Maoist hard-liners once again at bay, many Chinese intellectuals heaved a sigh of relief. As the student demonstrations and the ensuing expulsions of Fang and his colleagues receded from memory, and as official publications from the Party became refoliated with calls for political reforms and democratization, it did indeed appear that China had completed yet another of its seemingly endless political circles. In February of 1988 Fang was given a promotion from fourth to second rank of professorship and the Party allowed him to grant a short interview to The New York Times. Liberal friends who only the winter before had been gloomy about the prospect for political reform in China were now filled with a new optimism.

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But, chastened by the many earlier abortive reform efforts, Fang remained skeptical about the future. When asked by the Hong Kong journal Baixing Banyue Kan how he viewed the outcome of the Congress and Zhao's clearly reform-minded speech to the Party, he replied, "It is true that Zhao's report was very stirring. But in his own time Mao Zedong made speeches that were even more stirring." After citing a host of ways in which the Party continued to conduct itself in an undemocratic fashion, Fang went on to warn, "It's not enough just to read of speeches in newspapers. One must always keep one's eye on reality...There are still just too many examples of authorities saying one thing but doing another."

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.