[2005.05.19]Zhang chunqiao张春桥

Obituary讣告Zhang Chunqiao 张春桥
May 19th 2005
From The Economist print editionZhang Chunqiao, a member of the Gang of Four, died on April 21st, aged 88
张春桥，“四人帮”成员之一，死于4月21日，终年88岁

IT TOOK almost three weeks for China’s state news agency to announce the death of Zhang Chunqiao. When it came, a mere four sentences described his career as “one of the culprits of the Lin Bao and Jiang Qing Counter-revolutionary Clique”. And that, indeed, was how most Chinese had last seen him, at his televised show-trial in 1981. Manacled, rumpled, with his spectacles askew, he had looked both pathetic and desperate. And no wonder. With the other members of the Gang of Four, Mao Zedong’s chief henchmen (only one of whom now survives), he had faced charges of ultimate responsibility for the persecution of 729,511 people, and the deaths of 34,800 of them, during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.
中国官方媒体在张春桥去世的三个星期后，才对外发布了消息。在这仅有四句话的新闻中，将他说成是“林彪江青反革命集团的主犯之一”。事实上，绝大多数中国人对他的最后印象是在1981年电视上的法庭公审。在那次审判中，他手带镣铐，衣着凌乱，眼镜歪斜，神情看起来既可怜又绝望。作为毛泽东的主要追随者，他和四人帮的其他成员（尚有一人还活着）不得不面临着审判，被指控的罪名是在66-76年的“文革”期间，对729，511人的迫害及34，800人的死亡负有完全的责任。

Mr Zhang, though prickly, had been a witty and articulate public speaker, with a disarming habit—in the middle of rants against “capitalist-roaders” and “bourgeois remnants”—of fishing cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting up. At his trial, he acquired the habit of silence. He did not respond when the judge harangued him, would look at none of the evidence against him, and pretended to go to sleep. Sentenced to death, he said nothing. When the sentence was commuted to 18 years, rumour had it that he never spoke a word in jail and lost the power of speech. He was released in 1998, but no one knew where he had gone to live. Small wonder, then, that his death was murmured of in 1991, 1994 and 1996, and that many Chinese were shocked to find that he still survived.
虽然有点敏感，张在公共场合幽默且善言。带着他那不拘小节的习惯动作：从口袋中“钓出”香烟点着，痛斥着那些“走资本主义道路当权派”及“顽固执行资产阶级反动路线的一小撮人”。而在针对他的审判中。法官拿不出什么证据，只是喋喋不休地向他发问，而他则假装睡着，以沉默应答。当听到自己的死刑判决时，他仍然无动于衷，随后被减刑到有期徒刑18年。有传闻说，由于在狱中一言不发，他因而丧失了语言的能力。1988年，张获得释放，过着隐姓埋名的生活。关于他死亡消息曾在1991，1994和1996年不时地传出，但不久人们会惊讶地发现他依然还活着。

Suppressing words, either written or spoken, had formed the base of his career. As deputy head of the Cultural Revolution Group, from 1966 onwards, his role was to purge the party ranks of artists and intellectuals, creating instead “new-born things” that would be worthy of the revolution. Intellectuals were sent to work in the fields to clear their minds of bourgeois notions. As head of the Revolutionary Committee in Shanghai Mr Zhang used the Red Guards, ruthless gangs of students and workers, to burn books.
张是通过对“言论的压制”而起家的，作为中央文革小组的副组长，从1966年开始，他就参与了迫害党内的高级知识分子和艺术界人士，培养有利于革命的“新生力量”。在这期间，知识分子被下放劳动，以此改造他们的资产阶级思想观念。在上海担任革委会主任期间，张利用红卫兵，无情的工人和学生帮派来焚烧书籍。

Having purged these “poisonous weeds” (a favourite phrase), Mr Zhang thrust in his own ideas. Even in a Maoist context, these were often extreme. He imagined a China completely free of hierarchies, employers, wage systems, private property and even government. In 1958, Mao himself implicitly criticised his demand for the abolition of wages. One remark for which he is still remembered, “Socialist weeds are more fragrant than capitalist grain”, summed up his recklessness. He showed more enthusiasm than most, too, for the bowdlerising of the Beijing Opera under Mao’s fourth wife, Jiang Qing, the leader of the Gang. Her masterwork, “Spark Amid the Reeds”, underwent ten rewrites by Mr Zhang to make it into a thing of revolutionary glory.
在铲除了这些“毒草”(当时的流行语）后，张确立了自己的思想。这种思想即使在毛派分子的眼中，也过于极端。在张的心目中，中国应该是一个没有阶级，没有雇佣关系，没有工资制度，没有私有财产的社会，甚至连政府也没有存在的必要。关于废除工资一事，毛泽东对张进行了含蓄的批评。有句至今耳熟能详的“名言”就出自张之口：“宁要社会主义的草，不要资本主义的苗。”，现在看来真是一个笑话。在江青领导的对京剧改革中，张表现出超乎寻常的热情。江青是毛的第四任夫人，也是四人帮的头头。江的得意之作《沙家浜》也是经过张十易其稿，成为革命的样板戏。

His most daring idea concerned Shanghai itself. In 1967 he sought to turn China’s most westernised, industrialised city into a version of the Paris commune of 1870-71. The bureaucrats were kicked out, and the masses took over the government. Their slogan was “overthrow everything”. Unfortunately, dissident elements turned off the water and the power, and the city ground almost to a halt. Mao summoned Mr Zhang to Beijing and reined him back. Most painful of all, he condemned his efforts as “reactionary”.
张在上海实施了他那最激进的思想，1967年，他试图将中国这个最西化和工业化的城市改造成1870-1871年巴黎公社的翻版。当权派被打倒，人民群众当家作主。他们的口号是“打倒一切”。不幸的是，由此引发的社会动乱，造成了水源和电力供应的中断，城市几近瘫痪。毛泽东召他进京，面首机宜后派他重回上海。随后他被迫承认自己的错误，最让他痛苦的是，他违心地将自己的行为说成是“反革命”的举动。

The iron broom “铁扫帚”
Like many an iconoclast, Mr Zhang’s roots lay in the things he despised. His family were landlords and intellectuals in Shandong province, and he went to a good school. He joined the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers as a teenager, objecting to the regime of Chiang Kai-shek, and was a communist by 1940, when he was 23. His commitment to the cause was solid by 1949, when he followed the victorious communist army into Shanghai.
正如其它的造反派那样，张为自己的出身感到自卑。出生在山东一个地主和知识分子的家庭，张受过良好的教育，青少年时代就加入左翼作家联盟，参与“反蒋”的活动。1940年，23岁的他加入共产党。随着1949年共产党的军队进入上海后，他献身革命立场更加坚定了。

Unswerving though he seemed, he occasionally doubted that China’s revolution could be as swift and total as he hoped. His most famous article, “On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship over the Bourgeoisie” (1975), admitted that the abolition of private property, money and material incentives could take a little time. He hoped, however, that the “fortified villages” held by the bourgeoisie would be swept away, one by one, by the “iron broom of the proletariat”. Deng Xiaoping’s proposals to increase exports he scorned as “nation-selling capitulationism”.
张立场虽然坚定，偶尔也会怀疑中国的革命能否在短期内彻底完成。在他那篇最著名的文章《论对资产阶级的全面专政》（1975）中，张承认，要废除“私有财产，金钱和物质的刺激”，还需要经历一段时间的考验。他相信，资产阶级的“土围子”最终会被“无产阶级的铁扫帚”一个又一个地消灭。邓小平关于“增加出口”的提案也被他痛斥为“卖国投降主义”。

By then, though he had risen to second vice-premier, Mr Zhang could feel the forces of reaction closing in. In a rare candid note, written that February, he admitted that he thought he might be beheaded “at any time”. In fact the denouement happened in October 1976, when an elite unit of the People’s Liberation Army arrested him, Madame Mao, and the two others who made up the “Gang of Four”, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen.
在那时，虽然已经爬到了排名第二的副总理职位，张还是感到了自己的末日即将来临。根据2月的一份讲话记录稿记载，他罕见地坦言自己“随时”会人头落地。直到1976年10月，军方的资深将领逮捕了他，江青（毛夫人），姚文元和王洪文等四人帮成员，张的政治生命就此完结。

Mao was then a month dead. His star burned bright for two more years, then waned. By 1980, Mr Zhang and the others were scapegoats for his enormities. They were scapegoats, too, for the millions of Chinese who had helped to drive out neighbours, or chastise intellectuals, or hound local bureaucrats from office in the fervid days of Maoist upheaval. Mr Zhang’s guilty silence in court was not only his, but theirs. It is a silence that China still finds exceedingly hard to break.
毛泽东在此前的一个月已经去世，他的革命路线还实施了两年，随后渐渐失去影响。到了1980年，张及其同伙成了文革的替罪羊。在毛统治的那个疯狂年代里，知识分子遭到迫害，当权派被打倒，邻里反目为仇。张在法庭上的沉默从某种意义看来，不仅是对他个人的罪恶。对经历那个年代的人来说，大家是否都应该有所反思呢？