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Forrest Anderson/Time
Life Pictures/Getty Images The Chinese
astrophysicist Fang Lizhi at home in Beijing, shortly before taking
refuge at
the US embassy during and after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, 1989 My
‘Confession’ Fang Lizhi,
translated from the Chinese by Perry Link. The Chinese
astrophysicist Fang Lizhi at home in Beijing, shortly before taking
refuge at
the US embassy during and after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, 1989 From reading
Henry Kissinger’s new book On China,1 I have learned that Mr. Kissinger
met
with Deng Xiaoping at least eleven times—more than with any other
Chinese
leader—and that the topic of one of their chats was whether Fang Lizhi
would
confess and repent. On June 3,
1989, Deng, chair of the Military Commission of the Communist Party of
China,
ordered tanks from Chinese field armies into Beijing to suppress
students who
were demonstrating peacefully at Tiananmen Square. On the night of June
5,
Raymond Burghardt, political counselor in the US embassy in Beijing,
came to
the hotel where my wife, Li Shuxian, and I were temporarily staying and
invited
us to “take refuge” in the embassy as “guests of President Bush.” He
said we
could stay as long as we needed. The matter soon became a point of
contention
in US–China relations. About five
months later, on November 9, Deng received, as he described him, his
“old
friend” Henry Kissinger and brought up “the Fang Lizhi case.” Deng told
Kissinger that he was prepared to release the Fang family, expelling
them from
China “if the American side required Fang to write a confession.”
Kissinger
replied that if Fang were later to say that the American government had
forced
him to confess, things would be worse than if he had not confessed. The American
ambassador, James Lilley, relayed the gist of this Deng–Kissinger
exchange to
Li Shuxian and me, inside the embassy. Lilley, referring to the
confession as
“one of” Deng’s conditions, made it clear that he was only transmitting
the
message, not asking for a confession. We were “the guests of Bush”;
what kind
of host asks a guest to confess? I felt a bit sorry for the ambassador,
who
clearly was caught in a dilemma: he could not ask for a confession, and
could
not meet Deng’s condition, either. I told him to relax—Deng’s condition
would
not be all that hard to satisfy. I knew things about Chinese Communist
“confession culture” that Lilley and Kissinger probably did not
understand. Anyone who
has lived through political campaigns in recent Chinese history knows
this much
about the confession culture: solving a “problem” has little if
anything to do
with actual repentance or admission of guilt. So long as the underlying
problem
remains, no number of “confessions” changes anything. And once the
underlying
problem is solved, the lack of a confession never stands in the way.
During the
high tide of the Cultural Revolution, many Chinese scientists,
including me,
had to hand in confessions every day, and each confession was supposed
to show
“new” and “deeper” introspection on what we had found wrong in
ourselves. One
method we used in handling this demand was to spend a half-hour copying
what we
had written the day before (or maybe the day before that) while simply
jumbling
the order of the paragraphs. We would copy paragraphs A, B, C, and D
but put
them in the order C, B, D, A. This was enough to serve as our “new”
introspection. We later learned that even the reordering had been
unnecessary
because the authorities, who were living in their own ruts, were not
reading
what we wrote anyway. In short,
“confessions” in this culture are formalities. They have more to do
with face
than with actual negotiations. The confession that Deng Xiaoping
presented to
Mao Zedong is a famous example. In early 1970, when Deng learned that
Mao was considering
whether to exonerate him, allowing him to return to power, Deng quickly
wrote a
“guarantee to Chairman Mao” in which he vowed “never to reverse
course.” This
letter gave Mao face to do what in any case he was inclined to do. On the same
principle, then, if Deng really wanted to solve the Fang Lizhi problem,
there
was no reason why I shouldn’t give him a bit of face in order to let it
happen.
So, on my own initiative, I wrote out an “account” in two parts:
“concerning
the past” and “concerning the future.” Not a word of it admitted any
mistake or
confessed any crime, but it was verbiage and it might serve a purpose.
(A
translation of this statement is available at nybooks.com/u/7) On November
18 and again on November 24, Ambassador Lilley met with Deputy Foreign
Minister
Liu Huaqiu and presented him, among other things, with my “account,”
which
probably still rests somewhere in the ministry’s archives. No one in
the
government ever commented on it, so far as I know. (It is conceivable
to me
that, just as during the Cultural Revolution, no one ever read it.) In
any
case, by early December there was considerable optimism in the US
embassy that
the Fang Lizhi problem could soon be moved off the table. On December
9, William Stanton, the embassy’s political officer, in a mood of
visible
excitement, came to us bearing good news. President Bush had dispatched
his
national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, on another mission to
Beijing.
(Scowcroft had been sent on such a mission before, in secret, shortly
after the
crackdown at Tiananmen.) Scowcroft was arriving that very day, and
Ambassador
Lilley felt it likely that Scowcroft and Deng could seal a deal that
would let
Li Shuxian and me leave China with Scowcroft on his return flight.
“Pack your
bags!” Stanton said. “You may be free tomorrow!” On the
morning of December 10, with bags all set to go, we waited for marching
orders.
And waited…and waited. Till evening. Nothing. Only later
did we come to understand what had happened. The Chinese Minister of
Foreign
Affairs, Qian Qichen, had held a welcoming banquet for Scowcroft on the
evening
of December 9. At the time, US sanctions against China, including
suspension of
economic aid and a ban on visits by US high-level officials, were still
in
force. For this reason Scowcroft was hoping that the banquet would be
low-key,
without media coverage or any photographs. If it were publicized, he
would have
a lot of explaining to do when he got back to America. His hosts
agreed: the
media would be allowed only for a photo-op before the banquet; the
banquet
itself would be behind closed doors, out of view of the press. The plan
went ahead on that basis: the wine began to flow, toasts ensued, and
everything
was going smoothly. But when it came Scowcroft’s turn to thank his
hosts,
suddenly, out of the blue, a throng of reporters burst into the banquet
hall,
flashbulbs popping and video cameras trained on Scowcroft. Their
obvious
objective was to record Scowcroft’s words as proof that US–China
relations had
returned to normal. Such a thing could not have happened without
official
arrangement. Scowcroft
later wrote that this ambush had put him in an extremely awkward
position. He
had two choices: (1) stop the toast, turn around, and go home
empty-handed; or
(2) carry on with the toast knowing that the next day’s headlines in
the US
would likely read “Scowcroft Toasts the Butchers of Tiananmen.” After a
hasty
judgment of the pros and cons, he gritted his teeth and chose the
second
option.2 It was a gamble that his mission to Beijing might bring major
breakthroughs, and that these would outweigh any media reports of his
toast. The toast
itself, which was fairly lengthy, referred only once to the Tiananmen
events
and made no mention of tanks. It concluded with the words: “May I
propose a
toast to the People’s Republic of China, to the health of President
Yang
[Shangkun], to the great Chinese people, and to US–Chinese friendship?”
(The
full text of Scowcroft’s toast is also available here.) With this
Scowcroft had
certainly given his hosts enough face—much more than my own modest
“account”
had given. The next day
(i.e., the day that my wife and I had spent “awaiting orders”),
Scowcroft was
busy paying official calls on all of the brass of Beijing: Foreign
Minister
Qian Qichen, Premier Li Peng, General Secretary Jiang Zemin, and
finally Deng
Xiaoping. Only at this point did Deng tip his hand to reveal his bottom
line on
the Fang negotiation. Money was the crux. In exchange for the release
of Fang,
Deng wanted not just a piece of paper from Fang but three items from
the US:
lifting of US economic sanctions, resumption of loans, and an
invitation to
Jiang Zemin to visit the US. Scowcroft
replied that the US could not view a solution of the Fang Lizhi problem
as a
negotiating item on the same level as the lifting of economic
sanctions. This
approach would never be accepted in Washington. A solution to the Fang
problem
would certainly be of help on the sanctions question, but “linkage” was
out of
the question. There could be no “package solution.” Deng
Xiaoping and his people then adhered to the standard operating
procedure in
this oldest of trades: no ransom, no release. With nothing
to negotiate, the talks collapsed. Deng’s key condition (the ransom)
had not
been met. It could not have been plainer that the issue of confession,
which
had initially been reported as one of Deng’s conditions, was mere
window-dressing. In June
1990, the government of Japan promised to resume loan programs to China
on
condition that the Fang Lizhi problem be solved. Deng was “quick to
act” (James
Lilley’s phrase), and after only ten days, from June 16 to June 25, we
were
able to leave the embassy and leave China. No need for confession. This
again
demonstrated the principle that “once the underlying problem is solved,
the
lack of confession never stands in the way.” (But while Deng did not
ask me to
write anything at that juncture, Bob Silvers of The New York Review
did. He
wanted my views from the embassy, and I wrote a piece for these pages
called
“The Chinese Amnesia,” which I finished on June 25, only hours before
departing.3) During the
year that I spent in the embassy, friends in the physics department at
the
University of Rome wrote to me about another confession culture with
which they
were familiar: the culture of obsequiousness in the medieval Roman
Church. In
that era, when people were also living in fear of authoritarian power,
it was
acceptable to write things like “I confess my guilt” or “I beseech the
pardon
of the great, knowledgeable, charitable [somebody]”—because God would
forgive
falsehoods that were written under such circumstances. Even the
great physicist Galileo stooped to such language when he addressed
potentates
with phrases like “I, Galileo,…kneeling before you Most Eminent and
Most
Reverend Cardinals….”4 Some of my Italian friends, feeling excessively
nervous
on my behalf, actually sent me drafts of confessional language that
they
thought I might use to get me through my crisis. In all I received
three
complete drafts of ready-to-go confessions. But I suspect that these
drafts
were not original creations; they were probably copied from one of
those
medieval “manuals of confession.” Perhaps, in the future, someone should compile a “manual of confessions” from Communist China. Deng Xiaoping’s “guarantee to Chairman Mao never to reverse course” could be the lead item.
Forrest Anderson/Time
Life Pictures/Getty Images The Chinese
astrophysicist Fang Lizhi at home in Beijing, shortly before taking
refuge at
the US embassy during and after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, 1989 My
‘Confession’ Fang Lizhi, translated from the Chinese by Perry Link. Fang Lizhi, Chinese
Physicist and Seminal Dissident, Dies at 76 by New York Times — Cập nhật :
08/04/2012 18:33 Nhà bác học đối lập Phương Lệ Chi
("Sakharov Trung Hoa") từ trần. Chữ "seminal" trong tựa đề
bài báo NYT, xin các dịch giả đừng dùng chữ "tinh dịch" (như có vị đã
dịch "cha tôi bị ung thư tử cung"), mà nên dịch là "quan
trọng". Có thể xem bản tin tiếng Việt của VOA :
http://www.voanews.com/vietnamese/news/china-dissident-obit-4-7-12-146543725.html
Nguồn: Diễn đàn F! Còm của Gấu Cà Chớn: Đểu giả thiệt. Toàn 1 lũ Bắc
Kít! Mấy anh này bỏ chạy, chẳng biết tí chó gì về cuộc chiến, lầm "pháo kích" với "oanh kích", khi bị độc giả chất vấn, bèn chặc chặc, thì cũng "ầm" một tiếng, khác gì nhau đâu! Hà, hà!
Hồi mới
ra được hải, ngoại, và biết đến Diễn Đàn F, qua NTV [anh phán, mày phải
đọc tụi
nó, hà, hà!], GCC hết sức sững sờ vì giọng điệu hận thù đám Ngụy, bồi
Mỹ, VNCH
của lũ này. Đến giờ này thì cũng vẫn vậy! Đám Trùm Bắc
Kít ở Bắc Bộ Phủ cũng không ưa chúng. Đếch cho về. Ngay đến sư phụ của
chúng,
là PXA, tức Cao Bồi, ‘bạn của GCC”, người dâng Miền Nam cho Bắc Kít,
BBP không
ưa, mà còn tính làm thịt. Điều này là do PXA nói ra, nghe, không phải
GCC phịa! Ông không đi
nổi, không phải địa ngục chật cứng lũ VC, như ông nói, mà vì không có
nơi nào "dung" nổi ông,
y chang trường hợp Tướng Loan, bị "thế giới tự do" xua đuổi! Có 1 cái gì
đó, của Bắc Kít, rất ghê sợ, rất đáng tởm. Sự khác biệt
giữa hai từ oanh kích và pháo kích còn là đề tài trọng tâm, của nhà văn
Đức
W.G. Sebald, trong cuốn “Về lịch sử tự nhiên của huỷ diệt”, xb sau khi
ông mất
vì tai nạn xe hơi, [sorry, cuốn này xb khi ông còn sống, nhưng GCC mua,
sau khi ông mất!], khi ông tự hỏi, tại sao văn chương Đức lại vờ đi một
đề tài
quan trọng như thế: Những cuộc "oanh kích” của quân đội Đồng Minh huỷ
diệt
những thành phố Đức? Nếu như thế,
người Việt chúng ta, nhất là người dân Miền Nam, cũng có thói quen
không phô ra
những tủi nhục, khi họ bị người anh em Miền Bắc cho ăn “pháo kích”, như
một
cách nhắc nhở, chào mừng những ngày lễ lớn của dân tộc: Ngày thành lập
Đảng Cộng
Sản Việt Nam, Sinh Nhật Bác… Nếu có
chăng, thì là chút lòng ưu tư của "Tướng Givral", khi ông mủi lòng
trước những cái chết của thường dân, và có thể, run sợ về một cái chết
của
chính ông ta, bởi vì những trái rốc kết vốn vô tình, và mù loà, cho nên
ông bèn
ra lệnh cho ngưng pháo kích. Đêm nay ngưng
pháo kích! Ôi chao Gấu
lại nhớ đến Bác, và nỗi lòng của nhân dân Mít, khi biết Bác không ngủ,
lo lắng
cho Bác, và dặn dò Bác, ngày mai nhớ ngủ bù nghe Bác, nếu không, không
ngủ mãi,
là trở thành điên, thành khùng! Đêm nay Bác
không ngủ Hậu quả của
những vụ pháo kích, nếu có chăng, chỉ là chứng đái dầm của một cô gái,
[cô gái
lớn của Gấu], ngay khi còn là một thai nhi nằm trong bụng mẹ đã phân
biệt ra được
tiếng réo của những trái pháo khi bay qua, và sau này, ngay cả khi đã
thành lập
gia đình, vẫn còn mắc chứng đái dầm. Tra từ điển!
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