如果中国的历史学者在从事他们具有颠覆性的职业时，能有朝一日不受控制和审查, 他们一定会有这样的评价：中国人对于邓小平的崇敬，应远远超过毛泽东。毛泽东曾领导中国共产党打败日军和国民党，并在20世纪50年代统一中国，但他随后又使国家陷入了大跃进造成的饥荒和文化大革命的混乱。而邓小平则小心翼翼地重整破碎的山河，使中国充满信心, 推向了再度成为世界最大经济体的复兴之路。
傅高义(Ezra Vogel)这部厚重的传记, 写得很有叙事技巧, 富有高超学术水准，阐明了应当对邓小平更崇敬(1904年-1997年)的理由。傅高义在哈佛大学任教多年，曾在1979年出版畅销书《日本第一》(Japan as Number One)，之后他的主要研究兴趣转向中国，并在20世纪80年代花时间研究广东的经济改革。书中引述的资料来源和鸣谢对象，都显示出他交友广泛、学识渊博。尽管在超出西方汉学的常规领域时，其论述或可商榷。例如，他对英国和香港政治的了解就颇为欠缺。
本书并非充满溢美之词，但某些段落读来确有几分像是邓家授权的传记。书中或会提及邓的缺点，但给出的总体评价中，展示其瑕疵时却是手下留情。虽然我们再次得知，20世纪20年代邓小平少年时在法国务工的经历，使他终生都爱吃法式羊角面包，然而对于他后来在内战中的军事成就，描述却十分简明扼要。更有甚者，对邓小平1949年至1952年间在中国西南部(包括他的故乡四川省)的治理，仅一页半的篇幅轻轻带过。而邓小平那段时间的作为足称残暴，并赢得毛泽东的赏识，大地主遭攻击和杀害。有一天我们一定能对邓小平当时采取的手段了解更多，那绝对不是神经脆弱者能够承受的。
在20世纪50年代的“反右运动”中，该书对邓小平充当毛泽东执行者的历史几乎没有谈及。那段时间有近50万名知识分子被送去劳改。1958至1961年的大跃进造成了灾难性后果，导致4500万甚至更多人死亡（他在打台球时弄伤了腿，用病假做借口缺席那些麻烦的会议），邓小平在这个时期小心翼翼避免个人麻烦的做法称不上英雄所为。当时几乎有1000万四川人饿死。
不过, 邓小平招致最多批评的，还是他对经济发展和政治自由两者关系的糊涂看法。在20世纪80年代，与经济强硬派陈云的政策纷争中，他一直反对如果党放弃经济控制权，迟早会失去国家控制权的观点。对于邓小平和他圈子里的人，放松经济控制权对促进经济增长和创造就业至关重要，而如果不能实现经济增长并解决就业，共产党肯定会失去对国家的控制。这两种说法可能都是成立的，中国主要的生存挑战至今仍然是如何解决这个两难局面。
这个问题曾在1989年，在天安门广场周围，以血腥的方式得到了解决。用傅高义的话说，那是“一场异常巨大的悲剧”。许多人看待邓小平生平时，都是通过这起灾祸的棱镜，这或许不公平，但不可避免。我们当中，在镇压前刚好身处北京的那些人，不可能不对北京街头发生的史诗般的浪漫运动叹为观止。一些熟稔政局者，曾经对我们说过，这一切都会以眼泪告终，邓小平的毕生经历都显示出，他永远不会接受共产党的权威受到挑战。我们本应更关切地倾听他们的意见。
傅高义在书中写道，一位不愿透露姓名的省委书记说，邓小平看待民主，就像叶公好龙——叶公子高好龙，于是夫龙闻而下之。叶公见之，弃而还走，失其魂魄，五色无主。“叶公好龙”这则广为人知的故事，习惯上用来比喻言行不一。
傅高义对经历文化大革命（1966年-1976年）混乱之后邓小平稳定中国的角色阐述得当，邓小平和他家人在文革中也承受了苦难。实际上是邓小平让火车又开动起来，让人们没有互相报复就重新开始工作，还恢复大中小学教育。他开始成功地让中国免于倾覆，而这个成功又令他在1976年第二次被毛泽东打倒。偏执多疑的毛泽东怀疑比他年轻的邓小平并不会坚定地拥护文化大革命，嫉妒邓越来越强的声望，恐惧邓会在毛本人去世后像赫鲁晓夫对待斯大林那样，谴责已故的独裁者。
华国锋在1976年晚些时候继承毛泽东的权力后，很快就被人说服重新启用邓小平这个中国最好的务实派。尽管华国锋逮捕了毛泽东的遗孀和“四人帮”的另外三个成员，表现出极大的决断力，但他在政治上却无法与精明的对手相抗衡。邓小平排挤和打发了华国锋，显示出大师级的冷酷政治手腕。华国锋被剥夺了权力，遭到羞辱，不过并没有入狱。
就思想而言，邓小平果敢的务实主义，“实践检验真理”，战胜了华国锋被戏称为“两个凡是”的理论——凡是毛泽东说过的和做过的，就一定是正确的。这条路线使中国向世界开放，引发了农业和工业管理的改革，促成了许多年令人惊叹的经济增长。今天, 中国一天的出口额，几乎相当于改革真正开始的1978年12个月的出口总额。
邓最初的实验是在福建和广东进行的，很有可能成为中国下一届领导人的习近平的父亲，曾在广东担任省委书记。傅高义以前就曾撰文讲述过邓小平时代中国的经济调整和农村改革，其开端就是在与香港一河之隔，以前一直沉睡的渔村深圳周围，建设一个经济特区。那里欢迎外资，吸引并模仿境外技术，当然也有盗版。对经济的指令式控制，在那里部分为市场和利润追求所取代。傅高义对这段故事的描写十分权威，高潮是1992年邓小平的南巡，让改革者吃了定心丸，也给他的继任者江泽民极大的鼓励。
邓小平从来都不是一个意识形态理论家，正如傅高义所说，批评他未能对自己所做的事业提出一个概括性的哲学理论是不公平的。有时候，只要集中控制一放松，经济活动就会很容易发展起来。邓小平本人就曾称赞过乡镇企业的自发涌现。
我们应当怎样描述发生的这些事件？它们似乎与社会主义并没有太大关系，例如，在1997年后中国经济的十年高速增长中，工人工资占国内生产总值(GDP)的比例从53%下降到40%。无论在经济学上该如何正确地命名，威权主义的一党专制从未遭到摒弃。或许最恰当的描述应该是“市场列宁主义”。
阐述邓小平的治国艺术时，傅高义列出了支撑邓的统治的一系列原则。其中有若干条别的政治领袖也会采纳，包括为了保护王者的地位和自己的权柄无情地舍弃下属。邓小平先是因为党的总书记胡耀邦对待学生示威过于温和，而在1987年罢免了这位政治改革者，后来又在1989年天安门抗议事件中解决了赵紫阳。邓小平的首要信条是保护自己的权威和党的权威。至于这对于中国的转变是不是至关重要，仍然会是辩论的主题，而辩论也会越来越开放。无论答案如何，傅高义有力地阐述了这样一个观点：因邓小平而得以脱离贫困的人数，比历史上任何人都要多，为此他应该得到嘉许。
作者彭定康勋爵(Lord Patten)是BBC委员会主席，牛津大学(University of Oxford)校监，香港最后一任总督。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001043029
When Chinese historians are able one day to ply their subversive trade without control or censorship, their judgment will surely be that their country should revere Deng Xiaoping way above his predecessor Mao Zedong. Mao led the Communist party to victory over the Kuomintang and the Japanese, and united China in the 1950s. He then plunged his country into the famine and bloody mayhem of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Deng carefully put the pieces of the smashed nation back together again and launched China on its recovery to become assuredly once again the world’s largest economy.
Ezra Vogel’s massive biography assembles the case for Deng (1904-97) with narrative skill and prodigious scholarship. Vogel, for many years a Harvard professor, published the bestselling Japan as Number One in 1979. His principal academic interest then turned to China and he spent some time in the late 1980s studying economic reform in Guangdong. The sources and acknowledgements he cites in this book indicate the breadth of his contacts and study, though when required to stray outside the world of conventional western Sinology he is less sure-footed. His knowledge of British and Hong Kong politics, for example, is pretty sketchy.
The book is not hagiographical but it does occasionally read a little like the Deng family’s authorised biography. Warts are mentioned from time to time but the overall picture presented usually discounts the blemishes. While we learn once again that Deng’s time as a young emigrant worker in France in the 1920s left him with a lifetime love of croissants, his later military exploits in the civil war are dealt with pretty summarily. Moreover, Deng’s rule in the south-west of China, including his native Sichuan from 1949-52, gets just a page and a half. It was sufficiently brutal to earn Mao’s approval. Larger landlords were attacked and killed. One day we will presumably learn more about Deng’s methods at this time; they were plainly not for the squeamish.
Deng’s role as Mao’s enforcer during the “anti-rightist campaign” of the 1950s is hardly mentioned. Half a million intellectuals were shipped to labour camps. His careful avoidance of personal trouble during the disastrous Great Leap Forward of 1958-61, which led to 45m or more deaths (he broke a leg playing billiards and used a sick note as an excuse for missing difficult meetings) was not heroic. Almost 10m of his fellow Sichuanese starved to death.
But it is Deng’s muddled view of the relationship between economic progress and political freedom that will always attract the most criticism. In his policy battles with the economic hardliner Chen Yun in the 1980s, he was always in the camp that contested the argument that if the party gave up control over the economy it would sooner or later lose control of the state. For Deng and his circle, stepping back from command economics was essential for growth and job creation, and without them the Communist party would certainly lose control of the state. Both propositions are probably true and China’s main existential challenge remains the issue of resolving this dilemma.
The problem was bloodily resolved in 1989 in and around Tiananmen Square, “a tragedy of enormous proportions”, in Vogel’s words. It is, maybe, unfair but inevitable that Deng’s life will be viewed by many through the prism of this catastrophe. Those of us who were in Beijing just before the crackdown should not have been carried away by the epic romance of what was happening in the streets. We should have listened more carefully to the seasoned hacks who told us it would all end in tears and that Deng’s whole career showed that he would never accept such a challenge to the authority of the Communist party.
One unnamed provincial first party secretary is quoted, by Vogel, as saying that Deng’s view of democracy was like Lord Ye’s view of dragons. “Lord Ye loved looking at a book with pretty pictures of dragons but when a real dragon appeared, he was terrified.” This well-known story about a mythical figure from China’s distant past is customarily told to draw attention to the inconsistency between words and actions.
Vogel chronicles very well Deng’s role in stabilising China after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), in which he and his family had themselves suffered, literally getting the trains running again, making people work together without reprisals, and re-establishing schools and universities. His initial success in preventing China capsizing led to his second ousting by Mao in 1976. The paranoid Mao was suspicious that the younger man would not support unequivocally the case for the Cultural Revolution, was jealous of his growing popularity and feared that he might, on Mao’s own death, become the Khrushchev to his Stalin, denouncing the departed tyrant.
When Hua Guofeng succeeded Mao later that year, he was soon persuaded to reinstate Deng, China’s best pragmatic manager. But Hua, who had shown great resolve in arresting Mao’s widow and the other members of the Gang of Four, proved no match politically for his wily rival. Deng’s sidelining and despatch of Hua is a masterclass in ruthless, though not vindictive, politics. Hua was stripped of authority, humiliated but not imprisoned.
Intellectually, it was Deng’s bold pragmatism, learning truth from facts, that triumphed over what was ridiculed as the “whateveritis” of Hua – whatever Mao had said or done must be the correct way to act. This approach led to the opening of China to the world, the reform of agriculture and industrial management and the years of stupendous growth. In 1978, the year that really saw the beginnings of change, China exported about as much in 12 months as it now exports in a day.
The first experiments were in Fujian and Guangdong, where the father of the man tipped to be China’s next leader, Xi Jinping, was provinicial party secretary. Vogel has written before about the economic adjustments and rural reforms in China under Deng, starting with the creation of a Special Economic Zone around the hitherto sleepy fishing village of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong. Foreign investment was welcomed and foreign technology was brought in, copied and, of course, stolen. The commands of a controlled economy were partly replaced by markets and profits. Vogel tells this story authoritatively, culminating in Deng’s journey to the south in 1992 to give heart to the reformers and embolden his successor, Jiang Zemin.
Deng was never an ideologue and, as Vogel argues, it would be unfair to criticise him for failure to set out an overarching philosophy for what he was doing. Sometimes economic activity simply took off once central control was relaxed. Deng himself celebrated the spontaneous emergence of township and village enterprises.
How should we describe what has happened? It does not seem to have much to do with socialism, given for example that in the decade of fast growth after 1997, workers’ wages as a proportion of gross domestic product fell from 53 per cent to 40 per cent. Whatever the correct economic nomenclature, authoritarian party control was never abandoned. Perhaps it is best described as “market Leninism”.
Describing Deng’s art of governing, Vogel sets out a list of the principles that underpinned his rule. Several would have been embraced by other leaders, including his ruthless sacrifice of pawns to preserve the position of the king and his throne. First, he cut down the political reformer and party general secretary Hu Yaobang in 1987 for being too soft in dealing with student protests; then he destroyed Zhao Ziyang during the Tiananmen demonstration in 1989. Deng believed above all in preserving his own authority and that of the party. Whether that was essential to transform China will remain the subject of increasingly open debate. Whatever the answer, Vogel makes a strong case for according Deng the prize for lifting more people out of poverty than anyone else in history.
Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust and chancellor of the University of Oxford, was the last governor of Hong Kong
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