s8千珏符文:建国大业》让历史为现实服务

美国《时代》周刊网站10月8日发表Zoher Abdoolcarim的文章Reshooting History in a New China Film《一部重释历史的中国新电影》，摘要如下：

　　1949年初，中国内战到了最后阶段，毛泽东领导的共产党军队即将接掌北京。此时，毛泽东的头号敌人——中华民国及其国民党政府的领导人蒋介石委员长，正坐镇长江以南的南京。毛认为，先拿下北京将对国民党的士气造成致命打击。在前往未来中华人民共和国首都的途中，毛和他的高级将领在一座小镇逗留，那里的店主和商贩在无产阶级革命到来之前都逃走了。毛哀叹买不到自己最喜欢的香烟，他严肃地对他的同志说，“我们需要资本家回来。”

　　在当时那种意气风发的背景下，毛似乎不太可能说出那样的“反动”观点。但这个场景出现在《建国大业》当中，这是一部得到国家支持的精心制作的影片，旨在纪念今年中华人民共和国成立60周年。

　　这部纪录片式的电影从1945年开始讲起，从当时暂为盟友的共产党和国民党庆祝日本战败开始，到毛泽东在北京天安门广场宣布人民共和国成立而结束。但《建国大业》不是通常的那种宣传片，令人吃惊的是，影片——我们会认为是有意的——反映了当今中国领导层的部分想法。

中国的过去60年大致可分为两个阶段：第一个阶段是无休止的革命，社会动荡、民不聊生；第二个阶段则是逐步改革时期，带来了前所未有的繁荣和自由，但也产生了严重的腐败和不公正。当今中国在许多方面都是矛盾的：富与穷、开放与封闭、自由和压制、自信和不安。

　　在《建国大业》中，阶级斗争几乎闻所未闻。毛不仅需要资本家提供香烟，他和他的同志坦承不懂经济学，而他们认为经济是治理国家必须的。这里传达的信息是：毛擅长在共产主义旗帜下统一国家，但对如何搞发展不甚了解，是今天的共产党造就了“新新中国”——现代化、强大、令人“畏惧”。

　　在内战快要打赢时，毛也积极延揽各种中国政治人士，其中大多数是知识分子。毛泽东试图说服李济深——一个曾跟国民党结盟的南方人士，加入共产党政府。李向毛坦白自己造成许多共产党干部死亡，毛的回答是：忘掉过去，开始新的将来。这无疑是在对台湾说话——这是北京当前针对台湾的魅力攻势的一部分。

　　接着是热爱中国的司徒雷登。他父亲是到中国的传教士，他本人当时是美国驻蒋介石南京政府的大使。当时，毛曾说司徒雷登是美国派来对付共产党的特务。但在影片中，司徒雷登以及美国国务院对蒋介石和国民党颇为冷淡——这或许反映了中国渴望维持它与华盛顿不断改善的外交关系的势头（去年11月，中国同意了司徒雷登家人40年前就提出的请求，让他的骨灰安葬在杭州的一个墓地）。

Thursday, Oct. 08, 2009
Reshooting History in a New China Film
By Zoher Abdoolcarim
It's early 1949, China's in the endgame of its civil war and Mao Zedong's communist forces are poised to take Beijing. Just south of the Yangtze, in Nanjing, Mao's archfoe, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, holds court as the leader of the Republic of China and its Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government. But Mao believes that winning Beijing first will deal a mortal blow to the morale of the KMT. En route to what will be the future People's Republic's capital, he and his top lieutenants pause in a town that has been deserted by shopkeepers and merchants fleeing the revolution of the proletariat. As Mao laments being unable to buy even his favorite smokes, he soberly says to his comrades-in-arms, "We need the capitalists back."
It seems improbable that Mao would actually have expressed such a reactionary sentiment at such a heady time. His was a movement driven by the cause of the exploited worker and peasant. Yet the scene appears in The Founding of a Republic, a slickly produced (though ponderously paced) state-backed film to commemorate this year's 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. (See pictures of China's 60th birthday bash.)
The docudrama-style film begins in 1945 with the then temporarily allied communists and Nationalists celebrating the defeat of the Japanese and culminates with the declaration of the People's Republic by Mao at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. It purports to tell the true and full story of the tangled dance between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT to forge a new, unified China. As you'd expect, many — but surprisingly not all — elements of the KMT are portrayed as malevolent and capricious, and the CCP justly triumphs (of course!). Yet Founding goes beyond routine propaganda. What's striking is how the film exposes — intentionally, we would assume — some of the thinking of the Chinese leadership today. (Read "China at 60: The Road to Prosperity.")
China's past 60 years can be divided into roughly two halves. First came the period of ceaseless revolution, with all the widespread turmoil and suffering it perpetrated. Then the time of gradual reform, which has brought greater prosperity and freedom than China has ever known but which is still characterized by grave corruption and terrible injustice under a stern authoritarianism. Today China is many things, often contradictory: rich and poor, open and closed, liberated and oppressed, confident and insecure. But it decidedly isn't Marxist — or even Maoist. (See pictures of modern Shanghai.)
Because the CCP now gains its legitimacy almost solely from the material wealth it has created and is communist only in name, it has to recast the past to justify the present. Thus, in Founding, class struggle is hardly depicted or mentioned. Mao not only needs a capitalist to provide him with a cigarette; he and his cohorts admit they are ignorant about economics, which they acknowledge is essential to running the country. The message: Mao was great at consolidating the nation under the communist banner, but he was clueless about development; it's today's CCP that made the new new China — modern, strong, feared.
With the civil war practically won, Mao is also shown to be assiduously wooing assorted Chinese politicians, most notably intellectuals who saw the revolution as a chance to usher in democracy. This way, the CCP can be promoted as a party with roots in a broad-based political movement and not just in the spoils of war — thus further boosting its authority. Taiwan figures too. Mao tries to persuade Li Jishen, an influential southern China figure aligned with the KMT, to join the communist government. Li confesses to Mao that he is responsible for the deaths of many communist cadres. Mao's reply: Let's forget the past and begin a new future. That's directed at Taipei — part of Beijing's ongoing charm offensive toward Taiwan, once relentlessly denounced as a renegade province.
Then there's the Sinophile John Leighton Stuart, son of missionaries to China and U.S. ambassador to Chiang's Nanjing government. At the time, the real-life Mao vilified Stuart as an agent of American aggression toward the communists. In the film, Stuart, as well as the U.S. State Department, is lukewarm toward Chiang and the KMT — reflecting, perhaps, Beijing's desire to maintain the momentum of its improving diplomatic ties with Washington. (Last November, the Chinese acceded to a four-decade-old request by Stuart's family to have his ashes buried in a cemetery in Hangzhou, near Shanghai.)
Political rulers everywhere rewrite and use history for their ends. But as China looms ever larger in the global consciousness, anything we can glean about its leadership is especially valuable. There's one moral in Founding, however, that Beijing probably did not intend. Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son, is briefing his father about his fight to rid the KMT of corruption and injustice. Chiang praises his son's idealism — and gently advises him to desist so as not to undermine the KMT at a critical juncture in the civil war. "If you go ahead," says Chiang, "you lose the party." But, the Generalissimo quietly adds, "if you don't, you lose China." That's a message China's present leaders would do well to heed.