受访者柯伟林(William Kirby)系美国哈佛大学教授 ,本文刊于5月21日CGTN微信公众号。
视频时长约7分钟,以下为采访实录:
王冠:如果将中国共产党及其表现与其他国家的共产党进行比较,您认为中共成功的秘诀是什么?
柯伟林:这个问题很不错,历史学家很可能会在下个世纪,甚至更长时间内研究这个问题。因为我认为这是一次伟大的成功。毕竟新中国在成立之初的30年里走了不少弯路。我认为邓小平等领导人居功至伟,因为他们不忘初心,不忘马克思主义的核心要义,即共产主义需要建立在坚实的物质基础之上,不能只停留在空想或理想层面。共产主义并不意味着贫穷,而是意味着发展,意味着经济发展。20世纪上半叶的中国领导人也能理解其中的内涵,并在多数情况下为之拍手称道。
我想回顾一下孙中山先生,他的影响往往被低估了。中国目前的共产主义,更接近于孙中山所说的“民生主义”,即保障人民生计,以民生为中心。前总理温家宝也曾说过类似的话,也就是“以人为本”,坦率地说,这是一种新方法,与以公有制为基础的理想型共产主义不同,而后者在上世纪50年代、60年代至70年代初是中国社会的主流形态。
王冠:说到共产主义这个词及其概念,它是国际关系中最众说纷纭的一个词。乔姆斯基有句名言,反共产主义是一种国家意识形态,在美国和整个西方社会都存在。从上世纪二三十年代开始,出现了一波又一波的红色恐慌。近几年美国对华发动新冷战,特朗普和蓬佩奥等人掀起新一轮红色恐慌浪潮。您认为中国共产党在某些方面是否重新定义了共产主义的内涵?
柯伟林:美国反对共产主义,特别是20世纪50年代反共浪潮蔓延的原因之一在于人们或对或错地担心并认为,它是苏联发起全球意识形态运动的手段。后来,人们认为中国也意图使用这种手段来实现国际霸权。无论这种想法是对是错,当时很多西方人都持有这种看法。这种观点当时在欧洲也很流行。而事实上,共产主义是一场强大的,也许是20世纪最强大的全球意识形态运动。
1921年,中国共产党成立,其中部分创始成员为莫斯科共产国际派出的代表,他们不仅仅是俄国人,还是国际共产主义者,他们相信未来世界会发展成为共产主义社会。这一场国际运动强大且团结,但最终于1960年偃旗息鼓,随着中苏决裂,国际共产主义运动宣告终结。之后中国坚定不移地走自己的道路,在1978年后开始踏上新征程,而苏联则踏上了一条与中国截然不同的道路,如今国际共产主义运动已不复存在。
所以我认为有必要先对你的评论进行梳理,也就是说,共产主义本身并不值得害怕。比如说我所处的,马萨诸塞州列克星敦镇就没有这种恐惧,此处正是美国自由的摇篮地,这里并没有强烈的反共恐慌。坦白说,美国别处也没有这种情绪。尽管在美国会有一些反共言论,但它仅仅是一种舆论工具,使用这种工具的人要么是害怕未知事物,要么是害怕中国崛起成为强国。
王冠:好的,柯教授,您曾在《中国能领导世界吗?》一书中,对于21世纪是否会是中国世纪的问题给出了回答。您写道,它有可能成为中国世纪,但中国不会是唯一的领导者,这该如何理解呢?
柯伟林:这话的意思是,中国肯定会成为全球领先大国,在全球关键事务领域,中国将发挥出杰出的影响力。但就全球领导地位而言,我认为美国民众也体会到了,你无法将自己与世界各国分隔开来,或是把自己国家的利益放在别国之上,中国在上世纪60年代也走过这种弯路。
同样,中国能够崛起,正是因为它融入了国际潮流。中国的崛起与国际潮流息息相关,无论是国际共产主义运动(在此基础上,1921年中国共产党诞生),还是中国参加上世纪30年代末和40年代的反法西斯战争,抑或是在上世纪50年代加入苏联领导的社会主义国家阵营使得中国工业取得了长足发展等。中国从1978年开始实施对外开放,与国际经济和社会重新建立联系。2002年中国加入世界贸易组织。中国的崛起离不开与世界各国的联系互动。
通过与全球伙伴保持合作,中国才取得了今天的成功。中国之所以非常成功,是因为中国非常擅于建立合作伙伴关系,它不仅在初期与苏联交好,后来还与美国和西欧国家交好,之后又和第三世界国家建立了伙伴关系,与非洲、中亚和南亚的国家同样关系密切。
(以上言论仅代表专家个人观点,不代表人大重阳立场。)
Wang Guan:
When you compare the Chinese Communist Party, its performance against some of the other communist parties, what do you think is the secret formula of CPC's success?
William Kirby:
It's a great question and probably historians will be looking at this over the next century and more. Because it is, as I said, a remarkable success story, given the disasters of the first 30 years of the People's Republic. Yet, I think Deng Xiaoping and all of these individuals deserve such enormous credit for going back to the vision, really one of the central initial visions of Marx, that communism actually has a material basis. It's not purely an idea or an ideal, and that communism does not have to mean poverty. It can mean development. It can mean economic development, in a way, again, Chinese leaders of the first half of the 20th century would have understood very well and in many cases would have applauded.
Again I have to go back to Sun Yat-sen because he's under appreciated. The communism we see in China Today is much closer to what Sun Yat-sen would call “民生主义”. The livelihood of the people, taking people's livelihood as the center. This is what former Premier Wen Jiabao used to say in a different way, “以人为本”, have people as your foundation. This is a different approach, quite frankly, to the communalist and idealist approach to communism that marked China in the 1950s, 60s and in the first half of the 1970s.
Wang Guan:
And talking about the word and the concept of communism...It is believed to be one of the most loaded words in international relations. Chomsky famously said that anti-communism is a national ideology in the United States and the Western society at large. There have been waves of red scarce starting from the 1920s and 30s. Most recently, the new cold war against China, and the new red scare launched by Trump and Pompeo. Do you think the Chinese Communist Party, in some ways, has redefined the concept and the connotation of communism?
William Kirby:
One of the reasons for American anti-communism and the spread of it in the 1950s, in particular, was the fear, and the belief, then, rightly or wrongly, that this was part of a global ideology led by the Soviet Union. And then later by China also that sought a form of global domination. Right or wrong, that was widely believed in the west, certainly widely believed in Europe as well at that time. And indeed, communism was a powerful, perhaps the most powerful, global ideological movement of the 20th century.
The Chinese Communist Party when it was founded in 1921, it was founded in part by agents of the communist international from Moscow, who are not just Russian, but international communists who believed that the future of the world would be a communist world. That movement as an international is a powerful and united international movement, really fell apart, really at the latest in 1960, with the Chinese Soviet break. That ends international communism as a coherent movement. And China really goes its own path, in a quite different path after 1978, and the Soviet Union continues on a different path. But international communism basically is over as a movement today.
This is why one should take your comment quite correctly. That is communism, per se, is not something that one fears. One does not fear, for example, here in Lexington, Massachusetts, from which I'm talking to, the birthplace of American liberty. There's not a great anti-communist fear here, nor is there, quite frankly, despite some rhetoric you hear anywhere in the United States. But it remains a rhetorical tool used by those who either fear the unknown, or fear the rise of a powerful China in this case.
William Kirby:
I mean by that is that China is of course going to be one of the leading powers in the world, extraordinarily and rightfully influential in virtually every matter of global significance. But global leadership today and I think the Americans have experienced, this is not capable by hauling yourself off from the rest of the world, or putting your own country first, compared to anyone else. China experienced that in the 1960s as well.
But again, the rise of China is because of and not in spite of international currents, whether it's international communism that leads to the founding the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, whether it's part of the anti-fascist war of the late 1930s and 1940s, or whether it's part of being one of the socialist brother countries aligned with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, which helps China's development enormously in industrial terms. And then China's re-engagement with the international economic community after 1978. And again, after 2002 with the WTO, China's rise is inescapable from international engagement.
And so it is only with partners that China has been successful. And it has been remarkably successful because of its capacity to build and make partnerships, not just with the Soviet Union, first, not just with the United States and western Europe later, but now also with many parts of the world that we used to call the third world, with Africa, central Asia and South Asia.
中国人民大学重阳金融研究院(人大重阳)成立于2013年1月19日,是重阳投资向中国人民大学捐赠并设立教育基金运营的主要资助项目。
作为中国特色新型智库,人大重阳聘请了全球数十位前政要、银行家、知名学者为高级研究员,旨在关注现实、建言国家、服务人民。目前,人大重阳下设7个部门、运营管理4个中心(生态金融研究中心、全球治理研究中心、中美人文交流研究中心、中俄人文交流研究中心)。近年来,人大重阳在金融发展、全球治理、大国关系、宏观政策等研究领域在国内外均具有较高认可度。