原载于： 纽约时报
苏珊·桑塔格（Susan Sontag）
译者 苏利文
2000年8月19日
此文写于25年前，当作者听闻作家和诗人贝岭因为到中国传播其文学作品而被指控“煽动颠覆”被捕后立即为《纽约时报》撰写了专栏文章。此文也在法国《解放报》、意大利《共和报》、德国《法兰克福汇报》、西班牙《国家报》、波兰《选举报》、瑞典《每日新闻报》以及另外五六个国家的媒体上发表。25年过去，中共现在对言论自由的镇压有过之而无不及，现在中国被囚禁的记者、作家高居世界首位，甚至使用流氓手段绑架外国国籍的华人作家。中共的伟大民族复兴梦想是不可能靠封住人民的嘴巴实现的。
翻阅上周日的《纽约时报》，我停在了A版第10页，被一篇关于委内瑞拉选美皇后重要性的长文吸引（副标题是“自恋的故乡可能就在这里”），而下面一篇关于8月11日星期五晚在哈瓦那举办的音乐会的诙谐报道，（标题为“布埃纳维斯塔社会俱乐部：古巴鲜为人知的乐队，如今荣归故里”），对我这个古巴音乐的忠实粉丝来说简直无法抗拒。想象着鲁本·冈萨雷斯和康帕伊·塞贡多在哈瓦那的卡尔·马克思剧院演出，我心情大好，甚至以为有心继续翻阅那些关于民主党大会的乏味报道。
然而，就在古巴故事的旁边、页面下方还有另一则报道。仅仅五句话，却带来了令我心碎的消息：就在同一天下午，我的朋友、著名的中国诗人兼编辑贝岭在北京被捕。
对中国有才华的作家、艺术家和电影人来说，这是一个艰难时期。随着中国政府确信“言论自由”这等小事不足以阻挡全球商业利益（即“西方政府”）对中国的热情宠信，迫害正不断加剧。但贝岭似乎，唔，太过微不足道，不足以招致中国警察国家的怒火。更何况，他居住在美国，是美国的合法居民。
但，没错，他从事写作。他也是一本文艺思想刊物的编辑。1988年，他以文学交流项目身份来到美国，并在次年中国政府暴力镇压萌芽中的言论自由与民主运动后，他决定留在美国。1993年，他与一群同为30多岁中国流亡作家朋友共同创办了一本名为《倾向》的杂志。这本杂志名义上是季刊（至今已出版13期），由贝岭和联合编辑孟浪在波士顿剑桥编辑，在香港或台湾印刷。杂志的发行量在2000至3000册之间，大部分通过订阅销售给海外汉学家和中国知识分子与作家；约一千本带入中国，免费分发。
这就是贝岭被捕时正在做的事情。每当他带着杂志回到中国，计划在上海和北京的大学生中及文学圈分发时，我总是感到担忧。但正如他上次在纽约与我交谈时所保证的，中国当局对这本杂志的存在是容忍的，他不会有危险。
他周五从上海抵达北京，计划当天下午举行一场讨论会，交流对新一期《倾向》的看法。
现在，按照中国官方的说法，他已被“正式拘留”。政府可在30天内决定对其提出何种指控。当然，新一期杂志都已被没收。
八月总有坏事发生，尤其是八月中旬。一年中没有哪个时候比现在更难引起人们的注意，我对此深有体会，因为自上周日以来，我几乎一直在联系可能和我一道关注贝岭困境的人打电话发电邮。有如火如荼的民主党代表大会，有俄罗斯潜艇事故的惊悚事件。正如一位深谙中国事务的朋友所说：“你陷入了‘被捕中国异议人士疲劳症’。”
对贝岭，我们所能寄望的最好结果是：在遭受粗暴对待之后，他被驱逐出境——送回美国。但更可能的是，他将被正式起诉。据一个总部设在香港的人权组织称，负责贝岭案的公安部门专项处理“颠覆国家政权”案件。
不言而喻，“颠覆”是一个可判多年监禁的罪名。我不会声称贝岭没有政治立场。他当然有。他支持在中国实现言论和表达的自由。他热切关注中国独立（或“地下”）文化。我也不会辩称《倾向》是一本没有政治色彩的纯文学杂志。贝岭和同仁以及在杂志上发表文章的作者们，很少对民主或言论自由问题持中立态度。他们发表独立的、被封杀的中国作家作品。他们也翻译并采访多位外国作家，包括谢默斯·希尼、纳丁·戈迪默、切斯瓦夫·米沃什、奥克塔维奥·帕斯以及我本人——帕斯、米沃什、戈迪默和我还是杂志的顾问委员会成员。中国和“西方”作家之间的对话是杂志的核心特色。我们见面时，贝岭总爱谈论罗兰·巴特、瓦尔特·本雅明，谈我在萨拉热窝的经历，而我则想和他谈谈今天中国文学、电影以及独立表达的可能性。
为了展示杂志内容的广度，1996年夏季刊包含三篇约瑟夫·布罗茨基的译文和几首诗，以及一篇关于布罗茨基的评论和一篇探讨布罗茨基诗歌汉译难点的随笔；一个关于现代中国宗教（儒家与基督教）的专题；一组关于九十年代中国诗歌的文章；一部剧作；以及关于“第三世界知识分子”、海外华人女性作家、德国知识分子对柏林墙倒塌的反应，以及“封闭社会中的知识分子困境”的文章。这“封闭社会”，当然指的就是今天的中国。
在后冷战的全球化氛围中，商业利益日益凌驾于（甚至吞噬）其他所有关切，各国政府似乎越来越不愿干预此类事件。美国的事业就是做生意。尤其是跟中国做生意。美中永久正常贸易关系立法临近通过。没人想阻碍美国人致富。
是否太奢望我们的政府能对一位合法美国居民、此刻正被关押在北京监狱中的重要文学人物的命运产生一点兴趣？是否太奢望普通公民能被动员起来，为这位孤身一人的学者与诗人发声？诚然，公众舆论只是解决问题的一部分。在多数异议人士最终被暴政政府释放的案例中，关键影响来自政府高层的幕后压力。但公众舆论，是一个开始。
若对贝岭的处境保持沉默，我们只能对他、对中国的其他异议人士（就在两天前，他居住在北京的弟弟也被捕）抱以最坏的担忧。这种沉默，无异于向中国政府亮起一盏绿灯，意味着他们在此类案件中可以肆意妄为；意味着他们可以进一步扩大对独立思想的迫害和打压。如果无人回应，中国政府所收到的信息将再清楚不过。
美国的事业，也理应包括民主与自由。
苏珊·桑塔格是小说《在美国》作者。
附原文：
The Crime of Carrying Ideas to China
August 19, 2000
By SUSAN SONTAG
Burrowing through last Sunday’s Times, I parked at Page 10 of the A section, lured by a promisingly long article on the importance of beauty queens in Venezuela (“Narcissism’s Homeland Could Be Here” was the subhead) and below that by a wry account, irresistible to this longtime fan of Cuban music, of a concert in Havana on Friday night, Aug. 11 (“Buena Vista Social Club, Little Known in Cuba, Is Glad to Be Home”). Imagining Rubén González and Compay Segundo in concert at — where else? — Havana’s Karl Marx Theater put me in such a good mood I felt up for a return to the less than amusing pages on the Democratic Party convention follies.
But alas, next to the Cuban story, at the bottom of the page, was something else. Only a tiny article, five sentences in all, it brought me the heart-rending news that on that same Friday, in the afternoon, my friend, Bei Ling, the distinguished Chinese poet and editor, had been arrested in Beijing.
This has been a hard period for writers, artists and moviemakers of talent in China. Persecution is mounting as the Chinese government feels assured that so small an issue as freedom of expression cannot halt the inexorable embrace of China by global business interests (a.k.a. “Western governments”). But Bei Ling seemed, well, too slight a figure to bring down the wrath of the Chinese police state. And then, he does live in the United States and is an American resident.
But, yes, he does write. And yes, he edits an intellectual journal. After he came to the States in 1988 on a literary exchange program — and decided to stay when China’s burgeoning free speech and democracy movement was violently closed down by the government the following year — in 1993 he founded, with a group of writer friends, like himself all Chinese exiles in their 30’s, a magazine called “Tendency.” Nominally a quarterly (13 issues have appeared so far), the magazine is edited in Cambridge, where Bei Ling and his co-editor Meng Fang live, and printed in either Hong Kong or Taiwan. Most of the print run, which is between 2,000 and 3,000 copies, is sold by subscription to Sinologists and Chinese intellectuals and writers living abroad; a thousand or so copies are taken into China and given away.
That is what Bei Ling was doing when he was arrested. I always worry when he goes back to China with his copies to distribute in student and literary circles in Shanghai and Beijing. But, as before, he assured me, when we last talked here in New York, that the magazine’s existence was tolerated by the Chinese authorities and that he would not be in any danger.
He had arrived in Beijing from Shanghai on Friday, with plans to hold a discussion forum that afternoon to review the latest issue of “Tendency.”
And now he has been “formally detained,” according to the Chinese formula, which allows the government to keep him in jail for 30 days while it is decided what charges will be brought against him. And of course all the copies of the new issue have been confiscated.
Bad things happen in August. Mid-August especially. There is no moment in the year when it is harder to get people’s attention, as I can testify, having done little else since last Sunday except call and e-mail people who could possibly join me in bringing attention to Bei Ling’s plight. There’s the Democratic Convention, there is the riveting horror of the Russian sub. And as one knowledgeable Sinologist friend said, “You’re running into Arrested Chinese Dissident Fatigue.”
he best one can hope for Bei Ling is that, after being roughed up, he will be expelled from the country — sent back here. It is more likely, however, that he will be put on trial. According to one Hong Kong-based rights group, the police department in charge of Bei Ling’s case handles subversion cases only.
Subversion, need it be said, carries a prison sentence of many years. I am not going to claim that Bei Ling has no political views. Of course he does. He is for freedom of speech and expression in China. He cares passionately about independent (or “underground”) culture in China. Neither will I argue that “Tendency” is an apolitical, purely literary enterprise. The people Bei Ling and his colleagues print in their magazine are hardly neutral on the subject of democracy or freedom of expression. They print independent and censored Chinese writers. They have translated and done interviews with a number of foreign writers, including Seamus Heaney, Nadine Gordimer, Czeslaw Milosz, Octavio Paz and myself — Ms. Gordimer and I are also on the board of editorial advisers. Dialogues between Chinese and “Western” writers are a central feature of the magazine. When we meet, Bei Ling wants to talk about Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, and about my time in Sarajevo, and I want to talk about literature and film and the possibilities of independent expression in today’s China.
To give an idea of the range of the magazine, the summer 1996 issue contained translations of three essays and several poems by Joseph Brodsky, as well as a critical article on Brodsky and an essay on the problems of translating Brodsky into Chinese; a special section on religion (both Confucianism and Christianity) in modern China; a group of essays on Chinese poetry in the 90’s; a play; and essays on “the third world intellectual,” on overseas Chinese woman writers, on the reaction of German intellectuals to the fall of the Berlin Wall and on the problems of “intellectuals in a closed society.” The closed society, of course, is China today.
In the post-cold war atmosphere of globalization, in which the needs of doing business increasingly take precedence over (or incorporate) all other concerns, governments seem increasingly unwilling to intervene in such cases. The business of America is business. Above all, China business. The passage of legislation normalizing trade relations with China is imminent. Nobody wants to prevent Americans from getting richer.
Is it too much to hope that the fate of one important literary figure, a legal resident of the United States, languishing at this moment in jail in Beijing, could be of interest to our government? Is it too much to hope that private citizens could be mobilized to speak out for this lone scholar and poet? To be sure, public outcry is only part of the story. In most cases, where dissidents have been freed by their despotic governments, the key influence was behind-the-scene pressure by high-level government officials. But public outcry is a start.
If there is silence about Bei Ling, one can only fear the worst for him — and for others in China (two days ago his brother, who lives in Beijing, was arrested). It is simply a green light to the Chinese government that it can act with impunity in such cases; indeed, that it can enlarge the scope of its persecution and intimidation of independent thought. If nobody responds, the message to the Chinese government could hardly be clearer.
Surely the business of America is, ought to be, democracy and freedom, too.
Susan Sontag is the author, most recently, of “In America, a Novel.”
【译丛】“携带思想进入中国”罪最先出现在议报。
from 议报 https://yibaochina.com/?p=255844
