 |
Hong Kong
protests The Party
vs the people The
Communist Party faces its toughest challenge since
Tiananmen. This time it must make wiser decisions Note: Bài trên Người Kinh Tế. Tin Văn sẽ đi 1
đường phiên dịch liền tù tì
A different sort of order As Mr Xi has
accumulated power, he has made it clear that he will not tolerate
Western-style
democracy. Yet suppressing popular demands produces temporary stability
at the
cost of occasional devastating upheavals. China needs to find a way of
allowing
its citizens to shape their governance without resorting to protests
that risk
turning into a struggle for the nation’s soul. Hong Kong, with its
history of
free expression and semi-detached relationship to the mainland, is an
ideal
place for that experiment to begin. If Mr Xi were to grasp the chance,
he could
do more for his country than all the emperors and party chiefs who have
struggled to maintain stability in that vast and violent country before
him. Bài học HK với
Mít chúng ta? Mít chẳng học
được gì về “kỹ thuật đảo chánh” [biểu tình, đúng hơn] từ HK, nhưng bài
viết
[comment, đúng hơn], trên tờ Người
Nữu Ước, “một đất nước, hai chế độ”, làm Mít
nhớ đến anh Tẩy, khi đặt Nam Kít dưới chế độ tự trị, còn Bắc Kít, bảo
hộ. When Hong
Kong returned to Chinese control, in 1997, after a century and a half
under
British rule, the Communist Party rejoiced at recovering the jewel of
the Crown
Colonies, a tiny archipelago of two hundred and thirty-six islands and
rocks,
with more Rolls-Royces per capita than anywhere else in the world and a
film
industry that had produced more movies each year than Hollywood. But
the people
of Hong Kong feared that the Party would unwind the idiosyncratic
combination
of English and Cantonese culture that made the city so distinctive—with
its
independent barristers in wigs and its Triad bosses in Versace, all
documented
by a scandal-loving free press and set on a subtropical mountains cape
that’s
equal parts Manhattan and Hawaii. At the time
of reunification, Beijing pledged to endow Hong Kong with a “high
degree of
autonomy” under a deal called “one country, two systems.” But it was a
fragile
conceit, and, this summer, it failed. The Communist Party had promised
to give
Hong Kong citizens the chance to vote for the territory’s top official
in 2017,
but, in August, Beijing released the details: only candidates
acceptable to the
central government would be permitted to run. On September 26th, after
weeks of
tension, a couple of hundred students occupied the forecourt of the
Hong Kong
government’s headquarters. The police arrested Joshua Wong, a
seventeen-year-old student leader whose celebrity reflects the rise of
young
activists who are less apprehensive about challenging Beijing than
recent
generations have been. Wong was
released two days later, but his arrest attracted sympathizers, and
when police
unleashed tear gas and pepper spray, demonstrators brandished umbrellas
in
self-defense, creating an instant symbol of resistance. Numbering at
times up
to a hundred thousand, they were staging the most high-profile protests
against
the Communist Party since the student-led uprising in Tiananmen Square,
in June
of 1989. By week’s end, students, who were calling for the resignation
of Hong
Kong’s leader, Leung Chun-ying, had agreed to talks with the local
government
but vowed to remain encamped in the streets. The dispute
isn’t only about politics. The population of seven million has one of
the
highest levels of income inequality in the world, a gap that has
widened since
China regained sovereignty. University graduates, unable to afford
apartments,
sleep on their parents’ couches and blame local developers for
cooperating with
apparatchiks in Beijing to maximize real-estate prices. It had been
hoped that
open elections would hold leaders accountable and break up the
concentration of
economic power. The strain is also cultural: even though Hong Kong
businesses
have benefitted from China’s growth, locals resent the influx of
wealthy
mainlanders who feed the property boom. Last week, a student organizer
named
Lester Shum told a crowd that Hong Kong remains a colonial state. Resolving
the crisis falls to President Xi Jinping, in Beijing. Eighteen months
after
taking office, the tall, phlegmatic son of the Communist aristocracy
has
swiftly consolidated control of the Party and the military, arresting
thousands
of officials in an anti-corruption campaign and promoting his personal
brand of
power. For years, Beijing has downplayed the importance of any single
leader,
for fear of creating another cult of personality. Xi is reversing that
trend:
he has already graced the pages of the People’s Daily more times than
any
leader since Chairman Mao; last week, the government issued a book of
his
quotations in nine languages. Xi
sanctifies absolutism as a key to political survival. In a speech to
Party
members in 2012, he asked, “Why did the Soviet Communist Party
collapse? An
important reason was that its ideals and convictions wavered.
Eventually, all
it took was a quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of
the
Soviet Communist Party, and the great Party was gone. In the end,
nobody was
man enough to come out and resist.” But the very strategy that Xi has
adopted
for safeguarding the government in Beijing has hastened the crisis in
Hong
Kong. He has staked his Presidency on a “great renewal” of China, a
nationalist
project that leaves little room for regional identities. Last year,
when the
Party faced mounting complaints over deadly air pollution, Internet
censorship,
and rampant graft, it arrested lawyers, activists, and journalists in
the
harshest such measure in decades, and circulated an internal directive
to senior
members. The notice identified seven “unmentionable” topics:
Western-style
democracy, “universal values,” civil society, pro-market liberalism, a
free
press, “nihilist” criticisms of Party history, and questions about the
pace of
China’s reforms. The list was, in retrospect, a near-perfect inventory
of the
liberties that distinguish life in Hong Kong. In the
People’s Republic, reaction to the events ranges from quiet
exhilaration among
beleaguered activists to bemused indifference among ordinary Chinese,
for whom
both Hong Kong’s liberties and its demonstrations are too remote to be
inspiring. So far, there appears little chance that the unrest, fed by
intricate local grievances, will spread to the mainland. And yet the
Party
addressed it as a moral contagion: the filters and the human censors
that
constitute the Great Fire Wall removed images and comments from the
Internet in
what scholars who monitor Chinese digital life recorded as the sharpest
spike
in online censorship all year. In the official media, the events were
portrayed
as a disaster; an editorial in the People’s Daily published on October
1st
warned that “a small number of people who insist on resisting the rule
of law
and on making trouble will reap what they have sown.” But the
costs of a crackdown—diplomatic isolation, recession, another alienated
generation—would be incalculably higher than they were in 1989. China’s
economy
today is twenty-four times the size it was then, and Beijing aspires to
leadership in the world. The question is not whether Xi Jinping can
summon the
authority to resolve the crisis but whether he can begin to address the
problem
that awaits him when it’s over: an emerging generation that is ever
less
willing to be ruled without a voice. Shortly before Joshua Wong was
arrested,
he told a crowd of students, “Hong Kong’s future belongs to you, you,
and you.”
♦
Những nhân vật tiểu thuyết hiện đại đều bước ra từ cái bóng của Don Quixote; ta có thể lập lại, với những nhân vật của Võ Phiến: họ đều bước ra từ Người Chơi Cờ. Tôi không hiểu, ông đã đọc nhà văn Đức, trước khi viết, nhưng khí hậu 1945, Bình Định, và một Võ Phiến bị cầm tù giữa lớp cán bộ cuồng tín, đâu có khác gì ông B. (không hiểu khi bị bắt trong vụ chống đối, Võ Phiến có ở trong tình huống đốt vội đốt vàng những giấy tờ quan trọng...). Nhân vật "cù lần" trong Thác Đổ Sau Nhà, đã có một lần được tới Thiên Thai, cùng một cô gái trong một căn lều, giữa rừng, cách biệt với thế giới loài người, có một cái gì thật quen thuộc với đối thủ của ông B., tay vô địch cờ tướng nhà quê vô học, nhưng cứ ngồi xuống bàn cờ là kẻ thù nào cũng đánh thắng, đả biến thiên hạ vô địch thủ? "Nhưng đây là con lừa Balaam", vị linh mục nhớ tới Thánh Kinh, về một câu chuyện trước đó hai ngàn năm, một phép lạ tương tự đã xẩy ra, một sinh vật câm đột nhiên thốt ra những điều đầy khôn ngoan. Bởi vì nhà vô địch là một người không thể viết một câu cho đúng chính tả, dù là tiếng mẹ đẻ, "vô văn hoá về đủ mọi mặt", bộ não của anh không thể nào kết hợp những ý niệm đơn giản nhất. Năm 14 tuổi vẫn phải dùng tay để đếm! [Nhưng đây là Hồ Tôn Hiến, lớp 1, chăn trâu!] Ghi chú trong ngày Colorless
Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgimage by Haruki Murakami The
now-permanent Nobel favourite Murakami probably has the biggest
following of
any literary novelist on the planet. But readers who jumped on the
bandwagon
with his previous novel, the two-volume supernatural vigilante epic
1Q84, will
here find a change of mood. As a teenager, Tsukuru is told one day by
his four best
friends that they don't want to see him any more, and they refuse to
give any
reason. Now Tsukuru is 36, a designer of railway stations, and his new
girlfriend encourages him to seek out his old friends and demand to
know why.
Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki is a naturalistic coming-of-age story in the
vein of
his 2001 novel Norwegian Wood, sprinkled with strange images and
written in a
hauntingly mournful key. Đôi khi tôi
cảm thấy tôi là 1 kẻ kể chuyện tiền sử Trên tờ ML số
mới, còn có bài phỏng vấn Murakami, nhân cuốn sách mới xb của ông, dịch
từ tiếng
Đức, trên tờ Die Zeit, số 16
Janvier, 2014
Người Ấn tự hào về nền văn minh cổ xưa, còn hoài của họ. Hóa ra, họ là nạn nhân của nó. Naipaul: Lần viếng thăm thứ nhì [in trong Nhà văn và Thế giới] The Communist Party faces its toughest
challenge since
Tiananmen. This time it must make wiser decisions OF THE ten
bloodiest
conflicts in world history, two were world wars. Five of the other
eight took
place or originated in China. The scale of the slaughter within a
single
country, and the frequency with which the place has been bathed in
blood, is
hard for other nations to comprehend. The Taiping revolt in the
mid-19th
century led to the deaths of more than 20m, and a decade later conflict
between
Han Chinese and Muslims killed another 8m-12m. In the 20th century
20m-30m died
under Mao Zedong: some murdered, most as a result of a famine caused by
brutality and incompetence. China’s Communist Party leaders are no
doubt keen to hold on
to power for its own sake. But the country’s grim history also helps
explain
why they are so determined not to give ground to the demonstrators in
Hong Kong
who want to replace the territory’s fake democracy with the real thing
(see
article). Xi Jinping, China’s president, and his colleagues believe
that the
party’s control over the country is the only way of guaranteeing its
stability.
They fear that if the party loosens its grip, the country will slip
towards
disorder and disaster. Don’t let history repeat itself The rise of the Vallenzi They are right that autocracy can keep
a country stable in
the short run. In the long run, though, as China’s own history shows,
it
cannot. The only guarantor of a stable country is a people that is
satisfied
with its government. And in China, dissatisfaction with the Communist
Party is
on the rise. Bad omens Hong Kong’s “Umbrella revolution”,
named after the
protection the demonstrators carry against police pepper-spray (as well
as the
sun and the rain), was triggered by a decision by China in late August
that
candidates for the post of the territory’s chief executive should be
selected
by a committee stacked with Communist Party supporters. Protesters are
calling
for the party to honour the promise of democracy that was made when the
British
transferred the territory to China in 1997. Like so much in the
territory, the
protests are startlingly orderly. After a night of battles with police,
students collected the plastic bottles that littered the streets for
recycling. For some of the protesters, democracy
is a matter of
principle. Others, like middle-class people across mainland China, are
worried
about housing, education and their own job prospects. They want
representation
because they are unhappy with how they are governed. Whatever their
motivation,
the protests present a troubling challenge for the Communist Party.
They are
reminiscent not just of uprisings that have toppled dictators in recent
years
from Cairo to Kiev, but also of the student protests in Tiananmen
Square 25
years ago. The decision to shoot those protesters succeeded in
restoring order,
but generated mistrust that still pervades the world’s dealings with
China, and
China’s with its own citizens. In Hong Kong, the party is using a
combination of communist
and colonial tactics. Spokesmen have accused the protesters of being
“political
extremists” and “black hands” manipulated by “foreign anti-China
forces”;
demonstrators will “reap what they have sown”. Such language is
straight out of
the party’s well-thumbed lexicon of calumnies; similar words were used
to
denigrate the protesters in Tiananmen. It reflects a long-standing
unwillingness to engage with democrats, whether in Hong Kong or
anywhere else
in China, and suggests that party leaders see Hong Kong, an
international city
that has retained a remarkable degree of freedom since the British
handed it
back to China, as just another part of China where critics can be
intimidated
by accusing them of having shadowy ties with foreigners. Mr Xi, who has
long
been closely involved with the party’s Hong Kong policy, should know
better. At the same time, the party is
resorting to the
colonialists’ methods of managing little local difficulties. Much as
the
British—excoriated by the Communist Party—used to buy the support of
tycoons to
keep activism under wraps, Mr Xi held a meeting in Beijing with 70 of
Hong
Kong’s super-rich to ensure their support for his stance on democracy.
The
party’s supporters in Hong Kong argue that bringing business onside is
good for
stability, though the resentment towards the tycoons on display in Hong
Kong’s
streets suggests the opposite. Yet the combination of exhortation,
co-option and tear gas
have so far failed to clear the streets. Now the government is trying
to wait
the protesters out. But if Mr Xi believes that the only way of ensuring
stability is for the party to reassert its control, it remains possible
that he
will authorise force. That would be a disaster for Hong Kong, and it
would not
solve Mr Xi’s problem. For mainland China, too, is becoming restless. Party leaders are doing their best to
prevent mainlanders
from finding out about the events in Hong Kong (see article). Even so,
the
latest news from Hong Kong’s streets will find ways of getting to the
mainland,
and the way this drama plays out will shape the government’s relations
with its
people. The difficulty for the Communist Party
is that while there
are few signs that people on the mainland are hungering for full-blown
democracy, frequent protests against local authorities and widespread
expressions
of anger on social media suggest that there, too, many people are
dissatisfied
with the way they are governed. Repression, co-option and force may
succeed in
silencing the protesters in Hong Kong today, but there will be other
demonstrations, in other cities, soon enough. A different sort of order As Mr Xi has accumulated power, he has
made it clear that he
will not tolerate Western-style democracy. Yet suppressing popular
demands
produces temporary stability at the cost of occasional devastating
upheavals.
China needs to find a way of allowing its citizens to shape their
governance
without resorting to protests that risk turning into a struggle for the
nation’s soul. Hong Kong, with its history of free expression and
semi-detached
relationship to the mainland, is an ideal place for that experiment to
begin.
If Mr Xi were to grasp the chance, he could do more for his country
than all
the emperors and party chiefs who have struggled to maintain stability
in that
vast and violent country before him. |