The Significance of Magney's Visit to China

From Magney's visit to China to China's entry into WTO (Zhu Xueqin)

On August 4, 2004, Southern Weekend

This historical unit is as long as 2 10 years. It is almost impossible to explain what happened at the appointed time and place in recent years. Even if you put on what Hegel called Germany's "seven-mile boots" for 30 years, it is impossible to get out of this historical swamp. I can only try to explain my basic understanding of this historical unit in the simplest way, that is, two pairs and four countries, during which China has gone through a tortuous period.

The so-called two pairs and four countries are based on the comparison of modern social system experiments and political and cultural types: Britain and the United States are one pair, France and Russia are the other pair, the two peaks confront each other, and the two rivers flow forever. From 1946, Churchill first said in his telegram to Truman that "the iron curtain fell in Russia" to 1989, the so-called "cold war era" in which the Soviet Union and East China changed dramatically, I don't think it was that great. Apart from the unique ideological symbol color, it has no content independent of the history before and after. On the contrary, I think the so-called "cold war era" is only a recent development stage in the above-mentioned historical unit. Regardless of the ideological symbols, let's take a look at another dramatic content: the two pairs of receiving and dispatching sticks were completed separately on the battlefield. 1783, Britain lost on the battlefield, but passed the baton of political tradition to its opponent, the United States, pushing the constitutional direction and institutional civilization initiated by the former further. Coincidentally, in 18 12, the Napoleon Empire in the last stage of the French Revolution was also defeated by the anti-French alliance led by Russia. During the Russian occupation of Paris, Koshke cavalry set out on the Champs Elysé es. The young officers in this army were excited by the dazzling colors of the French Revolution, looking for the romantic relics of Jean-jean-jacques rousseau, and dismounted to accept the baptism of the political culture of the occupied country. In addition, before the reform, Peter the Great forced Russia to leave Asia and enter Europe. In fact, it was to leave Asia and enter France. The whole Russian upper class was basically integrated into the French world, so that "one country and two languages", the lords of Petersburg went to the countryside to collect rent, the lords spoke French, and the serfs spoke Russian. No one could understand anyone. Such Russia defeated such France on the battlefield, in fact, it defeated its spiritual mother. It should be said that it took over the political baton of the latter-the radical revolutionary tradition is a matter of course and does not require any unique imagination. Shortly after the winner of 18 12 returned to China, the first revolutionary movement in modern Russian history-1825 inner-party uprising began. December Party members are the most respectable generation of Russian revolutionaries, but their spirit comes from France, so there is no doubt. Since then, all the Russian revolutions have basically been extensions of the French Revolution, and all of them have regarded their careers as relay races of the French Revolution. The history of the world is so contradictory and dramatic that it may exceed the sum of the artistic imagination of all the literati living in this historical unit. Marx once said that "only world history is the greatest poet", which is absolutely true!

It was not I who first discovered that the confrontation between Britain and France was of world historical significance, but a Frenchman, Tocqueville. 150 years ago, Tocqueville found that Britain and France were spying on each other and fighting quietly, and their differences would determine the fate of civilization from now on. I just followed this train of thought and found a later scene, that is, their successors were opponents on the battlefield, and when they were defeated, they passed on the historical stick in their hands to the winners. So, what's the difference between these two sticks?

In layman's terms, the problem may start with the basic assumption of human nature. Britain and the United States are much bleaker and have the so-called "historical dark consciousness". They can only think of this step at most: "Because human nature is evil, democracy is necessary; Democracy is possible because human nature is good. " The softest piece in people's hearts, they dare not touch it, let alone imagine that they can dig it out and use the moral movement or the Cultural Revolution to refresh and completely transform it. At most, they only dare to perfunctory "red tape" at the institutional level to supervise the evil of human nature of those in power. On the French-Russian side, how many pairs of romantic hot eyes stare at the soft parts of people's hearts, and how many "visible hands" reach in and stir boldly. "Dare to teach the sun and the moon to change the sky for sacrifice", and finally "Dare to teach the soul to change the sky". Since human nature can be the best, heaven can be built on earth. If the revolutionary process of building a paradise on earth encounters resistance, the resistance will come from the ultimate source-selfishness of human nature. Before the Great Revolution, Britain had only a weak enlightenment-enlightening human reason to understand its limitations, and human nature was helpless; Before the American Revolution, there was almost no Enlightenment. 1787 Constitution does not come from the national reform of the Enlightenment before the revolution, but recognizes and affirms the differences of interests of all social classes, and on this basis explores what Huang Renyu called "digital management". On the other hand, the French Revolution was not only a strong enlightenment, but also a long one. Enlightenment is to understand the infinity of reason and the perfection of human nature. This doomed the Anglo-American revolution to be unromantic, unattractive and full of compromises, especially its limited revolutionary theory, and never dared to worship the revolution: if you want to engage in political revolution, try not to trigger a social revolution, and if you have entered the social revolution, you will never go deep into the Cultural Revolution and never change your life in the depths of your soul. The English Revolution ended with a law of religious tolerance. The so-called "religious tolerance" was almost the consent of spiritual freedom at that time. After the American Revolution, the Constitution stipulated that people's mental state is the basic freedom of citizens, and no one can interfere. Church and state are completely separated, politics does not belong to religion, and religion does not belong to politics. The softest piece in a person's heart, "the wind can enter, the rain can enter, and the king can't enter." France and Russia, on the other hand, do not exert their strength at the institutional level, but bypass the system and push human nature. From political revolution to social revolution, there is always a cultural revolution in the last scene, and a revolution breaks out in the depths of the soul. "Don't kill the soul, don't stop the play." As early as before the "Cultural Revolution" in China, they had started a Cultural Revolution without quotation marks. For example, in A.D. 1794, the French called the further development of their Jacobin dictatorship "* * * and the two-year Cultural Revolution". The guillotine rises and falls wildly, and robespierre thinks: "The terror without virtue is evil; Virtue without terror is weak. " Bin Laden should thank the French political culture for preparing such a symmetrical theoretical expression as early as 200 years ago, which is enough to benefit him today. We are familiar with various plays of the "Cultural Revolution", which were tried in France 200 years ago, including changing people's names and place names, and even the names of four cards on poker paper, all of which had revolutionary changes.

Almost at the same time as the French vigorously engaged in the Cultural Revolution, the British sent a trade delegation to visit China, that is, 1792 Magalny and Yin quietly visited China. The historical significance of the latter is no less than that of the former, but it was overshadowed by the dazzling flame of the French Revolution. Magney's visit to China is either condescending or the eight words we are familiar with when discussing the WTO today: "Free trade, agreed tariffs". Gan Long refused these eight words because foreigners refused to kneel as a gift, and "be a good girl, look up to the future and benefit people from afar, and raise four foreigners." The celestial system and the treaty system initiated by the British were the two "world systems" of the East and the West at that time. World 2 demands freedom of trade and agreed tariffs, while World 1 thinks that "China is rich in products and has everything, and has not used foreign goods to make up for what it needs". Magalny gave in, but only knelt on one leg. I don't know which leg was missing, which annoyed Qianlong and failed, and China missed the budding "WTO entry" at that time. As a result, Si Tong, the youngest member of the mission, aged 1 1, was only taken seriously. He once called the baby with blue eyes to the dragon's knees and was amazed. Forty-eight years later, Si Tong took part in the British Parliament's vote on whether to go to war with China, and voted in favour without hesitation. His reason is that China does not understand the language of free trade, but only the language of gunboats. From then on, there was the Opium War that humiliated China for two hundred years. Jiang Tingfu, the former head of the Department of History of Tsinghua University, summed up this history simply: "Before 1840, we were unfair to others, and after 1840, others were unfair to us." World 1 and World 2 are actually like seesaws in kindergartens, with one head high and one head low, which have been uneven for 200 years.

China fell behind because of this, and caught up because of backwardness. Fortunately, there is nothing wrong with the direction. This incident in Magney is no less than the regime change in China's twenty-fifth history. It's a problem in modern China, a point on the zigzag. The "horizontal" after the "one point" is that Xu Jishe and Lin Zexu began to write. The so-called "writing" means opening their eyes to face the world, not looking down on it. From the Opium War to the Revolution of 1911, China people basically took Britain and the United States as their teachers, saying that ships are strong and guns are strong, but they participated in the world arms race with the small-scale peasant economy and became the "first fleet in the Far East"-Beiyang Navy; If we carry out political system reform, we can also establish "the first harmony in the Far East"-"expel the Tatars and establish a Coalition government". These two achievements are the basic contents of A Horizontal, which surpassed Japan at that time and are not inferior to our younger generation today. This "one horizontal" also has hidden dangers. There are many hidden dangers, the first is the old political system. Although it is difficult to start restructuring. Today, it may be said that as a cultural power, the country's cultural resources, especially literary resources, are surplus, which naturally overflows beyond literature. It asks politics by culture or pure literature, and is not tolerant of the accumulation and persistence at the institutional level. It blamed the initial * * * and the initial temporary twists and turns on people's hearts, and gradually produced cultural determinism and the impulse of the Cultural Revolution. The first figurine may be Liang Qichao. The so-called novel transforms people's hearts, and people's hearts transform political system, which harms novels, people's hearts and political system. Hu Shi is also a successor. The "New Culture Movement" turned its attention from the political system to culture, which is pitiful, but also worrying.

In China, there are too many Rousseau who ask politics with literary thinking and too few Hamilton who develop constitutionalism with mathematical mind. At this time, the French got lost, but we touched their door. Therefore, Chen Yinque said at that time: "In western countries, the habits of legal persons and China people are the closest. Most traces of his political customs are with me. Beauty is the farthest from our country, which is also caused by the historical situation "(see Wu: Wu Mi and Chen Yinque, Tsinghua University 1992, p. 7).

It is not the people of China who are shocked to see this malpractice. Is a Japanese devil, during the Sino-Japanese War, the naval commander Ito Youheng, it was in 1895 that Ding, who was trapped in Weihai, said in his surrender book:

It is not a crime for the Qing dynasty to miss today, but to cover up its ignorance of change. As a result, the ruling minister, once in power, will be promoted in literature and art (Zhai Zi plus kicking hands); Literature and art are the ladder ears of glory. Is it enough to help your husband?

(Wang Yunsheng, editor-in-chief: China and Japan in the Past 60 Years, Ta Kung Pao, Volume II, page 197- 198, published in the 20th year of the Republic of China)

Building a country by writing is exactly the same as China and France. For details, please refer to the first chapter of Tocqueville's masterpiece The Old System and the Great Revolution. The title of that chapter is also straightforward: "By the middle of the18th century, why did the literati become the number one politician in the country, and what were the consequences?" Of course, China needs enlightenment, but it will be more difficult for China to get enlightenment if it does not take the French road, shirk the specific responsibility that political elites should be responsible for to broader cultural reasons, and look for "cause is cause". Because the political system is difficult, it is even more difficult to have a "cultural addiction." "Jing Ke stabbed Confucius". Lao Zhao with glasses made a mistake. He wants to hit the board and find Confucius and Ah Q's ass under the broken felt hat. A very metaphysical "reason" is that the cultural content in the soil is too high and there are too many scholars. They can't talk about anything but culture, so they can only eat culture on the soil that produces this cultural determinism. On the surface, it is a call for the Cultural Revolution, and it is very important to strengthen culture. In fact, it is to strengthen one's own cultural advantages. Letting so many literati leave the cultural topic is tantamount to making so many people homeless, and no one can bear it. As a result, once China was enlightened, it must be a strong and long-term enlightenment, and it will always be the concept first, the human nature transformation first, the Cultural Revolution first, and the revolutionary culture first. It is against the basic historical facts to blame all the disasters of China in this historical unit on the literati's love for culture. Besides the literati, how many rape factors have been inserted? When there are more articles to say. However, from the internal lessons that can be summarized today, it is an unavoidable fact that politics is dominated by big culture and small literature, or even if it is not a literary youth, politics is always discussed by culture and politics is required by literature. In the French-Russian Revolution, there were so many literary cynics among its leaders that Locke and Hamilton were shocked, which was in direct proportion to their disastrous consequences. But if compared with China, it will be dwarfed.

A sharp left turn under "One Horizontal" occurred at 19 19. At this year's Paris Peace Conference, Japan threatened to withdraw from the League of Nations. Moved by this, Wilson handed over Shandong from German to Japanese, which caused a great turn of intellectuals in China and was to blame. Russian intellectuals were also confused by China's empty talk about "abolishing all unequal treaties with China", and they had the above-mentioned internal lessons. Two international factors, plus a domestic factor, made China make a sharp turn, from Britain and the United States to Russia. In my opinion, this "clean-up" is nothing more than a "Cultural Revolution"! It is unfair and inaccurate to blame Mao Zedong's personal political conspiracy for the later "Cultural Revolution". There must be this factor, but it is by no means limited to this factor. Admittedly, Mao Zedong was a brilliant military commander and political leader, but he was first and foremost a successful literary youth and the most successful cynic in the May 4th Movement. At that time, he fully absorbed the air of the Cultural Revolution, and boldly publicized and reformed human nature in his later years: "Red rain makes waves wantonly" and "600 million China is like Yaoping". As for "looking at the world coldly in the sun, the hot wind urges the rain to splash the river", this "world" is of course the "world 2" mentioned above. This "hot wind" has the same name as one of Lu Xun's essays, and it is also a faithful metaphor for his full absorption of French and Russian political culture in his youth. With all due respect, Mao Zedong's life is a "braise in soy sauce", and the ideal of the Cultural Revolution in his youth and the practice of the Cultural Revolution in his later years come down in one continuous line. It's not that I don't respect it, but that Sri Lankan said it. In his later years, the old man summed up his life and praised the martial arts in the world-"Down with Chiang Kai-shek", but ignored the "Cultural Revolution" that puzzled everyone. You can also see what he said to Si Nuo for the last time: I only renovated a small area near Beijing, but other than that, it's still the same. If you still don't believe me, you can look at the amazing poem published in the Chongqing negotiation 1945: "In those days, Qin Huang Hanwu lost a little literary talent; Tang Zong Song Zu, slightly less coquettish; A generation of Tianjiao, Genghis Khan, only knows how to shoot an eagle with a bow. " Does he care about martial arts or "literary ambition"? Once Chang Ying is in hand, what will he "tie"? Is it not clear? As for Lu Xun, I don't agree to talk in a frivolous tone. I want to discuss it with respect. Mao Gong went to Xun Weng, two sentences. The first sentence: "Lu Xun's bones are the hardest" is correct. Lu Xun's backbone is so hard that today's Lu scholars can't match it. But Lu Xun's "remoulding national character" is something I can't agree with anyway. National, but also the nature of all China people. With the transformation of human performance, what else in the spiritual world can't be stirred and "transformed"? The word "transformation" will be particularly shocking and fresh in the memory of people who came here in the 1950s. But almost everyone has forgotten that "transformation" of human beings is not a new term, but an idiom that has been spoken every year, every day since the May 4th Movement. A red horror word that can't be said casually and scares people to death as soon as it is said, so it is accepted by the whole society and really needs enlightenment. The second sentence: "My heart is connected with Lu Xun" is not wrong. The similarity is not limited to this person who was rejected by Wang Ming in the Soviet area in the 1930s, but another person happened to be influenced by Zhou Yang's leisure in the white area. Lu Xun has a good eye for people. The first time I read Mao's poems, he said that the author had the habit of being a mountain king. This "mountain king" is frank and honest. During the period of 1957, he was able to speak his mind frankly. If Lu Xun wanted to write (continue to "reform the national character"), he had to be sent to prison (please be "reformed"). Lu Xun is great, but Lu Xun can't be wronged because someone has contact with him. Both of them took it as their duty to transform the national character, and both went to the west because of the failure of transformation.

Let me say a few words in vernacular. One is: 19 19. For intellectuals, from the Cultural Revolution to the Cultural Revolution, it was "the carpenter made his own cangue", which began with breaking the old integration of politics and religion and ended with a new one. I have a friend who is a writer and he respects me very much. He once said seriously: in this world, only human nature can't be satisfied. This is also a sincere statement! Human nature can be divided into "seeing" and "not seeing enough". This is a writer's profession, and you can't invest too much in your life. However, human nature cannot be changed, let alone transformed, which is fatal to the dead! Wind energy can change, rain can change, even kings can change, but human nature cannot change. Education is one thing, changing people's knowledge and ideas through education is the second thing, and changing knowledge and ideas through education is the third thing. These three levels, especially the last level, can't be stuck in the end and opened one after another! I have been teaching for twenty-five years, and I believe I am dedicated to my work. But I'm still stupid today, and I hesitate to accept it. What I finally dare not accept is the popular saying in education for decades: teachers are engineers of human souls. I can't understand how the human soul can be designed and kneaded at will according to the latest and most beautiful pictures like cement and steel bars in the hands of engineers. I am not an engineer, and I dare not be such an engineer. I am afraid of such engineers. Secondly, from Zhoukoudian to Sun Yat-sen University today, 500,000 years have passed and "changed the world" for 25 times. Has human nature changed? Food, clothing, housing and transportation are changing, only human nature has not changed. "People are different from animals. How rare are they? " Thousands of years later, I can still hear Meng's sigh. Human society is at stake, whether it is the world 1 or the world 2, it is piled on these few things. All efforts to transform human nature can make people cry at first, but in the end, reformers are ruined. Just a "soft few things" makes people depressed and full of hope. Apply the previous sentence: because human nature cannot be transformed, human beings are hopeless; Because human nature can't be transformed, human beings can still be saved!

1976 smashed the gang of four, ended the "left turn" and started the "four" under the "four", in which we still live today. At that time, two newspapers and one magazine demonstrated the legitimacy of "smashing in one fell swoop", which has always been said to be "a move that conforms to the people's hearts." What is "conforming to public opinion"? Isn't it "in line with the national character" Follow the "national character" that has been taught repeatedly since Ah Q! If 1976' s "crushing in one fell swoop" ended the "oil skimming" in internal affairs, then 1979' s war against Vietnam ended the "oil skimming" in foreign relations. From other angles, this war can be discussed a lot, but from the angle we are involved in today, it is really serious, but unfortunately, it has not been seen by historians so far. Can it be said that without this battle, there would be no subsequent Sino-US relations, and there would be no reconnection between World 2 and World 1? It can even be said that there would be no 1989 without this campaign. In such a special period, on the one hand, George W. Bush announced that United World II would "sanction" China; on the other hand, he even risked World II and sent a special envoy Christopher, Magney 200 years later, to visit Beijing secretly.

Since then, Sino-US relations, that is, China and World II, have been in turmoil. The "four" in our life today really embodies the aesthetic characteristics of Chinese characters, which are varied and full of twists and turns. The Cultural Revolution with quotation marks is over, but the Cultural Revolution without quotation marks is not over yet. Don't you see that all kinds of movements to transform the national character are still impulsive? Are various post-modern cultural orders from France still covering up due institutional changes? How many young writers and artists are full of literary anger, surging frequently outside literature? Their emotions are their socialism.

Long Yongtu, the chief negotiator of China government, lamented on TV last night that he had been talking about China's accession to the WTO for 15 years, and his hair turned white. We should join the WTO, and the way and timing of joining should also accommodate all kinds of negotiable issues, especially the "three rural issues" such as rural areas, farmers and agriculture, and we should be more cautious. China's enlightenment is also needed, but the first thing that needs enlightenment may be what soft places can't be "enlightened", what can't be enlightened, and what can be enlightened by the enlightener. In a nation's historical vision, 15 is not too long, but 2 10 years from 1792. From Magarini's failed visit to China to today's accession to the WTO, these eight words remain: "Free trade, agreed tariffs". China is really a good place to temper human patience. 2 10 years later, an official talked about black hair and a nation talked about juvenile hair. For the sake of WTO, China has experienced a tortuous pattern of two pairs and four countries. The bamboo in the east of the river is difficult to write, and the ink in the west is difficult to write! Can she become the fifth country? Can she start her own unique institutional experiment without pairing? Then it is not the cultural cycle of thirty years in Hedong and thirty years in Hexi. I am afraid that the first choice is a system direction, and today's "resistance" has been completed. It is best to never see the second word "knowledge" again in this life and this month after China's accession to the WTO.