大西洋月刊：當西方記者還愛中國共產黨時
2012年9月26日，“紅星照耀中國——外國記者眼中的中國共產黨人”檔案展在上海市檔案館新館向社會公眾免費開放，上海市領導俞正聲、韓正、劉雲耕、馮國勤、殷一璀等來到展館觀看。該檔案展由中央檔案館國家檔案局和上海市檔案局（館）主辦。2013年6月9日，“紅星照耀中國”檔案展在中華世紀壇再次開幕。之後，在寧夏、甘肅等地舉辦巡展。
就此，《大西洋月刊》2013年10月25日刊登文章《當西方記者還愛中國共產黨時》。文章稱，這個以20世紀30年代的事物為主題的展覽讓人們想起了外國記者報道中國的那個幾乎已被遺忘的年代。文章認為，如今，對中國共產主義的這種熱情在西方報道中已顯得不合時宜。對共產主義傳播曾盛行一時而產生的恐懼已經消失，但西方媒體仍對中國懷着敬畏和擔憂。而即使全球化已將信息傳播到了世界上更偏遠的國家，媒體仍在與意識形態偏差和片面傳播相抗衡——不僅僅是針對中國。對於該檔案展，文章稱，雖然展覽介紹稱這些記錄者展現了“中國共產黨公正、真實的形象”，他們的作品仍然是精心挑選出來的，以便僅展現中共崛起的積極面。
以下為《大西洋月刊》文章：
在上海江邊一棟不起眼的樓裏，一場精心籌辦的展覽正在3樓舉辦，但觀眾寥寥。紅色牆體上寫着“紅星照耀中國——外國記者眼中的中國共產黨人”，展覽歌頌了近12名外國記者——他們在1930年代記錄了共產黨的崛起。在紅軍從華中地區戰略撤退，也就是著名的“長征”期間，記者們採訪了共產黨領導人毛澤東、周恩來等，中共在西北部城市延安建立根據地後，一些記者還參了軍。
這場展覽是為了紀念埃德加•斯諾的一本同名著作。斯諾是《紐約太陽報》和倫敦《每日先驅報》的駐華記者。很多專題報道記者也為主流媒體撰稿，像英國的《每日郵報》和合眾國際社（UPI），當時UPI是一家大通訊社。該展覽介紹，這些記者中大部分對共產主義事業抱有同情之心，策展人在展出的檔案中對此自豪地大力宣揚。
“紅星照耀中國——外國記者眼中的中國共產黨人”檔案展
“用手中的筆和鏡頭，”展覽序言寫道，這些記者“將清貧而廉潔的共產黨員、裝備低劣卻堅持奮戰在民族獨立和人民解放第一線的革命軍隊形象呈現在世人面前”。
類似的話貫穿整個展覽。標語歌頌了“中國軍隊可歌可泣的事蹟”，並信誓旦旦地説“在偉大光榮的新世紀，紅星會更加耀眼。”而對記者的歌頌同樣熱情洋溢。
“共產黨的成功是建立在實證心理學之上，而非任何自命不凡的政治哲學。”合眾社美國記者傑克•貝爾登（Jack Belden）寫道。“紅軍贏得人民支持靠的不是説理，而是他們喚起了人民的希望、信任和愛戴。”據《紐約時報》當時一名駐華記者稱，很多外國媒體記者都依靠貝爾登從前線發回紅軍的消息。貝爾登後來為《時代週刊》和《生活雜誌》做報道。
另一位作家艾格尼絲•史沫特萊（Agnes Smedley）以同情共產黨人聞名。美國公共電視網（PBS）聲稱她還是中國和蘇聯的間諜。1930年代末日軍侵華期間，她為左翼媒體寫報道，如德國的《法蘭克福報》和英國的《曼徹斯特衞報》，即今天的《衞報》。史沫特萊的紅軍系列報道比貝爾登的還要直白。“中國共產黨是偉大的，”她寫道，“中國人民是偉大的。作為一名記者，我所做的僅僅是實事求是、不加褒貶地向世界人民傳達這一正義的戰爭，這場在偉大的中國共產黨領導下發動的民族戰爭。”
如今，對中國共產主義的這種熱情在西方報道中已顯得不合時宜。但是在冷戰前，許多西方國家視共產黨為國民黨的替代者，而國民黨則因自身的腐敗和殘暴而飽受詬病。自1920年代起，國民黨主席蔣介石就針對共產黨發動了一系列“圍剿”行動，逼迫他們放棄江西根據地，向地處中國西北黃土高原的陝甘地區轉移。殘酷的八年抗戰和破壞性的四年解放戰爭後，中國共產黨最終於1949年奪取了政權。但那時，由於冷戰突發，西方媒體已採取了偏對抗的態度。
今天，對共產主義傳播曾盛行一時而產生的恐懼已經消失，西方媒體甚至仍對中國懷着敬畏和擔憂。如今的共產黨與1930年代受欺壓的情形相去甚遠。共產黨現在被描述成了一個龐大而墮落的政黨。
75年以後，這樣的報道會和1930年代對中國的報道一樣過時嗎？即使全球化已將信息傳播到了世界上更偏遠的國家，媒體仍在與意識形態偏差和片面傳播相抗衡——這不僅僅是針對中國。比如，半島電視台曾因對阿拉伯之春的描述而廣受非議，多達22名記者今年夏天辭職，抗議對穆斯林兄弟的偏見。
其他機構也面臨着挑戰。英國廣播公司（BBC）在去年公佈的一份內部報告中承認，阿拉伯之春期間，BBC過於狹隘地將目光集中在特定國家的暴動上，忽略了該地區小事件。哈佛大學教授馬修•鮑姆（Matthew Baum）和尤里•朱可夫（Yuri Zhukov）在近期的一份工作報告中指出，對相關新聞的過度報道和對其他新聞的忽略可能與媒介輸出國的民主力量有關。通過對2011年利比亞戰爭的數據分析，他們發現，來自民主國家的記者傾向於過度報道政府的鎮壓和暴行，而非民主國家的記者則往往重在報道事態現狀。
也許此次展覽上被選出的作者會對某些類似的偏見感到心虛。不過，雖然展覽介紹稱這些記錄者展現了“中國共產黨公正、真實的形象”，他們的作品仍然是精心挑選出來的，以便僅展現中共崛起的積極面。而即便展覽看上去是面向外國遊客的，其歷史價值已經因為宣傳而丟失了。
這真是太遺憾了。1930年代西方對中國共產黨的熱愛恰恰是因為其不需任何點綴；斯諾等人的報道反映了一個時代，那時的人心向背還沒有出現決絕的變化。不幸的是，對於那些想借此知道更多世界如何看待中國這一問題的遊客來説——表面上這是展覽的主題——這場展覽留給他們的問題比答案更多。
《西行漫記（紅星照耀中國）》 三聯書店1979版封面
（本文原載於《大西洋月刊》The Atlantic網站，原標題：When Western Journalists Loved China’s Communists，作者：Emma Green；觀察者網王楊、張苗鳳譯。點擊下一頁查看英文原文）
When Western Journalists Loved China’s Communists
On the third floor of an unremarkable building on Shanghai’s waterfront, an elaborate exhibit sits nearly empty of visitors. Hung on crimson walls, “Red Star Over China: Chinese Communists in the Eyes of Foreign Journalists” celebrates close to a dozen foreign journalists who wrote about the Communist Party’s rise to power in China in the 1930s. During part of the Red Army’s strategic retreat from central China, known as the “Long March,” the writers interviewed Communist leaders like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and several joined the troops when they eventually set up camp in the northwestern city of Yan’an.
The exhibit is named in honor of a book of a similar title by Edgar Snow, a journalist who covered China for The New York Sun and London’s Daily Herald. Many of the other featured reporters also worked for mainstream media outlets, including Britain’s Daily Telegraph and United Press International (UPI), then a major news wire service. According to the exhibit, most of these writers had sympathy for the Communist cause, and the curators at the archives trumpeted this proudly.
“With their pens and their cameras,” the introductory note read, these journalists “presented to the world a fair and true image of the Chinese Communists and the People’s Army, who, though equipped with inferior arms, were fighting heroically at the forefront in the struggle for national liberation.”
This kind of language continued throughout the exhibit. Placards extolled the “epic deeds of the Chinese army” and assured that “in this new century of glory and prosperity, the red star is shining brighter.” The journalists themselves were no less effusive.
“Communist success was founded on empirical psychology and not on any pretentious political philosophy,” wrote Jack Belden, an American correspondent for UPI. “The Celestial Reds won the people to their cause not by any process of reasoning, but by arousing the hope, trust, and affection of the people.” According to a New York Times reporter embedded in China at that time, many members of the foreign press corps relied on Belden for information from the front lines of the Red Army. Belden later went on to report for Time and Life magazines.
Another writer, Agnes Smedly, was a known Communist sympathizer and served as a spy for China and the Soviet Union, according to PBS. During the Japanese invasion of China in the late 1930s, she reported for left-leaning publications like Germany’s Frankfurter Zeitung and Britain’s The Manchester Guardian, known today as The Guardian. Smedly’s support for the Red Army was even more pronounced than Belden’s. “The Chinese Communist Party is great,” she wrote, “The Chinese people are great. What I have done is just, as a correspondent, to convey to the people of the world the righteous war, waged by the Chinese people under the leadership of the great Chinese Communist Party, in a truthful way, without exaggeration or deprecation.”
Today, this kind of enthusiasm about Chinese communism would seem out of place in a Western publication. But in the pre-Cold War era, many saw the Communist Party as a worthy alternative to the ruling Nationalists, who were criticized for their corruption and brutality. Starting in the 1920s, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek launched a series of “extermination campaigns” against Communist rebels, forcing them to abandon their stronghold in Jiangxi Province and march to the loess plateaus of northwest China’s Shaanxi. Following eight years of brutal Japanese occupation and a destructive four-year civil war, the Communists finally gained control of mainland China in 1949. But by then, Western media outlets had adopted a more adversarial attitude, framed by the onset of the Cold War.
Even today, as the once-dominant fear of the spread of communism has been extinguished, Western media treats China with a mix of awe and anxiety. Now, the Communist Party is portrayed as a vast, corrupt bureaucracy—a far cry from the scrappy underdogs of the 1930s.
75 years from now, will this kind of coverage seem as dated as the reporting on China from the 1930s? Even though globalization has led to greater coverage of events in remote parts of the world, the media still struggles with accusations of ideological bias and incomplete coverage—and not just with China. For example, Al-Jazeera has been widely criticized for its portrayal of the Arab Spring, and this summer as many as 22 journalists quit the organization in protest of its perceived bias toward the Muslim Brotherhood.
Other organizations face subtler challenges. An internal report released by the BBC last year admitted that, during the Arab Spring, the organization focused too narrowly on uprisings in certain countries and ignored smaller stories about events elsewhere in the region. In a recent working paper, Harvard professors Matthew Baum and Yuri Zhukov argued that this tendency to over-report certain stories and under-report others might be tied to the strength of democracy in a media outlet’s home country. Using data from the 2011 Libyan civil war, they found that journalists from democratic countries tended to over-report rebel uprisings and atrocities committed by the government, while journalists from non-democratic countries tended to emphasize the resilience of the status quo.
Perhaps the writers chosen for this exhibit were guilty of some of the same biases. But although the exhibit’s introduction claimed that these dozen or so reporters presented a “fair and true image of the Chinese Communists,” their work was clearly selected carefully to represent only positive portrayals of the Communist rise. And even though the exhibit appeared to be targeted at foreign visitors, its historical value got lost amid the propaganda.
And that’s a shame. Western affection for China’s Communists during the 1930s is so interesting precisely because it requires no embellishment; the reporting by Snow and others reflect a time before perceptions turned decisively against Mao Zedong’s Communists. Unfortunately, visitors seeking to broaden their understanding of how the world sees China—ostensibly the point of the exhibit—are left with more questions than answers.