2012年9月26日，“红星照耀中国——外国记者眼中的中国共产党人”档案展在上海市档案馆新馆向社会公众免费开放，上海市领导俞正声、韩正、刘云耕、冯国勤、殷一璀等来到展馆观看。该档案展由中央档案馆国家档案局和上海市档案局（馆）主办。2013年6月9日，“红星照耀中国”档案展在中华世纪坛再次开幕。之后，在宁夏、甘肃等地举办巡展。

就此，《大西洋月刊》2013年10月25日刊登文章《当西方记者还爱中国共产党时》。文章称，这个以20世纪30年代的事物为主题的展览让人们想起了外国记者报道中国的那个几乎已被遗忘的年代。文章认为，如今，对中国共产主义的这种热情在西方报道中已显得不合时宜。对共产主义传播曾盛行一时而产生的恐惧已经消失，但西方媒体仍对中国怀着敬畏和担忧。而即使全球化已将信息传播到了世界上更偏远的国家，媒体仍在与意识形态偏差和片面传播相抗衡——不仅仅是针对中国。对于该档案展，文章称，虽然展览介绍称这些记录者展现了“中国共产党公正、真实的形象”，他们的作品仍然是精心挑选出来的，以便仅展现中共崛起的积极面。

以下为《大西洋月刊》文章：

在上海江边一栋不起眼的楼里，一场精心筹办的展览正在3楼举办，但观众寥寥。红色墙体上写着“红星照耀中国——外国记者眼中的中国共产党人”，展览歌颂了近12名外国记者——他们在1930年代记录了共产党的崛起。在红军从华中地区战略撤退，也就是著名的“长征”期间，记者们采访了共产党领导人毛泽东、周恩来等，中共在西北部城市延安建立根据地后，一些记者还参了军。

这场展览是为了纪念埃德加•斯诺的一本同名著作。斯诺是《纽约太阳报》和伦敦《每日先驱报》的驻华记者。很多专题报道记者也为主流媒体撰稿，像英国的《每日邮报》和合众国际社（UPI），当时UPI是一家大通讯社。该展览介绍，这些记者中大部分对共产主义事业抱有同情之心，策展人在展出的档案中对此自豪地大力宣扬。

“红星照耀中国——外国记者眼中的中国共产党人”档案展

“用手中的笔和镜头，”展览序言写道，这些记者“将清贫而廉洁的共产党员、装备低劣却坚持奋战在民族独立和人民解放第一线的革命军队形象呈现在世人面前”。

类似的话贯穿整个展览。标语歌颂了“中国军队可歌可泣的事迹”，并信誓旦旦地说“在伟大光荣的新世纪，红星会更加耀眼。”而对记者的歌颂同样热情洋溢。

“共产党的成功是建立在实证心理学之上，而非任何自命不凡的政治哲学。”合众社美国记者杰克•贝尔登（Jack Belden）写道。“红军赢得人民支持靠的不是说理，而是他们唤起了人民的希望、信任和爱戴。”据《纽约时报》当时一名驻华记者称，很多外国媒体记者都依靠贝尔登从前线发回红军的消息。贝尔登后来为《时代周刊》和《生活杂志》做报道。

另一位作家艾格尼丝•史沫特莱（Agnes Smedley）以同情共产党人闻名。美国公共电视网（PBS）声称她还是中国和苏联的间谍。1930年代末日军侵华期间，她为左翼媒体写报道，如德国的《法兰克福报》和英国的《曼彻斯特卫报》，即今天的《卫报》。史沫特莱的红军系列报道比贝尔登的还要直白。“中国共产党是伟大的，”她写道，“中国人民是伟大的。作为一名记者，我所做的仅仅是实事求是、不加褒贬地向世界人民传达这一正义的战争，这场在伟大的中国共产党领导下发动的民族战争。”

如今，对中国共产主义的这种热情在西方报道中已显得不合时宜。但是在冷战前，许多西方国家视共产党为国民党的替代者，而国民党则因自身的腐败和残暴而饱受诟病。自1920年代起，国民党主席蒋介石就针对共产党发动了一系列“围剿”行动，逼迫他们放弃江西根据地，向地处中国西北黄土高原的陕甘地区转移。残酷的八年抗战和破坏性的四年解放战争后，中国共产党最终于1949年夺取了政权。但那时，由于冷战突发，西方媒体已采取了偏对抗的态度。

今天，对共产主义传播曾盛行一时而产生的恐惧已经消失，西方媒体甚至仍对中国怀着敬畏和担忧。如今的共产党与1930年代受欺压的情形相去甚远。共产党现在被描述成了一个庞大而堕落的政党。

75年以后，这样的报道会和1930年代对中国的报道一样过时吗？即使全球化已将信息传播到了世界上更偏远的国家，媒体仍在与意识形态偏差和片面传播相抗衡——这不仅仅是针对中国。比如，半岛电视台曾因对阿拉伯之春的描述而广受非议，多达22名记者今年夏天辞职，抗议对穆斯林兄弟的偏见。

其他机构也面临着挑战。英国广播公司（BBC）在去年公布的一份内部报告中承认，阿拉伯之春期间，BBC过于狭隘地将目光集中在特定国家的暴动上，忽略了该地区小事件。哈佛大学教授马修•鲍姆（Matthew Baum）和尤里•朱可夫（Yuri Zhukov）在近期的一份工作报告中指出，对相关新闻的过度报道和对其他新闻的忽略可能与媒介输出国的民主力量有关。通过对2011年利比亚战争的数据分析，他们发现，来自民主国家的记者倾向于过度报道政府的镇压和暴行，而非民主国家的记者则往往重在报道事态现状。

也许此次展览上被选出的作者会对某些类似的偏见感到心虚。不过，虽然展览介绍称这些记录者展现了“中国共产党公正、真实的形象”，他们的作品仍然是精心挑选出来的，以便仅展现中共崛起的积极面。而即便展览看上去是面向外国游客的，其历史价值已经因为宣传而丢失了。

这真是太遗憾了。1930年代西方对中国共产党的热爱恰恰是因为其不需任何点缀；斯诺等人的报道反映了一个时代，那时的人心向背还没有出现决绝的变化。不幸的是，对于那些想借此知道更多世界如何看待中国这一问题的游客来说——表面上这是展览的主题——这场展览留给他们的问题比答案更多。

《西行漫记（红星照耀中国）》 三联书店1979版封面

（本文原载于《大西洋月刊》The Atlantic网站，原标题：When Western Journalists Loved China's Communists，作者：Emma Green；观察者网王杨、张苗凤译。点击下一页查看英文原文）

 

 

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.