谣言侵蚀北京的政治合法性

政治不透明与权力运作的黑箱化，是谣言产生的最佳温床。中国本来就盛产谣言，每逢乱世与末世，谣言更是特别多。目前，身处网络2.0时代的中国人又仿佛回到了百年前的大清王朝末期，身置各种谣诼之中。

若追究起谣言始端，则缘于重庆市副市长、原公安局局长王立军今年2月出奔成都美领馆。2012年3月14日下午，当今中国最有权势的人物之一薄熙来被免去职务。从那天开始，几年来都是中外媒体关注焦点的薄督消失在公众视野中，莫说薄督将受朝廷何种惩罚这种事体，就连薄督驻跸何处，也成了公众不得与闻的“国家机密”。从此各种谣言纷传。

谣言可谓纷然杂陈，从看起来颇为真实的消息（如薄熙来被软禁），到耸人听闻难以置信之事（如政变），在海外的中文网站均能找到。国内由于薄熙来以及相关消息成了禁词，于是微博成了各种“隐语”的天下，这些“隐语”一天一变，仅用于指称薄熙来的隐语就有好几种，如“不厚”（以其姓喻）、“西红”（西南唱红歌）、“西红柿”、“三少爷”（薄在其兄弟中排行第三）。一些国际大媒体开始还沉得住气，对网上消息要多方查证，比如《纽约时报》与《国际先驱论坛报》谈到中共中央办公厅3月15日的《关于王立军事件初步处理情况通报》，还分别向几位看到过那份报告的中国官员查证核实。但到后来，一些大媒体也加入竞猜游戏，比如《金融时报》英文网刊在3月20日下午刊登温家宝呼吁平反“六四”曾遭薄熙来多次反对的报道；21日中国大陆网民突然发现国内网站解禁，可以搜索到有关“六四”的部分内容。于是这些消息又引发种种过度猜测。

细究起来，这些谣言分为三类：第一类是有关薄熙来及其妻子谷开来的腐败问题。第二类则是由薄熙来牵扯出来的高层矛盾问题。第三类就是有多少军中势力卷入了这场权力斗争。

由于中国官方沉默以对，中国人又只好拿出从新闻字里行间读真意的看家本领。据说一向为青年、中年人不屑一顾的CCTV晚间新闻，最近收视率大增，人们耐着性子将枯燥的国内新闻从头至尾看遍，为的是看有谁没出现。其中关于传说中的薄熙来后台、政治局常委、政法委书记周永康更是成了关注焦点。

谣言其实是专制社会民众的一种反权力武器。反观中国历史，流言四起并对人们判断形势起特大作用的时期，往往就是王朝步入末世乱世之时。从“谣言”这个社会切口管窥蠡测，我们可以洞见一个社会的世态人心，政治的基本状况及其发展趋势。近现代以来，中国至少经历了三次大的政治谣言纷传的年代，一是晚清，二是国民党政府败退至台湾前夕，三是1976年。

以清末为例，当时谣言纷传，其中以两大类为主，一类是预言清朝灭亡的谣言，1911年在陕西就流传着“不用掐，不 用算，宣统不过二年半”的民谣。另一类是渲染上层矛盾的谣言，譬如汪精卫1910年在北京以炸弹刺杀摄政王事，被谣传为炸弹是载洵、载涛两位皇室成员从伦敦带回交给汪，命其刺杀摄 政王。1910年10月间促成湖北新军哗变（即打响武昌起义的第一枪）的也是一则与士兵性命攸关的谣言，有人说官员们正在编制所有汉族士兵的花名册，将以革命党罪名逮捕并惩罚所有湖北新军的汉族士兵。这则谣言将新军士兵逼入了秦朝末年陈胜吴广等面临的“大泽乡困境”：服从必然死亡，反抗或有一线生机，于是乃有10月10日晚上的楚望台起义。

中国不是信息透明的国度，每次权力斗争都会引起流言四布，连中低层官员都乐传这类流言并相信。现阶段处在网络2.0时代，一个政府不管其如何善于控制信息，却绝无可能完全控制该社会的所有传播渠道，控制得越紧，谣言的产生与传播也就越离奇。因此，今年2月王立军事件以来各种谣言纷传的状态，为政治学与传播学的交叉学科政治传播学提供了一个非常有价值的研究样本。

一个社会的政治体系与传播体系之间是种共生关系。谣言之所以传播迅速，其实在某种程度上也反映了一个时代的社会矛盾和统治乱象，是社会面临大变革、大分裂、大崩溃的预兆。可以说，这些谣言正从根本上侵蚀着中国政府统治的合法性。在各种谣言的发酵刺激下，中国人对政府的不满与轻视日益增长。

Rumors corrode Beijing’s political legitimacy
By He Qinglian on March 23, 2012
Translated by kRiZcPEc

http://hqlenglish.blogspot.com/2012/04/rumors-corrode-beijing-legitimacy.html

The perfect hotbed for rumors to thrive would be where the politics is opaque and where power functions in a way that is concealed from the public. China has always been full of rumors, in particular when it is the time of chaos and confusion, or when a dynasty nears its end. At present, the Chinese people in a time of Web2.0 is surrounded by all sorts of rumors, as was the case when the Qing dynasty was about to end a hundred years ago.

All these rumors could be traced back to one incident: Wang Lijun, deputy mayor of Chongqing and former public security chief, went inside the U.S. Consulate-general in Chengdu in February this year. In the afternoon of March 14, 2012, Bo Xilai, one of the most powerful persons in today’s China, was relieved of his duties. From that day onward, Bo, who in the past few years had been in the limelight of domestic and foreign media, vanished from public vision. Even Bo’s whereabouts is now deemed as a “state secret” that the public should know nothing about, not to mention the kind of punishment that he may get from the authorities. As a result, all sorts of rumors fly.

A good few varying stories can be retrieved from Chinese websites outside China, some appear to be quite plausible, such as Bo being put under house arrest; others are clearly incredible—a looming coup for instance. Yet because Bo Xilai and news about him are censored inside the country, all kinds of “argots” pop up on Weibo and they change daily. Several argots are being used to refer to Bo Xilai alone: “not thick” (taken from Bo’s surname, which means “thin”); “Red in the West” (Red Songs sung in the country’s Southwest); and “third young master” (Bo is the third son).

In the beginning, major international media would still make the effort to verify leads appeared on the Internet. For example, when the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune reported the CPC central committee’s “Bulletin Regrading the Initial handling of the Wang Lijun incident” on March 15, they would respectively check with several Chinese officials who had read it. But later on, even some of the major media joined in the guessing game. For instance, in the afternoon of March 20, a report that Bo Xilai repeatedly objected Wen Jiabao’s calls to redress “June-fourth” was published in the website of the Financial Times; and on March 21, netizens in mainland China found out that all of a sudden the ban on the country’s website had been lifted and they could retrieve some of the information about the “June-fourth incident”. All these gave rise to even more far-fetched speculations.

After a closer look, I found that these rumors could be divided into three categories: the first would be about the corruption issues of Bo Xilai himself and his wife, Gu Kailai; the second would be the issues of CPC top level disputes that Bo Xilai brought into daylight; and the third would be the number of persons with military background who got involved in this power struggle.

As a result of the Chinese officials’ remaining silence, the Chinese people had no way but to exercise their special skill of deciphering the true meaning from between the lines of the news reports. Reportedly the CCTV evening news, a program that has long been dismissed by the young and the middle-aged, saw a great increase in its audience recently, people would patiently watch the boring domestic news from start to finish so as to find out who has not shown up. In particular, Zhou Yongkang, member of the Politburo Standing Committee and secretary of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, allegedly the one who backed Bo Xilai, has become a focus of attention.

Rumors are in fact what the people in authoritarian societies use as a weapon to resist those in power. Looking back at the history of China, one would see that the times when rumors abounded and played significant roles in helping people to make of the situation were usually when dynasties came close to an end and when the country was descending into chaos.

From “rumors”–an incision of any given society, we could have some insights into the state of things in that society, what people have on their minds, the basic situation of politics and its development trend. Since modern times, China has gone through at least three major occasions when political rumors were abuzz: the first took place in the late Qing Dynasty, the second on the eve of the KMT government retreat to Taiwan, and the third in 1976.

Take the late Qing Dynasty for example, at that time the air was filled with rumors mainly of two categories: one being predictions of the dynasty’s collapse; and the other focused on disputes and infighting at the top most level. When triggered the Hubei New Army mutiny (the prelude to Wuchang uprising) in October 1911 was also a rumor that had a direct relevance to the soldiers’ lives: the Manchu imperial government was compiling a roster of all Chinese soldiers, and all Chinese soldiers of Hubei New Army would be arrested and punished for being members of the revolution party. The rumor put the soldiers in an impossible situation which obedience meant death; but if they revolted, there might be a chance that they could survive. And so the Chu Lookout uprising on the night of October 10 broke out.

China is not a country with information transparency. Whenever a power struggle occurs, rumors would be everywhere, and even officials at lower levels would be happy to spread and believe in those. In the Web2.0 era, there is no way for any government to manage all communication channels in society, no matter how good at information control it may be; the tighter the government regulates, the more bizarre the generation and dissemination of rumors would become. This state of various rumors flying around since Wang Lijun incident in February this year provided a very valuable research sample for Political Communication, the interdisciplinary study of Political Science and Communication.

The relationship between a society’s political system and its communication system is a symbiotic one. The fact that rumors spread rapidly reflects to some extent the social conflicts and chaotic governance of a given period, and is an omen that a drastic change, a major division and a great collapse would occur. It can be said that these rumors are fundamentally corroding the legitimacy of the Chinese government.With all these rumors around, the Chinese people become increasingly discontent with and contemptuous of their government.
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