二十多年以前，当治人者引亢高歌的时候，他虽为其中的一员，却选择了沉默。我曾问他，为何为官不立言，他说不愿作违心之论。十多年以前，当许多人因故沉默的时候，他开始发声。像陈寅恪先生那样，他以自己的未酬之志，年迈之躯，不屈不挠地为国人立一典型，使天下后世知所矜式。今天，这个人逝去了。然而，他的情怀、他的良知、他的梦想将继续萦绕荡漾，被珍惜引申。他用他生命中晚晴的夕阳，为一生写毕了完美的篇章。他怀三户之志，发九章之辞，以良知立德，以自由立命，虽然风雨如晦，但仍鸣放不已，守玉不渝；他不怕颠沛，敢于造次，不以物喜，不以己悲，堪称人杰豪雄。此人便是刚刚离去的李慎之先生。

我以为，慎之先生尤为可贵之处，在于关注个体生命价值与关怀国族兴盛的高度融合。有人为国而忘我，有人窃国以为我，其结果皆是国我两丧。慎之先生通过关心个体来关心国族，一个以为小来事大的人，不是一个以大而舍我的人。如此，则国我两旺。

诘难主流文明与普世精神者尝言，那些东西在中国的民族传统中没有根基，是在中国找不到锚地的泊来之物，中国的出路在于或另辟他途，或回归本土。然而，慎之先生用他的一生有力地证明了一个相反的结论。慎之先生对自由民主等普世价值与主流文明的认同，不是死读、模仿、被灌输的结果，而是其一生的生命体验和不懈探索的结果。慎之先生早年就读燕京，初染西学；后又投奔延安，尝试振兴民族的全新途径。直到晚年，慎之先生才真正找到自己的精神归宿，勇敢地走出“埃及”。他的言论成为佳话，他的行动成为楷模。谁说主流文明与中国无缘？谁说普世价值在中国无根？慎之先生本人即是普世精神的本土楷模。慎之先生以他的一生为一个案，证明了他在《北大传统与近代中国》序中所伸张的，主流文明与普世价值虽非中国几千年文化中固有的传统，但是来到中国就会生根发芽，与中国传统融和。慎之先生的言行在当代中国的思考者中间所引起的强烈反响，可见先生之道不孤。

寥寥数言，以志敬仰!

原文摘登于《南方周末》 2003年5月15日

Farewell to China\'s Liberal Architect
Liu Junning

Li Shenzhi, a premier architect of the late 1990s\' liberal intellectual revival and an uncompromising heavyweight campaigner for political reform and democracy in China, died on Tuesday, April 22, 2003, at Concord Hospital in Beijing. Mr. Li, 80, was born in 1923 in Wuxi City, Jiangsu province, into a merchant family with a cultural and patriotic tradition. This was a determining factor in shaping his world outlook. His father was a well-educated business manager. His grandfather had joined the 1911 Nationalist revolution. Mr. Li received a western-style education and graduated in economics from Yenching University in Beijing before joining Mao\'s Communist movement.
Mr. Li\'s had a varied and rich career. As a China\'s major foreign policy adviser and strategist, Mr. Li played an important role in promoting China\'s moderate attitude and later opening up policy toward the West. He was foreign policy adviser to Premier Zhou Enlai in the early 1950s. In 1954, Li was one of those suggesting the practice of circulating extracts of reports from the Western media, called "internal references," among the Communist leadership. This allowed leaders to receive information from the West at a time when China was internationally isolated.
In the late 1970s, Li was sought out by Deng Xiaoping for advice on China\'s foreign policy, especially its policy toward the U.S. Thereafter, as foreign policy adviser, he accompanied Deng on his visit to the U.S. in 1979. He also served as a special assistant to Premier Zhao Ziyang during his visit to the U.S. in 1984. Mr. Li supported and argued for engagement with the U.S. for many decades. Although his proposal of engagement with the U.S. was adopted by Deng and his successors, many Communist hardliners and New Left intellectuals continued to oppose him. In the 1990s, Li became a pioneer in promoting globalization studies in China. He believed that a thorough opening up would help speed up China\'s democratic transition and contribute to world peace.
As a forerunner and founding father of American studies in China, Li set up the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in 1981. In 1988, he founded the Chinese Association for American Studies.
Mr. Li\'s fame and popularity as a courageous and respected academic were closely related to his unremitting critique of the Communist ideology and practice in China. Mr. Li had his first major brush with top Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1956, shortly before the notorious Anti-Rightist Movement, when he appealed to the top authorities for a grand, fundamental democracy, by which he meant a liberal representative democracy. He later ran afoul with the authorities by refusing to attend a conference that declared martial law in Beijing on May 19, 1989. Thereafter, he resigned as the deputy president of CASS. "I don\'t want to be an official under the point of a bayonet," Li said. As a result, he was thereafter deprived of his position in the National People\'s Congress.
In the early 1990s Mr. Li began a decade-long critique of the regime. In an essay circulated clandestinely, on paper, through email, and on the Internet, among the community of intellectuals and retired officials, he was markedly explicit, mocking the lavish celebration of 50 years of Communist rule in 1999, and warning General Secretary Jiang Zemin about the need to end the Communist Party\'s continuing monopoly on political power. "Hitler is dead, Stalin is dead; there can\'t be that many countries left that strive for this vision of grandeur," he wrote. "My own guess is perhaps only Kim Jong Il\'s Korea would embrace it." That article solidified Li\'s role as a liberal
democrat. Consequently, he was blacklisted and criticized for his "improper" slander.
What will be remembered most is Mr. Li\'s contribution to the resurgence of liberalism in China and his courage in calling for liberal democracy under the present-day Communist rule.

As an indomitable champion of liberal democracy, Li wrote extensively to advocate and expound upon liberalism. The year 1998 highlighted the liberalist revival, and when Peking University\'s centennial was celebrated, Li wrote a preface to a special volume entitled "Peking University and the Liberal Tradition in Modern China," in which he wrote "through comparisons and choices in the world over the last two or three hundred years, especially the mankind\'s largest experiments in China for over a hundred years, we have plenty of reason to believe that liberalism > is the best and most universal value. The revival of the liberalist tradition originating at Peking University will bring a free China to a globalizing world, and will be beneficial and glorious for the entire world." Li\'s words have been regarded as a declaration of the rebirth of liberalism in China. At the time of his death, Mr. Li had become a leading voice in the movement for democratization in China. In his last speech several weeks before his death, Mr. Li asserted that the primary goal of China\'s modernization is democratization.
In democratic countries, those people who make contributions to the enterprise of freedom and democracy deserve and receive high honors. But in China, liberal democrat Li Shenzhi\'s only honor was repeated punishment. Mr. Li was seriously attacked during Mao\'s anti-rightist movement in 1957 and labeled a "rightist" - a term used to brand those who criticized the Chinese Communist Party and questioned the one party-rule. As a result, he was sidelined for almost two decades, resuming his academic positions 24 years later. But throughout his life Li was always proud of his label as a rightist.
In the New Anti-Rightist Movement in early 2000, Mr. Li, together with several other prominent liberal intellectuals, was advised by the authorities that they were writing reactionary and bourgeois liberal articles and they were warned to be aware of the consequences. Notwithstanding the numerous penalties and frustrations, Li was optimistic with China\'s future, not because its political transition will be completed very soon, but because of his confidence in democratic-based individual freedom and its inevitability for China.
As a dear friend to many younger liberal intellectuals and liberal-minded Communist officials, Mr. Li was a historical figure that ruled the intellectual scene for the past decade. His voice was an important dimension in the contemporary changes underway in China. Posterity will be left to decide his position in the liberal movement in contemporary intellectual history. It is certain, however, that his heroic courage and deep love of individual freedom and democracy are widely appreciated in China. Mr. Li died of pneumonia resulting from repeated cold, partly due to the uniform cutting off of central heating on March 15, 2003 despite the continued cold weather in Beijing. A small memorial tribute was held on Friday, May 9, in Beijing to commemorate his loss. The liberal intelligentsia sent their collective condolences and remembrances to Li\'s family. His survivors include his wife and four children.

原载于华尔街日报亚洲版 The Wall Street Journal Asian Edition. March 14,. 2003. A7. 66.