想了解一下，在有一定学术气氛的外国网民中，对于中国历史，尤其是毛泽东的看法是怎样的。于是就去了Quora以Mao Zedong为关键字搜索，看到了很多的问答。

最先领略到的就是外国人惊人的偏见与无知，在提问“毛泽东如何取得内战胜利”的问题说明里，提问者竟补充了一句“considering he was ridiculously unintelligent（考虑到他愚蠢到了荒唐的地步）”，引得众多答者吐槽“你是认真的么？”“你真的不是在反讽么？”，当然，有高票回答竟然是"运气，运气还是运气"。

当然，还是大量内销转出口的段子，“匪情研究所”系列和右派文人的贡献难分轩轾。有澳洲人滔滔不绝第讲述毛泽东如何“屠杀了4500万人，成为史上第一杀人犯”；有美国人引用毛泽东接见南乡三郎时的话只翻译“感谢日本军阀”却故意省略之前“使得中国人民觉悟，团结起来”的部分。当然，还有大量明显来自台湾的账号，用着或四六不懂或文理通顺的英语，却一致反刍着霉到发臭的政战文宣。当然，攻讦祖龙以降第一英伟人主，自然也会引得众多支持者反击。惜乎其心拳拳，其辞寥寥，源于我们的历史政治教育，理念多事迹少，讲成就多讲做事少，这些辩驳者也难以做到以理服人。虽然唯物主义的辩证历史观乃是刺破虚妄的一切法，可惜大多数学生都无此悟性，就好比人人都发了屠龙刀，刀谱却语焉不详。

在“意料之中”的失望中，我无意偶遇了一股清流，一位来自美国的，账号名Robin Daverman的非著名关于历史、中国、美国问题答主，论证有力，资料详实。用“学贯中西、博古通今”形容他毫不为过，并且以我粗浅的鉴赏水平，他简直到了“嬉笑怒骂皆文章”的地步。

我在此翻译一篇他的答文，以证明我所言非虚。

Has Mao Zedong been the victim of superficial propaganda that vilified him excessively?

毛泽东是肤浅的过度妖魔化宣传的受害者么？

This question is too big. I can only show you a tiny little corner of Mao’s work.

这个问题太大了，我只能向你展示出毛的成就的冰山一角。

In 1947, LIFE magazine employed a young American reporter, Jack Birns, to Shanghai to report on China’s civil war. Shanghai, at that time, was like a heaven: this one city is far, far, richer than the rest of China. It had 4 million residents and consumed half of the total electricity generated in China. Half. And the expats were indeed having a reasonably good time in Shanghai, as photographed by Jack Birns. Here is a photo of an expat with Chinese girls.

1947年，《生活》杂志聘用了一个年轻的美国记者，杰克·毕恩斯，前往上海去报道中国内战。上海是当时中国的人间天堂，一个比起其他部分超、超、超富有的城市。四百万居民享受着中国一半的电力，一半！外国的冒险家们在那里享受者货真价实的美好时光，就如毕恩斯照片上这个脂粉堆中的老外一样。

（上海杨浦发电厂的美国发电机，虽历经国民党撤退时破坏和“二·六大轰炸”的严重损失，但在电厂工人的精心修复养护下一直用到了90年代。）

And not far away, here is a city sanitary worker picking up trash. Also photographed by Jack Birns.

就在不远处，毕恩斯同样拍摄了环卫工人正在清理垃圾的照片。

Yes, that was a dead child you see there. Starved to death. And here is a newspaper article on Oct. 27, 1940, reporting that the night temperature dropped to 39.9 degrees fahrenheit, which was about 4.5 degrees celsius, which resulted in 74 people frozen to death in one of the Shanghai districts. Just one of the districts. Half of China is north of Shanghai.

没错，你看到的是个死去的孩子，活活饿死的。

这儿还有一份1940年10月27日报纸上的文章，报道称夜间温度降至39.9华氏度，也就是大约摄氏4.5度，就造成了上海一个区74人冻死。只是该市的一个区，半个中国在上海更北方的地方。

And here is the photograph Jack Birns took, of the execution of suspected communist sympathizers. The photograph was never published, of course, because the owner of the LIFE magazine, Henry Luce, was a devoted anti-communist and did not want to show the KMT government committing atrocities.

然后这里是毕恩斯的另一张照片，一个“被怀疑是共党同情者”的人遭到枪决。照片从未被公布，理所当然，因为《生活》的老板亨利·卢斯先生是一个铁杆的反共狂，不愿意展示任何国民党政府的暴行。

(注意受害者闪光的皮鞋和挺括的长裤，这显然不是农民或者苦力，职员？公务员？教师？我们不得而知了，但可以肯定起码是个体面人。除了无声地讲述国府如何滥用国家暴力机器，也从另一个侧面反映出，革命支持者有如此广泛的阶层分布。)

You think this is bad? NOOOOO, this was what heaven looked like in China in 1947, in the richest city, the one tiny spot of China that consumed half of the total electricity generation in China. On only 4 million residents. What about the other 500 million Chinese?

你觉得这很烂么？不不不，这对于1947年的中国，是地上天堂的景象。最富裕的城市，地图上的一个小点使用着国家一半的电力，只有四百万居民——外面的五亿中国人又是如何？

The head of the International Famine Relief Commission estimated that 3 - 7 million Chinese die of famine every year. The Northwest China famine, 1928-1930, Driven by starvation, people resorted to cannibalism. China’s population grew from 430 million in 1850 to 580 million in 1953. China's Demographic Evolution 1850-1953 Reconsidered. That’s an annual population growth rate of < 0.3% a year, in an age with no contraception and everybody was having 6+ kids. (BTW, by the time Mao died in 1976, China’s population had reached 930 million, grew by 350 million in 21 years, that’s a growth rate of ~ 3%. Compare this with the previous 100 years, and you’ll get the real total death rate of the previous century in China, which would be around 15 million a year.)

国际饥荒救济总署的估算是3-7百万人死于饥荒，每年。1928-1930年的西北大饥荒中（链接），人相食。中国的人口从1850年的4.3亿增加到了1953年的5.8亿（链接），代表不到千分之三的年人口增长率。那时没有避孕，每个妇女如果可以都会生育起码6个孩子。（顺便说一句，在毛死去的1976年，中国人口9.3亿，也就是说21年（原文如此）增长了3.5亿，约为百分之三的增长率。对比之前的一个世纪的数据，你大致能得出真实的死亡率，每年约1500万人。）

You think this is bad? NOOOOO, if you go to China’s countryside, you will often see something like this.

你觉得这太惨了？不不不不不！如果你去中国的乡下，你会经常看到这样的东西。

I ran across this photo on the internet. It’s a tombstone issued by the government in praise of a young girl’s good virtue. Her name was not on the tombstone, because girls didn’t have names. Her fiance died before the wedding, so her family carried her to her fiance’s house, had her stood on top of his coffin, strangled her, and put her inside the coffin, to be buried with her fiance, the man she had never seen, never met, never known in life. On the back of the tombstone are the names of the male relatives of her family and her fiance’s family, etched in stone as a perpetual sign of great virtue.

How does this compare with Afghanistan? with Pakistan? With Saudi Arabia?

我在网上无意中发现这张照片。这是当时的地方政府为表扬一个年轻女孩的“美德”而树立的墓碑。她的名字并无所载，因为女孩都没有名字。她的未婚夫在结婚之前就死去了，所以她的家人把她搬到了未婚夫的房间，在棺材上掐死了女孩，把她放进去，与一个从未相遇，从未相见，从未相知的男人合葬了。在墓碑的背面是两亲家所有男性亲属的姓名，勒于石上，作为对“美德”的永恒纪念。

这与阿富汗相比如何？巴基斯坦呢？还是说沙特？

This was the China that Mao took over. 80% illiterate. 35 years of average life expectancy, and GDP per capita was $52 in 1952. Historical GDP of China And if the men got a bit of money, the first thing they’d want to do was to open his own opium den and go buy himself a 12-year-old concubine.

这就是毛接手的中国，八成的文盲率，35年的预期寿命，到了1952年人均GDP也只有52美元。这个国家的男人只要有了一点小钱，最想做的事是抽点鸦片再买个12岁的小妾。

Mao changed all that in a most profound way, despite 21 years of the most comprehensive Western embargo. 400 categories of products, including medicine, farming, and fishing equipment, were under embargo from 1950 to 1971. Without the fertilizers, Chinese farm yield was abysmally low. Without the medicine, the Chinese was under constant threat of small pox, malaria, and the plague. U.S. Ends Ban on China Trade This was what Mao had in his hands. He started with clearing the country of bandits and opium, trained peasants on basic healthcare, and implemented universal, compulsory education. The government has the obligation to educate, and all children, boy or girl, have the obligation to learn, period.

毛从最深刻的程度上改变了这一切，硬顶着来自整个西方世界长达21年的全面禁运。400大类的产品，包括医药、农具、渔具，从1950年被禁运到1971年。没有化肥，中国农业单产低下且不稳定；没有药品，中国人不得不随时面对天花、疟疾···一切瘟疫的威胁。（“美国结束对华贸易禁令”的新闻链接）。这就是毛手上的烂摊子，他从消灭土匪和鸦片开始，训练贫农们基本的防疫知识，并且根植了广泛的、强制的教育。政府有义务施行教育，所有的孩子，不论男女，有义务上学，没得商量。

This is the first set of China’s currency issued in 1960, featuring the first woman tractor driver.

这是1960年得第一套人民币，印上了中国的第一个女性拖拉机手。

Today China has women astronauts,

今天的中国有女宇航员，

fighter jet pilots,

女歼击机飞行员，

SWAT teams,

女子特警队，

billionaires, China is home to two-thirds of the world’s self-made female billionaires

女亿万富翁，（链接：中国产生了世界上白手起家女亿万富翁的2/3）

construction workers,

建筑工人，

and Nobel Prize winners.

还有诺贝尔奖医学与生理学奖得主。

Generals, admirals, politicians, CEOs, firefighters. There is literally no job in China that people think women can’t do. This is the same people that a mere 70 years ago bound women’s feet and refused to let women go outside of their homes, wouldn’t even bother giving girls their own names. Foot binding Mao didn’t just change the country. He changed the people.

三军女将、女政治家、女总裁、女消防员。就如字面上一般，人们认为没有工作是中国女性不能做的。而同样的人，在不到70年前，把女人的脚缠到畸形以使她们大门不出二门不迈，甚至懒得给女儿起个名字。毛不仅仅是改变了国家而已，他改变了人民。

But these individual examples are not as important as the overall statistics here: China has one of the highest women labor participation rate, and one of the highest rate of education for women.

比这些个人的例子更重要的，是这里的整体数据：中国有名列世界前茅的妇女劳动参与率和女性教育平等。

So this is the way Mao understood Women’s Liberation: It’s not about clothes, not about sex, not about additional protection, not about some guy opening doors for ladies, but about strength - the strength of knowledge, of professional careers, of independence, of character, so that a woman can run her own life, and tell even the Pope himself to go f*ck off if she so desires. This, is Liberation.

这就是毛泽东理解“女性解放”的方式：无关于服饰，无关于性爱，无关于额外关照，无关于为女士开门，只关于力量——知识、职业、独立、个性，这些让女性能独力运营自己生活的力量。让女性从此能对着教皇大人说：“滚蛋！”——只要她愿意。这，才叫解放。

（译者注，难得见到外国友人能如此正确地理解“劳动人民翻身得解放”其中的“解放”是什么含义。多少人高呼着自由，却只是对放纵心心念念。）

And here is the thing about Mao: a lot of the stuff he did, nobody else has been able to do, even today, 40 years after he died. What I wrote here, is just a tiny little corner of his work. So you think you can do what Mao did easily? Well congratulations, we have just the right little problem for you to solve. Afghanistan is 100 times richer and the people healthier and more educated than China was in 1950. The country has only 30 million people, instead of 600 million. There is no embargo. Instead, there is a lot of financial aid. You want to go try your hands? NATO has been there for 15 years, what do they have to show for it? War is still going on. Opium production is at all-time high. Women walk around in tents. And little boys are still being f*cked on the arse. Bacha bazi So go. Go there and make it into another China. Show us what you can do. Show us you can do what Mao did without the loss of a single life. Show us you can do better. Or try Iraq. Or South Sudan. Or Yemen. All of these countries are hundreds of times better than China was in 1950.

关于毛泽东的另一个事实：他有太多的成绩，即使在他已死去四十年的今天，也令世人望尘莫及。我所写下的这些，仅仅是他工作的冰山一角。你觉得他没什么大不了？恭喜，我们有个“小问题”拜托你解决。阿富汗相比1950年的中国富裕了100倍，受教育程度和健康水平也远远好过，而且这个国家只有3000万而非60000万（原文如此）人口。不仅没有禁运，还有大量的财政援助。要不要上手试一试？北约已经在那里15年了，他们有什么成果？战火延烧，鸦片产量屡创历史新高，女人依然被裹成口袋，小男孩被从后面强奸（链接）。去啊！去把那里变成另一个中国，去展示你能做到的一切。展示一下，你是如何达成毛所完成的事业，同时还一个人都不用死的？或者去伊拉克、也门、南苏丹，这些比1950年的中国好出百倍的国家，展现你“能做到更好”的才能。

So going back to the original question, is Mao vilified excessively. I can only say this: he had done great things, and he had done quite a few things wrong. He did not do many favors to the West, but he was very straight forward and truthful about it. He didn’t lie about it. He didn’t steal. He didn’t pretend friendship. He didn’t kiss ass. Neither did he intend to harm any people or any other country. He intended to modernize China, and even more, modernize the Chinese people. He wanted to do those things that would benefit the Chinese people for the next hundreds of generations. He would have laughed at any vilification from foreigners, and thought he must be doing something right. He would not have liked the vilification from the Chinese people, but he would have ground his teeth and trudged on, if he were convinced that this was what China needed for the next 1,000 years.

回到你的提问本身，毛被过度妖魔化了么？我只能这么说：他达成了伟大的事业，也犯了不少的错误。他没对西方卖人情，并且他对此很正视、很坦然，没有撒谎。他不偷不抢，不假装友谊不拍马屁。反之，他也没有打算伤害任何人或者任何其他国家。他只想现代化中国，甚至更进一步，现代化所有中国人。

他只打算做能为中国人开创出百代光明的事。对所有来自外国的污蔑大笑以对，认为这表示有些事他做对了。他不会喜欢来自同胞的诽谤，但他愿意哪怕是用牙啃地前进——只要让他坚信这对于中国的下一个千年是必需的。

PS: I want to reply to some of the comments regarding Mao’s faults. He had a lot of those too, the most glaring being a weakness for pseudoscience and sycophancy. But that’s not the question being asked here. And I doubt anybody can write a comprehensive review of Mao on Quora. It’ll be too big.

附：我在此回复一些念叨毛的错误的评论。是，他有很多问题，最刺眼的就是对伪科学和奉承的抵抗力不强。但这都不是应该在这个问题下讨论的问题。有任何人能在Quora上写出一篇对毛的综合性总结么？这个题目太大了。

But the point I want to make is not about Mao. It’s about the fact that some aspect of “tradition” or “culture” or “religion” is harmful, and people who espouse those are just plain wrong, and most of the current crop of political leaders are pussyfooting about it, unwilling to deal with the fact that in certain places, it’s the PEOPLE themselves that need to be modernized. Any tradition or culture or religion the keep 50% of a country’s productivity off the table, or keep 50% of the brain power off the grid, can not possibly compete with other countries. Mao and the CCP were willing to deal with it and re-shape the culture to the right path. The other politicians today are willing to put up with medieval culture as long as it’s called “tradition” or “culture” or religion”, and this is going to keep the society down for the next millennium. Some things benefit the society if they live in a museum, and harm the society if they live in real life.

我希望强调的观点不是关乎毛本人的，而是那些所谓的“传统”“文化”“宗教”在某些方面非常有害。不仅信奉者更是大错特错，就连当下这帮“政治领袖”都对此裹足不前。不愿面对一个事实——是“人民”本身就必须被现代化。“传统”“文化”“宗教”，当它们让国家一半的生产力被浪费，让一半的才智不得发挥，这个国家不可能有任何竞争力。

毛和中共乐于处理这个问题，向着被证明是正确的道路重塑了整个文化。中世纪式的习俗——只要顶上了“传统”“文化”“宗教”的名号，当代政治家就愿意一忍再忍，不顾它们会再继续禁锢全社会一千年。有些事物，只有在博物馆里才有益，放出来了就是祸害。