作者：谢文飞
编辑：李聪玲 责任编辑：罗志飞 校对：冯仍
注意：我所要阐述的人格独立，是超越字面意义上的一种最高形态。它包含但不囿于个体在性格、情感、思想及物质上的独立自主。
在中国，对权力的态度是人格独立的标尺。在我出狱一周年之际，我为什么要写这么一篇文章？正是为了保持人格的独立，不愿意为了改善自己的际遇而向权力屈服，才会导致我一直处在权力的严控和打压之下，处处碰壁，不能自由地发展。正是在这种尴尬的处境下，一些人认为我是不合时宜的落伍者。他们认为，在当今世道下，首要的目的是让自己获得财富自由。而像我这样无力实现财富自由的人，在很多人看来是不配谈人格独立的。
这种论点是把人完全物化了的。如果以这种论点来看，在中国99%的人一出生，就注定无法实现人格的独立了。因为在我们这代人之前的99%的中国人，穷其一生是不可能实现财富自由的。恰恰相反的是，众所周知，在一个权力本位的社会中，尤其是私有财产不受保护的制度下，权力随时都可以剥夺任意一个人的私有财产。因此在中国，越是拥有巨额财富的人，越是不可能保持人格的独立。
几乎所有的中国成年人都知道，在中国的巨富群体当中，想要持久的保有巨额财富，不与权力相媾合几乎是不可能的。无论是李嘉诚的财产转移，顶级富豪的群体移民，还是如江苏铁本案，湖南曾成杰案，太子奶李途纯案，都彰显了权力对资本的宏观控制和“必要时”的生杀予夺。一把悬在头上的达摩克利斯之剑，提醒着中国的富豪居安思危，他们如履薄冰，战战兢兢，何来的人格独立。正如大清的红顶商人胡雪岩，不过是权力的附庸罢了。顶级富豪如此，遑论升斗小民。
最近20年来，将近一半的大学毕业生首选考公务员，而考取公务员的概率基本上百分之一、二，一些热门岗位甚至不及千分之一。俗话说，官大一级压死人。在一个遴选官员和提拔官员都没有一套公平合理的体系里，对考取公务员，人们趋之若鹜，显然是笃定以放弃人格尊严为代价，换取晋升之路乃至荣华富贵的。对他们讲人格独立无异于对牛弹琴。
而被西方认同为独立人格的代言群体的知识分子，在中国是根本不可能存在的。即使有，在这个庞大的群体中也是凤毛麟角，要么被噤声，要么被权力所排挤打压，或入狱，或远走他乡。
而在中国官方媒体中光鲜亮丽之学界名流，他们匍匐在权力面前的卑微丑态，更是令即便如我这般寒微之人也深为不齿。比如半个世纪前的中国科学界领军人物钱学森，为水稻亩产几万斤的大跃进保驾护航。今年才去世、老年才回国的爱国诺奖得主杨振宁，为文革浩劫的正当性辩护。至于“反美是工作、赴美是生活”之流，额头上就明写着“不要人格”的了。总之，中国知识界凡为庙堂所嘉许的学界名流不外是文化保镖，知识打手。
至于说占中国绝大多数人口的底层芸芸众生，即我自己厕身的阶层的人，终日忙于一日三餐，看着新闻联播长大，原本人生的字典里就不需要有人格独立这四个字。正如当年梁漱溟先生说，中国人的观念中没有自由的概念。所以视人格独立为性命如我者，在我所出生的桂阳县近百万人口中，竟找不到一个盟友。这十几年来我一直被当成一个出身于底层的异类，很多人对我的觉醒表示怀疑，那是因为极少有人知道自30年前我知道孟夫子的名号开始，我就无可救药地成了孟夫子的信徒。
在孟夫子眼里，一怒而诸侯惧，安居而天下息者，不足以称大丈夫。富贵不能淫，贫贱不能移，威武不能屈。方为大丈夫。孟夫子眼中的大丈夫显然是人格独立者，古典意义上的标杆。有人问他有什么长处时，他竟毫不犹豫地说，吾善养吾浩然之气。而这也是我唯一的长处。
30岁之前的我，虽有一身浩然之气，但多少有些浪漫主义色彩，对自身所处的社会并不具备理论上的批判性思维。直到08年开始上网之后，才逐渐看清自身所处世界的真实面目，之后误打误撞地认识了众多所谓的“异议人士”。从他们身上我学到了很多，同时深感自己不学无术，见识短浅，于是又阅读了大量思想启蒙类著作，一个跳出所处社会制度桎梏下的独立人格，在40岁之前才完全成型。
回首这几年经历的种种炼狱和磨难，使得我坚持走到今天而聊以自我宽慰的，便是人格的独立和思想自由。这一年来虽然没有在实际事务上取得任何进展，甚至连自己预期的将身心调整至正常状态也未全然实现，唯一无需感到惭愧的，便是保持了人格独立。
题外话：这一年多来，如果要我说出我对外界最大的不满，便是整个世界荒诞地分成了川粉和川黑两大阵营。我如果说，数以千万计在网上唾沫横飞，一遇川普议题便如干柴烈火，一点就着的英雄好汉们没有独立人格的话，我会成为众矢之的，无处安身。原本我把这一年定位为休整之年，恨不得躲到山洞里去静养，川普还是找上了我。
先是一位反川的教授问我对川普的看法，我说我不喜欢他，也没兴趣去反对他。我自顾不暇，哪有兴趣去关注一个万里之外的外国总统？况且他既然是被一个成熟的民主国家几千万选民通过选票选上去的，如果他特不靠谱的话，自然就会将他选下去，不劳我操心。
慢慢的微信平台上很多反川的公众号写手推到我面前来，写的文章千篇一律。一言以概之，就是川普不是个东西，川普危害全人类的民主自由人权。为了捍卫全人类的正义，必须反川。
我检索了其中几个公众号写手的过往。他们在邻居家的房子被强拆时未发一言；在城管当街暴打小贩的时候冷眼旁观；在农民工讨薪被捕、上访者维权被拦时冷嘲热讽；在我们这些异议人士抗争者身陷牢狱时置若罔闻；甚至视我这个在我们的国家最底层挣扎生存了几十年的人为国家的敌人。可是他却标榜自己反对一个外国总统是为了追求正义。
于是我在2025年2月15日有感而发，写了一篇《给墙内激进反川者泼点冷水》。里面提了三个问题：
第一，作为一个墙内人是反川重要还是反墙重要？
第二，川普、普京、邪帝，哪个对人类更具破坏力和潜在的威胁？
第三，墙内川黑是否认为比美国选民更具备清醒的认知，更有资格反川？还是因为比起做一个中国民间反对者，反川更高光更安全？
结果，我的问题刺激到了一些朋友，也导致了一些误会。竟然有朋友笃定我是川粉。一些川粉朋友也视我为盟友。
为了澄清朋友之间的误会，2月21日我又写了篇《给激进反川者泼冷水并非受他人影响》。然而误会并没有消除。情非得已，隔了一天我又写了一篇寓言，标题是《能解此寓言者可为我知己》，最后以“奈莫何，奈莫何”结尾。
随着时间的推移，我无意中发现川普话题已导致简中圈严重分裂，按捺不住自己的深度关切，又硬着头皮写下《导致简中圈的严重分裂，甚至不必要的严重对立，不外乎这几个主要因素》。因为精力有限，也没有去思考如何构思行文问题。有兴趣的朋友可以去检索一下前文的内容。
对那些完全具备独立人格，甚至还以特立卓识自许的挺川反川大佬来说，我写的这些文字显然是不入法眼的，但我起码可以告诉那些关心我的朋友：任何人，包括川普本人，都不能让我成为一个川粉或川黑。
但同时我也知道，我无需也无力改变任何一个人挺川或反川的立场，尤其是当每个人都想证明自己是正确的时候。比如我建微信群一年来，有的铁杆川粉发在我群里的信息 100%都是关于川普的，只为了证明一件事：川普永远是100%正确的；如有任何质疑，100%是质疑者的错。有的川黑做得更绝：只要发现我群里有一个川粉，立马闪退，并留言：粪坑群。即使这位“川粉”是理性挺川的也不行。在我看来，极端的川粉和极端的川黑都是无限放大了川普在美国政治上的影响力，然后又无限放大了美国在全球的影响力。他们忘了：地球不是一个村，川普更不是地球村的村长。
未来在互联网信息洪流的冲刷下，对大多数人来说更难以准确地找到自己的坐标。这是一个巨大而荒诞的悲剧，需要经历一个重新觉醒的时代，方能让我们更好地看清自己，看清这个世界的真相，看清我们每个人和世界的关联，以及我们每一个人在这个世界上应有的位置和该做什么样的事情。这就需要我们时刻警醒，保持人格独立，以安静的内心抵御外界的喧嚣。
One Year After Prison, Part IV: Maintaining an Independent Character
Abstract:The author reflects on the meaning of preserving personal independence under oppressive conditions during his first year after release from prison. He argues that in a power-dominated China, wealth, official rank, and fame cannot grant true independence. He recounts his own process of intellectual awakening and critiques the absurd polarization within the Chinese online sphere over Donald Trump, stressing that only by maintaining independent character can one truly understand the world and oneself.
Author: Xie WenfeiEditor: Li ConglingExecutive Editor: Luo ZhifeiProofreader: Feng Reng
What I aim to articulate here is a form of personal independence that transcends its literal meaning—a highest state of being. It includes, but is not limited to, autonomy in temperament, emotions, thought, and material life.
In China, one’s attitude toward power is the true measurement of personal independence. On the first anniversary of my release from prison, why do I choose to write such an essay? It is precisely because I refuse to yield to power in exchange for improving my circumstances that I continue to live under heavy surveillance and repression, stumbling everywhere and unable to develop freely. In this awkward situation, some people regard me as an outdated misfit. They believe that in today’s world the primary goal is to secure “financial freedom.” Someone like me—incapable of achieving financial freedom—is, in their eyes, not qualified to speak of personal independence.
This argument reduces the human being to a mere object. By that logic, 99% of Chinese people are destined from birth to never achieve personal independence, for 99% of the generations before us could never attain financial freedom. The truth, however, is exactly the opposite: in a society where power is supreme and private property is insecure, those with vast wealth are the least able to maintain personal independence, for power can seize any individual’s assets at any time.
Every Chinese adult knows that among China’s wealthy elite, it is nearly impossible to retain immense wealth without aligning oneself with power. Whether it is Li Ka-shing’s asset relocation, the collective emigration of top tycoons, or cases like the Tieben Steel incident in Jiangsu, the execution of Zeng Chengjie in Hunan, and the downfall of Taizinai’s Li Tuchun—each illustrates the state’s overwhelming control over capital and its unlimited “right” to destroy. A Damoclean sword hangs over the heads of China’s rich, warning them to remain vigilant. They tread on thin ice, terrified at every step—how could such people possess independent character? Just as the Qing dynasty’s great merchant Hu Xueyan was merely an appendage of power, so too are today’s tycoons. If this is true for the wealthy, what more for ordinary people?
In the past twenty years, nearly half of Chinese university graduates have made the civil service exam their first choice, even though the acceptance rate is one to two percent, with the most competitive positions below one-tenth of one percent. As the saying goes, “The higher the rank, the greater the power to crush.” In a system without any fair or rational mechanism for selecting or promoting officials, the frenzy to become a civil servant clearly reflects a willingness to trade personal dignity for a path toward promotion, privilege, and wealth. Speaking to them about independent character is like playing music to cattle.
As for intellectuals—the group most associated with independent character in the West—they are essentially nonexistent in China. Even among the few who do exist, most are silenced, marginalized, or repressed; some are imprisoned, others forced into exile.
Meanwhile, the glamorous academic celebrities featured in China’s state media display a level of obsequiousness before power that even someone as humble as I finds shameful. During the Great Leap Forward, Qian Xuesen—then a leading figure in Chinese science—defended claims of rice yields in the tens of thousands of jin per mu. Yang Zhenning, the Nobel laureate who returned to China in his old age and died this year, justified the Cultural Revolution’s devastation. As for those who chant “Opposing America is my job, living in America is my life,” they practically wear “No Interest in Personal Integrity” on their foreheads. In short, the academic elites praised by the establishment are little more than cultural bodyguards and intellectual enforcers.
As for the ordinary masses—by far the majority of China’s population, and the class from which I myself come—people are consumed by the daily struggle for food and survival. Raised on state news broadcasts, the word “freedom” does not even appear in their life vocabulary. As Liang Shuming once observed, Chinese traditional thought simply lacks a concept of freedom. Thus, for someone like me who treats personal independence as precious as life itself, it is unsurprising that among the nearly one million people in my hometown of Guiyang County, I could not find a single ally. For more than a decade, I have been regarded as an oddity—a deviant emerging from the lower strata. Many doubt my awakening, unaware that since the day I learned of Mencius’ name 30 years ago, I became incurably devoted to his teachings.
In Mencius’ eyes, the true “great man” is one whom “princes fear when he is angry, and the world is at peace when he dwells in tranquility.” Wealth cannot seduce him, poverty cannot sway him, power cannot intimidate him. This is the classical ideal of an independent character. When asked about his greatest strength, Mencius answered without hesitation: “I am skilled at nurturing my noble spirit.” That, too, is my only strength.
Before age 30, though I possessed a kind of lofty spirit, I was somewhat romantic and lacked critical theoretical understanding of the society I lived in. Only after I began using the internet in 2008 did I gradually see the true nature of my world. By chance, I met many so-called “dissidents.” I learned much from them and felt deeply my own lack of education and narrow horizons. I then read extensively in enlightenment thought. My independent character—one that had broken out of the chains of the existing system—was fully formed only before I turned forty.
Looking back at the purgatory and hardships of recent years, what sustains me and gives me solace is precisely my independence of character and freedom of thought. Although this past year I made no concrete progress in practical matters, and did not fully achieve the physical and mental recovery I had hoped for, the one thing for which I feel no shame is that I preserved my personal independence.
A brief aside: Over the past year, if I were to name my greatest frustration with the outside world, it would be the absurd split into two hostile camps—Trump supporters and Trump opponents. If I were to say that the tens of millions of people who erupt into online fury whenever Trump is mentioned lack independent character, I would instantly become the target of all sides, with nowhere to hide. I had planned to make this a year of rest and recovery, even fantasizing about retreating into a mountain cave—but Trump still found his way to me.
First, a professor who opposes Trump asked for my opinion. I told him I neither liked Trump nor had any interest in opposing him. With my own life in disarray, how could I afford to care about a foreign president thousands of miles away? In any case, since he was elected by tens of millions of voters in a mature democracy, if he truly proved unreliable, they would vote him out. That is no concern of mine.
Gradually, many anti-Trump public accounts on WeChat were pushed before me. Their articles were formulaic: Trump is terrible; Trump threatens global democracy, freedom, and human rights; therefore, opposing Trump is a moral obligation for all humanity.
I looked into some of these writers’ pasts. They had remained silent when neighbors’ homes were demolished; indifferent when urban-management officers beat street vendors in public; mocking when migrant workers fighting for owed wages were arrested, or when petitioners defending their rights were blocked; indifferent when dissidents like me were imprisoned; some even regarded someone like me—a person struggling at society’s lowest rung—as an enemy of the state. And yet these same people proclaimed that their opposition to a foreign president was for the sake of justice.
So on February 15, 2025, I wrote A Splash of Cold Water for Radical Anti-Trumpers Inside the Great Firewall. I posed three questions:
For someone inside the Great Firewall, is opposing Trump more important than opposing the Firewall itself?
Of Trump, Putin, and China’s dictator, who poses the greater threat to humanity?
Do anti-Trump netizens inside China believe they possess clearer understanding than American voters, making them more qualified to oppose him? Or is opposing Trump simply more glamorous—and much safer—than opposing China’s authoritarian system?
My questions irritated some people and caused misunderstandings. Some became convinced I was a Trump supporter. Meanwhile, some Trump supporters regarded me as their ally.
To clarify the confusion among friends, on February 21 I wrote Cold Water on Radical Anti-Trumpers Is Not Influenced by Anyone. But the misunderstanding persisted. Reluctantly, the next day I wrote a fable titled Those Who Can Understand This Fable Shall Be My Kindred Spirits, ending with the line: “What more can be said? What more can be said?”
Over time, I inadvertently discovered that the Trump issue had caused severe fragmentation—and needless hostility—within the Chinese online sphere. Unable to hold back my concern, I forced myself to write The Main Factors Behind the Severe and Unnecessary Polarization in the Chinese Online Community over Trump. Due to limited energy, I did not carefully plan its structure. Interested readers may search for it.
For those with truly independent character—especially the self-styled visionary leaders of both pro-Trump and anti-Trump camps—my writings may seem insignificant. But I can at least assure the friends who care about me: no one, not even Trump himself, can make me a Trump supporter or a Trump opponent.
But I also know I cannot change anyone’s stance on Trump, especially when everyone insists on proving their own righteousness. In the WeChat group I created over the past year, some staunch Trump supporters posted messages exclusively about Trump, all dedicated to proving one thing: that Trump is always 100% correct, and any criticism is always 100% the critic’s fault. Some Trump opponents acted even more drastically: upon discovering a single Trump supporter in my group, they immediately left, calling the group a “cesspit”—even if the supporter was rational. To me, both extreme Trump supporters and extreme Trump opponents greatly exaggerate Trump’s influence in American politics and then further exaggerate America’s influence on the world. They forget: the Earth is not a village, and Trump is certainly not the village chief.
In the future, under the overwhelming flood of information on the internet, most people will find it increasingly difficult to locate their true coordinates. This is a profound and absurd tragedy. Humanity must undergo a new period of awakening before we can better understand ourselves, understand the true nature of the world, grasp the relationship between each individual and the world, and know where each of us stands and what we ought to do. This requires constant vigilance—maintaining an independent character and using a quiet mind to resist the clamor of the outside world.
