北京（路透社，7月28日）－ 中国将奥运会看着是爱国之年的头等大事，而司马南――电视上的评论家、博客写手和共产党的捍卫者――则关注着试图摧毁共产党的黑暗势力。
这位剃平头的52岁的人发起了一场针对一些中国评论家和知识分子的网络战。他说，这些人绑架了今年的国家性事件，以图破坏共产党统治和爱国价值。
他的靶子是两家最广泛受阅、最好斗的报纸――《南方周末》和《南方都市报》。他指责这两家报纸利用灾难性的5月地震、即将召开的北京奥运会以及有关暴乱和谋杀的报道来推动自由的西方价值。
最近，他呵斥了广东省党的头目汪洋，这在一党制的中国是很大胆的行为。而司马说他还将继续批评。广东省控制着他所批评的两家报纸。
“争议的核心问题是中国应该走什么道路，是东方的还是西方的，是中国的模式还是西方的模式。”在他的工作室中，他这样说。他的工作室在北京北部，其中布满了传统的中国艺术品。
“按我的判断，他们所主张的那种彻底变革，势必导致混乱。”
司马的一些批评者说他是党内高层保守分子的替身（a stalking horse），而司马说这一说法很“荒谬”。
由他挑起的这一场小冲突展开了一扇窗户，让人看到8月奥运之后以及中国正在纪念经济改革30周年之时有关中国应向何处去的意识形态争议，
自由派的改革者期望地震、近期的社会动乱以及作为国际热点的奥运将刺激中国执政党变得更加开放和负责任。而党的正统的捍卫者则以同样的事件来证明严密统治和避免自由民主的需要。
“我怀疑司马南获得了任何高层的支持，但他主动迎合了一些人的担忧，他们担忧某些中国媒体走得太远了。”李大同说。李大同是《中国青年报》的前任编辑，因抵制审查制度而遭排挤。
“媒体确实有动力去进行更快的报道，并以更开放的方式讨论问题。但这样的讨论使得一些人忧心忡忡，疑虑重重。”
“他们以为西方的月亮更圆”
司马是中国少有的双字节姓氏之一。对他而言，他发起的运动不过是重归争议的热点。
司马曾任官员和记者。10年前，他因是xx功教派的敌人而获得名声。该教派于1999年围困了位于北京正中的共产党总部，之后被宣布为非法。
现在，司马在他办公室的门口悬挂了一面巨大的鼓，他以鼓声来欢迎他的客人。他以平稳的语流表述他的论点，显示了他作为电视主持人的经验。
5月12日，摧毁性的地震袭击了中国西南的四川省。几天后，《南方周末》赞扬了政府罕见的直率反应和对记者前往灾区的欢迎，并认为这是对“普世价值”的值得期待的拥抱。
《南方周末》的评论说，如果中国吸收这些价值，中国“将同世界的其他部分一起走上人权、法治和民主的康庄大道”。
司马已长时间恼怒于他所认为的该报对不利于中国的事情的报道。他认为该报的评论是对彻底“西化”和异己的自由信念的几无掩饰的宣扬。
那以后，司马开始定期剖析《南方周末》及其姊妹报《南方都市报》，从中发现他们恣意妄为的讯号。通过他的博客（blog.sina.com.cn/simanan），他认为这两家报纸还用贵州省暴乱及杀害6名警官的报道来攻击党。
他还指责该报对大赦国际和其他批评北京奥运及中国威权政府的组织的赞扬性报道。
“奥运是中国展现自身面貌的机遇。”他说。
“但那些人在文化上没有自信，因此他们认为西方的月亮比中国的圆，而且来自西方的普世价值一定是好东西。”他这样评说他的媒体论敌。
据当地的媒体估计，《南方周末》每期的印数高达130万。
最近，司马甚至斥责广东省委书记汪洋没有阻止该报有关杀手杨佳在上海刺杀6名警官之前与警方的伤害性冲突的报道。汪洋正试图将自己塑造为一位冉冉升起的改革分子。
“我不知道汪洋同志读了这样的报道后有什么感受。”司马说。
在中国，哪怕是对领导人的隐晦的批评，只要在网上出现，就会被立即删除。而司马的手指在汪洋面前摇来晃去，却安然无恙，这导致当地记者议论说他得到了宣传部官员的批准。司马说他只是按自己的意愿做事。
《南方周末》的员工拒绝讨论此事，说官方禁止他们与外国记者接触。但私下里他们将司马的说法斥责为蛮横的歪曲。
“我们是作为媒体自由的象征而遭受攻击的。司马南所做的，是中宣部目前不敢做的事情――公开攻击我们。”该报的一位记者这样说。
这位记者和其他几位接近这两份南方报的人士说，他们正受到宣传部官员对近期报道和评论的审查。
司马说他并非如一些批评者说的那样是要终止汪洋的职业生涯。但他说，一些高层官员已经是危险的自由观念的猎物。
“他们的影响并不仅限于年轻的知识分子，而且……存在于某些处于领导地位的官员之中。”他说。（译者：吕祥）
附原文：
China Party pundit spies battle outside Games arena
By Chris Buckley
Jul 28, 2008
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has cast its Olympic Games as the crowning act in a year of patriotic bonding, and yet Sima Nan -- television pundit, blogger and Communist Party defender -- sees dark forces within seeking to ruin the Party.
The crew-cut 52-year-old has been waging an Internet war against Chinese commentators and intellectuals he says have hijacked this year's national dramas to undermine Communist Party rule and patriotic values.
His target has been two of the nation's most widely read and combative newspapers, the Southern Weekend and the Southern Metropolis Daily, which he has accused of exploiting the calamitous May earthquake, the coming Beijing Olympics, and reports of riots and murder to push liberal Western ideas.
Recently he even scolded Wang Yang, the Party chief of Guangdong province, which controls the two papers, a bold act in the one-party state. And Sima says he will keep criticizing.
"The core issue in dispute is what road China should follow, the Eastern or Western one, the Chinese model or the Western one," he said in his work studio in northern Beijing crowded with traditional Chinese art.
"The kind of radical transformation they advocate, in my judgment, could lead to turmoil."
Some of Sima's critics have said he is a stalking horse for senior Party conservatives, a claim he said was "absurd."
But the skirmishing he has ignited offers a window into the ideological contention about where China should head after the Games in August and as it marks 30 years of economic reforms.
Liberal reformers hope the earthquake, recent social unrest, and international spotlight of the Games will prod the ruling Party to become more open and accountable. Defenders of Party orthodoxy have seized on the same events as vindication of top-down rule and the need to shun liberal democracy.
"I doubt that Sima Nan has any high-level backing, but he's jumping on certain people's fears that some Chinese media have been going too far," said Li Datong, a former editor at the China Youth Daily who was shunted aside for resisting censorship.
"There's momentum for the media to report faster and discuss problems more openly ... But that kind of discussion makes some people worried and suspicious."
"THEY THINK THE WEST'S MOON IS ROUNDER"
For Sima, one of the small minority of Chinese with two-syllable surnames, his campaign is a return to the spotlight of controversy.
The former official and reporter enjoyed fame a decade ago as a foe of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, outlawed after followers besieged the Communist Party leadership's compound in central Beijing for a day in 1999.
Now Sima greets guests with a flourish of banging on a huge hanging drum at the door of his office, and delivers his arguments in a smooth stream of rhetoric, showing his experience as a television compere.
Days after a devastating earthquake hit Sichuan province in the southwest on May 12, the weekly Southern Weekend hailed the government's unusually candid response and welcoming of reporters to the disaster as a promising embrace of "universal values."
If China absorbs these values, it "will with the rest of the world take the broad road of human rights, rule of law and democracy," said a commentary in the paper.
Sima, long irked by what he said was the paper's dwelling on things unfavorable to China, seized on the commentary as a barely veiled promotion of radical "Westernisation" and alien liberal beliefs.
Since then, he has regularly dissected the Southern Weekend and its sister Southern Metropolitan Daily for signs of waywardness, using his blog (blog.sina.com.cn/simanan) to claim they also used reports on a riot in Guizhou province and the slaying of six police officers to attack the Party.
He also accused the paper of writing favorably of Amnesty International and other groups critical of the Beijing Olympics and China's authoritarian government.
"The Olympics are China's chance to show its face," he said.
"But they don't have cultural self-confidence, so they think the West's moon is rounder than China's and that universal values, coming from the West, must be a good thing," he said of his media foes.
The Southern Weekend prints up to 1.3 million copies of every issue, according to local media estimates.
Sima has even recently chided Wang Yang, Party secretary of Guangdong, who has sought to craft himself as a rising reformist, for not disavowing the paper's report on the killer Yang Jia's bruising encounters with police before he slew six officers in Shanghai.
"I don't know what Comrade Wang Yang feels after reading this," Sima wrote.
In this nation where even murky criticism of leaders is often wiped from Web sites as soon as it appears, Sima's finger-wagging at Wang stayed up, raising talk among local journalists that propaganda officials approved. Sima says he acted on his own.
Staff at the Southern Weekend refused to speak on the record, citing an official ban on contact with foreign reporters. But privately they rejected Sima's claims as wild distortions.
"We're being targeted as a symbol of media freedom. Sima Nan is doing what the Propaganda Department is too scared to do at the moment -- attack us openly," said one reporter at the paper.
He and several other people close to the two southern papers said they have faced internal censure from propaganda officials over recent reports and commentaries.
Sima said he was not, as some critics have claimed, seeking to derail Wang Yang's career. But he also said some senior officials were prey to dangerously liberal ideas.
"Their influence is not just among young intellectuals but also ... among certain leading officials," he said.
(Editing by Brian Rhoads and Jerry Norton)
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