《红色赌盘》序言 INTRODUCTION OF RED ROULETTE
Better to speak out and die than keep silent and live.
—Fan Zhongyan 宋 范仲淹 (989–1052)
编者按：未来中国，农民造反已经历史终结，资本与科技必然会成为社会变革的主要动力。
INTRODUCTION
前 言
ON SEPTEMBER 5, 2017, WHITNEY DUAN, age fifty, disappeared from the streets of Beijing. She was last seen the day before in her sprawling office at Genesis. Beijing, a development project she and I had built worth more than $2.5 billion.
2017年9月5日，五十岁的段伟红在北京街头消失了。在此前一天，她最后出现在捷恩斯项目的办公室里。那是一个我和她共同创建的价值超过25亿美元的开发项目。
There, cocooned in a workspace that visitors reached after running a gauntlet of security guards, meticulously landscaped gardens, and a dozen varieties of Italian marble, Whitney had masterminded real estate projects worth billions more. And now suddenly she was gone.
在那里，段伟红策划了价值数十亿美元的房地产项目。参观者接受一连串安保检查，经过很多用意大利大理石精心设计的园景花园后，才能抵达的工作区。 现在，她突然失联了。
How had that happened? And who is Whitney Duan? Whitney Duan was my wife and business partner for more than a decade. By that point, we were divorced, but for many years we’d been close collaborators and confidants and together had enjoyed the wildest of rides. We’d achieved our shared dream of doing great things in China for China. Coming from poverty, we’d been seized with a desire to make something of our lives. We were awed by our own success.
这究竟发生了什么？段伟红又是谁？ 十多年来，段伟红是我的妻子和商业伙伴。 在她失联的那一刻，我们已经离婚了。多年来，我们一直是亲密的合作者和知己，一起享受户外旅行。 在中国，我们一起实现了为这个国家做大事的共同梦想。 来自于贫困，我们已经实现了为生活而奋斗的心愿。 我们对自己的成功感到欣慰。
We’d built one of the biggest logistical hubs in the world at the Beijing Capital International Airport. We’d conceived and constructed the swankiest hotel and business center in China’s capital—located on a choice swath of real estate near the city’s bustling heart. We’d done stock deals that netted us hundreds of millions of dollars. We’d operated at the center of power in China, cultivating premiers, high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party, and their families. We’d counseled the up-and-coming officials who had all of China in their grasp. We’d pushed for social and political changes to make China a better place. By doing well, we believed we could do good. We’d done the math; our net wealth totaled in the billions.
在北京首都国际机场，我们建造了世界上最大的物流枢纽，构思并建造了中国首都最豪华的酒店和商务中心——临近城市繁华中心的优质地产。 曾经做过股票交易，净赚了数亿美元。 我们运作于中国的权力核心，猎狐中共高层和其家人，推荐总理人选。 我们甚至为那些掌握中国前途的官员提供咨询。 为了让中国变得更美好，我们推动过社会和政治变革。 通过精心打造，我们相信可以做好。 初步估算； 我们的财富总计达数十亿。
But now she’d disappeared. From my home in England, I reached out to Whitney’s housekeeper, who said that Whitney hadn’t returned from work on that day in September 2017 and hadn’t been seen since. It was as if she’d been vaporized. I called people in the company we’d founded and learned that Whitney wasn’t the only one to have vanished. Two senior executives in her firm—along with a junior assistant who doubled as a housekeeper—were also missing. None have been heard from since. I’d only just left Beijing in late July, having dropped for our son for a summer with his mother. I wondered: Might I have disappeared, too, if I’d stayed a few more weeks in China?
可是，现在她杳无音信。我在英国联系了段伟红在中国的管家。他说，从 2017 年 9 月的那天开始，段伟红就再也没有下班回来。此后也没有人再见过， 就好像她被蒸发了一样。 我打电话给我们公司的创始人，了解到段伟红并不是唯一一个消失的人。 她所在公司的两名高级管理人员以及一名兼任管家的初级助理也失踪了。 从那以后就没有任何消息了。 我是七月底才离开北京的，我们一家三口在那里度过了一个夏天。 我想：如果在中国多呆几个星期，我是否也已经消失了呢？
Unexplained disappearances occur regularly in China, where the Communist Party holds a monopoly on power. Despite legal protections enshrined in China’s constitution, Party investigators out those rules to seize anyone on the flimsiest of pretexts and hold them indefinitely. These days Chinese Communist operatives even perform snatch-and-grab operations overseas, targeting newspaper publishers, businessmen, booksellers, and dissidents. You’ve heard about America’s extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. Well, this is China’s version.
在中共垄断权力的中国，经常发生不明原因的失踪事件。 尽管中国宪法规定公民受法律保护，但纪检人员无视这些规定，常常以最荒唐的借口逮捕任何人并无限期地羁押。 如今，中共特工甚至在海外进行猎狐行动，目标是报纸出版者、商人、书商和持不同政见者。 你听说过美国对恐怖嫌疑人的特殊引渡。 好了，这是中国版。
I called Whitney’s parents, but they knew nothing. I asked friends, senior socials in the Communist Party hierarchy who owed their positions to her. None were willing to intercede on her behalf. People were so worried about being ensnared by Whitney’s case and so afraid of the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which I’ve concluded is the organization that is holding Whitney, that they were unwilling to lend a hand. The more I asked around, the more I realized that every relationship formed among those who work within the Party system in China is saturated by calculations of benet and loss. Whitney had been extraordinarily useful to her friends. She’d arranged for promotions for scores of people inside the Chinese Communist Party and the government. She’d managed their careers and spent countless hours strategizing with them about the next move. But now that she was in danger, they’d dropped her like a stone.
我打电话给段伟红的父母，但他们一无所知。 我问了朋友，那些因为她才挤进中共高层的官员， 但没有人愿意为她说情。 他们非常担心因段伟红的案子而受牵连，又害怕中纪委的调查。我得出的结论是，拘禁段伟红的部门不愿意伸出援手。 我问得越多，就越发现，在中共体制内的每一个官员都在充分计算关系的利弊。段伟红曾经对她的朋友们非常有用， 她为中共党内的许多人安排了晋升。 她管理他们的官场生涯，并花无数的时间与他们一起制定下一步行动的战略。 但是，现在她处于危险之中，他们却把她当作石头一样抛弃。
As I thought frantically about what to do, what clever approach would deliver back to my son the mother who’d gone missing and the ex-wife who’d had such a transformative effect on my life, I reflected on the years-long series of incredible events that had led to this.
用什么巧妙的方法可以将失踪的妈妈还给儿子，以及对我的生活产生巨大影响的前妻再次出现，当我焦躁地思考该怎么办时，我反思了长达数年导致这一切不可思议的系列事件。
When Whitney disappeared, her net worth vastly exceeded what either of us might have imagined back in the early days of our relationship. A woman of outsize talents in a patriarchal society, she’d played the roulette-like political environment of the New China with unparalleled skill, parlaying an alliance with the family of a political titan into almost unimaginable success. Until she didn’t. She’d understood the real China until she didn’t. I was her business partner and husband. We scaled the heights together. This is my story, and hers.
在段伟红失踪时，她的净资产大大超过了我们确定夫妻关系初期的想象。 一个生活在男权社会中的非凡女子，在赌局轮盘似的的中国政治环境下，以无人能及的身手与权贵家族结盟，获得了几乎难以想象的成功。 直到她无能为力，等到她无力回天了，她才领略到了真实的中国。 我是她的生意伙伴和丈夫， 我们一起创造过辉煌。 这是我的故事，也是她的经历。
Note: this Introduction was from the PDF E-book, edited and translated by Menze Zhu
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