u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 1 For China’s rise to continue, the country needs to move away from the model
that has served it so well
IN THIS issue we launch a weekly section devoted to China. It is the first
time since we began our detailed coverage of the United States in 1942 that
we have singled out a country in this way. The principal reason is that
China is now an economic superpower and is fast becoming a military force
capable of unsettling America. But our interest in China lies also in its
politics: it is governed by a system that is out of step with global norms.
In ways that were never true of post-war Japan and may never be true of
India, China will both fascinate and agitate the rest of the world for a
long time to come.
Only 20 years ago, China was a long way from being a global superpower.
After the protests in Tiananmen Square led to a massacre in 1989, its
economic reforms were under threat from conservatives and it faced
international isolation. Then in early 1992, like an emperor undertaking a
progress, the late Deng Xiaoping set out on a “southern tour” of the most
reform-minded provinces. An astonishing endorsement of reform, it was a
masterstroke from the man who made modern China. The economy has barely
looked back since.
Compared with the rich world’s recent rocky times, China’s progress has
been relentless. Yet not far beneath the surface, society is churning.
Recent village unrest in Wukan in Guangdong, one province that Deng toured
all those years ago; ethnic strife this week in Tibetan areas of Sichuan;
the gnawing fear of a house-price crash: all are signs of the centrifugal
forces making the Communist Party’s job so hard.
The party’s instinct, born out of all those years of success, is to tighten
its grip. So dissidents such as Yu Jie, who alleges he was tortured by
security agents and has just left China for America, are harassed. Yet that
reflex will make the party’s job harder. It needs instead to master the art
of letting go.
China’s third revolution
The argument goes back to Deng’s insight that without economic growth, the
Communist Party would be history, like its brethren in the Soviet Union and
eastern Europe. His reforms replaced a failing political ideology with a new
economic legitimacy. The party’s cadres set about remaking China with an
energy and single-mindedness that have made some Westerners get in touch
with their inner authoritarian. The bureaucrats not only reformed China’s
monstrously inefficient state-owned enterprises, but also introduced some
meritocracy to appointments.
That mix of political control and market reform has yielded huge benefits.
China’s rise over the past two decades has been more impressive than any
burst of economic development ever. Annual economic growth has averaged 10%
a year and 440m Chinese have lifted themselves out of poverty—the biggest
reduction of poverty in history.
Yet for China’s rise to continue, the model cannot remain the same. That’s
because China, and the world, are changing.
China is weathering the global crisis well. But to sustain a high growth
rate, the economy needs to shift away from investment and exports towards
domestic consumption. That transition depends on a fairer division of the
spoils of growth. At present, China’s banks shovel workers’ savings into
state-owned enterprises, depriving workers of spending power and private
companies of capital. As a result, just when some of the other ingredients
of China’s boom, such as cheap land and labour, are becoming scarcer, the
government is wasting capital on a vast scale. Freeing up the financial
system would give consumers more spending power and improve the allocation
of capital.
Even today’s modest slowdown is causing unrest (see article). Many people
feel that too little of the country’s spectacular growth is trickling down
to them. Migrant workers who seek employment in the city are treated as
second-class citizens, with poor access to health care and education. Land
grabs by local officials are a huge source of anger. Unrestrained
industrialisation is poisoning crops and people. Growing corruption is
causing fury. And angry people can talk to each other, as they never could
before, through the internet.
Party officials cite growing unrest as evidence of the dangers of
liberalisation. Migration, they argue, may be a source of growth, but it is
also a cause of instability. Workers’ protests disrupt production and
threaten prosperity. The stirrings of civil society contain the seeds of
chaos. Officials are particularly alive to these dangers in a year in which
a new generation of leaders will take power.
That bias towards control is understandable, and not merely self-interested.
Patriots can plausibly argue that most people have plenty of space to live
as individuals and value stability more than rights and freedoms: the Arab
spring, after all, had few echoes in China.
Yet there are rights which Chinese people evidently do want. Migrant workers
would like to keep their limited rights to education, health and pensions
as they move around the country. And freedom to organise can help, not
hinder, the country’s economic rise. Labour unions help industrial peace by
discouraging wildcat strikes. Pressure groups can keep a check on
corruption. Temples, monasteries, churches and mosques can give prosperous
Chinese a motive to help provide welfare. Religious and cultural
organisations can offer people meaning to life beyond the insatiable hunger
for rapid economic growth.
Our business now
China’s bloody past has taught the Communist Party to fear chaos above all.
But history’s other lesson is that those who cling to absolute power end
up with none. The paradox, as some within the party are coming to realise,
is that for China to succeed it must move away from the formula that has
served it so well.
This is a matter of more than intellectual interest to those outside China.
Whether the country continues as an authoritarian colossus, stagnates,
disintegrates, or, as we would wish, becomes both freer and more prosperous
will not just determine China’s future, but shape the rest of the world’s
too. | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 2 It is the first time since we began our detailed coverage of the United
States in 1942 that we have singled out a country in this way. The principal
reason is that China is now an economic superpower and is fast becoming a
military force capable of unsettling America. | p******u
发帖数: 14642 | 3 没啥新东西，还在炒冷饭洗脑
model
that
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【在 u***r 的大作中提到】
: For China’s rise to continue, the country needs to move away from the model
: that has served it so well
: IN THIS issue we launch a weekly section devoted to China. It is the first
: time since we began our detailed coverage of the United States in 1942 that
: we have singled out a country in this way. The principal reason is that
: China is now an economic superpower and is fast becoming a military force
: capable of unsettling America. But our interest in China lies also in its
: politics: it is governed by a system that is out of step with global norms.
: In ways that were never true of post-war Japan and may never be true of
: India, China will both fascinate and agitate the rest of the world for a
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