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2013年2月20日星期三

裴敏欣:中国走向民主的五个路径

摄影:方闻(http://www.facebook.com/vern.fong)

知识分子们进行的这种揣测中国政治未来的活动让有些人着迷,却让很多人困惑。普遍的想法是,积习难改的中共决意要维持其政治垄断,也有办法再存活一段时间(尽管不是永远),也有少数人则认为中共来日不多。事实上,中国很有可能在接下来的10到15年内进行民主化过渡。 这种对中共民主未来的乐观看法是基于国际及历史上的各种民主过渡经验(过去40年里约有80个国家由独裁统治过渡到不同形式不同程度的民主体制),同时也是基于几十年来为民主过渡多样化及独裁体制溃败(二者紧密相连)提供了重要见解的社会科学研究。

诚然,那些相信中国一党政权仍有足够弹性再统治几十年的人能够表明,中共有巨大能力进行维稳(一个不够民主的体制得以存活的最关键因素),有能力适应社会经济变化(尽管学界针对其适应程度一直存在纷争),也能始终让经济成就成为其合法性的来源。

至于中国人民为什么应该摆脱几十年的一党专政则有诸多因素可言,可预测政权更迭理论的支持者们早已归纳出这些因素,在这些导致独裁统治衰溃的众多起因中有两点值得注意。

首先,独裁溃败有其逻辑。一党专政无论多么深奥老练,都必然会经历组织老化和衰败。领导人越来越衰弱(无论就能力还是意识形态信奉度而言);这种体制易吸引野心家和投机分子,这些人以投资者的身份来看待自己在该政权中的角色:他们对政权维护和生存做出过贡献,想把回报最大化,结果便导致腐败加剧、统治恶化、远离群众。实证地来看,一党专政的组织性溃败可据其有限寿命来测量。迄今为止,一党统治的最高寿命是74年(前苏联)。墨西哥和台湾的一党专统治分别在为71年和73年(尽管国民党在大陆的军事失败使台湾独裁寿命的计算有些复杂)。更何况,这三个最长命的专制政权在退出政治统治的前十年就开始经历体制性危机。如果同样的历史经验在共产党掌权63年的中国重演,我们可以理智地推测,在接下来10到15年内发生政权过渡的可能性的确很大,届时中共将达到其一党统治寿命的上限。

其次,社会经济变化的效应--文化水平和收入的提高、城市化加速、以及通信技术的改进-- 都极大削弱了集体性行为的成本,使专制政权去合法化,使人们对民主产生更多的需求。结果,那些在贫穷农耕社会统治相对容易的专制政权发现,在社会经济发展到一定阶段时自己越来越难维持统治,最终也将无法统治。数据分析表明,专制政权一旦在人均收入超过1,000美元(按购买力平价计算)时就愈发不稳定(民主过渡也更可能)。当人均收入超过4.000美元(按购买力平价计算)时,发生民主过渡的可能性就会急剧增长。很少有专制政权能够在人均收入达到6,000美元(按购买力平价计算)时存活下来,除非它们是石油输出国。如果我们应用这种观察,并把通货膨胀的可能效应计算在内时(尽管如上购买力平价数据是常数),就会发现
中国目前正处于这一“民主过渡地带”,因为其人均收入已达到约9,100美元。这一数字堪比韩国和台湾在80年代中期民主过渡前夕的收入水平。在未来10到15年内,其人均收入将超过15,000美元,城市化将达到60%到65%。中共现在维持其统治就已经很难(就人力派遣和财政资源而言),设想在10到15年后这一任务将是多么不可能。

如果这一分析足以使我们相信中国在接下来10到15年内很有可能产生民主过渡,那么一个更有趣的问题则是“这种过渡将如何进行?”

基于70年代以来丰富的民主过渡经验,中国有可能通过五种方式走向民主:

“快乐结局” 是中国民主过渡的最可取模式。典型而言,由旧政权精英阶层运作的和平权力退出会经历几个阶段,开始时是合法性危机出现,这一危机可能由诸多因素所致(比如经济萧条、军事失败、民众抵抗、镇压费用高昂、腐败泛滥)。部分领导人认同该危机后会相信专制政权已来日不多,他们应当启动和平权力退出。如果这些领导人在政权内取得政治支配地位,就会通过开放媒体、放松对公民社会管控等展开自由化进程。然后他们会和反对派领导人谈判,确定过渡后政治体制规则。最为关键的是,这种谈判将以对旧政权精英阶层的保护为主,这些人长久以来践踏人权,维护旧政权国家机关特权(如军队和秘密警察)。这些谈判一经结束后就会举行选举。大多数情况下(台湾和西班牙例外)代表旧政权的政党会丢掉选举,随后新民主时期便会到来。当下的缅甸民主过渡就是这种模式。

但对中国而言,是否会有这种快乐结局还要看精英阶层能否在旧政权无法挽回般地丧失合法性之前就进行改革。历史上后极权主义政权的和平过渡都糟糕透顶,主要是因为政权在决定改革时已为时过晚。台湾、墨西哥和巴西等的“快乐结局”过渡之所以成功,就是因为旧政权一息尚存,还多少能得到社会关键团体的支持。因此,掌权精英越早展开这一进程,就越有可能成功。然而
矛盾的是,强大政权往往不愿改革,软弱政权则无法改革。就中国来说,软着陆的可能性取决于中国新一代领导人在未来五年的表现,因为政治软着陆的机会之窗不会永远敞开。


“戈翁(戈尔巴乔夫昵称)来中国” 是有着险恶情节的“快乐结局”的改版。在这一情境下,中国领导人错过了开展改革的历史机遇。然而在接下来十年里,各种不利的经济、社会和政治趋势凑在一起(比如人口老龄化、环境恶化、裙带资本主义、社会不公、腐败和社会动乱等导致经济增长放缓),最后迫使政权面对现实。强硬派被罢黜并由像戈尔巴乔夫一样的改革者所取代,于是就有了中国版的glasnost和perestroika(俄语,意即“改革与开放”)。然而当时该政权已经彻底失去公信力,也失去了关键性社会团体的支持,自由化引发大规模政治运动和极端主义。旧政权成员开始叛变--他们或是投奔反对派或是逃至南加州或瑞士的安全港。政治混乱当中,政权也经历了同叶利钦和戈尔巴乔夫间相类似的内部分裂,随后一位极端民主化者代替了温和改革者,吸纳了大量旧政权变节者的主要反对派获得广大群众支持,拒绝向共产党低头,也拒绝与之谈判。共产党政权垮台,要么是因为选举使其忠诚者丢掉权力,要么是因为反对派同时夺权。

中国若出现这一幕将具讽刺。在过去二十年里,中共极尽所能避免苏联式的垮台。如果“戈翁”就是给中国带来民主的那一幕场景,也即意味着中国显然从苏联身上吸取了错误教训。

“天安门归来”是第三种可能。这一幕会在中共仍然拒绝改革时发生,即使社会中政治极端化迹象已经非常明显。在“戈翁一幕”中奏效的因素同样也会再次发生作用,只不过导致垮台的不是政权内部改革者的自由化,而是由意料之外的大规模反抗引发的全国范围社会组织运动,就像1989年时的天安门事件那样。这种政治革命将会与天安门民主抗议峰涌时期和中东“茉莉花革命”时期的表现非常相似。就中国而言,“天安门归来”引发不同政治结果的条件是中国军方拒绝再次干预进来拯救中共(自70年代以来由危机引发的过渡情况中,军队都在最关键时刻放弃了专制统治者)。

“金融危机”--我们的第四种情境--能够在中国引起民主过渡,正如1997-98年东亚金融危机导致印尼苏哈托政权垮台那样。中国以银行为基础的金融系统与苏哈托时期的印尼银行系统有许多共通点:政治化、裙带主义、腐败、管理不力、风险管理能力差。如今,中国金融系统累积了大量不良贷款已是既成事实,一旦这些贷款被确认,技术上就很有可能破产。何况,近年来通过影子银行系统形成的表外交易活动正迅速发展,给金融稳定带来更多风险。资金进出中国手段的不断升级削弱了中国对资金的控制能力,金融危机爆发的可能性就更大了。更糟糕的是,中国过早进行的资本账户自由化会在系统性经济危机时期加速资本外流。中国的金融系统一旦遭遇崩溃,经济就会停止增长,社会动乱将难以控制。如果武警和公安无法恢复秩序,军队也拒绝为执政党效命,后者就会在混乱中丧失政权。由金融危机本身导致垮台的可能性相对较小,但中国所承受的经济代价很有可能毁坏其经济成果,间接使中共最终丧失合法性。

“环境崩溃”是最后政权改变的最后一种路径。鉴于中国目前环境恶化的突出性,由环境崩溃引发政权改变的可能性并不小。环境崩溃与政权改变之间的关系虽然复杂但并不是无法理解。显然,就医保、生产力丧失、水资源短缺、外部损害而言,环境崩溃带来的经济代价将十分巨大。中国的环境污染问题已经开始让城市中产阶级和政权脱离开来,并引发了越来越多的社会抗议。环境保护行动主义将成为一种把不同社会组织联系起来共同反抗一党专政的政治力量,它们认为中共在环境问题上冷漠无情、反应迟钝、毫无能力。中国环境的严重恶化也意味着环境性灾难发生的可能--大规模有毒物质泄漏、破纪录式灾害、或有毒烟雾继续泛滥--都能引发大规模抗议,为反对派迅速进行政治动员敞开了大门。

无论是对中共还是对国际社会区而言,这一学界思考的剪影应当发人警醒。迄今为止,很少有人认真思考过中国权力过渡的各种可能性及合理场景。当我们一一审视这种过渡的可能起因和情境时,就应当想想那些无法想象又无法避免的事,这一点不言自明。

——原载《外交杂志》,读者推荐


5 Ways China Could Become a Democracy

THE DIPLOMAT February 13, 2013

By Minxin Pei

Few have seriously thought about the probability and the various plausible scenarios of a regime transition in China -- until now.
Speculating about China’s possible political futures is an intellectual activity that intrigues some and puzzles many. The conventional wisdom is that the entrenched Chinese Communist Party (CCP), so determined to defend and perpetuate its political monopoly, has the means to survive for an extended period (though not forever). A minority view, however, holds that the CCP’s days are numbered. In fact, a transition to democracy in China in the next 10 to 15 years is a high probability event. What stands behind this optimistic view about China’s democratic future is accumulated international and historical experience in democratic transitions (roughly 80 countries have made the transition from authoritarian rule to varying forms and degrees of democracy in the past 40 years) and decades of social science research that has yielded important insights into the dynamics of democratic transition and authoritarian decay (the two closely linked processes).
To be sure, those believing that China’s one-party regime still has enough resilience to endure decades of rule can point to the CCP’s proven and enormous capacity for repression (the most critical factor in the survival of autocracies), its ability to adapt to socioeconomic changes (although the degree of its adaptability is a subject of scholarly contention), and its track record of delivering economic improvement as a source of legitimacy.
To this list of reasons why the Chinese people should resign themselves to decades of one-party rule will be a set of factors singled out by proponents of the theory of predictable regime change in China. Among many of the causes of the decline and collapse of authoritarian rule, two stand out.
First, there is the logic of authoritarian decay. One-party regimes, however sophisticated, suffer from organizational ageing and decay. Leaders get progressively weaker (in terms of capabilities and ideological commitment); such regimes tend to attract careerists and opportunists who view their role in the regime from the perspective of an investor: they want to maximize their returns from their contribution to the regime’s maintenance and survival. The result is escalating corruption, deteriorating governance, and growing alienation of the masses. Empirically, the organizational decay of one-party regime can be measured by the limited longevity of such regimes. To date, the record longevity of a one-party regime is 74 years (held by the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union). One-party regimes in Mexico and Taiwan remained in power for 71 and 73 years respectively (although in the case of Taiwan, the accounting is complicated by the Kuomintang’s military defeat on the mainland). Moreover, all of the three longest-ruling one-party regimes began to experience system-threatening crisis roughly a decade before they exited political power. If the same historical experience should be repeated in China, where the Communist Party has ruled for 63 years, we may reasonably speculate that the probability of a regime transition is both real and high in the coming 10-15 years, when the CCP will reach the upper-limit of the longevity of one-party regimes.
Second, the effects of socioeconomic change –rising literacy, income, andurbanization rates, along with the improvement of communications technologies — greatly reduce the costs of collective action, de-legitimize autocratic rule, and foster demands for greater democracy. As a result, authoritarian regimes, which have a relatively easy time ruling poor and agrarian societies, find it increasingly difficult and ultimately impossible to maintain their rule once socioeconomic development reaches a certain level. Statistical analysis shows that authoritarian regimes become progressively more unstable (and democratic transitions more likely) once income rises above $1,000 (PPP) per capita. When per capita income goes above $4,000 (PPP), the likelihood of democratic transitions increases more dramatically. Few authoritarian regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per capita income hits more than $6,000 (PPP). If we apply this observation and take into account the probable effect of inflation (although the above PPP figures were calculated in constant terms), we will find that China is well into this “zone of democratic transition” because its per capita income is around $9,100 (PPP) today, comparable to the income level of South Korea and Taiwan in the mid-1980s on the eve of their democratic transitions. In another 10-15 years, its per capita income could exceed $15,000 and its urbanization rate will have risen to 60-65 percent. If the CCP has such a tough time today (in terms of deploying its manpower and financial resources) to maintain its rule, just imagine how impossible the task will become in 10-15 years’ time.
If this analysis is convincing enough for us to entertain the strong possibility of a democratic transition in China in the coming 10-15 years, the more interesting follow-up question is definitely “how will such a transition happen?”
Again, based on the rich experience of democratic transitions since the 1970s, there are five ways China could become democratic:
“Happy ending” would be the most preferable mode of democratic transition for China. Typically, a peaceful exit from power managed by the ruling elites of the old regime goes through several stages. It starts with the emergence of a legitimacy crisis, which may be caused by many factors (such as poor economic performance, military defeat, rising popular resistance, unbearable costs of repression, and endemic corruption). Recognition of such a crisis convinces some leaders of the regime that the days of authoritarian rule are numbered and they should start managing a graceful withdrawal from power. If such leaders gain political dominance inside the regime, they start a process of liberalization by freeing the media and loosening control over civil society. Then they negotiate with opposition leaders to set the rules of the post-transition political system. Most critically, such negotiations center on the protection of the ruling elites of the old regime who have committed human rights abuses and the preservation of the privileges of the state institutions that have supported the old regime (such as the military and the secret police). Once such negotiations are concluded, elections are held. In most cases (Taiwan and Spain being the exceptions), parties representing the old regime lose such elections, thus ushering in a new democratic era. At the moment, the transition in Burma is unfolding according to this script.
But for China, the probability of such a happy ending hinges on, among other things, whether the ruling elites start reform before the old regime suffers irreparable loss of legitimacy. The historical record of peaceful transition from post-totalitarian regimes is abysmal mainly because such regimes resist reform until it is too late. Successful cases of “happy ending” transitions, such as those in Taiwan, Mexico, and Brazil, took place because the old regime still maintained sufficient political strength and some degree of support from key social groups. So the sooner the ruling elites start this process, the greater their chances of success. The paradox, however, is that regimes that are strong enough are unwilling to reform and regimes that are weak cannot reform. In the Chinese case, the odds of a soft landing are likely to be determined by what China’s new leadership does in the coming five years because the window of opportunity for a political soft landing will not remain open forever.
“Gorby comes to China” is a variation of the “happy ending” scenario with a nasty twist. In such a scenario, China’s leadership misses the historic opportunity to start the reform now. But in the coming decade, a convergence of unfavorable economic, social, and political trends (such as falling economic growth due to demographic ageing, environmental decay, crony-capitalism, inequality, corruption and rising social unrest) finally forces the regime to face reality. Hardliners are discredited and replaced by reformers who, like Gorbachev, start a Chinese version of glasnost and perestroika. But the regime by that time has lost total credibility and political support from key social groups. Liberalization triggers mass political mobilization and radicalism. Members of the old regime start to defect – either to the opposition or their safe havens in Southern California or Switzerland. Amid political chaos, the regime suffers another internal split, similar to that between Boris Yeltsin and Gorbachev, with the rise of a radical democratizer replacing a moderate reformer. With their enormous popular support, the dominant political opposition, including many defectors from the old regime, refuses to offer concessions to the Communist Party since it is now literally in no position to negotiate. The party’s rule collapses, either as a result of elections that boot its loyalists out of power or spontaneous seizure of power by the opposition.
Should such a scenario occur in China, it would be the most ironic. For the last twenty years, the Communist Party has tried everything to avert a Soviet-style collapse. If the “Gorby scenario” is the one that brings democracy to China, it means the party has obviously learned the wrong lesson from the Soviet collapse.
“Tiananmen redux” is a third possibility. Such a scenario can unfold when the party continues to resist reform even amid signs of political radicalization and polarization in society. The same factors that contribute to the “Gorby scenario” will be at play here, except that the trigger of the collapse is not a belated move toward liberalization by reformers inside the regime, but by an unanticipated mass revolt that mobilizes a wide range of social groups nationwide, as happened during Tiananmen in 1989. The manifestations of such a political revolution will be identical with those seen in the heady days of the pro-democracy Tiananmen protest and the “Jasmine Revolution” in the Middle East. In the Chinese case, “Tiananmen redux” produces a different political outcome mainly because the China military refuses to intervene again to save the party (in most cases of crisis-induced transitions since the 1970s, the military abandoned the autocratic rulers at the most critical moment).
“Financial meltdown” – our fourth scenario – can initiate a democratic transition in China in the same way the East Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 led to the collapse of Suharto in Indonesia. The Chinese bank-based financial system shares many characteristics with the Suharto-era Indonesian banking system: politicization, cronyism, corruption, poor regulation, and weak risk management. It is a well-known fact today that the Chinese financial system has accumulated huge non-performing loans and may be technically insolvent if these loans are recognized. In addition, off-balance sheet activities through theshadow-banking system have mushroomed in recent years, adding more risks to financial stability. As China’s capacity to maintain capital control erodes because of the proliferation of methods to move money in and out of China, the probability of a financial meltdown increases further. To make matters worse, premature capital account liberalization by China could facilitate capital flight in times of a systemic financial crisis. Should China’s financial sector suffer a meltdown, the economy would grind to a halt and social unrest could become uncontrollable. If the security forces fail to restore order and the military refuse to bail out the party, the party could lose power amid chaos. The probability of a collapse induced by a financial meltdown alone is relatively low. But even if the party should survive the immediate aftermath of a financial meltdown, the economic toll exacted on China will most likely damage its economic performance to such an extent as to generate knock-on effects that eventually delegitimize the party’s authority.
“Environmental collapse” is our last regime change scenario. Given the salience of environmental decay in China these days, the probability of a regime change induced by environmental collapse is not trivial. The feed-back loop linking environmental collapse to regime change is complicated but not impossible to conceive. Obviously, the economic costs of environmental collapsewill be substantial, in terms of healthcare, lost productivity, water shortage, and physical damages.Growth could stall, undermining the CCP’s legitimacy and control. Environmental collapse in China has already started to alienate the urban middle-class from the regime and triggered growing social protest. Environmental activism can become a political force linking different social groups together in a common cause against a one-party regime seen as insensitive, unresponsive, and incompetent on environmental issues. The severe degradation of the environment in China also means that the probability of a catastrophic environmental disaster – a massive toxic spill, record drought, or extended period of poisonous smog– could trigger a mass protest incident that opens the door for the rapid political mobilization of the opposition.
The take-away from this intellectual exercise should be sobering, both for the CCP and the international community. To date, few have seriously thought about the probability and the various plausible scenarios of a regime transition in China. As we go through the likely causes and scenarios of such a transition, it should become blindingly clear that we need to start thinking about both the unthinkable and the inevitable.

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