《经济学人》2018年三月号封面 |
@小野丫译
上周末,中国从专制走向独裁。XJP这个已经是世界上最有权利的人,向世界宣告,他要改变中国的宪法,这样他就可以选择在位的时间。可想而知是终身担任最高领导人。 自从毛泽东以来,尚未任何一个中国领导人敢如此公开地宣称权力在握。这不仅是中国的一个重大变化(见文章),也有力证明了西方对中国25年赌注的失败。
苏联解体后,西方欢迎这个全球最大的共产国家进入全球经济秩序。西方领导人信心百倍的相信,让中国在诸如世界贸易组织(WTO)等机构中占有一席之地,世贸组织之中二战后建立的基于规则的庞大组织。他们希望经济一体化能够鼓励中国演变成市场经济,随着中国经济越来越富裕,人民自然就会渴望民主自由,权利和法治。这份报纸所分享的是一个有价值的愿景,并且比关闭中国更好。中国已经超越任何人的想象变得富有。在胡锦涛的领导下,你仍然可以看到回报的回报。习近平在五年前掌权时,中国充满猜测他会走向宪政。今天,幻觉已经破灭。实际上,习近平把政治和经济引向压制,国家控制和对抗。
所有的冰雹,西达达
从政治开始。习近平用他的权力来重申共产党的统治地位和他自己的地位。作为反腐运动的一部分,他清除了潜在的竞争对手。他执行了人民解放军(PLA)的大规模重组,部分是为了确保其对党的忠诚,以及对他个人的忠诚。他囚禁了思想敏捷
并在媒体和网络上抨击党和政府
的律师。虽然人们的个人生活仍然相对自由,但他正在创建一个监视状态来监视不满和偏差。
中国过去对其他国家如何自行管理并不感兴趣,只要它一个人留下。然而,它越来越把它的专制制度视为自由民主的对手。习近平去年秋天在党的第十九次代表大会上提出了"为其他国家提供新选择",这将涉及"中国智慧和中国解决人类面临的问题的方法"。习近平先生说,中国不会出口其模型,但你感觉到美国现在不仅仅是一个经济对手,而且还是一个意识形态对手。
嵌入市场的赌注比较成功。中国已融入全球经济。它是世界上最大的出口国,占总数的13%以上。它具有进取和足智多谋的特质,是全球100家最有价值的上市公司中的12家。它为自己和那些与之做生意的人创造了非凡的繁荣
中国不是一个市场经济体,在目前的情况下,它永远不会是。相反,它越来越把商业作为国家权力的一部分来控制。它将广泛的行业视为战略性行业。例如,其"中国制造2025"计划开始采用补贴和保护措施,在包括航空,科技和能源在内的十个行业中创造世界领先者,这些行业共占制造业近40%的份额。虽然中国对工业间谍活动的态度不那么明显,但西方公司仍抱怨国家对其知识产权的突袭。与此同时,外国企业有利可图,但悲惨,因为商业似乎总是按照中国的条件。例如,美国的信用卡公司只有在付款转移到手机后才被允许进入。
中国包含了一些西方的规则,但似乎也在起草一个自己的并行系统。采取"一带一路"倡议,该倡议承诺将在海外市场上投资超过1万亿美元,最终使马歇尔计划更加渺小。这部分是一个发展中国困境西部的计划,但它也创建了一个中国资助的网络,其中包括几乎任何愿意报名的国家。该倡议要求各国接受以中国为基础的争端解决方案。如果今天的西方规范挫败中国的雄心壮志,这种机制可能会成为一种选择。
中国利用企业来对抗它的敌人。它试图直接惩罚公司,就像德国汽车制造商梅赛德斯奔驰最近不得不在网上无意引用达赖喇嘛后不得不发表道歉一样。它还惩罚他们的政府行为。当菲律宾对中国对南海斯卡伯勒浅滩的要求提出质疑时,中国因为健康原因突然停止购买香蕉。随着中国经济影响力的增长,这种压力也会加剧。
这种商业上的"尖锐力量"是武装力量的一种补充。在这里,中国是一个地区性的超级大国,一心想把美国赶出东亚。与斯卡伯勒浅滩一样,中国也抓住并建造了许多礁石和小岛。中国军事现代化和投资的步伐让美国长期致力于保持该地区统治地位的决心受到质疑。中国人民解放军依然无法在战斗中击败美国,但权力即是解决,也是力量。即使中国的挑战已经显露,美国也不愿意或者不能阻止它。
深吸一口气
该怎么办?西方在中国失去了赌注,就在自己的民主国家正在遭受信任危机时。唐纳德特朗普总统早早看到了中国的威胁,但他主要从双边贸易赤字的角度来考虑,这本身并不构成威胁。贸易战会破坏他应该保护的规范,并在他们面对中国欺凌时需要团结的时候伤害美国的盟友。而且,无论特朗普如何抗议,他对"让美国重新走向伟大"的承诺都表示退出单边主义,这只能加强中国的手。
相反,特朗普需要重新审视中国政策的范围。中国和西方将不得不学会忍受差异。今天放下不当行为,希望参与将使中国变得更美好,这是没有道理的。西方勉强容纳中国滥用权力的时间越长,后来挑战他们的危险就越大。因此,在每一个领域,政策都需要更加严格,即使西方切入它所宣称的普遍价值。
为了对抗中国的强大势力,西方社会应该设法揭示独立基金会甚至学生团体与中国国家之间的联系。为了应对中国滥用经济权力的问题,西方应该审查国有企业和敏感技术对任何形式的中国公司的投资。它应该加强捍卫它试图保存的秩序的机构。几个月来,美国阻止了WTO官员的任命。
正如他所暗示的,特朗普应该通过重新考虑跨太平洋伙伴关系的成员资格来证明他对美国盟友的承诺。为了应对中国的硬实力,美国需要投资新的武器系统,并且最重要的是,确保它更接近盟友 - 这些人目睹中国的决心,自然而然地将目光投向美国。
执政和崛起的超级大国之间的竞争不一定导致战争。但是,习近平对权力的渴望提升了破坏性不稳定的可能性。他有一天会试图通过夺回台湾来夺取荣耀。请记住,中国首先限制了领导人的任期,以便永远不会再经历毛泽东独裁统治的混乱和罪行。一个强大而脆弱的专政不是西方中国赌注应该领先的地方。但那是它结束的地方。
《经济学人3月刊-西方如何误读了中国》
How the West got China wrong
It bet that China would head towards democracy and the market economy. The gamble has failed
LAST weekend China stepped from autocracy into dictatorship. That was when Xi Jinping, already the world's most powerful man, let it be known that he will change China's constitution so that he can rule as president for as long as he chooses—and conceivably for life. Not since Mao Zedong has a Chinese leader wielded so much power so openly. This is not just a big change for China (see article), but also strong evidence that the West's 25-year bet on China has failed.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West welcomed the next big communist country into the global economic order. Western leaders believed that giving China a stake in institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) would bind it into the rules-based system set up after the second world war (see Briefing). They hoped that economic integration would encourage China to evolve into a market economy and that, as they grew wealthier, its people would come to yearn for democratic freedoms, rights and the rule of law.
It was a worthy vision, which this newspaper shared, and better than shutting China out. China has grown rich beyond anybody's imagining. Under the leadership of Hu Jintao, you could still picture the bet paying off. When Mr Xi took power five years ago China was rife with speculation that he would move towards constitutional rule. Today the illusion has been shattered. In reality, Mr Xi has steered politics and economics towards repression, state control and confrontation.
All hail, Xi Dada
Start with politics. Mr Xi has used his power to reassert the dominance of the Communist Party and of his own position within it. As part of a campaign against corruption, he has purged potential rivals. He has executed a sweeping reorganisation of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), partly to ensure its loyalty to the party, and to him personally. He has imprisoned free-thinking lawyers and stamped out criticism of the party and the government in the media and online. Though people's personal lives remain relatively free, he is creating a surveillance state to monitor discontent and deviance.
China used to profess no interest in how other countries run themselves, so long as it was left alone. Increasingly, however, it holds its authoritarian system up as a rival to liberal democracy. At the party's 19th congress last autumn, Mr Xi offered "a new option for other countries" that would involve "Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind." Mr Xi later said that China would not export its model, but you sense that America now has not just an economic rival, but an ideological one, too.
The bet to embed markets has been more successful. China has been integrated into the global economy. It is the world's biggest exporter, with over 13% of the total. It is enterprising and resourceful, and home to 12 of the world's 100 most valuable listed companies. It has created extraordinary prosperity, for itself and those who have done business with it.
Yet China is not a market economy and, on its present course, never will be. Instead, it increasingly controls business as an arm of state power. It sees a vast range of industries as strategic. Its "Made in China 2025" plan, for instance, sets out to use subsidies and protection to create world leaders in ten industries, including aviation, tech and energy, which together cover nearly 40% of its manufacturing. Although China has become less blatant about industrial espionage, Western companies still complain of state-sponsored raids on their intellectual property. Meanwhile, foreign businesses are profitable but miserable, because commerce always seems to be on China's terms. American credit-card firms, for example, were let in only after payments had shifted to mobile phones.
China embraces some Western rules, but also seems to be drafting a parallel system of its own. Take the Belt and Road Initiative, which promises to invest over $1tn in markets abroad, ultimately dwarfing the Marshall plan. This is partly a scheme to develop China's troubled west, but it also creates a Chinese-funded web of influence that includes pretty much any country willing to sign up. The initiative asks countries to accept Chinese-based dispute-resolution. Should today's Western norms frustrate Chinese ambition, this mechanism could become an alternative.
And China uses business to confront its enemies. It seeks to punish firms directly, as when Mercedes-Benz, a German carmaker, was recently obliged to issue a grovelling apology after unthinkingly quoting the Dalai Lama online. It also punishes them for the behaviour of their governments. When the Philippines contested China's claim to Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, China suddenly stopped buying its bananas, supposedly for health reasons. As China's economic clout grows, so could this sort of pressure.
This "sharp power" in commerce is a complement to the hard power of armed force. Here, China behaves as a regional superpower bent on driving America out of East Asia. As with Scarborough Shoal, China has seized and built on a number of reefs and islets. The pace of Chinese military modernisation and investment is raising doubts about America's long-run commitment to retain its dominance in the region. The PLA still could not defeat America in a fight, but power is about resolve as well as strength. Even as China's challenge has become overt, America has been unwilling or unable to stop it.
Take a deep breath
What to do? The West has lost its bet on China, just when its own democracies are suffering a crisis of confidence. President Donald Trump saw the Chinese threat early but he conceives of it chiefly in terms of the bilateral trade deficit, which is not in itself a threat. A trade war would undermine the very norms he should be protecting and harm America's allies just when they need unity in the face of Chinese bullying. And, however much Mr Trump protests, his promise to "Make America Great Again" smacks of a retreat into unilateralism that can only strengthen China's hand.
Instead Mr Trump needs to recast the range of China policy. China and the West will have to learn to live with their differences. Putting up with misbehaviour today in the hope that engagement will make China better tomorrow does not make sense. The longer the West grudgingly accommodates China's abuses, the more dangerous it will be to challenge them later. In every sphere, therefore, policy needs to be harder edged, even as the West cleaves to the values it claims are universal.
To counter China's sharp power, Western societies should seek to shed light on links between independent foundations, even student groups, and the Chinese state. To counter China's misuse of economic power, the West should scrutinise investments by state-owned companies and, with sensitive technologies, by Chinese companies of any kind. It should bolster institutions that defend the order it is trying to preserve. For months America has blocked the appointment of officials at the WTO. Mr Trump should demonstrate his commitment to America's allies by reconsidering membership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as he has hinted. To counter China's hard power, America needs to invest in new weapons systems and, most of all, ensure that it draws closer to its allies—who, witnessing China's resolve, will naturally look to America.
Rivalry between the reigning and rising superpowers need not lead to war. But Mr Xi's thirst for power has raised the chance of devastating instability. He may one day try to claim glory by retaking Taiwan. And recall that China first limited the term of its leaders so that it would never again have to live through the chaos and crimes of Mao's one-man rule. A powerful, yet fragile, dictatorship is not where the West's China bet was supposed to lead. But that is where it has ended up.
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