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标题: [文摘]李世默演讲 [打印本页]

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作者: 肥狐    时间: 2014-10-7 15:34
标题: [文摘]李世默演讲
日志里有坛友发了视频，我打不开，网上找到原文。

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我出生在“文化大革命”高潮时的上海。

外婆后来告诉我，她当时抱着襁褓之中啼哭不止的我，心惊胆战地听着“武斗”的枪声。

在我少年时，我被灌输了一个关于人类社会发展规律的大故事，这个“元叙事”是这样说的：

所有的人类社会都遵循一个线性的目标明确的发展规律，即从原始社会开始，经由奴隶社会、封建社会、资本主义社会、社会主义社会，最终过渡到(猜猜这个终点？)共产主义社会。共产主义社会是人类政治、社会发展的最高阶段，所有的人类社会，不管民族、文化、语言有何异同，或早或晚都将演进到这一阶段。人类社会自此大同，彼此相亲相爱，永远过着幸福的生活——人间天堂。但在实现这样目标之前，我们必须投身于正义与邪恶的斗争，即正义的社会主义与邪恶的资本主义之间的斗争，正义终将胜利！

当然，这就是从马克思主义发展而来的社会发展阶段论，这一“元叙事”在中国影响甚广。

我们从小就被反复灌输了这个宏大故事，几乎融化到了血液之中，笃信不疑。

这个“元叙事”不仅征服了中国，也影响了全世界。世界上曾经有整整三分之一人在它笼罩之下。

然而，忽然一夜之间，苏联崩溃，世界沧桑巨变。

我赴美留学，改宗成为伯克利的嬉皮士，哈哈！

就这样，开启了我另一段成年经历，我又被灌输了一个全新的宏大叙事，仿佛我这辈子只经历那一个还不够似的。这个宏大叙事的完美程度与早前的那一个不分伯仲。它同样宣称，人类社会遵循着一个线性的发展规律，指向一个终极目标。叙事故事是这样展开的：

所有的人类社会，不论其文化有何异同，其民众是基督徒、穆斯林还是儒家信徒，都将从传统社会过渡到现代社会。在传统社会中，最基本的社会单位是家庭、氏族、部落等群体；而在现代社会中，最基本的、神圣不可侵犯的社会单位是原子化的个人。所有的个人都被认定为是理性的，都有同一个诉求：选举权！

因为每一个个人都是理性的，一旦有了权选举，必然会选出好政府，随后就可以在好政府的领导下，过上幸福的生活，相当于实现大同社会——又是一个人间天堂。选举民主制将成为所有国家和民族唯一的政治制度，再加上一个自由放任的市场让他们发财。当然，在实现这个目标之前，我们必须投身于正义与邪恶的斗争，即正义的民主与邪恶的不民主之间的斗争。前者肩负着在全世界推动民主的使命，必要时甚至可以动用武力，来打击那些不投票不选举的邪恶势力。

上述宏大叙事同样传播甚广。根据“自由之家”的统计，全世界采用选举民主制的国家，从1970年的45个已增至2010年的115个。近20多年来，西方的精英人士孜孜不倦地在全世界奔走，推荐选举民主这一救世良方。他们声称，实行多党选举是拯救发展中国家于水火的唯一良药，只要吃下它，就一定会实现繁荣，否则，永无翻身之日。

但这一次，中国敬谢不敏。

历史是最好的裁判。仅仅30多年间，中国就从世界上最贫困的农业国，一跃而为世界第二大经济体，实现6.5亿人脱贫。实际上，这期间全世界80%的减贫任务是由中国完成的。也就是说，如果没有中国的成绩，全世界的减贫成就不值一提。所有老的、新的民主国家的脱贫人口加起来，都不及中国一个零头。而取得这些成绩的中国，没有实行他们所谓的选举，也没有实行多党制。

所以，我禁不住问自己，我眼前画面到底哪里不对劲儿？我的故乡上海，一切都已今非昔比，新生企业如雨后春笋般发展起来，中产阶级以史无前例的速度和规模在增长。但根据西方的那个宏大叙事，这一切繁荣景象本不应该出现。

面对这一切，我开始做我唯一可以做的事，即思考它！

中国的确是个一党制的国家，由中国共产党长期执政，不实行西方意义上的选举。按照当代主流的政治理论，人们据此可以生成三个判断，即这个体制一定是僵化的、封闭的、不具合法性的。

但这些论断被证明是完全错误的。事实恰恰相反，中国的一党制具有与时俱进的能力、选贤任能的体制、深植于民心的政权合法性，这些是确保其成功的核心要素。

大多数政治学家断言，一党制天生缺乏自我纠错能力，因此很难持久。

但历史实践却证明这一断言过于自信。中共已经在中国这个世界上最大的国家之一连续执政64年，其政策调整的幅度超过近代任何国家。从激进的土改到“大跃进”运动，再到土地“准私有化”；从“文化大革命”到邓小平的市场化改革。邓小平的继任者江泽民更进一步，主动吸纳包括民营企业家在内的新社会阶层人士入党，而这在毛的时代是不可想象的。事实证明，中共具有超凡的与时俱进和自我纠错能力。

过去实行的一些不再有效的制度也不断得到纠正和更新。比如，政治领导人的任期制，毛时期，政治领导人实际上是终身任职的。这容易导致大权独揽、不受制约等问题。毛泽东作为现代中国的缔造者，在位晚年也未能避免犯下类似的严重错误。随后，中共逐步实施了领导人的任期制，并将任职的年龄上限确定为68到70岁。

最近很多人声称，相比于经济改革，中国的政治改革严重滞后，因此当前亟需在政改中取得突破。这一论断实际上是隐藏着政治偏见的话语陷阱，这个话语陷阱预设了哪些变革才算所谓的政治改革，只有实行这些特定的变革才行。事实上，中国的政治改革从未停滞。与三十年、二十年，甚至十年前相比，中国从基层到高层，从社会各领域到国家治理方式上，都发生了翻天覆地的变化。如果没有根本性的政治改革，这一切变化都是不可能的。

我甚至想大胆地判断说，中共是世界第一流的政治改革专家。

西方主流的观点认为，一党制意味着政治上封闭，一小撮人把持了权力，必然导致劣政和腐败。

的确，腐败是一个大问题。不过，让我们先打开视野看一下全景。说起来可能令人难以置信，中共内部选贤任能竞争之激烈程度，可能超过世界上所有的政治组织。

十八大前，中共的最高领导机构——中央政治局共有25名委员，其中只有5人出身背景优越，也就是所谓的“太子党”。其余20人，包括国家主席胡锦涛和政府总理温家宝，都是平民出身。再看300多人组成的十七届中央委员会，出身显赫者的比例更低。可以说，绝大多数中共高层领导人都是靠自身努力和激烈竞争获得晋升的。与其他发达国家和发展中国家统治精英的出身相比，我们必须承认中共内部平民出身的干部享有广阔的晋升空间。

中共如何在一党制的基础上保证选贤任能呢？关键之一是有一个强有力的组织机构，即组织部。对此西方鲜有人知。这套机制选贤任能的效力，恐怕最成功的商业公司都会自叹弗如。

它像一个旋转的金字塔，有三个部位组合而成。

中国的公务人员分为三类：即政府职能部门、国有企业，以及政府管辖的事业单位，如大学、社区组织等。公务人员既可以在某一类部门中长期工作，也可以在三类中交替任职。政府以及相关机构一年一度地从大学毕业生中招录人员，大部分新人会从最低一级的科员干起。组织部门会根据其表现，决定是否将其提升到更高的管理职位上，比如副科、科、副处、处。这可不是电影《龙威小子》中的动作名称，而是严肃的人事工作。

这一区间的职位包罗万象，既可以负责贫困农村的卫生工作，也可能负责城区里的招商引资，也可能是一家公司的基层经理。各级干部每年都要接受组织部门的考察，其中包括征求上级、下级和同事的反馈意见，以及个人操守审查，此外还有民意调查，最终择优提职。

在整个职业生涯中，中共的干部可以在政府职能部门、企业，以及社会事业单位等三大领域内轮转任职。在基层表现优秀的佼佼者可以晋升为副局和正局级干部，进入高级干部行列。这一级别的干部，有可能领导数百万人口的城区，也有可能管理年营业收入数亿美元的企业。从统计数据就可以看出选拔局级干部的竞争有多激烈，2012年，中国科级与副科级干部约为90万人，处级与副处级干部约为60万人，而局级与副局级干部仅为4万人。

在局级干部中，只有最为出众的极少数人才有机会继续晋升，最终进入中共中央委员会。就职业生涯来看，一位干部要晋升到高层，期间一般要经过二三十年的工作历练。这过程中有任人唯亲的问题吗，当然有。但从根本上，干部是否德才兼备才是提拔的决定性因素。事实上，中华帝国的官僚体系有着千年历史，今天中共的组织部门创造性地继承了这一独特的历史遗产，并发展成现代化的制度以培养当代中国的政治精英。

习近平的履历就是非常鲜明的例证。习的父亲确实是中共的一位前领导人，但他的仕途也历经了30年之久。习近平从村干部做起，一步一个脚印的走到今天这个岗位。在他进入中央政治局之前，他领导过的地区总人口累计已超过1.5亿，创造的GDP合计超过1.5万亿美元。

千万不要误解，这不是针对具体的人，仅仅是事实的陈述。如果要论政府管理经验，小布什在任德州州长前和奥巴马第一次问鼎美国总统时，他们资历还比不上中国一个小县长。

温斯顿·丘吉尔曾说：“民主是个坏制度，但其他制度更坏”。可惜，他没有见识过组织部。

西方人总认为多党竞选和普选是合法性的唯一来源。曾有人问我：“中共不经选举执政，其合法性从何而来？”我的回答是：“舍我其谁的执政能力。”

我们都知道历史，1949年中共执政时，由于战火肆虐，外敌横行，中国的国土四分五裂，满目疮痍；中国人的人均寿命仅为41岁。但在今天，中国已跻身世界第二大经济体，成为在全球有重要影响的大国，人民生活迅速改善，人均寿命排名奇迹般地列中等发达国家前茅。

根据皮尤研究中心在中国的民意调查报告，其中一些数据反映了中国的主流民意，其中大部分数据在近几十年来十分稳定。

高达85%的中国民众，对国家未来方向表示满意；70%的民众认为在过去的五年生活得到改善；82%的民众对未来五年颇感乐观。

英国《金融时报》刚刚公布的全球青年人民调结果显示：93%的中国90后年轻人对国家的未来感到乐观。

如果这不是合法性，那我就不知道到底什么才是合法性了。

相比之下，全世界大部分选举民主制国家都处于惨淡经营的境况。关于美国和欧洲的政治困境，在座的听众都了然于胸，无需我再详述。除了极少数例外，大部分采用选举的发展中国家，迄今为止还在遭受贫困和战火的折磨。政府通过选举上台后，其支持率在几个月内就会跌到50%以下，从此一蹶不振甚至持续走低，直到下一次选举。可以说，民主已经陷入“一次选举，长期后悔”的周期性怪圈。这样下去，失去合法性的恐怕不是中国的一党制，而是选举民主制。

当然，我不想造成一种误会，认为中国成为超级大国已经指日可待了。中国当前面临重大挑战，巨大变迁带来的经济、社会问题数不胜数，譬如环境污染， 食品安全、人口问题。在政治领域，最大的挑战是腐败。

目前，腐败猖獗，危及中国的政治制度及其道德合法性。但是，很多分析人士误判了腐败的原因，他们声称腐败是一党制导致的，只有终结一党制才能根绝腐败。更严谨一点儿的分析将证明这种观点毫无根据。

据透明国际发布的全球清廉指数排名，中国近年来的排名在第70到80名之间。印度是世界上人口最多的选举民主制国家，排名第95位，且逐年下滑；希腊排名第80位；印度尼西亚与阿根廷排名并列第100位；菲律宾排名第129位。排名在中国后的约100个国家中，超过一半是选举民主制国家。如果选举是根治腐败的万灵药，为何在这么多国家不灵呢？

我是做风险投资的，长于预测。因此，不做几个预测就结束今天的讨论似乎不妥。以下是我的三个预测：

未来十年：

1. 中国将超过美国成为世界第一大经济体，按人均收入计算也将在发展中国家里名列前茅。2. 腐败虽然无法根绝，但将得到有效控制。在透明国际的全球清廉指数排行榜上，中国有望继续提升10到20名，跨入全球最清廉的前60国之列。3. 经济改革会加速实施，政治改革也将继续推进，中共仍稳固执政。

我们正在见证一个时代的落幕。共产主义和选举民主制，都是基于普世价值的“元叙事”。在20世纪，我们见证了前者因极端教条而失败；到21世纪，后者正重蹈同样的覆辙。“元叙事”就像癌症一样，正在从内部吞噬民主。我想澄清一下，我并不是要谴责民主。相反，我认为民主政治对西方的崛起和现代世界的诞生居功至伟。然而，很多西方精英把某一种民主形式模式化、普世化，这是西方当前各种病症的病灶所在。如果西方的精英不是将大把的时间花在向外国推销民主上，而是更多关心一下自身的政治改革，恐怕民主还不至于像今天这样无望。

中国的政治模式不可能取代选举民主，因为中国从不将自己的政治制度包装成普世通用的模式，也不热衷于对外输出。进一步说，中国模式的重要意义，不在于为世界各国提供了一个可以替代选举民主的新模式，而在于从实践上证明了良政的模式不是单一而是多元的，各国都有可能找到适合本国的政治制度。

让我们为“元叙事”的时代画个句号吧。共产主义和民主可能都是人类最美好的追求，但它们普世化的教条时代已经过去。我们的下一代，不需要被灌输说，世界上只有一种政治模式，所有社会都只有一种归宿。这是错误的，不负责任的，也是乏味的。多元化正在取代普世化。一个更精彩的时代正缓缓拉开帷幕，我们有没有勇气拥抱它呢？

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作者: 兜胖胖    时间: 2014-10-7 17:04
中国的宪法前言

“坚持改革开放，不断完善社会主义的各项制度，发展社会主义市场经济，发展社会主义民主，健全社会主义法制，自力更生，艰苦奋斗，逐步实现工业、农业、国防和科学技术的现代化，推动物质文明、政治文明和精神文明协调发展，把我国建设成为富强、民主、文明的社会主义国家。”

李世默看来是要和宪法唱反调啊

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作者: 烟波钓徒    时间: 2014-10-7 18:16
Why democracy still wins: A critique of Eric X. Li’s “A tale of two political systems”
Posted by: Kate Torgovnick May July 1, 2013 at 12:12 pm EDT

By Yasheng Huang

Earlier this year, economist Yasheng Huang (watch his 2011 TED Talk) sparred with Eric X. Li in the pages of Foreign Affairs on a similar topic to today’s TED Talk. The TED Blog asked Huang to expand on his argument in his ongoing conversation with Li.

Imagine confusing the following two statements from a cancer doctor: 1) “You may die from cancer” and 2) “I want you to die from cancer.” It is not hard to see a rudimentary difference between these two statements. The first statement is a prediction — it is saying that something may happen given certain conditions (in this case death conditional upon having cancer). The second statement is a preference, a desire, or a wish for a world to one’s particular liking.

Who would make such a rudimentary mistake confusing these two types of statements? Many people, including Eric X. Li, in today’s TED Talk. The Marxian meta-narrative drilled into Li’s head — and mine in my childhood and youth in the 1960s and 1970s — is a normative statement. When Marx came up with his ideas about evolution of human societies, there was not a single country in the world that even remotely resembled the communist system he advocated. The communist system Marx had in mind had no private property or of ownership of any kind. Money was also absent in that system. The Marxian version of communism has never come to fruition and, most likely, never will. Marx based his “prediction” on deduction; his successors did so by imposing their wish, enforced by power and violence.
Eric X. Li: A tale of two political systems Eric X. Li: A tale of two political systems

By contrast, the narrative that was apparently fed to Li when he was a “Berkeley hippie” is based on the actual experience of human affairs. We have had hundreds of years of experience with democracy and hundreds of countries/years of democratic transitions and rule. The statement that countries transition to democracy as they get rich is a positive statement — it is a prediction based on data. In the 1960s, roughly 25 percent  of the world was democratic; today the proportion is 63 percent . There are far more instances of dictatorships transitioning to democracies  than the other way around. The rest of the world has clearly expressed a preference for democracy. As Minxin Pei has pointed out, of the 25 countries with a higher GDP per capita than China that are not free or partially free, 21 of them are sustained by natural resources. But these are exceptions that prove the rule — countries become democratic as they get richer. Today not a single country classified as the richest is a single-party authoritarian system. (Singapore is arguably a borderline case.) Whether Li likes it or not, they all seem to end up in the same place.

Are democracies more corrupt? Li thinks so. He cites the Transparency International (TI) index to support his view. The TI data show that China is ranked better than many democracies. Fair enough.

I have always thought that there is a touch of irony with using transparency data to defend a political system built on opacity. Irony aside, let’s keep in mind that TI index itself is a product of a political system that Li so disparages — democracy (German democracy to be exact). This underscores a basic point — we know far more about corruption in democracies than we do about corruption in authoritarian countries because democracies are, by definition, more transparent and they have more transparency data. While I trust comparisons of corruption among democratic countries, to mechanically compare corruption in China with that in democracies, as Li has done so repeatedly, is fundamentally flawed. His methodology confounds two effects — how transparent a country is and how corrupt a country is. I am not saying that democracies are necessarily cleaner than China; I am just saying that Li’s use of TI data is not the basis for drawing conclusions in either direction. The right way to reach a conclusion on this issue is to say that given the same level of transparency (and the same level of many other things, including income), China is — or is not — more corrupt than democracies.
Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth? Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?

A simple example will suffice to illustrate this idea. In 2010, two Indian entrepreneurs founded a website called I Paid a Bribe. The website invited anonymous postings of instances in which Indian citizens had to pay a bribe. By August 2012 the website has recorded more than 20,000 reports of corruption. Some Chinese entrepreneurs tried to do the same thing: They created I Made a Bribe and 522phone.com. But those websites were promptly shut down by the Chinese government. The right conclusion is not, as the logic of Li would suggest, that China is cleaner than India because it has zero postings of corrupt instances whereas India has some 20,000 posted instances of corruption.

With due respect to the good work at Transparency International, its data are very poor at handling this basic difference between perception of corruption and incidence of corruption. Democracies are more transparent — about its virtues and its vices — than authoritarian systems.  We know far more about Indian corruption in part because the Indian system is more transparent, and it has a noisy chattering class who are not afraid to challenge and criticize the government (and, in a few instances, to stick a video camera into a hotel room recording the transfer of cash to politicians). Also lower-level corruption is more observable than corruption at the top of the political hierarchy. The TI index is better at uncovering the corruption of a Barun the policeman in Chennai than a Bo Xilai the Politburo member from Chongqing. These factors, not corruption per se, are likely to explain most of the discrepancies between China and India in terms of TI rankings.

Li likes to point out, again using TI data, that the likes of Indonesia, Argentina and the Philippines are both democracies and notoriously corrupt. He often omits crucial factual details when he is addressing this issue. Yes, these countries are democracies, in 2013, but they were governed by ruthless military dictators for decades long before they transitioned to democracy. It was the autocracy of these countries that bred and fermented corruption. (Remember the 3,000 pairs of shoes of Mrs. Marcos?) Corruption is like cancer, metastatic and entrenched. While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize new democracies for not rooting out corruption in a timely fashion, confusing the difficulties of treating the entrenched corruption with its underlying cause is analogous to saying that a cancer patient got his cancer after he was admitted for chemotherapy.

The world league of the most egregious corruption offenders belongs exclusively to autocrats. The top three ruling looters as of 2004, according to a TI report, are Suharto, Marcos and Mobutu. These three dictators pillaged a combined $50 billion from their impoverished people. Democracies are certainly not immune to corruption, but I think that they have to work a lot harder before they can catch up with these autocrats.

Li has a lot of faith in the Chinese system. He first argues that the system enjoys widespread support among the Chinese population. He cites a Financial Times survey that 93 percent of Chinese young people are optimistic about their future. I have seen these high approval ratings used by Li and others as evidence that the Chinese system is healthy and robust, but I am puzzled why Li should stop at 93 percent. Why not go further, to 100 percent ? In a country without free speech, asking people to directly evaluate performance of leaders is like asking people to take a single-choice exam. The poll numbers for Erich Honecker and Kim Jong-un would put Chinese leaders to shame.

(Let me also offer a cautionary footnote on how and how not to use Chinese survey data. I have done a lot of survey research in China, and I am always humbled by how tricky it is to interpret the survey findings. Apart from the political pressures that tend to channel answers in a particular direction, another problem is that Chinese respondents sometimes view taking a survey as similar to taking an exam. Chinese exams have standard answers, and sometimes Chinese respondents fill out surveys by trying to guess what the “standard” answer is rather than expressing their own views. I would caution against any naïve uses of Chinese survey data.)

Li also touts the adaptability of the Chinese political system. Let me quote:

“Now, most political scientists will tell us that a one-party system is inherently incapable of self-correction. It won’t last long because it cannot adapt. Now here are the facts. In 64 years of running the largest country in the world, the range of the party’s policies has been wider than any other country in recent memory, from radical land collectivization to the Great Leap Forward, then privatization of farmland, then the Cultural Revolution, then Deng Xiaoping’s market reform, then successor Jiang Zemin took the giant political step of opening up party membership to private businesspeople, something unimaginable during Mao’s rule. So the party self-corrects in rather dramatic fashion.”

Now imagine putting forward the following narrative celebrating, say, Russian “adaptability”: Russia, as a country or as a people, is highly adaptable. The range of its “policies has been wider than any other country in recent memory,” from gulags to Stalin’s red terror, then collectivization, then central planning, then glasnost and perestroika, then privatization, then crony capitalism, then the illiberal democracy under Putin, something unimaginable during Lenin’s rule. So the country “self-corrects in rather dramatic fashion.”

Let me be clear and explicit — Li’s reasoning on the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is exactly identical to the one I offered on Russia. The only difference is that Li was referring to a political organization — the CCP — and I am referring to a sovereign state.

The TED audience greeted Li’s speech with applause — several times in fact. I doubt that had Li offered this Russian analogy the reception would have been as warm. The reason is simple: The TED audience is intimately familiar with the tumult, violence and astronomical human toll of the Soviet rule. Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, quoted the findings by other scholars that the Soviet regime killed 62 million of its own citizens. I guess the word “correction” somewhat understates the magnitude of the transformation from Stalin’s murderous, genocidal regime to the problematic, struggling but nonetheless democratic Russia today.

I do not know what a Berkeley hippie learned from his education, but in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I received my education and where I am a professor by profession, I learned — and teach — every day that words actually have meaning. To me, self-correction implies at least two things. First, a self-correction is, well, a correction by self. Yes, Mao’s policies were “corrected” or even reversed by his successors, as Li pointed out, but in what sense is this “a self-correction?” Mao’s utterly disastrous policies persisted during his waning days even while the chairman lay in a vegetative state and his successor — who came to power through a virtual coup — only dared to modify Mao’s policies after his physical expiration was certain. If this is an instance of self-correction, exactly what is not a self-correction? Almost every single policy change Li identified in his talk was made by the successor to the person who initiated the policy that got corrected. (In quite a few cases, not even by the immediate successor.) This is a bizarre definition of self-correction. Does it constitute a self-correction when the math errors I left uncorrected in my childhood are now being corrected by my children?

The second meaning of self-correction has to do with the circumstances in which the correction occurs, not just the identity of the person making the correction. A 10-year-old can correct her spelling or math error on her own volition, or she could have done so after her teacher registered a few harsh slaps on the back of her left hand. In both situations the identity of the corrector is the same — the 10-year-old student — but the circumstances of the correction are vastly different. One would normally associate the first situation with “self-correction,” the second situation with coercion, duress or, as in this case, violence. In other words, self-correction implies a degree of voluntariness on the part of the person making the correction, not forced or coerced, not out of lack of alternatives other than making the correction. The element of choice is a vital component of the definition of self-correction.

Let me supply a few missing details to those who applauded Li’s characterization of 64 years of China’s one-party system as one of serial self-corrections. Between 1949 and 2012, there have been six top leaders of the CCP. Of these six, two were abruptly and unceremoniously forced out of power (and one of the two was dismissed without any due process even according to CCP’s own procedures). A third leader fell from power and was put under house arrest for 15 years until his death. That is 3 strikes out of 6 who did not exit power on their intended terms. Two of Mao’s anointed successors died on the job, one in a fiery plane crash when he tried to escape to the Soviet Union and the other tortured to death and buried with a fake name. Oh, did I mention that 30 million people were estimated to have died from Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, and probably millions of people died from the violence of the Cultural Revolution? Also, do you know that Mao not only persisted in but accelerated his Great Leap Forward policies after the evidence of the extent of famine became crystal-clear?

Li calls the policy changes after these wrenching tumults “self-corrections.” His reasoning is that an entity called the CCP, but not anybody else, introduced these policy changes. First of all, doesn’t that have something to do with the fact that nobody else was allowed a chance to make those policy changes? Secondly, this fixation on who made the policy changes rather than on the circumstances under which the policy changes were made is surely problematic. Let’s extend Li’s logic a little bit further. Shall we rephrase the American Independence Movement as a self-correction by the British? Or maybe the ceding of the British imperial authority over India as another British self-correcting act? Shall we re-label the Japanese surrender to end the Second World War a self-correction by the Japanese? Yes, there were two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all of that, but didn’t the representatives of Emperor Hirohito sign the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on the battleship of USS Missouri?

To a hammer, everything is a nail. Li sees ills of democracies everywhere — financial crises in Europe and the United States, money politics and corruption. I readily agree that money politics in America is a huge problem and that it is indeed making the system utterly dysfunctional. But let’s be very clear about exactly how and why money politics is dysfunctional. It is dysfunctional precisely because it is fundamentally antithetical to democracy.  Money politics is a perversion of democracy. It undermines and invalidates a canonical pillar of democracy — one person, one vote. To be logically consistent, Li should celebrate money politics because it is moving the United States in the direction of the authoritarian way of politics that he is so enamored of.

This may be a shocking revelation to Li, but US and European democracies did not patent financial crisis. Many authoritarian regimes experienced catastrophic financial and economic crises. Think of Indonesia in 1997 and the multiple junta regimes in Latin America in the 1970s and the 1980s. The only authoritarian regimes that go without suffering an explicit financial crisis are centrally planned economies, such as Romania and East Germany. But this is entirely because they failed to meet a minimum condition for having a financial crisis — having a financial system. The consequences for this defect are well-known — in lieu of sharp cyclical ups and downs, these countries produced long-term economic stagnations. A venture capitalist would not fare well in that system.

Li claims that he has studied the ability of democracies to deliver performance. At least in his talk, the evidence that he has done so is not compelling. There is no evidence that countries pay an economic price for being democratic. (It is also important to note that there is no compelling global evidence that democracies necessarily outperform autocracies in economic growth either. Some do and some do not. The conclusion is case by case.) But in the areas of public services, the evidence is in favor of democracies. Two academics, David Lake and Matthew Baum, show that democracies are superior to authoritarian countries in providing public services, such as health and education. Not just established democracies do a better job; countries that transitioned to democracies experienced an immediate improvement in the provision of these public services, and countries that reverted back to authoritarianism typically suffered a setback.

Li blames low growth in Europe and in the United States on democracy. I can understand why he has this view, because this is a common mistake often made by casual observers — China is growing at 8 or 9 percent and the US is growing at 1 or 2 percent . He is mistaking a mathematical effect of lower growth due to high base with a political effect of democracies suppressing growth. Because democratic countries are typically richer and have much higher per-capita GDP, it is much harder for them to grow at the same rate as poor — and authoritarian — countries with a lower level of per-capita GDP. Let me provide an analogy. A 15-year-old boy is probably more likely to go to see a movie or hang out with his friends on his own than a 10-year-old because he is older and more mature. It is also likely that he will not grow as fast as a 10-year-old because he is nearer to the plateau of human height. It would be foolish to claim, as Li’s logic basically did, that the 15-year-old is growing more slowly because he is going to movies on his own.

Li is very clear that he dislikes democracy, more than about the reasons why he dislikes democracy. Li rejects democracy on cultural grounds. In his speech, he asserts that democracy is an alien concept for Chinese culture. This view is almost amusing if not for its consequential implications. Last time I checked, venture capital is a foreign concept but that apparently has not stopped Li from practicing and prospering from it. (And I presume “Eric” to be foreign in origin? I may be wrong on this.) Conversely, would Li insist on adhering to every and each precept of Chinese culture and tradition? Would Li object to abolishing the practice of bound feet of Chinese women?

The simple fact is that the Chinese have accepted many foreign concepts and practices already. (Just a reminder: Marxism to the Chinese is as Western as Adam Smith.) It is a perfectly legitimate debate about which foreign ideas and practices China ought to accept, adopt or adapt, but this debate is about which ideas China should adopt, not whether China should adopt any foreign ideas and practices at all.

If the issue is about which ideas or which practices to adopt or reject, then, unlike Li, I do not feel confident enough to know exactly which foreign ideas and practices 1.3 billion Chinese people want to embrace or want to reject. A cultural argument against democracy does not logically lead to making democracy unavailable to the Chinese but to a course of actions for the Chinese people themselves to decide on the merits or the demerits of democracy. Furthermore, if the Chinese themselves reject democracy on their own, isn’t it redundant to expend massive resources to fight and suppress democracy? Aren’t there better ways to spend this money?

So far this debate has not occurred in China, because having this debate in the first place requires some democracy. But it has occurred in other Chinese environments, and the outcome of those debates is that there is nothing fundamentally incompatible between Chinese culture and democracy. Hong Kong, although without an electoral democratic system, has press freedom and rule of law, and there is no evidence that the place has fallen into chaos and anarchy. Taiwan today has a vibrant democracy, and many mainland travelers to Taiwan often marvel that Taiwanese society is not only democratic but also far more adherent to Chinese traditions than mainland China. (I have always felt that those who believe that democracy and Chinese culture are incompatible are closet supporters of Taiwanese independence. They exclude Taiwanese as Chinese.)

Indeed Li himself has accepted quite a few political reforms that are normally considered as “Western.” NGOs are okay and even some press freedom is okay. He also endorses some intra-party democracy. These are all sensible steps toward making the Chinese system more democratic than the Maoist system, and I am all for them. The difference is that I see freedom to vote and multi-party competition as natural and logical extensions of these initial reforms, whereas Li draws a sharp line in the sand between the political reforms that have already occurred and the potential political reforms that some of us have advocated. As much as I tried, I fail to see any differences in principle between these partial reforms and the more complete reforms encompassing democracy.

There is a very curious way Li objects to democracy: He objects to many of the mechanics of democracy. In particular, he has a thing against voting. But the problem is that voting is simply a way to implement the practice of democracy, and even Li endorses some democracy. For example, he favors intra-party democracy. Fine, I do too; but how do you implement intra-party democracy without voting? This is a bit like praising tennis as a sport but condemning the use of a racket to play it.

Li has not provided a coherent and logical argument for his positions on democracy. I suspect, although I do not have any direct evidence, that there is a simple modus operandi — endorsing reforms the CCP has endorsed and opposing reforms that CCP has opposed. This is fine as far as posturing goes but it is not a principled argument of anything.

That said, I believe it is perfectly healthy and indeed essential to have a rigorous debate on democracy — but that debate ought to be based on data, facts, logic and reasoning. By this criterion, Li’s talk does not start that debate.

In this aspect, however, democracy and autocracy are not symmetrical. In a democracy, we can debate and challenge democracy and autocracy alike, as Li did when he put down George W. Bush (which I greatly enjoyed) and as I do here. But those in an autocracy can challenge democracy only. (Brezhnev, upon being informed that there were protesters shouting “Down with Reagan” in front of the White House and that the US government could not do anything to them, reportedly told Reagan, “There are people shouting ‘Down with Reagan’ on Red Square and I am not doing anything to them.”) I have no troubles with people challenging people in power and being skeptical about democracy. In fact, the ability to do so in a democracy is the very strength of democracy, and a vital source of human progress. Copernicus was Copernicus because he overturned, not because he re-created, Ptolemaic astronomy. But by the same criterion, I do have troubles with people who do not see the merit of extending the same freedom they have to those who currently do not have it.

Like Li, I do not like the messianic tone some have invoked to support democracy. I support democracy on pragmatic grounds. The single most important benefit of democracy is its ability to tame violence. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker provided these startling statistics: During the 20th century, totalitarian regimes were responsible for 138 million deaths, of which 110 million occurred in communist countries. Authoritarian regimes caused another 28 million deaths. Democracies killed 2 million, mainly in their colonies as well as with food blockades and civilian bombings during the wars. Democracies, as Pinker pointed out, have trouble even bringing themselves to execute serial murderers. Democracies, Pinker argued, have “a tangle of institutional restraints, so a leader can’t just mobilize armies and militias on a whim to fan out over the country and start killing massive numbers of citizens.”

Contrary to what he was apparently told when he was a Berkeley hippie, the idea of democracy is not that it leads to a nirvana but that it can help prevent a living hell. Democracy has many, many problems. This insurance function of democracy — of mitigating against disasters — is often forgotten or taken for granted, but it is the single most important reason why democracy is superior to every other political system so far invented by human beings. Maybe one day there will be a better system than democracy, but the Chinese political system, in Li’s rendition, is not one of them.

Yasheng Huang is a Professor of Political Economy and International Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is the Founder of both the China Lab and India Lab at MIT Sloan. His writings have appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Forbes, and most recently in Foreign Affairs, where he tangled with Eric X. Li on a similar topic. In 2011, Huang spoke at TEDGlobal on democracy and growth in China and India.

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作者: 然后203    时间: 2014-10-7 19:21


社会意识发展到这一步才是正常的。相关的道理我给不少同事朋友讲过。
可能从一个不一样的人嘴里讲出来才会有人听。

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作者: 然后203    时间: 2014-10-7 19:47

烟波钓徒 发表于 2014-10-7 18:16
Why democracy still wins: A critique of Eric X. Li’s “A tale of two political systems”
Posted by: ...

黄亚声就是靠唱衰中国吃饭的。论调一百年不变。

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作者: 楚天    时间: 2014-10-7 21:39
俺很欣赏这篇文章，因为这是讲给西方听众的，可以开阔他们的眼界。至于中国读者，咱们会觉得这里有些信息不特别准确，另外某些人已经自我感觉过分良好，读了无益。

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作者: 山菊    时间: 2014-10-8 09:31
我为了照顾国内网友贴的优酷，难道国外的看不见？

这里有油管的：

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0YjL9rZyR0

你这个中文翻译有的地方不准确，还是听着好些：）

那两个‘元叙事’我也曾经买过，跟他一样，第一次失望是89年；第二次梦碎则是2008奥运。然后开始关注一些关于中美两国的‘国家利益／国家战略’方面的文章～～～所以听了讲座颇有一些共鸣。

还是我们小轩的易明说得好：‘国，不可爱也得爱。’

她不可爱的地方我们都有责任；让她可爱更是我们的责任！

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作者: 山菊    时间: 2014-10-8 09:44

然后203 发表于 2014-10-7 06:47
黄亚声就是靠唱衰中国吃饭的。论调一百年不变。

原来就是黄亚声哦～～～昨天我一边做事，一边有一搭没一搭的听了李和另一个中国面孔的辩论。当时没听到名字，两人的英文都不错。没听仔细，印象中李准备很充分，不停拿出各种数据（多数是西方媒体的数据）。他的对手似乎就是挑毛病～～～比如李谈到党共的选拔人才机制，强调绝大多数中央领导都经过基层的历练。他的反驳就是：没有一个监督机制，谁知道那些干部是咋选出来的？他的反驳也是有道理的，毕竟任人唯亲是中国的传统特色，可惜没象对手那样准备一些令人信服的数据或证据。

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作者: 然后203    时间: 2014-10-8 09:54

山菊 发表于 2014-10-8 09:44
原来就是黄亚声哦～～～昨天我一边做事，一边有一搭没一搭的听了李和另一个中国面孔的辩论。当时没听到名 ...

是这样的，不过对在校学生没社会经验的人，还是很有欺骗性。他一直鼓吹印度发展模式的优越性。

最早知道他是因为他哥黄晶生有一篇回忆哈佛学习生活的文章，也就是从那个时候开始对这些海外学人产生怀疑。

其实资本主义民主之类的在1900年代就被批驳得体无完肤了。

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作者: 山菊    时间: 2014-10-8 10:01

然后203 发表于 2014-10-7 20:54
是这样的，不过对在校学生没社会经验的人，还是很有欺骗性。他一直鼓吹印度发展模式的优越性。

最早知道 ...

呃～～～那他一定是把自己归入印度的‘上等人’里啦？

我没去过印度，只看过一些新闻照片，比当初我插队的贵州穷山村还要可怕～～～前几年回国，曾去探访过插队的小村。虽然跟城市的差距还很大，但比起当年的光景，变化也是相当可喜的！

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