中国-迈向没有自由的富足社会

A Shining Model of Wealth Without Liberty
By James Mann
Sunday, May 20, 2007; Page B01
The Iraq war isn‘t over, but one thing‘s already clear: China won.
Asthe United States has been bleeding popularity and influence around theworld, China has been gaining both. That‘s largely because it has beencoming into its own as the first full-blown alternative since the endof the Cold War to Washington‘s model of free markets and democracy. Asthe U.S. model has become tarnished, China‘s has gained new luster.

(Jon Hicks - ¿ Jon Hicks/corbis)
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For authoritarian leaders around the world seeking to maintain theirgrip on power, China increasingly serves as a blueprint. We‘re used tothinking of China as an economic miracle, but it‘s also becoming apolitical model. Beijing has shown dictators that they don‘t have tochoose between power and profit; they can have both. Today‘s Chinademonstrates that a regime can suppress organized opposition and neednot establish its legitimacy through elections. It shows that a rulingparty can maintain considerable control over information and theInternet without slowing economic growth. And it indicates that anation‘s elite can be bought off with comfortable apartments, thechance to make money, and significant advances in personal,non-political freedoms (clothes, entertainment, sex, travel abroad).
Thisall adds up to a startling new challenge to the future of liberaldemocracy. And the result is ominous for the cause of freedom aroundthe world. China‘s single-party state offers continuing hope not onlyto such largely isolated dictatorships as Burma, Zimbabwe, Syria andNorth Korea but also to some key U.S. friends who themselves resistcalls for democracy (say, Egypt or Pakistan) and to our neighbors inCuba and Venezuela.
The China model has emerged from theconfluence of two independent developments over the past decade. Eachstands on its own, yet the interaction between the two has beenespecially toxic for democratic values.
First has been thefailure of U.S. foreign policy, symbolized above all by the war inIraq. Over the past decade, U.S. foreign policy has been dominated by aschool of thought that emphasizes military power and has tied thespread of democracy to the use of force. Not only has this failed, ithas also undermined support for democracy. U.S. attempts to export freemarkets and political liberty by force have been unable to bring evensecurity, much less prosperity, to Iraq. And they‘ve eroded our appealand clout worldwide.
The second key development has been thestaying power and economic success of the Chinese Communist Party. Inthe years immediately after the crackdown on pro-democracy protestersaround Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, Western pundits predicted thatthe Chinese government had one foot on a banana peel. Any day now, theysaid, it would fall or be forced to embrace far-reaching politicalreform to survive. Instead, China‘s economy expanded by a factor ofnine, and the Communist Party remains firmly in control.
Westernersnext seized on the Internet as the inevitable liberator of the Chinese."Information will knock down the bamboo curtain!" went the refrain.Instead, Chinese cops in the 500 cities that have established Internetpolice bureaus are using the Web -- tapping into people‘s e-mailaccounts and monitoring individuals using politically sensitive Websites -- as a handy tool to stamp out dissent.
China‘s stabilityhas belied the hopes and forecasts of Western leaders that growingprosperity would significantly alter the country‘s one-party politicalsystem. Over the past decade, presidents, prime ministers and othershave frequently offered a soothing scenario about how China willinexorably move toward freedom and democracy. In 1997, President BillClinton said China was on "the wrong side of history." Political changewould come "just as, inevitably, the Berlin Wall fell," he predicted.President Bush has repeated many of these same themes: "Trade freelywith China, and time is on our side," he once said. British PrimeMinister Tony Blair said two years ago that he thought there was "anunstoppable momentum" toward democracy in China. Not quite.
The optimistsassume that once a country becomes more affluent, its emerging middleclass will press for democratic change. But in China, the middle class(itself still tiny as a proportion of the overall population) supportsor at least goes along with the existing political order; after all,that order made it middle class in the first place. The ruling partyallows urban elites the freedom to wear and buy what they want, to seethe world, to have affairs, to invest and to profit mightily; inreturn, the elites don‘t challenge the Communist Party‘s hold on power.Moreover, China‘s new business community is hardly independent of theparty; in effect, it is the party, linked to China‘s power structurethrough financial connections or family ties.
In economic terms,China doesn‘t fit into the standard model of a free-market system,either. American magazines and television programs have for yearsjoyously proclaimed that China has "gone capitalist" -- a supposed sign(along with the proliferation of McDonald‘s, Kentucky Fried Chicken andStarbucks) that the Chinese are becoming like us. In fact, thefast-growing economic system that China is developing is quitedifferent from the American model -- a fact not lost on othercountries. Yes, China has private firms and stock markets. But only asmall portion of the stock of any given company is traded on the stockmarket; the majority is held by state-owned enterprises. CommunistParty officials frequently retain a majority of the seats on boards ofdirectors and keep veto power over personnel decisions. And when itcomes to foreign businesses, the Chinese system has been so good atattracting outside investment and fueling economic growth that theGerman magazine Der Spiegel recently asked, "Does Communism Work AfterAll?"
Of course, the Chinese model doesn‘t really work for, say,Burma; China is unique because of its sheer size and the allure of itsmassive markets, which no other country can match. Still, repressiveregimes elsewhere are increasingly looking to Beijing. And often thesympathy flows both ways: China has, in recent years, helped to prop upZimbabwe, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Cuba and North Korea.