亨利·罗文（HenryS.Rowen）胡佛研究所高级研究员，亚太研究中心主任，斯坦福大学商学院荣誉教授，是斯坦福区域革新和创业工程主任，《大中国革新探索》（斯坦福大学出版社2008年）主编。
斯坦福学者亨利·罗文：中国即将出现大变革 将深刻影响世界
斯坦福大学商学院荣誉教授亨利·罗文日前发表文章称，中国即将出现大变革，而且很可能是激烈的变革。在过去30多年里，中国经济以平均年增长率9%的速度迅猛增长，这使中国成为世界贸易和金融业的大玩家，而且在政治和军事领域也发挥越来越大的作用。这种增长不仅具有重要的国际意义，而且深刻影响了中国社会，迟早也将对国内政治产生影响。
亨利·罗文（HenryS.Rowen）胡佛研究所高级研究员，亚太研究中心主任，斯坦福大学商学院荣誉教授，是斯坦福区域革新和创业工程主任，《大中国革新探索》（斯坦福大学出版社2008年）主编。
亨利·罗文12月1日发表在胡佛研究所网站上的这篇文章指出，即将出现的是政治和经济两方面的变革。变革出现的顺序将产生影响力的巨大差别，但这个顺序非常不确定。无论如何，大变革很可能在2020年前出现。
社会变革
变革出现的早晚将产生重大差别。相信中国的增长将最终带来政治变革是一回事（邓小平在1988年告诉国务卿舒尔茨中国在50年后将成为民主国家，或许他的意思是‘忘掉它吧’），期待政治变革在这个十年内出现是另外一回事，本文的观点是后者。不过，事情并不这么简单（从来不），下文还将谈到的另一个观点是在此阶段很可能出现突然的经济衰退。人们不应该期待这些预测的事件是各自独立的，因为政治动荡将损害经济发展，而经济突然衰退肯定产生政治后果。政治动荡或经济衰退或者两者兼而有之的相互作用只是猜测而已，本文将做出一些猜测。
假设中国的经济持续高速增长，变革出现的时间应该是2015年，这是很近的未来，足以引起我们的关注，随后几年可能性将越来越大。把它们联系起来的共同因素是中国的人均GDP到那时将达到17000美元（以2005年的购买力为准）。这是自由之家列举的大部分“自由”国家或所有“部分自由”的非石油富国的经济水平。有助于自由的因素还有教育程度，而这在中国也稳步增长。虽然今天中国的教育水平仍然属于“非自由”的范畴，但假设增长率维持在年均9-10%，它将在2015年达到自由的基本水平。如果增长率下降到总理温家宝所说的7%，该水平也将在2017年后不久实现（更准确地说，如果经济持续高速增长，中国在2017年被认定为“部分自由”的概率是50%，随后概率将越来越大）。
可以理解的是，该话题的大部分讨论集中在政治自由即人民选择国家领导人的能力上。但自由之家有两个自由指标：一是政治权利，一是公民自由（如美国的权利法案）。从这些标准来看，当今中国在政治权利上垫底，在公民自由上稍好一些。原本就不该有政治排名，因为中国是列宁主义国家，共产党把经济自由和严格的政治控制结合起来，但是经济自由将产生深远的社会后果。经济自由的基础是繁荣，而繁荣是不平等分配的，中国东部城市里已经出现了庞大的中产阶级，越来越大的私营经济，媒体比10年前更自由，比30年前的自由度更是大多了（但政治言论仍然不自由），劳动力市场更开放，都市居住权的限制也不那么严格，宗教活动虽然常常受到骚扰但基本上被容许了，司法体系也在缓慢前行，人们的权利意识越来越强。笔者想再次强调繁荣并不均衡，庞大的中产阶级集中在东部城市里。用自由之家的说法，这些进步意味着公民自由的进步。
从消极的一面看，最近一直存在着对持不同政见者的打击，官方的委婉语是“维稳”。
现在还不清楚为什么在共产党控制似乎很强大的时候出现这种事。明年即将出现的领导人换届似乎已经定下来了，发生的群体性事件很多出现在少数民族地区。官方对阿拉伯世界的动荡传播到中国的担心是真实的，但人们对1989年天安门事件的记忆肯定也发挥了作用，因为这场风波在共党领袖的心中一直栩栩如生。那场风波是最后导致苏联解体的东欧动荡激发起来的，被视为危害党的领导。如果你采取列宁主义者的做法，就不可能不特别小心。
不幸的是，中国官方最近以维稳的名义打击持不同政见者。
中国的情形需要放在世界模式的背景下考虑，该模式显示经济发展和民主自由之间存在着明显的相关关系。这种联系或许三种可能性可以解释：1）经济发展导致民主；2）民主或许促成发展；3）两者或许有一个共同起因。经济发展导致民主的第一种可能是西摩·马丁·李普塞特（SeymourMartinLipset）的假设，即只有受过良好教育的富人才能抗拒蛊惑人心的煽动家。稳定的民主预设了人力、社会、和物质资本的积累。教育促进增长，人们文化水平的提高促成反对独裁的民主革命，使得反对民主的政变不大可能成功。
罗伯特·巴罗（RobertBarro）在分析了一百多个国家后发现更高的收入水平和更高的教育水平（初级）预示着更高的自由，这是支持李普塞特观点的证据，虽然在有利于选举权的因素出现和它在政治上的具体表现之间还存在着明显的时间滞后。在教育水平上，2000年中国25岁以上的人口中平均受教育年限是5.74年，尤其是在农村地区和快速扩张的高等教育方面教育进步的步伐在加快。到了2025年，25岁以上人口的平均正规学校教育将达到8年。教育带来的进步虽然缓慢，但经过一段时间终将产生巨大的影响力。巴罗把这种滞后归咎于制度的惰性，虽然受到经济和社会变量出现变化的影响。他注意到大概20年后，“民主程度就将完全由经济和社会变量所决定。”
这个观察帮助人们理解为什么像中国这样经济快速增长的国家当今的自由程度远远低于现有经济发展程度预测的那种水平。
亚当·普沃斯基（AdamPrzeworski）及合著者也发现经济发展水平最好地预测了不同政权出现的概率，但他们的解释是如果和从独裁到民主的转型国家相比，富裕国家的民主更容易生存。这些研究者注意到，一个国家的收入水平越高，该国的民主政权维持下来的机会就越大。
中国共产党人在表达各种怨愤不满时感受到的禁忌越来越少。
巴罗和普沃斯基等人发现民主并不直接导致更高的经济增长，佩尔森（TorstenPersson）塔贝里尼（GuidoTabellini）进一步强化了这个观点，他们认为民主导致经济增长的证据非常弱。他们写到“民主”这个概念太笼统，而制度细节非常重要。该理论的画面仍然不清晰，文献仍然存在不同观点。
第三个可能性是民主和发展拥有共同的起因。这个观点得到戴龙·阿西墨格鲁（DaronAcemoglu）和合著者的支持，他们认为“虽然收入水平和民主是正相关关系，但没有证据表明存在因果关系。相反，历史因素往往影响不同社会的政治和经济发展道路的偏离，导致民主和经济表现的正相关关系。”这些学者认为政治和经济发展道路交织在一起。有些国家走上民主和经济发展相互促进的道路，有些国家则遵循专制、压迫和更有限的经济发展的道路。
不管人们采取哪种解释，民主的中国在东亚并不算稀罕，因为日本、韩国、台湾都被自由之家列为民主国家，新加坡被列为“部分民主”国家。
它们显示西方式的民主能够在华人社会生根发芽。
中共为选举开了一扇小窗户，1988年允许村级领导干部选举。到了1990年代中期，90%的村委会主任都是通过投票而上台的。但个人直接提名、多个候选人、秘密投票、公开唱票、马上宣布投票结果、正常的罢免程序等要求并不总是得到遵循。多年前人们就猜想这种选举将扩展到乡镇层级，但这种期待并没有出现。
这使得中共面临一个变化的情景，人们在表达怨愤和不满时感受到的禁忌更少了，而这些不满和冤屈往往是当局的错误造成的。其中一个例子就是2011年7月的温州动车事故。这个事故本来就够糟糕的了，让许多人愤怒不已的是当局试图掩盖真相（从字面意思上就是把摔到桥下的车厢和尸体掩埋）。
人们表达不满的方式之一是通过当局所说的“群体性事件”。这些事件主要是罢工和抗议的结合体，抗议警察的不公，抗议地方党组织征地拆迁牟利以及少数民族民众抗议种族歧视等。在1995年，报道的群体性事件大约一万起，十年后的官方数据增加了十倍。如今政府已经停止报道这个数量，但非官方的估计是2010年大概有 16万起群体事件。抗议者一般都避免直接挑战中共的权威，更愿意引用党的文件、法律和国务院规定和领导人言论中列举的权利。抗议者也非常小心地把议题局限在本地事务上。人们不应该认为这个国家的抗议活动将严重威胁政权的存在。人们知道历史上这些抗议的作用是什么，领袖们有时候鼓励他们抗争，作为赶走当地腐败官员的方式。但是，尽管这并不说明中共摇摇欲坠，但也并非中共执政正当性的证据。
当局表现出的焦虑反映在社会出现的深刻变化上。正如杰夫·代尔（GeoffDyer）在2010年10月的《金融时报》上写的：
因为组织亲民主的情愿活动而被关进监狱的刘晓波是政治改革的旗手，但在很多方面他并非当局的主要挑战。刘先生属于上一代的持不同政见者，这些人在天安门事件后已经被边缘化了。普通中国人很少听说过他。
相反，压力更加多样化而且来自不同地方。都市郊区富裕阶层如果财产权受到侵犯更乐意组织大型抗议活动，而且确保电视摄像机的拍摄。中国迅速增长的司法群体里有很多人主张建立更加独立的法院，其中不仅有法官也有背负冤屈的公民。
而且，现在还有因特网，虽然当局尽一切努力审查和左右舆论导向，但网络已经成为反叛和嘲讽的源头。
中国的党国是这样一场暴风雨，人们往往容易忽略列宁主义阴影下出现的越来越充满活力的社会。
中共确实是一场暴风雨，爱德华·斯坦菲尔德（Edward Steinfeld）在2011年7-8月那一期《波士顿评论》上总结如下：
在这个新制度下，国家权威和国家与社会关系的本质已经完全不同了，这个现实被国家狂热地试图开发新规则维持控制和影响力的努力所证实。为回应对变化了的国家作用的期待，出现了依法治理的新话语。除了新税法、合同法、物权法、环境保护法之外，国家还出台了政府信息公开的法规，在某种程度上相当于中国的信息自由法。有些省比如经济发展很快的福建已经出台了强调集体协商作用的新的劳动法。
有关政治未来的话题，领导人的公开言论存在不同的口气。党的许多领袖已经表达反对审查和支持言论和媒体自由的观点。至于当局，温家宝总理在接受美国有线电视新闻网CNN采访时说“人民追求民主和自由的希望和需要是不可阻挡的。”（这句话遭到中国媒体的封杀）
技术已经改变了人们接触信息的方式和相互交流的能力。
其中一个是无处不在的手机，当今中国使用的手机超过8亿5千万部，未来几年，手机用户可能超过10亿。每天有五亿条短信在流传，政府已经失去了对人们传播信息、组织抗议活动和揭露腐败等的控制（比如下一场类似萨斯的传染病）。手机成为突发事件引起的群体性抗议活动的组织工具。
因特网的重要性无可争议。中国有五亿网民，而且还在不断增加。因为信息的其他来源和娱乐一直比其他国家受到更多限制，它的社会影响力也就更大些。这就产生了寻求信息和发布博客的用户和试图确定限制性边界的审查者之间不断上演的博弈。领导人对阿拉伯世界抗议活动的恐慌近乎草木皆兵，最近以一种滑稽的方式表现出来。因为突尼斯革命者将他们成功的起义命名为“茉莉花革命”，所以这种花在中国就曾经成为不存在的植物。二月份，当中国的“茉莉花革命”信息开始在网上传播的时候，三个汉字茉莉花被屏蔽了，发短信根本无法使用这些字，连胡锦涛主席唱“茉莉花”这首歌的视频也从网上消失了。
人民通过因特网或者使用手机展现出来的力量破坏了列宁主义控制的原则：用地域和社会阶级把人们孤立起来。所有这种现代化在一定程度上都得到当局的许可，因为这些社交网络技术带来的经济利益，如果它们受到严格限制，中国的经济增长将受到严重影响。
经济和政治动荡？
所以，中共领袖认为维持党对国家的控制所必须的经济高速发展播下了它们垮台的种子。但是中国的高速增长能够持续吗？每年9%以上的速度将降下来，这是绝对的真理，就像树不可能长到天上去，30年的高速增长（1989年天安门事件后短暂停滞了一段时间）已经非常罕见了。普遍的观点是通过劳动力增长乏力、工人从生产力低下的农村向生产力高的城市流动放缓、国家向国际技术前沿迈进的途径等形式出现衰退。
最近一些学者巴里·埃森格林（BarryEichengreen）、康镐炫（KwanhoShin）、朴东炫（DonghyunPark）等提出了相反的观点。他们发现几乎所有非石油出口国家的高速增长都是在以2005年国际价格计算人均GDP达到16740美元后突然停止了，其增长速度从每年5.6%突然降至2.1%。他们注意到中国的轨迹是在2015年达到这个水平（或者如果每年增长率是7%的话，是在2017年）。他们预测未来的经济衰退将是年增长率是2%到3.5%，这将意味着中国的增长速度降至6到7%（作者认为这种结果不是确定无疑的，但可能性很大）。基本原因是人均GDP到了这个程度后，工人从农业转向工业的回报开始下降，利用外资和技术的利益也随之消失。导致经济衰退的另外因素是中国故意压低人民币汇率。这三位作者观察到，越过16000美元水平仍然持续保持快速增长的经济体只有两个，那就是城市国家新加坡和香港。
这个现象的核心是生产力增长的放缓。他们写到：
经济放缓出现在经济增长过程的这个时刻，即人们不再能从农村转移多余劳动力到工业领域来刺激生产，引进外国技术的收益开始降低，但全要素生产力（TFP）从不寻常的3%以上的高水平突然急剧降至零仍然令人印象深刻。
但在这个方面，中国具有独特的优势以保持经济增长的高速度：中国地域辽阔可以大量注入投资，西部省份人多但贫穷。针对这一点，作者写到：
如果增长奇迹在国内移植的话，占中国人口相当比例的内陆省份的经济发展（人口比很多国家还多）在未来几年仍然可以维持中国的经济增长。政府已经扩展了基础设施建设比如高速路和铁路到这些欠发达地区，为它们的经济转型做准备。
假设确实出现了突然的经济衰退，后果会是什么呢？从国内来看，衰退很可能根据地域和行业不同而有所变化。已经出现的情况是很多资本投资很可能回报率很低，3000亿美元的高铁投资中很多可能就是如此。政府会做出削减资本投资和鼓励消费的反应吗？中国的整个出口已经引人注目地下降了36%。政府说要这么做。
几乎可以肯定的是中国的稳定，实际上也是中共统治的合法性要求经济持续高速增长---最起码年均增长率应该在7%。虽然存在神奇的门槛的说法并不可信，但这个速度若在世界其他地方都会被认为非常好的，如果经济大幅度衰退无论是国内还是国外都将对中国造成严重的后果。
从国内来说，经济增长放缓的前景出现很多问题，如这种衰退的不同影响如何跨国收入分配，我们知道贫富差距已经非常巨大了。有钱有势的某些人在炫耀他们的财富，网上已经出现了很多这种事。如果困难时期到来，人们会怎么看待这种消费？
哪些经济领域受到影响最沉重？房地产泡沫破裂已经即将来临，建筑工人将面临失业困境。汽车行业如何呢？作为世界第二大，2010年销售汽车1800万辆，官方预计在2021年将达到5000万辆。这对已经让政府头疼的问题如包括大学毕业生在内的失业和就业不足意味着什么？人们对希望破灭会做出什么反应呢？人们对本来就不受人爱戴的党的不满是否会大幅度增加呢？
至于对国际产生的可能影响，埃森格林和同事的观点是“有人估计，中国一家就占全球需求增长的30%，金砖四国总体占需求的45%，新兴市场和发展中国家作为整体是世界的绝大多数。”简而言之，中国经济衰退将严重影响世界经济增长。
受影响最大的是原材料供应如巴西、印度尼西亚、澳大利亚，但也包括日本和欧洲的机器供应商。考虑到国际贸易的多边特征，美国的出口也将受到影响。
中国的国防和外交政策在很多方面也将受到经济衰退的影响。增长衰退意味着未来军事潜力的扩张就不会这么大。中国将发现更难提供许多人预计将拥有的，人民解放军无疑期待的各种先进武器的货款。如果国家的困难足够沉重的话，中共可能被诱惑把外国人当作替罪羊。首要的目标就是美国人。
中共有一个选择，通过逐渐引入自下而上的政治变革试图避免可能的大动荡。这就是曾经也是列宁主义政党的国民党在台湾的做法。政治选举首先在地方政府，随后在国民代表大会进行，直到最后选举总统。这个过程虽然也不是没有困难但相对来说还算顺利。中国没有采取自上而下的途径或许是因为党的领袖看到这对其控制的威胁实在太大了，或许因为担心造成政治动乱。人们很难批评中国领袖这样的权力专家，但大麻烦确实就在前面。
两种变革的相互关系
回到最初的立场：在2020年之前某个时候中国将很可能出现政治变革或经济变革或者两种变革同时出现。如果这种变革出现了，两种变革出现的顺序可能产生很大差别，虽然人们只能预测情况会如何变化。如果首先出现实质性的政治自由，那么不那么严重的经济衰退就不会造成灾难性影响。但是如果出现另外一种情况，经济动荡先于政治改革，那么，严重的经济衰退将造成政治自由化、保守派势力成功控制局势、或陷入长期的政治动乱。我们不得而知。
不管怎样，中国在未来十年的发展将很可能深刻地影响世界其他地方，就像过去这些年对世界产生的影响一样巨大，只不过是用其他的方式。
December 1, 2011
policy review » no. 170 » features
China: Big Changes Coming Soon
by Henry S. Rowen
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/100861
Economic growth and political upheaval
Big changes are ahead for China, probably abrupt ones. The economy has grown so rapidly for many years, over 30 years at an average of nine percent a year, that its size makes it a major player in trade and finance and increasingly in political and military matters. This growth is not only of great importance internationally, it is already having profound domestic social effects and it is bound to have internal political ones — sooner or later.
Two kinds of changes are in store: political and economic. The order in which they occur will affect their impacts, and that order is very uncertain. In any case, big discontinuities are likely before 2020.
SOCIAL CHANGES
Sooner versus later can make a large difference. It is one thing to believe that China’s growth will lead eventually to political change (Deng Xiaoping told George Shultz in 1988 that China would become a democracy in 50 years, perhaps meaning: “Forget about it.”), but is quite another matter to expect political change within this decade — an argument made here. But things are not so simple (they never are); another line of argument, discussed below, is that there is a good chance of an abrupt economic slowdown over this period. One should not expect these conjectured events to be independent; political turbulence would hurt the economy and a sharp economic slowdown would surely have political consequences. The interplay between these two prospects, a political disruption and/or an economic jolt, can only be a matter of speculation, and some is offered here.
The leading edge of the time when these events might occur, assuming continued high-speed growth, is 2015 — soon enough to get our attention — with the odds increasing in successive years. The common factor that connects them is that China will reach a gdp per capita level of $17,000 by about then (in 2005 purchasing power parity). This is the level at which all non-oil-rich countries are at least “partly free” as rated by Freedom House, with the large majority being “Free.” Also fostering freedoms is the level of education, and that too is steadily increasing in China. While today it is deep in the “non-free” category, assuming growth is sustained at nine to ten percent a year it will reach this freedom benchmark level by 2015; if growth slows to seven percent annually, as Premier Wen Jiabao has suggested it will, that level is reached not long after — by 2017. (To be more precise, with continued high growth there is a 50–50 chance of China being declared partly free by 2017, odds that will increase thereafter.)
Most discussion on this topic focuses, understandably, on political freedoms, the ability of a people to choose their rulers. But Freedom House has two freedom indexes: One is on political rights while the other is civil liberties (for the latter, think of the U.S. Bill of Rights). On these measures, China today has a bottom score on political rights and is rated one step above the bottom on civil liberties. There should be no argument about the political rating; it is a Leninist state in which the Communist Party has combined economic liberalizing with tight political control. But economic liberalizing is having profound social consequences. Its foundation is prosperity. Prosperity is decidedly unequally divided, but a large class has emerged centered in the cities in the eastern part of the country, there is a growing private sector, the press is freer than a decade ago and much freer than 30 years ago (but with political speech remaining decidedly unfree), the labor market is more open, urban residency permits are less binding, religious practices are often harassed but are widely tolerated, the legal system crawls ahead, and people have a growing sense of having rights (not a traditional Chinese value). Prosperity may be decidedly unequally divided but, again, a large class has emerged centered in the cities in the eastern part of the country. In Freedom House terms, these advances mean progress on civil liberties.
On the negative side, recently there has been a crackdown on dissent with the official euphemism being “stability maintenance.” It isn’t clear why this is happening given that Party control looks strong. The transition to the next set of rulers next year seems to be settled, while many of the mass demonstrations that occur are taking place in the non-Han periphery of the country. It is true that worries are expressed by officialdom about the political turmoil engulfing the Arab world spreading to China, and memories about the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which are no doubt vivid in the minds of Party leaders, must also be playing a role. They were triggered by the upheavals in Eastern Europe, which culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and were seen as jeopardizing the rule of the Party. If you are running a Leninist operation you can’t be too careful.
Unfortunately, China has recently cracked down on dissent with the official explanation being “stability maintenance.”
China’s situation needs to be put into the worldwide pattern, which shows a strong correlation between economic development and democratic freedoms. Three possibilities might account for this connection: 1) Development might lead to democracy; 2) democracy might foster development; or 3) there might be a common cause driving both. The first, development leading to democracy, is Seymour Martin Lipset’s hypothesis that only a society with educated, wealthy people can resist the appeal of demagogues. Stable democracy presupposes an accumulation of human, social, and physical capital. Education promotes growth, and schooling makes democratic revolutions against dictatorships more probable and successful antidemocratic coups less probable.
After analyzing more than a hundred countries, in support of the Lipset view Robert Barro found that higher incomes and higher levels of (primary) education predict higher freedoms — but with significant time lags between the appearance of a factor positive for electoral rights and its expression in politics. On education, in 2000, China’s over-25 population had an average of only 5.74 years of schooling. Large educational-improvement efforts are underway, especially in rural areas and in the rapidly expanding postsecondary sector. By 2025, the average Chinese person over 25 will have had almost eight years of formal schooling. The educational mill grinds slowly but over time has huge effects. Barro attributed such lags to inertia in institutions affected by changes in economic and social variables, and notes that after about two decades “the level of democracy is nearly fully determined by the economic and social variables.”
This observation helps one to understand why a rapidly growing country such as China has a freedom rating today well below the level that its current income would predict.
Adam Przeworski and his coauthors also find that levels of economic development best predict the incidence of various types of political regimes, but their interpretation is the superior survival capacity of wealthier democracies rather than to movements from dictatorship to democracy at higher levels of wealth. The higher the level of income that a given country enjoys, these researchers note, the better are the odds that a democratic regime in that country will endure.
People in the Chinese Communist Party are feeling fewer inhibitions about airing their grievances, which are numerous.
Barro and Przeworski are among those who find that democracy does not lead directly to higher growth, a view reinforced by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, who believe that the evidence that democratizations yield economic growth is weak. They write that “democracy” is too blunt a concept and that institutional details matter greatly. The theoretical picture remains unclear and the literature is divided.
The third possibility, that democracy and development have a common cause, finds support from Daron Acemoglu and his several coauthors, who argue that “though income and democracy are positively correlated, there is no evidence of a causal effect. Instead . . . historical factors appear to have shaped the divergent political and economic development paths of various societies, leading to the positive association between democracy and economic performance.” These scholars see political and economic development paths as interwoven. Some countries embarked on development paths associated with democracy and economic growth, while others followed paths based on dictatorship, repression, and more limited growth.
Whichever interpretation one adopts, a democratizing China would not be unusual in East Asia, with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan rated “Free” and Singapore rated “Partly Free” by Freedom House. They show that Western-style democracy can take root in Sinitic societies.
The Chinese Communist Party has allowed a small window for elections for political office. In 1988 it mandated them, but only for villages. By the mid-1990s, 90 percent of committee heads held their posts by virtue of the ballot. However, requirements such as the direct nomination by individuals, multiple candidates, secret ballots, public counting of votes, immediate announcement of results, and regular recall procedures are not always followed. Some years ago it seemed likely that elections would be extended upward to townships, but this has not happened.
This is creating a changed situation for the Party, with people feeling fewer inhibitions about airing their grievances, which are numerous and can be triggered by events in which the authorities are held at fault. One such case was their response to a high-speed train accident in July 2011. The accident was bad enough, but what enraged many people was the authorities’ attempted cover-up (literally: hastily trying to bury the fallen cars and bodies).
One of the ways the people express their discontent is through what the authorities call “mass incidents.” These are, inter alia, a mixture of strikes and protests against unjust behavior by the police and the seizure of land from peasants by local Party people who then profit from it, and incidences in which non-Han people object to discriminatory behavior. In 1995, about 10,000 such incidents were reported; a decade later the official figure had increased tenfold. The government has stopped reporting this number but an unofficial estimate for 2010 is 160,000. Protesters typically avoid direct challenge to Party authority, preferring to cite rights listed in Party documents, laws, State Council regulations, and speeches by Communist Party leaders. Protests also tend to be carefully limited to local matters. One should not assume that protests in the countryside seriously threaten the regime. People know the role of protests in their history — and of leaders sometimes encouraging them as a way of ferreting out corrupt local officials. Yet while this is not a sign that the Party is tottering, neither is it a sign of Party legitimacy.
The nervousness the authorities are displaying reflects the profound changes occurring in society. As Geoff Dyer wrote in October 2010 in the Financial Times:
Jailed for 11 years for organizing a pro-democracy petition, Mr. Liu [Xiaobo] is a standard-bearer for political reform but in many ways he is not the main challenge for the authorities. . . . Mr. Liu is part of an older generation of dissidents who have been marginalized since Tiananmen. Few ordinary Chinese have heard of him.
Instead, the pressure is more diffuse but from a broader range of sources. There are the well-to-do suburban residents who happily organize large protests when their property rights are affected and make sure television cameras are there to watch them. China’s fast-growing legal community is full of people — from judges to citizens with a grievance — who are trying to build more independent courts.
And then there is the Internet, which, in spite of all the efforts of the authorities to censor and mould discussion, is also a deep well of rebellious irony . . . .
The Chinese party-state is such a blizzard of activity, that it is often easy to overlook the increasingly vibrant society emerging from behind its Leninist shadow.
The Party is indeed in a blizzard of activity, summarized as follows by Edward Steinfeld, writing in the July-August 2011 issue of the Boston Review:
In this new system state authority and the nature of state-society relations are radically different, a reality confirmed by the state’s frenetic effort to develop new rules to maintain control and influence. As a response to changing expectations of the role of the state, a new discourse of law-based governance has emerged. In addition to new tax, contract, property, and environmental laws, the state has promulgated national regulations on open government information — China’s Freedom of Information Act, in a sense. Some provinces, such as booming Fujian, have new labor rules that emphasize collective bargaining.
There are differences in tone among the public statements of some leaders on the subject of its political future. Many Party elders have come out against censorship and in support of freedoms of speech and of the press. As for active authorities, Premier Wen Jiabao said in an interview with cnn that “the people’s wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible” (a statement that was censored in the Chinese press).
Technology is transforming people’s access to information and their ability to communicate with each other. One is the ubiquitous cell phone, with around 850 million of them in use in China today, with over a billion users projected a few years from now. With over half a billion text messages flowing daily, the government has lost control of people’s ability to spread the word (e.g., about the next sars-type epidemic), organize protests, or expose corruption. Cell phones are an organizing instrument for mass demonstrations triggered by disturbing events.
The importance of the Internet should not be doubted. It has about 500 million users in China and is also heading powerfully upward. Because other sources of information and entertainment have been more limited than in most other countries, its social impact is greater. This has produced an ongoing game between users who seek information and who blog and the censors who try to set strict limits. The leaders’ nervousness was recently displayed in an absurd way in reaction to the uprisings in the Arab world. Because the Tunisian revolutionaries dubbed their successful uprising the “Jasmine Revolution,” this flower for a while became a nonexistent plant. In February, when messages for a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” began circulating on the Internet the Chinese characters for jasmine were intermittently blocked in text messages; videos of President Hu Jintao singing “Mo Li Hua,” a Qing dynasty paean to the flower, disappeared from the Web.
Demonstrations of people power via the Internet or the use of cell phones violate a tenet of Leninist control: keeping individuals separated by geography and by social class. All this modernization is being permitted (up to a point) by the authorities because of the economic benefits these social networking technologies bring; the country’s growth would be impaired were they to be more rigorously restricted.
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DISRUPTIONS?
So high-speed growth, seen as necessary by Party leaders if they are to remain in control, is sowing the seeds of their downfall. But will China’s high growth rate be sustained? It is axiomatic that the rate of 9-plus percent per year will slow; trees do not grow to the sky and 30 years of high-speed growth (interrupted briefly by the Tiananmen Square events in 1989) is already exceptional. A common view is that the slowdown will happen gradually through more sluggish growth in the work force, a reduced flow of workers from low-marginal-productivity farming to higher productivity urban work, and the country’s approach to the world technological frontier.
A contrasting view is offered by some scholars, recently by Barry Eichengreen, Kwanho Shin, and Donghyun Park. They find that high growth in almost all non-oil-exporting countries came to a rather sudden end at a per capita gdp of $16,740 in 2005 international prices, with growth slowing from 5.6 to 2.1 percent per annum, and they note that China is on a trajectory to reach that level in 2015 (or 2017 if growth is seven percent a year). They estimate the coming slowdown to be two to 3.5 percent a year, which would take the nation’s growth rate down to around six to seven percent a year (an eventuality the authors present not as certain but as highly probable). The basic reason is that at that level of gdp the payoff from shifting workers from agriculture to industry decreases and so, too, do the benefits from using foreign-developed technologies. Contributing further to the slowdown will be China’s strongly undervalued exchange rate. The three authors observe that the only two fast-growing economies to sail through the $16,000 level unimpeded were the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore.
Central to this phenomenon is a slowing of productivity growth. They write:
Slowdowns coincide with the point in the growth process where it is no longer possible to boost productivity by shifting additional workers from agriculture to industry and where the gains from importing foreign technology diminish. But the sharpness and extent of the fall in tfp (total factor productivity) growth from unusually high levels of 3-plus percent to virtually zero is striking.
However, in this circumstance China has a unique advantage that could keep it growing at a good rate: a vast region into which capital investment can be poured. Its Western provinces are both highly populated and poor. On this point, the authors write:
If the growth miracle is transplantable within China, then the economic development of the interior provinces, which have larger populations than most countries and are home to a substantial fraction of China’s own population, can continue to sustain the country’s growth for years to come. The government is already extending physical infrastructure, such as highways and railways, to less developed provinces to prepare them for this transition.
Assuming an abrupt slowdown does occur, though, what might some of its consequences be? Domestically, much might depend on the sectoral and geographic distribution of the slowdown. Already, much capital investment at the margin probably has little return. This is likely true of much of the reported $300 billion spent on high-speed rail. Might the government respond by cutting some kinds of capital investment (which it should be doing anyway) and encouraging consumption, which has fallen to a remarkably low 36 percent of total output? It has said it wants to do this.
It has become almost axiomatic that the stability of China, indeed the legitimacy of rule by the Party, requires sustained high growth — a minimum of seven percent per year gdp growth. Although the existence of a magic threshold isn’t credible and that rate, almost anywhere else in the world, would be seen as excellent, markedly slowed growth would likely have consequences for China, domestic and foreign.
Domestically, the prospect of slower growth raises many questions. For example, what would the differential impact of slower growth be across the income distribution, which has substantially widened over time? Some of the rich and powerful are flaunting their wealth, and the Internet is displaying this for all to see. How would this consumption come across if times get tough?
What economic sectors would be most affected? Already a real estate bust is in the offing, with rising unemployment for construction workers. What would happen to the auto sector, the world’s largest with more than eighteen million vehicles sold in 2010 and officially forecast to reach 50 million by 2021? What might happen to unemployment and underemployment, already a problem, including for college graduates? How might people react to disappointed expectations? Would disaffection with the Party, which is not universally admired, grow markedly?
On possible international impacts, Eichengreen and his colleagues have something to say: “By some estimates, China alone is accounting for 30 percent of global demand growth, the brics [Brazil, Russia, India and China] collectively 45 percent, and emerging markets and developing countries as a whole a healthy majority of the total.” In short, such a Chinese slowdown would seriously impact world growth.
Most obviously affected would be raw material suppliers such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Australia, but also machinery suppliers in Japan and Europe. Given the multilateral character of world trade, U.S. exports would also be hurt.
China’s defense and foreign policy could be affected in several ways by a major economic slowdown. Slowed growth implies its future military potential will loom not so large. The country would find it more difficult to afford the wide array of advanced weapons many assume it will have and which the People’s Liberation Army doubtless expects to receive. If the nation’s woes are deep enough, the Party might be tempted to blame outsiders for its misfortunes. The prime here would be the Americans.
The Party has the option of trying to avoid a possibly major upheaval by gradually introducing political changes from the bottom. This is what the Kuomintang Party, once also a Leninist one, did in Taiwan. Political choices were introduced first in local government, then in the national parliament, then finally in elections for president. This proceeded not without difficulties but relatively smoothly. China has not followed this upward course perhaps because the Party leadership sees the threat to its control as too great or perhaps because of a belief that political chaos would result. One hesitates to criticize such great experts on power as China’s leaders, but it does look like big trouble could be ahead.
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN DISRUPTIONS
To return to the initial propositions: There is a significant chance of either, or both, political and economic change in China occurring at some point before 2020. If this change happens, the order in which these two events occur could make a major difference, although one can only guess at how events might play out. If substantial political liberalizing were to occur first, then a less-than-huge economic slowdown shouldn’t have a traumatic effect. But if it were to happen the other way around, if economic change comes before political change, then a sharp economic slowdown might result in political liberalizing, or a conservative faction might succeed in tightening the screws, or there might be an extended period of political turbulence. We simply don’t know.
One way or another, developments in China in the next decade have a high probability of deeply affecting the rest of the world — more so than they have already and in very different ways.
Henry S. Rowen is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, director emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is co-director of the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and co-editor of Greater China’s Quest for Innovation (Stanford University Press, 2008).
斯坦福大学商学院荣誉教授亨利·罗文日前发表文章称，中国即将出现大变革，而且很可能是激烈的变革。在过去30多年里，中国经济以平均年增长率9%的速度迅猛增长，这使中国成为世界贸易和金融业的大玩家，而且在政治和军事领域也发挥越来越大的作用。这种增长不仅具有重要的国际意义，而且深刻影响了中国社会，迟早也将对国内政治产生影响。
亨利·罗文（HenryS.Rowen）胡佛研究所高级研究员，亚太研究中心主任，斯坦福大学商学院荣誉教授，是斯坦福区域革新和创业工程主任，《大中国革新探索》（斯坦福大学出版社2008年）主编。
亨利·罗文12月1日发表在胡佛研究所网站上的这篇文章指出，即将出现的是政治和经济两方面的变革。变革出现的顺序将产生影响力的巨大差别，但这个顺序非常不确定。无论如何，大变革很可能在2020年前出现。
社会变革
变革出现的早晚将产生重大差别。相信中国的增长将最终带来政治变革是一回事（邓小平在1988年告诉国务卿舒尔茨中国在50年后将成为民主国家，或许他的意思是‘忘掉它吧’），期待政治变革在这个十年内出现是另外一回事，本文的观点是后者。不过，事情并不这么简单（从来不），下文还将谈到的另一个观点是在此阶段很可能出现突然的经济衰退。人们不应该期待这些预测的事件是各自独立的，因为政治动荡将损害经济发展，而经济突然衰退肯定产生政治后果。政治动荡或经济衰退或者两者兼而有之的相互作用只是猜测而已，本文将做出一些猜测。
假设中国的经济持续高速增长，变革出现的时间应该是2015年，这是很近的未来，足以引起我们的关注，随后几年可能性将越来越大。把它们联系起来的共同因素是中国的人均GDP到那时将达到17000美元（以2005年的购买力为准）。这是自由之家列举的大部分“自由”国家或所有“部分自由”的非石油富国的经济水平。有助于自由的因素还有教育程度，而这在中国也稳步增长。虽然今天中国的教育水平仍然属于“非自由”的范畴，但假设增长率维持在年均9-10%，它将在2015年达到自由的基本水平。如果增长率下降到总理温家宝所说的7%，该水平也将在2017年后不久实现（更准确地说，如果经济持续高速增长，中国在2017年被认定为“部分自由”的概率是50%，随后概率将越来越大）。
可以理解的是，该话题的大部分讨论集中在政治自由即人民选择国家领导人的能力上。但自由之家有两个自由指标：一是政治权利，一是公民自由（如美国的权利法案）。从这些标准来看，当今中国在政治权利上垫底，在公民自由上稍好一些。原本就不该有政治排名，因为中国是列宁主义国家，共产党把经济自由和严格的政治控制结合起来，但是经济自由将产生深远的社会后果。经济自由的基础是繁荣，而繁荣是不平等分配的，中国东部城市里已经出现了庞大的中产阶级，越来越大的私营经济，媒体比10年前更自由，比30年前的自由度更是大多了（但政治言论仍然不自由），劳动力市场更开放，都市居住权的限制也不那么严格，宗教活动虽然常常受到骚扰但基本上被容许了，司法体系也在缓慢前行，人们的权利意识越来越强。笔者想再次强调繁荣并不均衡，庞大的中产阶级集中在东部城市里。用自由之家的说法，这些进步意味着公民自由的进步。
从消极的一面看，最近一直存在着对持不同政见者的打击，官方的委婉语是“维稳”。
现在还不清楚为什么在共产党控制似乎很强大的时候出现这种事。明年即将出现的领导人换届似乎已经定下来了，发生的群体性事件很多出现在少数民族地区。官方对阿拉伯世界的动荡传播到中国的担心是真实的，但人们对1989年天安门事件的记忆肯定也发挥了作用，因为这场风波在共党领袖的心中一直栩栩如生。那场风波是最后导致苏联解体的东欧动荡激发起来的，被视为危害党的领导。如果你采取列宁主义者的做法，就不可能不特别小心。
不幸的是，中国官方最近以维稳的名义打击持不同政见者。
中国的情形需要放在世界模式的背景下考虑，该模式显示经济发展和民主自由之间存在着明显的相关关系。这种联系或许三种可能性可以解释：1）经济发展导致民主；2）民主或许促成发展；3）两者或许有一个共同起因。经济发展导致民主的第一种可能是西摩·马丁·李普塞特（SeymourMartinLipset）的假设，即只有受过良好教育的富人才能抗拒蛊惑人心的煽动家。稳定的民主预设了人力、社会、和物质资本的积累。教育促进增长，人们文化水平的提高促成反对独裁的民主革命，使得反对民主的政变不大可能成功。
罗伯特·巴罗（RobertBarro）在分析了一百多个国家后发现更高的收入水平和更高的教育水平（初级）预示着更高的自由，这是支持李普塞特观点的证据，虽然在有利于选举权的因素出现和它在政治上的具体表现之间还存在着明显的时间滞后。在教育水平上，2000年中国25岁以上的人口中平均受教育年限是5.74年，尤其是在农村地区和快速扩张的高等教育方面教育进步的步伐在加快。到了2025年，25岁以上人口的平均正规学校教育将达到8年。教育带来的进步虽然缓慢，但经过一段时间终将产生巨大的影响力。巴罗把这种滞后归咎于制度的惰性，虽然受到经济和社会变量出现变化的影响。他注意到大概20年后，“民主程度就将完全由经济和社会变量所决定。”
这个观察帮助人们理解为什么像中国这样经济快速增长的国家当今的自由程度远远低于现有经济发展程度预测的那种水平。
亚当·普沃斯基（AdamPrzeworski）及合著者也发现经济发展水平最好地预测了不同政权出现的概率，但他们的解释是如果和从独裁到民主的转型国家相比，富裕国家的民主更容易生存。这些研究者注意到，一个国家的收入水平越高，该国的民主政权维持下来的机会就越大。
中国共产党人在表达各种怨愤不满时感受到的禁忌越来越少。
巴罗和普沃斯基等人发现民主并不直接导致更高的经济增长，佩尔森（TorstenPersson）塔贝里尼（GuidoTabellini）进一步强化了这个观点，他们认为民主导致经济增长的证据非常弱。他们写到“民主”这个概念太笼统，而制度细节非常重要。该理论的画面仍然不清晰，文献仍然存在不同观点。
第三个可能性是民主和发展拥有共同的起因。这个观点得到戴龙·阿西墨格鲁（DaronAcemoglu）和合著者的支持，他们认为“虽然收入水平和民主是正相关关系，但没有证据表明存在因果关系。相反，历史因素往往影响不同社会的政治和经济发展道路的偏离，导致民主和经济表现的正相关关系。”这些学者认为政治和经济发展道路交织在一起。有些国家走上民主和经济发展相互促进的道路，有些国家则遵循专制、压迫和更有限的经济发展的道路。
不管人们采取哪种解释，民主的中国在东亚并不算稀罕，因为日本、韩国、台湾都被自由之家列为民主国家，新加坡被列为“部分民主”国家。
它们显示西方式的民主能够在华人社会生根发芽。
中共为选举开了一扇小窗户，1988年允许村级领导干部选举。到了1990年代中期，90%的村委会主任都是通过投票而上台的。但个人直接提名、多个候选人、秘密投票、公开唱票、马上宣布投票结果、正常的罢免程序等要求并不总是得到遵循。多年前人们就猜想这种选举将扩展到乡镇层级，但这种期待并没有出现。
这使得中共面临一个变化的情景，人们在表达怨愤和不满时感受到的禁忌更少了，而这些不满和冤屈往往是当局的错误造成的。其中一个例子就是2011年7月的温州动车事故。这个事故本来就够糟糕的了，让许多人愤怒不已的是当局试图掩盖真相（从字面意思上就是把摔到桥下的车厢和尸体掩埋）。
人们表达不满的方式之一是通过当局所说的“群体性事件”。这些事件主要是罢工和抗议的结合体，抗议警察的不公，抗议地方党组织征地拆迁牟利以及少数民族民众抗议种族歧视等。在1995年，报道的群体性事件大约一万起，十年后的官方数据增加了十倍。如今政府已经停止报道这个数量，但非官方的估计是2010年大概有 16万起群体事件。抗议者一般都避免直接挑战中共的权威，更愿意引用党的文件、法律和国务院规定和领导人言论中列举的权利。抗议者也非常小心地把议题局限在本地事务上。人们不应该认为这个国家的抗议活动将严重威胁政权的存在。人们知道历史上这些抗议的作用是什么，领袖们有时候鼓励他们抗争，作为赶走当地腐败官员的方式。但是，尽管这并不说明中共摇摇欲坠，但也并非中共执政正当性的证据。
当局表现出的焦虑反映在社会出现的深刻变化上。正如杰夫·代尔（GeoffDyer）在2010年10月的《金融时报》上写的：
因为组织亲民主的情愿活动而被关进监狱的刘晓波是政治改革的旗手，但在很多方面他并非当局的主要挑战。刘先生属于上一代的持不同政见者，这些人在天安门事件后已经被边缘化了。普通中国人很少听说过他。
相反，压力更加多样化而且来自不同地方。都市郊区富裕阶层如果财产权受到侵犯更乐意组织大型抗议活动，而且确保电视摄像机的拍摄。中国迅速增长的司法群体里有很多人主张建立更加独立的法院，其中不仅有法官也有背负冤屈的公民。
而且，现在还有因特网，虽然当局尽一切努力审查和左右舆论导向，但网络已经成为反叛和嘲讽的源头。
中国的党国是这样一场暴风雨，人们往往容易忽略列宁主义阴影下出现的越来越充满活力的社会。
中共确实是一场暴风雨，爱德华·斯坦菲尔德（Edward Steinfeld）在2011年7-8月那一期《波士顿评论》上总结如下：
在这个新制度下，国家权威和国家与社会关系的本质已经完全不同了，这个现实被国家狂热地试图开发新规则维持控制和影响力的努力所证实。为回应对变化了的国家作用的期待，出现了依法治理的新话语。除了新税法、合同法、物权法、环境保护法之外，国家还出台了政府信息公开的法规，在某种程度上相当于中国的信息自由法。有些省比如经济发展很快的福建已经出台了强调集体协商作用的新的劳动法。
有关政治未来的话题，领导人的公开言论存在不同的口气。党的许多领袖已经表达反对审查和支持言论和媒体自由的观点。至于当局，温家宝总理在接受美国有线电视新闻网CNN采访时说“人民追求民主和自由的希望和需要是不可阻挡的。”（这句话遭到中国媒体的封杀）
技术已经改变了人们接触信息的方式和相互交流的能力。
其中一个是无处不在的手机，当今中国使用的手机超过8亿5千万部，未来几年，手机用户可能超过10亿。每天有五亿条短信在流传，政府已经失去了对人们传播信息、组织抗议活动和揭露腐败等的控制（比如下一场类似萨斯的传染病）。手机成为突发事件引起的群体性抗议活动的组织工具。
因特网的重要性无可争议。中国有五亿网民，而且还在不断增加。因为信息的其他来源和娱乐一直比其他国家受到更多限制，它的社会影响力也就更大些。这就产生了寻求信息和发布博客的用户和试图确定限制性边界的审查者之间不断上演的博弈。领导人对阿拉伯世界抗议活动的恐慌近乎草木皆兵，最近以一种滑稽的方式表现出来。因为突尼斯革命者将他们成功的起义命名为“茉莉花革命”，所以这种花在中国就曾经成为不存在的植物。二月份，当中国的“茉莉花革命”信息开始在网上传播的时候，三个汉字茉莉花被屏蔽了，发短信根本无法使用这些字，连胡锦涛主席唱“茉莉花”这首歌的视频也从网上消失了。
人民通过因特网或者使用手机展现出来的力量破坏了列宁主义控制的原则：用地域和社会阶级把人们孤立起来。所有这种现代化在一定程度上都得到当局的许可，因为这些社交网络技术带来的经济利益，如果它们受到严格限制，中国的经济增长将受到严重影响。
经济和政治动荡？
所以，中共领袖认为维持党对国家的控制所必须的经济高速发展播下了它们垮台的种子。但是中国的高速增长能够持续吗？每年9%以上的速度将降下来，这是绝对的真理，就像树不可能长到天上去，30年的高速增长（1989年天安门事件后短暂停滞了一段时间）已经非常罕见了。普遍的观点是通过劳动力增长乏力、工人从生产力低下的农村向生产力高的城市流动放缓、国家向国际技术前沿迈进的途径等形式出现衰退。
最近一些学者巴里·埃森格林（BarryEichengreen）、康镐炫（KwanhoShin）、朴东炫（DonghyunPark）等提出了相反的观点。他们发现几乎所有非石油出口国家的高速增长都是在以2005年国际价格计算人均GDP达到16740美元后突然停止了，其增长速度从每年5.6%突然降至2.1%。他们注意到中国的轨迹是在2015年达到这个水平（或者如果每年增长率是7%的话，是在2017年）。他们预测未来的经济衰退将是年增长率是2%到3.5%，这将意味着中国的增长速度降至6到7%（作者认为这种结果不是确定无疑的，但可能性很大）。基本原因是人均GDP到了这个程度后，工人从农业转向工业的回报开始下降，利用外资和技术的利益也随之消失。导致经济衰退的另外因素是中国故意压低人民币汇率。这三位作者观察到，越过16000美元水平仍然持续保持快速增长的经济体只有两个，那就是城市国家新加坡和香港。
这个现象的核心是生产力增长的放缓。他们写到：
经济放缓出现在经济增长过程的这个时刻，即人们不再能从农村转移多余劳动力到工业领域来刺激生产，引进外国技术的收益开始降低，但全要素生产力（TFP）从不寻常的3%以上的高水平突然急剧降至零仍然令人印象深刻。
但在这个方面，中国具有独特的优势以保持经济增长的高速度：中国地域辽阔可以大量注入投资，西部省份人多但贫穷。针对这一点，作者写到：
如果增长奇迹在国内移植的话，占中国人口相当比例的内陆省份的经济发展（人口比很多国家还多）在未来几年仍然可以维持中国的经济增长。政府已经扩展了基础设施建设比如高速路和铁路到这些欠发达地区，为它们的经济转型做准备。
假设确实出现了突然的经济衰退，后果会是什么呢？从国内来看，衰退很可能根据地域和行业不同而有所变化。已经出现的情况是很多资本投资很可能回报率很低，3000亿美元的高铁投资中很多可能就是如此。政府会做出削减资本投资和鼓励消费的反应吗？中国的整个出口已经引人注目地下降了36%。政府说要这么做。
几乎可以肯定的是中国的稳定，实际上也是中共统治的合法性要求经济持续高速增长---最起码年均增长率应该在7%。虽然存在神奇的门槛的说法并不可信，但这个速度若在世界其他地方都会被认为非常好的，如果经济大幅度衰退无论是国内还是国外都将对中国造成严重的后果。
从国内来说，经济增长放缓的前景出现很多问题，如这种衰退的不同影响如何跨国收入分配，我们知道贫富差距已经非常巨大了。有钱有势的某些人在炫耀他们的财富，网上已经出现了很多这种事。如果困难时期到来，人们会怎么看待这种消费？
哪些经济领域受到影响最沉重？房地产泡沫破裂已经即将来临，建筑工人将面临失业困境。汽车行业如何呢？作为世界第二大，2010年销售汽车1800万辆，官方预计在2021年将达到5000万辆。这对已经让政府头疼的问题如包括大学毕业生在内的失业和就业不足意味着什么？人们对希望破灭会做出什么反应呢？人们对本来就不受人爱戴的党的不满是否会大幅度增加呢？
至于对国际产生的可能影响，埃森格林和同事的观点是“有人估计，中国一家就占全球需求增长的30%，金砖四国总体占需求的45%，新兴市场和发展中国家作为整体是世界的绝大多数。”简而言之，中国经济衰退将严重影响世界经济增长。
受影响最大的是原材料供应如巴西、印度尼西亚、澳大利亚，但也包括日本和欧洲的机器供应商。考虑到国际贸易的多边特征，美国的出口也将受到影响。
中国的国防和外交政策在很多方面也将受到经济衰退的影响。增长衰退意味着未来军事潜力的扩张就不会这么大。中国将发现更难提供许多人预计将拥有的，人民解放军无疑期待的各种先进武器的货款。如果国家的困难足够沉重的话，中共可能被诱惑把外国人当作替罪羊。首要的目标就是美国人。
中共有一个选择，通过逐渐引入自下而上的政治变革试图避免可能的大动荡。这就是曾经也是列宁主义政党的国民党在台湾的做法。政治选举首先在地方政府，随后在国民代表大会进行，直到最后选举总统。这个过程虽然也不是没有困难但相对来说还算顺利。中国没有采取自上而下的途径或许是因为党的领袖看到这对其控制的威胁实在太大了，或许因为担心造成政治动乱。人们很难批评中国领袖这样的权力专家，但大麻烦确实就在前面。
两种变革的相互关系
回到最初的立场：在2020年之前某个时候中国将很可能出现政治变革或经济变革或者两种变革同时出现。如果这种变革出现了，两种变革出现的顺序可能产生很大差别，虽然人们只能预测情况会如何变化。如果首先出现实质性的政治自由，那么不那么严重的经济衰退就不会造成灾难性影响。但是如果出现另外一种情况，经济动荡先于政治改革，那么，严重的经济衰退将造成政治自由化、保守派势力成功控制局势、或陷入长期的政治动乱。我们不得而知。
不管怎样，中国在未来十年的发展将很可能深刻地影响世界其他地方，就像过去这些年对世界产生的影响一样巨大，只不过是用其他的方式。
December 1, 2011
policy review » no. 170 » features
China: Big Changes Coming Soon
by Henry S. Rowen
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/100861
Economic growth and political upheaval
Big changes are ahead for China, probably abrupt ones. The economy has grown so rapidly for many years, over 30 years at an average of nine percent a year, that its size makes it a major player in trade and finance and increasingly in political and military matters. This growth is not only of great importance internationally, it is already having profound domestic social effects and it is bound to have internal political ones — sooner or later.
Two kinds of changes are in store: political and economic. The order in which they occur will affect their impacts, and that order is very uncertain. In any case, big discontinuities are likely before 2020.
SOCIAL CHANGES
Sooner versus later can make a large difference. It is one thing to believe that China’s growth will lead eventually to political change (Deng Xiaoping told George Shultz in 1988 that China would become a democracy in 50 years, perhaps meaning: “Forget about it.”), but is quite another matter to expect political change within this decade — an argument made here. But things are not so simple (they never are); another line of argument, discussed below, is that there is a good chance of an abrupt economic slowdown over this period. One should not expect these conjectured events to be independent; political turbulence would hurt the economy and a sharp economic slowdown would surely have political consequences. The interplay between these two prospects, a political disruption and/or an economic jolt, can only be a matter of speculation, and some is offered here.
The leading edge of the time when these events might occur, assuming continued high-speed growth, is 2015 — soon enough to get our attention — with the odds increasing in successive years. The common factor that connects them is that China will reach a gdp per capita level of $17,000 by about then (in 2005 purchasing power parity). This is the level at which all non-oil-rich countries are at least “partly free” as rated by Freedom House, with the large majority being “Free.” Also fostering freedoms is the level of education, and that too is steadily increasing in China. While today it is deep in the “non-free” category, assuming growth is sustained at nine to ten percent a year it will reach this freedom benchmark level by 2015; if growth slows to seven percent annually, as Premier Wen Jiabao has suggested it will, that level is reached not long after — by 2017. (To be more precise, with continued high growth there is a 50–50 chance of China being declared partly free by 2017, odds that will increase thereafter.)
Most discussion on this topic focuses, understandably, on political freedoms, the ability of a people to choose their rulers. But Freedom House has two freedom indexes: One is on political rights while the other is civil liberties (for the latter, think of the U.S. Bill of Rights). On these measures, China today has a bottom score on political rights and is rated one step above the bottom on civil liberties. There should be no argument about the political rating; it is a Leninist state in which the Communist Party has combined economic liberalizing with tight political control. But economic liberalizing is having profound social consequences. Its foundation is prosperity. Prosperity is decidedly unequally divided, but a large class has emerged centered in the cities in the eastern part of the country, there is a growing private sector, the press is freer than a decade ago and much freer than 30 years ago (but with political speech remaining decidedly unfree), the labor market is more open, urban residency permits are less binding, religious practices are often harassed but are widely tolerated, the legal system crawls ahead, and people have a growing sense of having rights (not a traditional Chinese value). Prosperity may be decidedly unequally divided but, again, a large class has emerged centered in the cities in the eastern part of the country. In Freedom House terms, these advances mean progress on civil liberties.
On the negative side, recently there has been a crackdown on dissent with the official euphemism being “stability maintenance.” It isn’t clear why this is happening given that Party control looks strong. The transition to the next set of rulers next year seems to be settled, while many of the mass demonstrations that occur are taking place in the non-Han periphery of the country. It is true that worries are expressed by officialdom about the political turmoil engulfing the Arab world spreading to China, and memories about the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which are no doubt vivid in the minds of Party leaders, must also be playing a role. They were triggered by the upheavals in Eastern Europe, which culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and were seen as jeopardizing the rule of the Party. If you are running a Leninist operation you can’t be too careful.
Unfortunately, China has recently cracked down on dissent with the official explanation being “stability maintenance.”
China’s situation needs to be put into the worldwide pattern, which shows a strong correlation between economic development and democratic freedoms. Three possibilities might account for this connection: 1) Development might lead to democracy; 2) democracy might foster development; or 3) there might be a common cause driving both. The first, development leading to democracy, is Seymour Martin Lipset’s hypothesis that only a society with educated, wealthy people can resist the appeal of demagogues. Stable democracy presupposes an accumulation of human, social, and physical capital. Education promotes growth, and schooling makes democratic revolutions against dictatorships more probable and successful antidemocratic coups less probable.
After analyzing more than a hundred countries, in support of the Lipset view Robert Barro found that higher incomes and higher levels of (primary) education predict higher freedoms — but with significant time lags between the appearance of a factor positive for electoral rights and its expression in politics. On education, in 2000, China’s over-25 population had an average of only 5.74 years of schooling. Large educational-improvement efforts are underway, especially in rural areas and in the rapidly expanding postsecondary sector. By 2025, the average Chinese person over 25 will have had almost eight years of formal schooling. The educational mill grinds slowly but over time has huge effects. Barro attributed such lags to inertia in institutions affected by changes in economic and social variables, and notes that after about two decades “the level of democracy is nearly fully determined by the economic and social variables.”
This observation helps one to understand why a rapidly growing country such as China has a freedom rating today well below the level that its current income would predict.
Adam Przeworski and his coauthors also find that levels of economic development best predict the incidence of various types of political regimes, but their interpretation is the superior survival capacity of wealthier democracies rather than to movements from dictatorship to democracy at higher levels of wealth. The higher the level of income that a given country enjoys, these researchers note, the better are the odds that a democratic regime in that country will endure.
People in the Chinese Communist Party are feeling fewer inhibitions about airing their grievances, which are numerous.
Barro and Przeworski are among those who find that democracy does not lead directly to higher growth, a view reinforced by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, who believe that the evidence that democratizations yield economic growth is weak. They write that “democracy” is too blunt a concept and that institutional details matter greatly. The theoretical picture remains unclear and the literature is divided.
The third possibility, that democracy and development have a common cause, finds support from Daron Acemoglu and his several coauthors, who argue that “though income and democracy are positively correlated, there is no evidence of a causal effect. Instead . . . historical factors appear to have shaped the divergent political and economic development paths of various societies, leading to the positive association between democracy and economic performance.” These scholars see political and economic development paths as interwoven. Some countries embarked on development paths associated with democracy and economic growth, while others followed paths based on dictatorship, repression, and more limited growth.
Whichever interpretation one adopts, a democratizing China would not be unusual in East Asia, with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan rated “Free” and Singapore rated “Partly Free” by Freedom House. They show that Western-style democracy can take root in Sinitic societies.
The Chinese Communist Party has allowed a small window for elections for political office. In 1988 it mandated them, but only for villages. By the mid-1990s, 90 percent of committee heads held their posts by virtue of the ballot. However, requirements such as the direct nomination by individuals, multiple candidates, secret ballots, public counting of votes, immediate announcement of results, and regular recall procedures are not always followed. Some years ago it seemed likely that elections would be extended upward to townships, but this has not happened.
This is creating a changed situation for the Party, with people feeling fewer inhibitions about airing their grievances, which are numerous and can be triggered by events in which the authorities are held at fault. One such case was their response to a high-speed train accident in July 2011. The accident was bad enough, but what enraged many people was the authorities’ attempted cover-up (literally: hastily trying to bury the fallen cars and bodies).
One of the ways the people express their discontent is through what the authorities call “mass incidents.” These are, inter alia, a mixture of strikes and protests against unjust behavior by the police and the seizure of land from peasants by local Party people who then profit from it, and incidences in which non-Han people object to discriminatory behavior. In 1995, about 10,000 such incidents were reported; a decade later the official figure had increased tenfold. The government has stopped reporting this number but an unofficial estimate for 2010 is 160,000. Protesters typically avoid direct challenge to Party authority, preferring to cite rights listed in Party documents, laws, State Council regulations, and speeches by Communist Party leaders. Protests also tend to be carefully limited to local matters. One should not assume that protests in the countryside seriously threaten the regime. People know the role of protests in their history — and of leaders sometimes encouraging them as a way of ferreting out corrupt local officials. Yet while this is not a sign that the Party is tottering, neither is it a sign of Party legitimacy.
The nervousness the authorities are displaying reflects the profound changes occurring in society. As Geoff Dyer wrote in October 2010 in the Financial Times:
Jailed for 11 years for organizing a pro-democracy petition, Mr. Liu [Xiaobo] is a standard-bearer for political reform but in many ways he is not the main challenge for the authorities. . . . Mr. Liu is part of an older generation of dissidents who have been marginalized since Tiananmen. Few ordinary Chinese have heard of him.
Instead, the pressure is more diffuse but from a broader range of sources. There are the well-to-do suburban residents who happily organize large protests when their property rights are affected and make sure television cameras are there to watch them. China’s fast-growing legal community is full of people — from judges to citizens with a grievance — who are trying to build more independent courts.
And then there is the Internet, which, in spite of all the efforts of the authorities to censor and mould discussion, is also a deep well of rebellious irony . . . .
The Chinese party-state is such a blizzard of activity, that it is often easy to overlook the increasingly vibrant society emerging from behind its Leninist shadow.
The Party is indeed in a blizzard of activity, summarized as follows by Edward Steinfeld, writing in the July-August 2011 issue of the Boston Review:
In this new system state authority and the nature of state-society relations are radically different, a reality confirmed by the state’s frenetic effort to develop new rules to maintain control and influence. As a response to changing expectations of the role of the state, a new discourse of law-based governance has emerged. In addition to new tax, contract, property, and environmental laws, the state has promulgated national regulations on open government information — China’s Freedom of Information Act, in a sense. Some provinces, such as booming Fujian, have new labor rules that emphasize collective bargaining.
There are differences in tone among the public statements of some leaders on the subject of its political future. Many Party elders have come out against censorship and in support of freedoms of speech and of the press. As for active authorities, Premier Wen Jiabao said in an interview with cnn that “the people’s wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible” (a statement that was censored in the Chinese press).
Technology is transforming people’s access to information and their ability to communicate with each other. One is the ubiquitous cell phone, with around 850 million of them in use in China today, with over a billion users projected a few years from now. With over half a billion text messages flowing daily, the government has lost control of people’s ability to spread the word (e.g., about the next sars-type epidemic), organize protests, or expose corruption. Cell phones are an organizing instrument for mass demonstrations triggered by disturbing events.
The importance of the Internet should not be doubted. It has about 500 million users in China and is also heading powerfully upward. Because other sources of information and entertainment have been more limited than in most other countries, its social impact is greater. This has produced an ongoing game between users who seek information and who blog and the censors who try to set strict limits. The leaders’ nervousness was recently displayed in an absurd way in reaction to the uprisings in the Arab world. Because the Tunisian revolutionaries dubbed their successful uprising the “Jasmine Revolution,” this flower for a while became a nonexistent plant. In February, when messages for a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” began circulating on the Internet the Chinese characters for jasmine were intermittently blocked in text messages; videos of President Hu Jintao singing “Mo Li Hua,” a Qing dynasty paean to the flower, disappeared from the Web.
Demonstrations of people power via the Internet or the use of cell phones violate a tenet of Leninist control: keeping individuals separated by geography and by social class. All this modernization is being permitted (up to a point) by the authorities because of the economic benefits these social networking technologies bring; the country’s growth would be impaired were they to be more rigorously restricted.
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DISRUPTIONS?
So high-speed growth, seen as necessary by Party leaders if they are to remain in control, is sowing the seeds of their downfall. But will China’s high growth rate be sustained? It is axiomatic that the rate of 9-plus percent per year will slow; trees do not grow to the sky and 30 years of high-speed growth (interrupted briefly by the Tiananmen Square events in 1989) is already exceptional. A common view is that the slowdown will happen gradually through more sluggish growth in the work force, a reduced flow of workers from low-marginal-productivity farming to higher productivity urban work, and the country’s approach to the world technological frontier.
A contrasting view is offered by some scholars, recently by Barry Eichengreen, Kwanho Shin, and Donghyun Park. They find that high growth in almost all non-oil-exporting countries came to a rather sudden end at a per capita gdp of $16,740 in 2005 international prices, with growth slowing from 5.6 to 2.1 percent per annum, and they note that China is on a trajectory to reach that level in 2015 (or 2017 if growth is seven percent a year). They estimate the coming slowdown to be two to 3.5 percent a year, which would take the nation’s growth rate down to around six to seven percent a year (an eventuality the authors present not as certain but as highly probable). The basic reason is that at that level of gdp the payoff from shifting workers from agriculture to industry decreases and so, too, do the benefits from using foreign-developed technologies. Contributing further to the slowdown will be China’s strongly undervalued exchange rate. The three authors observe that the only two fast-growing economies to sail through the $16,000 level unimpeded were the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore.
Central to this phenomenon is a slowing of productivity growth. They write:
Slowdowns coincide with the point in the growth process where it is no longer possible to boost productivity by shifting additional workers from agriculture to industry and where the gains from importing foreign technology diminish. But the sharpness and extent of the fall in tfp (total factor productivity) growth from unusually high levels of 3-plus percent to virtually zero is striking.
However, in this circumstance China has a unique advantage that could keep it growing at a good rate: a vast region into which capital investment can be poured. Its Western provinces are both highly populated and poor. On this point, the authors write:
If the growth miracle is transplantable within China, then the economic development of the interior provinces, which have larger populations than most countries and are home to a substantial fraction of China’s own population, can continue to sustain the country’s growth for years to come. The government is already extending physical infrastructure, such as highways and railways, to less developed provinces to prepare them for this transition.
Assuming an abrupt slowdown does occur, though, what might some of its consequences be? Domestically, much might depend on the sectoral and geographic distribution of the slowdown. Already, much capital investment at the margin probably has little return. This is likely true of much of the reported $300 billion spent on high-speed rail. Might the government respond by cutting some kinds of capital investment (which it should be doing anyway) and encouraging consumption, which has fallen to a remarkably low 36 percent of total output? It has said it wants to do this.
It has become almost axiomatic that the stability of China, indeed the legitimacy of rule by the Party, requires sustained high growth — a minimum of seven percent per year gdp growth. Although the existence of a magic threshold isn’t credible and that rate, almost anywhere else in the world, would be seen as excellent, markedly slowed growth would likely have consequences for China, domestic and foreign.
Domestically, the prospect of slower growth raises many questions. For example, what would the differential impact of slower growth be across the income distribution, which has substantially widened over time? Some of the rich and powerful are flaunting their wealth, and the Internet is displaying this for all to see. How would this consumption come across if times get tough?
What economic sectors would be most affected? Already a real estate bust is in the offing, with rising unemployment for construction workers. What would happen to the auto sector, the world’s largest with more than eighteen million vehicles sold in 2010 and officially forecast to reach 50 million by 2021? What might happen to unemployment and underemployment, already a problem, including for college graduates? How might people react to disappointed expectations? Would disaffection with the Party, which is not universally admired, grow markedly?
On possible international impacts, Eichengreen and his colleagues have something to say: “By some estimates, China alone is accounting for 30 percent of global demand growth, the brics [Brazil, Russia, India and China] collectively 45 percent, and emerging markets and developing countries as a whole a healthy majority of the total.” In short, such a Chinese slowdown would seriously impact world growth.
Most obviously affected would be raw material suppliers such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Australia, but also machinery suppliers in Japan and Europe. Given the multilateral character of world trade, U.S. exports would also be hurt.
China’s defense and foreign policy could be affected in several ways by a major economic slowdown. Slowed growth implies its future military potential will loom not so large. The country would find it more difficult to afford the wide array of advanced weapons many assume it will have and which the People’s Liberation Army doubtless expects to receive. If the nation’s woes are deep enough, the Party might be tempted to blame outsiders for its misfortunes. The prime here would be the Americans.
The Party has the option of trying to avoid a possibly major upheaval by gradually introducing political changes from the bottom. This is what the Kuomintang Party, once also a Leninist one, did in Taiwan. Political choices were introduced first in local government, then in the national parliament, then finally in elections for president. This proceeded not without difficulties but relatively smoothly. China has not followed this upward course perhaps because the Party leadership sees the threat to its control as too great or perhaps because of a belief that political chaos would result. One hesitates to criticize such great experts on power as China’s leaders, but it does look like big trouble could be ahead.
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN DISRUPTIONS
To return to the initial propositions: There is a significant chance of either, or both, political and economic change in China occurring at some point before 2020. If this change happens, the order in which these two events occur could make a major difference, although one can only guess at how events might play out. If substantial political liberalizing were to occur first, then a less-than-huge economic slowdown shouldn’t have a traumatic effect. But if it were to happen the other way around, if economic change comes before political change, then a sharp economic slowdown might result in political liberalizing, or a conservative faction might succeed in tightening the screws, or there might be an extended period of political turbulence. We simply don’t know.
One way or another, developments in China in the next decade have a high probability of deeply affecting the rest of the world — more so than they have already and in very different ways.
Henry S. Rowen is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, director emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is co-director of the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and co-editor of Greater China’s Quest for Innovation (Stanford University Press, 2008).
