【08.11.13 英国 金融时报】 中国成功之后面临的风险
http://www.ftchinese.com/story.php?storyid=0010230602008年的前9个月中，共产党执政的中国政府的优势和不足，得到了前所未有的体现。
一场灾难性的大地震，一场史无前例的暴风雪，世界屋脊上的骚乱，毒奶粉事件，以及举办全球最大的体育盛会，这一切既展现了中国共产党这个全球最大政治集团所掌控的非凡资源，又暴露出它在应对一些来自21世纪挑战时所面临的困难。
以今年的盛事北京奥运会为例，在主持建设一系列奥运会主要基础设施项目上，中国政府官员有最高领导人的全力支持，而且几乎不需考虑公众意见，他们毫无困难地按时完工，其中包括那些与众不同、迅速闻名中外的新体育场馆。随后举行的奥运会开幕式庆典，则是一场眩目的视觉盛宴，数千名表演近乎完美的武警官兵庆祝了中华文明的辉煌。
然而，奥运会也暴露出中国共产党执政的威权特征。中国政府当时宣布，为奥运会期间可能出现的抗议示威活动划定一些特定游行区域。此后，警方却完全拒绝批准示威申请，并拘留了那些似乎不听话的申请人。精神病院开放病区的病人，突然发现他们被关起来了。北京周边地区迅速设立了大量路卡，在北京打工的民工们，则被迫返回他们遥远的家乡。
让中国政府感到非常满意的是，上述措施确实起到了一定作用。虽然一些游客对这一体育盛会缺少节日氛围感到失望，奥运会得以顺利举办，没有出现任何重大问题。中国运动员所获金牌总数打破历史纪录，进一步点燃了中国的民族情绪——中国共产党视此为其执政正统性的一个基础。奥运会结束之后，中国于9月份首次实现太空行走，更是极大地激发了爱国热情。
在奥运会之前，也就是在5月份四川西南部发生灾难性地震后，中国领导人就已经有机会展示共产党的组织能力和对民生问题的关注。地震后，中国国家主席胡锦涛和总理温家宝迅速动员大量人力物力救灾，赢得了广泛赞誉。
对中国领导人来说，今年并非一切都如愿以偿。大雪灾造成前所未有的破坏，暴露出中国大部分基础交通设施的落后。温家宝总理甚至通过扩音器，向困在火车站的旅客道歉。
随后，3月份拉萨爆发骚乱，暴露出西藏反华情绪的强烈程度，并引发国际上的抗议，使北京奥运火炬的国际传递活动，成为一场具有负面效应的反面公关。
然而，长期来看，对共产党形象破坏最严重的也许是问题奶粉事件。在该事件中，数万名婴幼儿因饮用中国乳制品企业生产的配方奶粉，出现集体中毒。
处于丑闻中心的三鹿集团管理层、当地官员，甚至三鹿的新西兰投资者新西兰恒天然乳业合作集团(Fonterra Dairy Co-operative)，在奥运会开幕前就知道有奶粉被工业原料三聚氰胺污染，并且已经发货。但直到9月份，这个问题才在新西兰政府的压力下公诸于众。
奶粉事件在某些方面反映出，中国在胡锦涛和温家宝执政的5年以来，并没有发生多少改变。2003年，政府试图掩盖SARS病毒蔓延的努力失败。此后，胡锦涛承诺将提高政府透明度，这为他赢得了赞誉。然而，胡锦涛事实上加强了对媒体的控制，而奶粉丑闻显示出，政府隐瞒负面新闻的意愿仍大过对公共健康的关心。
许多中国人对奶粉丑闻感到相当愤怒，这是可以理解的。在一群社会活动人士的电子邮件讨论中，一名活动人士写道，“他们可以用我们的储蓄去购买一些毫无价值的华尔街债券，他们可以侵吞我们的税收，我们只是保持缄默，但他们不能在食品上乱来，尤其是那些婴儿食品。”
对于一个日益感受到公众舆论压力的政府来说，这样的愤怒情绪显然不是好事。然而，几乎没有人怀疑共产党压制这些批评的能力，至少目前是这样。如今与1989年不同——当时，支持民主的抗议者聚集在天安门广场上，内部出现的分歧几乎使共产党陷入瘫痪。现在，高层领导人在公众面前展现的，是近乎完美的团结。在某种程度上，这反映了党内高层的牢固共识，即采用发达经济体模式，兼顾中国国情，坚持市场改革。尽管在党内仍有大量争议，但与上世纪80年代不同的是，党内并不存在意识形态上的冲突。
中国政府注重培训，建立“能者上”的升迁制度，这也意味着政府积极适应现代管理的需要——虽然充斥的腐败现象仍然不断引发公众的强烈不满。同时，中国共产党建立并维持着一个强大的媒体和互联网领域审查体系，确保公众听到党的声音。这个体系有效地消除了批评的声音，同时又允许民众相对自由地获取信息。
中国共产党的领导人还提高了处理问题的技巧，以把毒奶粉事件等负面新闻造成的影响降至最低。标准的做法包括：把任何问题都归咎于低级官员，解雇或监禁直接责任人，并确保高级官员以解决问题的形象出现在媒体报道中。在毒奶粉事件中，上述方法都被采用，并加上温家宝总理再次向受害者动情的道歉。
上述手法似乎是有效的，但驻北京的政治分析师罗素·利·摩西(Russell Leigh Moses)表示，这些做法不会永远奏效。他说：“这种做法是‘围捕疑犯'，寻找某种形式的政治借口，随后找出替罪羊。上述危机似乎没有让人们对体系运作方式，进行根本性的反思。”
在上世纪80年代，许多中国领导人把进行大范围的政治改革作为核心政策目标。但目前来看，胡锦涛和同僚似乎只满足于修补党内程序和规章，以提高治理水平。实际上，成功举办北京奥运会，已使他们的自豪感变质为近乎自大。
《人民日报》在9月发表的一篇评论中夸耀道，“整个奥运会期间，中国政府和人民展示了他们强大的组织能力和动员能力……充分体现了中国政治制度的优越性。”
摩西称：“短期的成功正使官员们认为他们能够摆脱(类似毒奶粉事件)影响。他们是自己成功的受害者。”
香港城市大学当代中国研究中心教授郑宇硕(Joseph Cheng)表示，共产党必须改变治理方式，以符合更为富有、信息更为充足的民众的期望。
郑宇硕表示，“人们的确开始询问敏感的问题，比如‘媒体为什么不能拥有更多的自由？为什么不能有更多的收支报告和预算平衡表？什么时候我们才会有真正的法治？'”。他警告称，如果没有进行实实在在的政治改革，以使上述问题成为现实，中国将逐步走向“危险之境”。
郑宇硕称，“当中国经济陷入持续低迷时，真正的考验就会来临，中国领导人明白这些情况，这就是他们努力保持至少8%经济增长速度的原因。”
译者/君悦
Dangers of success
By Mure Dickie 2008-11-13
Rarely have the strengths and weakness of China's Communist party government been so graphically on display as in the first nine months of 2008.
A devastating earthquake, unprecedented snowstorms, riots on the roof of the world, a poisonous milk scandal and the world's biggest sportsfest have exposed both the extraordinary resources commanded by the world's biggest political group and the difficulties it faces in coping with some 21st-century challenges.
Take the year's great set-piece moment, the Beijing Olympics, as an example. Technocratic officials with the full backing of top leaders and with little need for public consultation had no difficulty delivering a swathe of major infrastructure projects in time for the Games – including the construction of extraordinary new stadiums that became instant, internationally recognised icons. Then there was the opening ceremony, with its stunning visuals and cast of thousands of near-perfectly drilled soldiers and militiamen celebrating the glories of Chinese culture.
Yet the Olympics also laid bare the authoritarian underpinnings on which party rule relies. After announcing the creation of special protest zones for would-be demonstrators during the Games, police simply refused permission for anyone to use them – and locked up those applicants who appeared uncowed. Patients in open wards at psychiatric hospitals suddenly found themselves locked in. Roadblocks were thrown up around Beijing and migrant workers forced to return to distant homes.
To Beijing's great satisfaction, such measures helped ensure that the Olympics passed off without any major problems, even if some visitors were disappointed by the lack of festivity that surrounded this festival of sport. Nationalist sentiment, seen by the party as a vital source of legitimacy, was further fuelled by the Chinese athletes' record-breaking haul of gold medals. And displays of patriotic fervour were also centre-stage when China followed the Games with its first space walk last month.
Even before the Games, leaders had had the chance to demonstrate the party's organisational strength and concern for the welfare of the masses following the devastating earthquake that hit southwestern Sichuan Province in May. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao won widespread plaudits for mobilising extraordinary resources quickly after the quake.
Yet party leaders have hardly had everything go their way this year. The unprecedented disruption caused by freak snowstorms exposed the weakness of much of China's transport infrastructure – and left Mr Wen apologising by megaphone to stranded rail passengers.
Then in March, riots in Lhasa exposed the strength of anti-Chinese feeling in Tibet and prompted international protests that turned a triumphal international Olympic torch relay into a painful grind of negative publicity.
Perhaps most damaging to the party's long-term prospects, however, was the scandal surrounding the poisoning of tens of thousands of infants who drank milk formula distributed by local dairy companies.
Managers at Sanlu Group, the company at the heart of the scandal, local officials and even Sanlu's New Zealand investor, Fonterra Dairy Co-operative, all knew about the shipments of milk powder contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine before the Olympics opened. But it was not until September that it was made public under pressure from the New Zealand government.
In some ways, the milk crisis demonstrated how little China has changed in the five years since Mr Hu and Mr Wen rose to power. In 2003, Mr Hu won praise for promising greater government openness following the collapse of government efforts to cover up the spread of the deadly Sars virus. Yet media controls have actually been tightened under Mr Hu, and the milk scandal showed the urge to conceal bad news could still trump concerns about public health.
Many Chinese were understandably outraged. “They can throw our savings to buy some worthless Wall Street bond, they can embezzle our tax, we just keep our mouths shut. But they must not mess with the food, especially the babies,” wrote one contributor to an e-mail discussion among social activists.
Such anger is bad news for a government that feels increasingly vulnerable to public opinion. Yet few doubt the party's ability to face down its critics, for the moment at least. Unlike in 1989, when internal divisions almost paralysed the party in the face of huge pro-democracy protests centred on Tiananmen Square, senior leaders now present an almost perfect face of public unity. In part this reflects a firm consensus in favour of market reforms based on models provided by more advanced economies and adopted to local circumstances. Intra-party policy disputes still abound, but they lack the ideological edge of those in the 1980s.
A focus on training and the institutionalised promotion of competent technocrats to senior positions also means that the government has adapted impressively to the needs of modern management, even if widespread corruption remains a source of deep public resentment. Meanwhile, the party has ensured its voice continues to be heard by creating and maintaining a powerful system of media and internet censorship that, in effect, mutes critical voices while allowing relatively free access to information.
Party leaders have also developed techniques for minimising the damage caused by setbacks such as the milk scandal. Standard procedure involves blaming lower levels of officialdom for any problems, firing or jailing culprits and ensuring that top leaders are portrayed in the media as sorting out the mess. All these approaches were used during the milk scandal – along with another emotive apology to its victims from Mr Wen.
The tactics appear to be effective, but Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based political analyst, says they will not work forever. “It's ‘round up the usual suspects', seek some form of political cover and then find people to blame,” he says. “What these crises don't seem to be doing is leading to any fundamental rethinking of how the system works.”
While in the 1980s, many Chinese leaders saw major political reform as a central policy goal, these days Mr Hu and his peers appear to have little appetite for anything more than tinkering with intra-party procedures and measures to improve governance. Indeed, the success of the Beijing Games has prompted pride bordering on hubris.
“Throughout the Olympics, the Chinese government and people demonstrated their powerful organisational strength and unsurpassed ability to mobilise society ... fully embodying the superiority of China's political system,” crowed an opinion piece published in the party's People's Daily newspaper in September.
“The short-term success is leading officials to think they can get away with ,” says Mr Moses. “They are victims of their own success.”
Joseph Cheng, professor at the Contemporary China Research Centre at Hong Kong's City University, agrees that the party must change the way it governs to match the expectations of a richer and better-informed population.
“People do start to ask sensible questions, such as ‘Why can't we have more freedom for the media? Why aren't there more checks and balances? When are we going to have real rule of law?'” he says. Without genuine political reforms that can bring such things, he warns, China will move slowly towards a “crisis situation”.
“The real test will come when you have a sustained period of economic slowdown – and Chinese leaders understand that. That is why they are focused on maintaining at least 8 per cent growth,” Prof Cheng says.
[ 本帖最后由 langxianping 于 2008-11-13 12:02 编辑 ] 这篇报道的批评还是很有建设性的，我们的制度确实有优越性，但也有不足，应该从中吸取些教训 ！ "-----中国共产党的领导人还提高了处理问题的技巧，以把毒奶粉事件等负面新闻造成的影响降至最低。标准的做法包括：把任何问题都归咎于低级官员，解雇或监禁直接责任人，并确保高级官员以解决问题的形象出现在媒体报道中。在毒奶粉事件中，上述方法都被采用，并加上温家宝总理再次向受害者动情的道歉。----"
**YOU! 难道毒奶粉是温总理造的?文章中的话好像是从屁股眼冒出来的吧?特别臭! 很理性，中国人应该学会思考． 还算中肯的评价 这文章可以看看。。。 ＂但驻北京的政治分析师罗素·利·摩西(Russell Leigh Moses)表示，这些做法不会永远奏效。＂他说：“这种做法是‘围捕疑犯'，寻找某种形式的政治借口，随后找出替罪羊。上述危机似乎没有让人们对体系运作方式，进行根本性的反思。”
真是奇怪了，不知中国人有多少人会同意有一种方法是永远有效的，是不是中国采用了西式民主，就永远有效了？＂实践是检验真理的唯一标准＂这才是永远有效的 这篇文章对西方来说 很中肯了··。
但是也会看到攻击性。
页:
[1]