【福布斯】改革30年之后的中国（第三部分）
【原文标题】China After 30 Years of Reform（Four-Part Series）
【原文】
China After 30 Years of Reform, III
Gordon G. Chang, 12.18.08, 04:30 PM EST
The world's most dynamic society.
Starting in early November and continuing into this month, taxi and bus drivers went on strike in more than 10 major cities across China. In other recent disruptions, citizens in various locations broke into government offices, attacked police and burned official vehicles. Workers took to the streets in the country's export powerhouse, the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong province, as factories closed. The size of the demonstrations dramatically increased in October as the big toy manufacturers there started to go out of business.
In the first half of this year, more than 67,000 factories shut down in China. Slightly more than half of the country's toy manufacturers failed from January through July. These closures occurred before the full impact of the global financial crisis hit consumer sentiment around the world, so failures for the second half of this year--and for 2009--could be worse. China's economy is faltering.
As bad as it will be, the downturn this time will undoubtedly not be as severe as the economic failures following Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward beginning in the late 1950s and the chaotic decade-long Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966. In both cases, the Communist Party was able to recover and maintain its Leninist political system. Will it be able to do so this time?
At first glance, it appears that China's ruling organization looks secure. President Hu Jintao's six-year political crackdown has encountered virtually no organized opposition, and protestors are far from forming a nationwide coalition against the Communist Party. In the absence of a competitor, the Party has been able to adjust to conditions and make the transition from a revolutionary group to ruling organization.
Columbia University's Andrew Nathan, who is no friend of the regime, argues that Deng Xiaoping and his successors have institutionalized themselves by smoothing out successions, promoting meritocratic politics, modernizing a large bureaucracy and establishing the means of political participation to strengthen legitimacy. "Regime theory holds that authoritarian regimes are inherently fragile because of weak legitimacy, over-reliance on coercion, over-centralization of decision-making and the predominance of personal power over institutional norms," Nathan writes. "This authoritarian regime, however, has proven resilient."
Yet, after 30 years of reform, Chinese society today appears especially difficult to govern. Officials still prepare their five-year plans, but the Chinese people are making a "kinetic dash into the future" without so much as a roadmap or a compass. Once clothed in faded totalitarian garb, the Chinese today appear colorful.
This mall-shopping, Internet-connected, and trend-crazy folk are remaking their country at breakneck speed as they outrace everyone else on the planet.
Deprived for decades, they don't just want more. They demand everything. It's hard to describe the Chinese because they change so fast, faster than any other group in our times. "China's leaders may run what looks like a closed political system, and their decisions seem autocratic," notes Clinton-era official Robert Suettinger, "but they are struggling to keep up with a society that is changing in a direction and at a speed they cannot fully control."
Not only is the Communist Party losing control, it is losing legitimacy. As a veteran journalist told me just before leaving the country a few years ago, "I don't know anyone who believes in the Party anymore." The ruling group's loss of support has meant that, as China has grown more prosperous in recent years, it has also become less stable, with protests rising dramatically this decade from what we can tell. The political system is obviously having increasing difficulty channeling discontent as citizens are starting to think they have rights--and as they are becoming less afraid of their government. There may be as many as 150,000 protests each year in the People's Republic.
It's not hard to see why. Sustained modernization is the enemy of one-party systems. There can be nothing but trouble when political institutions do not keep up with the social forces unleashed by economic change. Nothing irritates rising social classes like inflexible leaders.
Beijing's policies seem designed to widen this gap between the people and their government, thereby ensuring greater instability for the foreseeable future. Today, there's unimaginable societal change at unheard of speed thanks, in large part, to government-sponsored economic growth and social engineering. Yet, at the same time, the Communist Party stands in the way of meaningful political change.
In good times, the Communist Party has been able to maintain its dominant role. But the real test of a political system is what happens when conditions worsen. "When times are bad economically, a small incident can rapidly become a big one," said Guo Cheming, a Communist Party cadre watching a protest at a failed toy factory in Dongguan, one of the principal manufacturing centers in Guangdong. The poetic Mao put it this way: "A single spark can start a prairie fire."
After the abandonment of its ideology, the Communist Party made the continual delivery of prosperity its primary source of legitimacy. We are about to discover whether the regime can survive a downturn when decades of economic reform have weakened its mechanisms of control and made the Chinese self-aware and assertive, people who, for the first time in their history, are carrying on national conversations about their collective future.
Deng Xiaoping's legacy is still not set, even after 30 years of economic reform. Now, his place in history is not in the hands of the government he led but in those of some 1.5 billion active citizens, perhaps the most dynamic people on the planet.
改革30年之后的中国（第三部分）
Gordon G. Chang08.12.17美国东部时间下午4：30
世界上最有活力的社会
从上个月到这个月，出租车和公交车司机在十几个中国主要的城市举行罢工。在另一些事件中，市民们冲击政府办公室，袭击警察，烧毁汽车。在珠江三角洲的广东省，由于工厂关闭，在出口最繁荣的城市，工人们上街游行。由于大的玩具制造厂开始停业，游行的规模在十月显著地增加了。
在今年的上半年，中国有67,000多家工厂关闭。从一月到七月，这个国家半数以上的玩具工厂倒闭。这些工厂的倒闭发生在全球金融危机在全球范围内影响人们之前。所以下半年和明年的下降会更加严重，中国经济在艰难前进。但是，至少这种下滑不会像20世纪50年代毛泽东毛泽东在发动大跃进之后的经济失败和1966年文化大革命带来的混乱。在这些例子中，共产党都可以恢复和继续他们列宁主义的政治制度。那么，这一次他们还能这么做吗？
乍一看来，中国的统治组织看起来很牢固。胡锦涛主席6年的政治镇压没有遭到有组织的反抗，并且反对者远不能组成一个全国性的对抗共产党的组织。由于没有竞争者，共产党可以与时俱进，并且完成从革命党到执政党的转变。
哥伦比亚大学的安德鲁·内森不是政治体制的朋友，他认为，邓小平和他的继承者已经制度化了自己的继承，推进精英政治，现代化这个庞大的官僚体制，扩大政权的分享来强化政权的合法性。内森写到:“政治理论表明独裁政权是先天不足的，因为缺乏合法性、过度依赖强权、过度集权、个人的强势超过体制。但是这种集权被证明是有适应性的。
经过30年的改革，中国变得非常不好管理。官方仍然准备他们的五年计划，但是中国人想快速奔向未来而不想用这样或那样的指导。一旦中国现今看起来漂亮的极权主义的外衣褪色，这个由购物中心组成、互联网连接的世界，和趋向疯狂的人们会以前所未有的速度改变他们的国家。
贫困了许多年，他们不只是想要更多。他们想要一切。很难去描述中国人，因为他们改变得太快，比这个世界上任何组织都要快。克林顿时代的官员罗伯特·苏堡力说，中国领导人可能在建立一个看起来是封闭的政治体系，做出的决定看起来是独裁的，但是他们试图在一个他们不能完全掌控的速度上和社会前进的方向保持一致。
不仅是共产党失去控制力，还因为他失去了合法性。就像一个资深记者在几年前离开中国时对我说的那样，“我不知道还有多少人相信党”。统治阶层失去支持意味着，伴随着中国近几年变得愈加繁荣，我们能够看到的是，这些年，反对者在显著增加，共产党也变得愈加不稳定。
政治体制明显面对日益增长的不满，因为人们在思考他们的权利，并且他们变得不那么惧怕政府了。每年在人民共和国里，大约有150,000次抗议活动。
这很难解释为什么。不断的现代化是一党政体的天敌。如果政治体制不随着经济改变带来的社会力量而改变的话，这是很麻烦的。没有什么比固定的领导人更能刺激不断上升的社会阶层的了。
北京的政策看起来是加剧人民和政府的鸿沟，这在可预知的未来会加重这种不稳定。今天，在不断感谢政府资助的经济增长和工程的话语后面，一种前所未有的社会变化在悄然发生。
在顺境时，共产党能确保自己的优势地位。但是对政治体制真正的考验是当情况变得糟糕的时候。郭车铭（音），一个共产党的干部，在看了广东一次由于工厂倒闭引起的抗议时，说：“在经济糟糕的时代，一个小小的事情可以很快变成一个大的事件。”毛泽东的诗管这个叫：星星之火，可以燎原。
在放弃了思想意识之后，共产党把持续的繁荣当做自己合法性的依据。我们想要知道这种政治体制能否在经历了多年增长之后的衰退时期存活下来，因为多年的经济改革弱化了国家的控制力，并且使得中国人的自我意识和自信心大大增强；他们正在从国家角度考虑他们共同的未来。
邓小平留下的遗产现在仍然不确定，即使是经过了30年的经济改革。邓小平的历史地位不在他领导的政府的手中，而是在15亿活跃的市民里，或许是世界上最有活力的人们。
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