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【08.12.25 美国时代周刊】金融危机能否深刻改变中国？
原文题目：
Will the Financial Crisis Bring Upheaval to China?
原文链接：http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1868402,00.html
译文链接：http://timeweekly.tianyablog.com/blogger
/post_show.asp?BlogID=534653&PostID=16143450&idWriter=0&Key=0
转自美国《时代》中文博客：
华东理工大学 仲程/译
三位中国女士在北京的一家购物中心闲逛 Greg Baker / AP
By Simon Elegant / Beijing Thursday
Dec. 25, 2008
有一段时间，中国看来会不一样。在世界其他经济体受到金融危机的影响面临经济衰退的时候，中国可能凭借着独特的因素将保持其近三十年来空前的高水平的经济增长。但是这个期待即将破灭，日益残酷的统计数据表明这个经济体正在衰退。中国经济可能在2009年遭遇硬着陆，即使是最乐观的经济学家也不得不承认GDP年增长速度将远低于8%---这个被中国经济学家以及政府官员普遍认为是社会发展要求最低的增长值，预计会下滑到5%以下。
在这种深度下滑逐渐明朗的时候，来自各方面的消息都在警告着社会动荡的威胁。11月中旬，中国国家主席胡锦涛强调这场危机是对中国共产执政能力的极大考验，其他领导人也反复地发出这种警告。在12月份的一次演讲中，国务院总理温家宝承认他非常担心工人失业以及大学生就业问题。甚至于最高法院的一位高官警告说法官在裁决过程中应该把社会稳定牢记在心。外界也在高度关注，中国，这个脆弱的社会环境可能会在改革开放的30年后首次遭受经济困难的重大打击。奥巴马团队应该就“如果发生重大的政治危机我们该如何应付”这个问题制定一个应急预案。哈佛大学的RoderickMcFarquar---世界最有名的中国通之一---近期在媒体的采访中这样说道。
尽管，悲观主义者和乐观主义者还存在很大的分歧，大部分的中国学者和分析人士认为“中国将度过这个难关”。他们相信，即使最差的情况例如类似于1989年天安门示威游行那样骚乱和抗议可能会发生，但是今天的情况已经大不一样了。可能会很糟糕，但是不管国家接下来的发展政策是什么，中国将进行一个相对平稳地过渡。
一个重要的原因是导致这场危机源头来自外部，和1989年形成鲜明对比的是，那时的抗议活动是因为人民对腐败、通货膨胀以及其他国内危机的愤怒。“我完全没有看到党面临着全国范围的挑战的迹象，因为你不能责怪这些事情的发生，危机是来自中国外部的。”李成（音译），华盛顿布鲁金斯研究所的一位中国学者这样说道。李先生提到的这一点也正视官方媒体竭力宣传的，政府的反应是迅速果断的，包括“四万亿政策”的出台、央行多次降低利率以及一揽子的措施去支持财政市场扩大内需等等。“到目前为止，他们的行动很迅速。”北京的一位西方外交家这样说道。“通常，他们比其他国家比如德国等出手规模更大、速度更快，他们并不担心在报纸上，中央电视台上向公众告知事情的真相。
另一个和1989年不同的是，党内领导阶层在解决危机面前团结一致，这是对权力的最好保护。内部对天安门事件如何处理的争论，使得那次事件拖延了一个多月并使事件升级。李先生说，这一次，虽然高层在一些具体问题上还有争议，但他们在最高层次上保持团结以避免任何高层内部的分裂产生。李先生说：“这一代的领导人学到了两个经验，一个在文化大革命，一个在天安门事件。从一个教训中他们意识到要不惜一切代价保持社会的稳定。从第二个教训里他们明白不管有什么事情发生，领导层不能有公开的分歧。
当政治精英被团结之后，任何反对他们的力量想去改变这个国家的政治秩序都是徒劳的，香港理工大学政治学教授DavidZweig这样说道。虽然，大量人的失业者，成千上万的农民工返乡是极其痛苦的，但这并不会对北京构成威胁。“请记住，北京有类似的经验：1998年到2000年，政府使得成千上万的国有企业工人下岗。那时爆发了大量的罢工和抗议使得政府有些许的紧张，但是，他们后来生存得很好。”当前，官方数据表明有4百万人失去工作；但是，一些人估计应该是这个数字的两到三倍。
“要使得政权垮台需要一个高于一切的意识形态，例如民主政治或者太平天国的神秘主义这些发生在19世纪中期和20世纪早期的革命。”Zweig说，政权的垮台需要中产阶级的支持，我并没有看到这些的发生。这数十年来，他们已经成为了共产党的核心支持者，他们前途已经紧紧地跟这个党联系在一起了。
“你可以说高层领导知道政治改革最终会在中国发生，党不能在不确定上坚持，”一位外交官说道，“这就是为什么他们的后代有90%从事商业，而不是他们所走的共青团或者其他渠道。但是这种改变需要15~20的时间，即使是在当前经济低迷时期也不会马上发生。中国将发生巨变，但还没有发生也不是现在发生。
【原文】
For a while, it seemed China night be different. Maybe the unique factors that have allowed its economy to grow at an unprecedented rate for nearly 30 years would keep it afloat when the rest of the world was succumbing to the impact of the growing global financial crisis. But that hope has now been crushed under an increasing tide of grimmer and grimmer statistics that seem to portray an economy in free fall. China will have its hard landing in 2009, and even the most optimistic economists now concede that GDP growth will be far below the 8% annual pace that Chinese economists and officials generally regard as the minimum necessary for the preservation of social order, possibly hitting 5% or under.
As the depth of the slowdown becomes clearer, voices from all quarters have warned of the dangers of unrest. In mid-November, President Hu Jintao said the crisis would be a grave test of the Communists Party's ability to rule China, a warning echoed by other lower ranking leaders. At a December speech, Premier Wen Jiabao confessed to being particularly worried about unemployed workers and university graduates. Even the head of the country's Supreme Court warned judges to take social stability into mind when passing rulings. Overseas, too, worry swelled about just how deeply China's fragile social compact might be shaken by the experience of economic hard times for the first time in 30 years. The Obama administration should have a contingency plan for "what we would do if there's a major collapse of the political order," Roderick McFarquar of Harvard, one of the world's most respected China scholars, recently told a reporter. (See photos here of China on the wild side.)
But though there are certainly bothj pessimists and optimists=, a large number of China scholars and analysts seem to belong to what might be called the "China will muddle through" school. They believe that, although worst case scenarios such as rioting and protests in the streets like the 1989 Tiananmen protests are possible, circumstances this time are very different and make a messy but relatively stable transition to whatever the country's next stage of development may most likely be. (See the Top 10 News Stories of 2008)
One important reason is that the driving cause of the crisis is external, in contrast to 1989, when the protests were sparked by anger over corruption, inflation and other domestic issues. "I simply don't see any kind of nationwide challenge to the Party emerging because you can't blame them for what's happening, it's coming from outside China," says Cheng Li, a China scholar at Washington's Brookings Institute. Li points out that, as it has been at pains to point out regularly in the official media, the government's reaction has been swift and decisive, including everything from announcing a 4 trillion renminbi ($587 billion) stimulus package, repeatedly lowering interest rates and taking substantive moves to bolster the property market and encourage consumer spending. "They've done everything right so far and very fast," says one western diplomat in Beijing. "Often it's been bigger and faster than other countries like Germany, and they aren't afraid to advertise that fact in the papers and on CCTV."
Another contrast to 1989 is the fact that the Party's leadership is solidly united about how this crisis needs to be tackled so as to best preserve its authority. Internal disputes about how to handle the Tiananmen protest allowed them to drag on for months and swell in size. This time, says Li, although they may disagree about some of the details, there is solidarity at the highest level to avoid any sign of a split among the top leadership. "This generation of leaders had two defining experiences in their lives," says Li, "the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen. From the first the lesson they learned was that social stability must be preserved at all costs. From the second they learned that whatever happens there must be no public divisions in the leadership."
Just as the political elite is united, the forces that would have to oppose them in any move to change the country's political order are fragmented, says David Zweig, a political science professor at Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology. Though it is miserable for those thrown out of work, millions of peasants going back to their villages are highly unlikely to pose a threat to Beijing. "Remember, Beijing has done this before: between 1998 and 2000, the government put tens of millions of workers at state-owned enterprises out of work. There were plenty of strikes and protests that made the government a little nervous, but overall, they were able to survive pretty well." Currently, the official figure is 4 million unemployed; but other estimates have the number at twice or three times that. (See pictures here of China's dust bowl.)
"For regimes to be overthrown you need an overriding ideology like democracy or the mysticism of the Taiping and Boxer rebellions in the mid 1800s and early 20th Century," Says Zweig. "For regimes to collapse now you also need the middle class, and I just can't see that happening. They have been the core of Communist Party support for a decade or more and their future is still very much tied up with the Party's."
"You can tell that the senior leaders know political change will come to China eventually and that the Party can't hang on indefinitely," says the diplomat. "That's why 90% of their children are in business, not working their way up the Communist Youth League or whatever. But that change is 15, 20 years down the road. That's not going to happen now, even if it is a very bad downturn. Change will come to China. But not yet. Not now." |
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