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本帖最后由 渔音谦谦 于 2009-10-13 21:51 编辑
原文地址：http://www.latimes.com/news/opin ... -buruma11-2009oct11,0,8205.story
Opinion
China's class ceiling
For the nation's growing economic elite, life is sweet. For dissidents and peasants, it's a different story. By Ian Buruma October 11, 2009
Thatthe current ruler of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao, is abore will no doubt be a relief to most people, including 1.3 billionChinese. Hu's dullness is remarkable given the high drama of China'sfairly recent transformation from a poor, blood-soaked totalitariancountry to a rich (in patches) superpower aspiring to take overAmerica's lead in the not-so-distant future. But perhaps his lack ofcharisma is part of the point. The first 27 years of the People'sRepublic, under Chairman Mao, when millions died in almost constantpurges and upheavals, and tens of millions died of starvation inbizarre economic experiments, were so awful that most Chinese are quitesick of charismatic leadership.
China is the only ancientcivilization in human history to have reemerged as a major force in theworld. And Chinese are rightly proud of this. So why rock the boat? Itis better to be ruled by boring technocrats like Hu who will keepthings nice and steady.
This is not the story one might hearfrom unemployed workers in the rust belts of northeastern China, orfrom rioting farmers in Guangdong province who have been pushed off theland by greedy developers working in tandem with corrupt partyofficials. Nor is this view necessarily shared by the brave lawyerswilling to take on some of those corrupt officials, or intellectualdissidents who still get arrested for arguing that Chinese should beentitled to basic democratic rights.
But it is the common linetaken by people who benefit most from the current wave of fun, fashionand prosperity -- the new urban elite, some of whom are pamperedchildren of Communist Party bosses. None are communist ideologues. Allhave taken the late leader Deng Xiaoping's "To Get Rich is Glorious"slogan seriously. And not a few of them, now in their 40s, were amongthe Tiananmen Square demonstrators in 1989 who demanded democraticfreedoms and an end to corruption.
One pokes into thiscontradiction at one's peril, especially if one is a foreigner. Aprominent figure in the new Beijing elite, a highly sophisticated womanwho personifies the glories of getting rich in today's China, alsohappens to be a daughter of the Communist aristocracy. Hong Huang is around-faced, expensively dressed media mogul who runs a string oftrendy magazines. Her mother was Mao's English teacher. Her stepfatherwas Mao's minister of foreign affairs. Hong was partly educated in NewYork, and one of her husbands was the filmmaker Chen Kaige, anotherplayer in Beijing's gilded age.
A few years ago, I was takento Hong's lovely country house in the mountains. I had been introducedby a mutual friend, the avant-garde poet Yang Lian, who lives in Londonwith his wife, Yo Yo, a novelist. Neither Yang Lian nor Yo Yo are,strictly speaking, political dissidents. They don't write aboutpolitics much, but they are free-spirited authors who chose not to putup with the restrictions of an authoritarian society.
Theevening started off amicably, with gossip about acquaintances on theBeijing scene. Then Hong started giving Yang advice. Why was he stillliving abroad? Why didn't he come back home? Things were great in Chinanow. Lots of money to be made. Yang should get with the program. Allthat modernist poetry might fool foreigners, but life had moved on inBeijing. He should do some advertising, or maybe pop lyrics. There wasno need to worry about censorship and all that, if you knew how to playthe game.
A certain edginess crept into the bracing mountainair. Hong's advice began to sound more like bullying. Tiananmen had notbeen mentioned, but it was the elephant in the room. It was one of thereasons Yang and Yo Yo opted for residence abroad. Suddenly, Hongbrought it up, turning to me as well. "Tiananmen, Tiananmen," she said,"foreign journalists are always going on about Tiananmen. I think it'stime to forget about all that. We should move on and feel proud of ourcountry. Foreigners just use it to bad-mouth China."
I felt Ihad to say something, but I didn't feel like picking a fight as Hong'sguest. So I put it to her that the Chinese still insist on rememberingthe Nanking massacre of 1937, when Japanese troops went on an orgy ofrape, looting and murder in what was then the Chinese capital. Indeed,this terrible event is a central part of what is now called "patrioticeducation." Japanese nationalists, on the other hand, want youngJapanese to forget about it because they feel that it is time to moveon and that the young should feel proud of their country.
Of course, I hadpicked a fight. And I will never forget the way Hong -- charming,cosmopolitan, New York-educated -- turned into a ranting Red Guard,screaming abuse at me, at foreigners in general and at Yang Lian and YoYo for defending me. Clearly a very raw nerve had been touched.
Yes,what Hong said was true. People, especially educated people with ACertain cosmopolitan style, were doing all right in post-1989 China.There was money to be made, a lot of money. Fashion was booming. And soon. But at a price. And that price is what Hong called "playing thegame" -- knowing what subjects to avoid, how to trim your views, how tostay out of politics. Let the dull technocrats rule China with a velvetglove -- and an iron fist for those who refuse to play the game.
Toopt for this is entirely understandable. Exile is tough. And who wantsto go to prison? Besides, life really is sweet for those who have madeenough money and the necessary compromises. But they are compromises.
Becausemost foreign journalists, businessmen, diplomats and academics tend tomeet educated, privileged Chinese like Hong, most reports from Chinareflect their views: that soft authoritarianism is good for China; thatthe Chinese masses are not ready for democracy; that to give them theright to vote would only create chaos. But the main argument fortechnocracy, heard not just from the Chinese elites but increasingly inWestern countries too, is that it is more efficient. Once the rulersput their minds to something -- the Olympic Games, birth control,economic reform, perhaps even tackling pollution -- nothing and no onestands in the way of success.
People who like the idea ofstrong central government and top-down change are often attracted tothe Chinese model. And so are businessmen who would much rather dealwith authoritarian party officials than independent trade unions. Chinais often favorably compared with India, with its gross inefficiencies,dire poverty and huge problems with illiteracy, corruption andorganized crime. Messy democracy, it might seem, is holding India back,while China is forging ahead with ever more impressive statistics.
Thereis some truth to this view. When I first saw Shenzhen in the 1970s, itwas a tiny village across the border from Hong Kong. Since DengXiaoping declared, in 1982, that a new economic zone should arisethere, his will soon became reality. It is now an industrial metropoliswith a population of, give or take, 10 million people.
Technocracy, however, has great drawbacks too. Authoritariantechnocrats are not very good in emergencies. When a devastatingearthquake hit Sichuan province in 2008, killing about 70,000 peopleand leaving 10 million more without homes, China was much praised forits speedy and compassionate response. What has been mentioned less isthat a disproportionate number of victims were children because schoolscollapsed. Developers had used shoddy materials and paid officials tolook the other way.
Perhaps one cannot blame the technocratsin Beijing for this. But the central government should not be praisedtoo highly either. Much of the early help came from ordinary Chinesewho sped to the scene, and they were actually hindered by officials inthe beginning. Later, when citizens, helped by lawyers, tried toinvestigate the corrupt practices that had led to the catastrophicnumber of children's deaths, they were blocked and, in some cases, sentto prison.
The other thing government-by-experts is singularlybad at doing goes to the heart of politics: solving conflicts ofinterest. Individual liberties have increased without the benefits ofpolitical liberties. The state will no longer decide whom a person canmarry, where he can live, what kind of job he can seek. But any effortto further collective aims in an organized fashion independent from thestate will be ruthlessly crushed. This leads to what old-fashionedMarxists called contradictions. What is good for the business elite ofShanghai may not be good for the peasants in Sichuan.
Tojustify its monopoly on power, the Chinese technocracy relies on thepromise of order and constant economic growth, and the claim ofpatriotism. Supporting the government is patriotic, and criticism isunpatriotic or, if voiced by foreigners, "anti-Chinese."
Butin the end, the greatest flaw in the system is that China's boringrulers are self-perpetuating. They cannot be punished by the ruled fortheir incompetence. Great blunders go unchecked. Conflicts of interestfester or erupt in violence. China's technocracy might well look stableand successful for a while to come, but it is unlikely to last withoutbasic political reform. Some think the new wave of technocrats, theones who went to Harvard or Yale, can bring this about themselves. Onenever knows. But as long as they haven't, I'd still put my money onmessy democracy any day.
Ian Buruma is a professor of human rights at Bard College and the author of, most recently, "The China Lover."
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times |
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发表于 2009-10-13 21:49
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