【中文标题】中国不为人知的弱点 － 毒品和腐败
【原文标题】China's Secret Weakness
【登载媒体】福布斯
【原文作者】Paul Johnson
【原文链接】http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0314/opinions-paul-johnson-current-events-secret-weakness.html
随着中国在海上和空中的经济、政治实力不断增强，一些评论人士认为，中国取代美国成为世界超级大国已经不是是否的问题，而是多快的问题。
这完全是胡说！只要美国继续保持自由、开放的现状和它独特的创新能力，就会继续领跑全世界。而且，中国领导层惧怕走上自由的道路，因为这会威胁到国家的凝聚力和统一大业，回到20年代军阀割据混战的恐怖状态。
更值得关注的事实是，中国有着不为人知的弱点，其中最致命的是赌博和吸毒。中国的繁荣现状已经形成了一批迅速壮大的国际赌博阶层，更不用说数量可观的吸毒者了。
尽管印度在18世纪因为大量出产鸦片而得名“鸦片之母”，但几乎其所有产品都销往海外市场，而不是本土。中国人对鸦片的钟爱似乎源于18世纪人口的迅速增长，从1700年到1850年，中国人口由1.5亿迅速增长到4.5亿。那时的中国是世界最大的鸦片消费国。
这为西方提供了极大的便利。尽管西方当时从中国采购大量的丝绸和茶叶，但中国坚决拒绝西方的商品，认为商品进口是不道德的行为。由于当时的政府用尽一切手段来禁止货物的进口，因此中国握有巨大的贸易顺差。但是后来，西方政府和贸易公司发现了中国对鸦片的巨额需求，因此开始通过广东大量出口。到19世纪30年代，中国的贸易顺差已经完全转化为逆差。
北京皇宫里的人逐渐发现了白银的流失和毒瘾的泛滥，尤其是在统治阶级内部，因此开始禁烟，同时阻止西方船舶向中国输送鸦片。而西方以自由贸易的名义用海军施压，鸦片战争因此开始，参战方主要是英国，目的是让中国的港口对他们开放。
一些专家认为，社会的整体繁荣通常不可避免地伴随有吸毒趋势的上升，并且引用美国作为实例。当然，中国已经加入了全球市场中，其生活标准迅速上升，其对成瘾性药物的消费也急剧地上升。澳大利亚研究人员Susan Trevaskes曾经出版过一本有关中国预防犯罪的书《Policing Serious Crime in China》，他估计阿富汗和巴基斯坦生产的海洛因中有40％进入中国，老挝和缅甸生产的毒品也有差不多的比例进入中国。Trevaskes还揭露出，中国自己也在生产摇头丸和其它毒品的原料，供出口和本土使用。
大范围的吸毒现象会引发有组织的犯罪行为，并且导致腐败。在鸦片经济的影响下，中国政府的腐败越来越严重，最终导致农民起义，然后是政府的野蛮镇压，包括烧毁农民的村庄。“坚壁清野”就是这项政策的最好写照。帝国当局建立了“战略村”（译者注：指具有战斗功能的社区、村庄），强迫农民在这里居住。
从20世纪80年代开始，中国政府采取了类似的行动，称其为“严打”，目的是打击有组织的犯罪活动和腐败。在20世纪最后25年中，无数的“犯罪分子”被处决。Trevaskes认为平均每年有2500到15000人被执行死刑，整个严打期间的死亡人数高达25万人。
这种打击犯罪的残暴行为以失败告终，最终也被政府所放弃，尤其是它似乎还导致了腐败的扩散，腐败已经遍及了官场中的所有阶层。
如果——看起来的确是有这样的苗头——中国的经济增长和生活水平的提高导致海洛因及其它毒品的泛滥，中国当局将如何应对因此而出现的有组织的犯罪？
中国人已经领悟到，繁荣是需要代价的。今天统治中国的共产党当局要比19世纪的帝国政府握有强大得多的可供支配的镇压机器。但是，历史已经证明，单纯的镇压是没有效果的。
与此同时，越来越多的中国人手中有越来越多的可支配收入——其中相当一部分会用来消费毒品。
原文：
With China's rapidly expanding economy and growing power at sea and in the air, some commentators have taken the view that it's not a question of whether but how soon China will replace the U.S. as the world's leading superpower.
This is nonsense. So long as America retains its freedom and thus its unique powers of innovation, it will continue to lead. Besides, China's elite is too scared to follow in the path of freedom because to do so would risk unity, threatening disintegration and a return to the terrible days of warlords and civil war, as in the 1920s.
Moreover, China has secret weaknesses. Its most serious: gambling and drug addiction. China's new prosperity is already producing a rapid expansion of the country's international gambling class, not to mention an appreciable increase in the number of drug addicts.
Though India was known as the "Mother of Opium" and during the 18th century produced large quantities of it, nearly all of India's opium was exported to foreign markets rather than consumed at home. The Chinese love of opium seems to have originated on a large scale with its 18th-century population explosion, when China grew from about 150 million in 1700 to 450 million in 1850. By that time China had become the world's largest consumer of opium.
This was highly convenient for the West. Although the West bought large quantities of silk and tea from China, the Chinese spurned Western goods, regarding foreign imports as immoral. As the authorities did everything in their power to restrict imports, China ran huge trade surpluses with the West. But then Western governments and trading firms discovered the Chinese appetite for opium and began to export it in large quantities through Canton. By the 1830s China's export surplus had turned into a growing deficit.
Alarmed by the loss of silver and the spread of addiction, especially among the ruling class, the imperial court in Peking sought to ban opium and prevent Western ships from bringing it in. The West--in the name of free trade--responded with naval force. Thus began the Opium Wars, which were fought mainly by Britain, to keep China's ports open.
Some experts believe that general prosperity in a society is always and inevitably accompanied by a comparable increase in drug-taking and cite the U.S. as an example. Certainly, since China entered the world market and its living standards began to rise swiftly, its consumption of addictive drugs has risen alarmingly. Australian researcher Susan Trevaskes, who has just published a book on Chinese crime prevention, Policing Serious Crime in China (Routledge, $125), estimates that 40% of the heroin produced in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a similar percentage of the drugs coming from Laos and Burma now go to China. Trevaskes also reveals that China itself manufactures "precursor chemicals" for ecstasy and other substances, for export and domestic use.
Drug use on a large scale attracts organized crime and corruption. Under opium's economic impact government corruption in China became more oppressive, which eventually led to peasant revolts, followed by the government's savage attempts at suppressing them by burning villages. The catchphrase describing this policy: "strengthening the walls and clearing the countryside." The imperial authorities then created "strategic villages" and forced peasants to live in them.
Since the 1980s the Chinese government has conducted similar campaigns, dubbed "Strike Hard," to put down organized crime and corruption. During the last quarter of the 20th century an enormous number of "criminals" were executed. Trevaskes puts the figure at between 2,500 and 15,000 a year and calculates that the total number may have been as high as 250,000.
Such ferocious campaigns to put down crime ended in failure and were abandoned, especially since it seems they often led to the spread of corruption--at all levels of officialdom.
If, as seems likely, the expansion of the Chinese economy and the rise in living standards lead to further increases in the use of heroin and other drugs, how will Chinese authorities deal with the concurrent rise in organized crime?
The Chinese are learning that prosperity comes at a price. The Communist authorities ruling China today have immensely more powerful and repressive machinery at their disposal than had the 19th-century imperialist bureaucracy. However, experience has shown that mere repression does not work.
Meanwhile, more and more Chinese have more and more disposable income--and a significant proportion of it is going to drugs. |
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发表于 2011-3-3 15:59
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发表于 2011-3-3 16:04
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