【中文标题】在中国，“花花”代表茶叶，不是造反
【原文标题】Where ‘Jasmine’ Means Tea, Not a Revolt
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】ANDREW JACOBS
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/weekinreview/03jacobs.html?_r=1&ref=china
在尼克松总统与红色中国建交的四十多年之后，美国政客依然坚信，中国那些地位不断提升的企业家和受过高等教育的奋斗者终有一天会发现，选举产生的民主制是不二之选。但是，到这个国家首都的随便一家高档购物中心里逛一逛，这种执念很快就会被推翻——你实际上会想，中国的独裁体制是否在通过某种有弹性的统治模式来谋求长治久安。
时机不对：阿拉伯国家最近发生的动乱让中国领导人彻底打消了推进政治改革的念头。
在东方广场购物中心，年轻的公司职员穿着耐克和A&F，公开表达他们对共产党统治的热爱。30岁的办公室助理郭婷说：“政治体制的任何变化都会让中国陷入无序的状态，我们的领导人做得很好。”
像郭女士这样受过高等教育的白领，代表着中国新兴的自信中产阶层，他们愿意接受政府的约束和不完美。对这些人来说，这些缺陷在统治集团所主导的每年两位数经济增长的前提下不算什么，他们甚至开始欣赏独裁统治下的社会稳定状态。
甚至可以说，对现状的反抗几乎是不存在的。流离失所的农民经常上街抗议被剥夺的土地，不同政见者在呼吁多党执政，但当局因害怕阿拉伯式的“花花革命”而采取的压制手段往往极为凑效。不满的年轻人在网络上发布对领导人刻薄的批判——直到监察机构删除这些发言。
但是，大部分西方专家都认为，共产主义者作为统治阶级，在短时期内不会面临被颠覆的命运。加利福尼亚大学博克利分校的中国问题专家Kevin O’Brien说：“他们表现出来的态度，要比埃及人和突尼斯人灵活得多。”他表示自己深深痴迷于“他们是如何赢得如此多的赞许的。”
这种类似达尔文理论的进化能力来自党在1989年的濒死体验，在当时，学生的知识分子占据了天安门广场长达7周，要求自由选举、结束媒体管制、腐败和裙带关系。在将示威行动残暴镇压之后的几年时间里，统治阶层找到了一种方法可以在大部分情况下满足人们的需要——这种方法足够打消大部分公民进行生死未卜的民主行走念头。
最近，中国的领导人还承诺要进行渐近式的政治改革，尽管阿拉伯国家的动乱，加上明年领导班子的更新换代，让政治改革不大可能发生。但是，不管你收集哪一方面的数字，大部分中国人的生活毫无疑问地发生了改变。在过去二十年里，城市人均收入水平翻了三倍，达到每年3100美元；人均寿命增加了4年，达到平均75岁；成年文盲下降了4600万人。中国城市的商业繁荣令人兴奋，鳞次栉比的住宅摩天大楼让人炫目，这代表了这个国家乐观的态度。O’Brien教授说：“10％的经济增长解决了很多问题。”
但是仅凭经济增长无法解释知识分子和专业人士普遍厌恶政治改革的现象。对于这个国家7000万党员和不断壮大的商业阶层人士来说，目前的政局给遵守游戏规则的人带来了巨大的优势。这些好处在于从国有银行中获得低息贷款，以及全能的官僚体系可以容忍你肆意破坏一家试图在国有巨型企业特权俱乐部之外进行经营的公司。
目前的社会体制滋生了对党的拥护情绪，即使这是出于生存的本能，而非贪欲。李凡是北京一家非政府组织——世界和中国研究所的主任。他说，选举产生的民主制会威胁到享受目前体制的商界精英们的既得利益。“那些靠经济改革发达起来的人，对与芸芸众生分享权力和既得利益不感兴趣。”
对中国3亿中产阶级来说，情况也是如此，他们很多人都认为，普选权会让贫穷的农民兄弟们权力过大。即使在充满理想化的大学生人群中，公认的信条也承认中国农民的受教育程度不足以让他们有能力选出国家的领导人。就像前国家主席江泽民在2000年接受麦克.华莱士采访时所说的：“我们人民的素质太低了。”
对民主制度的妖魔化来自像吴邦国这样的高层领导人，这位党内立法机构一把手在上个月警告，选举产生的民主制将会把中国“推向内乱的深渊”。在一旁擂鼓助威的是香港动作影星成龙，两年前在一次中国商业管理人员的聚会中，他谴责像台湾这样的民主社会“很混乱”，说中国人需要独裁统治。他的话激起了一轮热烈的掌声。
尽管大部分社会地位上升的中国人不愿意谈论这个问题，但是另外一件引人注目事情的发生，极大地挫败了他们对自己所仰慕的那种西方民主制度的热情——尤其是当其发生在像美国这样的国家时。最近值得关注的中国公民刘zm，为了呼吁结束一党执政而被控颠覆国家，入狱11年。即使上个月颁发的诺贝尔和平奖也没有缓解他的遭遇，政府更加没有因此减轻镇压的力度。最近几个星期，40多名知识分子、人权律师和博主在当局指使下被拘留或者“被消失”，这是新一轮打击不同政见行动的预兆。
香港城市大学政治科学系教授Joseph Cheng说：“人们的生活水平的确有极大的提升，他们也对未来持充分乐观的态度。但是他们同时知道，把脖子伸得太长没什么好结果。”
原文：
BEIJING — Over the nearly four decades since President Richard M. Nixon established diplomatic ties with Red China, American politicians have clung to the idea that the growing ranks of Chinese entrepreneurs and college-educated strivers would one day find electoral democracy irresistible. But a stroll through one of the capital’s upscale malls quickly demolishes such idealistic notions — and instead makes you wonder whether China’s autocrats have struck on a flexible model of long-lasting rule.
At the Oriental Plaza mall, young professionals dressed in Nikes and Abercrombie & Fitch openly profess their admiration for Communist Party governance. ”Any change in the political system would just throw China into disorder,” said Guo Ting, a 30-year-old office assistant. “Our leaders are doing a good job.”
Educated, white-collar workers like Ms. Guo are emblematic of an increasingly self-confident Chinese middle class willing to cut the government slack over its strictures and imperfections. To this group, such flaws are outweighed by the nonstop double-digit economic growth the regime has presided over, and they have come to appreciate the social stability that comes with autocratic rule.
Not to say that opposition to the status quo doesn’t exist. Dispossessed peasants regularly take to the streets over seized land. Dissidents continue to call for pluralism, though the authorities are increasingly suppressing them for fear that an Arab-style “jasmine revolution” could take hold here. And disaffected young people share barbed criticisms of their leaders online — until the censors delete the posts.
But the ruling Communists, most Western experts agree, are in no danger of being toppled anytime soon. “They’ve shown themselves to be a whole lot more flexible than the Egypts and the Tunisias of the world,” said Kevin O’Brien, a China expert at the University of California, Berkeley, pronouncing himself amazed at “how much they’ve managed to develop thumbs.”
Such a Darwinian ability to evolve grew out of the party’s near-death experience in 1989, when students and intellectuals occupied Tiananmen Square for seven weeks to demand free elections and an end to press restrictions, corruption and nepotism. In the years since it violently crushed those protests, the regime has found a way to satisfy many people much of the time — enough so that it has dissuaded most citizens from rolling the uncertain dice of pro-democracy street demonstrations.
Until recently, China’s leadership also held out the promise of incremental political reform, although the recent Arab unrest, combined with preparations for a change in leadership next year, has effectively killed such prospects. Still, any way you run the numbers, life has undoubtedly improved for most Chinese. Over the past two decades, annual per capita urban incomes have more than tripled, to $3,100 a year; life expectancy has jumped by more than six years, to an average age of 75; and the ranks of illiterate adults have dropped by 46 million. Chinese cities, with their heady, mercantile buzz and acres of gleaming residential high-rises, embody the nation’s optimism. “Ten percent growth solves a lot of problems,” Professor O’Brien said.
But economic growth alone does not explain the widespread aversion to political change one hears among intellectuals and professionals. For the country’s 70 million party members and the growing business class, the current arrangement delivers enormous advantages to those who play by the rules. The benefits can include low-interest loans from state banks and the forbearance of an all-powerful bureaucracy that could quash a company trying to start up outside the privileged club of state-owned behemoths.
The current setup fosters allegiance to the party, even if it is based on the survival instinct and not a small dollop of greed. Li Fan, director of the World and China Institute, a nongovernmental group in Beijing that studies political reform, said electoral democracy would threaten the benefits entrepreneurial elites enjoy under the current system. “Those who have prospered from economic reform have no interest in sharing power or the spoils of prosperity with those beneath them,” he said.
The same can be said of the 300 million members of China’s growing middle class, many of whom subscribe to the belief that universal suffrage would overempower their impoverished rural brethren. It has become an article of faith, even among idealistic college students, that Chinese peasants are too unschooled to intelligently select the nation’s leaders. As Jiang Zemin, then the Chinese president, told Mike Wallace in a 2000 interview, “The quality of our people is too low.”
The demonization of democracy emanates from top leaders like Wu Bangguo, the party’s top legislator, who last month warned the nation that electoral democracy would drive China “into the abyss of internal disorder.” Chiming in are celebrities like Jackie Chan, the Hong Kong actor who has denounced democratic societies like Taiwan as “chaotic,” saying the Chinese require authoritarian governance. “If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want,” he said at a gathering of Chinese executives two years ago, prompting a round of hearty applause.
Although most upwardly mobile Chinese are not eager to talk about it, there is another compelling disincentive against agitating for the kind of Western-style democracy they admit to admiring so much — when it is practiced in places like the United States. Liu Xiaobo, the last Chinese citizen of note to call for an end to single-party rule, found himself in jail for 11 years on charges of subversion. Even his Nobel Peace Prize, awarded last October, did nothing to ease his predicament, nor has it sapped the government’s zeal for repression: In recent weeks, more than four dozen public intellectuals, rights lawyers and bloggers have been detained or “disappeared” by the authorities as part of an ominous new campaign against dissent.
“It is true that people have seen a significant improvement in living standards and they are optimistic about the future,” said Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science at City University of Hong Kong. “But they also know there is nothing to be gained by sticking their neck out.” |
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