作者：2008年3月19日 人文与社会
在我们有生之年，大部分的东西在我们死后都会被遗忘。但中国崛起不同，它会如同罗马帝国或苏维埃的崛起与衰败，它的效应会在我们死后持续回荡。我们这一代人都看见到了中国的崛起，见到东方明珠如何从迷雾中赫然现身，我们也知道一堆惊人的统计数据；但为何，我们说不出来任何一位影响中国的思想家？我们从未听说中国到底是怎么看待这个世界，又如何看待自己。
本书作者马克．里欧纳德（Mark Leonard）抱着疑惑到达中国时，原本想稍微收集资料，就可以迅速离开。但是当他走进中国社会科学院，发现仅仅这一个单位就有四千位全职研究员，每天都在思考中国的未来、世界的未来。他才了解自己走进的世界，是一个卧虎藏龙的世界，每个人的脑中都有宏大的构想。举例来说，2007年，一群中国知识份子以“如何防止美国快速衰落”为题进行热烈讨论，思索如何设计一套制度，“安排”美国在衰落时至少保有“地区霸主”的位置。这样的提问与讨论，都让西方思想家感到震撼。有记忆以来，从来都是西方想着如何管理、应付中国，却从没想到中国也是以同样的方式试图管理西方，甚至已经包括西方的没落。里欧纳德在北大见了著名经济学家张维迎，看到他桌上相当于一个中国农民一年薪水的Cohiba雪茄；张维迎希望这些自由主义的象征，最后能够取代马克思主义。
里欧纳德在万圣书店楼上的咖啡店见了新左派的汪晖，他的立场跟当初在天安门广场一样，追求的是民主与自由，反对市场决定。里欧纳德也去了平昌与重庆，看到几个中国大陆各式各样的民主实验室，甚至来过台湾与陈水扁与马英九会面。藉由这些见闻，里欧纳德清晰而有趣地告诉我们改革开放之后的思想轴线。他相信，这些对于未来的构图，或许不会立刻影响到西方的权力版图，但确实会夺走西方在中东、非洲、拉丁美洲的影响力。
换句话说，二十一世纪将不会是中国的世纪，麦当劳世界上最受喜爱的速食地位不会被馒头所取代，但是U2主唱Bono下一次试图拯救非洲时，他们可能会在北京的奥运体育馆而非伦敦的海德公园举行最大型的演唱会。
居住于英国的学者、前欧洲外交事务委员会(The European Council on Foreign Affairs)执行主任马克·莱昂纳德(Mark Leonard)的新着《中国怎么想？》(What Does China Think·)英国版日前由Fourth Estate出版社出版，美国版也将于4月28日出版。本报道题图为美国版。今年3月号的《展望》(Prospect)杂志，以《中国的新知识分子》(China's New Intelligentsia)为题，刊出莱昂纳德的封面推介长文，介绍中国当代思想界。
莱昂纳德在文中首先回顾了他在2003年对北京的访问。当时中国社会科学院副院长王洛林和黄平接待了他，王洛林告诉他，该院有“50个研究中心，覆盖260个学科，有4000名全职研究员”。而英国的全部智库不过数百人，全欧洲千把人，在美国也不过万人。中国一家机构就有4000人，而这样的智库，在北京一地还有十来家。即便这4000个研究员不是每个都那么合格，数字本身还是很说明问题的。
莱昂纳德说，他本想到中国打个转就走，原以为中国的知识分子就是几个执拗的马克思主义意识形态分子，藏身于党的秘密研究室或者顶尖大学的校园，没想到他却发现了一群知识分子、智囊人物、活动家就国家的未来展开着激烈争论。他意识到，对中国的思想界的了解需要相当的功夫和时间。他在接下来的三年中多次奔赴上海北京，与数十名知识分子见面谈话，这些人有的是党员，有的是党外人士。
他说，人们都知道中国经济的崛起，却不知道中国思想界的状况。对美国知识界了如指掌，却对当代中国学者的状况所知甚少。他举例说中国的新左经济学家针对新右提出了社会不公平的问题，政治理论家讨论选举和法治的相对重要性，中国的新保守主义与自由国际主义争论大方向问题。中国知识分子的重要性也由于政治敏感性而更加突出。
他去北大见张维迎，在张的办公桌上看到了六盒昂贵Cohiba雪茄（人文与社会友情提示：cohiba雪茄，一盒25支从140美元到3、400美元不等，雪茄在欧美公开场合抽，是显摆财富和名望的标志商品，用英文讲：a conspicous declaration of wealth or social pretension），相当于中国农民一整年的收入的几倍。张维迎把这些雪茄盒子当成西方自由主义象征的碎片（虽然是社会主义国家的产品），希望这些盒子象征的力量能最终战胜和取代马克思主义。作为新右典型一员，张维迎跟他的朋友们想法差不多，就是希望现有公共部门全部打碎，政府萎缩成主要功能只是保护私有财产。新右在中国1980年代到90年代的改革中是核心力量，但30年以后，中国已经反对他们的观点意见。 社会调查显示，新右是中国最不受欢迎的一群。由于改革的代价、不合法改制、工资欠付等等引起了一些社会不安定现象，新右的市场万能观点也受到新左的挑战。在这场思想论战中，市场与国家、沿海与内陆、城镇与乡村、富人与穷人的对立都被提出讨论。
莱昂纳德也见了汪晖，他是公认的新左领导之一。所谓新左是一群关联比较松散的知识分子，他们日渐获得大众越来越强的支持，也通过他们的文章为政治讨论提出话题方向。莱昂纳德介绍道，汪晖年轻时也是市场的拥护者，但89年以后在陕西农村接触到农民的生活，思想发生转变，对不受限制的自由市场万能的观点产生了怀疑，意识到国家必须为了消除不公平做出努力。90年代汪晖访问美国，最终回国工作，现在在清华教书。汪晖约他在万圣的醒客咖啡店见面，他的样子穿着朴素，看上去像个典型的公众知识分子，但他并不闷在象牙塔中，他写过关于地方腐败的文章，帮助工人组织起来反对不合法的改制。新左之为新在于他们支持市场改革，之为左是因为他们关心社会不公正现象。 “中国困在迷失的社会主义和裙带关系的资本主义这两个极端之间，同时受到两者最恶劣因素的困扰… 我主张国家进行市场改革，但是不能为了GDP的增长牺牲工人利益和环境。”
新左提出的问题是，已经积累起来的财富是应该继续在精英手中集聚，还是应该建立所有公民都能受益的发展模式。他们想发展的是中国特色的社会民主。汪晖认为，“作为一个人口巨大的国家，中国无法采纳德国或者北欧福利模式。因此我们才需要制度革新。王绍光探讨低廉医疗保险，崔之远探讨所有权改革，以使工人在雇佣单位获得一定权利，胡鞍钢探讨绿色发展。”
北京的力量权衡似乎微妙地向新左的观点倾斜。2005年底，第十一个五年计划中提出了“和谐社会”的蓝图，这是从1978年以来第一次没有把经济发展作为高于一切的国家目标。这个计划中提到将使退休金、失业补助、医疗保险和产假用资金每年增加20％ ，在农村改善卫生和教育条件，并减少20%的能耗。第11个五年计划是新的中国模式的一个模版。对新右来说，它保持了继续试验的想法，采用渐进改革而不是休克疗法，对新左来说，它关怀了不公平现象和环境保护，探寻能够把合作和竞争连系起来的新体制。
2007年中国宣布将在赞比亚建立金属生产中心，毛里求斯、坦桑尼亚分别成为运输和经贸区。中国的投资力量在改变经济发展的结构，国际金融组织IMF和世界银行发现他们的势力减弱了。安哥拉、卢旺达、乍得、尼日利亚、苏丹、阿尔及利亚、埃塞俄比亚、乌干达、津巴布韦等国家都选择放弃IMF和世界银行而与中国合作。
很多中等或低收入国家都到中国取经，伊朗、埃及、安哥拉、赞比亚、卡萨克斯坦、俄国、印度、越南、巴西、委内瑞拉都派员到中国城市学习。中国知识分子比如张维迎和胡鞍钢等人常被邀请讲授经验。全世界有相当一部分国家在模仿中国，据世界银行统计，在120个国家有3000多个学习中国模式的经济特区在建设。全球化的原意是市场经济在全球的胜利，但是中国经验显示，国家资本主义是全球化的一个重要好处。
关于政治改革，莱昂纳德介绍了中共中央编译局副局长俞可平的一些关于民主的观点，俞认为激进政治改革和经济的“休克疗法”一样会导致失败，他提倡从草根开始的渐进从下而上的民主改革，希望通过在党内首先促进民主来推动民主。他建议莱昂纳德区四川平昌看看那里的党员“公推直选”的情况，但莱昂纳德认为，贫穷的平昌能够实行的，不一定能在北京上海这样的大都市也推行，中国其他2860个县都没有采用平昌模式。
莱昂纳德与北大教授潘维见面时，潘维严厉批评他太把草根民主当回事。潘维认为四川的地方领导就是想出名，实验没有成功。
中国思想家们认为，所有发达民主目前都面临着危机。西方政治模式的中心仍是多党制，但也有新的补充措施。但中国新一代政治思想者认为应该在边缘使用选举，但在决策中以公开咨询、专家研讨、社会调查为主。社科院的房宁打了个比方，西方模式民主是一个固定菜单，食客可以选择不同的厨师的饭店，但是菜色是固定的；中国模式是厨师固定，但菜色可以通过商讨来改变。
莱昂纳德介绍了一下重庆的商议民主（deliberative democracy）试验，这个概念是斯坦福的政治学家James Fishkin提出的，建立在雅典民主理想模式上，随机选取一个人群，请他们来对市政提出意见。重庆政府很自豪的宣布，在商议民主之后，轻轨票价从14块降到2块。很多中国城市都在学习这个方式。更有意思的商议民主在泽国镇，镇长的去留就是用这种方式决定的。该镇的4000万公共资金也是这样决定了使用方法。这种事例只有一次，但Fishkin和何包钢都认为这个模式也许会成为政治改革的模版。
莱昂纳德提及或许中国的公开咨询方式可以成为一党制国家借鉴的模式。针对某些人权组织一味批评中国的独裁以及在非洲输出独裁模式，他提出了不同的观点。在他看来中国的国际政治舞台的活动不应该被简单化的看作是对非洲独裁者的支持，中国在试图重新定义“力量”（power）在全球政治中的意义，推行“国家综合实力”的概念。中国的各个思想库都提出自己对政治、经济、军事、文化实力的量化方式。在全球化经济中重新建立国家主权，使之不受全球经济力量、公司、甚至个人的影响，这个想法是中国世界观的一个突出特色。
海军少将杨毅是中国军事智库的头脑人物之一。他对力量的看法决不局限于对兵器的衡量。他认为美国通过假装在国际事务中具有某种“道德高度”，已经建立了对中国的“策略围攻”。每当中国试图在外交上做出努力，比如军事现代化或者与更多国家建交，美国就把这些努力描写成为威胁。 而世界其他地区很容易就模仿超级大国的想法。
美国政治学者Joseph Nye 1990年提出的软权力概念在中国要比在华盛顿热门得多。2006年在北京召开了一个会议，推出了与“美国梦”相对的“中国梦”观念，中心是把中国与如下3个概念联系起来：经济发展、政治主权、国际法律。美国外交官在讨论政体变化的时候，中国人探讨对主权的尊重和文化多样性。美国外交政策通过准许和孤立来支持它的政治目标，但中国人提供没有附加条件的援助和贸易。美国把它的喜好强加给勉为其难的盟友，中国至少把看起来是在聆听其他国家的声音当成一种美德。
虽然所有中国思想者都希望加强国家力量，他们对国家的长期目标仍在争论。所谓“自由国际主义者”郑必坚喜欢谈论中国的“和平崛起”和中国如何重新加入了世界，适应全球标准，为全球秩序做出积极贡献。近年来北京通过六国会谈希望能解决北朝鲜核武器问题，与欧盟美国俄国一起解决伊朗问题，2005年在蒙特利尔国际大会上对于气候变化问题采取安抚姿态 ，派出4000名战士参加联合国维和任务。当中国与西方意见不一的时候，姿态也更加委婉。西方干涉科索沃时，中国在“不干涉政策”的基础上提出反对干涉他国内政。 伊拉克问题上中国弃权了。在达佛问题上，中国最终在2006年投票同意联合国派出维和部队－－虽然中国仍被批评与苏丹政府关系密切
但所谓“新保守派”或者说“新共产主义者”（neo-conns 即neo-conservatives 但莱昂纳德称其为neo-comms 即 neo-communistis）的杨毅和阎学通公开提出要用现代思想来实现中国的古老梦想，阎和许多中国知识分子一样研究古代思想，他最感兴趣的是古代中国学者对“王”和“霸”的区分。王制是中央集权，但是基于温和政府，没有强制和领土扩张。而霸是指霸权，最强大的国家压迫它的边缘。阎向解释莱昂纳德解释，王、霸同时存在：“在中原用王制，在“蛮夷之地”用霸术。这正像今天的美国，在西方用王制，在全球是个霸权，使用军事力量，采用双重标准。”阎学通认为，中国在日渐强大的同时应该有两个选择：“中国可以变成西方‘王制’的一部分，但这意味着必须改变政治制度，成为民主国家。另一个选择是中国建立自己的系统。”
“自由国际主义”和“新共产主义”矛盾是毛时代资产阶级外交政策和革命外交政策对立的一个现代变种。中国在今后的年代中，将会明显有资本主义特征。 中国已经决定加入国际经济和制度，它希望能够加强这些来限制美国并为中国发展建立和平的环境。但从长期来看，有些中国人希望按照中国模式来建立国际秩序。关键是避免冲突，但改变事实。
欧盟和北约的特点－－合并而不是保护主权，或许会在新生的东亚共同体和上海合作组织中再次实现。通过这些机构，中国向邻国保证和平发展的意向，并建立排除美国的新社区
中国在联合国中也成功地削弱了美国的势力。与俄国（喜欢公开反对美国和 欧盟计划）不同，中国采取比较委婉的姿态。虽然中国反对伊拉克战争，法德俄国在反对中占主导地位。中国支持非洲国家在2005年对安理会席位的争取，使得日本的申请失败。中国也让伊斯兰国家组织来主导对新的联合国人权委员会的削弱。1995年美国在联合国大会中得票50.6%, 但在2006年只有23.6%。在人权问题上，中国的支持率从43%上升到82%，美国责从57% 下降到了22%。
中国知识分子的论争讲继续在智库内部、杂志、大学、或者，对那些更加敏感的问题来说，在互联网上继续。或许有一天，张维迎、汪晖、俞可平、潘维、阎学通、郑必坚 的名字会像美国学者在前些年那样被我们熟知：就像那些80年代里根时代的经济学家或者911时代的新保守主义策略家们一样。
更加自由的政治论争、留学归国的学生、奥运会这样的大型国际活动会使中国知识分子的讨论更加自由。现在中国正在尝试上千种想法－－从商议民主到地域联合。从这个社会实验的大实验室，一种新的世界观正在出现，或许有一天它会形成一个明确的中国模式－－一条世界其他国家可以追随的、另外的、非西方的道路。
《中华读书报》记者康慨认为，“在席卷世界的“中国热潮”中，西方近年来出版了大量的相关图书，但以介绍历史风土，分析宏观政策，论述具体事件和人物，或讲解生意经的居多，对当代中国思想界的全面考察之作十分罕有。因此，马克·莱昂纳德的努力值得关注和认可。”
确实，莱昂纳德虽然不是中国研究的专家，也沿用了一些比如“独裁 dictatorship” 、“威权 authoritarian”之类的名词，但他不拘于时下流行的对中国经济发展走马观花式的点评、惊叹或者威胁论，向世界学术界介绍中国思想状况和论争成果，对经济政治争论的叙述有一定的深度，一方面指出了中国仍存在的问题，一方面提出中国的探索可供其他国家借鉴。
（《中华读书报》记者康慨编写过对这篇文章的简短介绍选译，本想转载，但其中很多地方或许是因为纸媒的特色，讳言而且改写了，与原文有所偏差，而且削去太多部分，仅十分之一不到。因此本站编辑重新译写，当然也有省略，主要是省略了关于89和西部某些地区、以及对自由的某些太绝对的批评、重复的铺叙强调，但尽量忠于原文，全面介绍。特此说明。人文与社会编辑特稿，www.humanities.cn; www.wen.org.cn 版权所有，转载请注明，谢谢。）
China’s new intelligentsia
作者：Mark Leonard 2008年3月28日 prospect magazine
Despite the global interest in the rise of China, no one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them. Yet China has a surprisingly lively intellectual class whose ideas may prove a serious challenge to western liberal hegemony
As he said this, I could feel myself shrink into the seams of my vast chair: Britain’s entire think tank community is numbered in the hundreds, Europe’s in the low thousands; even the think-tank heaven of the US cannot have more than 10,000. But here in China, a single institution—and there are another dozen or so think tanks in Beijing alone—had 4,000 researchers. Admittedly, the people at CASS think that many of the researchers are not up to scratch, but the raw figures were enough.
At the beginning of that trip, I had hoped to get a quick introduction to China, learn the basics and go home. I had imagined that China’s intellectual life consisted of a few unbending ideologues in the back rooms of the Communist party or the country’s top universities. Instead, I stumbled on a hidden world of intellectuals, think-tankers and activists, all engaged in intense debate about the future of their country. I soon realised that it would take more than a few visits to Beijing and Shanghai to grasp the scale and ambition of China’s internal debates. Even on that first trip my mind was made up—I wanted to devote the next few years of my life to understanding the living history that was unfolding before me. Over a three-year period, I have spoken with dozens of Chinese thinkers, watching their views develop in line with the breathtaking changes in their country. Some were party members; others were outside the party and suffering from a more awkward relationship with the authorities. Yet to some degree, they are all insiders. They have chosen to live and work in mainland China, and thus to cope with the often capricious demands of the one-party state.
We are used to China’s growing influence on the world economy—but could it also reshape our ideas about politics and power? This story of China’s intellectual awakening is less well documented. We closely follow the twists and turns in America’s intellectual life, but how many of us can name a contemporary Chinese writer or thinker? Inside China—in party forums, but also in universities, in semi-independent think tanks, in journals and on the internet—debate rages about the direction of the country: “new left” economists argue with the “new right” about inequality; political theorists argue about the relative importance of elections and the rule of law; and in the foreign policy realm, China’s neocons argue with liberal internationalists about grand strategy. Chinese thinkers are trying to reconcile competing goals, exploring how they can enjoy the benefits of global markets while protecting China from the creative destruction they could unleash in its political and economic system. Some others are trying to challenge the flat world of US globalisation with a “walled world” Chinese version.
Paradoxically, the power of the Chinese intellectual is amplified by China’s repressive political system, where there are no opposition parties, no independent trade unions, no public disagreements between politicians and a media that exists to underpin social control rather than promote political accountability. Intellectual debate in this world can become a surrogate for politics—if only because it is more personal, aggressive and emotive than anything that formal politics can muster. While it is true there is no free discussion about ending the Communist party’s rule, independence for Tibet or the events of Tiananmen Square, there is a relatively open debate in leading newspapers and academic journals about China’s economic model, how to clean up corruption or deal with foreign policy issues like Japan or North Korea. Although the internet is heavily policed, debate is freer here than in the printed word (although one of the most free-thinking bloggers, Hu Jia, was recently arrested). And behind closed doors, academics and thinkers will often talk freely about even the most sensitive topics, such as political reform. The Chinese like to argue about whether it is the intellectuals that influence decision-makers, or whether groups of decision-makers use pet intellectuals as informal mouthpieces to advance their own views. Either way, these debates have become part of the political process, and are used to put ideas in play and expand the options available to Chinese decision-makers. Intellectuals are, for example, regularly asked to brief the politburo in “study sessions”; they prepare reports that feed into the party’s five-year plans; and they advise on the government’s white papers.
So is the Chinese intelligentsia becoming increasingly open and western? Many of the concepts it argues over—including, of course, communism itself—are western imports. And a more independent-minded, western style of discourse may be emerging as a result of the 1m students who have studied outside China—many in the west—since 1978; fewer than half have returned, but that number is rising. However, one should not forget that the formation of an “intellectual” in China remains very different from in the west. Education is still focused on practical contributions to national life, and despite a big expansion of higher education (around 20 per cent of 18-30 year olds now enrol at university), teaching methods rely heavily on rote learning. Moreover, all of these people will be closely monitored for political dissent, with “political education” classes still compulsory.
Zhang Weiying has a thing about Cuban cigars. When I went to see him in his office in Beijing University, I saw half a dozen boxes of Cohiba piled high on his desk. The cigar boxes—worth several times a Chinese peasant’s annual income—are fragments of western freedom (albeit products of a communist nation), symbols of the dynamism he hopes will gradually eclipse and replace the last vestiges of Maoism. Like other economic liberals—or members of the “new right” as their opponents call them—he thinks China will not be free until the public sector is dismantled and the state has shrivelled into a residual body designed mainly to protect property rights.
The new right was at the heart of China’s economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Zhang Weiying has a favourite allegory to explain these reforms. He tells a story about a village that relied on horses to conduct its chores. Over time, the village elders realised that the neighbouring village, which relied on zebras, was doing better. So after years of hailing the virtues of the horse, they decided to embrace the zebra. The only obstacle was converting the villagers who had been brainwashed over decades into worshipping the horse. The elders developed an ingenious plan. Every night, while the villagers slept, they painted black stripes on the white horses. When the villagers awoke the leaders reassured them that the animals were not really zebras, just the same old horses adorned with a few harmless stripes. After a long interval the village leaders began to replace the painted horses with real zebras. These prodigious animals transformed the village’s fortunes, increasing productivity and creating wealth all around. Only many years later—long after all the horses had been replaced with zebras and the village had benefited from many years of prosperity—did the elders summon the citizenry to proclaim that their community was a village of zebras, and that zebras were good and horses bad.
Zhang Weiying’s story is one way of understanding his theory of “dual-track pricing,” first put forward in 1984. He argued that “dual-track pricing” would allow the government to move from an economy where prices were set by officials to one where they were set by the market, without having to publicly abandon its commitment to socialism or run into the opposition of all those with a vested interest in central planning. Under this approach, some goods and services continued to be sold at state-controlled prices while others were sold at market prices. Over time, the proportion of goods sold at market prices was steadily increased until by the early 1990s, almost all products were sold at market prices. The “dual-track” approach embodies the combination of pragmatism and incrementalism that has allowed China’s reformers to work around obstacles rather than confront them.
The most famous village of zebras was Shenzhen. At the end of the 1970s, Shenzhen was an unremarkable fishing village, providing a meagre living for its few thousand inhabitants. But over the next three decades, it became an emblem of the Chinese capitalism that Zhang Weiying and his colleagues were building. Because of its proximity to Hong Kong, Deng Xiaoping chose Shenzhen in 1979 as the first “special economic zone,” offering its leaders tax breaks, freedom from regulation and a licence to pioneer new market ideas. The architects of reform in Shenzhen wanted to build high-tech plants that could mass-produce value-added goods for sale in the west. Such experimental zones were financed by drawing on the country’s huge savings and the revenues from exports. The coastal regions sucked in a vast number of workers from the countryside, which held down urban wages. And the whole system was laissez-faire—allowing wealth to trickle down from the rich to the poor organically rather than consciously redistributing it. Deng Xiaoping pointedly declared that “some must get rich first,” arguing that the different regions should “eat in separate kitchens” rather than putting their resources into a “common pot.” As a result, the reformers of the eastern provinces were allowed to cut free from the impoverished inland areas and steam ahead.
But life today is getting tougher for the economists behind this system, like Zhang Weiying. After 30 years of having the best of the argument with ideas imported from the west, China has turned against the new right. Opinion polls show that they are the least popular group in China. Public disquiet is growing over the costs of reform, with protests by laid-off workers and concern over illegal demolitions and unpaid wages. And the ideas of the market are being challenged by a new left, which advocates a gentler form of capitalism. A battle of ideas pits the state against market; coasts against inland provinces; towns against countryside; rich against poor.
Wang Hui is one of the leaders of the new left, a loose grouping of intellectuals who are increasingly capturing the public mood and setting the tone for political debate through their articles in journals such as Dushu. Wang Hui was a student of literature rather than politics, but he was politicised through his role in the student demonstrations of 1989 that congregated on Tiananmen Square. Like most young intellectuals at the time, he was a strong believer in the potential of the market. But after the Tiananmen massacre, Wang Hui took off to the mountains and spent two years in hiding, getting to know peasants and workers. His experiences there made him doubt the justice of unregulated free markets, and convinced him that the state must play a role in preventing inequality. Wang Hui’s ideas were developed further during his exile in the US in the 1990s, but like many other new left thinkers he has returned to mainland China—in his case to teach at the prestigious Qinghua University. I met him last year in “Thinker’s Café” in Beijing, a bright and airy retreat with comfy sofas and fresh espressos. He looks like an archetypal public intellectual: cropped hair, a brown jacket and black polo-neck sweater. But Wang Hui does not live in an ivory tower. He writes reports exposing local corruption and helps workers organise themselves against illegal privatisations. His grouping is “new” because, unlike the “old left,” it supports market reforms. It is left because, unlike the “new right,” it worries about inequality: “China is caught between the two extremes of misguided socialism and crony capitalism, and suffering from the worst elements of both… I am in favour of orienting the country toward market reforms, but China’s development must be more balanced. We must not give total priority to GDP growth to the exclusion of workers’ rights and the environment.”
The new left’s philosophy is a product of China’s relative affluence. Now that the market is driving economic growth, they ask what should be done with the wealth. Should it continue accumulating in the hands of an elite, or can China foster a model of development that benefits all citizens? They want to develop a Chinese variant of social democracy. As Wang Hui says: “We cannot count on a state on the German or Nordic model. We have such a large country that the state would have to be vast to provide that kind of welfare. That is why we need institutional innovation. Wang Shaoguang [a political economist] is talking about low-price healthcare. Cui Zhiyuan [a political theorist] is talking about reforming property rights to give workers a say over the companies where they work. Hu Angang [an economist] is talking about green development.”
The balance of power in Beijing is subtly shifting towards the left. At the end of 2005, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao published the “11th five-year plan,” their blueprint for a “harmonious society.” For the first time since the reform era began in 1978, economic growth was not described as the overriding goal for the Chinese state. They talked instead about introducing a welfare state with promises of a 20 per cent year-on-year increase in the funds available for pensions, unemployment benefit, health insurance and maternity leave. For rural China, they promised an end to arbitrary taxes and improved health and education. They also pledged to reduce energy consumption by 20 per cent.
The 11th five-year plan is a template for a new Chinese model. From the new right, it keeps the idea of permanent experimentation—a gradualist reform process rather than shock therapy. And it accepts that the market will drive economic growth. From the new left, it draws a concern about inequality and the environment and a quest for new institutions that can marry co-operation with competition.
In February 2007, Hu Jintao proudly announced the creation of a new special economic zone complete with the usual combination of export subsidies, tax breaks and investments in roads, railways and shipping. However, this special economic zone was in the heart of Africa—in the copper-mining belt of Zambia. China is transplanting its growth model into the African continent by building a series of industrial hubs linked by rail, road and shipping lanes to the rest of the world. Zambia will be home to China’s “metals hub,” providing the People’s Republic with copper, cobalt, diamonds, tin and uranium. The second zone will be in Mauritius, providing China with a “trading hub” that will give 40 Chinese businesses preferential access to the 20-member state common market of east and southern Africa stretching from Libya to Zimbabwe, as well as access to the Indian ocean and south Asian markets. The third zone—a “shipping hub”—will probably be in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam. Nigeria, Liberia and the Cape Verde islands are competing for two other slots. In the same way that eastern Europe was changed by a competition to join the EU, we could see Africa transformed by the competition to attract Chinese investment.
As it creates these zones, Beijing is embarking on a building spree, criss-crossing the African continent with new roads and railways—investing far more than the old colonial powers ever did. Moreover, China’s presence is changing the rules of economic development. The IMF and the World Bank used to drive the fear of God into government officials and elected leaders, but today they struggle to be listened to even by the poorest countries of Africa. The IMF spent years negotiating a transparency agreement with the Angolan government only to be told hours before the deal was due to be signed, in March 2004, that the authorities in Luanda were no longer interested in the money: they had secured a $2bn soft loan from China. This tale has been repeated across the continent—from Chad to Nigeria, Sudan to Algeria, Ethiopia and Uganda to Zimbabwe.
But the spread of the Chinese model goes far beyond the regions that have been targeted by Chinese investors. Research teams from middle-income and poor countries from Iran to Egypt, Angola to Zambia, Kazakhstan to Russia, India to Vietnam and Brazil to Venezuela have been crawling around the Chinese cities and countryside in search of lessons from Beijing’s experience. Intellectuals such as Zhang Weiying and Hu Angang have been asked to provide training for them. Scores of countries are copying Beijing’s state-driven development using public money and foreign investment to build capital-intensive industries. A rash of copycat special economic zones have been set up all over the world—the World Bank estimates that over 3,000 projects are taking place in 120 countries. Globalisation was supposed to mean the worldwide triumph of the market economy, but China is showing that state capitalism is one of its biggest beneficiaries.
As free market ideas have spread across the world, liberal democracy has often travelled in its wake. But for the authorities in Beijing there is nothing inexorable about liberal democracy. One of the most surprising features of Chinese intellectual life is the way that “democracy” intellectuals who demanded elections in the 1980s and 1990s have changed their positions on political reform.
Yu Keping is like the Zhang Weiying of political reform. He is a rising star and an informal adviser to President Hu Jintao. He runs an institute that is part university, part think tank, part management consultancy for government reform. When he talks about the country’s political future, he often draws a direct analogy with the economic realm. When I last met him in Beijing, he told me that overnight political reform would be as damaging to China as economic “shock therapy.” Instead, he has promoted the idea of democracy gradually working its way up from successful grassroots experiments. He hopes that by promoting democracy first within the Communist party, it will then spread to the rest of society. Just as the coastal regions were allowed to “get rich first,” Yu Keping thinks that party members should “get democracy first” by having internal party elections.
Where the coastal regions benefited from natural economic advantages such as proximity to Hong Kong, the Cantonese language and transport links, Yu Keping sees advantages for party members—such as their high levels of education and articulacy—which make them into a natural democratic vanguard. What is more, he can point to examples of this happening. At his suggestion, in 2006 I visited a county in Sichuan province called Pinchang that has allowed party members to vote for the bosses of township parties. In the long run, democracy could be extended to the upper echelons of the party, including competitive elections for the most senior posts. The logical conclusion of his ideas on inner party democracy would be for the Communist party to split into different factions that competed on ideological slates for support. It is possible to imagine informal new left and new right groupings one day even becoming formal parties within the party. If the Communist party were a country, its 70m members would make it bigger than Britain. And yet it is hard to imagine the remote, impoverished county of Pinchang becoming a model for the gleaming metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing or Shenzhen. So far, none of the other 2,860 counties of China has followed its lead.
Many intellectuals in China are starting to question the utility of elections. Pan Wei, a rising star at Beijing University, castigated me at our first meeting for paying too much attention to the experiments in grassroots democracy. “The Sichuan experiment will go nowhere,” he said. “The local leaders have their personal political goal: they want to make their names known. But the experiment has not succeeded. In fact, Sichuan is the place with the highest number of mass protests. Very few other places want to emulate it.”
Chinese thinkers argue that all developed democracies are facing a political crisis: turnout in elections is falling, faith in political leaders has declined, parties are losing members and populism is on the rise. They study the ways that western leaders are going over the heads of political parties and pioneering new techniques to reach the people such as referendums, opinion surveys or “citizens’ juries.” The west still has multi-party elections as a central part of the political process, but has supplemented them with new types of deliberation. China, according to the new political thinkers, will do things the other way around: using elections in the margins but making public consultations, expert meetings and surveys a central part of decision-making. This idea was described pithily by Fang Ning, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He compared democracy in the west to a fixed-menu restaurant where customers can select the identity of their chef, but have no say in what dishes he chooses to cook for them. Chinese democracy, on the other hand, always involves the same chef—the Communist party—but the policy dishes which are served up can be chosen “à la carte.”
Chongqing is a municipality of 30m that few people in the west have heard of. It nestles in the hills at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialin Jiang rivers and it is trying to become a living laboratory for the ideas of intellectuals like Pan Wei and Fang Ning. The city’s government has made all significant rulings subject to public hearings—in person, on television and on the internet. The authorities are proudest of the hearings on ticket prices for the light railway, which saw fares reduced from 15 to just 2 yuan (about 14p). This experiment is being emulated in other cities around China. But an even more interesting experiment was carried out in the small township of Zeguo in Wenling City—it used a novel technique of “deliberative polling” to decide on major spending decisions. The brainchild of a Stanford political scientist called James Fishkin, it harks back to an Athenian ideal of democracy (see “The thinking voter,” Prospect May 2004). It involves randomly selecting a sample of the population and involving them in a consultation process with experts, before asking them to vote on issues. Zeguo used this technique to decide how to spend its 40m yuan (£2.87m) public works budget. So far the experiment has been a one-off but Fishkin and the Chinese political scientist He Baogang believe that “deliberative democracy” could be a template for political reform.
The authorities certainly seem willing to experiment with all kinds of political innovations. In Zeguo, they have even introduced a form of government by focus group. But the main criterion guiding political reform seems to be that it must not threaten the Communist party’s monopoly on power. Can a more responsive form of authoritarianism evolve into a legitimate and stable form of government?
In the long term, China’s one-party state may well collapse. However, in the medium term, the regime seems to be developing increasingly sophisticated techniques to prolong its survival and pre-empt discontent. China has already changed the terms of the debate about globalisation by proving that authoritarian regimes can deliver economic growth. In the future, its model of deliberative dictatorship could prove that one-party states can deliver a degree of popular legitimacy as well. And if China’s experiments with public consultation work, dictatorships around the world will take heart from a model that allows one-party states to survive in an era of globalisation and mass communications.
China scholars in the west argue over whether the country is actively promoting autocracy, or whether it is just single-mindedly pursuing its national interest. Either way, China has emerged as the biggest global champion of authoritarianism. The pressure group Human Rights Watch complains that “China’s growing foreign aid programme creates new options for dictators who were previously dependent on those who insisted on human rights progress.”
China’s foray into international politics should not, however, be reduced to its support for African dictators. It is trying to redefine the meaning of power on the world stage. Indeed, measuring “CNP”—comprehensive national power—has become a national hobby-horse. Each of the major foreign policy think tanks has devised its own index to give a numerical value to every nation’s power—economic, political, military and cultural. And in this era of globalisation and universal norms, the most striking thing about Chinese strategists is their unashamed focus on “national” power. The idea of recapturing sovereignty from global economic forces, companies and even individuals is central to the Chinese worldview.
Yang Yi is a military man, a rear admiral in the navy and the head of China’s leading military think tank. He is one of the tough guys of the Chinese foreign policy establishment, but his ideas on power go far beyond assessments of the latest weapons systems. He argues that the US has created a “strategic siege” around China by assuming the “moral height” in international relations. Every time the People’s Republic tries to assert itself in diplomatic terms, to modernise its military or to open relationships with other countries, the US presents it as a threat. And the rest of the world, Yang Yi complains, all too often takes its lead from the hyperpower: “The US has the final say on the making and revising of the international rules of the game. They have dominated international discourse… the US says, ‘Only we can do this; you can’t do this.’”
One of the buzzwords in Chinese foreign policy circles is ruan quanli—the Chinese term for “soft power.” This idea was invented by the American political scientist Joseph Nye in 1990, but it is being promoted with far more zeal in Beijing than in Washington DC. In April 2006, a conference was organised in Beijing to launch the “China dream”—China’s answer to the American dream. It was an attempt to associate the People’s Republic with three powerful ideas: economic development, political sovereignty and international law. Whereas American diplomats talk about regime change, their Chinese counterparts talk about respect for sovereignty and the diversity of civilisations. Whereas US foreign policy uses sanctions and isolation to back up its political objectives, the Chinese offer aid and trade with no strings. Whereas America imposes its preferences on reluctant allies, China makes a virtue of at least appearing to listen to other countries.
But while all Chinese thinkers want to strengthen national power, they disagree on their country’s long-term goals. On the one hand, liberal internationalists like Zheng Bijian like to talk about China’s “peaceful rise” and how it has rejoined the world; adapting to global norms and learning to make a positive contribution to global order. In recent years, Beijing has been working through the six-party talks to solve the North Korean nuclear problem; working with the EU, Russia and the US on Iran; adopting a conciliatory position on climate change at an international conference in Montreal in 2005; and sending 4,000 peacekeepers to take part in UN missions. Even on issues where China is at odds with the west—such as humanitarian intervention—the Chinese position is becoming more nuanced. When the west intervened over Kosovo, China opposed it on the grounds that it contravened the “principle of non-intervention.” On Iraq, it abstained. And on Darfur, in 2006 it finally voted for a UN mandate for peacekeepers—although Beijing is still under fire for its close ties to the Sudanese government.
On the other hand, China’s “neocons”—or perhaps they should be called “neo-comms”—like Yang Yi and his colleague Yan Xuetong openly argue that they are using modern thinking to help China realise ancient dreams. Their long-term goal is to see China return to great-power status. Like many Chinese scholars, Yan Xuetong has been studying ancient thought. “Recently I read all these books by ancient Chinese scholars and discovered that these guys are smart—their ideas are much more relevant than most modern international relations theory,” he said. The thing that interested him the most was the distinction that ancient Chinese scholars made between two kinds of order: the “Wang” (which literally means “king”) and the “Ba” (“overlord”). The “Wang” system was centred on a dominant superpower, but its primacy was based on benign government rather than coercion or territorial expansion. The “Ba” system, on the other hand, was a classic hegemonic system, where the most powerful nation imposed order on its periphery. Yan explains how in ancient times the Chinese operated both systems: “Within Chinese Asia we had a ‘Wang’ system. Outside, when dealing with ‘barbarians,’ we had a hegemonic system. That is just like the US today, which adopts a ‘Wang’ system inside the western club, where it doesn’t use military force or employ double standards. On a global scale, however, the US is hegemonic, using military power and employing double standards.” According to Yan Xuetong, China will have two options as it becomes more powerful. “It could become part of the western ‘Wang’ system. But this will mean changing its political system to become a democracy. The other option is for China to build its own system.”
The tension between the liberal internationalists and the neo-comms is a modern variant of the Mao-era split between bourgeois and revolutionary foreign policy. For the next few years, China will be decidedly bourgeois. It has decided—with some reservations—to join the global economy and its institutions. Its goal is to strengthen them in order to pin down the US and secure a peaceful environment for China’s development. But in the long term, some Chinese hope to build a global order in China’s image. The idea is to avoid confrontation while changing the facts on the ground. Just as they are doing in domestic policy, they hope to build pockets of an alternative reality—as in Africa—where it is Chinese values and norms that increasingly determine the course of events rather than western ones.
The western creations of the EU and Nato—defined by the pooling rather than the protecting of sovereignty—may one day find their matches in the embryonic East Asian Community and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. Through these organisations, China is reassuring its neighbours of its peaceful intent and creating a new community of interest that excludes the US. The former US official Susan Shirk draws a parallel between China’s multilateral diplomacy and her own country’s after the second world war: “By binding itself to international rules and regimes, the US successfully established a hegemonic order.”
The UN is also becoming an amplifier of the Chinese worldview. Unlike Russia, which comports itself with a swagger—enjoying its ability to overtly frustrate US and EU plans—China tends to opt for a conciliatory posture. In the run-up to the Iraq war, although China opposed military action, it allowed France, Germany and Russia to lead the opposition to it. In 2005 when there was a debate about enlarging the UN security council, China encouraged African countries to demand their own seat, which effectively killed off Japan’s bid for a permanent seat. Equally, Beijing has been willing to allow the Organisation of Islamic States to take the lead in weakening the new UN human rights council. This diplomacy has been effective—contributing to a big fall in US influence: in 1995 the US won 50.6 per cent of the votes in the UN general assembly; by 2006, the figure had fallen to just 23.6 per cent. On human rights, the results are even more dramatic: China’s win-rate has rocketed from 43 per cent to 82 per cent, while the US’s has tumbled from 57 per cent to 22 per cent. “It’s a truism that the security council can function only insofar as the US lets it,” says James Traub, UN correspondent of the the New York Times. “The adage may soon be applied to China as well.”
The debate between Chinese intellectuals will continue to swirl within think tanks, journals and universities and—on more sensitive topics—on the internet. Chinese thinkers will continue to act as intellectual magpies, adapting western ideas to suit their purposes and plundering selectively from China’s own history. As China’s global footprint grows, we may find that we become as familiar with the ideas of Zhang Weiying and Wang Hui, Yu Keping and Pan Wei, Yan Xuetong and Zheng Bijan as we were with those of American thinkers in previous decades; from Reaganite economists in the 1980s to the neoconservative strategists of the 9/11 era.
China is not an intellectually open society. But the emergence of freer political debate, the throng of returning students from the west and huge international events like the Olympics are making it more so. And it is so big, so pragmatic and so desperate to succeed that its leaders are constantly experimenting with new ways of doing things. They used special economic zones to test out a market philosophy. Now they are testing a thousand other ideas—from deliberative democracy to regional alliances. From this laboratory of social experiments, a new world-view is emerging that may in time crystallise into a recognisable Chinese model—an alternative, non-western path for the rest of the world to follow.
