[2022-10-17] 纽约时报 - 美国人应该向习的中国学习的三件事

 

 

Oct. 16, 2022, 9:00 a.m. ET
2022年10月16日，北京时间晚9点
By Farah Stockman
Farah Stockman joined the Times editorial board in 2020. For four years, she was a reporter for The Times, covering politics, social movements and race. She previously worked at The Boston Globe, where she won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2016.
法拉·斯托克曼
法拉·斯托克曼于 2020 年加入《纽约时报》编辑委员会。四年来，她一直担任《纽约时报》记者，报道政治、社会运动和种族问题。 她之前曾在波士顿环球报工作，并于 2016 年获得普利策评论奖。

About four decades ago, Chinese Communist Party officials scoured the world for best practices, which they cautiously piloted to create the economic miracle that their country showcases today. These days, though, the Communist Party champions Chinese solutions, and not just for China but also for the rest of the world. Xi Jinping, who just received an unusual third term at the helm of the world’s most populous country, embodies a far more confident China that has begun to portray itself as an alternative to the West.
大约 40 年前，中国共产党官员在世界范围内搜寻最佳实践，他们谨慎地试行这些实践，以创造中国今天所展示的经济奇迹。 然而，这些天来，共产党支持中国的解决方案，不仅是为了中国，也是为了世界其他地区。 习近平刚刚获得了不同寻常的第三个任期，掌舵这个世界上人口最多的国家，这体现了一个更加自信的中国，它已经开始将自己描绘成西方的替代品。

Creating a Chinese version of the World Bank, Mr. Xi inaugurated the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Instead of the American dream, he speaks of the “Chinese dream,” which describes the collective pride that people feel when they overcome a century of disorder and colonial humiliation to reclaim their status as a great power. Gaining control over territories viewed as lost, including Taiwan, is considered key to the Chinese dream. So is ensuring that China, not the United States, calls the shots in Asia and beyond. Mr. Xi launched China’s first aircraft carrier and its first foreign military base, in Djibouti.
习近平创建了中国版的世界银行，为亚洲基础设施投资银行揭牌。 他说的不是美国梦，而是“中国梦”，它描述了当人们克服一个世纪的混乱和殖民屈辱，重新获得大国地位时所感受到的集体自豪感。 控制包括台湾在内的被视为失去的领土，被认为是实现中国梦的关键。 确保中国而不是美国在亚洲及其他地区发号施令也是如此。 习近平在吉布提发射了中国第一艘航空母舰和第一个外国军事基地。

While Mr. Xi’s China undoubtedly presents the most serious challenge to U.S. global leadership in my lifetime, it also gives Americans a chance to learn from the successes and failures of a radically different system. I asked half a dozen scholars who study China what lessons Americans should draw from Mr. Xi’s tenure so far. Here’s a summary of what they told me.
虽然习近平领导的中国无疑对美国的全球领导地位提出了我一生中最严峻的挑战，但它也让美国人有机会从一个完全不同的体系的成功和失败中学习。 我问了六位研究中国的学者，美国人应该从习近平的任期中吸取什么教训。 这是他们告诉我的摘要。

‘Invisible Infrastructure’ Is the Most Important Kind
“隐形基础设施”是最重要的一种

In the absence of elections, Communist Party officials in China rise up the ranks based on how well they deliver on the party’s priorities, at least in theory. For years, the top priority was economic growth. Local officials plowed money into the highways, ports and power plants that manufacturers needed, turning China into the world’s factory. Under Mr. Xi, government priorities have shifted toward self-sufficiency and the use of industrial robots, something that Chinese leaders believe is critical to escaping the middle-income trap, in which a country can no longer compete in low-wage manufacturing because of rising wages but has not yet made the leap to the value-added products of high-income countries.
在没有选举的情况下，至少在理论上，中国共产党官员的升迁取决于他们对党的优先事项的执行情况。 多年来，当务之急是经济增长。 地方官员将资金投入制造商需要的高速公路、港口和发电厂，将中国变成了世界工厂。 在习近平的领导下，政府的优先事项已转向自给自足和使用工业机器人，中国领导人认为这对于摆脱中等收入陷阱至关重要。 工资上涨但尚未实现高收入国家产品附加值的飞跃。

But too much top-down planning can backfire. Ya-Wen Lei, a sociologist at Harvard who studies the impact of state policy on the spread of advanced technology in China, told me that some Chinese companies purchased robots that don’t work well and exaggerated their success to get government subsidies and curry favor with politicians. Directives from party officials with little expertise in robotics fetishize machines beyond their actual usefulness.
但过多的自上而下的计划会适得其反。 哈佛大学研究国家政策对先进技术在中国传播的影响的社会学家雷亚文告诉我，一些中国公司购买了性能不佳的机器人，并夸大其成功以获得政府补贴和巴结政客。来自对机器人技术缺乏专业知识的党内官员的指令对机器的崇拜超出了它们的实际用途。

“Many manufacturers don’t want or need the government to give them guidance on technology,” she told me. Some corporate managers complained that government subsidies often flowed to politically connected firms and were wasted, while others grumbled that government directives were unpredictable and ill informed.
“许多制造商不希望或不需要政府为他们提供技术指导，”她告诉我。 一些公司经理抱怨政府补贴经常流向与政治相关的公司并被浪费，而其他人则抱怨政府指令不可预测且信息不灵通。

What many Chinese businesses wanted most, she said, was “invisible infrastructure”: a predictable judicial system, fair access to bank credit and land, and regulations that are applied without regard to political connections. Her findings, reported in detail in “The Gilded Cage: Techno-State Capitalism in China,” which will be published next fall, suggest that Beijing’s pronouncements about amazing technological advancement should be viewed with a touch of skepticism.
她说，许多中国企业最想要的是“无形的基础设施”：可预测的司法系统、公平获得银行信贷和土地的机会，以及不考虑政治关系而适用的法规。 她的发现将在明年秋天出版的《镀金的笼子：中国的科技国家资本主义》中详细报道，这表明北京关于惊人的技术进步的声明应该以怀疑的态度来看待。

There’s No ‘Economic Miracle’ for Farmers
农民没有“经济奇迹”

Mr. Xi had a privileged childhood as the son of a top Communist Party official. But the Cultural Revolution shattered that sheltered life; he was sent to a remote village for seven years, where he did hard labor and slept in a hillside cave home. As a result, he can claim a familiarity with rural people and rural problems that few world leaders can even imagine.
作为一名共产党高级官员的儿子，习近平有一个特权的童年。 但是文化大革命打破了这种被庇护的生活； 他被送到了一个偏远的村庄，在那里工作了七年，在那里他辛勤劳作，睡在一个山坡的洞穴里。 因此，他可以声称对农村人和农村问题的熟悉程度是世界领导人甚至无法想象的。

One of Mr. Xi’s most celebrated campaigns has been a vow to stamp out extreme poverty, a tacit acknowledgment that China’s economic miracle has left hundreds of millions of rural farmers behind. Only 30 percent of working Chinese adults have high school diplomas, although 80 percent of young people are getting them now, according to Scott Rozelle, a co-author of “Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise.”
习近平最著名的运动之一是誓言消除极端贫困，这是对中国经济奇迹已将数亿农村农民抛在后面的默许。 《看不见的中国：城乡鸿沟如何威胁中国崛起》一书的合著者斯科特·罗泽尔（Scott Rozelle）表示，尽管现在 80% 的年轻人正在获得高中文凭，但只有 30% 的在职中国成年人拥有高中文凭。

Those unskilled laborers — who will increasingly be replaced by robots, according to China’s grand strategy — present an economic challenge and a threat to political stability. Premier Li Keqiang, who was once considered a rival to President Xi, announced in 2020 that more than 600 million Chinese people scrape by on the equivalent of $140 per month.
根据中国的大战略，这些非熟练工人将越来越多地被机器人取代，这对经济构成挑战，并对政治稳定构成威胁。 曾被视为习主席对手的李克强总理在 2020 年宣布，超过 6 亿中国人每月靠相当于 140 美元的钱勉强度日。

Last year, Mr. Xi declared “complete victory” in eradicating extreme poverty in China, but skepticism about his success abounds. Some experts on China report that local officials gave out cash to rural families — one-time payments that got them temporarily over the poverty line — instead of initiating badly needed structural reforms.
去年，习近平宣布在中国消除极端贫困方面取得“彻底胜利”，但外界对他的成功持怀疑态度。 一些中国问题专家报告说，地方官员向农村家庭发放现金——一次性支付让他们暂时摆脱贫困线——而不是启动急需的结构性改革。

“Rural Chinese in many ways are like the lowest class in a policy-driven caste system,” Mr. Rozelle told me. Nevertheless, even a flawed program to address rural poverty is better than no program at all.
“中国农村在很多方面就像政策驱动的种姓制度中的最低阶层，”罗泽尔先生告诉我。 尽管如此，即使是一个有缺陷的解决农村贫困问题的计划也比没有计划要好。

Beware of the Personality Cult
谨防个人崇拜

When Mr. Xi took became leader of the Communist Party in 2012, China was plagued by rampant corruption and eye-popping inequality flaunted by the country’s billionaire class. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables described Mr. Xi as having been genuinely disgusted by the unbridled greed among the elite. He set out to save his rudderless Communist Party by cracking down on graft and bringing wayward nouveaux riches back into the fold by recruiting them as party members. He ordered chief executives to contribute more toward “common prosperity” and showed what could happen to those who didn’t toe the party line. (Jack Ma, China’s Bill Gates, appears to have been forced to give up control of his company and has all but disappeared from public life.)
当习近平在 2012 年接任中共领导人时，中国饱受腐败猖獗和亿万富翁阶层所标榜的令人瞠目结舌的不平等所困扰。 泄露的美国外交电报称，习近平对精英阶层肆无忌惮的贪婪感到非常厌恶。 他着手通过打击贪污和招募任性的暴发户成为党员来拯救他那没有方向的共产党。 他命令首席执行官们为“共同繁荣”做出更多贡献，并展示了那些不遵守党的路线的人可能会发生什么。 （马云，中国的比尔盖茨，似乎被迫放弃了对公司的控制，几乎从公众生活中消失了。）

But Mr. Xi’s crackdown went too far. Increasingly, foreign investors and Chinese entrepreneurs are fleeing. Coupled with a draconian zero-Covid strategy, Mr. Xi’s policies have sent the economy into a tailspin.
但习近平的镇压太过分了。 越来越多的外国投资者和中国企业家逃离。 再加上严苛的动态清零战略，习近平的政策使经济陷入混乱。

More worrisome still is the return of an atmosphere of fear and sycophancy not seen since Chairman Mao’s time. A businessman who was critical of Mr. Xi was sent to prison for 18 years. The era of relative openness to intellectual debate and foreign ideas appears to have come to an end.
更令人担忧的是，自毛主席时代以来从未出现过的恐惧和谄媚气氛的回归。 一名批评习近平的商人被判入狱 18 年。 对知识辩论和外国思想相对开放的时代似乎已经结束。

Term limits and prohibitions on cults of personality, put in place to avoid another despot like Mao, have gone out the window so Mr. Xi can have more time in power. Mr. Xi has been called a modern-day emperor, the chairman of everything and the most powerful man in the world. The fate of China’s 1.4 billion people once again rests on one man.
为了避免像毛泽东这样的暴君而实施的个人崇拜的任期限制和禁令已经消失，这样习近平就可以有更多的时间掌权。 习近平被称为现代皇帝、万事万物的主席和世界上最有权势的人。 中国14亿人民的命运再次落在了一个人的身上。

No doubt Mr. Xi believes that he is doing the right thing for his people, that China needs an unwavering leader to become the strongest and most powerful version of itself. But that’s not how it works, according to Yuhua Wang, a political scientist at Harvard who is author of the book “The Rise and Fall of Imperial China,” released this month. Mr. Wang studied 2,000 years of Chinese history and discovered, somewhat counterintuitively, that China’s central government has always been the weakest under its longest-serving rulers.
毫无疑问，习近平相信他正在为他的人民做正确的事，中国需要一位坚定不移的领导人来成为最强大、最强大的自己。 但本月出版的《中华帝国的兴衰》一书的作者、哈佛大学政治学家王玉华表示，事情并非如此。 王先生研究了中国 2000 年的历史，有点违反直觉地发现，在其任职时间最长的统治者之下，中国的中央政府一直是最弱的。

Emperors, he explains, have always stayed in power by weakening the elites who might have overthrown them — the very people who are capable of building a strong and competent government.
他解释说，皇帝总是通过削弱可能推翻他们的精英——那些有能力建立一个强大而称职的政府的人——来保持权力。

“One can argue that he has good intentions,” Mr. Wang told me of Mr. Xi. But the tactics he has used to maintain power — crushing critics, micromanaging businesses, whipping up nationalist fervor and walling China off from the world — may end up weakening China in the end.
“有人可以说习是出于好意，”王先生告诉我他理解的习近平。 但他用来维持权力的策略——压制批评者、微观管理企业、煽动民族主义热情以及将中国与世界隔离开来——最终可能会削弱中国。

The tale of an autocratic leader who hangs on to power while promising national greatness is a cautionary, if familiar, one for people everywhere, not just in China.
一个独裁领导人在保证国家伟大的同时继续掌权的故事对于世界各地的人们来说都是一个警示，即使是熟悉的，也不仅仅是在中国。

标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。

昨天从头到尾我看完了20大开幕。以下观点仅供参考：
1. 坚持公有制为主——私企们可以关门了。
2. 不排除武力统一——韭菜们继续高潮啊，打是不敢真打。
3. 尽管新华社的一图速览20大里列举了坚持对外开放的基本国策，但我没有听到报告里出现改革开放的字样。
4. 老人团里虽然江泽民朱镕基没有出现，但105岁的宋平出现还是让说明习的连任之路荆棘坎坷。特别是俺天津老乡小木匠——李瑞环同志拿出了当年修天津火车站滚刀肉的气势，一个掌声都没给习近平。

 

至于习能否连任，已经不是问题了，问题只是在于他能否统一中国共产党了。

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