Chapter 18 2. Talking about the Chinese model at Oxford University
With the rapid rise of China and the rapid expansion of its influence, the whole world is looking forward to hearing more and more Chinese voices and Chinese words. It is also necessary for China to express its own judgments on itself and the world. On the afternoon of June 20, 2012, on a sunny day, the China Center of Oxford University held a press conference and seminar for the English version of my "China Shock". I gave a keynote speech on the topic, and had extensive and heated discussions with the participating scholars on topics such as the Chinese model and Chinese discourse. The following are the main contents of my speech that day:
First of all, I would like to thank Oxford University China Center for holding such a launch ceremony and seminar for my English version of "The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State". I am very glad to have the opportunity to come to Oxford University again. I was a visiting scholar here 20 years ago and spent an unforgettable time. The strong sense of history and strong speculative atmosphere of Oxford University left a deep impression on me and helped me form my own research on China’s development. Some ideas about the model.This time, you arranged for me to live in the oldest "University College" in Oxford. On the ground floor of the college, there is a sculpture of the great poet Shelley, the son of the college, lying "sleeping peacefully" by the lake.Shelley is a well-known poet in China. His famous poem "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" has inspired countless Chinese people with lofty ideals to fight bravely for national independence and national liberation.In the past 30 years, these verses have inspired countless people who devoted themselves to the great cause of China's reform and opening up, and inspired them to overcome many difficulties and dangers in the process of reform and opening up, all of which laid the foundation for the rise of China today.
Shelley lived downstairs and I lived upstairs, and it was a strange feeling.Undoubtedly, the British sense of history is best reflected here.This reminds me of what I want to talk about today. Like the British, the Chinese nation is also a nation with a strong sense of history.If "Shelley lives downstairs, I live upstairs" reflects the historical heritage of British culture, then in China, most Chinese people can still read the original texts of Confucius' works more than 2,000 years ago. The historical inheritance of Chinese culture.China's rise today is inseparable from this great historical heritage.
The rise of China is the most important international event in the 21st century, but we also know that the outside world, especially the Western world, does not know enough about China.I have met many Westerners who know very little about China. In their perception, China is roughly a magnified East Germany, waiting for a "color revolution."They also believe that those so-called dissidents represent the future of China.At noon today, Oxford University awarded an honorary doctorate to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Someone here asked me whether China would follow the political path guided by the West.
I told him frankly that I have been to Myanmar. The governance level of this country is at least 40 years behind that of China. If Western political model is used to govern Myanmar, the result will not be good.I have visited more than 100 countries, most of which are developing countries, and I have come to a simple conclusion: when developing countries copy the Western model, there are basically two endings: one is from hope to disappointment, and the other is from hope to despair.So I thanked him for his kindness and told him that China will continue to go its own way, not the way of Myanmar, nor the way of Egypt.After the Egyptian Revolution, I said that the "Egyptian Spring" would turn into the "Egyptian Winter", and now that prospect seems to be becoming increasingly clear.
In fact, the Western model is facing huge challenges in the West itself, from the bankruptcy of Greece today to the crisis in Spain and the United States.Stiglitz, the American Nobel laureate in economics, recently quoted President Lincoln's famous saying "of the people, by the people, and for the people", saying that American democracy has degenerated into "1% has, 1% governs, and 1% enjoys".Almost all polls show that people in Western countries have very low support for their governments, and the government's performance is far below the expectations of the people in their own countries, and it is also lower than the Chinese people's support for their governments.These circumstances show that the West still has a long way to go in reforming its own economic and political systems.
Over the past 30 years, the mainstream Western media has made countless pessimistic predictions about China, predicting that China will collapse countless times, but it turns out that they are all wrong. China did not collapse, but rose rapidly.The deep-seated reason for the West's continuous misjudgment of China is its ideological prejudice against China.Once they can respect the facts and get rid of ideological prejudice, they will see that the changes that have taken place in China over the past 30 years are the greatest economic and social revolution in human history. 80% of people lifted out of poverty.This achievement has laid the foundation for China's rise today, which has profoundly changed China and also affected the entire outside world, including Britain.
I can give a simple example to illustrate the transformation in China.Most of you here are experts on Chinese issues, and you must have heard that there are "three major elements" in Chinese folk marriages.In the 1970s, the "three major items" were still "watches, bicycles, and sewing machines"; in the 1980s, they were "refrigerators, color TVs, and washing machines"; in the 1990s, they became "air conditioners, computers, and video recorders." ; After entering the 21st century, it has become "house, car, ticket".No nation in the world has experienced such rapid wealth growth in such a short period of time.Of course, I also want to apologize to everyone, because this is an example of being too "materialistic".However, a country that once led the world for thousands of years has been impoverished for more than 200 years after plummeting, and then became rich rapidly in the past 30 years. It is inevitable that "materialism" will rise for a while.With the passage of time, China's cultural construction will catch up, and China's cultural heritage has laid the foundation for this cultural construction and China's own renaissance.
A rapidly developing China naturally has various problems of its own, some of which are quite serious and not easy to solve.We can compare the rise of China today with the rise of the United Kingdom. When the United Kingdom rose, the population of the United Kingdom was only over 10 million people, but it already had a huge colony dozens of times larger than its own territory. The United Kingdom could "Export" their own problems to the outside world, for example, "export" criminals to Australia, "export" the unemployed to Africa, and "export" dissidents to the Americas, and China is already a country with a population of 1.3 billion. A big country can only digest the various problems that accompany the country's rapid rise within itself.But the practice of the past 30 years has proved that China can cope with these challenges.Despite China's various problems, China's overall success is certain, and the key to this success is the nature of the Chinese state and China's development model.
China is not an enlarged East Germany, nor is it another ordinary country, but the only "civilized country" in the world.China is a country that integrates five thousand years of continuous civilization and a super-large modern country.I can use an inaccurate analogy here: it is a bit like the ancient Roman Empire has never perished and has continued to this day. It has a large population and a vast territory. Under the leadership of a unified central government, it has achieved modern transformation. Huge internal differences such as culture and culture can coexist peacefully, and everyone uses one language: Latin.
"Civilized country" is the product of "the sum of a hundred countries" in the long-term historical process.This is why I repeatedly emphasized in the book "China Shocked" that if a country like China adopts the political system of the West today, it will become ungovernable and will move towards division and disintegration.In fact, not only China, but even the European Union, whose population is only one-third of China's, cannot implement the Western multi-party system and one person, one vote to elect the "president" of the European Union today.If this is done, the EU will either disintegrate or become an empty shelf without any decision-making and execution capabilities.
As a "civilized country", China is a complex of four super factors, namely a super large population size, a super vast territory, a super long history and tradition, and a super rich cultural heritage.Take the population as an example. In 2012, 3.1 billion people traveled during the "Spring Festival travel" in China. This is roughly equivalent to moving the population of the entire North and South America, the entire Europe, Africa, Russia, and Japan within a month.No country in the world faces the enormous challenges and opportunities that come with such a population.
China is a continent, the size of a continent, with huge internal regional differences.China has thousands of years of historical inheritance in almost all fields of human knowledge.The richness of Chinese culture is also rare in the world.A typical example is the richness of Chinese food and beverage.The most abundant cuisine in Europe is French cuisine, but I personally think that the richness and diversity of any one of the eight major cuisines in China may exceed that of French cuisine. In other words, French cuisine is a product of a French national culture, and the eight major cuisines It is the cultural product of China's "summation of a hundred countries" and "civilized country", so its richness and diversity are rare in the world.In fact, all aspects of Chinese society reflect this great richness and diversity. This is not only the most difficult part of China's political governance, but also the most exciting part of China's rise.
The "four supers" characteristics of China's "civilized country" have actually standardized China's development path and all the characteristics of the Chinese model.The biggest feature of the Chinese model is practical rationality, that is, under the guidance of the idea of "seeking truth from facts", everything proceeds from reality, does not engage in bookishness, constantly sums up and draws on the experience and lessons of oneself and others, and promotes bold and prudent system reforms and reforms. innovation.This reform policy of prudent exploration, respect for facts, and constant trial and error is in line with China's vast territory and complex national conditions.This kind of practical rationality has something in common with the empiricist philosophy advocated by the British: David Hume has always questioned the reliability of pure rational causal reasoning; Edmund Burke has repeatedly emphasized that a country’s political system should mainly come from its own Historical tradition; Bertrand Russell strongly advocated "facts only", that is, "what are facts? What is the truth confirmed by facts?".If these great philosophers were still alive today, they would understand today's China.
Under the guidance of practical rationality, China insists on giving top priority to eradicating poverty and improving people's livelihood, and has achieved the greatest achievement in the history of human poverty alleviation; China insists on gradual reform and rejects "shock therapy". Reform does not seek perfection, but Seek to constantly correct mistakes and continue to make progress; China insists on opening up to the outside world, learns from the strengths of others, and at the same time continues its own tradition, especially through a relatively neutral, strong, and promising government to promote China's reform and development; China It has also established a mixed economic model, that is, giving full play to the efficiency of the market in controlling resources and the advantages of socialism in ensuring macro balance, which has enabled China's economy to experience sustained growth for more than 30 years. I think this trend will continue.
Practical rationality has enabled China to avoid political romanticism and economic romanticism, avoiding political and economic traps one after another, especially avoiding the "shock therapy", total privatization, financial crisis, and pseudo-"democratization". Major traps such as the disintegration of the country have achieved China's overall rise today.
The relative success of the Chinese model does pose a certain challenge to the Western model. From a political point of view, the Chinese model may eventually bring about a paradigm shift in the world, that is, from the analysis paradigm of "democracy and autocracy" to "good governance and bad governance". ", and good governance can be a Western system, such as Switzerland (although many Swiss people disagree), or a non-Western system, such as Singapore and Hong Kong.Although there are various problems in mainland China, the overall level of governance is much higher than that of most developing countries and countries with economies in transition.Similarly, bad governance can also be Western systems, such as Haiti, Iraq, Mongolia, Ukraine, Greece, etc., or non-Western systems, such as Myanmar.The Chinese model will inspire more and more countries to boldly explore their own path, carry out institutional innovation, and pursue good governance.
China is indeed rising rapidly.Today, more and more economists tend to believe that China will surpass the United States to become the world's largest economy within a decade or so. My own estimate is that the number of Chinese middle class will be twice the population of the United States by then.Although China's development model has its own flaws, it is the product of fierce international competition and is still being improved.It is full of vitality and can compete with the Western model and the American model.In fact, there is no need for the West to be afraid of the Chinese model.Like economic growth, the competition of development models is not a zero-sum game, but a win-win situation, just as the West has benefited a lot from China's rapid economic growth.From the perspective of the Chinese, the development process is a process of learning from each other. China has learned a lot from the West, and is still learning now, and will continue to learn in the future. But in this process, China has also played its own traditional In the process of high interaction between China and the West, more and more of its own things have been formed.The West might as well "emancipate the mind" as Deng Xiaoping said, and try to draw useful experience from China's success.This will help avoid misjudgment of China's future, and can also enrich our common wisdom to better deal with the challenges of various thorny global issues, such as eradicating poverty, creating jobs, avoiding financial crises, and preventing clashes of civilizations, etc. . At this time in 2011, I once had a debate on the Chinese model with Professor Fukuyama, the author of "The End of History and the Last Man" in Shanghai. I told him frankly that history has no end and will not end, if If we have to talk about the end, it can only be the end of the "end of history", and this end is good for China, for the West itself, and for the entire human race, because the entire human race needs to constantly explore new and better things. Good political and economic systems.
This speech was later reprinted by many websites, and Guangming Daily also published the full text, which attracted enthusiastic responses from readers.I really hope that more and more Chinese scholars will join the great cause of constructing Chinese discourse, and explain a real China and the world to Chinese people and the outside world through their own serious and solid research.In China, we are still facing the threat of being fooled by Western discourse today. Therefore, we need to construct a strong Chinese discourse to clarify and question. Fortunately, with the financial crisis and debt crisis, Western discourse is going downhill in an all-round way.Western discourse's deception about China is mainly manifested in political romanticism (or democratic fundamentalism) and economic romanticism (or market fundamentalism).Western forces are trying their best to sell these two things to China and the whole world, fooling many countries, but the effect seems to be worse than the other. The "color revolution" has basically faded, and the "Arab Spring" has evolved into the "Arab Winter". .What's interesting is: probably too much deception has been done to others, and some Western countries themselves really believe in these things. As a result, many Western countries have also been deceived by themselves.Take a look at the West today. Iceland, Greece and other countries have gone bankrupt successively. Spain, Portugal, Italy and other countries are on the verge of bankruptcy. , the country is heavily in debt.
Among the leaders of socialist countries, the most famous person who was completely fooled by Western discourse was Gorbachev, the leader of the former Soviet Union. The "Third Holocaust" (the "First Holocaust" refers to the Mongol invasion in the 14th century, and the "Second Holocaust" refers to the German fascist invasion during World War II).Gorbachev himself participated in the 1996 Russian presidential election, but his vote rate did not exceed 1%, and the vast majority of Russians rejected him.I have been to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia before the disintegration. The disintegration process of these two countries can be roughly summarized as follows: the first step is the intellectual elite being fooled by Western discourse; the second step is the political elite, especially the leaders of their party and country , was also fooled by Western discourse.The result is that a misstep becomes eternal hatred, the entire economy is heading for collapse, and the entire country is heading for disintegration.We must always remember the profound lessons of the disintegration of these two countries.
The rise of China must be accompanied by the rise of Chinese discourse. This kind of discourse must have strength and vigor, and must be able to deconstruct Western discourse and so-called universal values. Chinese discourse must have a better form of expression.We should re-examine Western discourses, such as democracy, autocracy, human rights, freedom, universal suffrage, rule of law, multi-party system, market economy, government role, citizen Society, public intellectuals, human development index, Gini coefficient, etc.We need to absorb what is reasonable from others, eliminate what is unreasonable, and in the process gradually establish a strong discourse system of the Chinese themselves.Our world is undergoing great changes, and the hegemony of Western discourse has been shaken. The cause of deconstructing Western discourse and constructing Chinese discourse is in the ascendant and promising.
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