Chapter 21 1. Starting from the "Egyptian Spring"

At the end of January 2011, there was a massive anti-government wave in Egypt. On February 11, the long-term ruling President Mubarak stepped down sadly.Western media rendered this movement as the "Egyptian Spring" and "Middle East Spring" in which democracy overthrew autocracy, heralding the democratization of the entire Arab region.But I've done many field trips to the area, and the reality is much more complicated.As I said in my debate with Fukuyama, "Middle East Spring" will turn into "Middle East Winter". Time has proven my prediction to be correct.Deng Xiaoping said that a soldier who has heard the gunshots is different from a soldier who has not heard the gunshots, and it is also different from a soldier who has visited a place on the spot and has not.To study, especially political science, one must be grounded, and one must understand the book of society.

Since the mid-1980s, I have visited Egypt four times and have my own observations and thoughts on this country.In the north, I walked to Alexandria, in the south to the Aswan Dam, and in the east across the Sinai Peninsula to the Red Sea town of Taba on the border with Israel.If I were to use one word to describe my impression of visiting Egypt many times, the word would probably be "explosion", especially Cairo, which feels noisy (it is said to be the city with the highest decibel in the world), crowded (everywhere cars suffer crowded), messy (half the city never seems to be cleaned). In the 1980s and 1990s, although Egypt was a mess everywhere, it felt that the society was still alive, and most people were too busy making a living to care about other things.In the past ten years, various social contradictions have become increasingly acute and politicized. The whole society is like being covered with dry wood, just waiting for a little spark to burn and explode.The turmoil in Tunisia became the spark, sparking this upheaval and revolution.But the revolution is romantic, and the post-revolutionary problems will be more complicated, because many deep-seated problems in Egypt seem intractable.

The first is the problem of population explosion.The first time I visited Egypt was in 1986. At that time, the population of Egypt was more than 40 million. Today it has more than doubled.At that time, Egypt also had a "national family planning plan", but due to factors such as religious traditions and backward education, this plan was difficult to implement, and the population of Egypt continued to rise sharply, resulting in a serious shortage of various resources.Egypt's land area is about 1 million square kilometers, but 95% of the country's territory is desert, and more than 90 million people "dwell" on 5% of the land.I once flew south from Cairo along the Nile to Aswan.Looking around, beyond the narrow oases on both sides of the Nile River are endless deserts, which made me truly feel the harsh living environment in Egypt and the true meaning of "The Nile River is the lifeline of Egypt".The population explosion means that Egypt's population is too young, today 50% of Egypt's population is under 25 years old, and youth unemployment exceeds 30%.The streets and alleys of Egypt are full of young people with nothing to do (I have also been to Tunisia, Jordan, Algeria and other countries, and the situation is similar).These desperate young people have become the main force in the movement to overthrow Mubarak.

Then there is the issue of poverty.I have carefully observed the Egyptian police in charge of the security work of the Chinese embassy. Most of them are of a certain age, with lax discipline and disheveled clothes.These people's income is very low, not enough to support their families, so they always ask the staff of the embassy for food and drink, and often have to take it home after eating.Many Egyptians now have to work two jobs to make a living.Recently, prices in Egypt have risen in an all-round way, and the prices of staple foods on the Egyptian people's table, such as bread, tomatoes, beef and mutton, have doubled.My Egyptian student told me that a kilogram of tomatoes cost 2 Egyptian pounds a kilogram half a year ago, but now it costs 12 Egyptian pounds (about 2 US dollars) a kilogram. A sheep used to cost 300 Egyptian pounds, but now it costs at least 1,000 Egyptian pounds, that is, It is said that for the working class, eating tomatoes and mutton has become a luxury.For the poor 40% of the Egyptian population whose daily income is less than 2 US dollars, they can only live like a year.Under such a situation, how can the common people not complain and even rise up.

The population explosion has eroded the achievements of Egypt's 30 years of economic development.This is highlighted by the acute shortage of housing.The appearance of Egyptian cities is generally simple. Thousands of houses in Cairo have no exterior wall decoration, only the same concrete exterior walls.Numerous roofs are erected with dense steel bars, giving people the feeling that the house has not yet been completed, but the houses below are already full of people.My Egyptian friend said that this is the "wisdom" of the citizens of Cairo, because the Egyptian law stipulates that the real estate tax must be paid on the completed houses, and the "half-finished" projects can be "tax-free".Another Egyptian wonder is the "City of the Dead".Influenced by ancient Egyptian culture, wealthy Muslims would build tombs with small courtyards for the dead. These tombs are connected to form a large "city of the dead", with street names and house numbers inside.But today the "City of the Dead" is full of poor people who have poured into Cairo from the countryside to make a living. They dragged their families, took the cemetery as their home, and set up camp here with their bones. In the "City of the Dead", there are piles of garbage, dust, diseases and crimes.It is estimated that millions of people in Cairo live in such harsh conditions.

Behind all this is the extremely deformed economic structure of Egypt.Egypt as a whole is still very poor, but there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and the national economy has long since become a consumption-oriented economy that relies heavily on imports.Egypt does not have enough ability to earn foreign exchange through exports, so it can only tear down the east wall to make up for the west wall, resulting in high debts.I visited Egypt with the then President Li Xiannian in 1986. One of the issues discussed by the two sides was that Egypt asked to postpone the repayment of the loan provided by the Chinese government due to economic difficulties.At that time, Egypt imported 9 billion U.S. dollars of consumer goods a year, but its foreign exchange income was only 7 billion U.S. dollars, of which remittances accounted for half, and the rest came from oil exports, Suez Canal revenue and tourism revenue.Today, Egypt's economic structure has improved, and tourism revenue accounts for the bulk, but the country as a whole is still unable to make ends meet, and the imbalance between imports and exports is even more serious.Mubarak has been in power for nearly 30 years and has carried out some economic structural adjustments, but has never formed a complete modern industrial chain.Except for some textile and food enterprises, there is not much modern manufacturing industry, so it is difficult to create many employment opportunities.Everything from food to many daily necessities depends on imports.The financial tsunami triggered by the United States and other factors led to the rapid depreciation of the Egyptian pound, and the wages of the people were far behind the speed of rising prices.

While the economic situation is deteriorating day by day, corruption is increasingly penetrating into all levels of society.There are various "tips" to be paid for doing things in Egypt.There is obviously a 16% service charge in restaurants, but guests generally have to pay extra "tips".Anything that involves queuing, such as getting a driver's license or visiting a busy tourist attraction, there will always be someone (including the police) who will accost you and offer to do something for you in exchange for your "tip".Once an Egyptian friend went out to lunch with me and came back to find his car was chained due to improper parking.He told me, don't worry, there must be police waiting nearby.Sure enough, a policeman came out of the bushes and waved to us. The friend gave him a little money and the problem was solved.These are petty corruptions that are commonplace in Egypt.Various versions of the corruption of senior government officials have long been circulated in the market, especially the corruption of the Mubarak family. It is generally believed that his family has tens of billions of dollars in stolen money overseas. This has made Mubarak increasingly unpopular in Egypt.

Egypt was once colonized by France and the United Kingdom, so it has inherited many traditions left over from the colonial era. For example, most of the top government officials were educated in Europe and the United States, but these people are often out of touch with the people of their own country, resulting in a low level of national governance. . In 1987, when Li Peng, who was the vice premier, visited the Aswan Dam, I was accompanied by a deputy minister of the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Energy. He had studied in the UK and spoke beautiful English.But when Li Peng asked him how much the residents of Cairo cost for one hour of electricity, the deputy minister was at a loss and asked his subordinate, who was busy asking another person, before finally giving an answer.Seeing this situation, Li Peng sighed softly to me: "It's really a bureaucrat, but you don't need to translate this." In fact, this kind of "disconnection" is very common in developing countries: most of the upper elites are born in wealthy families, have received Western education, However, it is seriously out of touch with its own society, has a heavy bureaucratic habit, and is indifferent to the suffering of the people.From this perspective, China's "people-oriented" culture of caring about the sufferings of the people and the diligent administration tradition of "becoming an official and benefiting one party" are indeed extremely valuable political resources, as well as China's core competitiveness beyond other developing countries and beyond the West one.

The "revolution" that broke out in Egypt also defeated the Western army.If the West really believes that its democratic system is a "universal value", then why hasn't the West implemented a democratic system in "authoritarian" countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia in the past few decades?Why are the "dictatorial" leaders of these "authoritarian" countries almost all hard-core allies of the West?In fact, the logic of the West is very clear: as long as the West thinks you are its enemy or opponent, it will use the so-called "universal values" and "color revolution" to mess you up; is acceptable, even encouraged.The "universal value" of this double standard in the West is clearly manifested in the Middle East.This point is worthy of careful reflection by those admirers of the Western model in China.

Of course, the West has also begun to realize the threat posed by the turmoil in Egypt today, because this turmoil directly endangers the three core issues of the West: The first is counter-terrorism.The West is worried that Islamic extremist forces will grow rapidly along with the Islamic democratic movement. After all, the "Muslim Brotherhood" is the most rigorously organized opposition force in Egypt and the originator of various Islamic forces dormant in the Arab world. The movement Hamas is inextricably linked to militant groups such as the Front Islamique du Salut d'Algerie in Algeria.If the hardcore allies of the West in the Arab world are toppled in this wave of Islamic democracy, the United States should be the most panicked, and the Al Qaeda and Iran should be the most happy.

The second is oil.The Suez Canal is the lifeline for maintaining oil supply in the West. If the canal is closed, oil tankers supplying Europe will be forced to detour more than 10,000 kilometers. European oil-consuming countries will not be able to bear this burden. The third is Israel.Mubarak is the most important "strategic partner" of the United States and Israel in the Middle East. This is also one of the reasons why Mubarak himself is gradually losing popularity in the country. Now that Mubarak has stepped down, the relationship between Egypt and Israel may add more variables. In view of this, the West's strategy for dealing with the Egyptian issue can be summed up as "both face and face".On the one hand, they verbally expressed their support for the Egyptian democratic movement, but on the other hand they hoped that the Egyptian military would stabilize the situation so that Egypt could "smoothly transition" to another pro-Western regime.The United States still has two cards to play: one is the influence formed by the United States’ long-term infiltration of the Egyptian army; the other is the dependence of the Egyptian economy on US aid.But things may not be that simple.Once the Pandora's box of Western-style "mass democracy" is really opened, the explosion of political participation will be inevitable. The result is by no means easily controlled by the United States or any party. This is why the United States is sitting on pins and needles today. From my own on-the-spot investigations, as long as Arab countries engage in genuine universal suffrage, it must be Islamic forces that come to power, not pro-Western liberal forces.Sure enough, in the May-June 2012 general election, Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood came to power.Immediately afterwards, Egypt fell into constant disputes between Islamists and secularists.As a result of electoral politics, the conflict between these two factions has intensified, and neither side has compromised. The result has been national unrest, capital flight, business closures, skyrocketing prices, and soaring crime. In July 2013, the army ousted the democratically elected President Morsi, which led to new chaos and turmoil. Controversies between secularists and Islamists have intensified. Large-scale bloodshed has broken out. Egypt's prospects are not optimistic. Some Westerners associate the turmoil in Egypt with China.During the two days when the turmoil in Egypt intensified, I happened to introduce China's development model in the Dutch Senate.A Dutch MP asked me: Will China become the next Egypt?I suggested that he consult various polls conducted by Western institutions in China.No matter how many problems China has today, almost all polls show that the Chinese are the most optimistic in the world about the future of their country.China is not the next Egypt, but the next largest economy in the world.In the past 30 years, China has firmly grasped the main axis of developing the economy and improving people's livelihood, which has greatly improved people's lives and made most people feel that their lives have a bright future.In contrast, Egypt has wasted 30 years, people's livelihood is deteriorating, and the people feel hopeless. This is the biggest difference between China and Egypt, and it is also what I have witnessed during my four visits to Egypt.More importantly, China has roughly figured out its own path to success, while Egypt may still have a long time to figure it out. The problem in Egypt is not a question of "democracy and autocracy" at all, but a question of "good or bad governance".If it is a question of "democracy and autocracy", then Egypt can solve all the problems by copying the Western democratic model.But in fact, the Western model cannot solve any of Egypt's deep-seated problems, such as population explosion, poverty, housing, and economic structure.If the Chinese model can inspire Egypt, I think that for Egypt, the top priority should be to get rid of foreign intervention as soon as possible, establish social order as soon as possible, and go all out to develop the economy and improve people's livelihood.If this is not achieved, Egypt is likely to enter a new round of turmoil. Looking at the so-called "democratic wave" in West Asia and North Africa, the so-called "Arab Spring" cheered by many people in the West, the so-called "a new Middle East is about to be born". Three years have passed, and Libya has been torn apart. The country fell into a state of anarchy out of control, and even the American ambassador was killed by the "democratic" people.Although Tunisia has not disintegrated, the country's economy has been severely damaged, and the original secular regime has been rapidly Islamized.Yemen is even more turbulent. A country with a population similar to China’s first-tier cities (23.6 million) has experienced three wars at the same time: inter-tribal wars, inter-sectarian (Sunni and Shia) wars, government forces and The "base" organization's war does not rule out the possibility of a war of independence in southern Yemen.Egypt's own situation has become complicated, and it is really chaotic. Egypt is also facing extensive intervention and intervention by the United States, Israel, Europe, Iran and various Islamic radical forces, and the country has fallen into a comprehensive crisis.Egypt appears to be caught in the typical vicious cycle of developing countries adopting the Western model: popular elections produce populist leaders who can't do a good job with the economy; Democratization was called for once, and the cycle started all over again when an elected government came to power.Such is the misfortune of Egypt. Whether it is Egypt or other Middle Eastern countries, the development path of a country depends on the people of the country to explore.These people who have experienced the "Arab Winter" may eventually find a development path that suits their own national conditions, but this exploration process may be extremely difficult and tortuous.