Chapter 10 Chapter 2 least bad mode?

The development of a country, like a person's life, is mainly composed of a few key steps.If these steps are taken correctly, everything will be smoother and the prospects will be brighter.If these few steps are taken wrong, it will hurt the muscles and bones, and even lose the whole game.Looking back at the 30 years that China has gone through, it cannot be said that no mistakes have been made, and some mistakes cannot be said to be serious, but we have taken the right steps in the most critical steps.Reform and opening up began at the end of 1978. Looking back, if it were not for the proposition and persistence of Deng Xiaoping, a powerful leader, China might have chosen a different path.The following four possible options come to mind.

The first is the "ultra-left model": no reform and opening up, and a comprehensive affirmation and continuation of the past ideas of "taking class struggle as the key link", "politics in command", and "grasping revolution and promoting production".Those who put forward the "two whatevers" in the early days of reform basically had this kind of thinking.If China had followed this path at that time, China's outcome would probably not have been better than that of our northern neighbor. The second option is the "extreme right model", a Westernization model that takes a complete Westernization and replaces it with a pro-Western government.I remember that in the 1980s, scholars advocating "total westernization" always won applause when they gave speeches in universities. "What China needs most is to import a prime minister." There was applause from below.Even the view that "it is best to let the West colonize China for a period of time" has many supporters.Regarding how the Western model works in developing countries, I can briefly talk about the situation in the Philippines.Because no developing country has been westernized more thoroughly than there: the Philippines was first a colony of Spain, and people’s religious beliefs were converted to Catholicism, and later it was a colony of the United States. It has been regarded as a "democracy showcase" in Asia for a long time , its political system and system are almost completely copied from the United States, with separation of powers and separation of church and state. It has been more than 100 years since democracy and constitutionalism have been established. People Power" overthrew the dictatorship. In 2001, the "people power" drove out President Estrada again.However, this country has been trapped in political turmoil for a long time. A once powerful country second only to Japan in East Asia and a "democratic showcase" set up by the United States has turned from prosperity to decline. China surpassed.

I visited Manila, the capital of the Philippines, in the summer of 2005. The first thing I entered was a large number of slums.30% of the people in the Philippines live below the poverty line, with an average daily income of less than one dollar.Now one out of every ten Filipinos has left their hometown to work overseas, a total of about 8 million people, making Filipino maids the business card of the entire Philippines.The remittances of Filipino maids have also become the main source of foreign exchange income for the Philippines.Airports in the Philippines have dedicated channels for labor exporters.

Because I had received Mrs. Marcos and her party in Beijing in the past, I asked a professor at the University of Manila, how does the current Philippines compare with Marcos?She said frankly: "It's even worse now. No amount of people's power can change the reality that a few prominent families in the Philippines control the entire Philippine politics. They are vested interests and influence all levels of government in the Philippines through their own financial resources and connections." She said He also talked about such a point of view: "In the past, the Marcos family and his cronies were corrupt. After they were greedy enough, they did something for the common people. Now it is a change of government, which is the beginning of a new round of corruption. What do you do? ? How can ordinary people get rich?"

Filipinos now say that Filipino democracy ultimately boils down to the 3Gs, namely guns (gun), money (gold) and goons (goons).My tour guide said to me: "In the past, during the Marcos regime, only Marcos and his cronies could do this. Now that democracy is restored, anyone can do these things. The situation is even worse than under Marcos. Marcos once The downfall, on the surface, is the victory of democracy, but in fact, the three gs have begun to spread.” I asked him why there are so many murders in Philippine politics, and since 1986, there have been nearly a thousand political murders.He said: "Political positions are the source of income for politicians, so many politicians do not hesitate to take risks, hire killers, murder politicians and journalists who dare to expose the truth. The government can't even control guns, and now there are more than 400,000 guns scattered among the people. .” He told me to be careful when I go out.When he finally broke up with me, he said: "This country is like a sinking passenger ship, and everyone on board wants to leave."

Although Manila is dilapidated, it is also full of vitality. Most of the cars are painted in colorful colors. In 2004, the country once created a Guinness record of 5,327 couples kissing in the capital Manila at the same time.Only such a passionate nation would elect a movie star Estrada to be president, then put him in prison, sentence him to life imprisonment, and finally pardon him by President Arroyo.Not long ago, President Arroyo, who just stepped down, was placed under house arrest in a hospital awaiting trial on corruption charges, and it may not be long before the former leader is jailed and then pardoned.I really don't know when the Philippines will be able to get rid of this kind of "game democracy" where internal strife is like a child's play.

There are many "fully westernized" countries like the Philippines in the third world.Its biggest feature is: the economic and social structure is medieval, and the superstructure is post-modern. As a result, the needs of the government and the people are seriously out of touch, the people are still unable to get rid of poverty, and the country is in turmoil for a long time.The common people are struggling for basic survival, the social unemployment rate and the crime rate are rising steadily, and there are rambling discussions in the Congress to learn from "civilized countries", "amend the constitution" for a while, and "abolish the death penalty" for a while.The Philippines also abolished the death penalty in 2006.

After excluding the above two "extreme left" and "extreme right" non-reform models, there are two remaining reform models: one is the "conservative reform model" of Cuba, and the other is the "radical reform model" of the former Soviet Union. model". Cuba's reform model can be described as sticking to the original system as much as possible politically and economically, and making some minor reforms in some places.Cuba adheres to the planned economy, but also adds limited market regulation, which has a lot in common with China's influential "planned economy as the mainstay, supplemented by market regulation" in the early days of China's reform and opening up. In August 2005, I visited Cuba for 10 days and stayed at a friend's house. I saw, heard, and felt a lot.I have a certain respect for Cuba, because such a small country with a population of only 11 million has the courage to challenge the United States, a superpower, for more than 50 years.And the legendary Castro, whom I met up close twice in Europe, is indeed full of charisma.But I also have to admit: Cuba's impression is disappointing.If it can be summed up in two sentences, it would be: Cuba's economy is too difficult, and the people's life is too difficult.I said to myself, if China had not been able to bravely move towards a market economy and accept the challenge of globalization, China's situation today may not be much better than Cuba.

That time, I took the Cuban Airlines plane from Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, to Havana. At least 30 years of history.The high temperature in the cabin was more than 40 degrees, but all the air conditioners failed. The one-hour flight was like taking a sauna, sweating profusely.The flight attendants on the plane were not smiling either.As soon as the plane took off, all the cabin doors above the seats were shaken open, and one of the handbags fell off. Fortunately, no one was hit, but everyone was a little nervous.Just one American guy, with his arm around his Cuban girlfriend, laughing loudly.I saw some elderly Cuban passengers showing angry expressions. They probably felt that the dignity of Cuba had been insulted, but they had no choice but to do so.

Most of the shops on the main commercial street in Havana were empty, and the windows of clothing stores were just a few white shirts. The pharmacies sold only about twenty or thirty kinds of medicines, including red medicine and purple medicine.The market supply feels much more depressed than that of Beijing and Shanghai during the "Cultural Revolution".My landlord told me that staples are rationed.Flour, pork, eggs, and even table sugar are provided on vouchers.Beef is a national monopoly and cannot be bought by private individuals. It is only supplied to foreign-related restaurants and restaurants.Most of the cars on the street are old polluting and fuel-guzzling cars from the 1950s, so the whole city smells of car exhaust.The cars were too old, so many broke down. Repairing cars with the hood on the side of the road has become a scene in Havana, and there are also modified vehicles that use the front of the truck to drag the body of the bus.It is said that the new Chinese-made bus arrived in Cuba last year, and it immediately became a beautiful scenery in the whole Cuba.

The government's control over society is very strict.Mobile phones are strictly regulated and rarely used.Internet access is also very inconvenient.Except for an Internet cafe in the city center where I waited for half an hour and it was not my turn, almost only foreign-related restaurants can access the Internet, and they charge 3 new pesos every 20 minutes, which is about 30 yuan.Not to mention the high price, the Internet speed is very slow. After opening the email, more than ten minutes passed.There are only 4 TV channels: 1 news channel, which broadcasts mostly boring conferences; 1 literary channel, which broadcasts some good European and American classic feature films; 2 educational channels, imparting knowledge of mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine and culture No commercial interruptions.There are few newspapers and magazines. Granma is a party newspaper with 8 pages of small format, all of which are slogans and conference news. The types and quantity of books in the bookstore are also very limited. People tend to attribute Cuba's problems to the US blockade and sanctions.But I chatted privately with some Cuban friends, and they believe that the human factor accounts for at least half.For example, when it comes to squeezing sugar, why do we need to supply it in accordance with the certificate, because the price of sugar is too low, and sugar farmers have no enthusiasm.An owner of a Chinese restaurant said it more bluntly, what embargo is mainly because of embargoing himself.Enterprises do not have any import and export rights.Seeing that someone made a little money, the government became nervous and wanted to tax you, and finally made everyone poor.In the early 1980s, Cuba tried to open the farmers’ free market, price reform, wage reform, and foreign trade reform. However, due to problems such as speculation and inequality, the Cuban government carried out a "correction campaign" from 1986 to 1989. , emphasizing the strengthening of the party's ideological work and spiritual encouragement, and opposing the decentralization of power, so that the economy has returned to the original state of the planned economy.I was curious to get a haircut in a small shop with only two barbers on the side of the road, but when I inquired, this small shop was also state-owned, and there was still a quarter of an hour before the off-duty time, and the two of them patted their buttocks and left. Sorry for those waiting. Chatting privately with Cuban friends, I can feel that Castro is still popular, but at the same time people have changed their minds. Most of them are not discussing whether Cuba will fall to the United States after Castro, but the Chinese model and the Vietnamese model. With keen interest.Castro's younger brother, Raul Castro, has also stated on many occasions that he wants to learn from China's experience in reform and opening up, and has already started actions in some areas, such as passing a more open agricultural policy, allowing Cuban citizens to buy mobile phones, Computers, permission to buy and sell houses, etc., these are all good things.In retrospect, if China had not stepped out of the old path of planned economy and carried out drastic market-oriented reforms, but only tinkered with the old system, it would have been difficult for China to bid farewell to Cuba's shortage of economy today. But Cuba is not all about weaknesses. Despite the economic difficulties, it has achieved universal medical subsistence allowances.Infant mortality in Cuba is said to be lower than in the United States.Planned rationing obviously guarantees the minimum consumption and nutrition of the people, so it seems that there is no situation of many people suffering from malnutrition in some developing countries.Cuba now also provides medical assistance to the poor in some Central and South American countries, and many poor people in Central and South America also come to Cuba to see a doctor.In comparison, I think that through more than 30 years of reform and opening up, China's national strength has greatly increased, with annual fiscal and tax revenues of 10 trillion yuan. We can do better than Cuba in terms of social security. When it comes to Cuba, there are two other things that deeply touched me: one is a monument to the Chinese martyrs who sacrificed for Cuba’s independence at the East Street of Havana, engraved with the Cuban War of Independence hero General Tiguesada Two sentences that praised the Cuban Chinese: "No Chinese is a deserter, and no Chinese is a traitor." This is probably the highest level of praise for a nation.In the second half of the 19th century, the Chinese population once accounted for one-tenth of the Cuban population.During the Cuban War of Independence in the 19th century, thousands of Chinese participated in the independence movement, and several troops composed entirely of Chinese were brave and indomitable, and became famous in Cuba.This monument still makes tourists stop and stare today, and is a source of great pride to the Chinese.The compatriots who died in foreign countries for the independence of Cuba will always be remembered by future generations.The Cuban nation is not an ungrateful nation, a nation that knows how to be grateful must be a nation with hope. In Chinatown in Havana, I also saw a building facing the entrance of Chinatown, with the traditional Chinese characters of "Pacific Hotel" engraved on it, but it has long been empty.Mr. Tao, in his 70s from the Chinese Association, told me that these are the property of our compatriots.These Chinese owners all belonged to the wealthy class in Cuba at that time. After the Cuban revolution, they fled to other countries, and these properties were confiscated by the government.He said: There are few Chinese people now, there are only about 200 people, and they are all old.He also said that Havana was once the most prosperous city in the Americas. "At that time, there was no Las Vegas, and Americans came here to eat, drink, prostitute and gamble on weekends. Many rich people bought houses here to eat, drink and have fun."Looking at the large and dilapidated luxury villas on the seaside of Havana, you can imagine the luxury of those rich people back then, but the huge gap between the rich and the poor led to the Cuban Revolution in 1959.Many of the wealthy people who fled in a hurry were Chinese, and of course they took their capital, technology and connections with them.In this world, the lack of basic social justice and the large gap between the rich and the poor will always lead to turmoil and revolution, but the revolution is heroic, romantic, and joyful, while the construction after the revolution is arduous, complicated, and time-consuming of.The Cuban people are still exploring a path of development that suits their own national conditions, and I believe the Cuban people will eventually find such a path. As for the radical reforms that the former Soviet Union took under the leadership of Gorbachev, everyone knows the results.But we can't forget that in the 1980s, Gorbachev proposed "new thinking" and political reforms as the overriding priority, which attracted the envy and praise of many people in our country.The Chinese people, especially the intellectuals, who have experienced endless political turmoil such as the "Cultural Revolution" sincerely desire large-scale political reforms, because there are indeed many problems in our political system. Comparing the differences in the reform strategies of China and the Soviet Union, under the strong leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China took a "steady reform path".From the perspective of the interaction between politics and economy, China’s path may be summarized as: relatively large-scale economic system reform and relatively small-scale political system reform, and the focus of political reform is to pave the way for economic reform. It can be called "the model of economic reform priority".The advantages and disadvantages of this model are obvious to all, but generally speaking, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. China has avoided major turmoil. China's economic scale has been 18 times that of 1978, and people's lives have greatly improved. Gorbachev took political reform as the main axis and used economic reform to assist political reform. As a result, he first wanted to ensure that the political process was irreversible, and he could do anything for this, which violated the laws of economics.The result of the reform was catastrophic: the Soviet Union disintegrated rapidly, the economy collapsed, people's living standards dropped sharply, people's years of savings disappeared with crazy inflation, and the average life expectancy fell below 60 years old. When I visited the Soviet Union in June 1990, I felt that Gorbachev's method would not work.First of all, the Soviet economy was very difficult, and there was a general shortage of goods.When I go to GUM, the largest department store in Moscow, in the beautiful Russian traditional vaulted commercial building, I have to wait in a long line to buy everything. There are only one or two styles at the counter of leather shoes and coats. There are always 100 people in line, and they need Passport to buy.The weather in Moscow was colder than I expected. I wanted to buy a windbreaker, and then I started to experience the Soviet-style queue. An hour later, it was my turn. A very rude female salesperson told me that only a passport is not enough, and I need a passport Proof of residence in Moscow, I can only give up.I walked for another hour at noon, but I couldn't find a place to eat. There were few restaurants with long queues and short business hours. Russians have a great sense of humor and can take a hard time.I passed by a TV store, which was full of clumsy black and white TVs produced by Russia itself. I went in curiously, and my friend from the Soviet Academy of Social Sciences who accompanied me pulled me up and said, "Don't buy this TV. Dude, it might blow up. Our popular saying here is 'Soviet televisions are made for the enemies of the Soviet Union'." A huge problem with radical political reform was the rapid explosion of political participation for which the Soviet system was completely unprepared.Radical political reforms led to questions first about the legitimacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and then of the existence of the Soviet state as a whole.Lithuania was the first to declare independence from the Soviet Union, followed by Latvia and Estonia.Because the economic situation has deteriorated, Gorbachev has messed up his game, his personal prestige is almost gone, and anyone can make fun of him.A Russian sinologist told me this joke, a man vowed to go to the Kremlin to kill Gorbachev, so he took a pistol and went on the road, but came back after a while.People asked: How did you come back?He said that there was a long line of people who wanted to kill Gorbachev, and I couldn't wait, so I had to come back. I remember that in 1993, Professor Sachs, the mastermind of "shock therapy", came to the University of Geneva to give lectures.Arbatov, a well-known Russian scholar present and director of the American-Canada Institute of the former Soviet Union, suddenly stood up and asked a question.He questioned Sachs in very clear English: "My motherland has disintegrated, are you happy?" After speaking, he left in a huff.Sachs looked astonished.After he left the stage, Sachs said: "It's not that our plan is poorly designed, but that a group of old Communist Party members who asked questions just now are hindering our reform and frustrating our reform plan." But what people want to ask more is: reform How can the design of the scheme not take into account various opposing factors? In fact, the key point is that these American scholars did not understand Russia’s national conditions and prescribed prescriptions indiscriminately. At that time, the Soviet Union, from the general public to the political elite, had superstitious beliefs in the West and the United States, and accepted Western political discourse in its entirety.Gorbachev himself is still admired in the West, but many Russians cannot forgive him.Gorbachev's standing in the hearts of his own people plummeted. In 1996, he ran for the Russian presidential election and received less than 1% of the vote.A Russian friend said to me recently: "The years of the 1990s were an unprecedented catastrophe for Russia. Only by understanding this can we understand why Russians today are so disgusted with the United States and support Putin so much." Comparing comprehensively the different model choices that China may have in the past 30 years, my conclusion is: Although our "stable reform model" has many problems, it is indeed better than the "ultra-left" and "ultra-right" models, and it is also better than Cuba's The "conservative reform model" is better than the "radical reform model" of the former Soviet Union.A large country with a population of 1.3 billion, through more than 30 years of struggle, the economy has grown rapidly, and the living standards of most people have greatly improved.China has become the world's second largest economy and the largest exporter, but these statistics are still based on the fact that the renminbi is undervalued.Westerners have various criticisms and accusations against China, even to the point of being critical, but there are not many who deny China's achievements.If we started lagging behind the West about 300 years ago, we are indeed catching up now.