Chapter 18 4. Political reform: go your own way

In March 2008, I attended an academic conference in Barcelona and met Mr. Josep Pique, the former Spanish foreign minister.After recalling his visit to China a few years ago, he said to me: "When I climbed the Great Wall for the first time, I suddenly felt that I had a new understanding of Chinese politics, which is that we can no longer use the concept of traditional Soviet communism to understand China." For the Chinese He said that the difference between the Chinese model and the Soviet model is obvious, but for a Western politician, this recognition is hard-won.Now many Westerners still regard China as the Soviet Union, as an enlarged East Germany.But the former Spanish foreign minister felt the difference between the two systems of China and the Soviet Union through his contacts with China, Chinese history and culture, and realized an important and simple truth: China’s political development today is the result of China’s own history. A unique continuation of tradition, this continuation determines the uniqueness of the Chinese road.

Western academic circles and media often discuss China's future, but they can be summed up in three views: One is the "China collapse theory", which believes that China's development has brought about various problems, and these problems will eventually lead to China's division and collapse The second is the "peaceful evolution theory", which believes that as China's economy develops and opens up to the outside world, China will become more prosperous and eventually follow the path of Western democracy; the third is a view that has become popular recently: China may neither If it collapses, it will not take the path of Western democracy, but will become a "rich, powerful and autocratic" country, such as the new book "The China Illusion" (The China Illusion) by James Mann, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Fantasy) as described.The first point of view, because so many pessimistic predictions about China have failed, and now the number of people who believe it has been greatly reduced; but the second and third views are still accepted by many people in the West.In fact, the biggest blind spot of these three perspectives lies in their Western-centric view of history and the limitations of Western discourse. Failure to understand the development and evolution of Chinese politics has surpassed the theoretical framework derived from Western-centric theory and the interpretation capabilities of Western discourse.

French scholar Gao Dawei once said such an interesting sentence: "In front of China, the West must learn to be humble. In the long history of China, there are at least seven dynasties whose history is longer than the history of the entire United States of America. There are also long-term elite politics. Given the cultural traditions, it is hard to imagine that China will completely follow the Western model. China must be a co-architect of our new world.” The relative success of China’s economic reforms illustrates this point.Western mainstream economic and political scholars never imagined that China would be so successful following its own path, nor did they imagine that their own-led development model would be so unsuccessful in developing countries.

The relative success of China's economic system reform, in a sense, provides valuable experience for China's political system reform.There are three fundamental experiences behind our successful economic reform: the first is to persist in "seeking truth from facts" and proceed from China's history and reality, rather than a perfect ideal design; Gradually promote the transformation of the system; the third is to use the doctrine, not to send the doctrine, that is to say, learn all the strengths of others, but I am the main one, and I will decide the choice with my own perspective, and I will never follow blindly.This kind of successful thinking can also be as big as outlining the way forward for China's political system reform.

In the history of the West, the idea of ​​reform that is relatively close to this gradual reform is the idea of ​​empirical reform in British history.Judging from international experience, the road of empiricism is less costly than the road of idealism.Britain is a typical example of empirical political change, while France is a typical example of idealistic political change.Since the Glorious Revolution in 1688, Britain's domestic system has been gradually improving. It firmly believes that the cultural customs and judgments of a nation are relatively stable, and adheres to the British thinker Edmund Burke's "reform with reservations" Philosophy, insisting that the British "never imitate what they have not tried" in his "Reflections on the French Revolution", and insisting that a country's political system should be derived mainly from its own traditions and not Like the French Revolution, by pursuing an ideal model.The United Kingdom has been constantly adapting, reforming in small steps, and never cutting off its own history.This gradual approach allowed England to achieve stability and development over a longer period of time than France.During the Victorian era, which began in 1837 (she reigned for 64 years), Britain reached the height of its power.The industrial production capacity of Britain at that time exceeded the combined industrial capacity of the rest of the world, and its wealth was unmatched by France at that time.A Frenchman sighed after watching the first World Expo held in Crystal Palace in London in 1851: France is a "democratic country", but failed to feed its own people, while Britain is an "aristocratic country", but it feeds its own people. people. (Note that at that time people generally regarded Britain as an "aristocratic country", not a "democratic country".)

Indeed, idealistic France has been in constant turmoil and revolution for a long time, and its economy lags far behind that of Britain.France's approach is to first establish a great ideal, especially Rousseau's idea of ​​"sovereignty lies in the people", and then practice these ideals magnificently, but the overall price paid by France is much higher than that of Britain.Since the French Revolution in 1789, France's political system has been relatively turbulent, and even the Fourth Republic in 1946 was not stable, with too many political parties and too strong a parliament.It is generally believed that the French political system stabilized after Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic established the presidential system.Canadian scholars Jean-Benoit Nadeau (Jean-Benoit Nadeau) and Barlow (Julie Barlow) made a summary of this in the best-selling book "60 Million French People Can't Be Wrong" about French culture: from the French Revolution in 1789 In the 173 years since the French political system stabilized in 1962, "France has experienced five democratic governments, three royal regimes, two empires, and one fascist regime, and all of these governments ended in violence." From Chinese From the point of view, we also need to pay attention to the differences in population.At the time of the French Revolution, the population of France was only over 20 million, a little less than that of Shanghai today. Even in 1962, the population of France was only over 40 million, while China is already a large country with a population of 1.3 billion. Such tossing, not to mention civil strife, the whole world can't bear it.

From the perspective of China's history since 1949, the experience of the first 30 years is more like that of France, and the experience of the last 30 years is more like that of the United Kingdom. The situation in the last 30 years is generally much better than that of the first 30 years, and most people have received benefits. China's rise is unstoppable.For China's future political reform, the gradual road of empiricism should be better than the radical road of idealism.However, many of us Chinese also have a tradition of political romanticism and radicalism similar to the French. We always hope to solve all the problems existing in China through radical political changes, and accomplish all in one battle.In fact, when carrying out political reforms in a super-large country like China, we must consider the cost of each reform policy.The best way forward for China is to steadily promote political reform and achieve greater results at a lower cost.

The empirical model is driven by domestic demand, and the key to domestic demand is effective domestic demand.Reform driven by effective domestic demand is relatively stable. Effective domestic demand can only be achieved when a country’s ideology, culture, and people’s sentiments have generated real domestic demand. This is also the biggest internal driving force for reform.For example, the development of China's real estate industry has enabled more and more Chinese to become property owners, which in turn created a real domestic demand for the "Property Law", and the resulting "Property Law" is Very targeted and operable, played a good effect.In the political field, at the current stage in China, the strongest domestic demand may be the construction of anti-corruption mechanisms, the construction of inner-party democratic mechanisms, the construction of a service-oriented government, and the construction of a society ruled by law.

Due to the strong promotion of the West, some artificial domestic demand and false domestic demand have been created in many third world countries, but there is no real domestic demand in terms of ideology, culture, and people's sentiments in these countries.The result is a complete disconnect between the upper and lower structures. In April 2007, Kenyan NTV conducted a poll. The issues that the common people are most concerned about are employment and security. Less than 2% of the people care about constitutional reform. The second is constitutional reform.Another congressman put forward the motion of "learning from civilized countries and abolishing the death penalty".This serious disjointed situation is also related to the racial killing that started 8 months later.

In February 2008, the American "International Herald Tribune" published a survey on the satisfaction level of citizens of six western countries with the status quo of their own country, and found that the dissatisfied people greatly outnumbered the satisfied people: (Source: International Herald Tribune, February 8, 2008) The "New York Times" also published an American poll on October 30, 2007. 80% of the people were dissatisfied with the work of the current Congress, 68% believed that there was a problem with the direction of the country, and 60% believed that they had fallen. Life for a generation will be worse than it is now.Confidence in the U.S. government's ability to solve problems is lower than it was during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and Watergate in 1974.In 2005, the very influential Pew Research Center in the United States conducted a survey of 17 countries and found that 72% of Chinese were satisfied with the status quo of their own country, ranking first among the countries surveyed. 76% of Chinese people believe that their quality of life will improve in the next five years, which is also higher than other countries.In 2008, the center conducted a similar poll among 24 countries, and China once again took the lead, with 86% of the people saying they were satisfied with the overall state of the country. In March 2008, in a poll conducted by the American "World Public Opinion Website" on the trust of global leaders, the trust of Chinese leaders in their own country was 93%, far higher than that of Western leaders.

(Source: PEW Global Attitudes Project, 2005) If the above-mentioned independent polls conducted by American scholars roughly reflect the actual situation in various countries, then we can say that although China’s political system still has many unsatisfactory aspects, and although Chinese people still complain about various problems, China’s People's overall recognition of their country's current situation, their trust in their leaders, and their confidence in their future are all among the best in the world.This cannot help but make people rethink a series of issues such as the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese and Western systems.If you consider that the per capita resource consumption in Western countries is more than 10 times that of China (according to Jared Diamond's calculation, the per capita resource consumption in the United States is 11 times that of China), and the people's satisfaction is still so unsatisfactory , this kind of reflection needs to be carried out even more.Of course, China has a large population, even if there is such a high level of satisfaction as 72% or 86%, the number of people who are dissatisfied with the status quo, even though the proportion is low, will not be a small number, so we have no reason to be complacent; on the contrary, we must walk on eggshells, Conscientiously solve various existing problems to further improve the satisfaction of ordinary people. Objectively speaking, both Chinese and Western systems have a lot of room for improvement, but in the past 30 years, China has been constantly reforming and progressing, while the West seems to be rigid in thinking and stagnant.A senior EU official from the Netherlands once told me privately: "Although we asked China to carry out various reforms when we held human rights dialogues with China, our own domestic reforms have been difficult. For example, in order to add an hour to the store every week Business hours, the government and union representatives negotiated for more than a decade before reaching an agreement. Is this good or bad for the public interest? Of course not." Few people now deny the pragmatic, efficient, and orderly features of the Chinese system.This reminds me of my own experience dining with a German friend.That time, this German who liked Chinese culture very much invited me to a well-known German restaurant for dinner. The waiter kept changing plates for us. He smiled and said to me: "Look, Chinese food is much more delicious than our German food. Many, but our meal ceremony is more grand than yours, you are just a pair of chopsticks, we don’t have much to eat in German cuisine, but we keep changing knives, cups, and plates.” I thought about it later, and this analogy seemed very political.If the quality of food is the "content" and the exchange of plates is the "form", then many "contents" in our system are not inferior to those in the West, or even better than those in the West.For example, the overall performance of our system over the past 30 years has clearly surpassed that of developing countries that have adopted Western political systems, and even surpassed developed countries in some aspects: the performance of the United States in 2005 "Katrina" disaster relief and China's 2008 How can years of earthquake relief be compared?In France, a sudden heat wave in August 2003 caused the unnatural death of more than 10,000 elderly people across the country, which shocked the world; Italy changed its government like a revolving lantern, and even the urban garbage and other problems have not been dealt with for many years, let alone Said to solve the deep-rooted underworld problems.To some extent, the poll results quoted above also reflect many deep-seated problems in the Western system. The Western political system is very similar to Western food, with a whole set of normative forms.This form can be divided into two parts. One part serves the content. For example, Western food must be divided into meals, one serving per person, which is more hygienic. It is very similar to the voting system to ensure that voters have some kind of supervision over candidates.The other part is that the form is higher than the content, and there are more aesthetic functions, such as using different shapes of cups for different drinks.Registered voting, organized assemblies, and televised debates in Western democratic systems also have a similar formal beauty.Although the "content" realized by the Western system is different from our "content", in terms of form and procedure, many Western practices are often more attractive than ours.Their approach makes it easier to bring politicians closer to the public, and makes it easier for the public to have a sense of participation.For example, in the debates between the two sides of the campaign, many words are campaign language, and not many people take it seriously.But this form of debate can not only let the people understand their policies, but also create a form of political participation that the people like to hear and see.TV debates are very attractive to the public, even a bit like our Spring Festival Gala, which has become a repertoire in many countries. Everyone likes to watch it, but after watching it, they say it is not very interesting.In developed countries, except for a few countries such as France, the general election turnout rate is not high, about 50%, but the TV debates of the main candidates often have high ratings.This shows that many ordinary people just want to watch a good show. As for which candidate is elected, it does not have a great impact on their lives. We need to innovate the form of democracy in light of China's national conditions, so that ordinary people have more sense of political participation and identity.Content and form are more important than content, but form cannot be ignored.In terms of form, we can learn from some forms from the West, or we can refine and innovate from our own traditional resources, or we can combine local and foreign resources to create new forms, so that our democracy is more standardized and more formal in form. Vitality, more colorful.I even think that, in a sense, the focus of our political reform is to shift from emphasizing "content" to "content and form", and from emphasizing "results" to "results and procedures".Chinese people are very good at learning from other people's strengths.Let’s take a meal as a comparison. Chinese food is eaten together, which is not as hygienic as Western-style food sharing, but as long as a pair of serving chopsticks are added to the dishes, the hygiene problem of sharing food will be solved, and the Chinese and Western styles will be in line. Of course, what we can learn from the Western political system is not only the form, but also the content.For example, the doctrine of separation of powers emphasizes the restriction of power. We should learn from the idea of ​​power restriction in light of China's reality, and we can also learn from some Western designs on power restriction.But the three powers in the United States are evenly matched with each other, and it does not apply to other Western countries, let alone non-Western countries.Western countries such as France and Germany are actually executive-led. The French president and the German chancellor have more power than the parliament.The same goes for the EU itself, where the European Commission has more power than the European Parliament.The parliaments of Germany and Denmark are also dominated by consensus.Of course, while maintaining administrative leadership, we must also learn from international experience and vigorously strengthen the supervision and checks and balances of power. When learning from some practices in the West, we don't have to, and we don't need to regard form and voting as the only thing that is supreme.We want to liberate democracy from the rigid and narrow discourse of the West, and take the road of democratic innovation.When the West promotes its own democratic model, it simplifies what should be a deeply cultural and diverse form of democracy into universal suffrage with one person, one vote. This in itself is a huge harm to the cause of democracy. Kevier's famous quote: There are two kinds of people who can most harm democracy, one is the anti-democratic person, and the other is the democratic radical.Those who promote the "color revolution" in the West today belong to the latter category. Our democratic construction must have an innovative spirit.Democracy building should be a dynamic undertaking. Democracy can have a thousand or ten thousand forms, and should not be limited to the one-person-one-vote universal suffrage.When I was researching cross-strait relations, I pointed out that the two sides should adhere to the principle of "first the easy and then the difficult", start with small things, start with "functional cooperation", "accumulate small to big change", "accumulate to qualitative change" , accumulating countless "small Chinas" that cooperate with each other, and finally form a "Great China" that is all-round cooperation, and finally complete the great cause of the reunification of the motherland.I think our democratic construction can also be a similar process. Democratic construction should start from the countless "small democracies" around us, and eventually converge into China's "big democracy". "Small democracy" is something we can see and touch every day, such as the "sunshine" management of residential quarters, the "sunshine" finance of public institutions, the restriction of the rights of top leaders in units, various demonstration meetings, Hearings, debates, press conferences, the mayor's hotline, e-government, humanized management, the improvement and standardization of the petition system, the gradual abolition of the urban-rural dual household registration system, the expansion of the proportion of differential elections, various public opinion surveys, Print media and online media discuss the government's public policies, the coordination of interests of different classes and groups, and so on.We want the people to feel that there is more and more democracy in our lives, and that there are more and more affairs that they can participate in discussions. At the same time, this reform process is a gradual, orderly, and A process that continues to benefit everyone.Democracy and sunshine coexist, democracy starts from the side, and democracy starts from small things.With the passage of time, with the accumulation of everyone's practice and experience, and with the increasingly mature social, economic and cultural conditions, countless "small democracies" will eventually converge into the "big democracy" of the entire Chinese society and system. The final form of "big democracy" will gradually take shape through continuous exploration. Our political reforms must complement each other with economic development and improvement of people's livelihood, instead of opposing each other and harming people's livelihood.The artificial domestic demand promoted by the West is characterized by the fact that political change is completely out of touch with economic development and improvement of people's livelihood, and even destroys the latter.The political change in the Philippines is of a single political direction and has nothing to do with economic development or improvement of people's livelihood, and is even contradictory.The same is true of the "color revolution" in Kyrgyzstan.In a country with relatively backward economic development, if a government cannot gather the consensus of the whole society on developing the economy and improving living standards, and on this basis, promote the innovation of the political system, it will pin its hopes of solving all problems on the radical In terms of political reform, the risk is extremely high, because political reform and revolution often create excessive expectations in society, and political reform and revolution are unlikely to meet these expectations in the end. As a result, expectations quickly turn into disappointment, and there are huge Destructive disappointment. We must go beyond the Western democratic model, especially the American democratic model, in the construction of democracy, because this model itself has many problems.American democracy is far from the ideals of many sages in the West. It has received a lot of criticism in the United States and Europe. cannot be cashed) and monetization (the American democratic system is too expensive for ordinary people to imagine), and even US President Barack Obama stated frankly in his book "The Audacity of Hope": "Campaign requires TV media and advertisements, which requires money. The process of getting money is a process that produces corrupt effects. After taking money, we must take care of the interests of those who provide the money. Although government money may also be used (but this money Very limited, not enough for a campaign, probably with lots of strings attached)." In our political reform, we must also prevent Handan from learning to walk.It is right to learn the strengths of others, but if you have not learned the strengths of others, you give up some of your own effective local methods, which is like learning to walk in Handan, which is also terrible.There are many developing countries in Handan learning to walk.For example, some African countries have adopted Western legal systems, but they are always unaccustomed to the environment, but they have completely discarded their original traditional customs. As a result, state governance has become disordered and even paralyzed. As for whether China will generate domestic demand for Western political systems in the future, maybe it will, maybe it won't, it's hard to judge now, and this is a question for the future.If China's real domestic demand is the same as that of the United States in the future, then a system similar to that of the United States may emerge in the future.If the domestic demand is not the same, there will be no similar system.China's political tradition is so different from that of the United States, I doubt that China will have the same domestic demand as the United States.But we can learn from some aspects of the American system. From my personal observation, one of the strengths of the American democratic system is its grassroots democracy, especially its community self-management, rather than the wasteful US presidential election.We should learn from all good experiences in the world, learn from China's reality, and lay a solid institutional foundation for China's long-term stability in the process of interaction between tradition and modernity. We can follow the successful experience of economic reform and cross the river by feeling the stones to carry out political reform. For a long time, what we need most is not a "road map", and I am afraid that we will not be able to produce a "road map". ".But like economic reform, we can have a "compass" and need to know a general direction.The overall direction of economic reform is market-oriented reform, which is an organic combination of market and planning, and aims to develop productivity and improve people's living standards.The overall direction of political reform should be to achieve good governance, establish a first-class talent selection mechanism, a first-class democratic supervision mechanism, and a first-class social consultation mechanism, and finally implement the "good life" of the people.In the process of exploration and practice, a more complete idea, or "road map", will emerge at the right time, just like through 16 years of reform and opening up, we have finally formed a rich, And the concept of "socialist market economy" that can be operated.Without 16 years of practice of crossing the river by feeling the stones, it is impossible to come up with such a theory. China is a big country. What has been successfully practiced in China is the truth. The West may not understand it, make sarcasm, or oppose it, but as long as the Chinese people clap their hands, and as long as the final facts prove that our choice and approach are correct, they will only accept it. Can come to understand you, interpret you, and ultimately have to accept you.The Chinese model will eventually affect the rules of the game in world politics and enrich the form and content of world democratic politics.The West's own model has also followed this way and eventually became a strong model. For example, the United Kingdom established a constitutional monarchy, but for a long time, others still regarded it as an "aristocratic country" rather than a democratic country.It's like learning a foreign language. If you think that English is the only good language in the world, then you will always be someone else's student. He can always tell you what's wrong, or even give you a failing grade.Now that China has risen, more and more people are learning Chinese, and Chinese will naturally become a powerful language in the international community. If you want to communicate with me, you must learn my language well and try to reach my mother tongue level. I You can also correct your pronunciation and grammar, or give you a failing grade. If it is said that more than 30 years ago, many of us were more accustomed to looking up to the West, that would be understandable. After all, China has just experienced the "Cultural Revolution", the economy is withering, and all industries are waiting for prosperity.However, after more than 30 years of reform and opening up, China has embarked on a development path that suits its own national conditions. If you are still like some people today, it is a bit laughable and generous. I am afraid that even Westerners want you Less respect.We have only made some "potential tapping" and "fine-tuning" of our political system, and the country has risen rapidly; if we continue to promote the reform of the political system in line with the national conditions, and further tap the wisdom and potential of the Chinese people, that will be even more majestic and magnificent. For his career, the best is yet to come.We should look at the West confidently, calmly, and neither humble nor overbearing, to see where the strengths and weaknesses of their systems are, and then compare China, where are our strengths and weaknesses, so as to figure out what is wrong with Western things. , What we should learn and learn from, what should be questioned and discarded, in the end, it is all to find a political development path suitable for China's own situation, a broad road that can enable China to achieve long-term national stability and people's happiness.