Chapter 10 green alert

How to realize "civilized constitutional government and easy life" in China?A few years ago, in an interview with China Youth Daily, Wu Jinglian emphasized that "reform, we are passing the hurdle" and called on the Chinese people to work together to overcome difficulties. In 2003, Mr. Ren Zhongyi, a veteran of the Communist Party of China, also said in an interview with the media that China’s reforms had not yet passed the threshold, and encouraged the people of the country with the words “reforms have not yet been successful, comrades still need to work hard”.However, in this section, the author of this book focuses on "too large circle".

Many countries in the world have a history of "enclosure movement", and the most famous one is the United Kingdom.Regarding this period of history, there was a group of farmers who "appealed" to the king about the plundering of a lord named John Bomir: "This powerful John Bomir used deceit and violence to occupy your suffering subjects-our pasture , these lands have been ours for generations. He fenced these pastures and other lands for his own. Later this John Pommier usurped our homes, fields, furniture, and orchards. Some houses were demolished, Some of them were even set on fire by his people, and we were forcibly expelled. If anyone is unwilling, Bomir will lead his thugs to surround his house. These people armed with swords and wooden sticks, smashed the gate of his house aggressively, Not caring about the crying of his wife and children..." This scene is not unfamiliar in today's China where "houses cannibalize people".

If the centuries-long land enclosure movement in Britain originated from the high profits of sheep farming, then the power of the land enclosure movement sweeping China today is not only from the temptation of economic profiteering, but also from the temptation of "political profiteering" (political achievements) .Because of this, behind the figures of countless Chinese "John Pomirs" is the collusion and distribution of power and capital. Although the central government proposed special protection for cultivated land, strictly restricted the conversion of agricultural land into construction land, and set up a "joint inspection team" to crack down on the enclosure of "developed but undeveloped areas", however, the phenomenon of illegal land acquisition has not been resolved. Effective containment, even intensified in many places.The New Enclosure Movement, which is popular in urban and rural China, has been ridiculed by overseas media as "eating socialism's disbanded meals."

According to statistics from the Ministry of Land and Resources on law enforcement inspections of satellite photos of some cities from October 2004 to May 2005, illegal land use accounted for 61% and 50% of the number and area of ​​new construction land, respectively, and in some places it was even as high as 80%.Correspondingly, all walks of life seek to strengthen their own development, the most direct manifestation of which is the need for more land and more enclosures.The land use requirements raised by various industries in the hands of the Ministry of Land and Resources even exceed our national land area.

Jiang He was also circled. In June 2003, the Ministry of Water Resources conducted a dragnet-style inventory across the country, and found that there were more than 3,000 hydropower stations with only "four nos" (no project approval, no design, no inspection and acceptance, and no management). "China Business Daily" once published "The Crisis of Returning to Poverty Brought by the Poverty Alleviation Project" and warned that the state should protect the rights of the people in the reservoir area through legislation. Otherwise, once the tragedy happens, the situation will be irreversible.

In addition, there is the craze of "encircling mines". Due to the fact that the state monopolizes natural resources, the actual absence of the main body of natural resources has led to the concentration of resources in the hands of a small number of people, resulting in a large amount of resources being wasted, destroyed, stolen or even plundered.This is why some people in power have been able to get rich in a short period of time in recent years.When property rights are not clearly defined during the capitalization process, society hands over the fate of natural resources and their pricing power to those in power.

From the two dimensions of time and space, there are two kinds of unfairness: one is the unfair distribution among the same generation; the other is the intergenerational unfairness. Regarding the former, although globalizationists believe that "the world is flat", if we look at it from the perspective of development and compare the gaps between China's cities and villages, the east and the west, and the coast and inland, it is not difficult to find how China's wealth is tilted. . In recent years, in order to expand investment, some localities have expropriated or forcibly expropriated farmers’ collective land, or by lowering compensation standards, defaulting, withholding, or embezzling land compensation and resettlement fees to complete power rent-seeking.In stark contrast to some local governments’ high land transfer fees: on the one hand, some farmers who lost their land became “citizens without land for farming, without employment, and without subsistence allowances.” Those who were powerless to defend their rights even went so far as to set themselves on fire. On the other hand, power and capital make a fortune by taking advantage of "geographical advantages".

With the development of China's urbanization and modernization, industrial parks, development zones and even "university towns" in various places began to expand viciously. As a result, a large number of farmers lost their land and once again paid for China's "modernization".In contrast, some real estate developers have made a lot of money.In the 2006 Forbes China Rich List, 20 of the top 50 richest people are closely related to the real estate industry.They either take the real estate industry as their main industry, or real estate is their important source of wealth.In another rich list - Hurun's 100 rich list, 6 of the top 10 richest in 2006 are mainly engaged in real estate, and two real estate is also one of their main industries. In the 2004 Hurun Report, there were 45 listed entrepreneurs who were mainly engaged in real estate.

According to surveys, most of the net income obtained by local governments through land transfer fees is "taken from agriculture and used in cities." Or 50%, village-level organizations accounted for nearly 30%, farmers accounted for only half to 10%. Regarding the latter kind of unfairness, American international law scholar Eddie B. Weiss put forward the theory of "intergenerational fairness" as early as 1984.As an important principle of sustainable development, intergenerational fairness has been widely accepted by people. Its core value is that the use of resources and wealth should not be absolutely tilted towards any generation.

Obviously, the current land lease system, whether it is damage to the environment or misappropriation of wealth, means a serious "overdraft" of the wealth and health of future generations.It is understandable for a citizen to use tomorrow's money to do today's work. After all, everything is paid for by himself. However, for the government, it is tantamount to snatching the land benefits of the next few generations. Some financial experts pointed out that in just over ten years, through the existing land transfer system, the local government has collected a huge amount of disposable financial resources of more than one trillion yuan, but it adopts a one-off method of collecting funds for 50 to 70 years of land rent. It is carried out, which reflects that some power departments "eat more than they deserve" or "compete with their descendants for profit".

The victim and the murderer are in love.No one would deny that the rising China is also facing a cultural crisis.In the 1980s, Chinese people lived with music such as "Let the world be filled with love", "Tomorrow will be better", and "Good people live a safe life". Twenty years later, what is popular in China is some such as "wolf in sheep's clothing". ""Mouse loves rice" can be used as the love song of the national anthem of "Sadomasochism": "I am sure I am the wolf in sheep's clothing, and you are my prey, the lamb in my mouth..." Everything changes Now, if you think about the wolves in the north of Qi Qin, you will know that even wolves have changed in this world. In August 2005, Hong Kong economist Professor Lang Xianping repeatedly issued "heavy bullets" in the media, denouncing many Chinese business leaders by name and name for taking advantage of the reform of state-owned enterprises to turn public affairs into private interests and embezzle state-owned assets.These accused companies are almost all "star companies" that have been regarded as typical successful reforms in the past, including TCL, Haier, Greencool, Kelon and so on. Lang Xianping's bombardment caused a strong reaction: there was overwhelming support on the print media and the Internet, while the criticized companies complained one after another. Greencool's boss Gu Chujun even sued Lang Xianping to court in Hong Kong.When Lang Xianping responded, he said that he was not against Gu Chujun personally, but was really concerned about the serious situation of the loss of state-owned assets.Lang Xianping thus turned from "case" into "problem", and sharply criticized many aspects of China's economic transition. Regarding Lang Xianping's attack, China's "mainstream economics" circle "collectively lost its voice."Lang Xianping lamented that his struggle for defending state-owned assets had not received any response from his peers.However, in fact, Qin Hui, a professor at Tsinghua University, had sharply criticized the above-mentioned problems long before Lang Xianping. After the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1997, the "state-owned enterprise reform battle" became fashionable, and more exciting methods than "dividing" and "selling" appeared in many places.For example, from 1999 to 2000, Changsha implemented the "defined privatization" of "beautiful girls marry first" to a group of large profitable state-owned enterprises, using political power to directly transfer state-owned assets to "insiders" and realize the control of managers in one step ( MBO).This is a "radical" approach that has never been seen in the public domain by countries around the world, including the countries in transition in Central and Eastern Europe.In this regard, Qin Hui once criticized in Caijing magazine. After the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2002, the "level management of state-owned assets" began to be implemented, and public opinion believed that this was a formal letting go of "governments at all levels to handle assets at all levels."At the same time, the voices of managers to hold shares rose sharply, and it was rumored that the next year would be the "MBO year". Qin Hui wrote "How to Fairly "Exit" State-owned Assets" and "MBO, Not MBO Year" and other articles, pointing out that "grading "Management" cannot change the nature of the government as a caretaker rather than an owner of national assets. In Qin Hui’s view, a just reform should “produce the initial owner under equal starting point and the final owner under equal (competition) rules”.China wants to develop a market economy because it believes that the optimal allocation of resources can only be achieved through the market.Logically speaking, if power can allocate resources to the "superior", what is the need for the market, and what kind of property rights reform is needed? Regarding the property rights reform of state-owned enterprises and township "collective enterprises" in the past, Qin Hui emphasized that the disposal of public property should follow the principle of "democracy in the community", because there is no public participation, public supervision, and no full game between stakeholders. Under normal circumstances, the "caretaker's transaction" of public assets is often "the person in charge of the spoon takes the big rice pot privately".If the people's communes were privatized in this way back then, turning the commune into the private estate of the commune leader, and the peasants into migrant workers, or simply driven out, wouldn't the peasants rebel?Fortunately, the rural reform at that time was only recognized by the higher authorities after the peasants themselves started it. The peasants divided the land equally (of course it was only "contracting", and the issue of land rights has been left over to this day), breaking the "big pot of rice".Today, the land is managed by farmers individually, and there is no "one who is in charge".However, what is intriguing is that this actually makes the land rights reform more difficult than the property rights reform of other public assets (including other public properties in rural areas, such as enterprises, etc.): land is not run by officials, but by It is run by farmers, so some people will never allow it to be privatized! In contrast, privatization of public property controlled and operated by officials without democracy can easily become privatized by the elite.In fact, for many enterprises, whether they are state-owned enterprises or the so-called township collective enterprises in rural areas, the reform of property rights has almost been given to the "caretakers".Workers can only "look at success or failure, life is heroic, just start all over again" like Brother Biao! The scholar Wu Si, who is famous for his book, analyzed "what is the nature of society in contemporary China" in the article "Who Is the World: Discrimination and Analysis of "Crown Capitalism""?Pointing out that the current socialism in China is no longer worth discussing, and capitalism seems to have problems.In response to Wu Jinglian’s previous mention of China’s “crony capitalism”, Wu Si believes that this concept, like the once popular “bureaucratic capitalism”, emphasizes the close relationship between capital and administrative power, but both imply a premise that China has or will soon Enter capitalism. Wu Si asked rhetorically, if "capitalism" is defined as the bourgeoisie has the final say, the bourgeoisie controls violence and holds the legislative power, then has there ever been capitalism in China?The bourgeoisie in China has never had the final say, and the powerful or bureaucrats are the groups that have the final say.Therefore, it is more accurate to say "bureaucratic capitalism" or "crony capitalism" in reverse, that is, "capital-powerism" or "capital-bureaucracy". "Astronomical prices" are flooding the lives of Chinese people.Open Baidu to search, and there are more than hundreds of thousands of news related to "sky-high prices".For example, "Harbin's sky-high medical expenses", "sky-high late payment fee", "so-and-so luxury house sold at sky-high price", "sky-high price of moon cakes" and so on. In 2007, there were two "sky-high prices" news that became the focus of people's scrambling discussions.One happened in Beijing and the other in other provinces. What happened in Beijing is this: several Peking University professors organized a "Youth Writing Brigade" composition training class, and the fee was as high as 4,900 yuan in just eight days. Another incident happened in Yangkou Town, Guangfeng County, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province.When a villager drove a truck and damaged three tiles on the exterior wall of the private house of the director of the county's construction bureau, the timid farmer was told to pay a total of 4,000 yuan in compensation and appraisal fees during mediation by the county traffic police brigade.However, judging from the photos published by the People's Daily, the damaged tiles were only two centimeters wide.The so-called "one brick for the bureau chief, one year for the farmer to sweat", this matter immediately attracted a wave of bad comments after it was exposed on the Internet. On the surface, the two "sky-high price incidents" have nothing to do with each other.The same thing is that they all "fall short". "Youth Writing Journey" involves people's choice and life under the condition of market economy.From the perspective of economic sociology, everyone is an "economic man" and "ideal man", and all people's behaviors are all related to their interests.Starting from the principle of self-interest, each person makes a choice that suits him, and social rationality will be optimal.In an open society, there is no need for morality in this matter, and the invisible hand of the market is enough to abort it. One, transparency.Although advertisers boasted that "the 'Whampoa Military Academy' of Chinese writing will be built on the shore of Weiming Lake", most people know that the so-called "big names" are just ordinary people, and it is impossible to teach a group of writers in eight days, let alone teach Out of "The Writer's Officer". Second, optional.Just imagine, if it is stipulated that all children who aspire to become writers must attend this fake "Whampoa Military Academy", then, when they have no choice, the children will have to accept this exorbitant price.Otherwise, the success of sky-high prices depends entirely on the public opinion market. This high-priced composition class inevitably reminds people of a lesson Wang Xiaobo gave to the wealthy elite in "Humility Study Class"-the elite should be humble, and don't underestimate the IQ of society too much. In contrast, the sky-high compensation case in Yangkou town tells the story of civic life from the perspective of power.Different from the above-mentioned "sky-high price of commodities", the head of the construction bureau showed "sky-high price of power".For three ordinary tiles, no one with a little common sense and reason would believe that they would be worth several thousand yuan.The absurd thing is that the county traffic police brigade summoned by the construction director actually believed it, and confidently "enforced the law" against the farmer.What is reassuring is that this incident was finally revealed to the world with the help of the media. At this time, the director of the construction bureau had to face the question of "1.7 million yuan to build a private house". Through these exorbitant claims and absurd law enforcement, while people are discussing the "Sicilianization" of certain local powers, it is not difficult to draw the following conclusions: First, the powers of mutual protection and connivance form a monopoly of power, which in turn leads to sky-high prices for power; Second, power is bought and sold at sky-high prices, and society will be the biggest victim; Third, the supervision from the media and society will help the normal operation of power, or return to the normal track. Obviously, it is not the market but the monopoly that really causes "sky-high damage" to public life.In fact, the real market is not afraid of sky-high prices, and a mixed bag is also a kind of social ecology.If this selective "sky-high price consumption" is understood as a kind of "luxury", the sky-high price will also have a positive meaning.Under the conditions of a market economy, sky-high prices may even lead fashion, and through the "drag effect", luxury goods will gradually become daily necessities.As society moves forward, luxury is often temporary.For example, an indoor bathroom was a luxury in 1900, but it has already entered the homes of ordinary people. As Montesquieu said in "The Spirit of the Law", "the rich do not have luxury, the poor will starve to death"; Werner also expressed the idea that "luxury brings capitalism" in "Luxury and Capitalism". View.When some scholars pointed out that extravagance destroys human nature, Adam Smith, who advocated that "abundance and freedom are the two blessings of life", also pointed out in "The Wealth of Nations" that the prohibition of extravagance represents "the desire of kings and ministers to supervise personal economic activities. Incompetent and taken for granted."On the economic level, a society can realize the transfer and redistribution of wealth through the sky-high consumption (luxury) of the rich; on the political and social level, this "necessary luxury" can also be realized in Objectively resist the secret rule carried in the "Law of Poverty and Loving the Tao". To be accepted by the society, "high-priced products" must meet at least the following two conditions: First, it is not a non-competitive public product, such as hydropower, oil, or even government operating costs; Second, it is optional independent consumption, rather than passive consumption. In other words, this "sky-high price product" is neither a bill apportioned by the power alliance, nor a necessities of life under market monopoly conditions. The United Nations Development Program issued the "2006 Human Development Report in the Asia-Pacific Region" and pointed out that the whole of East Asia is experiencing a period of "jobless growth", and the situation in China is particularly serious.Similarly, UBS published a research report on "Global Prices and Income". In terms of salary index and purchasing power, among the 71 major cities surveyed, Beijing and Shanghai, which are developed cities in the Mainland, ranked 65th and 59th respectively.However, under such circumstances, some monopoly industries continue to try to "connect with sky-high prices" in the name of "connecting with the world". The monopolist takes advantage of its exclusive position to limit the entry of competitors or potential rivals, thereby restricting fair competition.Some places have issued documents specifying that only a certain type of beer, a certain type of cigarette, and a certain type of electric vehicle can be sold locally, leaving consumers with no choice.Some monopoly enterprises draw up overlord clauses, requiring consumers to passively accept their "high prices and weak services".Because "there is only this one, no other branch", consumers can only bite the bullet and accept its various unfair terms.The monopoly side easily obtains excess profits through monopoly, and loses the motivation to improve technology and services, reducing economic efficiency.News such as the annual salary of 150,000 yuan for meter readers in Guangdong's electric power system, and 300,000 yuan for middle-level workers in a tobacco company in Zhejiang have been continuously exposed. In August 2007, PetroChina disclosed that despite the drop in international oil prices in the first half of the year and the rare blizzard in Bohai Bay, the cost of employee remuneration still increased by more than 30%, reaching 5.4 billion yuan. The "welfare corruption" of state-owned enterprises with monopoly advantages is only a superficial problem.What's more serious is that this monopoly of power has strangled the starting point for Chinese entrepreneurship and competition to be fair.According to statistics, between 1994 and 2004, 7.7 million self-employed businesses disappeared.Economist Wu Jinglian also pointed out in a forum themed "income distribution" that the inequality of opportunities has led to the widening gap between the rich and the poor in China, and the factors that cause inequality of opportunities are corruption and monopoly.On the one hand, monopoly keeps people's consumption "in line with sky-high prices", divides the society into "house slaves" and "homeowners", and makes the vast majority of people have to struggle for sky-high prices; Days, corrode the foundation of a country to create the future. Transformational times are both the best of times and the worst of times.If the production and consumption of media is an important feature of postmodern society, then monopoly production with sky-high prices is more or less pre-modern.Today, some people compare housing, medical care and education to the "new three mountains" of peacetime. Unrestricted power is the greatest monopoly in the world. On August 30, 2007, the "Anti-Monopoly Law" came out after a long-awaited call.Unfortunately, the "Anti-Monopoly Law" in China is only half a law, not a complete law: on the one hand, it is characterized by rough details; It is mainly operated by the anti-monopoly enforcement agency, and the executive agency is a government department. To a certain extent, the anti-monopoly enforcement agency is one with the government.In other words, the "Anti-Monopoly Law" did not put more emphasis on the function of the judiciary, and did not leave more room for the game between enterprises and the government. "Red Alert" is a series of real-time strategy virtual games developed by American EA game company, and "Green Alert" is an "invention" of the author of this book, which describes the life that is closely related to the current Chinese people. The capitalization process of China's economy is undoubtedly the only way for China's economic development.Those who care about society have long pointed out that the capitalization process of the Chinese economy is completed on the basis of state-owned property rights, or on the basis of state-owned property rights dominating.The nature of state-owned property rights also determines that the capitalization of the Chinese economy cannot completely attribute the operating costs and benefits of property rights to the relevant parties. An extreme example is that some units or individuals let the society bear the cost and let themselves enjoy the benefits.State-owned enterprises are chasing listings, also because going public is a good thing with huge profits or no profits. It can not only allow companies to obtain low-cost funds, but also allow company executives to get rich overnight.The unfair transactions brought about by large and small non-compliance have forced countless investors to vote with their feet and stay away from the giant juicer of the Chinese stock market. Against the backdrop of economic reforms, some government departments and listed companies have formed a "community of interests that siphons money" without denying it.Many listed companies donate original shares to government officials at all levels. The fat-brained officials wait for the stock price to rise and then sell it to make a fortune out of thin air.When it came to depression, the internet was filled with mourning, and those small and medium-sized stockholders who hoped to save the market were more like survivors from the end of the Tang Dynasty.Wu Jinglian said that China's stock market is very irregular, like a casino, but it attracted a lot of opposition, accusing Wu Jinglian of bad-mouthing the Chinese stock market.In fact, even Wu Jinglian himself knows that the Chinese stock market is not even as good as a casino, because "there are rules in the casino, for example, you can't read other people's cards, but in the Chinese stock market, some people can read other people's cards, cheat, and commit fraud." ". Since the end of 2007, the sharp drop in China's stock market has caused a lot of controversy.It should be said that the development of China's stock market can be regarded as a microcosm of China's capitalization and socialization.The Chinese stock market, which aims to "alleviate poverty for state-owned enterprises", is often unimaginable-the government allows companies with poor qualifications to go public to collect money, but it also wants to "squeeze bubbles" for junk companies by suppressing the stock market and making shareholders lose money.The result of the tacit collusion between power and capital is to let the society bear the performance risks of enterprises and the policy risks of the government.When foreign "hostile forces" shouted "red alert" to prevent China's rise, facing the "Chinese-style supervision" of the stock market, many Chinese investors had already erected a "green alert" warning sign to managers in their hearts. China has bid farewell to the era of the Red Revolution.If readers can look at the abnormal flow of wealth in China from a wider background, understand the mystery behind the wealth of the country and the poverty of the people and the polarization between the rich and the poor, and understand the weight of power on China's wealth distribution map today, it will not be difficult to find The "green alert" mentioned by the author of this book has extremely profound connotations of the times.It involves, of course, not limited to the stock market, it also includes the flow of wealth caused by taxation and other public policies, and involves how the society protects its wealth from being swallowed by the power of the banker—as mentioned above, not being sucked up "Social Wool".