Community & Reflections
文革毒地依然在，只是缺契机
何清涟 今年是文革50周年，“516通知”被公认为文革之始。当此际，海内外中文媒体密集地发布了很多文章，文章呈现两极化，国内主要是左派表达怀念之思；海外中文媒体上则多批判之言，除此而外，将刚冒头的习近平个人崇拜、政治迫害被解释成回归文革的征兆。 文革究竟会不会回归中国？这得先弄清楚文革是什么。对这个问题我思考了多年，认为文革是中国人在最高皇权的号召下，对现存秩序的一次暴力颠覆。中国文化中，对“力“的崇拜源远流长，根深蒂固。对“力”的崇拜呈两极表现，一是对权力的崇拜，极致是对皇权的高度崇拜；二是对暴力的崇拜，中国江湖文化始终存在，比如对水浒英雄、游侠文化与黑道文化的崇拜。如果要对文革下一个定义，那就是：文革是权力与民间暴力在中国千载难逢的一次大结合。 弄清文革的性质，以及它发生时的社会条件，我们就会明白文革要重回中国，要点在于权力与民间暴力会不会结合，即权力是不是放纵民间暴力肆虐。 一、个人崇拜只是权力崇拜的一种形式 现在很多人批评习近平集权、鼓励对他的个人崇拜，是想建立独裁政治，并将这点与中国回归文革联系起来。 对习近平集权想建立独裁的批评，那是假定集体领导不是独裁，个人专断才是独裁。对此我曾撰文指出，政治学对独裁的定义是：由一个人或少数人集团拥有绝对政治权力而不受宪政与法律限制的政治体制；这种体制的统治权常由一人或一集团所垄断，通过不同的镇压机制来发挥其政治权威。从一战以来，世界的独裁政体分为宪法独裁、共产独裁（名义上是无产阶级专政）、反革命独裁及法西斯独裁，20世纪60年代非洲各国经过民族独立解放运动之后，又发展出许多不同类型的独裁政体，如宗教独裁、家族独裁等。 中共政府以其政治实践昭告世界，中共的政治体制就是独裁政治，无论是毛泽东个人垄断权力的统治模式，还是邓小平开创，江泽民、胡锦涛时期奉行的集体领导（寡头共治，即媒体称谓的“九龙治水”）的统治模式，都没改变中共的独裁政治本质；习近平并非想恢复独裁，因为他接手的政权就是独裁政体，他只是想将寡头独裁变为个人独裁。观诸世界近现代史，独裁政治中的个人独裁与宗教独裁，比较容易出现个人崇拜现象，比如前苏联的斯大林、中国的毛泽东、伊朗的霍梅尼。 政治迫害也非文革的专利，而是专制极权政治的共性。从毛泽东建立中共政权那一天开始，中国的政治迫害就从未停止过，区别只在于有时进入宽松期，有时进入严控期。在各种运动期间，政治迫害集中，规模大，受迫害的人数多，比如反右、文革、六四运动被镇压之后，政治迫害就非常密集。文革期间因领袖意愿多变，政治形势变化太快，这一波政治运动的迫害者，在下一波政治运动中，就可能成为被迫害者。怀念文革的人，多数属于文革的最终受益者。 二、中国传统江湖文化的暴力崇拜与皇帝情结 历史上，每个民族从蒙昧时期开始，都经历过对原始暴力的崇拜，文明成熟后会演化为对皇（王）权的崇拜，以及能够在某种程度上成为权力替代物的侠义道的崇拜。法国有佐罗传说、美国有西部故事、中国有游侠文化。当文明进入现代法治之后，这种对侠义暴力的传说对现实世界的影响才会淡化。 中国的游侠文化是游民社会的产物。中国的游侠文化始于战国时期，到两汉形成一种社会现象，是让统治者感到头痛的一个社会问题。由于两汉时期游侠文化对中国有着巨大的社会影响力，从而演变成一种心态、一种生活追求，并成为一种文化现象（以上见王学泰《游民文化与中国社会》）。游侠文化在各个历史时期表现不同，内容逐渐丰富，最后定格于《水浒传》中的劫富济贫、替天行道，在王朝末期，又与陈胜的“王侯将相宁有种乎”，“彼可取而代也”结合起来，成为农民起义的号召。 但是，即使是要推翻王朝的农民起义，也常常要借助其他类型的权力给予支持与合法性，一是神道力量，二是拥戴皇族后裔加强号召力，比如西汉末期绿林赤眉起义时，就推出有皇族血统的放牛娃刘盆子为首领。皇权与江湖权力从来就没有错位， 造反者梦寐以求的就是坐上龙椅当皇上，但皇帝从来没想去降格当江湖领袖，最多只是想收伏江湖为自己所用。造反者在破坏旧世界时将暴力发挥得淋漓尽致，出现唐末诗歌中“天街踏尽公卿骨，内库烧为锦绣灰”这种情形；夺了龙椅之后，立刻出现“扶犁黑手翻持笏，食肉朱唇却吃齑”这种翻身喜庆现象。 朝廷权力与江湖社会并存，这种现象在清中叶以来非常突出，因为自乾隆以来人口剧增，游民日多，依傍江湖组织成了游民谋生手段。当时有句话，“朝廷小，江湖大”，意指江湖会社是朝廷权力的盲点。但江湖一般情况下不会与朝廷直接对抗，对抗者如白莲教、天地会就会遭到朝廷镇压，而漕帮则与朝廷合作甚好。至于朝廷与江湖合作，只有清末慈禧太后忽发奇想，要利用义和团驱洋。结果惹来大祸。但慈禧太后也没想动员民间暴力推翻爱新觉罗皇朝，只有毛泽东的文革才是皇帝动员民间力量“打碎旧世界，创造新天地”，尽管这个“旧世界”本来由他亲手缔造。 三、文革发生的契机之一：毛泽东收回权力的需要 文革是权力高端即皇权与民间暴力在中国千载难逢的一次大结合。那么，文革之前，中国到底发生了什么？ 文革发生的契机之所以出现，当然首先是因为毛泽东需要。一般都公认，毛泽东自1958年以来的大跃进及经济政策的严重失误，导致中国出现饿死3000多万人的大饥荒，对中国社会造成了极大伤害，在党内威望严重受损，不得不退居二线。1962年夏天，国家主席刘少奇对毛泽东说：“饿死这么多人，历史要写上你我的，人相食，要上书的！”这句话深深得罪了毛泽东。此后，由刘少奇、周恩来、邓小平等人收拾残局。经过几年整顿，刘少奇将中国收拾得有点气象，威望上升，一度出现了“刘主席万岁”的口号。毛深感自己至高无上的地位受到挑战，因而要通过“破坏一个旧世界”的方式来打乱当时的政治格局，重新收权。他是发动群众运动的老手，因此想到通过文化大革命来发动群众。 四、文革发生的契机之二：底层翻身的需要 中共建政后，工人农民翻身获得政治上的优越地位，但经济地位仍然低下、文化教养并没有得到提升与改善，他们渴望真正“翻身”。 1、“将颠倒了的世界再颠倒过来”的翻身需求 文革当中，红卫兵与造反派经常宣示：“要将颠倒了的世界再颠倒过来”，只是句中“世界”这个词有时会被换成“历史”二字。这句话是中共土改时的宣传用语，意思是“解放前”即中共1949年建政前的社会格局是颠倒的，是地主这种封建势力与资产阶级当家的世界，工人农民饱受压迫，如今要在中共领导下革命，要翻身做主人。在共产革命口号的鼓动及中共枪杆子的保护下，全中国用土改及随后而来的工商业社会主义改造化私为公，乡村精英阶层即地主、富农家的土地、浮财、年轻女人全分给贫下中农，不少地主则被枪毙了，农村基层政权由没有文化的共产党干部与农民共同掌管。占中国人口70%以上的农民，虽然在阶层序列“工人、贫下中农、革命干部”上排在第二位，优于革命干部，但由于人民公社化，经济上一直非常贫穷。 城市的情况复杂一些，中共的主要依靠对象工农干部们管理运作不了城市那复杂的经济系统，因此，在有近现代工商业的大中城市中，那些政治上已经被打倒、归于另册的“旧社会”精英有不少被留用，比如医院、大学、中学教师，工厂企业商业系统的管理，都需要专业知识。加之50年代进入大学的人还有不少是所谓剥削阶级子弟，因为他们在教育传承上有优势。文化戏剧界也是专业领域，旧精英依然占领着舞台。 这种情况时时让城市里的工人、贫民感到压抑。在工商业社会主义改造之时，他们的翻身愿望被中共鼓动起来了，政治地位也提高了，尤其是工人，是“新社会”的正宗主人翁，但最后却只能继续从事工人的工作，只有极少数人可以作为政工干部提拔到工厂管理层，大多数主人公仍然是挂着领导阶级名号的体力工作者。家庭经济收入也远不如那些政治贱民，比如资本家、工商业者、以及各种出身不好的文教卫科技工作阶层。这种实际生活中的低下感，与被中共在50年代初期土改、工商业社会主义改造运动中鼓动起来的翻身感形成剧烈反差。 这种社会情绪如果未经过中共刻意培养，应该不会发展成文革时那种暴力喷发式状态。至少，在1964年中共大规模开展阶级斗争教育之前，我的邻里街坊都平静相处，无论是干部、医生、教师、工人，大家都守望相助，互相给予方便。谁家孩子生病，家长不在时，邻里立刻背上就跑，赶紧送到医院。家中无人时，连门都不用锁，自有邻里照看。 2、中共的阶级教育培养社会仇恨 到1964年，中共在全国范围内开展“千万不要忘记阶级斗争”的社会主义教育运动，工人、城市贫民、贫下中农的政治优越感被调动起来了，表达阶级仇恨成为一种政治时髦。以本人经历为例：我入学早，1964年已经是三年级学生，一直是三好、五好学生、班干部，参加作文比赛，无论在市里、省里，每次都能拿奖。但1964年以后，这些荣誉全都被剥夺了，还被一些出身好的差学生骂为“地主资产阶级狗崽子”。只是我运气好，一是这些学生的家长受惠于我父亲医术，发现他们这类行为后施以惩罚，不许他们再骂；二是两位出身革干家庭、经常与我一起外出参加校外比赛的男同学看到这些差生欺负我，痛揍过他们两次，因此这些差生没敢再对我进行持续的辱骂。但整个社会的翻身欲望却被调动起来，翻身自然没有可能，但用践踏政治贱民来彰显自身高人一等却有可能，这种仇恨情绪还被官方定义为政治正确的阶级感情。 五、“革命翻身成元勋”的激励 社会底层仅有翻身意识还是不够的，得有途径，途径就是革命。中共的革命教育承担了这种教诲功能，几十年如一日地用各种版本的翻身故事教导本国人民尤其是青少年。从奴隶到将军、放牛娃成了革命元勋的励志故事充斥小学、中学语文课本，以及各种革命教育读本。在赞扬革命者大无畏牺牲精神的同时，也展示了革命者成为元勋的光明前景。 这些故事的主角，主要生活在北京、上海等地，各省的大中城市也有一些。现实生活中，这些元勋家庭子女享受的特殊待遇让人羡慕。我的小学同学中有三位姜姓同学，父亲是长征老干部，双胞胎中的女孩成绩平平，但听话温和，有利于学校培养，因此各种荣誉集于一身；男孩则集坏学生的特点于一身，不写作业，逃学，经常捣蛋，老师都不敢批评。低两个年级的弟弟向这位哥哥学习，都是全校有名的捣蛋鬼。一位体育老师因忍无可忍在拉大姜同学时拧了一下耳朵，结果是老师被迫向学生家长道歉。虽然从未有老师正式宣示过这三兄妹的特权，但孩子们都非常清楚他们这种特殊待遇与其父亲的“长征老干部”身份有关。一位市粮食局局长的儿子被姜姓兄弟打得头破血流，衣服撕得稀烂，学校还停课一周以示惩罚。这位男生心中不平，认为这是他爸的地位是南下干部，低于长征老干部所造成的结果，不肯来复课，对他爸爸说：“都怨你，为什么不早点参加革命？不去长征？” 至于红二代们在文革中那句著名的血统论口号“老子英雄儿好汉，老子反动儿混蛋”，以及改革以来红二代们在资源先占方面的优势，已经成了社会不公、腐败横行的根源之一。一个声称要消灭私有制与社会不公、建立人人平等的共产主义社会的政权，最后却将中国社会变成了一个史上最腐败、最不公正的社会，只能说是对中国人的严重讽刺了。 六、中共统治下社会上升管道的严重扭曲 人类社会中，越是等级色彩严重的社会，越压抑不住社会底层的上升愿望。一个社会只要有正常的社会上升通道，这种愿望会成为社会向上的动力机制，既给社会带来活力，也为统治阶层吸纳人才。中国是个等级社会，由于特权无处不在，体现在生活的每一细微处，社会成员向上攀爬、出人头地的欲望特别强烈。但是，这个社会的向上流动管道却非常狭窄。中国自隋唐以来，每次王朝更替之际以爵位奖赏了军功人士之后，都会通过科举制吸纳社会各阶层的优秀人才进入统治集团，尽管通过科举一途跻身于社会上层的人数相当少，但只要有“朝为田舍郎，暮登天子堂”这种榜样的力量在，就会给社会成员以希望，“耕读传家久，诗书继世长”就是中国传统社会认可的上升途径。自清末取消科举制以来，社会上升通道就未能制度化。由于社会动荡，“乱世英雄起四方”，辛亥革命时期，军功与革命资历是主要上升资本；国民政府早中期社会重建，机会多，军功、学历与才能让不少中下层有志青年获得升迁。 中共建政后，消灭了旧精英，但由于建立的社会主义计划经济体制注定是个机会稀缺的体制，因此，到了50年代末期，连就业都算政府对社会成员的一种政治奖赏，比如出身好的青年可以招工、参军，报考大学，可以提干，而出身不好的青年在50年代末就取消了升大学的资格，与招工、参军无缘，幸运的可以在集体制作坊式企业、小工场就业，更多人只能成为社会闲散人员，或被发配去支边，即到青海、甘肃、新疆、海南岛等地的农场就业。 正常社会的上升通道是凭借能力，但此时却被毛泽东的逆向身份歧视扭曲成凭借“出身”与基层干部的印象。出身工人贫下中农家庭的青年优先获得机会。谁能获得这些机会并没有严格的考核标准，由青年家庭居住所在地的居委会、公社大队干部凭印象“考核”，这印象的形成，既可以通过参加居委会活动的表现，也可以通过拍马屁取悦。在1976年以前，读大学机会稀少，参军一直被视为中国青年最好的出路，招工次之。那时候，谁家有个孩子参军，父母亲及家人在当地就是“光荣军属”，享有政治特权，一切优先。我的街坊中有一位邓姓人家，其儿子在1962年参军，上升很快，他家因为“拥军优属”（优待军属之意）而逐渐成为街道一霸，其小儿子有轻微智障，留级三次，考试从不及格，1964年“千万不要忘记阶级斗争”教育开始，他突然被选拔成少先队大队长，经常在全校少先队大会上口吃地代表全体少先队员发言。 如果说中国几千年的人才选拔都是择优，只有毛泽东时代实现了择劣。 七、毛泽东发动文革的群众基础就是社会底层要继续“翻身” 简要概括，文革前的中国社会状态如下：中国社会底层的上升愿望，被中共革命50年代的“翻身运动”鼓动起来，但政治上的优越地位却改变不了经济上的贫穷，以及文化地位的实质性低下。这些拥有政治优越感的底层仍然只能仰望有特权革命干部，用复杂的眼光看待那些政治地位低于他们，但经济文化地位却相对优越的知识技术阶层。一旦遇到最高领袖鼓动红卫兵造反，有了“将颠倒了的世界再颠倒过来”的机会，这种“翻身”欲望就进入井喷状态。翻身，将这些地富反坏右资产阶级践踏一番，再将平常只能仰望的走资产阶级路线的党内走资派与反动学术权威、名演员等打翻在地，再踏上一只脚，在践踏这些阶层的快感中让自己升华。这就是社会底层参与文革的动力。我非常清楚地记得：当一大群红卫兵、街道积极分子涌进我家来抄家时，在家里将线装医书与各种书籍乱扔一气，打开柜门翻检衣物，砸坏红木椅子与雕花床时，躲在窗外看着这一切的我，甚至能感受到他们那种“终于可以作践你们了”的快感。 权力与民间暴力在文革中，终于遇到了千载难逢的一次结合机会。毛泽东鼓励下成立的“革命委员会”就成为权力、军队与工人农民造反派三结合的机构。这个机构在毛泽东打碎旧权力格局之后接管了权力，让尝到造反甜头的一些工人、农民实现了“翻身”的愿望。但“上升”与“翻身”是有本质区别的，“上升”是通过努力将自身变强、升华，最后成为精英；“翻身”则是通过暴力掠夺获得地位与财富，翻身者无需改变原有素质，就成为“社会精英”，如中共革命中的工农干部，其行为方式与思维方式并没有随着社会地位而精英化，常说粗口，整个社会前所未有地以自己是“大老粗”自豪。 八、今日中国，谁在呼唤文革归来？ 今天的中国社会转型，最大的失败还不是政治转型的蹉跎，而是社会结构转型的失败。如果说中国改革前是一个倒T字型的社会结构，即80%以上的人口是底层（农村人口占总人口70%，还有部分城市贫民），只有20%左右的干部、知识分子是上中层，还有国企工人因收入稳定、政治地位高而起了类中产阶级的作用，那么如今耗尽中国资源换来的经济发展，也仍然只有30%是中上层（中产阶级只有25%左右，加上少数上层与富裕阶层）。中国仍然是一个穷人过多、社会缺乏上升通道的社会。这种结构就算中国实行民主化，短期内也不会得到改观。印度、巴西、委内瑞拉、阿根廷等民主化之后的社会状态可做证明。 社会底层过多的社会，注定与革命有不解之缘。中国尤其如此，因为中共政府自建政以来，持之以恒地灌输马克思主义革命思想。自50年代以后出生的人将革命翻身视之为天经地义，“要将颠倒了的世界再颠倒过来”早就成为社会底层的天然意识。尤其是改革以来，中国人目睹官员通过寻租活动聚敛，商人通过权钱交易成为巨富，这些人垄断了财富、资源，他们的后代垄断了机会，形成了阶层固化现象，这种革命的想法更强烈。在这样一个充满了不公不义、没有正常上升管道的社会，指望在中共革命意识形态教育下成长的社会底层不产生革命翻身的愿望，只能是一厢情愿的幻想。 我的观察是：其实真正需要文革的人，不是中国的政治、经济、知识三大精英集团，而是毛左与部分底层。习近平等政治精英，对毛左仇恨经济精英与知识精英的态度只是有意利用、顺势而为。德国纳粹统治及毛时代的文革经验告诉世人，极权政治常用的手段之一，就是依靠险恶的暗示和伪善操纵民意。中国当局有意暗示放纵大众仇恨经济精英与外国资本，可以转移社会仇恨，减轻政治压力；让大众仇恨知识精英，可减轻当局面临的民主化压力。 这些希望文革回归的人其实是政治懦夫，他们希望“将颠倒了的世界再颠倒过来”，但并不想付出中共革命时“抛头颅、洒热血”的牺牲，只想奉旨造反。他们的目标其实远比文革的造反派复杂，文革的造反派们面临的是普遍贫穷的中国，社会不存在土豪，翻身意愿没太明确的经济目标。但今天呼唤文革归来的人，其实潜意识里还包含着“打土豪、分财产”这一意图。 但让希望文革回归的人失望的是，习近平并无发动文革的实际需要，毛与社会底层结合的契机，目前还未出现。原因很简单，第一，权力在习近平手中，党内目前暂时无人能够动摇他的位置；第二，习的独裁不需要回到文革就已经实现。以他目前的状态，无论是压制党内异己，还是压制政治反对者，都不需要借助于全国性的大规模“群众运动”；第三，当年发生三年大饥荒之后，中共党内均知这是毛的失政，对刘少奇的恢复经济举措比较认同。现在中国各群体对习的不满是多层次，其目标甚至互相抵牾：官员不满习近平反腐，但却希望习近平高压维稳。维权人士反对政治迫害，但不见得喜欢中共政府放纵官员腐败。知识群体反对控制言论，但官员觉得管制有利。因此，各种类型的不满很难形成对习近平的政治压力。更何况，习近平并非不清楚，如今的“群众”只要发动起来，恐怕就不那么听话。这次处理魏则西事件，就可看出习近平操纵民意的娴熟：一旦达到其军改目的即停止军队有偿化服务之后，所有针对医疗系统的批评也就停止了。所谓网络舆论，其功能对习近平来说，有如当年大字报之于毛泽东。 为本文论及的问题做一总结，那就是：中国文革的毒地依然在，但今天的中共最高领导人并无要与底层“翻身”愿望相结合的政治需要。因此，习近平不会发动文革，让底层用“奉旨造反”的方式来颠覆中共的统治秩序。但是，一个社会底层过多且无上升通道的社会，注定是个通向失败的高风险社会。习近平的强硬统治，只是为中国的精英阶层将“帝国红利”变现赢得时间而已。中国未来最好的出路可能是阿根廷式、委内瑞拉式民主。最坏的出路就是再翻一次烙饼。 （原文连载于VOA何清涟博客，2016年5月16-17日，http://www.voachinese.com/content/china-cultural-revolution-heqinglian-part1-20160516/3332956.html；http://www.voachinese.com/content/heqinglian-blog-china-cultural-revolution-part2-20160517/3335119.html）
何清涟2025-11-06 05:43👍 0💬 0薄熙来案留下的政治苦果
何清涟 薄熙来案件从8月济南庭审至9月22日宣判这一过程，无论是中国当局还是薄熙来的庭辩，都集中于薄是否贪污腐败，刻意回避了薄案的真正缘由，即薄案是权力斗争的产物。 中南海极力要抹去薄案政治斗争与权力斗争的色彩，自有其难以言表的苦衷。 \苦果之一：利益分裂与党内政治竞争\ 中共奉行“一个党、一个主义、一个领袖”的一元化政治，权力传承也是上一代党魁们协商后指定（但却宣称是“人民选出来”的）。薄熙来为中共所不容的就是他高调挑战了这一党内游戏规则。更麻烦的是，薄熙来的支持者并非被党视若寇仇的自由知识分子与异议人士，而是党内政治势力，以及与党有千丝万缕关系、由党大力扶持，专门对付民主自由人士的新老左派。让党尤其不开心的是，西方社会也有人对薄十分称许，不少人意犹未尽，希望薄熙来还有可能复出。 对于党内高层的挺薄势力，即陈元、刘源、张海阳等一干太子党成员，习近平采取了恩威并施、打击与给出路并用的方式，或是从原来的岗位被调走，比如曾贷数百亿巨款支持“重庆模式”的陈元，已从炙手可热的国家开发银行董事长位置上调离；或是在原岗位上等候退休“荣养”，如刘源、张海阳。陈、刘还分别赐予了一个全国政协的职务以示安抚。 上述这些人支持薄，其实各有利益盘算，比如刘源一直惦记着恢复其父亲刘少奇的新民主主义政治。即使在薄未系狱之时，也有风险考量。今年8月31日《纽约时报》在“薄熙来称依照中央命令处理王立军”一文透露的细节颇值玩味：“王立军被送到北京后，令计划负责的中央办公厅秘密地命令首都的一家部队医院对王立军进行精神病检查。……该医院确认王立军患有间歇性精神问题。如果这个消息传播开来，可能会让人们质疑王立军关于谋杀的说辞，还有他提出的其他指控”，因此，薄熙来请求监督这座北京医院的刘源将军帮助泄露检查结果，但却遭到了拒绝，使薄失去了一次绝好的机会。 薄熙来的重刑可能对这些人有威慑作用，但却不能从根本上消除党内自家人的争权之意。令习恼火的是另外两种评判，其一是薄熙来富有政治才能，党出于自身前途考虑，应该任用有才能的政治人物，其二是薄熙来是人民利益的代表。比如悉尼大学中国研究中心主任、教授凯瑞·布朗（Kerry Brown），就对薄熙来的殒落充满了惋惜之情，认为“中共丧失了一个当今最有才能的政治人物”，薄“是他这一代人当中仅有的既拥有显赫权力，又真正接触人民、和人民直接对话的人”，“他的遗产不会轻易消失，有关他权力沉浮的质疑也不会消失。薄熙来最后的告别对中国和共产党的政治生活来说是一个巨大损失，或许多年以后会因此后悔不已。” 这位教授对薄熙来“真正接触人民、和人民直接对话”的看法大概是缘于薄在重庆曾向下汲取社会支持并获得一定成功。但这位布朗教授完全忘记了中国是中共统治下的新极权政治，这种政治的最大难题就是人才的逆淘汰机制与权力更替的不确定性，两者结合在一起，结果就是劣胜优汰，领袖人物一代不如一代，这既是苏共经验，也是中共与北韩的经验。布朗教授认可的薄熙来的个人魅力与才能，正好成为薄在政治竞争中的招祸之由。 共产党政治不允许政治竞争，认为竞争的存在就意味着党的分裂，不再是一个团结的整体；高层接班人也只能由最高层“集体商定”，谁要主动争取则是无视党的组织纪律，藐视最高领导层的权威。因此，党中央无法公开解释：为什么薄熙来这么多年能够“特立独行”不受干预，为什么薄的“重庆模式”曾红透一时，吸引党内高官蜂拥捧场。如果中共想解释这些，只会加剧党内分裂，导致更大的政治麻烦，所以还是祭出反腐法宝比较省事。 \苦果之二：薄向下汲取社会支持符合中共意识形态\ 薄熙来在其争取“入常”的政治竞争中，除了获得部分“太子党”成员的隐形支持之外，他还努力向下汲取社会支持，“唱红”与“分蛋糕”，前者是用左派那套自称代表底层人民，反对资本主义压榨的话语系统加以包装，后者是动用薄熙来运用关系网络借来的巨额资金，如从国家开发银行借来巨额贷款，改善重庆的公共服务与民生，比如建立交巡警平台、改善治安、为底层提供廉租房，进行福利补贴等。“打黑”打击的是民营企业主，虽然其中有不少是被冤枉的，但在被贫富悬殊撕裂的中国社会，大多数民众对这些有“原罪”的企业家并不同情。 可以说，薄熙来的“唱红打黑”，挑起的乃是中国改革30余年以来不断积累的深层矛盾，其中最核心的问题是社会分配不公与贫富差距鸿沟不断扩大。这种矛盾日益尖锐，导致社会底层将毛时代的“均贫”不断理想化，镀上了一层厚厚的“社会平等”色彩。他们当中不少人相信薄熙来是能够为他们谋福利的领袖。这些经济改革的利益受损者，如下岗工人等并无自组织能力，在现实政治生活中只是无数个零的汇合，但一旦找到他们的那个“1”，即领袖人物，因其人数众多，蕴含的政治能量不可小觑。 这一点让中共极其尴尬，熟知中共历史的人都知道，中共当年起家时号称“穷人党”，以“剥夺剥夺者”为号召，发动底层革命。中共改革以来的现实与当初建政时的许诺完全相悖，中共对此假作不见，教育宣传仍然沿袭旧的意识形态。薄熙来的“唱红打黑”，完全占据据了中共意识形态的制高点，是利用社会底层这些“穷马克思主义者”，为自己政治竞争增添筹码。 有政治眼光的清醒者当然都明白薄熙来只是因为政治需要，才采取这种向下汲取社会支持的做法。他的“打黑”变成“黑打”，表明他骨子里是一位坚决主张用毛泽东的专制高压手段维护中共现存统治的专制者。问题是，习近平上任以来的所作所为，让人们越来越清楚地看到他实行的其实只是一条没有薄熙来的“薄熙来路线”：严格控制思想言论，反对民主宪政、打压资本（习还包括外国资本），唯一不同的是，习没有花力气改善公共服务系统，用福利安抚社会底层。习没有这样做的原因，是因为他与薄处于不同的位置：薄位在督抚，用的是朝廷的银子，比如国家开发银行那无硬性偿债责任的巨额贷款；习位在“主君”，朝廷的银子用得太多，拉下的亏空是自己的。 薄熙来的个人命运已经尘埃落定，但薄案留下的这两颗政治苦果犹在，它会在中国的政治社会生活中悄悄成长，很难说什么时候会再次卡住中共的喉咙（底层的平均主义将是中国社会发展的另一个瓶颈）。这一次中共硬生生地将这两颗苦果吞了下去，下次中共是否还有同样的幸运？只有天知道。 （原载何清涟VOA博客，2013年9月23日，http://www.voachinese.com/content/he-qing-lian-20130923/1755644.html）
何清涟2025-11-06 05:49👍 0💬 0新冠疫情为中国造成的“时与势”
何清涟 新冠病毒此刻正在全球肆虐，瑞士达沃斯经济论坛线上会议于1月25日开幕。一年多以来，中国在全球疫情中的身份悄然发生转换，从疫情发源国变身为成功的抗疫大国。各国抗疫，既指望中国提供疫苗，还指望中国提供经验，也因此，中国国家主席习近平致词成焦点，世界主流媒体都作了重头报道。按照中国政府的说法，武汉肺炎不是中国弱点的证明，而是中国优势的写照。 中国“时与势”的奇妙转换 目前，全球主要国家再度陷入新冠疫情的第二波危害之中，英国变种新冠病毒的致死率更高。中国疫情虽然也非常严重，但全世界都将抗疫的希望寄托在中国身上。其中因由，除了中国有效控制死亡、疫情数据之外，WHO对中国抗疫的高度赞扬起了不少作用。法新社的报道代表世界在这一问题上的主流观点：中国经济似将挺过新冠肺炎疫情的打击，但全球仍未走出疫情泥沼。 一年之间，中国从疫情发源地成为世界抗疫中坚，算是习近平总结的“时与势站在我们这一边”的重要内容。这种奇妙转换有赖三大因素：一是依赖强权控制下的宣传模式；二是强权控制下的隔离方式；三是疫苗的生产与供应。 中国式宣传在国际社会获得成功 政府最初隐瞒疫情，这是天下皆知的公开秘密，然后再利用防疫物质短缺，比如各国需要口罩、检测剂等，让有需要的国家噤声，不敢批评。然后经过WHO的多方表扬包装，中国成了世界上最成功、最负责任的抗疫大国，全世界都欠中国一个道歉。几个月过去，全世界仿佛忘记中国是疫情的发源地，不少国家还养成了对中国的抗疫依赖性。 随着疫苗的推出，到2021年，中共不仅在中国国内，而且在国际社会绝对控制了疫情的叙事。且不说那些中共明里暗里资助的英文媒体，就以Twitter为例，几十个与中国政府有密切关系的“异议人士”的推号，不厌其烦地宣传美国川普政府抗疫的失败，有的除了强调病毒来自美国之外，中国抗疫的成功更是这类推号的主要宣传内容。对武汉病毒期间封城的恐怖记忆早已消退，如果有人重提武汉肺炎，一定会遭到水军的大声抗议。 1月25日，《纽约时报》发表一篇《北京如何把新冠悲剧变为“中国优势”》，文中承认北京疫情宣传的成功：“这场悲剧表明，北京控制中国人民所见所闻所思的能力，甚至超出最为悲观的预料。中共已经显示了它有在下一个危机中——无论是灾难、战争还是金融危机——把人民团结起来的工具，不管北京的表现多么拙劣。” 中国的隔离方式被认为是成功的模式 2020年疫情初起，武汉封城，全世界舆论哗然，美国主流媒体一致批评侵犯人权。在美国许多地方，连从疫区归来居家隔离都做不到。意大利青年还开始接吻运动，以此抗议该国政府的隔离措施。 但到了2020年3月，新冠病毒在欧美肆虐，中国政府公布的确诊数字不断降低，疫情貌似得到控制。WHO不断奉上肯定与赞扬之词，称颂中国的抗疫实践值得其它各国学习。BBC中文部采访了不少专家与医生，均表示，中国严厉的封锁和隔离措施，的确有效降低疾病确诊数字，但认为大部分国家要仿效中国式的“大规模封城”并不容易，除了没有中国政权的执行力外，也牵涉到经济、社会及人权议题，因此并不适用在各个地方。 同年4月29日，国际医学期刊《柳叶刀》在线发表了一篇题为“Institutional, not home-based, isolation could contain the COVID-19 outbreak”的通讯文章，作者来自新加坡国立大学苏瑞福公共卫生学院和伦敦卫生与热带医学院。该文作者比较了大多数欧美国家采用的居家隔离以及中国式的集中隔离对新冠疫情传播的影响，得出结论，相比居家隔离，中国式集中隔离可再减少37%新冠感染。文章作者敦促医疗负担过重的国家参考集中隔离的方式采取防控措施。 《柳叶刀》发布这篇文章，算为中国式隔离正名，从此之后，为疫情所苦的西方国家基本不批评中国的抗疫模式，反而时不时希望本国学习。美联社2020年10月29日发文称，在美国这场已经持续近8个月的疫情危机中，没有一个人是无辜的：各级政府负责人都犯下了严重的错误，浪费了疫情防控过程中最宝贵的时间和机会。记者采访了哥伦比亚大学国家防灾中心的医学专家欧文·里德莱纳（Irwin Redlener）博士，他的看法是：全美反应的不一致“着实让人沮丧”，即使美国做不到“中国式封城”，但也至少学学加拿大，在重新开放时谨慎行事。 WHO访华的专家组组长、加拿大流行病学专家布鲁斯·艾尔沃德更是称颂说，中国的隔离方式是世界上“唯一已被证明确实有效的方法”。当时西方媒体问他：中国的做法不是侵犯人权吗？艾尔沃德回答说“不是，这是伟大的人道主义。” 至此，中国武汉封城及各地的小区封锁，成了西方国家羡慕而无法仿效的方式。 中国的疫苗外交：对世界疫苗供应的控制 2020年9月间，WHO与全球疫苗免疫联盟（GAVI）、流行病预防创新联盟（CEPI）牵头成立新冠疫苗保障机制（Covax，中国译为“新冠肺炎疫苗实施计划”）。中国10月8日正式加入“新冠肺炎疫苗实施计划”。该计划为92个低收入和中等收入经济体提供疫苗资金。中国加入该计划之时，国务院联防联控机制科研攻关组疫苗研发专班工作组组长郑忠伟表示，到年底预计中国疫苗年产能能达到6.1亿剂，2021年能达到10亿剂。按高风险人群、高危人群和普通人群分层满足接种。其时已有超过40个国家向中国企业提出了新冠疫苗的采购需求。 掌握着疫苗的供应，中国政府的处境大大改善，除美国川普政府之外，基本不再有国家提出追查病毒来源之议。中国率先实行并大力倡导的健康码制度，大重置计划准备采纳并在世界推广，如果成功，健康码将成为国际人口流动的一项重要“身份证明”。 WHO在中国时势奇妙转换中的作用 最近三个月以来，世界上出现了好几种传染力更强的COVID-19病毒菌株，比如英国菌株、南非菌株、巴西菌株等。据1月24日WHO公布的情况，中国之外219个国家和地区有感染病例，累计感染者过千例的已达到168个，其中，美国累计感染约2512万例居全球之首，印度超1066万例、巴西超884万例分列第二、三位。 1月14日，WHO调查组抵达武汉开始为期14天的防疫隔离，在隔离中度过1月23日的武汉封城纪念日。按照VOA的说法，中国当局和WHO在疫情之初备受诟病的应对表现，以及WHO与北京之间复杂而微妙的关系再次进入世界舆论的聚光灯下。 在目前的国际环境下，追踪病毒来源真相非常困难。但另一个事实却非常明显：作为疫情发源地的中国，其国际地位不仅没受到削弱，反而得到某种加强。这从大重置司令部达沃斯刚召开的世界经济论坛对习近平的高度重视及礼遇可以看出。新冠疫情的流行，一方面削弱了美国地位、加剧了美国政治纷争；另一方面却成就了中国的时与势，这一奇特现象，足以成为解读全球大势逆转的一把钥匙。 （原载自由亚洲电台，2021年1月26日，https://www.rfa.org/…/heqinglian/hql-01262021140345.html）
何清涟2025-11-06 06:23👍 0💬 0《泰坦尼克号∶不沉的人性光芒》——第二章∶巨兽下水
19世纪末，西方各国都在争先恐后地进行工业革命，发展新科技，富国强兵。当英国人正在建造六万吨巨轮的时候，远在地球另一端的中国却是另外一幅景像。 大清王朝自18世纪下半叶就开始衰败。大小官吏争相搜刮民财，中饱私囊。他们营私舞弊，贪赃枉法，腐败已达千疮百孔的程度。乾隆时总缆朝政20多年的权臣和 ，用各种手段积累的钱财竟达四亿两银元，相当于清朝政府八年的财政总收入。 1792年，在瓦特发明了蒸汽机8年之后，当英国正进行工业革命，并成为世界上最强大、最先进的资本主义国家时，他们派遣了一个六百余人的庞大使节团，携带着价值一万三千英镑的巨额礼物，到北京希望能与中国通商，并派驻商业使节。 但闭关锁国、愚昧骄横的大清朝廷，竟硬说这些英国人是来拜贺乾隆皇帝弘历八十大寿的，并要求他们在皇帝面前三跪九拜。英国特使拒绝双膝跪地，因为在西方人看来，只有在上帝面前才可以双腿跪下。最后英国使节妥协为单腿下跪，但仍一无所获。闭目塞听、对西方文化一无所知的大清皇帝对通商和派驻使节的要求不仅全部拒绝，还居高临下以训斥臣属的口气给当时已经非常强大的英国下了两封“昭书”，它的主要内容译成白话文大意是这样的∶ “英国国王，倾心中国文化，特派使节，恭恭敬敬，拜祝我的万寿无疆，足以证明你恭顺的诚意，深为嘉许。你们请求在我天朝派驻使节，照管你国买卖，这跟天朝制度不符，绝对不可。天朝的恩德和武威，普及整个天下。天朝物产丰富，无所不有，根本不需跟外夷互通有无。” 1840年，当英国的工业生产量已占世界的60％以上，贸易额占全球四分之一强时，中国清朝的皇帝还生活在宦官和女人之中，对外部世界一无所知。 封疆大吏林则徐被视为当时清廷中最想了解西方，最开化的。但他在鸦片战争前夕给皇帝的奏折中竟说，英军只会海战，不懂陆战。夷人一身紧裹，腰腿僵直，跌倒就爬不起来。内地的百姓可以像屠猪宰羊那样容易就杀掉这些进犯的异类。 而广州的守城总督奕山，竟认为由于浮动在海上的轮船飘摇晃动，那些在上面的大炮根本不可能打中陆地上固定的目标。当英军的炮弹落在海岸城堡的墙头，把奕山的高论轰碎了时，他仍认为绝不可能，只是洋人用了妖术。中国民间故事中有污秽之物可使妖术失灵之说，于是奕山就收集了全城的人屎狗屎和猪血羊血，抹在城头，弄得整个广州城一片血腥恶臭。结果可想而知。 到了慈禧太后独揽大权、横行霸道的时候，中国已经是“弱”弩之末。面对西方国家的富国强兵，连亚洲的日本也进行了“明治维新”变革，慈禧太后却全然不顾地挪用了建造海军的2400万两银子，修建颐和园，歌舞升平。这个愚昧顽固的满族老太太对世界的无知是惊人的。她竟不相信葡萄牙这个国家会真的存在。当大臣说确实有这麽一个国家时，她竟喝道∶怎麽会有一个叫葡萄芽的国家。她理解成了葡萄的“芽”。 在英国人正在建造人类有史以来最大的巨型轮船的时候，中国的男人们还在当宦官，留辫子，坐轿子，穿马褂，三妻六妾，“大红灯笼高高挂”。中国当时和世界的差距是如此这般∶西方人在造万吨巨轮横行天下，中国女人在裹千金小脚守住闺房。 “泰坦尼克”走下船台 1911年5月31日，在中国的辛亥革命发生前的四个多月，六万五千吨的巨轮“泰坦尼克号”在英国的“哈兰德沃尔夫造船厂”三号船台建成。在这个巨大的三号船台前面，有一块刻着白字的牌子∶ 白星/皇家汽轮/泰坦尼克号 一位穿着华贵的女士站在高耸的“泰坦尼克号”巨轮前面，抑扬顿挫、一字一句地说∶“我现在命名这条巨轮为《泰坦尼克号》，愿上帝保佑她和所有的乘客。”随后打开一瓶香槟，和造船工人以及成千上万的围观者，一起欢呼祝贺这个人类“最大的移动物”的建成。在音乐声中，雄伟的“泰坦尼克号”巨轮缓缓地从三号船坞平台滑到水中，然后劈风斩浪驶进大西洋┅┅ 这是根据美国报道文学作家沃尔特．路德的《难忘的一夜》改编的电影《冰海沉船》开始时的一个镜头。这个镜头艺术地再现了当年“泰坦尼克号”建成下水的壮丽场景。 这是五月的最后一天，是白星轮船公司历史上最兴奋的一天。这一天，不仅“泰坦尼克号”建成下水，而且先前制造的“奥林匹克号”也在这一天下午正式交付白星公司使用。 早晨7点30分，三号船台前就聚集了很多人，人们对这样一艘人类最大的巨轮的建成下水充满好奇和兴奋。一位作家当时描述说，这一天空气中洋溢着“快乐和兴奋”。 当天下午将交付使用的“奥林匹克号”，在“泰坦尼克号”没有下水使用之前是全世界最大的轮船，排水量五万吨，只比“泰坦尼克号”少一万五千吨。但造船专家说，“泰坦尼克号”是“完美化了的奥林匹克号”。除了“奥林匹克号”之外，“泰坦尼克号”的体积比当时地球上水面上行驶的最大轮船都大50％。 接近中午，“泰坦尼克号”前面的情形更让人兴奋。在三号船台前聚集的人群达到10万多，不仅有船厂的一万四千名员工，还有哈兰德沃尔夫造船厂所在城市贝尔法斯特市的居民。大部分人群围着船坞在水边站成一线，也有人爬到了船坞的顶棚架子上，还有人站到了吊车上。大家全都在屏息等待观看一个将创造历史的时刻。 造船厂的总裁詹姆斯．皮埃尔忙着接待各种客人，当然他们中一定会有摩根，这位专程从纽约赶来的“国际商业航运公司”的总裁，也是这艘巨轮的拥有者。还有白星轮船公司的总经理布鲁斯．伊斯米带着他的太太孩子。更多的贵宾是贝尔法斯特市的官员和当地名流。 中午12点整，皮埃尔站到了三号船台前临时搭建的高台上，背对着“泰坦尼克号”的巨大船身，开始举行下水仪式。开始是船上的旗语打出了“祝你好运”，然后，皮埃尔和伊斯米两人对控制轮船下水的机械开关又最后迅速检查了一遍。当时他们两人并排走向机械开关的照片至今仍被人收藏。 两个船业大亨在这一天特意穿得非常讲究，都是西装革履，里面有马甲，带着怀表。伊斯米戴了一顶英国绅士的礼帽，右手拿着一个手杖，显得格外潇洒、自信，有一种典型的“世纪商人”的大家气派。皮埃尔没打扮得像伊斯米那麽绅士味，他头上是个海员帽。在仪式开始的时候，他眼睛直视前方，好像前面有什麽事情发生了一样。他的表情传递着他的紧张、快乐和激动。因为这一天不仅是他的船厂造出了世界上最大的轮船，也是他和妻子两个人的生日。 12点5分，“泰坦尼克号”船尾升起一面红色的旗子，这个信号表示，牵引船准备就绪，其它观察和看热闹的船只要离这艘巨轮远一点，因为它就要下水。 12点10分，一枚信号弹从“泰坦尼克号”上发射，它表示这条船五分钟之后就会下水，船上的所有人员都要各就各位。 这艘人类制造的最大的汽轮船上共有29个汽锅，联结着162个煤炭火炉。每天需要燃料六百吨，才能把这29个锅炉烧沸，然后由巨大的水蒸汽发出五万匹马的推动力，使巨轮最高达到每小时25海哩，即45公里的速度。 此刻，在巨轮的底舱，二百多名汗流浃背的锅炉工人，正在忙碌呼喊，挥锹扬臂，把六百吨煤炭一锹锹铲进162个火炉，使29个汽锅热水沸腾，奔腾呼啸，膨胀出五万匹马的嘶鸣和爆发力。它如同一枚巨型炸弹等待引爆；也像一个超级西班牙公牛，睁着腥红的双眼，青筋暴跳，等待那闸门打开，冲进斗牛场的瞬间。当巨轮上的有两个天安门城楼高的四座粗大的烟囱喷发出诗人李白笔下的“黑”发三千丈的滚滚浓烟时，那情景就像是一头复活的恐龙从水下猛然腾起，把人们惊叹得倒吸一口冷气。 一切都准备就绪，只等待船长史密斯的手按下启航的开关。那个瞬间，就像曾有过几百万士兵撕杀的淮海大战，一排排大炮扬起胀满的炮筒，千万条机枪高扬起饥饿的弹孔，在万籁俱静中，等待司令员的一声令下，吹起冲锋的号角。 12点14分，第二枚信号弹从轮船上腾空而起，船长史密斯的手放在了启航的电钮上，这个人类制造的最大移动物开始下水了！ 这个像巨兽一样的庞然大物，在牵引船后徐徐移动。由于船底放了21吨牛油和肥皂水，这条六万吨的巨船平稳自然地滑进了水中。从标志下水的第二发信号弹腾起，到巨轮完全进入水里，前后只用了62秒。 “泰坦尼克号”像是一条巨鲸，进入了大西洋。她也像一个刚受洗的婴儿，皈依了大海的宗教。船上那四个巨大的烟囱冒出的浓烟，像是她刚刚在海水中沐浴过的满头黑发，一路飞扬，飘散出活力和健美；也像是她高举着燃烧黑色烈焰的火炬，骑着波涛汹涌的海水，跨过大西洋，去和另一端高扬火炬的纽约“自由女神”相聚。 岸上的10万人欢呼雀跃，喊声震天。伊斯米紧紧拉着太太和孩子的手，激动得不知说什麽才好。皮埃尔和妻子紧紧拥抱，他喃喃道∶“它诞生了，这是我们的孩子，我们永远的孩子。”皮埃尔和妻子的下一次生日聚会，就将庆祝三个人，除了他们夫妻，还有他们的“女儿”泰坦尼克号。 整个巨轮下水的仪式，没有香槟，没有红酒，没有葡萄汁，连打破一瓶海水洒到甲板上表示下水的传统仪式也没有。这是和《冰海沉船》电影开始的镜头不同的。也许，所有“仪式”都在这些热爱轮船的人们心里，因为真正的爱是没有仪式的。 驶向历史 “泰坦尼克号”从三号船台顺利下水后，用了10个月的时间装修内部。从纽约专程赶来的摩根还特意到船上的A B 两侧甲板探察，因为在那里要修建世界一流的豪华一等舱，摩根那些巨甲富豪的朋友和同事，将来旅行都会住在这里。 所有的轮船内部装修都是用最好的材料，最好的木匠，最时髦的设计，最先进的设备。尤其是一等舱，更是精美绝伦。豪华套房的私人专用散步甲板，按地算价，等于正面每公尺120美元。这种豪华套房每晚四千美元以上的价格，等于船上员工18年的工资。船上报务员的工资，一个月才20美元。 1912年4月10日，经过10个月的内部装修和多次试水的“泰坦尼克号”巨轮，准备首航，开往纽约。这一天，推翻满清王朝，出任了共和政府第一任大总统的孙中山，在袁世凯等军阀势力的挤压下，正式辞去临时大总统的职务刚刚9天。袁世凯继任当了总统后，立即着手恢复帝制，准备把他登基做新皇帝的梦想变成现实。 在英国南安普敦市港口，“泰坦尼克号”整装待发，即将开始她的处女航。英国四月的气候天高气爽，万里无云。繁忙的港口，各种船只进进出出，但他们在巨大的“泰坦尼克号”面前如同是一个个儿童玩具船，在水盆里摇来晃去。 “泰坦尼克号”的所有员工都在船上准备就绪。这是一支庞大的队伍，总共有888人，其中370名管理者、工程师、水手、锅炉工，汽轮工、机油工；518名服务员，包括厨师、饮食服务生、切菜工、面包师、乐手、医生、护士、票务员、客房侍生、厨房帮手、门房、更夫等等。 南安普敦市是个港口城市，几乎所有的居民都聚集到码头，观看“泰坦尼克号”首航的“世纪壮举”。不仅仅是这个港口城市，整个英国都在为人类第一艘六万吨巨轮下水远航而兴奋。 威尔佛雷德．赫尔牧师于海难发生37年后，在教会杂志《传教者社会》上发表了回忆文章，曾这样描绘了当年巨轮首航时情景∶ “我还记得，在泰坦尼克号出发的那天，整个英格兰高兴得像是庆祝一个巨大的节目。每一个城市，每一个楼房，都插着彩旗，在四月的微风中飘扬。一种英武的胜利者的气氛洋溢在空气中，那一天到处都有人高唱着那句美丽的歌词∶英国人统治着海洋┅┅” 实际上，白星轮船公司没有特意宣传庆祝“泰坦尼克号”首航，没有乐队演奏，没有人发表演讲，没有挥舞彩旗。唯一与众不同的是在轮船出发前，有成千成万的围观者和送行者欢呼喝彩。 “泰坦尼克号”在万众的欢呼目送下，出师就有点不利，差点撞上港口中停泊的其它船只。由于“泰坦尼克号”船身太庞大，使本来就有限的南安普敦港更显得窄小，再加上由于煤炭工人正闹罢工，好几条船都因为没有燃料而被迫停留在港口里。“泰坦尼克号”在六条牵引船的导引下，徐徐驶离码头，她的左边停泊着美国客轮“纽约号”，右边是白星公司的“海洋号”。她小心翼翼地从这中间穿过。 突然，由于巨轮搅动起的海浪太大，导致旁边的“纽约号”猛烈晃动，使栓住“纽约号”的几根缆绳断裂，“纽约号”摇摆地倒向正行驶的“泰坦尼克号”，而且近到只有一米到一米五的距离。在这千钧一发之际，导引船“沃坎号”当机立断，立刻驶靠“纽约号”，“沃坎号”船长盖尔把他的导引船开到“纽约号”的尾部，挡住“纽约号”，终于使“纽约号”放慢了漂移。而“泰坦尼克号”船长史密斯也打满舵，利用巨轮掀起的浪头，把“纽约号”冲击到离开巨轮远了一点。最后“纽约号”被制服，并被拖到别的船坞，腾出更多空间，让“泰坦尼克号”安全地驶离港口。 满舱财富，一船辉煌 “泰坦尼克号”共装载了1320名乘客∶头等舱337人；二等舱271人；三等舱712人。再加上888名工作人员，共装载了2208人。 三百多名头等舱的乘客成了船上员工和其他乘客关注的焦点，因为他们中有很多豪门、巨富、显贵和名流。在“泰坦尼克号”启航当天，远在美国的最有影响力的报纸《纽约时报》都在显著版面刊登出船上的名人和富豪名单，可想而知这那些人当年的地位。各种领域的名流和富豪，构成了一个万花筒般灿烂多彩的名单∶ 作家雅克．富特雷尔； 戏剧制作人亨利．哈里斯和妻子雷内； 美国总统塔夫脱的侍从武官阿奇．巴特少校； 费城电车巨子的后裔哈里．韦德纳； 费城电车大亨威廉姆．卡特； 周游四方的医学大师克拉伦斯．穆尔； 银行世家、国际管道公司总裁本杰明．古根海姆； 瑞典皇家武官史特夫逊中尉； 杜威学院的青年科学硕士劳伦斯．比斯利； 钢铁业巨子阿瑟．莱尔森夫妇； 宾西法尼亚州铁路公司第二副总裁约翰．塞耶夫妇； 密西根州大富翁迪金森．毕晓普和妻子海伦； 传记作家、西点军校毕业的阿奇伯尔德．格雷西上校； 伦敦“真空”石油公司总经理霍华德．凯斯； 纽约市名律师弗雷德．西沃特； 英国神学家、宗教改革家和旅行布道家威廉姆．斯特德； 美国名画家、罗马统一艺术学院院长富兰克．米利特； 国际知名的服装设计家达夫．戈登夫人； 海运杂志的编辑塞缪尔．沃德．斯坦顿； 美国亿万富翁约翰．雅各布．阿斯德和新婚妻子马德琳； 加拿大皇家游艇协会副会长和多伦多化工厂商阿瑟．普里钦； 加拿大新干线铁路公司总裁查尔斯．海斯； 新泽西州特伦顿市“默瑟汽车公司”总经理奥古斯塔斯．罗伯林； 法国飞行员皮埃尔．马雷查尔； 法国雕塑家保罗．切夫瑞； 白星轮船公司总经理布鲁斯．伊斯米； 电影女明星多萝西．吉布森； 梅西百货公司创办人、慈善家伊西多．施特劳斯和妻子埃达； （梅西不仅在当年，今天也是世界最大的百货公司，座落在纽约曼哈顿第六大道上的梅西百货大楼有十几层高。这些富豪名流们还带着自己的31个侍从和服务生，以备一旦船上服务员不够他们使用。而船上已为头等舱的190个家庭安排了上百名服务生，23名使女，8名服务专员，以及一应俱全的护士和家庭女教师。） 57名百万富翁 ┅┅┅┅ 一等舱的名单中还有两个富豪没有上船。一个是艾尔弗雷德．格温．范德比尔特，他临上船时改变了主意，因此逃过了和“泰坦尼克号”同沉海底的命运。也许是上帝的安排，三年后他乘坐另一条轮船“路斯塔尼亚号”时，和那条船一起遇难，还是葬身海底。 另一个富豪是专程从纽约赶来乘坐“泰坦尼克号”首航的，他比全世界任何一个人都想坐在一等舱，品尝这个世界第一个最大轮船的所有光荣。他就是收购了白星轮船公司、最早提出造这艘巨轮的美国“国际商业航运公司”的总裁摩根。也许是天意，他坐船从纽约到英国在大西洋上颠簸摇晃了七八天，终于到达南安普敦港后就一下子病倒了，不要说上船，连床都起不来了。 这麽多富豪名流聚集在一条轮船上，在大西洋航运史上还没有过。今天的富人名流仍是喜欢聚会热闹，当时更是时尚。他们有时相会在埃及金字塔旁边的宾馆，有时欢聚在英国考斯辛快艇比赛会上，偶尔也会碰头在德国的巴登温泉。但哪里也没有同时聚会在世界上第一艘最大轮船的处女航上更令他们兴奋。 描写泰坦尼克号沉没始末的《难忘的一夜》的作者沃尔特．路德说∶“在泰坦尼克号上的这次航行，不像是一次越洋旅行，而是一次团聚。” 船上后来获救的乘客之一，舞台剧制作人亨利．哈里斯的妻子雷内20年后还一往情深地回忆道∶“他们有一种友谊的精神，不像我以前任何旅行中的经验，没有琢磨乘客名单，而是从客舱乘客中的莫逆友好气氛来判断。他们在甲板上的聚会就像是一次盛大的酒会。” 这些富豪名流们携带了大量行李箱和旅行袋。仅那位家中经营钢铁业的阿瑟．莱尔森太太就带了16个大衣箱。斯波尔丁公司老板带了30箱高尔夫球杆和网球拍。塔夫脱总统的侍从武官阿奇．巴特虽然旅行不到六个星期，也带了七个大皮箱，满满地塞着各种衣服等。 从后来船难幸存者填写的随船携带物品清单上，也可以看出这些富豪名流们到底带了多少东西。 费城的夏洛特．卡德夫人带的物品有14个大皮箱，4个小箱子，3个柳条箱和一个药品箱。这些箱子里有70件衣服∶10件毛皮大衣、38件羽毛衣，22个别在适当位置的帽针、91双手套和无计其数的她喜欢的新奇小玩意，例如鸟状的瑞士八音盒等。 另一个费城的时尚绅士比利．卡特填写的损失物品有∶一辆雷诺牌汽车、60件衬衣、15双皮鞋、两套燕尾服和24套马球棍。 头等舱的57个百万富翁中，其中11人的总资产就达一亿九千一百万美元。全部头等舱的337名乘客的资产总额高达五亿美元。折合成今天的价值，是100多亿美元。 据撰写《永不沉没》一书的作者丹尼．阿兰巴特勒的研究统计∶“当时的英国，占不到人口1％的富豪，拥有整个大英帝国67％的财富。在美国也是同样的比例。”而“泰坦尼克号”的富翁们携带的财物，正好是这个“比例”的体现。 为了使船上的二千多人能在六天横跨大西洋的旅行中吃好、住好、玩好，“泰坦尼克号”随船装载了大量的用品，品种之多，数量之大，都是史无前例的。这份船上的物品单，像是世界级大储存仓库的清单∶ 新鲜肉75000磅 新鲜绿豆2250磅 鲜鱼11000磅 鲜竹笋800把 鸡禽25000磅 鲜橘36000个 乾咸鱼4000磅 柠檬16000个 香肠2500磅 咖啡2200磅 新鲜鸡蛋40000磅 茶叶800磅 面粉200桶 冰淇淋1750品脱 白糖10000磅 速溶奶粉1200品脱 土豆40吨 甜面包1000个 洋葱3500磅 葡萄果50箱 米和乾豆10000磅 暖室葡萄1000磅 生菜7000棵 新鲜牛奶1500加仑 压缩牛奶600加仑 西红柿2．34吨 新鲜奶油6000磅 果酱1120磅 啤酒20000瓶 果酒1500瓶 矿泉水15000瓶 白酒850瓶 茶杯3000只 盘子1500只 刀叉8000套 水瓶2500个 早饭杯2500只 酒杯2000个 晚宴杯12000只 鸡蛋勺2000个 贝壳叉1000个 面包架400个 剪葡萄的剪子100只 除了这些，船上还装载了六千吨煤炭，因为每天“泰坦尼克号”就需要650吨；900吨行李；3435袋邮件。船舱中还有一件无价之宝∶波斯诗人莪默伽耶的《鲁拜集》原稿。 “泰坦尼克号”驶离英国码头时，成千上万的人向她欢呼，向她致意，海洋般挥动的手臂，撒出一把把默默的叮咛和祝福，不仅有对远行的朋友或亲人的怀恋惜别之情，也有对登上人类首艘最大的轮船做处女航的羡慕。电影《泰坦尼克号》中乘客开始上船时的那个人头攒动、万众欢腾的热烈场面，正是当时真实场景的艺术再现。 “泰坦尼克号”喷着强劲的黑烟，鸣响着深沉回荡的汽笛，劈风斩浪，以每小时45公里的世界最快的速度，切开大西洋海水，奔向纽约。 第二天的英国《英格兰和贝尔法斯特新闻晨报》自豪地写道∶“这是一个爱尔兰的头脑和工业结合的最精彩之作。” 《造船者》杂志感叹到∶“这是一个实用的永不沉没的巨轮。”谁也没有想到，四天之后，这句话竟成了“泰坦尼克号”的墓志铭。（未完待续） 2012-04-14 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 04:27👍 0💬 0曹长青纽约演讲：国共联手 台湾往哪走？
【大纪元7月13日讯】（大纪元记者唐明纽约报导）昨日（7月12日），知名政论家曹长青应台湾海外网的邀请在纽约台湾会馆发表题目为“国共联手，台湾往哪走？”的演讲，就马英九上台後，台湾的前途发表看法。 曹长青表示，国共联手并不能给台湾带来安全，只能让中共占尽便宜，在马英九为首的国民党政府采取一些妥协政策後，中共并没有作出让步。在经济方面，国共联手後，中共不会帮助台湾在经济上崛起，反而更有利於中共加深对台湾的经济和文化的渗透，从而吸取台湾的资金，输出大量的劳工和产品进入台湾，进而控制台湾的经济命脉；另一方面，中国的经济畸形发展，正如西方人称之为“盗窃”经济。在政治方面，国共联手後，台湾的民主不会改变中共在大陆的专制统治，正如香港回归後，中共的专制和造假影响了香港，台湾的民主政治反而会受到中共专制的影响和冲击。 在中共是否会攻打台湾的问题上，曹长青先生认为中共没有能力攻打台湾。首先，虽然中共在发展军事和经济，但是世界自由的力量也在发展，美国的经济也在发展，而且中共在世界上没有盟友，而美国有北大西洋公约组织，在太平洋地区与日本联盟。其次是中国国内因素不成熟，中国国内人民并不关心意识形态，不关心台湾的独立与否，而是关心自己的生活品质。再就是中共领导人不具备打台湾的魄力和能力。 曹长青说，马英九为首的国民党政府中断了台湾成为一个正常国家的基础。他认为马英九不可能连任，马不懂经济，没有决策能力，家庭和社会的环境使他成为一个优柔寡断的人。马英九上台後，没有履行自己就职总统时的承诺，无情打击绿营，加深蓝绿之间的对立，这样必将唤醒台湾民众。更可悲的是，马英九不了解中共，甚至是抱著幻想，他与中共妥协，不真正为台湾人民的利益著想，很多中国民运人士改变了对他的看法，并纷纷提出批评。 台湾有些地方为讨好中共，禁止法轮功练习者在旅游点讲讲真相，曹长青先生对此提出严厉的批评，他认为应该尊重法轮功练习者的信仰。他还对民选官员刘醇逸和杨爱伦没有出来制止那些在法拉盛攻击法轮功练习者的中共暴徒表示强烈谴责，他认为这两位议员给台湾人丢脸，让社区民众失望。刘醇逸的母亲在现场为儿子辩护，曹长青诚恳地说∶“如果我说错话，我会道歉，但现在我不能这样做，因为我没有看到刘醇逸站出来公开表明中共镇压法轮功是错的。” 最後曹长青表示，对台湾的问题，必须尊重台湾的现实、真实、台湾的历史和台湾人民的愿望，台湾需要一个信念坚定、形象清晰及能真正代表台湾人的领导人，台湾一定会成为一个正常化的、台湾自己的国家。 7/13/2008 ——转自「大纪元」 http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/8/7/13/n2190148.htm 2008-07-14 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 11:28👍 0💬 0采访曹长青∶美国不应该给王立军政治庇护
近日重庆公安局长王立军叛逃美驻成都领馆事件，被称为是引爆中共政权分裂的前奏。旅美政论家曹长青先生在接受希望之声电台记者静汝的采访中指出，现在媒体上之所以诸多猜测、推测，根本原因在於中共政府的不透明，其对此事的沉默显示中共政权的虚弱和不稳定性。下面就请听曹长青先生对王立军事件的评论。 记者∶王立军事件近日已成为海外舆论关注焦点。首先请问您是怎麽看这件事的？ 曹长青∶对这个事件海外媒体报导很多，但很多是一些猜测，因为内幕并不是很清楚。但有三点是可以确定的∶第一他去过成都的美国领馆，美方已证实这一点。第二他又从那里出来了。第三他随后消失了，人已被拘捕扣留，或双规审查，反正在中共手里。 王立军不是个小人物，他是重庆市副市长兼公安局长。重庆是省级市，王立军等於是副省长兼公安厅长，这样一个副部级官员“进入”美国领事馆，对中共来说是一个相当严重的事件。 记者∶有人认为王立军敢去美国领馆，实质是摊牌，涉及背后的中共各种势力。有分析认为， 王立军事件拉开了中共高层分裂的序幕？您是怎麽看的？ 曹长青∶从常理来看，王是去寻求“政治庇护”。一般来说不政治庇护不可能进入美国使馆。最后他又离开，显然是没被接受。那麽高层的中共官员，敢於进入美国使馆，说明他和重庆市长薄熙来的矛盾和内斗，到了一个完全不可开交的地步；得严重到多大的程度他才敢挺险走这一步。因为进入美国使馆，按照中共的标准等於是叛变，而且到了中共最敌对的国家美国的使馆，按照共产党的逻辑是不可接受、不可原谅的。 王立军作为下级敢背叛到这一步，至少说明那个上级，也就是重庆市长薄熙来对他的欺压和逼迫到了什麽程度。现在是两个层次的问题，一个是王立军去了美国领馆，是单纯的跟薄熙来之间的个人权力斗争，还是涉及到中共高层。这个层次是可以确定的，王和薄的内斗已激烈到无法解决，王到了无法忍受，才走了这步险棋。 第二个层次，今年会是中共权力斗争激烈的一年，因要开十八大，权力重新洗牌。常规做法是，胡锦涛退休，习近平接班。在这个洗牌前夕，权力争夺、暗盘交易将会更加激烈。在这种情况下，王立军和薄熙来的分裂可能不是单纯的，是中共高层内斗的一个投影。这里有一个特别的背景∶薄熙来跟习近平是“思想战友”，两人都是新一代崛起的少壮派官员，都很左倾，热衷极端的共产党意识形态。 薄熙来在重庆搞什麽唱红歌，要恢复毛时代那种宣传，习近平是支持的，两人在思想上相当接近，是意识形态的战友。在这种情况下，王立军事件是不是可能被中共高层那些对习近平不满，或对习近平接班不同意的人，通过打击薄熙来，来打击习近平的一个工具。这种可能性是不能排除的。 现在王立军“消失”了，被押到北京之后就再没有声息了。表面好像没有声音，但薄熙来、习近平这一派和其他的派别在暗盘中的权争搏斗，可能是非常激烈的。中共召开十八大前夕的这个“突发事件”，标志着共产党内部权力斗争的激烈性，相当令人瞩目。 记者∶也有人认为，王立军去美国领馆求救，美国的处理方式堵死了有血债的中共高官借美国途径逃跑的路。 曹长青∶王立军进入美国领馆，然后又离开，从常识来看，一定是去寻求政治庇护，否则不会进入美领馆，因为不是官场的方式，而是私自进入。那怎麽看美国领馆没有给予王立军庇护这件事？ 首先从美国方面来看，这个时候他们不可能给予王立军政治庇护，因时机太敏感，中国国家副主席习近平要访问美国。奥巴马政府希望跟要“接班”的中共领导人建立一个好的关系。如果在这个时候给了王立军政治庇护，那习近平访美怎麽处理？可能都会推迟，不能成行，这会成为中美之间的烫手山芋。 对王立军的政治庇护，成都领馆是做不了主的，必须呈报美国驻中国大使；而骆家辉在习近平访美前夕的敏感时刻，也不可能单独做主，会报请国务院，国务卿希拉里会跟美国国家安全顾问商讨，甚至整个事情有可能报请奥巴马总统亲自拍板。现在美国国会正准备调查这个事件，看奥巴马政府跟中共有没有暗盘交易等。 美国方面拒绝给予王立军政治庇护，有其自身的政治考量。那麽从道义角度来看，我也认为美国不应该给王立军政治庇护∶ 第一，王立军有权利申请政治庇护，有这个Rights，每个人都有权利向美国提出，但有这个权利不等於有这个资格，Rights和资格是两回事。我认为王立军没有这个资格。政治庇护是什麽？你在政治上对专制政权有不同的看法，有政治异见，因此受到那个政权的迫害，或基本人权被剥夺。而王立军从来没表示过对专制政治的异见，没有持不同政见。他是中共机器上的一个重要零件，跟另一个齿轮发生权力斗争，是内部权力分赃不均等问题造成的严重分歧和分裂（他跟外交官和一般文职官员寻求庇护不一样）。如果王立军得到美国的政治庇护，那等於他跟那些真正反抗专制、受到中共迫害而得到美国政治庇护的人们对等了、一样了，这在道理和道义上都是说不过去的。 第二，如果美国开了绿灯给了王立军政治庇护，那等於说中共今后的高官、贪官，或者说残害人民的那些酷吏，谁都可以在共产党内权力斗争失败后转身进入美国使馆得到政治庇护，或者逃到美国申请，然后得到批准。那不在某种意义说，等於是用政治庇护这种方式奖励那些贪污腐败、欺压人民、搜刮民财的官员们了麽？给这种官员们一个保护伞了麽？例如前任的那个重庆公安局长文强（已被处决），如果也进入美国领馆，难道也给予政治庇护？他贪污腐败、包括强奸女学生等罪行，就一笔抹消，然后拿贪污来的巨款到美国，得到庇护？ 所以，我觉得这次美国使馆不管出於什麽样的角度，没有给王立军政治庇护，从后果和结局来说其实都是一件对的事情。这等於是发出一个信号，那些有血债的，那些欺压人民的中共高官，那些暴力集团的重要成员，那些专制机器上的残忍零件，不可以给他们摇身一变、获得自由世界保护的机会，他们的罪行应该得到惩罚，而不是得到变相的奖励。 从另一个角度，王立军事件跟不久前加拿大引渡回中国的赖昌星有某种相同性。当然涉嫌巨额走私的赖昌星没有欺压人民没有血案，但赖昌星同样不是个政治案，而属於刑事案。王立军作为公安局长负责“打黑”，包括镇压人民，而且他是不是像前任文强那样有贪污腐败？这些都属於刑事案的范畴，而不是政治案。 中国三十多个省市自治区，重庆最引人注目∶一是唱红歌，二是打黑（打击黑社会）。唱红歌完全是政治倒退，退到毛时代，唱那些毛时代的革命歌曲。毛时代的歌是洗脑的，制造大众恐惧的，是专制统治宣传的一个核心的东西，而薄熙来就热衷这些。 而所谓“打黑”，也是按政治运动来搞的，什麽短期内快打、快判等等，完全是人治，是用政治运动来解决司法领域的事情。在这场“打黑”中，有很多可能是无辜的，尤其是一些民间企业家也被借机打击。 外界批评重庆的“打黑”是制造“黑色恐怖”，在这个过程中，王立军是主角，是薄熙来的主要打手。今天两个打手之间发生了矛盾，但在本质上他们是一样的。海外有人对王立军同情，认为只要跟薄熙来对立就应同情，但王立军是不值得同情的。现在没有任何清晰的事实可以证明王立军是主张民主的，反对专制的，反对腐败的。而从我们已知的事实和信息来看，王立军是专制机器中一个重要的齿轮，是中共暴力集团中的一个凶残打手。 记者∶另有文章认为，目前海外媒体对重庆事件的报导有多个版本，而大陆媒体对薄熙来、王立军事件等报导也很混乱，上下没有统一口径，加上中共官方媒体对整个事件的沉默等，这些都表明中共高层意见不一，中共政权处於极度虚弱状态。那您是怎麽看的？ 曹长青∶现在海外媒体所以有这麽多猜测、推测，甚至编织的消息，根本原因在於中国政府的不透明，它任何信息都不公开，整个事件就像不存在一样，才导致了各种信息，各种传言，各种猜测。正常的话，如果中国政府开一个记者会，告诉媒体王立军发生了什麽，他现在哪里，我们怎麽处理，给一个大致的消息，就会平息很多猜测。但中共没有这麽做。它历来都是这样，遇到重大事件，封锁新闻，回避真相，拒绝真实。 但这个事件经过互联网和民间传播管道，被越来越多的中国人知道。中共副部级官员进入美国使馆寻求政治庇护，这是非常罕见的，这是一起重大事件，有人甚至说， 这种冲击接近于七十年代林彪叛逃事件对毛泽东政权的打击。今天老百姓会问，像王立军这样的高官，副省长兼公安厅长的人都要叛逃，都要进入美国使馆寻求政治保护，可以想像中共政权内部的权力倾轧、众叛亲离到什麽程度。所以说中共面临这个局面很难处理，很难表态。就像当年林彪事件出来之后，毛政权也是很难处理，隔了很久才发文件，一级级传达解释，那次对中共统治集团造成很大震动，从此毛泽东一蹶不振。 从王立军事件可以看出，中共在十八大召开前的激烈权力斗争；中共对此沉默，不敢开记者会，不敢谈这个事件，显示它相当的虚弱和脆弱，透露出中共政权现在统治的不稳定性和不确定性。 ——原载∶希望之声电台，2012年2月16日；原题∶中国的不稳定因素来自中共高层 2012-02-16 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 11:27👍 0💬 0只有共产党，才能救中国？——万润南文章读後感
我的《和刘宾雁分道扬镳》一文在《开放》一月号发表之後，引来鲜见动笔的万润南先生和难得叫真儿的郑义先生的长篇批评。正好给我一个机会补充那篇文章所未及表达的内容。 我的文章批评了刘宾雁跟著西方左派声讨资本主义制度、抨击西式民主的观点。没想到惹火了万润南先生，他虽然提了一句「更倾向曹长青推崇的右派经济理论」，但通读全文，他明明是更为西方左倾思潮辩护，甚至质问美式民主能否在後院开花的问题。我不得不承认，万润南的「新」想法，的确令我非常吃惊；以我对他的了解，感觉他在思想上（甚至气质上）都应该是那种站在刘宾雁左倾立场对立面上的人。想不到我的判断居然有这麽大的失误。也许岁月在往不同方向改变著我们每一个人。 在探讨中国到底应该实行左派还是右派的经济理论之前，我首先呼吁的是中国政治的民主化，在政治民主化的前提下，用不著刘宾雁之类去做人民的大救星，去担心中国资本主义会不会走过头了。一届政府做不好，老百姓会用选票换另一个政府。在正常的民主国家，自然会形成一左一右的两派主要势力。把两种理论放到市场上去竞争，相信人民有智慧去选择。共产党就是不相信人民有选择的能力，它要替人民选择，所以才带来了暴力和独裁。 万润南表示，西方有左右派，两者都没错，他既认同刘宾雁对社会主义的眷恋，也理解曹长青对资本主义的推崇。其实万润南不属於「没有宗教的人对所有的宗教都宽容，没有观点的人对所有观点都接受」的那一类人。事实上，万润南的倾向性是很明显的，比如他引一位美国女教授的话，「我完全支持你们反对你们制度的斗争，但当你们反对你们制度的时候，千万不要对我们的制度评价过高」，并认为这是美国「清醒的声音」。 这其实和刘宾雁的观点在本质上一模一样：共产主义不好，西方资本主义也不好，我们要寻求第三条道路。那条道路在哪儿呢？还让共产党再继续拿十三亿人做试验吗？西方左派有资本喊，因为他们已经在享受那个他们可以自由攻击的民主制度。而刘宾雁没有资格喊，不仅因为他连回到自己国家的机会都得不到，更因为他口口声声关注的中国人民还生活在专制奴役中。 就是那些一直攻击西方文明的左派们，一直在声援著国际共产世界的乌托邦，在所有的乌托邦都崩溃的今天，他们不仅对当年的亲共没有丝毫反省，今天仍继续用抗衡资本主义制度、阻止自由世界向专制国家推广民主的行动，来客观上帮助延续世界大小独裁专制的存活。 西方当然不完美，在这个世界上没有完美个人的情况下，怎麽可能有完美的社会？西式民主是已经被历史证明的、迄今为止最可行的道路，为什麽就不让中国人民先走到这一步？下一步的问题等共产党结束了再说。你说我没不让中国人走民主道路，但你强调西方并不好，那中国人还有什麽必要学？ 万润南和刘宾雁在一个思路上，认为曹长青这类头脑简单的人，以为「一切罪恶全由共产党造成，因而只要推翻共产党，便是一片光明了 （刘宾雁观点） 」。其实谁会认为，只要共产党倒台，中国就变成一个完美世界了；人类善与恶的斗争会永远存在，中国也不例外，这还用说吗？但刘宾雁万润南的思路，就是用第二步可能发生的问题，来阻止人们走第一步。 万润南先生以前给我的印象是对共产党的认识比较清楚的，现在忽然一下子倒退到六四前，的确让我吃惊不小。他那麽推崇邓小平，认为共产党之所以继续执政，是因为他们比反对它的人聪明。既然如此，那万先生那麽深地卷入八九民运干什麽呢？八九民运是被认为打断了邓小平改革的呵。这只给我一个感觉，万润南对当年走那一步可能後悔了。照万润南的逻辑，共产党之所以还在中国存活，就因为它比反对他们的人聪明，难道今天世界上得以存活的独裁专制都是因为统治者比他们的反对者更聪明吗？ 我可以理解万润南先生对民运组织和参与者的失望。但民运人士千错误、万缺点，都不应该影响中共独裁制度必须结束这个原则。谁说共产党结束後一定会是今天的民运人士执政？以苏联、东欧以及亚洲那些结束了专制的国家的例子来看，那些政府的运作基本上是原班人马，只不过形成了不同党派，开始了通过竞选而你上我下的民主机制。 万润南先生提出， 面对左的刘宾雁和右的曹长青，共产党肯定更害怕刘宾雁。万润南先生真以为共产党害怕某个海外的所谓「异议人士」？国内比刘宾雁左的，比曹长青右的，一堆一堆的，许多国内人在海外发表的东西，无论勇气和智慧都丝毫不亚於海外的人，共产党也没把他们统统都抓起来。他们连在国内的人都不怕，还怕在海外的所谓「异议人士」？别那麽自我重要了。 共产党害怕的是喊出「皇帝没穿新衣」的声音成为知识界和民间的主流。这就像当年魏京生指出「邓小平是独裁者」，等於是说「皇帝赤身裸体」；而刘宾雁举著「第二种忠诚」的大旗、提出共产党有缺点错误，需要改正，等於是说，「皇帝身上的衣服有点脏，需要洗一下」。那麽共产党到底怕谁？如果更怕刘宾雁的忠诚，他们为什麽不把刘宾雁抓起来，而让魏京生坐了近二十年的牢？ 这种皇帝衣服有点脏的第二种忠诚思路，至少产生两个误导民众的结果，第一，皇帝是穿著衣服的（这是根本和关键！），第二，衣服洗净之後还是好的，可以继续穿；所以人民仍可寄望於一个好皇帝，而不是结束整个皇帝制度。 其实共产党正需要利用西方左派和刘宾雁这种观点来愚弄中国人民：「西式民主并不好」。那中国怎麽办？只有继续共产党的领导。万先生可以说，既然共产党可以利用刘宾雁的观点，那为什麽不让他回国呢？问的好。如果共产党真的了解刘宾雁的想法，早就热烈欢迎他回到《人民日报》，给他更高的特权发表文章。刘宾雁那些支持西方左派的文章，我看差不多都符合《人民日报》今天的发表标准。可是共产党根本不了解他，也不关心他现在的观点。但为什麽不让他回去呢？今天处於守势的共产党，多一事不如少一事，那些曾给共产党惹麻烦的人，已经出去的，就都在外面呆著吧；或许他们知道，在外面呆久了，会像万润南那样，感觉「还是共产党聪明」了。 刘宾雁曾对一代又一代的中共领导人抱希望和幻想，他也曾对胡温新政寄托希望，但一代又一代的领导人都让他幻想破灭，正如一个又一个共产专制在各国崩溃，仍没使他放弃对马克思主义的眷恋、对「真正共产党人」的寻觅。 我不仅不否认党内力量在中国改变中将起到的作用，甚至认为，如果中共最高领导层没有改变的话，中国的真正改变几乎是难以发生的（这点我在「中国人所不了解的李登辉」一文中论述过）。但怎麽改变？当年蒋经国的改变，他的开放党禁、报禁是主动的、情愿的吗？绝对不是！是在台湾人民风起云涌、一波又一波的反抗运动逼迫下，不得不做出的妥协。 以苏联和台湾的例子来看，无论是戈尔巴乔夫还是蒋经国，都没有想结束自己的政党，都是在意识到不得不政治改革之後，才促成了下一步的契机。而像刘宾雁那样，在西方自由的土地上，一味地跟著西方左派抨击资本主义，所能起到的唯一作用，就是传递一个信息，西式民主学不得，中国还得靠共产党领著大家往前走。一句话：刘宾雁期待的是好的共产党人掌权，而不是没有共产党的中国！ 没有人说过所有共产党员都是坏人，但共产党的问题不是哪个人的品德问题，而是制度问题。我强调的是共产专制的邪恶，我批判的是共产党执政的独裁。这和具体哪个共产党人的品德没有多大关系，民主国家里品德糟糕的领导人到处都是。而刘宾雁等人则转移视线，把别人对共产制度的批判，变成对共产党人的声讨。郑义先生甚至明申暗示，像曹长青这种对共产制度深恶痛绝的人，一旦有朝一日中国变天，还不得回去像当年共产党横扫反对者一样清算共产党？郑义先生大概忽略了，基督文明的赞美者、西方宪政民主的推崇者从来都不是暴力份子。而恰恰是那些诋毁基督文明、蔑视西方民主制度的文化人们，那些貌似颇有人道主义情怀的萨特们，促成了暴力的开端；恰恰是刘宾雁这类至死坚信「马克思主义就是一种人道主义」，至死抗衡西方资本主义制度，把人分成好人坏人的自命的「裁判者」们，才是构成暴力的思想根源和基础。 刘宾雁要和他认为的坏人做斗争，而我对和人斗没有任何兴趣，我的作战对象从来不是现实生活中的任何人，而是一些观念。这个世界上骨子里就是邪恶的人，不能说没有，但很少，也不能促成人类的大灾难（因为恶魔容易辨识，没等成大气候，就被摧毁）；而被错误观念主导的「好人」，高举「善」的大旗，才能有众多响应者。共产主义是最典型的例子。 而刘宾雁那种对西方社会的抨击，对「好共产党人」的寻觅，加上万润南这种「共产党人聪明」论，都在加强著「只有共产党，才能救中国」的分贝，都在客观上帮助著共产党继续统治中国。 正是由於这种对共产党割舍不断的恋情，刘宾雁才在自由的美国，感觉如同坐监狱。《开放》二月号盛禹九的文中说，「几年前，一位老友去看望他，刘说的第一句话是：『你来探监了！』」我想，长期这种不健康的心态，一定严重损害了他的身体。万润南先生这篇文章，多少令我对他产生一丝担心，忍不住说一句：老万，多保重，祝你有一个好的心境，希望你眼里的美国天空和我看到的一样湛蓝！ （原载《开放》2006年4月号） 2006-04-05 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 07:37👍 0💬 0外因篇：美国为何必然被武肺攻陷？
何清涟 截至4月8日，美国武汉肺炎感染者为433719人，死亡14764人。 从武汉肺炎开始后，我就知道美国的沦陷只是时间问题，因为这是美国作为全球化倡导国的必然代价。在中文推特上，我持续地表达过这一看法，并且预测：纽约与加州必成重疫区，新泽西因为是大纽约地区，铁路沿线不少人通勤到纽约，亚洲移民几乎占总人口25%左右，因此必然也沦为疫区；再加上美国人视行动自由为个人自由的第一要义，国内党争正炽，如果有疫情，势头将会很强，但我相信美国反应过来后，最后能够扼制住。 外部人成“内部的外人”：新罗马帝国的必然代价 持续了20年的全球化，一直让人看到充满希望的绿色版：全球共享财富的增长；中国成了经济巨人，拥有全世界数量最多的亿万富豪与人数最多的中产。但2020武汉肺炎席卷200个国家与地区这一至今还远未结束的灾难，让人看到了全球化的黑色版，世界在共享财富的增长的同时，还共享瘟疫。全球化在发达国家造成穷人数量增加、贫富差距扩大这一趋势，已经让保守主义有重归之势，共享瘟疫带来的反思必将更加痛切。 美国在全球化后的移民政策极有利于发展中国家那些希望改善经济生活的人迁居美国。奥巴马八年统治期间，对移民采取有收无类的政策；声称要继承奥巴马精神遗产的希拉里·克林顿在2016年竞选时的承诺，就是她入主白宫后第一项总统令将是开放边境，欢迎所有人来美国。而奥巴马给中国的最大优惠是对中国开放十年期多次往返签证，连中国人都调侃说“一场影响世界格局的‘和平演变’已经开始。作为美国最重要的《移民法》有一条总则，任何一项移民来自同一个国家在同一年中不能超过（世界各国）总数的7.1%。而对中国人十年多次往返签证的开放将使这条种族人口比例控制法规形同虚设。那一年，有人统计过，赴美旅游的中国人将从此前一年的180万暴增至一年300万以上，赴美生子的中国孕妇将会从前一年的近5万人产生年均100%的增长。 一直有人将美国比喻成新罗马帝国，就是从世界中心这一意义上说的。罗马帝国曾征服了世界许多国家，也容纳了来自这些国家的人，在罗马内部形成了平行社会。直到目前，美国仍然是容纳移民最多的国家，只是越来越丧失同化能力，不再是大熔炉（Melting Pot），成了容许各种不同价值观存在的多元文化，名副其实的Salad Bowl。穆斯林难民选区选出来的女议员奥尔马（Ilhan Oma），就是成为美国“内部人的外人”，多次公然在国会发表各种反对美国价值观甚至美国宪法的言论；中共在美国公然招聘科技英才的“千人计划”参与者，很多就是归化入籍的华人。这一点，犹如罗马帝国晚期，罗马帝国已经无法制裁、约束那些拒不认同美国价值观且危害本国利益的异族强势者。 以上，是中国武汉肺炎必然影响美国的大背景。 武汉肺炎发生之后，从中国来人知多少？ 在美华人有回中国度春节的习俗，更有人经常往返两国。在没有疫情发生的正常时期，这批人是中美航空业开辟中美专线的利润基础。今年却很不幸，在武汉肺炎疫情初起之时，这批往返于中美之间的人士有不少人成了潜在的病毒携带者。在川普对中国的禁航令发表之前，外界甚至不知道到底有多少人从武汉直接来了美国。当时，我只能根据中国一篇《武汉天河机场离开武汉的500多万人都去了哪里？大数据告诉你》猜其大概， 文章里面列有一张图表，记录从武汉天河机场出发至世界各大机场的前20位，仅到美国旧金山的就有3610人，纽约机场、华盛顿机场等当然也有，但不在前20之列，该文并未列明数据。 4月2日，美国ABC News发布一份新闻调查，该调查根据美国商务部记录和海关与边境保护局收集的相关数据——据称是迄今为止从中国和其他疫情最严重的国家入境美国的旅客的最详尽的数据，帮助人们了解武汉肺炎如何在美国如此广泛，如此深入和如此迅速地传播和渗透。在该病流行的2019年12月、2020年1月和2月的关键时期，中国从美国到达美国的旅客为75万9493人，其中包括228,000多名返回家园的美国人以及成千上万的商务，学术，旅游或探亲访华的中国人。” South Shore Health的传染病专家西蒙娜·怀尔德斯（Simone Wildes）博士对ABC新闻说：“很难估算出携带COVID-19的中国旅客到美国的比例，但是可以推测出旅行时可能已经感染了很多旅客。” 1-3月，意、西、英等八个疫区国涌入美国190万 并非只有来自中国的旅行者不安全，1-3月，封城前夕，从中国武汉出发至全世界各国的共有6万人。2月9日，美国南安普敦大学研究人员绘制的地图显示，自12月疫情爆发至武汉被完全封锁之前，离开武汉的500万人中有6万人去了世界。研究人员使用手机跟踪数据和航班跟踪器的组合来跟踪旅行者的路径。结果显示了一条由武汉向中国其他地区和世界各地的疫情扩散图，这张恐怖地图揭示了武汉成千上万的旅行者如何将冠状病毒传播到全球几十个国家约380个城市。 南安普敦大学这项研究做得较早，但指出了中国武汉肺炎传遍世界已经不可避免，ABC News亦调查了12月，1月和2月从八个受灾最严重的国家入境美国的数据：来自意大利的共有343,402人，来自西班牙的为418,848人以及来自英国的约190万旅客——世界都知道，意大利、西班牙与英国的疫情显性恶化均发生于2月中下旬。 看到ABC News提供的这些数据，受访的美国的传染病学家都很清楚，2月2日对中国断航，一是时间太晚，二则因携带病毒者从多国持续涌入美国，美国疫情的爆发是必然的，只是时间问题。纽约州州长库莫对纽约疫情严重有个说法：这些国际旅游者来美国，第一站就是纽约。他没说的是：这些来者当中有不少人有亲戚在美国纽约，他们从本国逃出来，就是来投亲避疫的。而美国各机场的检疫，其实形同虚设。这点，我将在《内因篇：美国为何必然被武肺攻陷？》一文中分析。 SARS之后，先觉者看到了全球化黑色版的轮廓 SARS算是2020年武汉肺炎的预演版。自那以后，美国医学协会（IOM）出版报告，提出了导致传染病卷土重来的八个原因，列在首位的就是随着全球化的发展，人口日益在全球范围内流动，传染病也随之周游列国。该报告指出，频繁的人口流动使得传统的隔离方式根本无法生效，也使得一国爆发的传染病会迅速地传播到其他地区。加上20世纪中期人类对抗传染病取得的胜利使得大家变得麻痹大意，原有的防治传染病的系统逐渐衰落，公共健康的注意力逐渐转移到心血管病和癌症等“现代病”，疫苗的提供没有跟上，财政支持不够，人员培训和公众教育都落伍了，如果一旦爆发，形势将非常严峻。 无独有偶的是，美国国家情报委员会在2004年的一份有关2020年世界前景的报告中预测，只有“一种重大全球冲突”的发展，才能阻止全球化的持续发展。这个发展是什么？即全球瘟疫大流行。报告提到，到了2020年，世界越来越受到身份认同政治的困扰，全球化将面临政治反噬。如果有什么事情会使全球经济整合脱轨，那很可能会是一种致命新疾病的大规模传播。这份报告的主持者是曾任外交官及普林斯顿大学学者的罗伯特‧哈钦斯（Robert Hutchings）。哈钦斯在最近一封电子邮件中表示，他们在这份报告中所试图提出的观点是：“全球化是普遍存在的力量，同时带来了好的与坏的后果” 2020武汉肺炎的全球大流行，终于让全世界所有国家看到了全球化黑色版的可怖景象，疫情过后，这场持续了20多年的全球化将被重新定位。 （原载台湾上报，2020年4月10日，https://www.upmedia.mg/news\_info.php?SerialNo=84967 ）
何清涟2025-11-09 00:53👍 0💬 0爱泼斯坦文件如何成为川普的政治公关危机？
何清涟 7月7日，美国联邦调查局和司法部公布了一份关于“爱泼斯坦案”的审查结果备忘录，司法部长邦迪认定爱泼斯坦系狱中自杀，并表态 “不打算公布新文件”，此言获川普强力背书，随后，川普对要求公开文件的支持者MAGA群体——川普阵营昵称Base（基地）的言论越来越具有侮辱性与攻击性，川普深陷自己制造的麻烦中， 7月18日，在《华尔街日报》报道一封2003年署有川普名字、出现在爱泼斯坦生日纪念册中的信件后，川普被迫公开要求司法部解封所有与爱泼斯坦案有关的大陪审团证词，并威胁起诉《华尔街日报》及新闻集团，但事情并没有划上停顿号。 川普制造政治公关危机的过程简述 爱泼斯坦案无疑是美国本世纪最受关注的重大案件之一，各种传说沸沸扬扬，从“国际恋童网络”，到爱泼斯坦是摩萨德成员，据说存在的1000个受害者名单，克林顿曾坐26次萝莉专机，这个岛的客人留下的把柄据说成为一项可供操控的政治筹码和战略资源。 在7月7日之前，川普从未否认过爱泼斯坦文件的存在，上任后公布爱泼斯坦文件是他在竞选期间多次重复的公开承诺。维基百科上载明各种信息来源的与爱泼斯坦有关的重要人物都是贵人，第一位就是曾任美国司法部长比尔·巴尔的老爸，后来爱泼斯坦入狱后，正值巴尔担任联邦司法部长，爱泼斯坦在监狱中“自杀身亡”。美国媒体多年来的揭发，形成了一整套对爱泼斯坦案的公共认知，几乎动摇了公众对全球精英、媒体机构乃至美国司法系统的信任，可说早已超越了刑事调查的范畴，成为一起黑幕重重的政治案件。 一向服从有加的众议院议长约翰逊与几位共和党议员都加入了要求公开文件的行列，但不到一天，随即在他的巨大压力下迅速回归“我们支持总统的正确决定”。 如果仅仅只遇到媒体压力，川普有办法对付，以往这种情况他一律名之为“Fake News”，然后被MAGA放大。但这次从川普7日的表态之后，在他自己的Truth Social上，第一次出现新情况，批评声浪超过了点赞声。对这种情况川普非常不适应，于是呼吁自己的支持者们“不要再浪费时间和精力”在这个奥巴马与克林顿制造的阴谋上，但MAGA没听总统训示，对MAGA的指责逐步升级，例如“这（指要求公开秘密文件）肮脏且无聊，不懂为什么有人对这感兴趣”，15日干脆开骂相信爱泼斯坦文件存在的支持者愚蠢，16日继续猛烈抨击自己的支持者愚蠢，并指责他们听信了民主党的说法，陷入大骗局（Big Hoax）当中，甚至说出：“我再也不需要他们的支持了！”终于将总统与他的基地（Base）之间撕开一条巨大的裂缝，许多著名的MAGA人士如查理·柯克、Robby Starbuck、jay plemons这次也没法再充当川普安抚MAGA群的中介了，纷纷发表自己的看法。 美国媒体：乐将旧曲翻新声 起火的当然不只川普自家百分百掌控的Truth Social，而是全美国媒体。 《华尔街日报》7月17日发长文，2003年爱泼斯坦50岁生日时，朋友麦克斯韦尔为其准备的一份皮革装订生日纪念册中，有川普的署名信件，信件风格轻佻，包含几行文本。信件内文本以第三人称撰写，模仿川普与爱泼斯坦间虚构对话。 图片 川普及时反应，17日在他的Truth Social发文怒斥《华尔街日报》刊登其致爱泼斯坦的“伪造信件”，称该报道“虚假、恶意、诽谤”，并表示将起诉《华尔街日报》、新闻集团及鲁珀特·默多克本人。他强调已亲自警告默多克与主编艾玛·塔克该信为伪造，但对方仍执意刊发（这说明WSJ事先通知了总统）。川普称此举是“又一个假新闻案例”，并否认与爱泼斯坦有任何不当关联。 图片 对《华尔街日报》披露这封信如此震怒，弄得这条消息继川普对MAGA说的绝情之语“我不再需要他们（MAGAzine）的支持”之后，又成了美欧所有媒体的头条新闻。“爱泼斯坦案”让川普陷入了一场自己制造的政治公关危机当中。 7月18日，美国总统川普宣布就“致爱泼斯坦信件”一事对美国《华尔街日报》等相关各方发起“强力起诉”，索赔100亿美元。鉴于川普任总统之后诉讼媒体的通杀业绩，MAGA开始认为，默多克钱多得烧手，一定要制造一个假新闻赔付川普巨款。不过还真有不怕赔付的媒体紧紧跟上。福布斯网站于7月18日刊登了一篇《唐纳德·川普与杰弗里·爱泼斯坦之间所有已知的关联》，其中列了一条时间线，内容非常丰富，《华尔街日报》所列举的生日贺信只是个小CASE。 A person and person posing for a picture AI-generated content may be incorrect. 爱泼斯坦政治公关危机小结 英文媒体及自媒体的评论，只要不是极端“凡是派”的保守派大V，基本认为爱泼斯坦文件的麻烦，是川普自我制造的。 1、川普年轻时与爱泼斯坦的来往，照片、报道俱在，包括川普以前都承认。 2、没人将川普与萝莉岛那些未成年少女的脏事扯上关系。因为人们推断，如果真有，那是总统竞选时的大杀器。 3、他们只是非常不明白，这种情况下，川普为何不公布，而且要站到司法部长的前面，替她挡子弹，这多少忽视了司法部长女士的做法来自上命。 4、后果评价都比较悲观。最悲观的是班农，说会让共和党丢掉10%的议席。最确定伤害，是川普用“我不再需要他们的支持”伤害了Base。关于这一点，多说几句。 Maga群与川普是互相造就的关系，川普多年来一直给自己打造“深层政府毁灭者”的人设，以此获得MAGA的支持。尤其是去年6月在宾州演讲被刺杀未遂事件之后，MAGA运动奉川普为神一般地存在，几乎都认定川普是神选之子，上帝救他，就是为了赋予他拯救美国的天职。他做过的竞选承诺很多，其中最著名的承诺至少这几项：24小时内（后改成数月内）结束俄乌战争；抑制通胀； 不止一次承诺要公布爱泼斯坦文件。从2020年-2024年一直追随川普的MAGA群成了他的近卫军，每有不同意见，一面倒地支持川普，我曾戏用文革末期中共傀儡主席华国锋的“两个凡是”总结MAGA群的特点：凡是川普支持的必然正确，我们坚决支持；凡川普反对的必然错误，我们坚决反对。川普执政150多天以来，内政推行总体尚可，但外交上四处出击，至今乏善可陈。无论是与俄罗斯的接触还是伊朗问题，MAGA中少数人有过质疑，但因为质疑者不占MAGA主流，因此都未造成川普与他的Base之间产生裂痕。本次的裂痕虽然大于以前，但在《华尔街日报》文章发表之后，许多MAGA包括马斯克又表态支持川普。从美国此刻的政治生态看，川普敢公开声称不再需要的支持，但MAGA确实需要川普这面旗帜。 根据路透社/益普索7月16日公布的民意调查，69%的美国人认为川普政府隐瞒了杰弗里·爱泼斯坦客户的信息，这些客户涉嫌以性为目的的人口贩卖。只有6%的受访者不同意这一说法，25%的受访者表示不确定。 在川普政府撤回公布爱泼斯坦案相关文件的承诺后，川普在此事上的支持率仅为17%。在共和党人中，35%的人支持总统的立场，29%的人不同意，其余的人则弃权。 以上调查，实际上是 这次政治公关危机的度量表。我认为，如果仅仅只是当年的来往，未涉及所谓未成年少女性性侵这类犯罪，那就只是交友不善的问题，川普大可坦然相对，让司法部公布文件，尽快让这次自造的政治公关危机尽快止息。 （原载《联合早报》，2025年7月22日，https://www.zaobao.com.sg/forum/views/story20250722-7180060）
何清涟2025-11-06 06:13👍 0💬 0一个蒋介石，各自表述
民进党政府决定撤销军方对两蒋墓地的宪兵守护，引起国民党的反弹，蒋家後人甚至扬言，要把两蒋陵墓移到中国奉化蒋的老家安葬，於是更引起争论。 香港《大公报》引述南京学者的评论说，目前两蒋陵墓移到中国的时机并不成熟，因共产党是否接受、国民党是否同意、民进党政府是否放行等，都是未知数；主要因为两岸三个主要政党对蒋的评价不同，其历史地位未形成定论，可谓「一个蒋介石，各自表述」，导致移灵问题十分敏感。国民党一向宣传蒋是「伟大领袖」，共产党批蒋是「人民公敌」，民进党则视蒋为独裁者、「二二八屠杀元凶」。 去年，蒋介石的日记在美国胡佛研究所公开（持照片证件者均可查 ^，可谓「一个蒋介石，又有新表述」。该日记跨度从一九一五年到蒋去世前三年的一九七二年，长达近六十年。看过这些日记的两岸研究专家普遍认为，该史料具高度真实性及权威性，能够颠覆国共两党过去的官方论述，把蒋从国民党的「伟大领袖」神坛上拉下来，也把蒋从共产党的「独夫民贼」祭坛上拉下来，还原其本来面目。 所谓走下「祭坛」，因这些日记呈现出蒋介石、国民党领导抗日的真实，而不是北京宣传的共产党领导抗日。日记证实，蒋了解当时中国缺乏对抗日本的国力，因此尽量拖延正式开战，以让中国争取时间备战。中国研究蒋介石的权威学者杨天石说，「蒋日记具很高的史料价值，足以改写中国近代史！」 所谓走下神坛，因蒋介石的日记披露了很多隐私，包括早年私生活细节等；自我撩开了国民党歌颂的「道德圣人」的面纱。日记显示，蒋早年曾想做生意、炒股票，甚至想留学美国，并不生来就是「伟大领袖」的胚胎。尤其日记有蒋帮助孙中山暗杀党内政敌陶成章的内幕。蒋用暗杀手段对付党内异己，那时就显露出他崇尚暴力的独裁者本性。该日记还显示，蒋败退台湾前，对国民党的弊病知之甚详，曾主张将中国国民党改名为「劳动国民党」。 纵观蒋的日记和其历史，他当年在中国大陆领导抗日、对抗共产党，推动中国现代化，虽不是民主领袖，倒也功大於过；而败退台湾後，实行小皇帝般的「戒严法」统治（死後权力传给儿子，更是皇帝做法），则是明显的独裁者。今天，撤销宪兵守护独裁者墓地是台湾走向民主的象徵，因没有民主国家要动用军队看护独裁者尸骨的。将来那些守护「国父纪念馆」孙中山石像的宪兵也应撤销；因为大活人看护石头的「兵马俑」时代早已过去。 怎样对待独裁者的遗迹，也是一个国家民主程度的标志之一。 ——原载台北《自由时报》2008年1月7日「曹长青专栏」 2008-01-08 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 10:10👍 0💬 0诺贝尔和平奖光束刺疼中共
诺贝尔和平奖颁给了刘晓波，不仅是首次颁给一个中国籍人士，更因得奖者是身陷牢狱的异议人士，而招致中国官方的抗议和国际舆论的关注。虽然有一批中国异议人士对刘晓波获奖资格有相当的异议（纽约时报已做报导），但国际舆论普遍认为，这是挪威的诺贝尔和平奖委员会的一次非常勇敢的行动，它将引导全球的目光关注中国恶劣的人权状况，并对中国人争取自由的事业具有促进作用。 近年诺贝尔和平奖的选择，因越来越左倾，常引起争议；尤其是奖给一些权力人物。像美国就有卡特、戈尔、奥巴马等前後获奖。极为左倾的卡特，曾赞美卡斯特罗、金正日等独裁者，在美国声望已低到被称为最糟的总统；戈尔则靠渲染全球过暖发了大财，《纽约时报》曾讽刺地说，他可能是全球首位绿色产业富豪（目前身价已数亿美元）；奥巴马获奖，更成为全球笑料，因提名时，他才出任总统12天，什麽成就还没有，媒体嘲讽说是“提前鼓励奖”。挪威的诺奖委员会因此被媒体骂得灰头土脸，简直是自取其辱。 所以挪威今年的选择，被视为是一雪前耻。尤其中国外交部副部长，事前曾去挪威当面警告诺奖委员会主席，如颁给中国异议人士，将会怎麽样等等。但挪威的评委们没有畏惧、退缩，毅然做出勇敢的决定。 欧美网路上的评语，可以说传递了普通西方人的心声，他们说，去年这时候，大家乐了一个星期，因奥巴马获奖，实在太荒唐可笑了。而今年的和平奖颁给了中国异议人士，则是正确的选择。生活在自由世界的人们，对中国的专制，敢於发出批评和谴责的声音，是对中国人的民主奋斗给予道义上的声援。 近年中国随著经济和军事崛起，共产党对外摆出扩张的霸权姿态，对内则实行更严酷的镇压政策，几乎所有的民运组织领导人，都被抓进监狱；基督徒、法轮功练习者也不能幸免。据人权组织的报告，过去十年，超过十万名法轮功学员被关进劳改营，其中三千多人被迫害致死！而对异议作家刘晓波，去年中共的判决书毫无掩饰就是要以言治罪，以他在网路上发表的六篇文章，就重判了11年，差不多一篇文章就判两年！而西方很多国家，由於看重中国的市场，更由於国际领袖对邪恶的绥靖主义，导致西方对中国穷凶极恶的镇压人权劣行都没给予有效的谴责，更谈不上制裁。所以北京可以肆无忌惮，随欲做恶！ 这次诺贝尔和平奖颁给中国异议人士，等於是对北京政权的一次痛击。从目前中共的反应来看，他们是既尴尬，又恼怒，更恐惧，千方百计地封锁这个新闻。但报导说，中国有很多民众放鞭炮庆贺，这是共产党郁卒，老百姓开心的时刻！ 和平奖颁奖词明确指出，“中国已违反自己签署的多项国际协议，甚至还包括中国宪法所保障的政治权利。”“在中国国内外，尚有许多人为争取人权出力。而刘晓波被重判，成为中国人权斗争最突出的象徵人物。”几乎是明说，这次颁奖给刘晓波，是给中国的整体人权运动的道义支持。 所以，今年的诺贝尔和平奖，像一道光束，既刺疼了北京政权，又让世人更看清中国的黑暗，同时也给中国的民主运动注入了激励的力量。 ——原载《自由时报》2010年10月11日“曹长青专栏” 2010-10-11 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 07:35👍 0💬 0描画中美关系的词汇演变路线图
何清涟 人间常会发生这种事情：有心栽花花不发，无心插柳柳成荫，这次中美第五次战略与经济对话的91项成果虽经中国政府高调宣传，却无法成为网络热传话题。倒是中国副总理汪洋那句“中美关系如夫妻，不能离婚”，被网络言论演绎出无数歧义，成了此次会谈的“亮点”：官方宣传赞其“幽默”，民间则嘲笑恶骂兼而有之。 \从“同床异梦”到汪洋“夫妻”之喻\ 汪洋在会谈中为活跃气氛将中美关系喻为“夫妻”，“不能离婚”时，根本没想到会引来那么多始料未及的丰富联想。比较客气是追问中美两国“谁是夫谁是妻，谁主内谁主外”？不客气一点的是笑问“中美如夫妻，台湾的身份是什么，难道是小三？”《环球时报》那篇谈到“中美如夫妻，日本吃醋”的文章遭到的责骂更多，说美国有无数个“老婆”，中国将自己摆在与日本争宠的位置，没有国格。 这当然是中国文化中夫妻关系的一种情不自禁的折射：1949年以前，中国一夫一妻多妾制；现阶段，中国流行一夫一妻多情妇。在“成功人士”的婚姻中，丈夫居于强势地位，握有主动权，女性在婚姻中的尊严荡然无存。因现实感受，中国网民特别在意谁是夫谁是妻，如果是西方文化，大概对此不会如此高度敏感。 ——以上当然是题外的话。本文只是想介绍一下汪洋将中美关系比喻为夫妻的由来，以及中共文化习惯性地借用虚拟血缘关系与虚拟亲属关系定位各种关系，究竟有何不妥。 将中美关系比喻为“夫妻”，汪洋其实只算是引申，不是发明者。真正的发明权大概应该属于美国霍普金斯大学国际关系学院中国研究专家戴维·M·兰普顿（David M. Lampton）。在1988-1997年这十年间，兰普顿曾担任美中关系全国委员会主席。从该职位上退下来后，他曾于2001年发表专著《同床异梦：中美关系1989-2000》（ Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.- China Relations, 1989-2000），该书梳理了1989年天安门事件后十年以来中美两国在台湾问题、经济、安全、人权等各层面上的利害关系，建议两国领导人和国民如何在新及在追求共同利益中共同生存。虽然作者成书之时并未看到中美关系后来的种种摩擦与冲突，但他准确地把握到中美关系的主调，并巧妙地借用了中国成语“同床异梦”来描摹这种非友非敌的关系。 此书影响甚大，从此以后，中美关系一发生摩擦，中外观察者与媒体都习惯性地用“同床异梦”“中美婚床”来形容中中美关系，连中共在美国的喉舌《侨报》也写过“同舟共济与同床异梦，中美关系以何为主”这类文章。但这时用“同床异梦”，大多论者只是借用这一成语的主要意义，即表面上共同从事某项活动，但内心各有各的打算，两者貌合神离，并没人用中国式思维去思考过中美两国何者为夫、何者为妻；当然更没有人去想象在世界多边关系中，美国与世界各国的交往是“一夫多妻”关系，其他国家与中国在建构自身与美国的关系中，位置是“小三”还是“大奶”之类，更不会有媒体发表类似于《环球时报》这种“中美交好，日本吃醋”的奇怪文章。 据一位接近汪洋的人士透露，汪洋喜欢搜集各种信息。汪主政广东之时，从广东各大学与研究机构至美英等国访问的一些人士成天泡在图书馆里，搜集整理各类有关中国政治经济及中外关系的信息，回去上交给主管机构。蓝普顿这本书的中文版曾由香港中文大学于2003年出版，有不少书评。汪洋即使未读过全书，也大概知道这本书的书名及内容概要。至于从“同床异梦”发展出“中美关系如夫妻”之说，是出于汪洋灵机一动还是身边智囊的建议，那只有天知道了。 \滥用虚拟血缘关系背后是不自信\ 中国传统文化的核心是宗法文化。宗法文化强调人在各种社会关系中的位置及相应的责任与义务。将虚拟血缘关系用于人际交往，借此强化彼此之间的利益关系，是宗法文化的衍生物。共产文化理论上摒弃血缘关系，讲究同志情谊，但却好用虚拟血缘关系来类比共产党与人民、其他组织或国家的关系。中国人熟知的是中共常将自己与人民的关系比拟为母子关系，如“文革”及“文革”前的流行红歌“唱支山歌给党听，我把党来比母亲”，80年代流行的“党啊，亲爱的妈妈”。国际关系中，毛时期对于社会主义国家的一直统称为“兄弟国家”，各国共产党称之为“兄弟党”。对越南与阿尔巴尼亚称之为“同志加兄弟”，以示其特别亲密。对苏联则称之为“老大哥”，承认“以弟事兄”的等级差别。 上世纪80年代实施对外开放，中共虽然“与时俱进”地找到一些新名词构建不同层次的国际关系，但深层思维仍然未改。“兄弟国家”只剩下一个北韩，但还是将非洲、拉美一些独裁国家归类于“中国人民的好朋友”，以示与其他不同。但对美国，因为核心利益（即保住中共执政权）的考量，中共从来就没有真正信任过。在欧盟未衰落之前，中国想建立中美欧“多极关系”主导世界格局，2008年欧盟衰落之后，中国又开始与美国共构“战略伙伴关系”，在各种摩擦不断之时，经常强调中美要建立“战略互信”。中美第五次战略与经济对话召开之时，正逢北京巧用斯诺登事件狠狠踹了美国一脚之后，会谈气氛并不真象中方媒体渲染得那么好。汪洋在会上致辞时也是软硬兼有，虽然用了“中美关系如夫妻”之说，但同时也不忘强调，虽然中方“愿意对话，愿意听到不同的声音，愿意接受正确的意见”，但对那些可能会动摇中国基本制度，损害国家利益的意见，中方绝不可能接受，“中国在这一点上会和美国一样，守住自己的底线。”并再次引用习奥会时习近平曾说 “兔子急了也踹鹰”，以此表达北京坚守底线的决心。 所以，从大盘上判断，汪洋说“中美关系如夫妻，不能离婚”，与其说是表达了一种想与美国建立亲密关系的愿望，还不如说显示了北京高层对中美关系缺乏自信。他想表达的其实是：两国日子都得过下去，一拍两散对谁都没好处。 可以说，在国内，中共喜好用虚拟的母子关系形容自身与人民的关系，是因为深知人民与其离心离德；在国际社会，中共则因为“利”字当头的无原则外交，导致自身没有几个真正的“友好国家”，于是特别在称呼上苦下工夫，用虚拟亲缘关系比拟中美关系，背后显示的就是高度不自信。 （原载美国之音何清涟博客，2013年7月16日，http://www.voachinese.com/content/heqinglian-blog-20130716/1702950.htm；http://voachineseblog.com/heqinglian/2013/07/us-china-relations-2/l）
何清涟2025-11-06 06:36👍 0💬 0Rural Economy at a Dead End: A Dialogue on Rural China, Peasants and Agriculture
By He, Qinglian\, Visiting Scholar, University of Chicago, and Cheng, Xiaonong, Editor-in-Chief, Contemporary China Studies Modern China Studies No.3, 2001 China and India: Latecomers to the Road of Modernization He Qinglian: The human race experienced a number of social changes in the last century. Among them, only two great changes produced a lasting impact. First, the political system of democracy has emerged as the generally accepted model for political governance around the world. Second, the class of small peasants has decline and perhaps even begun to disappear. The latter change has permanently severed the historical umbilical cord that for generations has linked humankind with its past. What cannot be ignored is that a certain relationship exists between these two drastic social changes. Ultimately, politics is nothing but the sum total of all the social relationships of humankind. The characteristics of the people will determine the nature of their government, and the nature of the government will determine the characteristics of its people. From day one, the human race has had to depend on mother nature for most of its material needs: a civilization founded on agriculture depended on land; a nomadic tribe settled near pastures and water; and an economy based on fishing and hunting relied on fish in the water and prey in the hills. Even when history had progressed to the era of Adam Smith, nothing had changed. That is why Adam Smith referred to land as “mother of all wealth.” On the eve of World War II, only two countries in the world, the United Kingdom and Belgium, had a fishing and agricultural population that made up less than 20 percent of their total population. At that time, whether the small peasant class would ultimately be destroyed became a highly controversial “theoretical issue.” Western theorists used the statistical data of that time to refute the Marxist view that “capitalism had destroyed the small peasant class.” After the World War II, however, most countries gradually adopted economic development as a major theme in their national policy. This sped up industrialization and the massive movement of the agricultural population away from the countryside to various modern economic units in the urban economy. The world then entered an age of rapid development, so rapid indeed that the majority of the population never really understood the significance of the changes they experienced. By the late 1980s, even Bulgaria, a bastion of the small peasant class and the least developed country in Europe, saw this class diminish to less than one third of the total population. Among the Asian countries, Japan’s agricultural population fell from 52 percent in 1947 to 23 percent in 1989.\[1\] However, by the end of the last century, there remained three large regions in the world where the population still consisted mainly of the small peasant class. They were China, South Asia and continental South-east Asia, as well as Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Most the world’s so-called “low-income economies,” according to classification by the World Bank, were confined to these three regions. Cheng Xiaonong: The 20th Century was an era in which mankind explored models of social progress and development. During this process, China underwent huge upheavals and changes, suffering hardship after hardship. Even now, China is still in the midst of an exploratory period in terms of systemic transformation and modernization. Behind closed doors, the Chinese people may be able to forget the chaotic days of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution,” and cheer themselves hoarse over the long awaited and eye-catching progress achieved over the past 20 years. Nonetheless, when they open their “windows” and observe what has been happening around the world, there in fact are not that many successes to gloat over. The “success” which is most often mentioned seems to be that “China has been able to feed one fifth of the world’s population with its limited per capita farmland.” As a matter of fact, towards the end of reign of Emperor Qianlung in the Qing dynasty, China topped the world’s agricultural production while simultaneously feeding a third of the world’s population. \[2\] During that same period, England was saddled with an overpopulation that Malthus had called disastrous. Had this overpopulation not been relieved by the immigration to North America, internal strife would have become rampant, and England would have never been able to expand its territorial domain to become the awe-inspiring “empire on which the sun never sets.” Thus, if “success” were to be measured by “the number of people fed,” then would China not have been a more “glorious” success during the period from the early to mid-Qing dynasty under the reigns of Kangxi and Qianlung? If we are to take a measure of the progress in China today, the country may be able to pride itself on the flourishing economies of a few urban centers; but if we are to judge progress by the living conditions of a majority of the people, then social progress in China today simply cannot be divorced from the context of rural issues. He: If we observe carefully, we will find that two gigantic countries in Asia have not fully enjoyed the great achievements of 20th Century civilization. Their small peasant class has survived with extraordinary persistence, though also with great difficulty. They are India in the South Asian subcontinent and China in East Asia. No matter how hard their governments try, the small peasant class still makes up more than 70 percent of their respective populations. This means that the historical umbilical cords that link these two countries to their pasts have not been completely severed. When comparing these two countries, we will find many stark similarities. First, both have a history that stretches back thousands of years; they both once stood head and shoulders above the rest of the civilized world; and are among the world’s four great ancient civilizations. More strikingly, however, is that both historical cultures, in the process of being absorbed into their modern equivalents, have not been transformed into a spiritual resource but instead have become heavy baggage standing in the way of modernization. Second, both countries are superpowers in terms of population. China’s population size tops that of all other countries, while India has the “honor” of being number two. China can perhaps find solace in one place: It is reported that because India’s birth control policy is not as stringent as that of China’s, India may take over China as the world’s most populous country in 20 years. As a result of the pressures arising from overpopulation, people with higher education in these two countries often move out by way of overseas studies in search of a better living. In China, people from the grassroots may even adopt high-risk means of illegal immigration. For emigrants from both countries, the United States is the pre-eminent choice since protection of immigrant rights is enshrined in its Constitution. Among overseas students in the United States, Chinese ranks highest in number, with Indians in second place. Currently, many on the technical staff of American hi-tech companies are Indian and Chinese. Furthermore, while the two countries have different political systems, they are similarly enmeshed in overwhelming corruption. Year after year, both countries, according to the “International Transparency Organization,” are two of the most corrupt countries around the world. In India’s case, corruption is well known to the world due to the country’s free press. This phenomenon has been well documented in works such as Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations and the Challenge of World Poverty by Swedish Economist Gunnar Myrdal. China, on the contrary, has “wisely” insisted on only a partial opening-up, and has so far avoided becoming a classic example of international studies on corruption. One other phenomenon common to both China and India is that while a few major cities enjoy a high level of prosperity, the majority of rural and peripheral areas lag far behind. However, in the last 20 years of reforms in China, a small number of newly developed townships have emerged, whereas in India such newly developed townships still number in the few. For religious reasons, main roads in Indian cities are littered with foul smelling dung left by sacred cows. As a result, the Chinese can point at their few “window dressing” model cities and proudly pronounce that these “showcases of modernization” are much cleaner and comelier than their Indian counterparts. For instance, Shenzhen won its title as “Garden City of the World” by “wisely” forbidding the judges involved to go anywhere near the smelly Shenzhen and Xinzhou Rivers. On the other hand, India does not even have one “showcase of modernization” worth a title. It can be said that the state of the population and resources in China and India is such that, as they enter the 21st Century, these two pre-modern societies must continue to be wagged by the mammoth tails of their “small peasant class.” Cheng: Unlike South Asian and African countries, China undertook catastrophic experimentations in its modernization process during the past 50 years. Despite this, it has not been able to extract itself from the laggard country category. China has experimented with agricultural collectivism, even in its most extreme forms of “militarized operations” and “messing together.” It was only after paying a heavy price of losing tens of millions of lives that China, forced by the tremendous pressures of reality, retreated once again to the model of individual agricultural operations. The pressures created by China’s large population also meant that it could not proceed with agricultural modernization; otherwise, the peasants removed from their land would have no place to go. During this period, China had practiced industrialization in the style of the “Great Leap Forward,” moving close to ten million peasants from villages into cities. It also tried the “five minor industries in every township” scheme that flourished all across the land. Then it turned to the modernization model of village and township enterprises, naming it “to leave the land but not the homeland.” Finally it even opened doors that have been locked for so many years to Hong Kong and Taiwan financed enterprises. All these were done for one reason alone: to find a way out for the tremendous labor surplus from the rural areas. Although the systemic change of rural reforms carried out in the early 1980s produced a one-time outcome bringing short-term prosperity to the rural economies, it soon became a thing of the past. The expansion of urban economies was never able to fully absorb the hundreds of millions of excess rural laborers. Technological advances meant that enterprises were soon in the transition from labor-intensive models to technology- and capital-intensive models. Demand for labor from enterprises was diminishing and, at any rate, the low-grade laborers from traditional rural areas, who had no modern technical training at all, could not meet the skill requirements of the technological age. Beginning in the latter half of the 1990s, job allocation for university graduates became more difficult by the day, and China suddenly found itself faced with the early arrival of the phenomenon of a “surplus intellectual workforce.” To avoid painting themselves into the corner of “to graduate is to be unemployed,” many university students chose to follow the path of “research” to enhance “employability.” In the past four years, the number of students opting for “research” has increased annually by 30 percent. Some people have been referring cynically to this phenomenon as “a temporary suspension of three years from employment.” In fact, the large increases in the intake of undergraduate students among universities in the past two years appear to have served a similar function. These circumstances have once again brought to the forefront the various social conflicts caused by what is commonly called “the three agro-issues,” namely issues related to rural China, peasants and agriculture. Once again, society is made to feel the “age-old pains” of China’s modernization process. And all researchers genuinely concerned about the reality in China must sadly admit that “the three agro-issues” still pose a fundamental challenge during China’s course of modernization. He: In China’s several-thousand-year history, peasants have always made up the majority of the population. When peasants are taken care of, the country is taken care of. The most basic approach to pacify the peasant population has always been to “oblige the peasants back to the field,” to allow them to farm. However, now that farming has become an enterprise with marginal benefit or even negative value, those who have been farming for generations suddenly are realizing that they cannot make enough of a living even if they farmed well. In fact, this realization has led some to the preference of farming less. Many peasants from the food-basket area around Hubei, Hunan, and Dongying Lake (which has been described as “when Hu and Guang ripe, the country is bountiful”) have left their farmland barren to earn a living by engaging in various types of activities away from their home villages. \[3\] In Hunan Province’s Lian Yuan City, the total farmland in Jin Jia Village, Feng Ping County, is only 869 Chinese acres, or 0.72 Chinese acre per capita, which is 0.08 Chinese acre lower than the basic subsistence level. Since farming cannot support their living, villagers left one after another, leaving almost 130 Chinese acres of farmland abandoned. \[4\] A writer once made a record of the gross accounts of farming relatives in a village. A peasant family of four has six acres of farmland. Because of the natural climatic condition in the mountains, farmers rely on climate for their yield. In 1999, this peasant family only harvested a little more than 400 catties of half-kernel wheat. Last year was a little better: the same family harvested over 3,000 catties of wheat, which was sold at 0.34 yuan per catty for over 1,000 yuan. The purchase of fertilizers alone cost over 200 yuan. The family had to retain more than 2,000 catties for its own consumption. The remaining 1,000 or so catties would not even fetch them 500 yuan. In addition, each family member had to pay the authorities remittances and fees for village coordination, volunteer services, accumulated labor work, agricultural taxes and so on. Every person had to remit 153 yuan; therefore for a family of four the total came to 612 yuan. The cousin of the author exclaimed that after a year of hard work on the farm, the household income was still less than the expenses, as the family had to sell its pigs and use wages earned elsewhere to subsidize the payments to the authorities. What really frustrate peasants is the special farm produce tax, which comes to 65 yuan per person. The local “officials” force peasants to farm 0.4 Chinese acre of peppers per peasant to assess the farming and forestry special produce tax. Even in a good year, the yield of a one Chinese acre of a pepper field is only over 300 yuan per catty. During a drought year, the field usually yields nothing. Nevertheless, the village government would still insist on collecting the pepper-growing special farm produce tax. Under such circumstances, peasants all want to be relieved from this field responsibility. \[5\] This situation exists in various degrees all across the country. Only in areas where the non-agricultural economy is highly developed do the peasants have a slightly greater resilience to shoulder such pressure. Cheng: In reality, the decline in peasant income emerged quite some time ago. I discovered a thesis released in 1996 that analyzed the per capita actual income (i.e. income after deducting inflation and that can be compared on a year by year basis) of peasants from all provinces across the country between 1987 and 1994. The analysis showed that only peasants in the four provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Heilongjiang managed to have their actual income grow in a way that was somewhat comparable to the income growth of the urban population across the country. In the provinces of Guangdong and Zhejiang, where township enterprises are most developed and peasants are most affluent, the average income of their peasants in 1994 only reached half that of the average income of urban residents across the country. In the five provinces and autonomous regions of Anhui, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Hunan and Guizhou, the situation was worse. In these areas, the average actual income of farmers in 1994 was either less than that of 1987 or remained the same without growth. \[6\] Thereafter, peasants in more and more areas found their income growth trapped in a stagnant or declining state. Recently the State Statistics Bureau began to acknowledge that income growth of peasants has obviously declined, sometimes reaching only two to three percentage points. In fact, judging from some reports at the grassroots level, even these official figures were highly inflated. Many township and county heads often intentionally inflate the peasant income to dress up their results. Even when the peasants’ farming income decline, some grassroots officials simply submit reports that applies the maximum yield for the number of fruit trees and maximum eggs that can be laid for the number of hens owned by the household so as to come up with a collection of peasant family income showing “growth.” These officials do not care how many eggs the hens actually laid or how many fruits trees actually yielded. Experienced economic statisticians all realize that the statistics of peasant income prepared by the State Statistics Bureau tend to be overestimated. If these were used as the basis to project the consuming power of all the peasants across the country, there would be an obvious error of over estimation. This can in fact be judged against the fact that the demand for the peasant consumer market remains stagnant for many years. Furthermore, in recent years there is a tendency for the cash income of peasants to decline year after year. The State Statistics Bureau, in order to “highlight” the growth of peasant income, preferred to use the index of “annual net income per peasant” instead of the index that compared “cash income per peasant.” It is because by using the index of “annual net income per peasant, ” they can include, at a discount, all the produce that the peasants produced for self-consumption even though the amount of cash on hand had become less and less. As long as they could include, whenever needed, the staple data that peasants retain for themselves in the statistics, the officials could “come up” with a “one to two percent growth” in peasant income. Because the price of agricultural produce has declined time and again in recent years, peasants would suffer a great loss if they sell all their harvested crops. They have had to temporarily stockpile the produce at home. The more heavily a province depends on agriculture, the higher the proportion is this non-realizable “income” relative to the peasants’ net income. Had it not been for the about 100 million peasants working elsewhere and brought some cash back to their families, it is doubtful whether many peasant families would be able to even have enough cash for the mandatory fees and remittances. When the urban population is dreaming of a comfortable life style in the new century, probably not that many people realize that the rural economy is trapped in a dire state, and that as a result, our metropolitan exuberance is in fact very fragile. If we fail to identify the issues concerning the current state of modernization for some 900 million peasants in China, and if we look only at the activities in major metropolitan areas, we can easily misjudge the overall picture of China’s economic situation. He: Peasants unwilling to farm is a new problem that has never happened before in the history of China. This leads me to think about the fate of China’s much revered study of history. The main categories of Chinese civilization can be grouped into four: Jing, Shi, Zi, Ji (Confucian classics, history, philosophy and belles letters). The historical status of history is just below Jing (Confucian classics). The imperial advisor to the emperor had to provide advice on history as well as on Jing (Confucian classics). However, studies in this particular subject had been a total failure in the past two decades and are trapped in a wilting state beyond revitalization. The root problem probably lies in the traditional function of history on which it is based —“know your history so that you know the rise and fall of the nation”—has been lost. Contemporary society can no longer find any relevance in political experiences and administrative systems from history that would serve as reference. Therefore history has literally become “the study of dead things in the past.” Take the issue of rural peasants as an example. The experience of “settling and pacifying peasants” acquired through the 25 dynasties probably does not provide any real relevance nowadays. Things and situations change; we have to rely on our own effort to search for solutions to the new challenges that come along in the new era. The challenge posed by the “three agro-issues,” i.e., rural China, peasants and agriculture, is not something that anyone engaged in the study of China issues can afford to avoid. If the “three agro-issues” are not satisfactorily resolved, even the most vibrant urban economy will become a floating oasis amid the economic sea of small peasants. When the strong wind and high wave come, the oasis would be toppled. This has been the bitter lesson that we have learned several times over from various major peasant-revolutions that have occurred in modern history. Arbitrary Remittances Drive Farmers’ Plight from Bad to Worse Cheng: In recent years, what has been really heartbreaking is that corrupt rural officials have imposed a string of arbitrary levies that scrape clean the already meager income of peasants struggling for survival. The unreasonable burden that peasants have to shoulder has never been heavier. The situation is so severe that the media in China occasionally exposes some isolated cases. It is even said that the “three levies and five collections” are about to crush all the peasants. He: The heavy burden on peasants is a very serious problem. The levies and taxes that peasants have to pay are far too heavy relative to their overall incomes. There are far too many fees and taxes and many of those are arbitrary. There is a saying in the rural areas, “The first tax is light, the second heavy, and the third is like a black hole.” Here, the “third tax” refers to the arbitrary fees and taxes, to which peasants in many areas are opposing. Why does the rural administration impose arbitrary fees? Although local authorities often use the pretext of subsidizing educational funding for locally run schools to justify an increase in taxes, taxes are raised to support the rural cadres in reality. The hierarchy of China’s political authorities usually stops at the county level, as China’s Open Door Policy has disbanded the People’s Commune. There often has not been a clear definition for organizational structure at the township level. As of now, governments at the rural levels have already evolved into the first level of authority that has real monetary power. It is currently expanding in an altered format to the village level. Responding to the enormous bureaucracy of the central, provincial and county governments, the township government likewise expands year after year and has also established various organizational departments. These departments in turn have generated a string of business units and affiliated enterprises, large and small, supporting more and more people who do not have much real work to do. They all carry the banner of serving the peasants, but in reality it is simply a pretext that allows them to collect money from the peasants to support their own living. These people form an enormous established interest group. Even at the village level, many people are trying, through relationship manipulation, to join the privileged group to become government officials who “bear no official title.” The China Economic Times published a letter written by an old farmer to the central leadership, which said that two decades ago, there were only 30 government officials in the village where he lives. Now there are more than 300. Where does money come from to support this ever-expanding team of government cadres? Ultimately, they scrape it from the peasants. In some areas, they set up some form of a “levy card” system for the peasants with a view to make the remittances more transparent so as to minimize arbitrary levies. In 1997, Tong Zhou City of Jiansu Province conducted a specific research on farmers’ encumbrances. Director for the Peasant Office at that city pointed out that the increase of encumbrances in absolute terms that farmers have to bear has been huge in recent years. Many rural areas include many service charges and other fees in the levy card — such as joint defense security fee, farm machinery maintenance fee, fees for listening to broadcasts, the personal portion of collaborative medical fees, tap water supply installation fee and cable television installation fee — those should not have been included in the first place. This has far expanded the amount that peasants would otherwise have to bear in accordance with properly decreed regulations. Cheng: The crux of the problem in reality is not entirely due to local governments acting outrageously. Another reason is that the central government scrapes too much and disregards the financial difficulties at the grassroots level. After the implementation of tax reform in 1994, the central government is obviously financially much better off and is having less constraints when spending money. But the share of financial resources of local authorities contracted in relative terms, and their financial income became insufficient to support the ever-expanding team of officials at the provincial, county and township administration. In the past few years, more and more counties have found their financial situation to be so tight that it was difficult to pay wages on time. Under the collective system, local authorities without sufficient revenue would obviously lead the provincial government to squeeze the county government, and the county government in turn would squeeze the township government. In the end, both the county and township governments do not have sufficient income to cover all their expenditures. Then, the county and township governments would inevitably pass on a large portion of their daily expenses to the peasants, and use the remittances and encumbrances outside the tax system to force the farmers to support the local officials. Although some rural governments have tried to “downsize,” the number of officials has not been reduced. “Downsizing” has meant reclassifying many of the administrative organizations to generate pretexts for new fees in the financial budget to become “self-supporting.” On the surface, this reduces the number of party and government officials and organizations that are being supported under the category of listed expenditures. At the same time, however, it creates many organizations that rely on arbitrary charges or unjustified fines for survival (such as the family planning office at the township level, justice office, civil administrative office, etc.), and legitimizes the actions of those organizations scraping money from the general public under the pretexts of providing management and public services. These organizations were originally indispensable departments required within the administration for public services delivery. The reason peasants have to pay taxes is to support the operation of these departments. Since these departments have financial support, there is no reason why they have to levy further charges when delivering such services. At best, they should only charge a minimal service fee for cost recovery, which is common among countries with normal standard practices. However, some provinces in China have “reformed” these indispensable departments for service delivery into quasi-governmental organizations totally depending on fee collection for survival, so that they could save the regular tax revenue to support surplus organizations and government officials that have no legitimate reason to collect fees. This is asking for the public for the impossible. They are using the community’s need for services as a mechanism to pass on the cost for public services delivery, and to collect the disguised “public services tax” from the peasants. At the same time, they have “coerced the good to become bad,” inducing these service-delivery administrative organizations to scrape people’s means in the name of providing services. As a result, some organizations distort their basic responsibilities of providing services into taking advantage of and blackmailing peasants simply to increase the income of their officials or boosting the funding for extraneous items such as motor vehicles or cellular phones. Many strange and unimaginable phenomena have then emerged. For example, the justice office now thinks that the more dispute cases it has in the rural areas the better; the civil administrative department wishes that there were more divorce cases, because only then would they be able to “generate more income.” The most absurd is that the family planning office on the one hand hunts down women for sterilization operation, and on the other hand wishes that they would be caught pregnant in violation of the family planning policy. When there is gambling in the village, the township police would be smiling to themselves because only then would they be able to impose heavy fines on the peasants and make more money for the department. These practices have become increasing common over the past five years. In 1996, some scholars overcame the barriers and obstacles posed by rural cadres and conducted an in-depth research into the various villages inside Henan Province. They discovered many incidents of this kind. \[7\] As long as the huge team of public servants in and out of establishment exists, the local authorities will inevitably try every means to apportion the expenditures. The central government clearly understands the situation and instructs to ban levies and encumbrances as such. In reality they are only putting up a show, knowing too well that the ban is useless. In addition, the enormous number of cadres at the county and township levels in and out of establishment not only need to spend and be fed, but also want to keep up with the consuming level of the public servants in the coastal and prosperous regions. Not only do they want to lead a comfortable life but also to climb one step up the living standard for the new century. For instance, in the 1970s and 1980s, rural heads usually lived in the locality of their offices. They could either walk or bike home. Nowadays 90 percent of the rural heads across the country live in the county town. They employ state vehicles to commute to and from work between the county town and the government office, incurring annual costs in purchasing, maintenance, chauffeur and gasoline up to hundreds of billion yuan. It is impossible for the grassroots level to include massive expenses as such in the existing budget, and more than half of the costs would undoubtedly be offloaded to the peasants under all kinds of pretexts. As a result, a substantial percentage of peasants’ annual income is written off for the sake of “modernizing the transportation” of rural leadership. Two years ago newspapers such as the China Reform Journal criticized this phenomenon, while the central government made an appeal to address the issue of “private use of public vehicles.” Nevertheless, once the issue touched on the immediate interests of the cadres at various levels, such calls for reform deteriorated into its usual “all talk but no action” and vanished without a whimper at the end. At the rural level, the number of public servants currently released from work and rely on “three levies and five collections” has peaked at 1.4 million \[8\]. Even if new cadres were not recruited from among the peasants, just those discharged from the military and those graduating from high schools, universities as well as training and technical schools would require job allocation and add over one million people to the work force. According to the analysis of Zhang Peisen and Liu Zuo at the Scientific Research Institute of the State Administration of Taxation, the arbitrarily raised funds, imposed fines, collected fees and apportioned remittances amount to 10 percent of the GDP in as early as 1996, which is more or less equivalent to the amount of the country’s properly decreed taxation. \[9\]. In the past five years the ratio has sharply increased. A large portion of this alarming burden has rested on the shoulders of the peasants. As a result, the financial burden of the peasants since early 1990s has intensified every year. According to statistics, the average taxes and collective cost recovery and the like for an individual peasant has increased annually by 18 percent from 1990 to 1995, 100 percent higher than the growth of peasant income in the same period. \[10\] Jin Qing, Author of China by the Yellow River, records in his book the words of Liu, owner of an apple orchard who has “a lucrative brain as well as some thoughts” in Tai Kang County, Henan Province. “The taxes are plenty and heavy. Encumbrances come in so many different names that no one can make head or tail of them. In reality, the rural cadres never explain clearly which is what to the peasants, and the burden is unbearably heavy. As soon as the summer and fall harvests are done every year, the rural cadres would bring along the public security people from the local police station to the village, demanding levies and pressing the common folks out of breath. I can say that, in recent years, the country folks have been living in terror and fear.” \[11\] These words sound as if the clock has turned back to the times of the Republic of China but in reality reflect the thinking of the poor Chinese peasants. Regrettably the media in China can rarely publish voices of this kind. He: The rural survey team of the State Statistical Bureau released a survey result in 1999. Out of the net income of the peasants across the country, an average of 5.2 percent is for the state and collective agencies. The ratio of other encumbrances out of net income is: 3.5 percent for the eastern provinces, 7.3 percent for the central provinces, and 5.5 percent for the western provinces. The more the region is economically underdeveloped, the heavier is the burden of encumbrances on the peasants. \[12\] The state stipulates that the levy of “three levies and five collections” must not be over 5 percent of the peasant’s net income in the previous year. For peasants in comparatively affluent regions, there is not much of a problem paying at this level and people may not feel much burdened. For example, half of the peasants in the Guangdong area no longer engage in agriculture, and taxes at this level cannot be counted as heavy to those “privileged peasants.” \[13\] However, 52 percent of the peasant families in China now are still at the basic subsistence level and can barely feed and clothe themselves. For these low-income families, the portion kept from their harvested crops is already huge and strap cash income. The 5 percent tax of net income may account for a substantial portion of their cash income. As a result, the tax that is not a burden to the peasants in economically developed regions is in real terms more than half of the peasant families across the country can shoulder. The Economic and Finance Working Committee of the Standing Committee of Tong Zhou City’s People’s Congress in Jiangsu Province once produced a very conscientious document called the “Investigative Report on Encumbrances on Peasants in the City.” Since the writer of the report is conscientious and down to earth, the report contains more than the usual clichés and actually describes the arbitrary fee collection over and beyond the “three levies and five collections” clearly decreed for rural regions. The report sent a very important message: it is not only the township and village governments that add encumbrances to the peasants. According to the report, statistics from 12 townships illustrate that the absolute value of peasants’ encumbrances on average increased 40 percent in 1997. In extreme cases one saw an increase of 74.6 percent, which was around 20 percent higher than the average increase in per capita net income. The encumbrances that some peasants bore were several times higher than that of the previous year. This was mainly due to a few reasons. First, the figures for peasant net income were highly inflated, which increased the coefficient for the actual encumbrances as well as the burden of the peasants. Second, many construction projects undertaken by higher levels of rural governments also extend encumbrances to the grassroots level and peasants to various degrees. Take roadwork as an example. Each township has to shoulder tens of thousands of yuan and in some cases even close to a million. Some townships would collect expenses to replace labor work, whereas some would collect encumbrances according to the number of laborers or headcounts in the household. Third, there are too many encumbrances beyond the scope decreed by the official documents, such as donations of all kinds, target for “double modernization,” remaking of rural drinking water systems, fees to remove graves for farmland restoration, conscription fee for youths of appropriate age, joint defense security fee, education collection and advancement of capitals and so on. Although these items are mostly good and practical items for the benefit of the people, they demand financial capabilities well beyond that of the local administration and generally require compulsory apportion in order to implement. \[14\] The Tong Zhou City’s People’s Congress can be described as caring enough to pay attention to the benefits of the peasants, but some local authorities are so greedy that they are merely ruthless and lawless. For example, in Zong Yang County of Anhui Province, the Qian Pu Township administration even illegally set up a local “private tax” in order to rip people off. Regardless of income, the “individual income tax” is compulsory and collected according to headcounts; regardless of production of special farm produce, “special farm produce tax” is collected. When there are no other pretexts available, the officials even are brazen enough to add an item called “other income tax.”\[15\] Regrettably, these are not isolated cases. Many local governments at the village and township levels, on the one hand, keep themselves busy collecting various kinds of fees and taxes illegally, exploiting ordinary folks. On the other hand, they float many loans and accumulate debts. This situation has become so severe that it has seriously impeded the healthy development of local economies in the rural areas. According to the results of surveys on indebtedness in the entire province of Hunan, the total debt of Hunan’s village and township governments in 1998 reached 5.93 billion yuan, 88.4 percent of all local governments were in debt that year, with an average amount of debt at 2 million yuan. These debts had been primarily caused by illicit expenditures such as private embezzlement of public funds. The funds were appropriated for one project to boost another entirely unrelated program, such as the purchase of lavish luxurious cars, payment of excessive taxi fees, “talking” fees with call girls and the like. \[16\] At the moment peasants who rely on agricultural income in many areas simply cannot afford to pay the encumbrances. More than often they have to find other work to pay these charges. This not only demonstrates that rural agriculture has found it difficult to support the enormous expenditures incurred by the rural administration. It also indicates that many encumbrances of inland rural administration have stretched to the coastal regions because of rural labor mobility. In other words, rural administration relies on the taxes drawn from rural laborers undertaking non-agricultural activities to maintain its expenditures. It has been reported that the reach of some rural cadres of a certain village in Hubei Province’s Jian Li County has been extended to as far as a garbage village in Haikou City, Hainan Province. The cadres pressed for the remittances from village residents that have moved their households to Haikou to glean and collect garbage for survival. \[17\] Because of the unbearable burden, there have been several peasant protests opposing arbitrary levies and fees. Confrontation between the peasants and the local governments has grown more and more acute. Amid the confrontation a new kind of “peasant leaders” have also emerged: advocates for the local peasants’ benefits and interests. \[18\] Last year an article in the \[Guangzhou-based newspaper\] Southern Weekend created a stir. It reported that the publisher of the Collected Essays on Rural Development, a magazine in Jianxi Province, produced a supplementary issue entitled The Working Manual to Reduce Encumbrances on Peasants. The issue compiled a collection of all the central government’s official documents on agricultural policies to help peasants understand what fees are mandatory and what fees are arbitrarily collected by the local authorities. Nonetheless the supplementary issue was categorized as “reactionary publication” by the local government. In the end the chief editor of the publication had to leave town to hide from the government. \[19\] In the city of Chongqing, Sichuan Province, up to 100 residents of Yu Sha Village in Wu Xi County have fled to the mountains to escape taxation, and a peasant woman committed suicide because she could not bear the financial burden. \[20\]. These are obvious illustrations that arbitrary fees and levies in rural China have become a tyranny fiercer than the tiger. Cheng: In recent years, the biggest dilemma facing rural cadres on the grassroots level is the conflict between encumbrances and their opponents. The harder life becomes for the peasants, the harder is the rebound against the encumbrances. In order to reap enough benefits from the peasant household, many rural authorities keep teams—for example, “Crops Collecting Teams”—to serve as a “secondary police force” to force payment from the peasants. Between the rural authorities and the peasants a “vicious cycle of positive and negative feedback” occurs: the more the peasants are against the encumbrances, the more the cadres in the rural administration need to recruit collecting teams to impose encumbrances. This in turn increases the encumbrances and fees, resulting in stronger opposition from the peasants. The more conflicts there are between peasants and the rural administration, the more likely it is for higher levels of governments to increase the number of grassroots cadres and strengthen the function of the local authorities. This would inevitably increase the encumbrances that are already placed on the peasants’ shoulders, creating more and sharper conflicts between the peasants and the rural administration. This vicious cycle of government-driving-people-to-poverty will only make both sides suffer. As the peasants gradually come to understand the parasitic and predatory nature of their administration and affiliated organizations, the tensions will inevitably accumulate and come to a breaking point. One would be hard-pressed to find any positive effects out of such a process. What are the root causes for peasant poverty? He: According to statistics made public by the government, peasant income has grown very little since 1997. In 1998, peasant cash income registered zero percent growth for the first time since many years. \[21\] A report in 2000 by the rural survey team of the State Statistics Bureau indicates that while per capita salary incomes reached 16,641 yuan and 14,054 yuan for residents of Shanghai and Beijing, respectively, the annual net income per capita for rural residents in 1999 was merely 2,210 yuan. Among such peasants, 52 percent are rural families who had less than 2,000 yuan of annual net income per capita, the amount necessary on the most basic subsistence level. In addition, 26 percent of the rural families had an annual net income per capita between 2,000 and 2,999 yuan, which allow for some amount of surplus and savings beyond basic subsistence. \[22\] Thus, it can be seen that approximately 40 percent of the total rural population are families at the basic subsistence level. Some attribute poverty in rural China to the excessively heavy burden imposed on peasants. In fact, this is only one side of the problem. Even if reform of the taxation system in the rural areas were fully implemented, it would only serve to partially alleviate the burden on the peasants but not solve the root problem of rural poverty. The root causes of poverty for Chinese peasants as a whole lie not in the excessively heavy encumbrances but in low output per capita and low surplus per capita. China is a huge agricultural nation and people would probably feel self-satisfied just by looking at total figures made public by the various relevant governmental departments. For example, when looking back at the Ninth Five-Year Plan period, China’s agricultural production capabilities have steadily improved and some newspapers have reported that our country’s annual grain output has reached 504.88 million tons, with the basic average level kept at more than 500 million tons. The annual average output for oil-bearing crops, sugar-yielding crops, meat, aquatic products are respectively 23.20 million tons, 89.68 million tons, 53.53 million tons and 37.30 million tons. In terms of total output, our country’s agricultural outputs rank first in the world. \[23\] What issue does this “number one ranking” raise? Comparing the level of economic development in various countries is not a “who is bigger” game played with total outputs. Ever since demography became a field of study, people have known that a country’s social wealth and economic strength should be measured in terms of its wealth per capita and production rate per capita. If, we try to calculate an average output based on China’s total population or agricultural population based on these total outputs, then we cannot dodge the fact that the output of our country’s individual agricultural laborer is very low. Take grain for example. Over 300 million laborers produce 500 million tons of grain, and the grain output per capita is only 3,000 catties, of which more than two-thirds is used to feed 900 million people in the rural population. The surplus grain that each rural laborer can afford to put to sale is only several hundred catties. Those “grandiose” total outputs cannot dissimulate the true picture that China is an agriculturally weak country. Having tremendous total outputs and little surplus per capita has always been an outstanding issue. Since the reintroduction of the small peasant economic system 20 years ago, the ensuing release from the old system trammel have once brought prosperity to agricultural sectors. From 1979 to 1984, the gross domestic production ratio of agriculture was higher than that of 1978 by several percentage points. This in reality reflects the rebound of the production force that had been held back during the era of the people’s commune. Since the mid-to-late 1980s, various malpractices that have plagued the agricultural sector gradually emerged into public view, including backward means of production, severe diminishing of marginal remuneration when the yield per acre reached the highest level, low production rate per laborer, backward and obsolete form of rural social organizations, etc. As a result, agriculture in China once again gradually showed a sense of fatigue, with its proportion in the gross domestic production sliding to only 18 percent in 1998. \[24\] Relevant materials have shown that such proportion remains unchanged in recent years. In the meantime, however, the state can no longer get much revenue from the agricultural sectors. In 1999, the state’s finance arm collected 100 billion from the rural areas through various channels, \[25\] while the total financial revenue of the state for the same year exceeded 1,000 billion \[26\]. In other words, the primary industry of agriculture that takes up most of China’s labor force only contributes one tenth of the state financial revenue as its share of contribution to society. In fact, the meager revenue from agricultural taxes is far less than the financial investment in agricultural, forestry and water projects. Since the reform, the economic system in rural China has by and large been restored to the normal state in which market regulation dominates. In terms of economic capabilities and technology, it is not impossible for China to undergo modernization in agricultural production. The traditional household-based, small-peasant farming model is still practiced due to pressure from excessive population. Cheng: Any social distribution and redistribution can only be made on the basis of surplus. The low-efficient output of agriculture in China makes it difficult for peasants even to maintain their basic subsistence. The rural population, which makes up 70 percent of the total population, and the rural labor force, which makes up 50 percent of the country’s working age population, would find it impossible to feed themselves through the agricultural sector that produces merely 18 percent of the GDP. Mr. Wen Tiejun, an agricultural expert, pointed out that with the increase in population, 900 million peasants could only maintain their basic subsistence with 0.1 hectare of farmland per head. In 1998, the net output value from agriculture reached 1,383 billion, but the output value per capita is only 1,537 yuan. After deducting two-thirds for self-consumption, the actual income is only about 500 yuan. We can therefore conclude that after deducting the fixed costs and cost of active labor, the income per Chinese acres from most crops of conventional agricultural sectors is in the negative. There is no surplus for agriculture. However, the rural superstructure established during the 1980s when peasants’ income increased must rely on agricultural surplus to maintain; hence the phenomenon of excessive and arbitrary fees and charges are instituted in a manner of “drying a pond to catch fish.” \[27\] He: Actually, the fact that agricultural sectors in China do not produce any surplus is not a new problem. According to the concept of “moderate population growth” advanced by Edwin Cannon of the Cambridge School, there should be an appropriate ratio between the labor force and farmland acreage. He pointed out that during any certain period of time, the population farming on acreage and obtaining the maximum production rate is certain. In other words, in a fixed period of time with other conditions unchanged, revenue will increase in proportion to the labor input increase; but, when labor is increased to the maximum earning yield, there is no increase of earning yield. The population commensurate with the maximum earning yield point is the optimal population for the society. When the increase of labor exceeds this point, the earning yield decreases proportionally, which leads to the decrease in degrees of marginal rates of return. In his book entitled Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, Chinese American scholar Philip C. Huang makes use of the data gathered from North China to specifically discuss the concept of the “high level balance pitfall”. The implication of this concept is that excessive labor surplus in China causes intensive farming to reach a state of shrinkage in marginal return. My book entitled Population: the Sword of Damocles hanging on China also discussed this issue. In particular, I cited the narration of Bao Shicheng’s Agricultural Administration in Prefectures and Counties, in which he said that “when farming a paddy field or a dry farmland, apply manure to the field will result in the increase of one dou (one deciliter) of grain. Adding one more laborer would result in the increase of two dou of grains. Bao Shicheng said that to farm one Chinese acre of paddy field requires 8 to 9 laborers. If the yield per Chinese acre is 1.5 shi, then, adding one more laborer will only increase the output by 1/30. It is more or less the case in multiple cropping. Double cropping a paddy field only yields 20-30 percent more than single cropping. That is to say, in as early as Qing Dynasty, people had realized that the yield per unit acreage could not be increased in the same proportion as the labor force. Compared with the modernization of other agricultural countries, China is characterized by a rather unique phenomenon: while the total farmland in rural areas and farmland per capita have decreased, the number of rural households is increasing. That is the complete opposite to the international trend of growth in per household acreage under cultivation. In 1978, the acreage under cultivation in China was 99,938.5 kilo-hectares, with 1,030 square meters per capita, 5,730 square meters per household. In 1995, while the cultivated area has decreased by 4.5 percent to 94,970.9 kilo hectare, farmland per capita sharply decreased by 24.3 percent to only 780 square meters. Acreage per household also sharply decreased by 28.8 percent to 4,080 square meters. \[28\] This astonishing decrease directly led to the diminution of household farming and the increase of rural surplus labor. The shrinkage in farming scale is turning farther and farther away from the acreage under cultivation per peasant required by modern agriculture. Some people have made such comparison: by the current German nourishment standard, a German peasant on the average produces enough food for the consumption of 55 people. In China, 65 percent of its labor force (28 percent of its total population) are engaged in farming, which means that a Chinese peasant on average can only feed less than four people – equivalent to the number of people in his household – but the calories and protein intake is much lower than the German level. This calculation is based on an average Chinese family of four. In fact, the average number for a rural family usually is more than five. I would like to add one more point; if one is to calculate the ecological cost required for feeding Chinese peasants, it should be said that they are the most expensive labor force in the world. For example in the Liangshang Region, it is necessary to weed out grass and trees on several hills before one can grow potato for food and fuel to feed people. When some environmentalists conducted an investigation tour to the Southwest and Northwest regions and saw this, they just blurted out: “people are tantamount to a grass-cutting machine.” So emphasizing our country’s cheap labor force is misleading. When measuring the price of labor, one should not merely take into consideration the paltry wages a laborer might get but must calculate the actual cost to maintain people’s livelihood and the cost to the entire economy. From the above analysis, it can be seen that the root causes for poverty in rural China arise from the low production rate of farming and the small amount of per capita surplus. “Excessive and arbitrary charges imposed on peasants” are like salt on existing wounds. Our drive to aid the poor for all this time in reality is similar to breastfeeding those who live with terrible natural conditions. In other words, the state helps poverty-stricken people maintain their basic subsistence through financial transfer. In light of the present conditions in rural China, we can only come to one conclusion: under the circumstance where rural farming has not made any big revolutionary change, it is not possible to root out the causes of poverty in rural China even if excessive and arbitrary charges on peasants were alleviated. Where is the way out for the rural surplus labor force? Half of the past 50 years have been spent on carrying out forced collectivization of peasants, causing low yield in agricultural production and aggravated poverty in rural areas. In the meantime, strict control on residential permit and migration has enchained peasants to the village where their ancestors have lived. They can only eke out a poor existence in dire poverty. In the early 1980s, as \[nationwide\] rural reform abolished the People’s Commune, which highly restricted peasants’ economic and personal freedoms, agricultural production quickly increased and peasants indulged themselves somewhat in the small-peasants-dream of a bucolic life that they had once lost. However, the severe imbalance between population and natural resources–which is severe for China–has once again revealed itself. With agricultural income decreasing and heavy encumbrances aggravating difficulties, more and more peasants are compelled to find their living elsewhere. The successful transformation of the Chinese society now hinges on finding a way out for surplus labor in the rural areas. He: The extraordinary increase in population has almost nibbled away the fruits of economic growth in China for the past 300 years. The People’s Commune system of distributing grain according to headcount has greatly stimulated peasants’ desire for birth. In the earlier stage of reform, after the household contract responsibility system was introduced, the aroused enthusiasm for production led to an increased agricultural production rate. Everybody was lulled into believing that there was no more population crisis. Later when the problem was identified, it was believed that the urbanization of population would gradually narrow down the polarization between the urban and rural economies. I remember reading a book entitled On Dual Economies by an American development economist. The booming township enterprises that absorbed rural surplus labor heightened everybody’s expectations. The so-called “trio employment model” for Chinese peasants – working in agricultural sector, township enterprises, and migrant worker working across the regions – was formed at that time. This model was regarded by everyone as a long-term and effective channel to absorb rural surplus labor. In 1998 when it was still not very difficult to get a job in the cities, a survey conducted in 38 counties and municipalities showed that peasants who left their land to seek jobs elsewhere made up one-sixth of the rural labor force. In the lower-income counties or municipalities, peasants who left their land to seek jobs elsewhere made up 20 percent of the rural labor force, equivalent to 85 percent of the local non-agricultural working population. In the high-income counties, the labor force from elsewhere was 28 percent of the local workforce, 67 percent of the workers in the local township enterprises. During the period from 1989 to 1996, these migrant workers sent to their families a total of 34.8 billion yuan. Among 22 low-income counties, the funds brought home up to 4.5 billion yuan in 1996. From 1989 to 1996, the funds remitted back home reached 22 billion yuan. \[29\] Looking at the entire nation, one third of the workforce from the rural areas works in the non-agricultural sectors in 1998. Among them, 57 percent of the peasants’ income comes from the agricultural sectors, while as high as 43 percent thereof derives from the non-agricultural sectors. \[30\] Many peasants from the economically developed areas have bid farewell to their land. For example as early as 1996, 55 percent of the workforce in Zhejiang Province is engaged in non-agricultural sectors. In 1998, the income per capita for those shifted to the tertiary industry has exceeded 8,000 yuan, among which income per capita for those working in the transportation sector and commercial and restaurant sectors has exceeded 10,000 yuan, four times that for their counterparts working in the agricultural sectors.\[31\] Cheng: The situation in China is different from that in other developing countries. Because of a huge population base and high rural population growth, the urbanization process at a normal speed cannot solve the issue of employment for rural surplus labor in China. In other developing countries that underwent the urbanization process, the rural labor force gradually shifted to economic sectors in the cities. However, in China, even the economic sectors in the cities are in the dilemma of not being able to fully absorb the urban labor force. Thus, the rural labor force to a great extent has to pin their hopes on finding employment in township enterprises, making it the rather important aspect in the trio. And the absorption of the rural surplus labor by the township enterprises is an achievement in China’s economic reform worthy to be proud of. 1996 was the year when Chinese township enterprises absorbed most numerous rural labor force that exceeds 130 million people. \[32\] Afterwards, various drawbacks of the township enterprises, especially the ever-increasingly acute issues of environmental and sustainability, emerged. The enterprises were being transformed from extensive management to intensive management, going through the process of readjustment, contraction, reorganization, transformation of system and elimination. Under these circumstances, the township enterprises in recent years have been compelled to close down or to lay off their workers in succession. Not only are they not able to absorb any new labor force from the rural areas but they also have to disgorge labors by the dozens or millions. For that vast number of low-quality rural laborers who have had to leave their land but not their homeland, this is no longer a hurdle-free road. During the three years after 1996, the growth rate of the township enterprises was lower than 18 percent. In 1997 it was 17.8 percent, in 1998 17.5 percent while in 1999, the figure has fallen to 14.2 percent. In the meantime, the ability to absorb the rural surplus labor is tapering off. In the three years after 1996, the number of people working in the township enterprises is decreasing by five million each year. As a result, the number of people actually working in township enterprises at the moment is well below 120 million. \[33\] When the township enterprises were getting rid of rural laborers, the cities were also narrowing their doors. Prior to the mid-1990s, the government had been providing bank loans to support those state-owned enterprises noted for their low efficiency, lack of vitality and high wastefulness. The government managed to temporarily maintain economic growth and urban employment rate and avoided the thorny issue of reform for state-owned enterprises, because it might have caused headaches in aspects such as ideology and social control policies. Nevertheless, this expediency has planted the hidden plight for the financial systems, which might collapse because many banks are beset with bad debts. In the latter half of 1990s, to prevent the financial systems from collapsing, the government had to abandon some policies of protecting state-owned enterprises, as a result the state-owned economic sectors immediately fell into a predicament from which they cannot extract themselves. State-owned enterprises had to lay off their worker and staffs by hundreds of thousands. In order to alleviate the pressure on the cities for employment, the four cities that absorbed the most numerous rural laborers, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, promulgated some regulations requiring their enterprises. It is required that when recruiting new employees, local residents should be recruited by a certain percentage, thus diminishing the chances for outside laborers to get jobs. The decline of township enterprises is not only the result of the cyclic change of economic situation. A deeper cause lies in the system itself. In the past 20 years, the “hand” of the local governments has been instrumental in the rapid development of township enterprises, which was once seen by some scholars as the advantage in the model of Chinese township enterprise development. Now it can be seen that this “hand” has also caused the blinding and uneconomical nature of the enterprises. Once the nationwide “bubble economy” disappeared, township enterprises that once climbed aboard the bandwagon of bubble economy would find it hard to subsist. There was the “model of South Jiangsu,” once praised as the paragon of success for township enterprises, is now showing a picture of dilapidation. Cadres at the grassroots level in southern Jiangsu Province also have to admit that this road for development has its limit and they too have begun to reflect and self-examine. Some economists have proposed the development strategy of “developing small towns, accelerating the urbanization process so as to absorb the rural surplus labor.” This strategy, however, is not of much help given the great and urgent pressure the cities and countryside are facing. Moreover, the central government focuses the limited urban development funds on a few big cities designed to be “showcases” in its attempt to attract more foreign investments. But, when the governments at the provincial and county levels of inner China are strapped for funds, it is futile to pin the hope on the possibility that local funds will be diverted to develop medium and small-sized towns. Under this circumstance, if one pressured rural governments at the county and municipal levels to develop small towns, the burden of raising development funds will inevitably be shifted on to peasants, thus aggravating the situation in which peasants are already suffering from excessive charges. It would also make it easier for rural officials to line their own pockets through under-the-table dealings while contracting out urban utility projects. As a result, those small town projects that begin with fanfare might peter out towards the end. With a few roads, fancy hotels and landscaped strips but no enterprises that can subsist and develop and offer employment to rural surplus labor. And while peasants are made to suffer more from the rip-off, rural officials’ purses will bulge bigger. The outcome of the development projects of more than a few inner counties has proved this. The core issue for developing the economy and expanding job opportunities lies in the development of enterprises. However, it is precisely on this point that no one in China, from the top levels to the grassroots, is willing to do a profound self-examination of the system with which the state-owned and township enterprises are operating. Therefore, no feasible and promising enterprise development model has been summed up from the experience and lessons of the past 20 years. This, in fact, has fully reflected the drawback inherent in the model of incremental reform characterized by shortsightedness, conservatism. If this is the common shortcoming among the power-greedy officials, then the true intellectuals should not “dance to their tunes” by presenting a false picture of peace and prosperity. Though China has so many famous economists with grandiose academic titles, it is regrettable that most of them are only keen on “presenting memo to the throne” and “receiving attention from the emperor.” Very few of them dare to confront this realistic issue and to tell the truth. Disparity between the Urban and Rural Goes Back to Square One Cheng: In developed and industrialized countries, differences between town and country, together with the shrinking of the class of small peasants, have disappeared after urbanization. Things are different in developing countries. Excess rural labor constantly moves to cities whereas high-level development in the cities is done mostly at the cost of declining rural areas. This is especially the case in Asian countries. Governments of some developing countries often take pride in having cities with tens of millions of residents. Quite a few municipal governments in China have also listed as a modernization objective in their urban development plans to build large cities with millions of residents. It is worth noting that the rapid mechanical growth of urban population often plunges urban development into extreme chaos, resulting in the “urban disease” in developing countries. A large number of temporary and illegal buildings have appeared in many cities. There are no drainage systems around those buildings and piles of garbage have become scars on the faces of the cities. Urban transit systems cannot match the growth of populations, and outdated transit systems make it more difficult for residents to commute to and from work. Links between town and country are fragmented. As soon as you leave a city, you will see that rural streets are so bumpy that it is difficult to travel on. Governments of some developing countries like to use high-rise buildings and luxuriously decorated hotels in their cities to form various “windows of modernization” and show off their level of modernization to the international community as “achievements” of their countries. However, no matter how beautiful these “windows” are, it is an undeniable fact that as long as you go to the rural areas, you will find it full of gaping wounds, bleeding and difficult to heal. For the recent 10 years, urban construction in China has been advancing by leaps and bounds, which seems very exciting if China is viewed from this perspective. China as it is now in the 21st century has a few modern and flourishing urban “windows”, such as the four most bustling cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. From the perspective of residents in those cities, the quality of their life has reached the stage where attention is devoted to taking care of their health, looks and weight. More and more people own personal computers and have Internet access. Signs of internationalization in those cities have become more and more obvious. To tens of millions of residents in those cities, the new century seems to mean a comfortable lifestyle much like the one enjoyed by the developed countries. This is certainly appealing and gives people confidence in and beautiful dreams about the future. To match the vision of those urban residents, the media have depicted a new-century blueprint of “buying cars and living in new homes,” which has made even some Taiwan residents envious. Besides, there are early signs of urban-rural integration in coastal regions of Southern Jiangsu, Eastern Zhejiang and Guangdong. However, modernization in China has not reached the vast inland countryside and small towns at all. In recent years, the media in China have focused on the above-mentioned “windows” regions in their reports on the “excellent situation” in China. It is as if the image of China has been reduced to merely the image of a few cities. After visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, a foreigner may think this is China in the 21st-century. If the Chinese themselves think this is the case, they are deceiving themselves as well as others. From a more objective perspective, the vast inland countryside actually reflects the main problems in China because, after all, the majority of the Chinese population live there. The population in the prosperous regions in China is only tens of millions and, no matter how prosperous these regions are, they cannot bring about the development of the national economy. The inland has more than 90 percent of the entire Chinese population. Not only does the rural area have no place in the “prosperity in window dressing,” but most residents in medium-sized and small towns cannot see the “dawn of the new century” with respect to their personal development. In those medium-sized and small towns, monthly income of many families is only about a few hundred yuan and they can manage to eke out a living only because prices are low. However, unemployment rate is rising and young people do not have good job opportunities. Looking around, you will see local enterprises in a bad shape and the only way to make a living is to find a way to get a job in a government agency. At the moment, the gap between town and country is widening again and has returned to the 1978 level when reform just started. During our 20-year reform, the difference in income between town and country has shown a saddle-shaped pattern. There was a big gap at the end of the 1970’s, which was reduced in the mid 1980’s but widened again in the late 1980’s. The gap became obvious in 1999. During that year, the nominal growth rate of farmers’ cash income was 1.9 percent while the annual growth rate of urban residents’ income was 7.9 percent. While the difference in income growth between town and country was obvious, the State Council raised salaries for urban officials and employees in October, which further widened the gap between town and country. Upon calculation, an urban resident’s income today is equivalent to the combined income of 2.7 farmers. If factors like household population structure, spending patterns and charges are taken into account, the household burden coefficient for a rural laborer is higher than that of an urban laborer. While an urban resident’s income is for consumption only, part of the income of a farmer’s family has to pay for production and operation costs as well as investments. Furthermore, one third to one fourth of a farmer’s income will be taken away by various fees and charges. So the difference in consumption level between town and country is obvious. According to the data published by the State Statistics Bureau with respect to average annual living expenses, close to eighty percent (79.8 percent) of residents in China’s rural area spent less than 2,000 yuan on average for their household living expenses with three tiers – 500-999 yuan, 1,000-1,4999 yuan and 1,500-1,999 yuan. Only about twenty percent (20.91 percent) of them spent 2,000 yuan or more for their annual household consumption expenditure. Among them, 4.39 percent spent 2,500-2,999 yuan, 4.07 percent spent 3,000-3,999 yuan, 1.65 percent spent 4,000-4,999 yuan and only 2.44 percent spent 5,000 yuan or more. He: The poverty of rural China is also shown in consumer market shares. The direct consequence of a re-widened gap between town and country is the shrinking of the rural consumer market. The rural population makes up 70 percent of the national population but only 40 percent of the durable consumer products market and 20 percent of the urban and rural savings. At the same time, main durable consumer product industries across the country have an excess of production capacity at 50 percent in general. Take color TV sets as an example. While all urban households now have TV sets, only 10 percent of the rural households have them. According to another set of data from the State Statistics Bureau, during the period from 1995 to 1999, the Engel coefficient for urban residents dropped from 49.9 percent to 41.9 percent while, for rural residents, it fell from 58.6 percent to 52.6 percent. The reduction rate of the latter is two percentage points less than the former. \[38\] Cheng: I have calculated the data from the Annual Statistics of China 2000 and found that in 1999 the consumption per capita for approximately 700 million rural residents in 20 provinces in China’s inland was only 574 yuan. The consumption per capita for approximately 260 million residents in costal provinces and urban suburbs was 1,603 yuan. In comparison, the consumption per capita for urban residents in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, who together make up only 4.9 percent of the national population, was 11,819 yuan. In other words, one fourth of the consumer products across the country were sold to less than 5 percent of the national population, while rural residents in inland provinces, who make up 56 percent of the national population, purchased less than one seventh of the consumer products across the country. In fact, half of the urban population living in the richest cities in those two cities and three provinces belongs to low-income families and does not have strong buying power. Therefore, data about the average buying power in those richest cities only reflect the super buying power of about tens of millions of the Chinese elite population. Obviously, about 1 to 2 percent of the national population is currently at the top of the income and consumption pyramid. The commodity advertisements in the national media are basically for those people. The per capita buying power of rural residents in inland provinces, who make up the majority of the national population, is only one twenty-fifth of the former. This is a picture of the urban-rural gap in today’s China and the gap is widening. The widening of the urban-rural gap is related to the policies, which are biased toward cities. In recent years, there have been basically no more measures truly beneficial to farmers while policies to make a few urban residents’ good life even better have been introduced one after another. For example, the government constantly uses its financial resources to raise salaries for urban residents who work for state-owned organizations in the name of increasing domestic demands. In fact, half of the citizens residing in the rural area can only manage to eke out a living and they need more help than those who work for state-owned organizations. However, when the government increases income for the citizens, those it intends to take care of before anyone else are always government officials, who have fairly good salaries supplemented by additional income and more benefits. The 800 million poverty-stricken farmers have been quietly “forgotten.” But when the government mentions the increase of consumer product sales, they recall farmers and want them to spend more money. Its purpose is not to let farmers live a better life but to reduce inventories in state-owned enterprises in cities. Some urban-based economists call for the opening-up of the huge rural market and ask farmers to consume more, so that products from state-owned enterprises in cities have markets. When they are suggesting how to dig deeper into farmers’ empty wallets, they are too lazy to think seriously why, for so many years, the rural market has not been able to expand and, to the contrary, it is gradually shrinking. The tendency of some Chinese scholars to be biased towards cities is actually a reflection of the same tendency of the government. Not only do they seldom care about poverty-stricken rural residents who make up the majority of the population, but they also do not think about the cause of the farmers’ poverty. When people are talking about the new century image of a few cities, very few of them mention that the immediate issue in China is not to make a few large cities even better. If we save some of the urban construction funds in a few large cities, construct fewer super high “century buildings,” build fewer “round-the-city highways” or new subway lines and invest less in luxurious lighting along main boulevards, and if we instead invest the funds in the inland in the development of the rural areas, it will benefit the rural population, which is tens times larger than the urban population, and its economic collateral effect is immeasurable. At least, we will not have to ask urban residents to donate for the “Hope Project” to fund the “compulsory” elementary education of rural children on behalf of the government, which according to the Constitution should have funded such education. Having fewer of the aforementioned investments in the cities will not affect the prosperity of these cities; at most it means fewer halos on the “windows,” which are already bright enough. The reason that such a simple idea does not have a “market” is because it does not add brightness to the “windows” and “faces.” Since the rural area is not a “face” and is not a political “base,” the difficult situation of rural residents is not so “important.” Since the beginning of the 1990’s, 800 million farmers have rarely had active spokespersons in the policy research circle and have not drawn any well-deserved attention during the policy-making process. This is in very sharp contrast to the situation in the 1980’s and one of the reasons that the age-old “three agro-issues” are difficult to resolve. Among the experts and scholars who studied Chinese reform in the 1980’s, one of the strongest teams was a group of middle-aged and young economists affiliated with the Rural Policy Research Office led by Du Runsheng. They did researches perseveringly year in and year out and maintained a front-line perspective to observe the rural issues. They won the leadership position in both policy research and scholarly discussions and drew attention from the academic circles abroad. However, at the end of the 1980’s, this team was intentionally broken up and its members were repeatedly criticized. After that, although a few scholars persisted in studying the three agro-issues and had many results, they were no longer supported by strong teamwork and their research results were not taken seriously. During the three agro-issues policy discussions, the decision-makers turned to and relied on administrative and technical officials. Theses administrative and technical officials, however, have the characteristic of following the opinions of their superiors in every respect and often disrespect academic criterion necessary for down-to-earth, objective and systematic researches and policy studies. As a result, the quality of policy research regarding the three agro-issues in the 1990’s obviously deteriorated. It is no good for China to have lost a strong team in the study of the three agro-issues. What is more, the three agro-issues in the 1990’s became more complicated than before; they were not only economic issues, but also social issues; they were even related to political reform. After 10 years, the problem is finally exposed. Looking at the difficult situation faced by today’s rural area, we can only see analyses made by a few scholars and piecemeal reports by some journalists in the Chinese media. We can no longer see systematic, comprehensive and persuasive analyses and researches based on down-to-earth and first-hand researches as we saw in the 1980’s, let alone any benign interaction between such researches and policy-making with respect to the three agro-issues. There will be no solution to the problem of random collection of fees and taxes without political structural reforms Cheng: The effect of the one-time economic reforms of 1980s in the rural areas cannot possibly maintain any long-term sustained growth and prosperity in China’s rural economy. Some economists believe that once a market mechanism is introduced into the countryside, a reasonable rural economic system will naturally fall into place and therefore lead to the “fast track” of smooth future development. But reality has shown a totally different answer. One specific reason for the widening gap between urban and rural areas is that once the rural economic reforms have made some initial achievement, policies started to tilt more favorably towards cities. This in turn has helped speed up the transfer of resources to the urban development and increase exploitation of the farmers. First, during the second part of 1980s, financial resources were brought in to raise salaries of urban residents, increase price subsidies, and depress prices of agricultural products for the benefits of urban consumers. Later on, during 1990s, state-owned enterprises were allowed to raise the prices of their monopolized products on a large scale, which meant that all the benefits farmers received earlier on from increased prices of agricultural products were gradually taken back by state-owned enterprises as a result of higher farming costs. During the period of “bubble economy,” monopolized rural financial institutions moved large sums of farmer’s savings to urban real estate and stock markets, and as a result, employees of those financial institutions gained a great deal at the expense of those peasants. A side effect is that the residents in the “prosperous areas” also benefited, directly or indirectly, to a smaller or larger extent. Of course, the prosperity of urban areas also has to be with the injection of foreign investment. Huge amounts of foreign investment concentrated in a few metropolitan areas are bound to create some prosperity, but the inland rural areas are excluded from such opportunities. He: To be honest, I do not agree totally with what you have said. China’s rural poverty is not the result of favorable policies to cities. It is a fact that some policies are tilted towards the cities. But even if the government is more considerate of the countryside in distributing resources, the state of backwardness in the countryside and poverty of farmers will not be changed much. As a matter of fact, the root of the poverty problem in rural areas is the severe lack of balance between population and resources, too little farmable land against too many people, low productivity and low surplus income. The phenomenon of “random fees and taxes” only serves to make things worse. As long as there is no revolutionary progress in the agricultural production, even if rural taxation reforms are perfectly in place, it will only lessen peasants’ pressure, not eliminate the pattern of “breast-feeding the rural areas,” let alone solve the rural problems once and for all. The ultimate solution is to modify the unbalanced ratio between population and resources. Besides, the huge pressure of China’s enormous population is already forcing us to overuse our natural resources. Some environmental experts have pointed out that 38 percent of China’s land is already in danger of desertification, and many “poverty-stricken” areas are no longer habitable. To go to those regions to solve poverty problems is merely helping a certain group of people maintain a low-level livelihood at very high costs. Cheng: That’s a long-term goal, which doesn’t conflict with trying to reduce severe pressures of the rural areas in the short term. At the present time, China is facing a hard but important task, and that is how to ease the worsening economic crisis in the countryside through further rural structural reforms. The problem of “three nongs” (“nong yie” –agriculture; “nong cun” – countryside; “nong min” – rural residents, peasants, or farmers) is probably one of the most daunting challenges China has ever faced in the present century. Of course, the long-range solution to the “three nongs” problem is in the development of rural economy. But most of the lengthy, well-developed theories have not presented any short-term solution. Most of the measures offered by the authorities have been suggested by Chinese scholars in recent years and quoted many times in official documents. Those measures have not proven to be effective in the past, \[39\] and will have a hard time convincing people that they can produce miracles now. The most urgent need is to do something to make sure farmers can somehow manage to survive, either by increasing their income or reducing their financial pressure, or by doing both at the same time. In any case, some measures have to be implemented to alleviate the present rural crisis. During the negotiations with the U.S. government over China’s entry into WTO, the Chinese government insisted that the subsidy rate to their farmers should not be lower than 10 percent, while the US government suggested a rate no higher than 8 percent. The Chinese government at the time put on an attitude as if to say that China would rather delay entrance into WTO than back down on their demands. The difference in 2 percent appeared to be vital to the protection of China’s agriculture. As a matter of fact, the Chinese government could never afford such funds to subsidize agricultural products. Some experts even calculated that even if China did agree to the U.S, demand of 8 percent subsidy rate, they would have no financial power to back it up. The present subsidy rate Chinese government offers to agricultural products is a mere 3 percent. After that, they have no actual means to increase it to any higher percentage. Obviously, with such restraints on the size of the purse, expecting the government to raise subsidies for agricultural products to protect farmers’ interests would be like “trying to quench your hunger by drawing a pancake on paper”–not possible at all. Last year Premier Zhu Rongji suggested a rise in the grain prices as a protective measure, \[40\] while in fact there is little possibility for raising prices with the present financial limitations on the government part. Especially considering the fact that most of the subsidies to farm products have ended up in the pockets of those in the monopolized, state-owned commercial sectors, benefiting employees of co-op stores and other areas dealing with grain products. It has not done much to help improve peasant income. What we should pay more attention to is the fact that there is hardly any room for further price rises in agricultural products. Recently Huang Jimu, from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, did a detailed analysis of the costs and prices of China’s agricultural products and drew an alarming conclusion. He discovered that most of China’s agricultural products are already priced above the average price level of the international market, and most products cost more than those in developed countries. \[41\] So it seems that there is little hope for China’s farmers who might expect higher returns in the future as a result of higher prices. Even if the Chinese government can indeed maintain the current market prices of domestic agricultural products and make considerable efforts to reduce or at least buffer the shock of lower-priced imported products, it is unlikely that the farming income of Chinese peasants will experience any noticeable improvement. However, can they possibly reduce taxes for farmers? He: During the Qing Dynasty, both Emperor Kanxi and Emperor Qianlong tried to implement a policy where each province would rotate to enjoy a year’s reduction of taxes. And the richer areas in the South East region generated enough income through exports of silk, tea and chinaware to help the emperors pay for the reduction of taxes to the farmers. In present-day China, the same southeastern region is much richer than inland areas, but does the government have the ability to maneuver centrally controlled funds to reduce taxes in inland areas? The problem is that although the central government collects plenty of taxes every year, it seems to have an empty wallet all the time and even runs up debts. In order to sustain urban prosperity and avoid large-scale sliding of the economy, the majority of the central government’s expenditure relies on borrowing every year. As a result, it has no ability to pump any more money into the countryside in the central and central-west regions. Cheng: Since there is no way the government will be able to reduce or suspend taxation on its farmers in a long time to come, and they can hardly offer any valid policies or viable measures to improve farmers’ income, then alleviating the unreasonable burden on the Chinese rural population becomes a key issue. China’s reforms began in the rural areas in the first place, but twenty year later, China’s farmers have ended up in such dire straits, causing the low growth and economic slowdown for years. But it is a shame that in the mainstream topics in China, words like “further rural reforms” seem to have long been forgotten, as if after the initial reforms in the 1980s, the rural structure has already been smoothed out and no longer deserves any attention. Even if there is some occasional mention of related subjects, it will only be addressing certain isolated policies, not a comprehensive assessment of the extreme predicament in China’s rural areas. And in order to cover up the true picture in the countryside, the central government’s Central Department of Propaganda even went so far as to ban all media from reporting on problems in rural areas in May this year. In the past ten years, the central government has repeatedly issued orders to stop random collection of fees and taxes from farmers, but they have only been temporary measures that only touch on the symptoms rather than take care of the root of the disease. So they have done nothing to eliminate the problems. Recently, the central government tried to push through experimental reforms in certain provinces to change the form of “fees into taxes,” but had to abandon the attempt because of fierce resistance from local governments. The purpose of turning “fees into taxes” had been to increase proper taxes while reducing various fees. But the actual result was that while proper taxes increased and the expenses and consumption from local government officials ate up part of increase, at the same time, the “hard budget” in education was still up in the air. Local government officials purposefully kept this “gaping gap” to hold against the central government. Their reasoning was this: since the central government could not allocate large sums of funding to supplement the basic educational projects in the countryside, then they had to allow the local officials to collect various fees on farmers in the name of “rural educational projects.” Of course those so-called educational fees would be used for the consumption of those officials. (In fact, even if the central government did have the financial means to supplement rural education, expenses under this name would have become a bottomless hole when managed through the corrupt rural structure.) The failure of the attempted “fees turned into taxes” reforms illustrates once again that because the legitimacy and actual operation of the central government regime depend on the interest groups in various local governments, the central government has lost their ability to reform local governments and their officials. This situation is not going to be changed through the individual effort of any one individual leader. Those relatively familiar with the rural areas in China will see clearly that to alleviate the unreasonably heavy burden on farmers, efforts have to be made to streamline the structure and cut the number of local officials and their expenses. Not long ago a Chinese scholar suggested the possibility of returning to the pre-1949 rural structure based on the unit of villages only, abolishing the two-tier structure of villages and townships, and installing village heads elected by villagers. Only suggestions like this truly address the root problem. It is only when they can reduce the huge number of grass-root officials, who have been well kept by fees and taxes from farmers, and start democratic elections for those above the level of village heads, can the problem be resolved from the very root. Apart from this, there seem to be very few effective ways to address this issue. However, to implement such drastic measures as to rule out random fees and taxes is easier said than done. Under the present rural structure, obviously no further progress can be made in taxation reforms. To look at the problem from a deeper level, we will see that the cause of the continuing expansion of local officials is a natural result of the management pattern where the best officials will be promoted to upper levels. Under the existing system in China, rural residents, residents of counties and townships have been systematically underprivileged that they cannot naturally relocate to big or medium-sized cities to work or live. Therefore, the passage way for such residents and their children to move up in the social hierarchy is extremely narrow. Normally they would have to pass college entrance examinations, study at colleges or universities and then hope to be assigned jobs in bigger cities after graduation. Or they would have to join the military and then try to work for the local governments of their native town after they retire from the military. Or they would have to try to get jobs in county-level enterprises through back-door connections. These have been the main channels for the elite groups of rural residents, below the county level, to move up socially. The reforms in recent years have opened up another channel for rural residents, i.e. for them to work as low-level contractual laborers in cities and live the life of “second-class citizens.” This new road, although effective in raising their family income, offers no effective help for those “contractual laborers” to raise their social status. Therefore, those who are after real social promotions would opt out for college or the military, and then try to get jobs with government units in bigger cities. But recent years have witnessed a sluggish economy and huge numbers of lay-offs in big and medium-sized cities. The government units have had to depend on themselves to make ends meet, there have been fewer and fewer job opportunities for graduates from city-level universities and colleges. Fewer still are jobs for graduates from vocational schools at rural levels. As a result, those vocational school graduates of rural residence have had to return to their native towns and villages in large numbers to line up along the side of military retirees at the narrow doors of local governments begging for a “bowl of rice.” These local government positions also somewhat satisfy their desire to “become officials.” With so many bankruptcies in county-level enterprises nationwide, a position at local governments has become the only way forward for the rural elite. Understandably, the result is the overcrowding of the socially ambitious through this “narrow door.” As long as the authorities need to gain loyalty from the group of the rural elite, they would have to allow the mechanism of this upwards movement to go on, and have no choice but to let more of them squeeze into the door of “officialdom.” The result is, quite naturally, that they will have no way of controlling the endless expansion of county and township level governments. But if the authorities stop this promotion passage for the grass-root-level elite, the central government’s control over rural areas will be fundamentally shaken. Therefore, we can say that although on the surface the phenomenon of “random fees and taxes” seems to be the lawless doings of local officials, it is in fact the ruling authorities transferring their own unbearable pressure onto the farmers. This is a cost they have to bear in order to rule and stay in power. Any further progress in China’s rural structure can only be made through a complete political overhaul. If we say that, in the1980s, abolishing the three-tier system under the People’s Commune structure and contracting land to family units resulted in an actual “revolution” in the countryside, then reducing the number of rural officials and implementing democratic elections for officials from village-heads up would become a second rural “revolution” for the liberation of farmers. This second “revolution” will be much more profound than the first “revolution” in that it will erode the fundamental interests of the “government-salaried” rural officials for the very first time. Confronted with the dilemma of whether to be on the side of farmers or the side of rural officials, the central government will be put through a real test to see whose interests they really represent. The second “revolution” will also touch upon the issues of how to change the long-standing political structure of the rural system, how to plan out the scale, size and functions of rural governments according to farmers’ needs and capabilities. It should never again arbitrarily design the size and functions of rural, grass-root-level governments and force the farmers to finance them unconditionally, as it did in the past twenty years, simply because the government itself deemed it necessary. Changes of the local government functions and structure would mean a fundamental transformation in the national rural political system. The costs of maintaining the existing rural structure have proven to be far beyond the financial capabilities of both the central government and the farmers themselves. To keep this present system running will further slow the economy down and elevate social conflicts. But to reform this system will mean a battle between 800 million peasants and about 30 million rural officials, but the result will set up the foundation for a validated regime. After a dozen years of practice at electing village committee members, the rural regions should have matured politically enough to adapt to pending reforms. To farmers themselves, reforms are more than welcome, but the inertia, developed over a long period of the authoritarian regime, will be hard to overcome, especially since those reforms have to be carried out with the cooperation from rural officials. It’s like trying to “negotiate over ripping the skin off a tiger with the tiger itself”–it won’t be easy. Twenty years ago, China’s rural economic reform movement picked up tremendous momentum under circumstances just like today and soon accelerated so rapidly and was so widely spread it became unstoppable. In the future, waves of political structural reforms, as pushed by farmers who are the majority of China’s population, will become inevitable. Only when fundamental reforms take place can China’s countryside regain their vibrant energy and farmers be relieved of their excessive financial burdens. However, without political insight, courage and good strategies, we cannot actively engage ourselves with such challenges. We would only be sitting back and idling our time away, aimlessly. By the time we have finished groping our way around, like “a blind person riding on a blind horse” to find ourselves “in a deep pond in the middle of night,” our frantic effort to come up with a solution would be too late. Small-Scale Rural Economy and China’s Social, Political and Economic Structures He: Historically speaking, the peasant problems in China have been accumulating for three centuries. Since the Emperor Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, China has been under the pressure of over-population. In the sixth year of Qianlong Emperor’s Reign, the registered population in China was already 143 million. At the time, famous scholars like Ren Qiyuan and Hong Liangji all talked about this problem. Hong Liangji’s article “Comments on Livelihood” focused on how to control population growth. Hong’s article from 1973 was published a few years before Malthus’s “Theory of Population.” But the two countries described by the two authors adopted two entirely different approaches to their population problems. Great Britain sent large numbers of people to the Americas to alleviate pressures in their own country, and two more mass exoduses took place after the Industrial Revolution. In China at the time, although many laborers emigrated overseas, most of the population movement happened within China, causing many serious battles over territory and resources between different groups of immigrants. In March 1999 when I went to Taiwan to give lectures, I discovered, quite by accident, that the custom of “worshipping to have your wishes granted” started with immigrants. Taiwan is mainly a society formed by different waves of immigrants. Immigrants to the island have been involved in countless skirmishes over land, natural resources and living space, between the Han people and other so-called outside tribes, between Guangdong and Fujian immigrants, between different family groups, villages and organizations. These skirmishes tended to accelerate into huge armed battles or large-scaled clashes because of different ethnic, linguistic and social customary backgrounds. Over the years many people from different groups lost their lives in such battles and their bodies were left unburied. So a lot of times it’s been up to kind-hearted people or villagers raising money themselves to build mass burial grounds. And often they built a simple temple by the mass graves where they would hang up red cloth banners saying “your wishes would be granted if you worshipped here.” \[42\] The Taiping Rebellion also happened as a result of population pressures. At the time scholars like Wang Shiduo studied this and later on Luo Ergang wrote an article on this problem. Since the mid-19th Century, China has made continued attempts to reduce population pressures. Sun Yat-sen’s slogan of “farmers should be given farm land” and the Communist Party’s Land Revolution have in effect both been efforts to find solutions through changing the ownership of land resources. But dividing land evenly among farmers, although a good temporary solution to feed the growing population, has not been effective in controlling its rapid over-growth. And by the mid-20th Century, China’s population eventually jumped from 450 million to 1.3 billion. If we can say the problem in the19th Century was how to give enough land to individual farmers, the 20th Century’s challenge is how to let farmers have enough means to feed themselves and reduce the number of jobless rural residents wandering around cities. Right now, we have a surplus of idle farmers in the countryside, the production efficiency dropping considerably, too many taxes and fees levied on farmers, causing small-scale farmers to go bankrupt, local officials to become villains, peasants to become idle. The above scene is alarmingly reminiscent of what happened during the turn of the century and 1930s. \[43\] Cheng: The most horrible thing is that this marginalized group of people is in the state of endless over-growth, which has a lot to do with the astronomical size of China’s population and a severely unbalanced ratio between population and natural resources. At present, China has 1.59 mu (Chinese acre) of land per capita, which is only 43 percent of the world’s average. \[44\] Also the cultivated land is of poor quality: 79 percent of the farmland is of medium to low output. Only 40 percent of the land has proper water sources and irrigation facilities, of which a lot is on 25-degree slopes and of poor quality. \[45\] The worse natural conditions are, the higher population growth rate is. Where there are fewer natural agricultural products, there are fewer non-farm-related jobs, and those poorer and crueler local officials would take more from the farmers. This forces the poorly educated and unskilled idling rural residents to immigrate to other areas. So when cities start to tighten their employment policies, this moving population with no livelihood to return to in the countryside and no food or accommodation supplies outside their homes are left with very little to feed themselves. The troops for \[past mass movements or uprisings such as\] Li Zicheng, the White Lotus Cult, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Red Army and the Eighth-Route Army have consisted of this volatile immigrant population. Today, the fast growth of this fringe population might not result in a replay of “The Rebels of the Water Marshes,” but will certainly provide enough volunteers for the growing organized criminal groups. The “Zhang Jun Case” should have given us a good warning. He: Since the 1988 publication of my first book, Population – the Hanging Sword Over China, I have been led to believe more and more strongly in the following formula: the political structure of a society is firmly rooted in the nature of such a nation, and that is the ratio between the kind of resources available, population and natural resources. Geographical environment also influences the culture of the inhabitants of this nation. This formula holds true even in pre-industrialized periods. Human beings are first and foremost products of their natural environments, and the most basic level of the living environment is the geographical environment. The French philosopher Montesquieu once tried to explain certain phenomena through the theory of “geography deciding all,” but his theological explanations of geographical elements made him a laughing stock among his peer intellectuals. The fact that Marx criticized this theory had led China, for a long period of time, to make every attempt to change nature regardless of the damage to natural resources. Many Chinese scholars, up till now, have not had enough courage to show any allusion to the Montesquieu’s theory in their studies. China’s population has a very special relationship with its natural resources, which has over the years conditioned its structure of small-scale family farming economy and its corresponding social/political structure. Whether it is in the mountainous and hilly areas, or on the plateaus, as long as the small farming families could somehow work out a balanced ratio between farming, animal and handicraft industries within the families, then they could sustain a relatively stable living. Because of the strong adaptability to the geographical environment in this economic structure, it has gradually spread from the middle inland region across the land to areas around it becoming the main economic structure in rural China for the past couple of thousand years. This structure has one strong character and that is the rampant population growth. After 1949, the system of the People’s Communes set up a distribution mechanism to allocate grain quotas according to the number of heads in a family. With a shortage of foodstuff, the grain quotas of able-bodied, single, male laborers were lower than families with many children, resulting in a situation where “working more was not as good as giving birth to more children.” This in effect encouraged rural residents to want to have bigger families. After the recent reforms, the small-scaled farming economy was reversed to individual families as the basic production units, but the population problem remains a serious concern, as shown by many surveys and studies. For instance, a survey in Dianbai County’s Zheng Beifeng Village, Guangdong Province, showed that in 1980, this village had a population of 252, 0.6 mu of paddy field and 0.4 mu of land per head. By 1998, the study said, this same village had 536 people (not including the 32 people who moved out), and their share of land per head had been reduced to 0.28 mu, as a result of building houses and other projects in the village. The population of the village more than doubled in less than a birth cycle (20 years). None of the families in the village had a single child. The average number of children was more than 4, with the biggest family having 15 births (12 survived). In the culture of local villages, the number of sons in a family is still the only factor that decides your social status in the village. Villagers had no knowledge of birth control and would not inform on other families who had more than one child. \[46\] Cheng: There was no family planning policy in place during the Cultural Revolution period, even less so in rural areas. By the 1980s, all areas in China have set up special institutions in charge of family planning issues and introduced systematic methods to control population growth, but it has so far done little to stop the trend of having more offspring in the countryside. Cao Jinqing, author of the book China on the Side of Huanghe River, walked all over the rural areas in Henan Province, and completed a detailed survey of the region. He discovered that the farming families very rarely had just one child; most of them had more than one. The local officials told him repeatedly: “those who have power will give birth just because they have power; those who have money will buy their children (paying fines for each child after the first one); and those with no power or money will escape to other areas to give birth (easier to give birth out of your own village). \[47\] He: Zheng Beifeng Village is not a poverty-stricken village according to the grading system, nor is it a star village with money-generating enterprises. It is simply one of the tens of thousands of average villages in rural China. No doubt it faces urgent problems such as the lack of organization and clashes between ordinary villages and officials. But I don’t think these are the most fundamental problems because, as long as the most basic conditions for survival exist, there is the possibility of getting those problems solved. The key issue here is that the ecological conditions in that particular region have no way of sustaining such a huge population and meeting their basic need for survival. It is not possible to rely on the traditional farming method to farm 140 mu of land to feed over 500 people. This valuable survey with its factual basis provided detailed records on the serious unemployment rate and rising crimes. Here are some of the facts quoted in the report: “the villagers there have no skills, no capital, no natural resources, no industry, and no organization. How many of the 300 laborers under this kind of circumstances can find enough work to afford food? In terms of employment, apart from farmers, there are six teachers, one doctor, one worker and one person doing various transportation jobs. In addition, 15 people farm animals, three people have small shops, 16 people sell small goods and 55 work as contract laborers outside the village. Most of those who farm animals would have a dozen pigs, and the majority of them actually lost money this year (1998). Most of those who sell various goods would sell chickens, and they would make about 20 yuan if they sell 10 chickens that day. Those who work outside their village as contract laborers are mostly in construction sites, and they bring home about 30 to 40 yuan. The female workers mostly work in factories or restaurants, and they generally make a couple of hundred yuan a month depending on the situation. But a lot of those idlers, especially single males, who wander between the three stores in the village having nothing else to do have become the main criminals. Gambling is their open and constant game, and the form of recreation they enjoy most, but their stealing and robberies are obviously not so open. But nearby villages often have animals, cooking utensils and grains missing, and the peer groups often brag about those vivid and sometimes scary scenes of robbing, cheating, stealing and fighting.” I will stop here and won’t quote those rather dire stories for you. Most countries in the world regard education as the most valid recipe for fighting poverty. This report also mentioned the state of education of this village: “at the present time, Beifeng Elementary School has 10 teachers, among whom two are high school graduates, while all others went through junior high school level. Three of the teachers are salaried, and the others are either paid by funds collected from villagers or just acting teachers. In view of the government policy to gradually phase out villager-paid teachers or validate them to be salaried teachers in Guangdong Province in the past three years, the author gathered the following unbelievable details from the school principle Chen Beizhong. According to relevant government policies, the County Education Bureau has a quota to validate over 4000 villager-paid-teachers, through examinations, to turn them into salaried staff. The regulations stated that those who started teaching before 1993 and had proper certificates as village-paid-teachers and those who earned teachers’ training diplomas through distant learning qualify to take the tests. Those who do well at the test would be promoted to be salaried staff, and their years of teaching would also add positive points. Those who have more than 28 years of teaching experience would be exempt from having to sit the test to become staff. The test subjects would be psychology and educational studies. But, according to some sources, the teachers’ training diplomas through distant learning have been bought with money; the tests on psychology and educational studies were done through memorizing a little brochure that was sold for just 120 yuan. The fact that the tests were not on basic subjects like Chinese or mathematics made it possible for cheaters. The author (Chen Feng who did the studies) worked as an acting teacher for two weeks in an elementary school in February this year (1998) and found out that some teachers could not answer questions on the tests themselves, and at times did even worse than the students. On the other hand, some of the younger and better teachers were being laid off soon after they started. Chen’s remark on this fact is: “The good ones are controlled strictly, the bad ones are being let off easily. I would say they are wrecking education rather than mending it.” Because of the low quality of teachers, very few of the fifth graders could name five things in the following five categories: countries, provinces, cities, sports and Chinese emperors. Although most of the school-age children are attending school, the 280 yuan fee per semester is forcing more and more students out of school. As a result, fewer and fewer students managed to graduate from elementary school, and fewer still attempt to go to junior high school. In this way, excessive population growth has put unbearable pressure on the rural residents, and at the same time villagers are not aware of, nor do they have the ability to realize the fact that the only way to gain wealth and social status is through self-improvement. Backward education can only produce low-quality, low-ability peasants. Poverty, close-mindedness, backwardness, superstition, unemployment and crimes hover over today’s Zheng Beifeng Village like menacing evils.” This report reads like a horror story, but the more horrid thing is that villages of this sort are not special cases; they can be found everywhere. My hometown Shaoyang City, called Baiqing Prefecture in old times, has over a thousand years of history and has been a relatively developed city both culturally and economically. But apart from a higher educational level among the residents than those in Zheng Beifeng Village, most other aspects are pretty similar. More than 90 percent of the state-owned enterprises have declared bankruptcy, and a part from a minority of the population who have moved out of the city by going to college out of town, most of the local youths have no jobs. Gambling has become routine entertainment for men and women, old and young. The city is filled with the unemployed and criminals, and the city streets are horrendously ugly. Many young women have moved elsewhere to make a living as prostitutes or “concubines” and their families are not ashamed of their occupations. Cheng: What we have also found out, looking at the report on Zheng Beifeng Village, is that the local authorities are only interested in collecting more money for themselves from their position of power. And those local officials do nothing but dine and wine every day, totally oblivious of the serious, long-standing state of poverty in the area. The political and historical responsibility can be attributed clearly to the structure that supports those officials. Of course, some local, village-level organizations have played a positive leadership role in pushing the local economic development. For instance, the head of Huaidi Village committee, in the suburb of Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, used 90 million yuan which they collected from villagers as start-up capital and formed an effective strategy for development. They decided that they should “take advantage of their favorable geographical location to upgrade their industries and turn their three industries toward catering to the needs of the city.” From 1996 to 1999, the village’s revenue generated from the three industries accelerated at an annual rate of 80 percent. The village as a whole earned an income of 20 million yuan in 1999 alone, of which earnings from the three industries took up 90 percent. Their strategy of forming a passageway between urban and rural areas managed to provide jobs for almost every laborer in the village. \[48\] He: There are indeed many cases like this in China that have successfully eliminated poverty through their favorable locations and the personal charisma of certain leaders. But examples like that cannot be copied readily by everybody else, because not every village has that kind of advantages, and whether the social/economical pattern of star villages like that will disappear naturally as their present leaders die of old age is still uncertain. I am much more concerned with the living conditions of the other 90 percent of the rural population. I have studied that extensively, having been to many rural areas and having consulted many of those who have done years of research on the subject. Information filtering through from many channels has shown that the family planning scheme in many villages has gone out of control, and there is a serious discrepancy between the population figures they report and the actual number of people in the villages. For example, an investigation in Sichuan Province revealed an unregistered population of 400,720. \[49\] The family planning scheme has been defined as “a fundamental policy of the nation,” but in fact, many local officials have been using penalty fines generated from over-births as a means to collect money. So the officials would freely allow villagers to have more than one child, or even encourage them to do that, in order to charge money for it. Most of the fines collected in such a way have been used to improve their own benefits or build better offices for them. A scholar who has spent long periods of time in the countryside once told me, “Whenever you see a nice office in a village or township, you will know for sure that the family planning operation there is pretty bad. It’s only the middle-income farmers who are afraid of paying family planning penalties. The richer ones are not worried; they will just pay the money. The impoverished families also don’t care, because if worse comes worst, they will just relocate and escape elsewhere to be ‘wandering guerrillas because they have more than one child.’” Villagers from Xutun Village, in Xiao County’s Datun Town, Anhui Province, have told reporters from Fortnightly Chat magazine that, over the years, every leader, from their previous party secretary to the present one and the village director, has publicly sold birth permits and used this as one way to acquire wealth. For instance, the price tag for the first born has gone up from 30 yuan to 200 or even 300 yuan, while the prices for multiple-births have gone up to the range of thousands of yuan. In the past few years, this village has seen the sale of more than 200 birth-permits, which have generated more than 30 thousand yuan of fees for the village officials. The village officials themselves would even lead the way in having more than one child. The 40- year-old village director has three sons, and the eldest son has three children of his own. An official called Zhang who is in charge of family planning of the village is in his 30s and already has 4 children. The village committee secretary has 2 sons and 7 grandchildren. The nephew of the previous village party secretary has 5 children. The registered number of people in the village is 2,106, while the actual figure is above 2,330. \[50\] Qinba Village in Wuchuan City, Guangdong Province, is also a “super-over-birth” village. Out of the over 600 families, more than 100 have more than 6 children, and two families even have 10 children each. The average family size is one with 5 children in the village. But why is there such a lack of family planning control in this village? The village party secretary Rong Wenxiu gave this answer, “It’s really hard to manage it with such a huge number of over-birthed families.” But according to reports from villagers, the village officials have been the leaders in having more children. Rong Guanbao, the village committee director and Liang Yakong, the deputy director, each has 5 children. Wang Wei, another village official, has 4, and Liang Derui, deputy head of the general affairs team, has 8 children. Even today, some of the villagers have had to drink water from roadside ditches. The bumpy country roads throughout the village are covered with trash and smelly human droppings. This sizable village of more than 3000 people does not have a single public toilet. \[51\] In villages like this one, apparently nothing except money is able to create unity among villagers. The general state of law and order is even worse than that from half a century ago when villages were ruled autonomously. But as such villages never attract attention from either the government or media, lives of those villagers will just have to take their natural courses. Chunfeng Village, in Guidong County’s Datang Town in Hunan Province, attracted accidental attention from reporters of the Southern Weekend because of the unusually high death toll of their contract laborers. \[52\] Chunfeng Village has been graded as an extremely impoverished village at a provincial level. It has few transportation facilities and hardly any natural resources. Its 1,598 people share a total of 1,400 mu of terraced fields scattered on slopes of 800 to 1000 meters above sea level, less than one mu per head. There is no business enterprise in the village, and the collective annual earnings amounted to only a couple of thousand yuan. Apart from the meager income from the less than one mu per head and one season’s harvest of rice, villagers have to keep pigs and go elsewhere to look for temporary work. Since the beginning of 1993, with the exception of those families not depending on farming and those with too many children, everybody else has had to find jobs elsewhere to make a living. Two-thirds of these laborers (mostly young girls) have gone to work in toy factories or electronics factories in the Jujiang River Delta area, earning a monthly wage of 400 to 800 yuan. But in 1999, the economic slow-down left many of those who had gone to look for jobs in Guangdong Province empty-handed. Male laborers, however, would often go look for higher pay but more risky jobs, for instance in tungsten-sand mines or coalmines, and many have lost their lives in collapsed mines or gas explosions. During the quiet winter season, the mining facilities in Yizhang’s Yaogangxiao, Binzhou’s Shizhuyuan, Linwu’s Xianghualing, all hire several thousand workers to “filter tungsten ore” and most of them come from villages like Chunlingfeng. They would gather enough funds to buy mining franchise from private owners to explore mines that have already been abandoned by big state-owned enterprises. They would prepare their own primitive tools, explosives and mining lamps, go several thousand meters deep in the mines, set off explosives in the hope of finding some left-over ore. There is no safety facility in those abandoned mines and explosions frequently cause collapses. Of Chunfeng Village’s 20 deaths, 8 died when “filtering for tungsten ore,” and 5 of them perished in collapsed mines. The head of Datang Township, where Chunfeng Village is located, said, “Things like this happen all over Datang Township.” For example, from the nearby Jiaozhou Village, 20 have died when working away from home. Since 1993, 16 deaths have occurred and most of them died in collapsed tungsten, coal mines or gas explosions in Hunan, Guangxi or Guangzhou Provinces. For those who are engaged in “filtering for tungsten ore,” words like “labor law” and “contract of labor” are strange to their ears. They only have verbal agreements with owners and no one has thought about signing a written contract. In the words of one villager, “These days it’s so hard to find work and if you want to sign a contract with a boss, the boss will send you walking.” The families and relatives of those who have lost their lives are unaware of the fact that they should seek compensation through legal procedures. According to statistics from the economic committee of Datang Township, the 1998 average earning per head in Chunfeng Village was 880 yuan, and the blood money from those laborers took up 60 to 70 percent. The party secretary of Chunfeng Village claimed that apart from paying for day-to-day expenses, the laborers only have enough money to pay for school fees for their younger siblings. Nobody has managed to invest his or her money in business or even in building a better house. Although there is little money involved and big risks taken, few of the Chunfeng Villagers have ever considered doing anything else for a living. To them, if they don’t go out to find work, they would lose their basic livelihood. It’s no way out of poverty, but they have very little choice but to go on. The most horrible thing to them is not that they shouldn’t do the “filtering of ore,” but that there be “no filtering job to do.” Lives of these villagers remind me of the ecological refugees in Africa. In places like Chunfeng Village, land and ecological conditions in effect are no longer capable of sustaining lives of so many people. As a matter of fact, the ecological condition throughout China has been so over-burdened by the population that it has become a real crisis. There are not only serious problems with water pollution or water cutouts in the seven main river systems such as Yangtze River and Yellow River but also with the issue of land—the so-called mother of wealth. According to statistics and other sources, China has become one of the most seriously desertified countries in the world, with a desertified area of 3.6 million square kilometers, or about 38 percent of the national area. Some areas are rendered uninhabitable for local residents. Jiang Youxu, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Forestry Science, made a similarly poignant point. He said that China’s ecological environment is no longer safe and if we do not come up with timely measures to address the problem, people would soon be in danger of losing their livelihood. \[53\] Because the impact of an ecological crisis on people’s livelihood does not seem to be as immediate and direct as that of disease, the concept of environmental protection in the minds of the Chinese people is “we can still afford to just sit back and talk about it.” For example, every time the newspaper I worked for featured a story about a young girl being abandoned or having no money to see the doctor, within days we received donations of thousands or even tens of thousands yuan. When I wrote a lengthy full-page feature article about a volunteer environmentalist Yang Xin, not a single reader called to inquire about it or donate any money. I reported on how he had devoted a dozen years of his life, leaving behind his wife and family, to set up and monitor an observation station at Kekexili, the origins of Yangtze River, to record the environmental changes. Even if we had established a hotline and an account for donations, we would not have generated more reader response. The difference in reaction, to the story of a helpless girl and to an environmental projectionist, forms a sharp contrast with what would have happened with charity donations in developed nations. Ever since I started working on China’s population issues, one thought has been ingrained in my mind: China’s political and social formation has been closely connected with its population and resource formation. To China, twentieth century has been a century of peasants, i.e. the “quantity” of its people decides the “quality” of its political rule. China’s land policies, with vague definitions of land ownership and of compensating the impoverished with government funds, have resulted in the loss of human dignity among peasants. They have lost the basic human dignity to earn a livelihood. The overall effect of China’s social and economic policies has been that people would carry on with reproduction regardless of the costs and limits of natural resources and then transfer the responsibility of supporting the population from family to society. We shall wait for history, a history of clear conscience, to assess the long-term impact of this in the centuries to come. If we sum up experiences from various countries in the world, we will see that apart from China and India, which have big populations, every country’s industrialization process took place as their small-scale farming economy phased out. It’s two sides of the same coin. As urbanization gathered momentum, the industrialized economic sectors would absorb rural laborers who had lost their land during the process. But because China has such an enormous population, and because of modern science and technology advances, technology-intensive enterprises have gradually replaced labor-intensive ones, leaving out most of the rural workers who have had little education and no modern skills. In addition, the growing pace of secondary industry and service sector falls far behind the growing rate of population, which means most of the landless peasants would have no chance to be part of the modern economy and are rapidly becoming a “surplus,” marginalized class of the society. Those timid, law-abiding peasants would continue working like animals to keep up a miserable living, just like the villagers in Chunfeng Village. Many reports have revealed the horrid conditions of contract workers in cooperation, joint-venture and foreign-owned enterprises (mainly companies with Taiwan or Hong Kong investors, or the ones owned by Asia’s Four Little Dragon countries). They could all trace their origins to the extremely unbalanced labor-market in China. In December 1998, when I was on duty, I dealt with one death incident that happened in the Four Seas Clothes Factory in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zegion involving a worker called Xu Zhangshui, who was originally from Jiangxi Province. It was during the peak production season when it occurred, and for a number of days the workers in the factory had been working extra shifts nonstop. The twenty-or-so-year-old Xu Zhangshui worked for 48 hours without a break, and never woke up after he went back to lie down in his dormitory. He had blood coming out of his nose, mouth and eyes when he was discovered. When I asked the factory workers why didn’t anybody raise any question about it because it was illegal to force workers to do so many nonstop shifts, the workers all looked at each other in puzzlement. Later on they told me they wouldn’t dare, because they were afraid of losing their jobs. But the factory owner said to me, “Even I am surprised myself. My factory indeed has poor benefits, long hours and low wages, and I have often told the workers that if they don’t like it here they can leave. But the funny thing is, there are still a lot of people fighting to work here.” What he said reminded me of what a lot of foreign capitalists in Shanghai used to say before 1949, which has become a “national shame” to us. They had said, “It’s difficult to find four-legged dogs in China, but it’s easy to find two-legged people.” If we look at the origin of such problems, we can see that the benefits of laborers have everything to do with the supply-demand ratio of the market. The lack of concern about human rights in China also has to do with the enormous surplus of population. The most basic right in human rights is the right to survival. If the right of survival is still in question, many of the marginalized people will not get around to paying attention to the right to freedom or the right to possession. Out of the urgent need to survive, a large number of them have been involved in all kinds of abnormal economic activities such as selling blood and prostitution, or even criminal activities such as organized robberies, human abduction and sales, digging up ancient tombs and selling cultural relics. In this way they have become mainstream criminals. Recently, in one of the most sensational criminal cases in China, the “Zhang Jun Case,” many of the culprits were originally from poverty-stricken rural families with many children. The main criminal Zhang Jun himself was from an impoverished family of seven children. In a city, a middle-income family with one child can have a relatively easy life, but the same family with two children would have a tougher time making ends meet. With the same income, it would be impossible to support a family of three children and have enough money to pay for their educational fees and daily expenses. But faced with such a high reproduction rate in the rural areas, how is it possible to even talk about eliminating poverty? I have said before that if the Chinese people don’t change their backward thinking on having multiple children, the Chinese civilization will inevitably become a sacrifice, perished through, and presented to, the ancient alter of population. The fifth national census shows that the average size of a Chinese family is 3.44. This figure is not that reliable. The families that really comply with the family planning policy are those working for government or state-owned units and enterprises in the cities, while the campaign of family planning has had little effect on the rural contract workers. Let’s look at the situation more closely. In China, urban residents only take up about 30 percent of the national population and rural families are allowed two children, while those with more than two are quite common, and the ethnic minority families are permitted to have even more than two. If you put all the figures together, you will see that most probably the average size of a family in China exceeds 3.44. Of course, everybody knows better than to trust the official figures the Chinese government releases. Cheng: I recently read an article in which the author criticized some of your arguments. He said, “\[You believed\] China’s population problem will block China from progressing further and the huge, low-quality rural population will become the biggest obstacle to China’s modernization process.” He argued that pessimistic conclusions like these would in fact cover up the real cause for making the problem even worse, and conceal the fundamental solution to it. Worse still, he said that your arguments could be used by those with ulterior motives who believed in an elitist regime. \[54\] Have your read this article? Another point I want to make regarding the process of China’s system transformation is that our system is still the focal concern of many independent intellectuals. If we over-emphasize the population strain when we discuss the problem of the “three nongs,” will we then be diluting the impact of a bad system on the “three nongs” problem? Besides, the population problem cannot be solved in a short time, but the “three nongs” issue is desperately urgent. If we link up a problem that needs an immediate solution with one that has to take a long time to solve, maybe it will be of little help in addressing the immediate problem? He: Yes, I have read that article, but I feel that the author underestimated the seriousness of China’s present problems: he seemed not particularly sensitive to the huge population pressure on China’s ecological conditions. As for how to solve the problems, I believe that China needs fewer empty talkers. China’s extremely complex issues cannot be easily addressed by a few simple “counter-measures.” If most of our citizens are expecting a great leader to suddenly emerge out of the blue to save them, that’s a perfect indication that they have not taken up the responsibility for the result of their own doings. The purpose of my studies is only to try to increase the awareness of our living environment. I don’t agree that I have over-emphasized the seriousness of our population crisis. In China’s cultural traditions, there has always been an emphasis on harmony between man and nature. In the theory of “the oneness of heaven and man,” “heaven” is nature, and “the unification of heaven and man” is the harmonious existence of heaven and man together. China’s ancient culture is full of this kind of simple humanism, and this kind of humanistic spirit is incorporated in our understanding of society, morality and natural surroundings. In many of Chinese classics including medical books, you will find morals of simple humanism deeply rooted in our cultural traditions through Confucian teachings. When visiting in Qufu, Shandong Province, I had stood long in front of the tomb of Confucius, founder of China’s national spirit and thought about this question: if a culture could support a nation for a few thousand years, it must have had an innate affinity and equilibrium. When we were young, we had inherited teachings from our elders such as “not a single inch of silk or a single grain has come easily,” and knew how to be frugal. But this new generation has grown up armed with technology and without humanism and will probably never have the chance to be exposed to those influences. In the past half century, the heritage of the Chinese national culture has basically been wiped out. Overwhelming political slogans were the rule of the times: “humans WILL defeat heaven,” “wage a war against nature,” “our gumption will equal the amount of production yield from the land,” “we will make high mountains bow their heads and force rivers to make way for us.” The excessive wreckage of nature was somehow praised as the “spirit of our age.” The journal Cultural History of Shaoyang once carried the memoir of an official who reflected on his experience of supervising work in a fishing village in the late 1950s. He recalled that he had asked the fishermen to knit very dense fishing nets so young fish would escape, but the production volume was still below the required level during the “Great Leap Forward” period. Then he told the fishermen to start using explosives in the river, and that of course netted thousands of dead fish floating on the surface of the river, and their production volume shot up. Some fishermen were so upset they sharply criticized this official, who was eager to achieve the production level as required by the authorities. They said to him: if you don’t let off the young fish, we will soon have no fish to fish; what you are doing is wrecking our livelihood. But under the then-strong political and ideological pressure of the time, the fishermen’s simple concept of environmental protection had no ground to stand on. Now their next generation naturally knows how to use strong electric nets to fish, leaving a dead silence along their tracks. Although the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” have both become history now, their influence is still widely felt in our education and culture. Our education still calls for a spirit that advocates “materialism” rather than “humanism.” As a result, neither teachers nor students in present-day China are equipped with the necessary knowledge regarding population, resources, ecological environment and cultural heritage. The educational pattern of emphasis on technology at the expense of humanistic concern have led to the destructive exploration of our natural environment and commercial usage of humanistic heritage, and what we see as a result is just nature’s revenge against human society. In the same way, widespread corruption among China’s officials is a wicked revenge to the old, backward official-selection system that has bred the officials. To sum up this dialogue, maybe we can draw such a conclusion: the most urgent need is to restructure the rural system, and the key factor for stabilizing the rural area–and stabilizing society as a whole–is to solve the rural employment problem. But this only offers a short-term recipe for fighting poverty. A longer term, more effective strategy against poverty lies in the improvement of education. To address the three problems, we have to have “certain social/political conditions ready.” First of all we have to have a reasonable, highly efficient and clean government, which can decide on the right policy to regulate and control the society. Second, the concept of family planning should become the voluntary behavior of the rural population, rather than mandatory behavior only on paper from the government. Third, we must inject more investment in education and continually improve the general educational level of the nation’s population, so that we will improve the quality of our population, and create a social environment where poverty is less likely to exist. Footnotes: ————————————————- World Bank, World Development Report 1991: The Challenge of Development, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 264-5. Editorial Office of Times of Studies, Glory of the Sunset – the Prosperous Reigns of Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong in the 17th and 18th Century in a World of Change, Times of Studies, June 19th 2000. The Industry and Commerce Times of China, April 23rd 1998, p.4. “The Sound of Hunan,” Outlook Weekly, April 13th 2001, p.2. “Calculating the Money-losing Account,” Economic Times of China, Nov 18th 2000, p.3. Cheng Xiaonong, “Where Did the Prosperity Come From? An Analysis of China’s Economy,” Modern China Studies (USA), 3rd Edition, 1996. (An edited version of the article was later reprinted in Open Age (Guangzhou), September 2000.) Cao Jinqing, China by the Side of Yellow River: Scholar’s Observation and Reflections on Rural Society, Shanghai Literary and Arts Press, September 2000. Zhang Musheng (Director of Chinese Taxation Affairs), “Predicament of China’s Public Finance,” Strategies and Management (Beijing), 2nd Edition, 2001. Ibid. “Obstacles to Improving Peasants’ Purchasing Power”, Economic Times of China, Nov 20th 1998, p.5. Cao Jinqing, p.355. Economic Times of China, March 9 1999, p.3. Xinhua News Agency, January 18th 2000. “Why is it Difficult to Reduce Peasants’ Burdens”, Economic Times of China, August 10 1998, p.1. Digest of Newspaper and Magazines, November 23 1998. Fortnightly Chat, 23rd Edition 1998, a reprint from Digest of Newspaper and Magazines, December 21 1998. “A Village in a City”, Land’s End magazine, 1st Edition, 2001. Fortnightly Chat, 2nd Edition, 2000. “The Adventure of a Book – How Heavy are Peasants’ Burdens”, Southern Weekend, October 12 2000, p.1; “Collection of Government Documents Became a Banned Book”, Southern City Paper, November 14th 2000. “Hundreds of Villagers Fleeing to Mountains”, Celebrity Paper, May 22nd 1998, p.1. Song Hongyuan, Zhao Changbao (Center for Rural Economic Studies, Department of Agriculture), “Earning Increase, Employment Transfer, Urbanization Progress – Prominent Issues in the Development of Rural Economy and Policy-making Directions”, Marketing World, 1st Edition, 1999. “Still a Daunting Task to Improve Earnings and Consumption Level of Rural Population”, a report by the Rural Investigation Team of the National Bureau of Statistics. It claims that 14.72% of the rural residents earns an average per capita income of 0 – 999 yuan; 37.63% with 1,000 – 1,999 yuan; 26.02% 2,000 – 2,999 yuan; 11.21% 3,000 – 3,999 yuan; 4.72% 4,000 – 4,999 yuan; while 5.71% of the rural population has an average income of above 5,000 yuan. A reprint from Industry and Commerce Times of China, July 25th 2000, p.7 “Rural Area – a Center of Resistance not to be Neglected”. Economic Times of China, September 19th 2000, p.1. Market and Economy of China, December 4th 1999, p.2. Cao Jinqing. “1,000 Billion State Revenue Improves Government Regulatory Power”, Economic Times of China, September 25th 2000, p.2. Wen Tiejun, “At End of Century Agricultural Policy Must Turn too”, Internal Reform Reference, 7th Edition, 1999. “Rural Area – a Center of Resistance not to be Neglected”, Industry and Commerce Times of China, July 25th 2000. “Subjects on Rural Employment and Labor Market”, “Three-fold Employment Situation of Today’s Rural Laborers”, Market and Economy of China, October 28th 1998, p.6. “Increase of Rural Income Happens Outside the Rural”, Industry and Commerce Times of China, December 4th 1999, p.2. “Rural Laborers in Zhejiang Saying Goodbye to Land”, Industry and Commerce Times of China, July 12th 1999, p.2. “The New Problems Faced by Agriculture and Rural Economy”, Economic Times of China, March 30th 2000, p.8. Ibid. China’s Almanac of Statistics 2000, Publishing House of Chinese Statistics, September 2000, p.330. Ibid., p.313. “Improve Peasants’ Purchasing Power and Open up Rural Market”, Central Team of Rural Economic Survey, National Bureau of Statistics, Economic Times of China, March 9th 1999, p.3. Economic Times of China, March 30th 2000, p.8. Ibid., October 9th 2000, p.1. Wen Tiejun, “A Specious Discussion on the ‘Three nongs’ and Other Related Topics”, Chinese Economic Net “50-People Forum” (Beijing), May 16th 2001. “Agricultural Policy Faces Important Transformation, the Issue of Grain Price is not just a Pricing Issue”, speech given by Premier Zhou and Vice Premier Wen Jiabao at the Symposium on Grains Affairs, sohu.com, special column on industry, commerce and finance, September 3rd 2000. Huang Jikun, Ma Hengyun, “Compare and Contrast the Costs of China’s main Agricultural Products With Other Parts of the World”, Strategy and Management, 6th Edition, 2000. Lin Fushi, “Note on the Taiwan Han Community’s Worship of Devilish Devils”, Rituals, Temple Fairs and Community published by Taiwan Central Research Academy and Chinese Research Institute of Literature and Philosophy. He Qinglian, “Relationship Between Bankruptcies in China’s Rural Areas and the Population Pressure,” History of the Chinese Rural, 4th Edition, 1986. Economic Times of China, July 25th 2000. Economic Times of China, June 6th 2000. Chen Feng, Cultural Times of Southern Hills, November 20 1998. Cao Jinqing, p. 510. “The Road Taken by Huaidi Village”, Economic Times of China, February 25th 2000. “The Startling ‘Black Hole” in the Sichuan Population”, Shenzhen Commerce, July 14th 2000, p. A9. Fortnightly Chat – Internal Edition, December 1998, reprinted in Digest of Newspapers and Magazines, December 10 1998, p.1. Chinese Youth, March 11th 2000, p.4. “Records of Unnatural Deaths in Chunfeng Village”, Southern Weekend, June 4th 1999. “Ecology of Our Land: a Heavy Topic”, Industry and Commerce Times of China, March 14th 1999, p.3. Zhao Cheng, “Out of the Misleading Population Region – Response to the Dialogue of He Qinglian and Li Hui”, Century China web site, “Public Platform” column, April 18th 2001. \Ms. HE Qinglian left China unannounced in June 2001 in the face of widespread, government-sanctioned harassment of scholars. She is the author of two books: We Are Still Watching the Stars Above (2001) and China’s Pitfalls (1998). Both document the dark side of China’s economic reforms and address issues such as corruption, inequalities and the breakdown of the social fabric previously weaved by China’s state-directed economy. Ms. He holds a master’s degree in economics, and most recently worked in China as a reporter for the Shenzhen Legal News. This article is reprinted with permission.
何清涟2025-11-08 23:59👍 0💬 0中国经济的堡垒战：“保卫外汇储备”
何清涟 最近几个月，中国经济可能惊现动摇世界经济的“黑天鹅“，成为国际投行界的热议话题。中国政府也丝毫不敢懈怠，对于金融长堤上最薄弱的外汇市场，尽全力守望。但控制人民币汇率易为，至少目前已经成功将人民币兑美元汇率阻击在破七大关。而防止资本外流却难，几乎演变成政府为一方，无数资本拥有者与金融机构及“地下钱庄”为另一方的三角攻防战。 央行关紧“帝国红利”套现之门 资本外流的主力之一是在华外资。外资银行得行业近水楼台之便，竞相套现清场，陆续成功撤资。中国外汇储备连续四个月下降，10月份外汇储备为3.12万亿美元，较9月份下降457.27亿美元。尽管央行负责人今年内数度出面声称“人民币无（长期、持续）贬值基础”，无奈国内人不相信，并创造出“人无贬基”，将官媒在发生重大国际事件，例如英国退欧、川普当选美国总统、OPEC石油限产、美国将废除TPP等常用的一句话“中国或成最大赢家”，缩减成“中或最赢”，组合成一对2016中国最牛新“成语”嘲讽当局。 中国媒体几个月前就开始用“誓死保卫外汇储备”、“一定要打赢外汇储备保卫战”来表达政府决心，先后祭出的法宝有限制个人利用一年5万美元额度套汇、限制外资企业换汇数额等，但却无法扼止外汇储备剧减之势。11月28日，国家外汇管理局出台新规定，意在抑制资本流出对冲贬值压力。除了规定各种10亿美元的大额海外投资必须送央行备案审查之外，还规定凡资本账户下超过500万美元的海外支付，包括组合投资或海外并购等直接投资，必须上报市外管局批准；之前已经获批的大型投资项目尚未转帐的外汇部分也适用此规。新规出台之前的报批限额是5000万美元。 这种严格限制之下，除了有特别门路的资金持有者之外，大多数还未套现的“帝国红利”就困在中国境内无法转移。《华尔街日报》（12月1日）在《外资公司跨境转移资金面临新钳制》，提到中国加强资本管控，外企可汇出资金急降9成，例如美国大选尘埃落定后，一些美国公司预计候任总统川普政府将宣布对美国公司存放在海外的资金给予税收赦免，想从中国汇出更多资金，但这个计划目前受阻。 近几年中国人纷纷将套现的“帝国红利”转移至海外抢购豪宅，作为资产保值计划。但如今这一美梦也难以实现。新浪网日前登载一消息，奥斯卡影后、澳大利亚演员凯特-布兰切特将她在悉尼海滨的一套住宅出售给一位来自中国的买家，房产价格为2000万澳元（1490万美元），远远超过了中国民众每年5万美元的购汇上限。买家没法付款，导致交易流产。据澳洲几家房产交易经纪商称，华人在澳洲购房因同样原因导致交易失败的案例多达几十起。 人民币汇率管控获IMF默认 人民币汇率管控，在国际社会只有两道压力，一道来自国际货币基金组织（IMF），另一道来自美国每年评估“汇率操纵国”。第一道压力在现阶段几乎没有，因为中国政府管控人民币汇率是IMF默认的。人民币跻身IMF的五大储备货币行列，却享有其他四大币种没有的特权，是汇率由政府管制、不能自由兑换的唯一货币。这一特权是IMF当初批准人民币入篮之时审时度势，专为中国修改了IMF相关规则而赋予的。这相关规则是：一国货币要纳入IMF储备货币行列需要满足两个条件，一是出口位于IMF成员国前列，中国是世界最大出口国，符合这一条件。二是货币可自由兑换。为了中国，IMF特别修改了游戏规则，改成“可自由使用”。中国政府甚至都未承诺观察期满就实行自由兑换。当时的外管局局长易纲专门就此发表讲话，称中国将在条件成熟之后，实行清洁浮动。在过渡期间，仍然实行政府管控下的汇率浮动（即肮脏浮动）。何时条件成熟，由中国政府自行判断。今年一年观察期届满，人民币正式加入SDR时，IMF并未提出要中国将可自由使用提升至可自由兑换。 另一道压力则来自美国。美国财政部每年都评估与其有经贸往来的国家，确定何者是汇率操纵国。尽管美国当选总统川普声明就任后要将中国列为汇率操纵国，但恐怕实施起来有点难度。因为美国财政部规定，汇率操纵国必须满足三个条件：该国对美国的贸易顺差超过200亿美元； 该国的经常项目盈余相当于其国内生产总值（GDP）的3%以上；该国必须通过反复净买入外国货币持续压低本币，一年内购买外币总量超过其GDP的2%。 中国显然只够得上第一个条件。2015年，中国对美贸易顺差高达3657亿美元，比中韩贸易总额还多（韩国是中国的第二大贸易国）。但其他两个条件就不能“达标”。因此，美国财政部今年10月14日再次宣布中国为“非汇率操纵国”，并特别强调，尽管人民币在过去一年持续贬值缘于市场压力，中国并没有通过操纵汇率贬值获得贸易优势。并表扬了中国干预外汇市场，是“为了防止人民币过快贬值对中国以及全球经济带来负面冲击。” 估计川普正式就任之后，会发现将中国定成“汇率操纵国”，必须先全盘考虑，后修改规则。而修改规则最大的难题是必须公平，不能专为中国量身订做一套规则。 世界都担心中国的“黑天鹅”振翅起飞 2016年，中国经济并无起色，制造业还在去产能与债务泥潭中挣扎，央行货币放水仍然在房市债市来回折腾。唯一聊以自慰的，就是全世界居然没多少国家日子好过，与中国同列“金砖五国”的南非、巴西、俄罗斯、印度，目前都陷入通胀急剧上涨，国家经济停滞的困境，全露出镀金下的土坯原色，而欧盟的困难更甚，德银不得不发出警告，明年欧盟金融可能陷入崩溃。因此，有海外专家安慰中国：“其实，99%的国家，经济比中国更糟糕！” 世界各国其实非常担心中国经济出现大麻烦。北京最痛恨的“中国崩溃论”，今年又以各种预言形式相继出现。美国《国家利益》3月2日发表《世界末日：为中国的崩溃做好准备》（Doomsday: Preparing for China’s Collapse），文章罗列了美国政府为应对中国崩溃应当采取的种种措施。紧接着，美国总统奥巴马接受《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic，4月号）记者杰弗里·戈德堡的采访，表述了他的看法，“衰落的中国比崛起的中国更可怕”，理由是“如果中国失败，如果未来中国的发展无法满足其人口需求进而滋生民族主义，……那么我们将不仅要考虑未来与中国发生冲突的可能性；我们自身也将面临更多的困难与挑战。” 法国兴业银行在最新的季度研究报告中用“五只黑天鹅”表述了全球经济增长前景面临的风险，指出中国是 G5 国家中“纯经济”风险较大的一只“黑天鹅”：房屋大量过剩，高债务水平和不断出现的不良贷款问题，使中国存在 20%的“硬着陆“风险；另外，“经济结构改革不足”使中国经济存在“失去十年”的重大风险，这一概率高达 40%。 这种担心非常普遍。11月17日，2008年诺贝尔经济奖得主保罗·克鲁格曼（Paul Krugman）在华盛顿的一场研讨会期间接受了美国之音记者的采访，他对两个关键问题的回答很有代表性。一是记者问“一旦中国经济出现更为严重的状况”，世界其他经济体会不会前去救市？”克鲁格曼的回答是：“不会。即便是其他国家具有最良好的愿望，也不可能；中国的社会和经济规模太大了——不会因为规模如此之大而不可能垮掉，但是规模大到拯救起来很难（not too big to fail，but too big to save）。”在回答记者引述他人的看法，即中国经济一旦出现严重状况，必将带来政治领域的改革时，克鲁格曼的看法是，经济领域一旦出现状况，中共政权有可能会再次依赖高压手段来控制形势。中国在政治开放领域已经向后退，到那时可能会退得更多。 中国是一个与全世界180多个国家有经贸往来的第二大经济体，如果真成了国际投行界预测的“黑天鹅”，影响之大难以估量。正因如此，国际社会对中国意在控制汇率与资本流出的“外汇保卫战”，不仅不做任何干预，反而给予赞扬。 （原载VOA何清涟博客，2016年12月4日，http://www.voachinese.com/a/china-defends-foreign-reserve-20161204/3622641.html）
何清涟2025-11-06 06:06👍 0💬 02016 年的世界：金砖之国成土坯（2）
何清涟 2016年，曾被国际投行界寄以重望的“金砖五国”（BRICS，又被称为“新兴经济体”）均陷入了经济下滑的困境，而且不幸的形式与原因各不相同。 一、俄罗斯经济陷入困境 自俄罗斯吞并克里米亚之后，欧美对俄罗斯制裁逐渐加剧，结果导致俄罗斯经济一路下滑，再加上国际能源供求格局的变化，俄罗斯经济陷入困境，俄罗斯人口袋里的钱也越来越少了。俄储蓄银行首席分析师米哈伊尔·马托夫尼科夫的研究报告显示，俄罗斯的劳动力成本已经比中国人更低，全俄的平均工资为每月433美元，少于塞尔维亚、罗马尼亚、波兰和中国。俄罗斯人收入下降的原因，有卢布对美元汇率暴跌之因素，也有其他原因，比如国际能源价格下跌。而油价下跌的一个因素是，IS盗取了叙利亚的石油，用1/3的价格出售。 西方一致认为，普京的日子不长了。不过，2016年12月美联社和芝加哥大学“全国民意调查中心公共事务研究站”的民调显示，80%的俄罗斯民众依然支持普京，认为本国经济下滑不是普京的错，这位领袖有能力提振经济。 二、巴西经济萧条“有如经历了战争” 拉美诸国一直都是左派联盟，经济发展滞后。1998年乌戈·查韦斯当选委内瑞拉总统之后，“粉红浪潮”在拉美诸国兴起，与古巴卡斯特罗的“血色共产主义”相比，“粉红浪潮”是比较柔性及温和的社会主义版本。巴西自从2002年卢拉·达席尔瓦代表左派第四次参选总统并成功当选后，开始推行温和的社会经济改革路线，除继承社会民主党政府部分新自由主义经济政策之外，还利用扩大政府开支来促进经济的增长并增加社会褔利，2009年申奥成功时，巴西经济形势不错，一度被视为取代中国的国际资本投资热土，2010年经济增长率曾高达7.5%。 迪尔玛·罗塞夫2010年接任总统后，通过货币和信贷急剧扩张刺激经济，在短期内保持了经济增长，但政策的负面效果很快显现：利率与人均储蓄不断下降，贷款总额上升到前所未有的高度，政府开支不断增长。对此情况，有奥地利学派的经济学家依据经济周期理论，对罗塞夫的经济政策持强烈批评态度，认为中央计划和政府干预与市场自由格格不入，必将导致危机。2015年，巴西GDP出现六年来的首次负增长，比2014年减少3.8%，总统罗塞夫和工党坚持这次危机由“国际危机”导致，不肯做出改变。2016年4月17日，巴西众议院投票表决，通过了对总统罗塞夫的弹劾案，理由是罗塞夫使用非法的国家贷款来掩盖联邦预算的赤字。到了8月，这位巴西历史上的首位女总统终被免职。 美国麻省理工学院（MIT）经济学教授Roberto Rigobon说，尽管巴西目前并没有出现内战，但其经济状况却如同一个经历了内战的国家：“内战的国家经济都会出现一种情况：通货膨胀无限上涨，国家经济停滞。就经济层面而言，罗塞夫政府的执政是毁灭性的灾难。” 对这次危机的根源，巴西至今并未达成共识，部分人认为，是罗塞夫政府的政策让巴西处于现在的境地，根源应该上溯至达席尔瓦政府；另一些人则认为，是铁矿石及原油等能源价格低迷、中国对巴西出口产品的需求下降、美元升值等原因，导致经济下滑，造成巴西现在的困境。这种观点影响到政治层面，巴西民众当中不少人不满议会弹劾罗塞夫前总统，成千上万民众参加反对新总统特梅尔政府的大规模抗议，要求重新进行大选。 2016年巴西经济社会均处于动荡之中，无论是对危机的产生原因还是对未来的解决之道，政府与民间缺乏共识，这种状况将持续到2017年。 三、印度的“经济革命”：废钞、没收黄金与部分房产 印度与中国是同处亚洲的两个人口大国，多年来西方国家围绕着“龙象之争”究竟谁占优势费了不少唇舌。2016年11月，印度财政部高官杰扬特·辛哈充满信心地宣告：印度已经准备好从中国手中“接过全球增长的接力棒”，“将在增长和发展方面把中国甩在身后”。2016年8月，IMF对印度经济做出预测，当年印度经济的增速为7.5%。这个数字超越了中国的经济增速6.7%。 就在印度与外界对其经济前景一致看好时，印度现任总理纳伦德拉·莫迪11月8日宣布旨在打击印度的贪污和地下经济的“废钞令”惹了大麻烦。原因是：1、被宣布废除的500和1000卢比面值的钞票占这个亚洲第三大经济体流动性的80%以上；2、印度经济总规模2万亿美元，零售业占到其中的56%；3、由于新版大面值钞票难以获得，只有小面值钞票流通，产生了消费停滞的现象。加之换到新版2000卢比大额纸钞的人，又因为囤积心理和找零短缺，无法顺利使用。因此，整个印度经济发生了流动性危机。印度界线资本预计，2016/17财年印度GDP增长率或因此下降4.1个百分点。不少家中藏有大量现钞的富人为了不让财富化为乌有，用10-15%的费用让穷人使用自己的换钞额为他们兑换新钞。来不及换钞的富人将废钞一袋袋地倒往河流。 不但如此，在 废除86%的流通货币后，莫迪政府考虑没收黄金来补充国库。新规定是已婚妇女可持有500克以内黄金、未婚女性持有250克以内的黄金以及男性持有100克以内的黄金，不得没收。对超过允许持有上限的黄金珠宝，执行搜查的官员可以自行判断是否应该充公。 但印度的麻烦并未到此结束。英国《金融时报》最近在一篇文章中猜想，莫迪下一个目标可能是使用非法财富购买并且未登记在真正所有者名下的房地产。该文还提到，莫迪正在认真考虑“不寻常的改革措施”，包括可能取消所得税，并用银行交易税来替代。 印度经济学家德雷兹曾表示，在一个繁荣的经济体更换货币就如同向高速行驶的汽车轮胎上“开了一枪”。这位总理不寻常的“经济改革”，让人想起2014年4月印度大选前夕，《经济学人》杂志曾发表封面文章《谁能阻止莫迪？》，该文预言，莫迪若当选总理将是印度的不幸。 四、回归非洲“传统国家”的南非 2016年2月，世界银行对南非2016年的经济增长预期仅为0.8%；到了7月，国际货币基金组织将南非的经济增长率下调为0.1%。世界银行认为，大宗商品价格的低迷、中国需求的减缓以及严重的干旱，都制约着南非的发展。这两个国际经济组织认为，目前南非经济环境多变，最令人担忧的因素之一就是频繁的抗议。南非是金矿和铂矿储量都非常丰富的国家，但是这些矿区，也是抗议活动最频繁的地区。之前持续时间长达五个月的超级抗议，极大地影响了南非的经济发展。 后曼德拉时代的南非政治已不是国际社会忌讳的话题。在执政的18年中，非国大领导的政府创造出了人数庞大的黑人中产阶级（主要是在公共领域而非私有领域）和一个规模较小但明显的黑人特权阶层，却没能显著缩小居住在棚屋里的下层阶级和其他社会阶层之间的鸿沟。这种不平等引发了强烈的怨恨，各种暴力抗议、罢工不断。《纽约时报》记者比尔·凯勒在《后曼德拉时代的南非》一文中谈到，在南非，“你甚至会听到有黑人无限怀念地谈及种族隔离的岁月”。 南非报纸的头条每天都在大肆报道政治丑闻，现任总统雅各布·祖马“唯一的成就就是让姆贝基看起来像是一名道德典范”，祖马耗费巨额公帑与捐献修建的豪华庄园，以及他的几位妻子与几十个儿女，政治上任用私人的方式，导致南非越来越像非洲“传统”国家。没人能够预测南非的未来，因为政治正确的关系，对南非的思考只能止步于祖马的极度奢侈与腐败。 在全球化的进程中，围绕最高效益与最低工资的世界性竞争，迫使资本不断开疆拓土，巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国、南非等成了“金砖五国”。这四块“金砖”与中国不同，形式上都实现了民主化。但无庸讳言的是，这些国家的民主制度极其软弱无力，早就成了一种形式上的表演。由于缺乏廉洁高效且有监督能力的政治制度支撑，这些国家一度取得的经济成就很快就消失无形。 （原载VOA何清涟博客，2016年12月29日，http://www.voachinese.com/a/heqinglian-article-20161230/3656649.html）
何清涟2025-11-06 06:31👍 0💬 0练法轮 gong 该当何罪？
（抱歉，因本网页技术问题，法轮gong的“gong”字无法显示，只能用拼音代替） 1999年4月25日，上万名法轮gong练习者到中南海静坐，抗议地方政府和媒体对他们的丑化，结果被江泽民下令镇压。虽然後来胡锦涛掌权，但镇压不仅没有结束，反而更加严重。 过去12年来，由於当局垄断媒体，一面倒地丑化和批判，导致不少中国知识份子也跟著政府的宣传口径，把法轮gong指责为「邪教」。 政府凭什麽有权把哪种宗教定性为「邪教」？宗教属於个人信仰领域，政府不可以裁决信仰问题，不管哪里的政府，都没有这种权力。 由於中共控制媒体，很多中国人都不了解了解法轮gong学员遭到的严酷镇压，不清楚他们面对的环境是多麽野蛮。 北京人权律师高志晟曾撰写法轮gong学员被政府迫害的详细调查报告（因此他被当局抓走，至今「失踪」），采访了那些遭到迫害摧残的法轮gong练习者本人，那些悲惨的细节，只能用「令人发指」来形容。难以让人相信，在人类进入21世纪的今天，在世界最大的人类群体的中国，有那麽多普通、无辜的人，仅仅因为相信和练习法轮gong，而遭到政府那麽残忍的迫害。 中共当局专门成立了一个叫「610」的常设机构，在全国范围内指挥镇压法轮gong；把法轮gong学员关押到和刑事犯在一起的劳教所、监狱等等，然後在那里，在那个被西方记者称为中国最黑暗，最见不到阳光的地方，进行强行洗脑和暴力摧残。 据高志晟律师的调查报告，几乎所有被关押的法轮gong练习者，都受到殴打。有用脚踢，用棍子打，用鞭子抽；还有国际上禁止用的酷刑，像用「老虎凳」使人的腿剧痛，反背手，长时间吊起来，扒光衣服，放在雪地中冷冻。而最常见的是用电棍，连打带电，即使对女性，也没有丝毫的仁慈。据最新统计数字，至今已超过3400名法轮gong学员被这样迫害致死。 几年前从黑龙江逃到加拿大的法轮gong学员王玉芝就是一个典型的例子，她因为信仰和练习法轮gong，在哈尔滨曾被当局关押了几个月，後来她写了一本书《穿越生死》，讲述她的生死历程∶ 在中国经济开放之际，王玉芝和她的家人迅速抓住机会，创办了相当有成绩的企业。但因为她信了法轮gong，中共警方就把她逮捕，关押到劳教所，强行洗脑和拷打改造。 她认为自己无罪，坚决反抗，不写悔过书，结果遭多次殴打，被关押在十几人挤在一起的小房间里。警方为摧残她，还特意把有严重皮肤传染病的人，安排和她紧挨著睡，结果让她也染上皮肤病。 最後她以绝食绝水来抗议，结果被手脚绑在专门设计的铁椅子上，由劳改所的医生护士及员警强行灌食。所谓灌食，就是用一根粗管子，从鼻子硬插进食道，把米汤灌进去。王玉芝说，那些员警只是把那些灌食的管子在水盆子里涮一下，根本没做任何消毒，就这样一个个给被关押的法轮gong学员插进食道。 由於她反抗挣扎，不同意灌食，结果那些灌的米汤，和她的鼻血，喷得满身都是。她这样坚持了几个月，导致鼻腔，食道等都因灌食而破裂，总是出血。她的双眼，也出血出脓，几近失明。 她在毫无罪名的情况下，就这样被非法关押摧残了九个多月，还算她命大，撑了过来，而和她一起关押的其他法轮gong练习者，好几个人都被活活这样灌食和摧残而致死，就死在她的身边。 後来王玉芝逃到香港和中东，最後被加拿大政府特批，来到西方。她在温哥华生活了三年之後，她的一苹眼睛仍然有脓水，仍没有完全康复。 被关押的法轮gong练习者，他们没有别的抗争手段，只能靠绝食，靠伤害自己的身体，来表达抗议。灌食，是中国警方常用的方式。据说现在被关押的法轮gong练习者中，最高记录是，有人坚持绝食了七百多天，即有两年之久，都是警方强行灌食。 生活在自由世界的人，有时很难想像专制社会的黑暗。尤其是在中国纸迷金醉、灯红酒绿的今天，人们的视线太容易被北京、上海的高楼大厦所挡住。而在那些高楼大厦的背後，有著数不清的残酷、数不清的罪恶，更有数不清的普通百姓，在用血泪和生命顽强地抗争著。 今天人类的文明价值之一就是，不管你有什麽信仰，什麽想法，绝不可以因为这种想法和信仰而遭到迫害，这是人类文明的底线。如果有哪个团体因为这个原因受到迫害摧残，人们就应该发出共同的抗议之声，同情之声，西方人甚至把它提到这样绝对的高度，那就是这个世界有一个人不自由，就是所有人不自由。 德国一位牧师在描述自己在纳粹时期受迫害的情景时说过这样一段话∶「在德国，当他们来抓共产党人时，我没有说话，因为我不是共产党人。当他们来抓犹太人时，我没有说话，因为我不是犹太人。当他们来抓工会党人时，我没有说话，因为我不是工会党人。当他们来抓天主教徒时，我没有说话，因为我不是天主教徒。接著他们来抓我了，而这时已没有人能为我说话了。」 今天，一位中国网民把它改写成：「在中国，起初他们大杀地主，我没有说话──因为我不是地主；接著他们追杀反革命，我没有说话──因为我不是反革命；後来他们追杀民运分子，我没有说话──因为我不搞民运；此後他们追杀法轮gong，我没有说话──因为我是平民百姓；最後他们奔我而来，却再也没有人站起来为我说话了┅┅ 」 因而，在四二五法轮gong学员静坐遭镇压12年後的今天，人们更应该为法轮gong鸣不平，为他们说公道话，向残暴的中共政府发出抗议之声，支持法轮gong及所有致力结束共产党邪恶的中国人，因为只有结束专制，中国才会有民主，有宗教和言论自由，中国才会有希望！ 作者注∶本文是据几年前的“长青论坛”视频整理，该节目可在youtube点看∶ （上集）http://youtu.be/-UH4TYB4Tu8 （下集）http://youtu.be/g-GbPrCzXQk 2011年4月25日（caochangqing.com） 2011-04-26 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 07:35👍 0💬 0Chinese literature faces a century of failure
Lu Xun once said: "I think there is nobody truly deserving the Nobel Prize in China. It would be better for Sweden to ignore us. It would only encourage Chinese egotism, causing them to believe they could really parallel those great foreign writers if yellow-skinned people were given preferential consideration. The result would not be good at all." By Cao Chang-Ching 曹长青 The Taipei Times Sunday, December 12th, 1999 The chairman of the Nobel Committee handed the last Nobel Prize for literature of the century to the German writer Gunter Grass on Friday, marking a period to the century's great literary works. Among all the messages it sends out, one quiet note heard probably not by many people but certainly by the Chinese: their authors are totally absent during the first hundred years since the establishment of the honor. With one fifth of the world's population and a long and profound cultural and literary tradition, there might be more people who love and undertake the drudgery of writing in China than in any other country in the world. So why has no Chinese author ever been honored with the award of the prize? Among the possible reasons, the following are worthy of consideration: Politics has corroded literature If the Nobel Prize for literature began this century, so did Chinese political literature. Beginning in the early 1920s, authors and scholars such as Hu Shi (胡适) advocated the modernization of the Chinese language, intending to promote a literary revolution. This however quickly turned into a political movement intent on "saving and strengthening the nation." Before long, the patriotic crusade was subsumed by the anti-Japanese war. Consequently, "oppose the Japanese and save the nation" became the slogan of most authors and the so-called "literature of national defense" (国防文学) became fashionable for a time. The civil war between the KMT and the communists, which immediately followed the anti-Japanese war, took the relay baton to dominate literature. Most authors were willingly involved in politicized writing. After the communists took over China, authors were not only totally deprived of their freedom of creativity, but were also remodeled to suit the Communist ideology. Those modern classics of China, such as The Tempest (暴风骤雨), The Red Flag (红旗谱) and A Tale of Youth (青春之歌), characterized China's literature of the last fifty years: they are social messages and literary propagators of communist ideology. Writers were required to be servants of the party and to subjugate art to politics. In this carefully policed intellectual atmosphere, authors gradually lost their individualism, humanity and sensibility. During the Mao era almost all literary works promoted revolutionary spirit instead of human values. Although the revolutionary character in Chinese writing has abated over the past 20 years, the long period of dominance of political "revolutionary " themes has stunted Chinese writers' ability to deal with the "foul rag and bone shop of the heart" which is, universally, the stuff of great literature. The Chinese writers themselves don't seem to understand this. The late author and translator of Ulysses, Xiao Qian (萧乾), complained that the Nobel Committee did not understand the heroic images of workers and peasants in Chinese literature. A young writer of the new generation, Wang Anyi (王安忆), commented on Zhang Ailing (张爱玲) recently saying she wrote only petty-bourgeois sentiment. It is peculiar that two well-known authors of two different generations seemed to be ignorant of the meaning and purpose of literature. If subjects of imaginary writing must be confined to certain social groups or display certain values, then literature has metamorphosed to politics. The bondage of traditional Chinese culture But politics should not be the sole matter to blame for China's failure to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Otherwise why did five authors and poets from the former communist Soviet Union -- a system just as politicized and just as culturally policed -- receive the accolade? And why has Taiwan, with a population of 22 million and without communist rule, not produced a Nobel Laureate while Australia, with a smaller population, has? In fact, not only in the last 100 years but in the last 2,000 years China has failed to produce any great literary art that was recognized universally. Therefore, simply to blame communism is not enough; there must be more deep-rooted problems that need to be addressed. Throughout the 2,000 years of Chinese history, culture preference has always put the concepts of country, nationality and collective thinking above the value of life, dignity and individual freedom. This kind of value preference conflicts with the essential quest of the art of literature: the meaning of living, the value of individual life, love, suffering and compassion, etc. When a culture's principal value is not focused on individual human beings, then there is no individual, and every person is simply part of an amorphous mass. It is hard to imagine that any literary work with individuality could emerge from a culture without individualism. Undeniably no universality is likely to be found in the suppression of individuality. Therefore, such a culture is doomed to be unable to produce unique literary characters that reflect part of the universal common condition. The lack of literary cultivation Most writers learn their craft by the reading of others. This necessitates both that they live in an environment where literature is obtainable and, in order to hone their skills, they need to see how others use their native language and address their cultural and social issues, they need access primarily to the classics of their own culture. Unfortunately, Chinese authors suffer from an inherent shortage of literature. Most classic Chinese works were written in classical Chinese (文言文), which could hardly benefit modern writers who neither read nor write in such language. Since classical Chinese is hugely different from today's modern language, the author Lin Yutang (林语堂) asserted: "Psychologically, learning classical Chinese is almost like learning a foreign language." The only few readable, half-classical, half-modern language Chinese works, such as A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦）, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义) and All Men Are Brothers (水浒传), have proved to provide little literary nutrition to modern writers. For A Dream of Red Mansions, the best of all, lacks any in-depth probing of human feelings despite its excellent description of characters and situations; Romance of the Three Kingdoms and All Men Are Brothers are merely popular fiction for the masses and have nothing to do with art of literature. Therefore, the modern Chinese literary heritage is extremely scanty, both in quantity and quality. While the Soviet Union might have shared China's bleak communist politics and forced adaptation of literature for socio-political goals, this did not stop the emergence of five Nobel Literature laureates. Without a doubt, the rich literary tradition of Russia was the reason for this. Russian authors inherited an abundant legacy from their great classical writers -- Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. Russia's literature is appreciated universally, but Chinese literature has been acknowledged merely in China. One may occasionally see a copy of an English translation of A Dream of Red Mansions, in US bookstores, but nobody knows who Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹) is. This scanty heritage of literature has handicapped the development of Chinese authors' humanity and sense of art. Besides their own culture heritage, another primary resource for writers is foreign literature. However, Chinese translations of western classics only began in this century. Not only was the quantity limited, the selection of literary works approved in communist China was mostly of second- or third-rate so called proletarian writers. The Chinese translation of Ulysses was published in China only in 1994, and Lolita 30 years after its original publication. Most of the 100 best English novels this century as selected by Random House have not yet been translated into Chinese, let alone the numerous great literary achievements of the 18th and 19th century. Nevertheless, even if all of the great Western works were translated into Chinese, "translations are but reflections in a tarnished mirror," as the French translator of Ulysses stated. Language is essential for authors such as Joyce and Nabokov. Unfortunately, one could see almost nothing at all of the masterful language usage of Ulysses and the beautiful prose style of Lolita from the Chinese translations. In fact, no matter how the translators racked their brains, not even half of the original works' richness was brought out in the Chinese translations. Lack of knowledge of foreign languages is another defect of today's Chinese authors. Again, dissimilarly, most good Russian writers know at least one or two foreign languages. For example, all of the above mentioned Russian authors understood French. Doubtless, French literature is one of the world's greatest (wining 12 Nobel Prizes for literature, far more than any other single country, is no accident). Imbibing directly the quintessence of France's splendid literature while utilizing their own rich resources, it is no wonder that Russia should have produced so many fine writers. Obviously, it is too hard for Chinese writers to produce great literary art when they can neither receive nourishment from their own cultural legacy nor acquire directly the cream of the world's classic literature. Modern Chinese language history is too short Despite China's 2,000 years of cultural history, the language being used today is less than 100 years old. In today's China, few can appreciate the language that was used throughout China's history and was called by Lu Xun (鲁迅) "the dead language." Lin Yutang also commented, "Classical Chinese cannot express precise meanings. As a result, everything was said in generalities or in vague terms." Of all Chinese literature, the poems of the Tang and Song dynasties are generally agreed to be the finest flowering. However, since the rules for such poems were extremely strict, the poet Wen Yiduo (闻一多) described the writing of such poems as "dancing with shackles." And the shackles certainly crippled Chinese expression. The reform and modernization of the Chinese language began only in the 1920s. Today, the use of classical Chinese has been almost totally abandoned, but the new vernacular has never had a chance to really develop, dogged as it has been by political struggles, trammeled as it has been by political ideology and sloganeering. When a language itself is still in a primitive stage of development, little good writing can emerge from it. It is not easy to point to any contemporary Chinese author whose prose style is truly beautiful. The phraseology of good writers such as Lu Xun was extraordinarily dreadful. The limitation of characters Although Chinese characters may help one's visual impression in a certain sense, the limitation on imagination and abstract thinking they impose is a greater deficiency. Compared with English, Chinese has some fatal flaws. It does not take a linguist to realize the differences; anyone with a high-school level ability in both languages could easily point out the impotency of the latter. For example, the lack of words to express abstract concepts leads to indefinite and imprecise expressions, the scarcity of verbs results in boring descriptions of human actions, the paucity of adjectives and adverbs contributes to dull narration in stories, the deficiency of synonyms makes explanations of any kind not only difficult but also repetitious. Besides all of these, loose grammar and floppy logical requirements of Chinese encourage innumerable senseless compositions. No wonder Lin Yutang claimed "Chinese language was ruled by men and English by law." Based on this writer's own reading experience, the best distinction of the advantage and disadvantage of English and Chinese languages might be this: almost all English translations of Chinese works, except poetry, are either more precise, or more beautiful, or more powerful than the originals; while at the same time, all, not almost, Chinese translations of English works are either more obscure, coarser or weaker than the originals. It certainly needs many books to discuss such a big subject as Chinese language and literature, but at least, the above mentioned reasons can be seen as having something to do with Chinese authors' failure to win the Nobel Prize or any other degree of international appreciation. It was rumored in the 1930s that the Nobel Committee had considered awarding Lu Xun the prize, upon which Lu Xun wrote to a friend: "I think there is nobody truly deserving the Nobel Prize in China. It would be better for Sweden to ignore us. It would only encourage Chinese egotism, causing them to believe they could really parallel those great foreign writers if yellow-skinned people were given preferential considerations. The result would not be good at all." Nearly 70 years later, nothing has changed. Translated by Francis Huang www.taipeitimes.com 1999-12-12 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 11:19👍 0💬 0中国人为何失去了病有所医的经济权利？
病有所医是现代社会福利不可或缺的一种，而在中国诸种“改革”当中，医疗保险体制却遭受举国痛诟，公认这项改革有三大缺陷：个人医疗费用负担过重，政府投入不足和医疗服务公益性缺失。最常见的指责是认为医保体制改革之所以失败，原因全在于过度市场化。 医疗体制改革的缺陷易于总结，但将其失败归咎为过度市场化却过于简单。因为从历史经验中可以看到一点，正是市场经济催生了平等理念及与之相对应的社会保障制度。它要求法律认可和平等地保护每一个人的权利，并反对特权和垄断。 而中国的医疗保险制度目前既不能让本国公民平等地享有最低医疗保险，同时又在医疗保障中设置了按照干部行政级别分级享受医疗待遇、分级给药的规定。这些其实都与市场经济的原则相悖。 其实，无论在哪个国家，医疗事业都有其双重性，既有市场属性，即追求盈利的一面，也有其公益性的一面。所谓“市场属性”指的是医护人员的服务及医疗设施的使用均需用钱购买；所谓“公益性”指的是政府应该拿出钱来，为本国人民购买医疗服务，这里说的“购买”就是用政府要用公共投入建立医疗保障体系，让医疗部门既能够满足盈利需要，又能保持其公益性特点。 兼顾公益性与市场属性，其实就是国家与市场关系的调整。虽然各国医疗制度存在诸多差异，但两大趋势却是共同的：一是医疗保障体系趋向普遍覆盖；二是医疗服务体系趋向“有管理的市场化”。而中国却正好呈现了两大相反的特点：一是医疗保险覆盖率过低（城市里只覆盖了50％人口，农村里只覆盖了20％的人口）；二是医疗市场缺乏有效率的监管，从而导致医疗制度面临公益性不足与市场化不足双重困境。 国家与市场关系的调整有赖于社会制度系统。在社会制度系统中，医疗制度只是一个子系统，它的所有问题只是中国社会制度缺陷在医疗领域的折射。 医保改革失败，首先应归因于政府放弃了在全民医疗保险中的责任。这种放弃体现为公共投入严重不足，结果既导致保险覆盖率偏低，也导致个人支付的医疗卫生费用迅速上涨。“2005年中国卫生统计提要”的数据显示，中国的卫生总费用高达6,623亿多元，其中由政府支出的只17.2％，社会支出为27％多，个人卫生支出占55.5％――而发达国家的政府负担了卫生总费用的73％，发展中国家负担了57％－59.3％左右。 其次，中国社会缺乏医疗商业保险等筹资机制。这一点原因就更复杂，一是商业保险的历史很短，二是整个社会信用缺失，市场风险很大。商业性医疗保险这一险种虽经保险公司推出多年，但鲜有人问津。从表面上看，缺乏多元化筹资管道是医疗市场化不足所致，但其深层障碍却是道德信用缺失，人们对各种保险商品缺乏信任。 第三是监管力度不够，导致医药费失控。由于政府投入大量减少，而医院要维持运转，必然提高对患者的收费水准。而医疗行业是一个医生（医疗服务的卖方）与患者（买方）之间信息严重不对称的“卖方市场”，医生掌握病症分析、用药的有关信息，极易形成“诱导性过度消费”。加之中国的医疗体制又是医药不分，医院既是药品厂家最大的购买者，又是最大的销售者。这个市场如果缺乏监管或者监管不力，就等于放纵医生利用职业位势诱导或者迫使患者消费。而作为医疗市场管理者的中国政府又高度腐败，在这种制度环境下，希望中国医疗市场走向管理型市场化无异于缘木求鱼。 也正因为医疗体制折射了是中国社会体制的弊端，在外部社会条件没有改变的情况下，中国医疗体制的改善并无多大可能。但病有所医又是人的基本经济权利，从中国的国力与人口现状出发，中国政府与其以发达国家为效法样板，不如学习印度。印度奉行政府重公平，市场重效率的准则，用公共投入建立了一个低水平的全民医保体制，以满足穷人需要体现公平；同时鼓励民间投资，建立商业化的高水平医疗服务体系，以满足富裕阶层的需要以追求效率。一个低水平的医保体制未必理想，但总比中国目前这种生了小病也无钱医治的状况要好得多。 （原载于《华夏电子报》2006年8月17日，第 153 期）
何清涟2025-11-06 06:01👍 0💬 0日本孩子赢在起跑线上
前三篇专栏，我写的都是日本与美国比较，强调日本的独特性，那种由日本传统文化所塑造的国民性。在这个塑造过程中，教育至关重要。而这一点，尤其和当今的美国有很大不同。 美国左派风潮非一日之寒，其中一个重要原因是左派势力基本控制了美国的教育，从孩子阶段就灌输左倾意识形态，培养（毒化）出一批批的“美式红卫兵”、左疯继承人。最近美国左派民主党在国会提出“选举改革法”，其中就有把投票年龄降至16岁，因年龄越小，越容易被洗脑、被欺骗，从而成为左派票源和力量。美国甚至在幼儿园阶段就对孩子传播“变性”是“自由选择”这种荒谬教育，甚至要改变男、女的代名词“他、她”等。 美国的保守派当然知道争夺孩子教育的重要性，但他们很难战胜左派，因有三大劣势∶第一，即使父母在家里用传统价值教育孩子，而外部左派掌控的教育界、新闻界、影视界等，人数成千上万。两个父母对付百万左派，数量上不成比例。第二，孩子在家除睡觉外，仅早晚与父母在一起，白天基本都在学校和课外活动，被左派老师引导（老师多数左倾，美国教师工会是最左的团体之一）；所以在影响孩子的时间上，父母又是弱势。第三，左媒无所不在∶除学校外，机场、旅馆、商场等几乎所有面向公众的电视，都是播放严重左倾的CNN等，话语权被左派以绝对压倒多数占据。所以，仅在人数、时间、媒体这三点上，家长处于很大的劣势中。保守派父母在家里对孩子的传统价值教育，很容易被外部左翼的汪洋大海淹没。更别提那些本身就是左派的父母，还有众多连左右派都分不清、也不懂的家长们，尤其是移民。这种现状下，左派俘虏孩子轻而易举。 日本父母最懂“三岁看大，七岁看老” 而日本在教育方面则走了一条确保传承传统的独特之路。中国当今有句很火的流行语，叫做“不让孩子输在起跑线”。意思不错，要孩子小时候打好基础，让人生的“赛跑”从起点就有赢的条件。但中国人追求的赢，基本限于“技能”的赢，而不是品德、教养和正向的人生观。而且中国人溺爱孩子（一胎化恶果），相互攀比（谁更有钱有势），加上所谓爱国主义教育（其实是爱共产党、爱独裁领袖）的政治毒化，事实上，中国孩子在起跑线上就已“输”了。 真正从起跑线就开始“赢”的是日本孩子。他们首先赢在做人的品德和教养上；那是一种没有意识形态的、人类古往今来认可的传统价值下的品德和教养。这种赢，源于日本独特的教育理念和实践。 人们常说孩子“三岁看大，七岁看老”，强调三岁之前得到的教育和薰陶之重要。而这个阶段的教育只能来自父母。在日本，很多女性生育时都辞职，回家当全职妈妈，以求最大限度对孩子“三岁”期间的哺育和教育。在越来越竞争激烈的社会，辞去工作要很大的决心。少了一份薪金收入的同时又增加一个婴儿，经济负担顿然加重。但日本父母认为，钱“丢”了，将来可以挣回来，而孩子这三岁期间的教育没能跟上来、“三岁看大”这决定性的年龄段没打好地基，将来孩子长大出了问题，那就多少钱也“买”不回来了。从这个意义上说，日本父母是世界上最有“数学”头脑、最有“高瞻远瞩”眼光、最懂价值投资的。 日本教育学家认为，孩子三岁之内更多时间和母亲在一起，会更有安全感；得到母亲无微不至的哺育和教育，以后会更少反叛心理和人格。心理调查显示，那些小时候没得到充分母爱的孩子，更容易产生反社会人格，更易暴烈暴戾，甚至成为犯罪分子。有位中国母亲曾就中日孩子教育问题在网上评论说，“我认识的很多青春期叛逆的孩子从小都不是父母带大的。” 日本孩子在三岁内就被父母教育礼貌、感恩等等，甚至从小就被薰陶日语独有的“敬语、自谦语”等也加强了那种礼仪文化。孩子在吃饭前后，都被教育要感恩，而且从小就被要求中国俗语说的“站有站样，坐有坐样”，自律、规矩。而不是像美国人那样让孩子所谓自由发展，结果很多情况下纵容了各种恶习。孩子生下来是一张白纸，不懂事，如果随孩子自己决定，就等于在一张白纸上随便涂鸦，那麽涂得一塌糊涂、一片狼藉就不奇怪了。日本人把好了三岁内孩子的第一关，就为其奠定了一生至关重要的人品地基。 孩子三岁后，可送保育院，那里的教育和日本父母的家教基本一致，仍然继续礼仪、礼貌、诚信、感恩等，但多了合作、团队精神、关心和照顾他人感受等教育。然后是幼儿园，进一步强化上述的品德教育。从小学阶段开始，孩子则被教育的，更多是独立、自立、自强等今后在社会上生存的基本素质。建立在幼年培养的礼貌、感恩、关爱他人这块地基上的自立自强，和自私自利则是两股道上跑的车。 “日本学校的午饭”味香全球 日本小学生上学，学校禁止父母开车接送，除非有特殊状况，还要事先向校方申请。六、七岁孩子背著大书包独自去学校，全日本如此。媒体曾拍到日本皇室的小公主也是自己背著书包独自去学校。而中国孩子们却在攀比谁的父母接送他们上学的车更高级。 孩子独自去上学，路上出事怎麽办？日本在这方面有精心设计∶1，开学前，家长被学校安排熟悉孩子的上学路线，走哪条路都有严格规定，以减少出事或交通意外可能。2，孩子要按路线上学，放学回家路上不许去商店或其它任何地方，必须直接到家，脱掉校服后才可自由活动。3，如有情况，孩子书包上有报警按钮。4，有市民和商家组成的“110自愿援助孩子队”，孩子上学路上，沿途都有110可支援。仅大阪，就有14万商家和住户参加这种110计划。整个日本社会形成一个巨大绵密的保护孩子网。所以小学生独自去学校在安全的前提下，培养了自立、自强、自律的心理素质。 日本小学的午饭也是训练孩子自立、自强的重要环节。按规定，校长和老师要和孩子一起吃饭，吃同样饭菜，而且校长要“先吃”，以防食物有毒。饭盒是孩子们自己搬来，饭前孩子们要感谢厨师，感谢老师和校长。饭菜不管是否喜欢，都要吃掉，绝不可浪费。饭后孩子们把食品盒拆开、按垃圾分类，然后清洗碗筷、刷牙（日本孩子书包里都有牙具），然后集体清理饭桌和地板等。再相互致谢、致敬，整个午饭才结束。这样日复一日地重复，就使日本孩子养成了一种习惯∶尊敬、礼貌、尊师、勤劳、团队精神等。澳洲记者曾采访并录制了8分钟的“日本学校的午饭”（https://youtu.be/hL5mKE4e4uU ），观看人次3300万。中国人看过直呼∶“他们在培养公民，我们在培养公主！” “不要给别人添麻烦”的文化更高级 日本孩子不仅从小被教育礼仪、规矩、自律、诚信、感恩等，还被教导“不要给别人添麻烦”，这不仅是一种行为规范，更是全民性的道德修养，是日本不同于全世界任何其它国家、最有特色的文化传统。在公众场所，日本孩子都是静静的，不大声喧哗，更不哭闹，也不乱跑，因为早被父母教育“不要给别人添麻烦”。孩子如果忘了，父母会立刻提醒，告诉这会给他人“添麻烦”，同时向周围的人说“对不起”。日本有一亿多人口，“对不起”这句话恐怕每天得被说几十亿遍，成为日本被公认是全球最礼貌国家的一个符号！ 英国《金融时报》驻东京记者皮林（David Pilling）写了本《日本∶生存的艺术》，其中说，“日本人在做每一件事时都执迷于准时性、礼貌性、整洁性，以及绝对的严肃性，让我感到惊诧。”日本人经过婴儿、童年、少年等奠定人生基础的礼貌、礼仪、感恩、守时、敬业、诚信、荣誉、耻辱感等等教育后，他们看事情的角度就和美国人、英国人，尤其是西方左派不同了。例如东京御茶水大学数学教授、散文家藤原正彦2005年出版的《国家的品格》（畅销200万册）就非常强调日本的传统文化价值。他说在英国做研究时，看到一位知名的剑桥教授竟然用裂口的杯子稀哩呼噜喝茶，感到惊愕。而在日本，教授身份的人不可能用裂口杯，更不会发出“呼噜呼噜”的喝茶声。这种不顾身份的行为，连日本小孩都做不出来。他说“日本有茶席，我们把每件事都变成艺术。”固然有些苛刻，但反映一种对规矩的要求。 日本犯罪率是美国二百分之一 藤原教授可能少见多怪，如果他看到堂堂美国总统奥巴马竟在白宫把两条腿翘在办公桌上，仰倒在沙发椅里听下属汇报工作，可能会惊愕掉下巴。但这种毫无规矩和自律的举止，现已成为美国左派的时髦。在名牌大学，就有穿短裤、露腿毛的教授给学生授课。 有人观察到，在国际谈判中，西装革履的代表团一定来自日本。他们认为，穿得正规整洁是对他人的尊重。像日本女性，出门都要打扮、穿著整洁漂亮，主要不是秀自己，而是尊重他人。三十多年前我第一次去日本就对这点感受强烈，对朋友说，怎麽街上的日本女性好像都是要去参加婚礼？她们不仅穿得赏心悦目，而且举止典雅。这和当今那些不知羞耻、到处跳丑陋广场舞的中国大妈们形成两极！ 日本孩子获得的独特品德教育，传承了日本独有的传统和文化，成就了当今这个不仅繁荣，更是全球最文明国家的日本！中国的经济总额近年超过了日本，但中国人口是日本的10倍。日本是世界第三大经济体，是英国和法国经济的总和。别说跟腐败专制的中国比，即使和欧美比，日本在治安、服务等方面都超过他们。日本人口是澳洲的五倍，但犯罪率是澳洲五分之一，是美国的二百分之一！这与日本人从幼年起的哺育和教育方式一定有直接关系。“三岁看大、七岁看老”。 ——原载台湾《看》杂志2021年11月号 2021-11-12 http://www.caochangqing.com （转载请指明出处）
曹长青2025-11-01 10:30👍 0💬 0“哈里斯经济学”继承与发扬了“拜登经济学”
何清涟 DNC大会经得力的宣传包装，展示了民主党内士气提振，以至于人们忽视了一条重要信息：8月20日DNC大会上，哈里斯的最大金主”未来前进”（Future Forward）负责人昌西·麦克莱恩（Chauncey McLean）在发言中称，他们自己的民意调查没有公开民调显示的那么 “乐观”，并警告说民主党人在关键州的竞选中将面临更加激烈的竞争。[\[1\]](https://heqinglian.net/2024/09/02/harris-inherits-and-develops-biden-economics/#post-13943-endnote-1)那么，决定2024大选王座归属的因素到底是什么？是真实的民意，还是重演2020年破坏规则的选举？这确实是个非常严重的问题。 美国大选的“第一战场”，经济问题是定盘星 自当年克林顿说出那句经典名言“笨蛋，问题在经济”以来，经济政策历来被视作总统候选人核心的选举承诺，对中间选民的选择起着关键作用。8月16日，在DNC大会召开前三天，副总统卡马拉·哈里斯公布了她上任 100 天内将实施的经济政策——其中包括高达 1.7 万亿美元的补贴，其主要主张包括：1、承诺在四年内努力建造 300 万套新房，以给每位首次购房者发放 25,000 美元帮其支付首付；2、为中等收入和低收入家庭在儿童出生第一年提供高达 6,000 美元的税收减免。但并未没有说明哪些收入属于“低收入”和“中等收入”。3、承诺要“取消数百万美国人的医疗债务，并帮助他们避免将来积累此类债务”，限制药价，超出的部分由政府买单。4、限制零售业物价。哈里斯计划降低食品杂货成本，包括与国会合作禁止“哄抬价格”，或阻止卖家对产品定价过高。食品价格如果涨得太离谱，要高额罚款。 派发的蛋糕够多够大，但最关键的一条却未予以说明：做蛋糕的钱从哪里来？多位记者都当面向她提出这个问题，哈里斯不耐烦地表示，询问她计划如何支付她在竞选期间提出的几项经济提案的费用“是一个错误”。不过，她没法堵住所有经济学家的嘴，包括哈佛大学名经济学教授曼昆(Greg Mankiw) [\[2\]](https://heqinglian.net/2024/09/02/harris-inherits-and-develops-biden-economics/#post-13943-endnote-2)在内的多位智库经济学家都批评她的经济政策，集中于三点：1、住房补贴会导致通货膨胀，导致更严重的财政赤字。2、控制价格会造成短缺与强制配给。3、对资金来源表示困惑。[\[3\]](https://heqinglian.net/2024/09/02/harris-inherits-and-develops-biden-economics/#post-13943-endnote-3) 大概她的竞选团队想表示资金来源可靠，哈里斯竞选团队19日证实，她希望向美国家庭和企业增税 5 万亿美元 。[\[4\]](https://heqinglian.net/2024/09/02/harris-inherits-and-develops-biden-economics/#post-13943-endnote-4) 美国历届大选的经验证明，增加税收从来不受欢迎，美国主流媒体多支持哈里斯，对这增税计划基本轻轻带过，读者几乎注意不到。在发布之后的一周之内，只有美国税收改革网站(Americans for Tax Reform)详细列举了这个计划并予以评点。 增税5万亿计划上贴“向富人征税”标签 增税5 万亿美元计划，主要内容包括： 1、 将目前 21% 的联邦企业所得税税率提高到 28%，高于共产主义中国的 25% 和欧盟 21% 的平均水平。 2、 小企业税率上调至39.6%。 3、 将美国与国际税收卡特尔捆绑在一起，对美国企业征收21% 的全球最低税率 。 4、 股票回购税增加四倍——哈里斯税将影响到所有拥有 401K 或IRA 或工会养老金的美国人 5、 对加密货币挖矿使用的电力征收 30% 的联邦消费税 6、 对美国能源征收370亿美元税； 7、 取消父母去世时的加倍税基，征收第二笔遗产税； 8、 对未实现收益征收违宪的财富税； 9、 资本利得税和股息税是共产主义中国的两倍多 10、 退休税与医疗税。 该文指出，为了征税，国税局规模要大大扩大。 拜登被要求退选的主要原因，其实是其经济政策的失败，因此，民主党内原来曾希望哈里斯远离拜登经济学，但在政府干预经济上，如前所述，哈里斯走得比拜登更远。在税收政策上，哈里斯其实继承了拜登的绝大多数主张，比如1、2、3、7，9；而对未实现的收益征收财富税，完全违宪，美国人都知道，没有实现的预期收入不能征税。 川普的税收政策 川普三次竞选都主张国内减税，2017年11月公布了《减税和就业法案》（The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act，简称#TCJA），影响到美国非常多的个人与企业公司。在川普之前，美国的公司税率为31%，TCJA将公司税率降为21%，此外还取消了对小企业的转嫁扣除（Pass-through Deduction），使这些企业的营业收入获得20%的税收减免，当时，由于民主党人都反对这项法案，因此规定这项法案将在2025年12月到期。 民主党一直攻击川普的TCJA是对富人的税收减免，完全不提中产阶级其实也从中受益。例如，根据TCJA，平均收入在49,000至86,000美元之间的中产阶级家庭，其税收减少了800美元，在税收减免的基础上减少了1.4%；收入在308,000至733,000美元之间的上层阶级，税收减少了3.4%。 2024年川普竞选时公布的税收政策在维持原有TCJA的基础上向外延伸，主要包括对所有美国进口商品普遍征收所谓的基线关税，对所有从中国进口的美国商品征收60%的关税，同时维持TCJA的减税政策，具体为使TCJA中即将到期的个人所得税减免和企业所得税减免永久化。 选民对税收的态度 税收政策是美国两大政党之间最大的分歧之一，即使是微弱的国会多数席位也可能导致企业利润和家庭财务状况出现巨大差异。因此，凡纳税的选民（美国民主党选民很多不用交税）都关心税收政策。 今年3月26日，彭博社公布该社就税收问题在七个摇摆州的民调，民调结果显示，受调选民表示更信任川普的税收政策，以47%对35%领先拜登。但对于川普的关税政策，只有50%的受调选民支持对中国进口商品征收60%关税，26%反对；49%的受调选民支持普遍征收基线关税，25%反对。 该民调还显示，“向富人征税”成为受2024年大选关键州选民欢迎的政策立场，在7个摇摆州中，69%的登记选民支持对亿万富翁与年收入超过40万美元的人群增税，支持者中包括58%的共和党人、83%的民主党人和66%的无党派人士。同时，大多数选民仍然希望维持对个人所得税与遗产税的减免政策，只有32%的受调查选民支持让TCJA的减税政策在2025年如期到期。[\[5\]](https://heqinglian.net/2024/09/02/harris-inherits-and-develops-biden-economics/#post-13943-endnote-5) 选民对川普的国内税收政策与关税政策持不同态度，原因也一目了然，对国内税收政策的支持反映了美国纳税人对维持减税政策的需求，认为TCJA的政策能够提高纳税人的税后收入，促进经济增长和就业机会。反对高关税政策，可能是缘于选民担心高额关税会导致商品价格上涨，加剧通货膨胀，甚至可能引发贸易战，对经济造成负面影响。 TCJA政策一定程度上回应了美国社会对财富分配不平等问题的关注，迎合了美国社会推进经济公平与公正的基本主张，获得选民的广泛支持。根据美国财政部2019年报告，TCJA使24个州的失业率降至历史最低 。[\[6\]](https://heqinglian.net/2024/09/02/harris-inherits-and-develops-biden-economics/#post-13943-endnote-6) 拜登的税收政策虽然强调向富人增税，降低高收入群体的可支配收入，但未提高低收入群体的税后收入；提高企业税率和资本利得税将对企业投资和资本市场造成负面影响，并降低美国国际竞争力，进而减缓经济增长。税务基金会（Tax Foundation）初步估计拜登的2025财年预算将使长期GDP减少2.2%，即期GDP减少1.9%，工资减少1.6%，并减少78·8万个全职工作岗位 。[\[7\]](https://heqinglian.net/2024/09/02/harris-inherits-and-develops-biden-economics/#post-13943-endnote-7) 川普有过四年执政业绩，任期内的经济发展让美国人受益；哈里斯的经济政策尤其是税收基本继承“拜登经济学”，本人并无创意，过去从政业绩也乏善可陈。也因此，从竞选的第一战场上，哈里斯绝无赢的可能；但第二战场涉及选举规则之争，共和党试图恢复2016年及以前那一人一票、身份验证、当天完成选举的选举规则，罢用有争议的DOMINI机器；民主党则坚持不验ID、鼓励非法移民投票、邮寄选票、依旧使用DOMINI机器。如今这场涉及规则的战斗正如火如荼，尤其是在七个战场州特别激烈，可以预知，决定这场选战胜负的因素不完全在第一战场。 Harris super PAC founder says public polls are too optimistic, By Jarrett Renshaw and Trevor Hunnicutt, August 19, 2024(https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-super-pac-founder-says-public-polls-are-too-optimistic-2024-08-19/ ) ↑ #Greg Mankiw, Maybe Ms. Harris needs some economists Sunday, August 18, 2024 (https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/ ) ↑ Kamala Harris unveils economic plan — including a whopping $1.7T in handouts, fed ban on grocery store ‘price gouging’, By Diana Glebova, Josh Christenson and Victoria Churchill Published Aug. 16, 2024 (https://nypost.com/2024/08/16/us-news/kamala-harris-unveils-economic-plan-including-a-whopping-1-7t-in-handouts-fed-ban-on-grocery-store-price-gouging/ ) ↑ $5 Trillion List of Tax Hikes Kamala Harris Just Endorsed, By Mike Palicz, 08/21/2024 (https://atr.org/5-trillion-list-of-tax-hikes-kamala-harris-just-endorsed/· ) ↑ Tax the Rich Is Actually a Popular Bipartisan Stance, Poll Shows, Bloomberg, March 26,2024( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/swing-state-voters-favor-tax-the-rich-movement-election-poll?leadSource=uverify%20wall ) ↑ U.S. Department of the Treasury, December 10, 2019, Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Delivering for Businesses, for Families, and for You(https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-delivering-for-businesses-for-families-and-for-you ) ↑ Details and Analysis of President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Proposal, Tax Foundation, March 22,2024(https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/biden-budget-2025-tax-proposals/ ) ↑
何清涟2025-11-06 06:14👍 0💬 0