| 黄亚生：民主终将会赢——对李世默"两个政治制度"的批判 | ||
| 作者：黄亚生 译者： 国有汪汪汪 | ||
Earlier this year, economist Yasheng Huang (watch his 2011 TED Talk) sparred with Eric X. Li in the pages of Foreign Affairs on a similar topic to today's TED Talk. The TED Blog asked Huang to expand on his argument in his ongoing conversation with Li. 今年早些时候，经济学家黄亚生与李世默在美国《外交事务》（Foreign Affairs）上进行了辩论，所围绕的话题与今天TED演讲的主题相似。TED博客邀请黄亚生进一步阐释观点，继续与李世默围绕此问题的对话。 Imagine confusing the following two statements from a cancer doctor: 1) "You may die from cancer" and 2) "I want you to die from cancer." It is not hard to see a rudimentary difference between these two statements. The first statement is a prediction — it is saying that something may happen given certain conditions (in this case death conditional upon having cancer). The second statement is a preference, a desire, or a wish for a world to one's particular liking. 想象一下一位癌症医生做出如下两种令人混淆的论断：一，"你可能死于癌症"；二，"我希望你死于癌症"。我们很容易就看出这两个论断的基本不同。第一个论断是一种预测，是说在特定条件下（在此情况下是指得了癌症）一些事情可能发生。第二个论断则是一种偏好，一种愿望，或者说，是想让世界成为自己喜欢的样子的一种愿景。 Who would make such a rudimentary mistake confusing these two types of statements? Many people, including Eric X. Li, in today's TED Talk. The Marxian meta-narrative drilled into Li's head — and mine in my childhood and youth in the 1960s and 1970s — is a normative statement. When Marx came up with his ideas about evolution of human societies, there was not a single country in the world that even remotely resembled the communist system he advocated. The communist system Marx had in mind had no private property or of ownership of any kind. Money was also absent in that system. The Marxian version of communism has never come to fruition and, most likely, never will. Marx based his "prediction" on deduction; his successors did so by imposing their wish, enforced by power and violence. 那么谁会混淆这样两种论断，犯这样的低级错误呢？有很多人，包括今天参加TED演讲的李世默。马克思主义元叙事钻入了李世默的脑袋——上世纪六七十年代也钻入了童年和青年时代的我的脑袋里。当马克思产生人类社会进化想法的时候，世界上甚至根本没有任何一个国家，与他所提倡的共产主义体制有一丁点相似。马克思所想的共产主义体制没有任何形式的私人财产和产权。那个世界中连钱都没有。马克思版的共产主义从未实现，很可能永远也不会实现。马克思通过推理进行"预测"，而他的后继者则以权力和暴力强行推行自己的愿望。 By contrast, the narrative that was apparently fed to Li when he was a "Berkeley hippie" is based on the actual experience of human affairs. We have had hundreds of years of experience with democracy and hundreds of countries/years of democratic transitions and rule. The statement that countries transition to democracy as they get rich is a positive statement — it is a prediction based on data. In the 1960s, roughly 25 percent of the world was democratic; today the proportion is 63 percent . There are far more instances of dictatorships transitioning to democracies than the other way around. The rest of the world has clearly expressed a preference for democracy. As Minxin Pei has pointed out, of the 25 countries with a higher GDP per capita than China that are not free or partially free, 21 of them are sustained by natural resources. But these are exceptions that prove the rule — countries become democratic as they get richer. Today not a single country classified as the richest is a single-party authoritarian system. (Singapore is arguably a borderline case.) Whether Li likes it or not, they all seem to end up in the same place. 相比之下，这种曾令仍作为伯克利嬉皮士的李世默感到厌倦的叙事，是基于真实的人世经历产生。我们已有几百年民主经验，和数百年/次的民主过渡和治理实践。有一个实证性论述是这样说的，当国家更富有时候他们便倾向于转向民主国家，这个预测是有数据支持的。在1960年代，大约25%的国家实现了民主。今天这个比例是63%。还有更多的例子显示了独裁国家是转向了民主体制而不是其他道路。世界上其余国家也明确的表达了对民主的偏爱。正像裴敏欣指出的，在所有25个比中国人均GDP更高的不自由或者部分自由的国家中，有21个是靠自然资源来支撑的。但是这些都是论证中（国家更富有时候他们便倾向于转向民主体制）的例外。今天，没有任何一个被列为最富有的国家还是一党专政。（新加坡可以说是一个边缘情况。）无论李世默喜欢与否，他们都在同样的地方被终结。 Are democracies more corrupt? Li thinks so. He cites the Transparency International (TI) index to support his view. The TI data show that China is ranked better than many democracies. Fair enough. 民主制度会崩溃吗？李世默认为是这样，他举出了国际清廉指数（TII）来支持他的论断，TII的数据显示中国的排名比许多民主国家还要好。我勉强同意。 I have always thought that there is a touch of irony with using transparency data to defend a political system built on opacity. Irony aside, let's keep in mind that TI index itself is a product of a political system that Li so disparages — democracy (German democracy to be exact). This underscores a basic point — we know far more about corruption in democracies than we do about corruption in authoritarian countries because democracies are, by definition, more transparent and they have more transparency data. While I trust comparisons of corruption among democratic countries, to mechanically compare corruption in China with that in democracies, as Li has done so repeatedly, is fundamentally flawed. His methodology confounds two effects — how transparent a country is and how corrupt a country is. I am not saying that democracies are necessarily cleaner than China; I am just saying that Li's use of TI data is not the basis for drawing conclusions in either direction. The right way to reach a conclusion on this issue is to say that given the same level of transparency (and the same level of many other things, including income), China is — or is not — more corrupt than democracies. 我一直认为用清廉指数来为一个不透明的政治体系来辩护是很讽刺的。先把讽刺放到一边，先让我们记住TII本身就是一个李诋毁的民主政体的产物（准确的说是德国民主）。下面要讲的是一个基本的观点：在民主国家中的腐败要远远多于我们知道的在那些集权国家中的，因为民主国家按照定义就更透明，并且有更透明的数据。我更相信在民主国家中比较腐败程度，而不是机械的套用在中国与其他民主国家的比较中，这就像李世默所不断重复做的，但从根本上说是有缺陷的。他的方法混淆了两种效果：一个国家透明程度如何以及一个国家腐败程度如何。我不是说民主国家就一定比中国干净，我说的是李用的数据不能作为得出上述任何一个方向的结论的基本依据。在这个问题上想要得出结论的正确方法是：在给定同样的透明度下（以及同样水平的许多其他指标，比如收入）中国有/没有比民主国家腐败。 A simple example will suffice to illustrate this idea. In 2010, two Indian entrepreneurs founded a website called I Paid a Bribe. The website invited anonymous postings of instances in which Indian citizens had to pay a bribe. By August 2012 the website has recorded more than 20,000 reports of corruption. Some Chinese entrepreneurs tried to do the same thing: They created I Made a Bribe and 522phone.com. But those websites were promptly shut down by the Chinese government. The right conclusion is not, as the logic of Li would suggest, that China is cleaner than India because it has zero postings of corrupt instances whereas India has some 20,000 posted instances of corruption. 一个简单的例子就会阐明这种观点。在2010年，两个印度企业家成立了一个网站叫"我行贿"。这个网站让帖子以匿名的方式张贴印度公民不得不行贿的例子。截止到2012年8月，这个网站记录了20，000起腐败的报告。一些中国企业试着做同样的事情，比如他们创造了" I Made a Bribe"和" 522phone.com"但是这些网站很快就被中国政府强行关闭了。正确的结论并不是像李的逻辑所说的，中国比印度更干净因为他有着零纪录的腐败案例而印度政府有着20，000起腐败案件。 With due respect to the good work at Transparency International, its data are very poor at handling this basic difference between perception of corruption and incidence of corruption. Democracies are more transparent — about its virtues and its vices — than authoritarian systems. We know far more about Indian corruption in part because the Indian system is more transparent, and it has a noisy chattering class who are not afraid to challenge and criticize the government (and, in a few instances, to stick a video camera into a hotel room recording the transfer of cash to politicians). Also lower-level corruption is more observable than corruption at the top of the political hierarchy. The TI index is better at uncovering the corruption of a Barun the policeman in Chennai than a Bo Xilai the Politburo member from Chongqing. These factors, not corruption per se, are likely to explain most of the discrepancies between China and India in terms of TI rankings. 对于国际透明组织的努力工作我们应该给予尊重，但是他们的数据在处理腐败感知和腐败发生率的不同上有着非常差的表现。民主国家无论在美德还是恶习上，都要比集权国家更要透明。我们之所以知道印度更腐败部分上是因为印度有着更高的透明度，并且他有着一个可以闲聊的一群人，他们不害怕挑战并批评政府。（在一些例子中，我们看到他们坚持用摄像机进入酒店纪录转移到政客手里的现金）另外，低级的腐败比那些发生在高级政治阶层中更容易被发现。TII更容易发现发生在Barun一个警察的腐败，而不是在重庆的政治局成员薄熙来。这些因素更容易解释一大部分中印TII排名的不同，而不是腐败本身。 Li likes to point out, again using TI data, that the likes of Indonesia, Argentina and the Philippines are both democracies and notoriously corrupt. He often omits crucial factual details when he is addressing this issue. Yes, these countries are democracies, in 2013, but they were governed by ruthless military dictators for decades long before they transitioned to democracy. It was the autocracy of these countries that bred and fermented corruption. (Remember the 3,000 pairs of shoes of Mrs. Marcos?) Corruption is like cancer, metastatic and entrenched. While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize new democracies for not rooting out corruption in a timely fashion, confusing the difficulties of treating the entrenched corruption with its underlying cause is analogous to saying that a cancer patient got his cancer after he was admitted for chemotherapy. 李喜欢指出，就像探讨印度一样，再次用到TII的数据，我们可以发现阿根廷跟菲利宾是两个我们众所周知的民主又腐败的国家。但当他在说明这个问题的时候，他总是省略关键的事实细节。是的，在2013年这两个国家都是民主国家，但是在他们转型到民主国家之前都被无情的军政法独裁统治了数十年之久。是这些独裁政府带来并让腐败在此发酵的。（别忘了马克斯夫人的3000双鞋）腐败就像癌症一样，既可以转移又根深蒂固。虽然我们现在可以合法的批评新政府没有及时有效的清除腐败，但这是混淆了根深蒂固的腐败的根本原因，这就好比我们说一个病人在他化疗之后得了癌症。 The world league of the most egregious corruption offenders belongs exclusively to autocrats. The top three ruling looters as of 2004, according to a TI report, are Suharto, Marcos and Mobutu. These three dictators pillaged a combined $50 billion from their impoverished people. Democracies are certainly not immune to corruption, but I think that they have to work a lot harder before they can catch up with these autocrats. 世界上最让人震惊的顶级腐败分子都是且只是那些独裁者。根据TII的报告，让我们来看看2004年的前3位罪魁祸首，分别是苏哈托，马科斯，蒙博托。这些独裁者在他们穷困潦倒的人们中总共掠夺了500个亿。民主政治当然不会对腐败免疫，但是我认为他们如果想要追上这些独裁者的步伐恐怕不得不更努力工作。 Li has a lot of faith in the Chinese system. He first argues that the system enjoys widespread support among the Chinese population. He cites a Financial Times survey that 93 percent of Chinese young people are optimistic about their future. I have seen these high approval ratings used by Li and others as evidence that the Chinese system is healthy and robust, but I am puzzled why Li should stop at 93 percent. Why not go further, to 100 percent ? In a country without free speech, asking people to directly evaluate performance of leaders is like asking people to take a single-choice exam. The poll numbers for Erich Honecker and Kim Jong-un would put Chinese leaders to shame. 李对中国的体制有着很强的信心，他首先说这个体制是受到中国人民的广泛支持的。他引用了金融时报的调查：93%的中国年轻人对自己的未来很有信心。我已经看过这些被李引用的很高的支持率的数据，以及其他显示中国体制很健康健壮的证据。但是我很困惑为什么李应该在93%的地方停止了，为什么不再走的远一点呢，到达100%，在一个没有自由言论的国家，问人民直接评价领导人的表现就好像是让他们参与一个只有一个选项的考试。昂纳克以及金正恩的民调支持率将会甩中国领导人一大截。 (Let me also offer a cautionary footnote on how and how not to use Chinese survey data. I have done a lot of survey research in China, and I am always humbled by how tricky it is to interpret the survey findings. Apart from the political pressures that tend to channel answers in a particular direction, another problem is that Chinese respondents sometimes view taking a survey as similar to taking an exam. Chinese exams have standard answers, and sometimes Chinese respondents fill out surveys by trying to guess what the "standard" answer is rather than expressing their own views. I would caution against any naïve uses of Chinese survey data.) （让我提出一个警示，千万别使用中国的调查数据，我对中国已经做了许多研究，我总是在理解调查数据上的陷阱面前很谦卑。除了政治上的压力让调查的答案引向自己想要的方向外，另一个问题是中国的受访者有时候把这个调查看成简单的考试一样，中国的考试有着标准答案，然后有的时候中国的受访者在填写调查问卷的时候试着猜测什么是标准答案，而不是表达他们自己的意见。所以我很谨慎的对待任何随意的使用中国的数据。） Li also touts the adaptability of the Chinese political system. Let me quote: 李还吹捧了中国制度的适应性，让我引述一下： "Now, most political scientists will tell us that a one-party system is inherently incapable of self-correction. It won't last long because it cannot adapt. Now here are the facts. In 64 years of running the largest country in the world, the range of the party's policies has been wider than any other country in recent memory, from radical land collectivization to the Great Leap Forward, then privatization of farmland, then the Cultural Revolution, then Deng Xiaoping's market reform, then successor Jiang Zemin took the giant political step of opening up party membership to private business people, something unimaginable during Mao's rule. So the party self-corrects in rather dramatic fashion." "现在，大多数政治学者都会告诉你一党制在本质上说不能自我修正的。它不会持续很长时间，因为他不能适应。现在让我来告诉你们事实，在64年的世界上最大的国家的统治中，我党的政策范围是比其他国家都要广谱的，在最近的记忆里，从土改运动，到大跃进，然后是农田私有化，文化大革命，邓小平的市场化改革，再到继任者江泽民迈出了巨大的一步：让私人企业家也能成为党员。这有些在毛时代看来都不可思议。所以我党在以戏剧化的方式自我修正。" Now imagine putting forward the following narrative celebrating, say, Russian "adaptability": Russia, as a country or as a people, is highly adaptable. The range of its "policies has been wider than any other country in recent memory," from gulags to Stalin's red terror, then collectivization, then central planning, then glasnost and perestroika, then privatization, then crony capitalism, then the illiberal democracy under Putin, something unimaginable during Lenin's rule. So the country "self-corrects in rather dramatic fashion." 现在我们想象一下提出如下叙述性的庆祝，比如，俄罗斯的"适应性"。俄罗斯，无论作为一个国家，还是一个民族，都有高度的适应性。在最近的记忆中，他的政策范围要比其他国家都有广泛，从古拉格到斯大林的红色恐怖，然后是集体化运动，中央计划经济，再到开放和改革，私有化，裙带资本主义，然后是在普京统治下的不开明的民主，在列宁的统治时来看这会显得不可思议。所以国家正在以戏剧化的方式自我修正。 Let me be clear and explicit — Li's reasoning on the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is exactly identical to the one I offered on Russia. The only difference is that Li was referring to a political organization — the CCP — and I am referring to a sovereign state. 让我说的更清楚明确，李的关于党具有适应性的推理是跟我提出的俄罗斯的例子一样的。唯一的不同是李用的词语是共产党，而我的是苏维埃国家。 The TED audience greeted Li's speech with applause — several times in fact. I doubt that had Li offered this Russian analogy the reception would have been as warm. The reason is simple: The TED audience is intimately familiar with the tumult, violence and astronomical human toll of the Soviet rule. Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, quoted the findings by other scholars that the Soviet regime killed 62 million of its own citizens. I guess the word "correction" somewhat understates the magnitude of the transformation from Stalin's murderous, genocidal regime to the problematic, struggling but nonetheless democratic Russia today. TED的观众给了李热烈的掌声，事实上有好多次，我怀疑如果李用了上面俄罗斯这个类比他是不是还会如此的受欢迎。原因很简单，TED的观众对骚乱，暴力以及苏联统治时期天文人员的伤亡更熟悉。史蒂芬·平克在他的书《The Better Angels of Our Nature》中引用了其他学者的发现，苏联政权杀了六千二百万的人民。我猜"修正"这个词多少有点低估了从斯大林制造血腥屠杀的灭绝种族的政权，到今天问题重重，但好歹也能被称作民主的俄罗斯的转变。 I do not know what a Berkeley hippie learned from his education, but in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I received my education and where I am a professor by profession, I learned — and teach — every day that words actually have meaning. To me, self-correction implies at least two things. First, a self-correction is, well, a correction by self. Yes, Mao's policies were "corrected" or even reversed by his successors, as Li pointed out, but in what sense is this "a self-correction?" Mao's utterly disastrous policies persisted during his waning days even while the chairman lay in a vegetative state and his successor — who came to power through a virtual coup — only dared to modify Mao's policies after his physical expiration was certain. If this is an instance of self-correction, exactly what is not a self-correction? Almost every single policy change Li identified in his talk was made by the successor to the person who initiated the policy that got corrected. (In quite a few cases, not even by the immediate successor.) This is a bizarre definition of self-correction. Does it constitute a self-correction when the math errors I left uncorrected in my childhood are now being corrected by my children? 我不知道一个伯克利嬉皮士从他的教育中学到了什么，但是在马萨诸塞的剑桥，就是我接受教育以及我当教授的地方，我学习到了并且每天教授给人们话语都应该是有意义的。对于我来讲，自我修正至少说明了两件事，第一，自我修正是通过自我来做出的纠正。是的，毛的政策被修正了或者被他的继任者完全反过来了，正像李所说的。但是，这究竟是不是"自我修正"？毛的完全具有毁灭性的政策在他衰弱甚至弥留之际成为了植物人还在持续，他的通过算不上是严格政变上位的继任者，只敢在毛的肉身确定无疑的死亡之后才敢修改毛的政策。如果这也算一个自我修正的例子，那么什么不是自我修正？几乎任何一个李在他演讲中提到的政策的都是他的继任者对前面制定这个政策的人的改变。（在许多例子中，不是被直接继任的人改变。）这是一个自我修正奇怪的定义。我小时候犯下的数学错误如果被我的孩子们改了这构成了自我修正吗？ The second meaning of self-correction has to do with the circumstances in which the correction occurs, not just the identity of the person making the correction. A 10-year-old can correct her spelling or math error on her own volition, or she could have done so after her teacher registered a few harsh slaps on the back of her left hand. In both situations the identity of the corrector is the same — the 10-year-old student — but the circumstances of the correction are vastly different. One would normally associate the first situation with "self-correction," the second situation with coercion, duress or, as in this case, violence. In other words, self-correction implies a degree of voluntariness on the part of the person making the correction, not forced or coerced, not out of lack of alternatives other than making the correction. The element of choice is a vital component of the definition of self-correction. 自我修正的第二层含义是指自我修正要与环境发生联系，不只是进行错误更正的人的身份。一个10岁的孩子可以凭借他自己的意愿更正拼写错误以及数学错误，他可以在他的老师对他的左手背进行严厉的拍打之后做出修改。在两种情况下修改都是一样的，都是一个10岁的男孩，但是环境却是很大程度的不相同。一个人会很正常的将第一种情况跟自我修正联系起来，第二种跟强迫，胁迫或者是暴力联系起来。换言之，自我修正对于当事人意味着可以有一定程度的任意性来进行修正，不是通过胁迫，不是除了进行更正没有其他选择。自我修正的定义中，可以选择的元素是个重要组成部分。 The second meaning of self-correction has to do with the circumstances in which the correction occurs, not just the identity of the person making the correction. A 10-year-old can correct her spelling or math error on her own volition, or she could have done so after her teacher registered a few harsh slaps on the back of her left hand. In both situations the identity of the corrector is the same — the 10-year-old student — but the circumstances of the correction are vastly different. One would normally associate the first situation with "self-correction," the second situation with coercion, duress or, as in this case, violence. In other words, self-correction implies a degree of voluntariness on the part of the person making the correction, not forced or coerced, not out of lack of alternatives other than making the correction. The element of choice is a vital component of the definition of self-correction. 李在描述64年的中共一党专政进行了一系列自我修正，很多人为此鼓掌，现在让我给这些鼓掌的人提供一些丢失的细节吧。在1949年到2012年间，有过6位共产党领导人。在这六位当中，有两位突然且随便的就被政治力量清洗出局了。（其中一位甚至辞退都没有经过整顿程序甚至是党内的程序。）第三位领导人失权后被监禁15年直到死去。这就是说6个人中的3个没有完成他们的任期。两位毛指定的接班人在他们的工作中死去，其中一位死于空难，当时他在企图逃往苏联。另一位被折磨到死然后被埋在一座换了名字的坟里。哦，我还没描述约有3千万的人死于毛的大跃进中，还有数不清的成千万的人死在文化大革命中。另外，你知道毛在有十分清晰的证据显示大跃进已经造成大规模的饥荒时，毛不但坚持他的大跃进还让他的政策更进一步。 Li calls the policy changes after these wrenching tumults "self-corrections." His reasoning is that an entity called the CCP, but not anybody else, introduced these policy changes. First of all, doesn't that have something to do with the fact that nobody else was allowed a chance to make those policy changes? Secondly, this fixation on who made the policy changes rather than on the circumstances under which the policy changes were made is surely problematic. Let's extend Li's logic a little bit further. Shall we rephrase the American Independence Movement as a self-correction by the British? Or maybe the ceding of the British imperial authority over India as another British self-correcting act? Shall we re-label the Japanese surrender to end the Second World War a self-correction by the Japanese? Yes, there were two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all of that, but didn't the representatives of Emperor Hirohito sign the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on the battleship of USS Missouri? 李把这些痛苦的悲声过后的政策变动称作"自我修正"。他的理由就是是一个叫做共产党的实体，而不是其他人，出台了这些变化的政策。首先，这难道不是跟其他人无法被允许来改变政策有关吗？其次，是谁在改变这个政策而不是在什么环境条件下改变更是一个问题。让我们按照李的逻辑推下去，难道我们应该把美国独立运动说成是英国的自我修正吗？或者割让英国在印度的统治权也是一次自我修正？难道我们应该重新认识日本，把在二战中日本的投降行为理解成他的自我修正吗？没错，是有两颗原子弹在广岛跟长崎爆炸了，但难道不是表裕仁天皇派出的代表们在密苏里条约上签订了投降协议吗？ To a hammer, everything is a nail. Li sees ills of democracies everywhere — financial crises in Europe and the United States, money politics and corruption. I readily agree that money politics in America is a huge problem and that it is indeed making the system utterly dysfunctional. But let's be very clear about exactly how and why money politics is dysfunctional. It is dysfunctional precisely because it is fundamentally antithetical to democracy. Money politics is a perversion of democracy. It undermines and invalidates a canonical pillar of democracy — one person, one vote. To be logically consistent, Li should celebrate money politics because it is moving the United States in the direction of the authoritarian way of politics that he is so enamored of. 对于一个锤子来说，任何东西都是钉子。李在各个地方都看见了民主的弊端-发生在美国跟欧洲的金融危机；金钱政治跟腐败。我承认金钱政治对于美国来说是一个巨大的问题，而且他能让整个体制完全失去作用。但是让我们先澄清这个问题，为什么金钱政治能让体制失去作用。它之所以这样因为这是完全跟民主政治对立的。金钱政治是民主的颠覆，他削弱并且让一个民主基本规范-一人一票制失去作用。按照这样的逻辑，那么李应该为金钱政治欢呼，因为它把美国引向朝着独裁的道路，这正是李所迷恋的东西。 This may be a shocking revelation to Li, but US and European democracies did not patent financial crisis. Many authoritarian regimes experienced catastrophic financial and economic crises. Think of Indonesia in 1997 and the multiple junta regimes in Latin America in the 1970s and the 1980s. The only authoritarian regimes that go without suffering an explicit financial crisis are centrally planned economies, such as Romania and East Germany. But this is entirely because they failed to meet a minimum condition for having a financial crisis — having a financial system. The consequences for this defect are well-known — in lieu of sharp cyclical ups and downs, these countries produced long-term economic stagnations. A venture capitalist would not fare well in that system. 得出这样的结论对李来说可能有点出乎意料，但是金融危机并不是美国跟欧洲民主国家的专利。许多独裁国家同样经历了灾难性的金融跟经济危机。回想一下1997年的印尼，7，80年代的多个军政府统治的拉丁美洲。唯一的没有明确遭受金融危机的是那些采用计划经济的独裁政权，比如罗马尼亚和东德。但原因其实是他们完全没有一个发生金融危机的最低的条件-有一个金融系统。这个没金融系统的缺陷的结果广为人知：在这些国家里，不是剧烈的周期性起伏，而是长期的经济停滞。任何一个风投都不会在那里发展。 Li claims that he has studied the ability of democracies to deliver performance. At least in his talk, the evidence that he has done so is not compelling. There is no evidence that countries pay an economic price for being democratic. (It is also important to note that there is no compelling global evidence that democracies necessarily outperform autocracies in economic growth either. Some do and some do not. The conclusion is case by case.) But in the areas of public services, the evidence is in favor of democracies. Two academics, David Lake and Matthew Baum, show that democracies are superior to authoritarian countries in providing public services, such as health and education. Not just established democracies do a better job; countries that transitioned to democracies experienced an immediate improvement in the provision of these public services, and countries that reverted back to authoritarianism typically suffered a setback. 李宣称他研究了民主国家的政治表现，但至少在他的演讲中，他提出的证据可没有什么说服力。现在还没有证据说明国家成为民主政体要付出什么经济代价。（同样重要的是，在世界范围内也没有有说服力的证据指出民主国家一定在经济增长率上比独裁国家好或者不好。实际上有一些是好，有一些不是，取决于具体的情况）但是在公共服务领域，民主国家显然更胜一筹。两位学者David Lake和Matthew Baum证明了民主国家在提供公共物品上比独裁国家更优越，比如健康和教育。不仅仅是以已经成型的民主国家，那些正在转型的国家会有一个在公共物品供给上会有一个突然的增长。相反，退回到独裁国家的地方则会有一个明显的倒退。 Li blames low growth in Europe and in the United States on democracy. I can understand why he has this view, because this is a common mistake often made by casual observers — China is growing at 8 or 9 percent and the US is growing at 1 or 2 percent . He is mistaking a mathematical effect of lower growth due to high base with a political effect of democracies suppressing growth. Because democratic countries are typically richer and have much higher per-capita GDP, it is much harder for them to grow at the same rate as poor — and authoritarian — countries with a lower level of per-capita GDP. Let me provide an analogy. A 15-year-old boy is probably more likely to go to see a movie or hang out with his friends on his own than a 10-year-old because he is older and more mature. It is also likely that he will not grow as fast as a 10-year-old because he is nearer to the plateau of human height. It would be foolish to claim, as Li's logic basically did, that the 15-year-old is growing more slowly because he is going to movies on his own. 李指责了欧洲跟美国等民主国家的经济低增长率。我理解为什么他会有这种想法，因为一个马虎的观察者很容易犯这样常见的错误：中国有百分之8到9的增长率，而美国只有百分之1到2。他错误的把低增长率归咎于民主政治，认为后者压制了增长。因为民主国家通常更富有并且有更高的人均GDP，所以这很难保持跟那些有着低人均GDP的贫困国家和集权国家一样的增长率。让我做一个类比，一个15岁的男孩可能比一个10岁的男孩更容易自己出去看一场电影或者出去跟朋友玩，因为他更成熟。另外他身体上不会比10岁的男孩成长的更快了，他的身高已经接近人类的平均水平了。按照李的逻辑来说，那我们应该说15岁的男孩生长的更慢是因为他要自己出去看电影。 Li is very clear that he dislikes democracy, more than about the reasons why he dislikes democracy. Li rejects democracy on cultural grounds. In his speech, he asserts that democracy is an alien concept for Chinese culture. This view is almost amusing if not for its consequential implications. Last time I checked, venture capital is a foreign concept but that apparently has not stopped Li from practicing and prospering from it. (And I presume "Eric" to be foreign in origin? I may be wrong on this.) Conversely, would Li insist on adhering to every and each precept of Chinese culture and tradition? Would Li object to abolishing the practice of bound feet of Chinese women? 相比于他不喜欢民主制度的原因，李更不喜欢民主制度本身。李是在文化层面上拒绝了民主，在他的演讲中，他断言民主在中国文化中是一个舶来品。这一点如果不是因为它相应的影响将会是有趣的。刚才我在校验他的时候，风投也是一个外来概念，但显然没有阻止李在从事这个行当并且发了财。（我猜"ERIC"也是一个地道的外来概念？）反过来说，李会坚持那些中国传统文化中的条条训诫吗？他会反对废除女人裹小脚的清规戒律吗？ The simple fact is that the Chinese have accepted many foreign concepts and practices already. (Just a reminder: Marxism to the Chinese is as Western as Adam Smith.) It is a perfectly legitimate debate about which foreign ideas and practices China ought to accept, adopt or adapt, but this debate is about which ideas China should adopt, not whether China should adopt any foreign ideas and practices at all. 一个简单的事实就是中国已经接受了许多国外的概念并将其付出实践。（顺便提醒一下，马克思主义跟亚当斯密一样也是外来概念）。这是一个完全正当的辩论关于什么外国思想，习俗是是中国可以接受，采用以及适应的。但是这个辩论是应该关于中国应该接受的思想，不是是否中国应该采用外国的思想和习俗。 If the issue is about which ideas or which practices to adopt or reject, then, unlike Li, I do not feel confident enough to know exactly which foreign ideas and practices 1.3 billion Chinese people want to embrace or want to reject. A cultural argument against democracy does not logically lead to making democracy unavailable to the Chinese but to a course of actions for the Chinese people themselves to decide on the merits or the demerits of democracy. Furthermore, if the Chinese themselves reject democracy on their own, isn't it redundant to expend massive resources to fight and suppress democracy? Aren't there better ways to spend this money? 如果我们的议题是什么思想或者什么习俗应该采纳或者拒绝，那么我可不像是李，我对于13亿人想要什么外国思想，不想要什么外国习俗我一点信心都没有。一个反对民主的文化原因逻辑上是推不出来民主不适用于中国人，而是要让中国人实际的行动来决定民主的优点跟缺点。更进一步，如果中国人自己拒绝了民主，那还用费钱费时来打压或者跟民主做斗争吗？把钱用在别的地方不好吗？ So far this debate has not occurred in China, because having this debate in the first place requires some democracy. But it has occurred in other Chinese environments, and the outcome of those debates is that there is nothing fundamentally incompatible between Chinese culture and democracy. Hong Kong, although without an electoral democratic system, has press freedom and rule of law, and there is no evidence that the place has fallen into chaos and anarchy. Taiwan today has a vibrant democracy, and many mainland travelers to Taiwan often marvel that Taiwanese society is not only democratic but also far more adherent to Chinese traditions than mainland China. (I have always felt that those who believe that democracy and Chinese culture are incompatible are closet supporters of Taiwanese independence. They exclude Taiwanese as Chinese.) 目前这场争论还没有发生在中国本土，因为想要这么做的先决条件是需要民主的土壤。但是它发生在中国的其他地方，争论的结果就是中国本土文化跟民主没有什么不兼容的。我们知道的香港，虽然目前还没有实行选举民主，但是他早已实现了新闻自由以及一套法律制度，目前我们还没看到任何他会混乱以及陷入无政府状态的迹象。再说台湾，今天是一个充满活力的民主政体，那些从大陆去台湾的游客经常感叹并惊异于台湾社会不仅仅是很民主的，而且在传统文化的坚守上做的比大陆要出色很多。（我怀疑那些认为民主跟中国文化不相容的人都是那些支持台独的，他们不认为台湾属于中国） Indeed Li himself has accepted quite a few political reforms that are normally considered as "Western." NGOs are okay and even some press freedom is okay. He also endorses some intra-party democracy. These are all sensible steps toward making the Chinese system more democratic than the Maoist system, and I am all for them. The difference is that I see freedom to vote and multi-party competition as natural and logical extensions of these initial reforms, whereas Li draws a sharp line in the sand between the political reforms that have already occurred and the potential political reforms that some of us have advocated. As much as I tried, I fail to see any differences in principle between these partial reforms and the more complete reforms encompassing democracy. 实际上，李已经接受了很多政治改革，通常都被认为是"西方"的。非政府组织是很好的，新闻自由也很好。他也认可一些党内民主。这些都是更合理的步骤，使中国的体制比毛时代的更加民主，我自己也支持他们。不同的是，我看到的是这些初步改革之后的一系列后续改革：自由选举以及多党制竞争。但是李在我们已经做出的改革跟提出的这些后续改革之间划了一道楚河汉界。但是我怎么努力，也实在看不出这些部分的改革和朝着民主道路上更进一步的完整的改革间有什么原则上的区别。 There is a very curious way Li objects to democracy: He objects to many of the mechanics of democracy. In particular, he has a thing against voting. But the problem is that voting is simply a way to implement the practice of democracy, and even Li endorses some democracy. For example, he favors intra-party democracy. Fine, I do too; but how do you implement intra-party democracy without voting? This is a bit like praising tennis as a sport but condemning the use of a racket to play it. 李反对民主的方式非常奇怪，他反对许多民主的机制。特别是，他反对人民有投票权。但问题是，投票是一个落实民主很简单有效的方式。李也拥护一部分民主方式。比如，他赞成党内民主。好吧，我也赞成，但是在没有投票权的情况下，如何实现党内民主。这就好比说喜欢网球这种运动但是谴责人们使用球拍。 Li has not provided a coherent and logical argument for his positions on democracy. I suspect, although I do not have any direct evidence, that there is a simple modus operandi — endorsing reforms the CCP has endorsed and opposing reforms that CCP has opposed. This is fine as far as posturing goes but it is not a principled argument of anything. 对于民主的看法，我感到李没有提出一个连贯的具有逻辑的论证。尽管我没有直接的证据，但是发现他有一些不光彩的手法：拥护共产党拥护的，反对共产党反对的。这是故意做出某种姿态而不是在从道理上进行说明。 That said, I believe it is perfectly healthy and indeed essential to have a rigorous debate on democracy — but that debate ought to be based on data, facts, logic and reasoning. By this criterion, Li's talk does not start that debate. 我觉得进行一场严格的关于民主的辩论赛很有益也是很需要的，但这是要基于数据，事实，逻辑和推理。按照这样的标准，李其实是没有在辩论。 In this aspect, however, democracy and autocracy are not symmetrical. In a democracy, we can debate and challenge democracy and autocracy alike, as Li did when he put down George W. Bush (which I greatly enjoyed) and as I do here. But those in an autocracy can challenge democracy only. (Brezhnev, upon being informed that there were protesters shouting "Down with Reagan" in front of the White House and that the US government could not do anything to them, reportedly told Reagan, "There are people shouting 'Down with Reagan' on Red Square and I am not doing anything to them.") I have no troubles with people challenging people in power and being skeptical about democracy. In fact, the ability to do so in a democracy is the very strength of democracy, and a vital source of human progress. Copernicus was Copernicus because he overturned, not because he re-created, Ptolemaic astronomy. But by the same criterion, I do have troubles with people who do not see the merit of extending the same freedom they have to those who currently do not have it. 在这方面来说，民主跟独裁不是对称的，在一个民主国家，我们可以向民主和独裁提出挑战和进行讨论。就像李在黑布什一样（我很欣赏这一点），我在这里也同样可以。但是在独裁国家，你却只可以只可以谴责民主。（当勃烈日涅夫被告知在白宫前面有高喊着"打倒里根"及美国政府的游行的时候，美国政府不能做任何事，他告诉里根有许多人在红场上高喊打倒里根我也不会对他们做任何事。）我对人民挑战拥有权力的人以及怀疑民主制度没有任何困惑。事实上，能在民主国家做这样的事来源于民主自身的力量，这也是一个人类进步重要的源泉。哥白尼之所以是哥白尼，是因为他推翻了托勒密天文学，而不是重建了它。用同样的标准来看，我对那些没有看到把自由从现有的领域延推广到没有的地方的价值的人们感到很困惑。 Like Li, I do not like the messianic tone some have invoked to support democracy. I support democracy on pragmatic grounds. The single most important benefit of democracy is its ability to tame violence. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker provided these startling statistics: During the 20th century, totalitarian regimes were responsible for 138 million deaths, of which 110 million occurred in communist countries. Authoritarian regimes caused another 28 million deaths. Democracies killed 2 million, mainly in their colonies as well as with food blockades and civilian bombings during the wars. Democracies, as Pinker pointed out, have trouble even bringing themselves to execute serial murderers. Democracies, Pinker argued, have "a tangle of institutional restraints, so a leader can't just mobilize armies and militias on a whim to fan out over the country and start killing massive numbers of citizens." 像李一样，我不喜欢一些人用那种救世主的口气来赞颂民主。我赞成民主是因为务实的理由。最重要的一个民主带来的好处就是他驯服住了暴力。在《The Better Angels of Our Nature》这本书中，平克给出了令人触目惊心的数据：在20世纪中，极权主义政权背负了1.38亿条人命，其中1.1亿死在了共产主义国家中，威权国家还制造了另外2800万命案。民主国家则是200万，主要死亡发生在殖民地以及食物封锁或者战争期间民用爆炸这种情况。正像平克指出的那样，民主国家甚至很难执行一系列的杀人行动。平克接着说，民主国家机构之间互相牵制，一个领导人凭借自己的念头不能随便动员军队和民兵进入整个国家屠杀人民。 Contrary to what he was apparently told when he was a Berkeley hippie, the idea of democracy is not that it leads to a nirvana but that it can help prevent a living hell. Democracy has many, many problems. This insurance function of democracy — of mitigating against disasters — is often forgotten or taken for granted, but it is the single most important reason why democracy is superior to every other political system so far invented by human beings. Maybe one day there will be a better system than democracy, but the Chinese political system, in Li's rendition, is not one of them. 跟李还是一个伯克利嬉皮时候被告知的相反，民主的理念不是告诉人们他是万能的，而是说他能保护人民不生活在地狱中。民主有这般那般的问题。减轻灾难做为一种民主中的保险的功能，经常会被遗忘或者想当然，但这也是为什么民主会比到目前为止人类的其他政治制度优越的最重要的原因。也许有一天，会出现一种比现在民主制度更好的政治制度，但绝不是李提到的那个中国政治体制。 Yasheng Huang is a Professor of Political Economy and International Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is the Founder of both the China Lab and India Lab at MIT Sloan. His writings have appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Forbes, and most recently in Foreign Affairs, where he tangled with Eric X. Li on a similar topic. In 2011, Huang spoke at TED Global on democracy and growth in China and India.
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