环球时报：沈大伟突喊“中国崩溃”为哪般

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09/03/2015
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作者：来源：环球时报

　　资料图：沈大伟

　　美国乔治•华盛顿大学教授沈大伟(David Shambaugh)在《华尔街日报》上撰文，公然宣称“中国共产党统治的最后阶段已经开始，并且它在最后阶段旅途上走得比很多人想象的还要远”。最近围绕“中国崩溃论”不断出现新的叫嚣，就在几天前，美《国家利益》杂志的一篇文章甚至呼吁美国政府要为即将到来的“中国崩溃”做好准备。

　　沈大伟是美国比较著名的研究中国的学者，他曾经对中国体制做过一些“正面解读”，因而常被划入美国的“对华温和派学者”。近一段时间他开始激烈批评中国，成为美国学界动向的一个突出点。

　　无论沈大伟是在做机会主义的新站队，还是这是他晚年对华认识变化的真实反映，这都将被证明是他学术研究的败笔。他对中国的研究缺少超越性的定力，他最终没能跳出西方价值观或政治规律对其研究的干扰，他变得像章家敦之流一样庸俗，靠给中国“占卜”来博西方舆论的眼球。

　　如果美国的主流学者就是以这样过山车般的逻辑开展对华研究并引导美国舆论的话，那么将很令人失望。一段时间以来我们注意到，美国学者对中国情况的资料占有很丰富，但他们的研究结论有很明显立场先行的迹象，并且高度意识形态化。

　　沈大伟应当意识到，他的个人经历和思想方法都有局限，他对非西方世界的认识始终隔着一层，这值得他本人高度警惕。如今全世界看好中国未来的人无疑在增多，第三世界相信中国道路的人尤其越来越普遍。即使在西方，愿意反思对中国认识的人也呈增加之势。他本人对中国的悲观在他周围的圈子里容易得到共鸣，但在世界上却是反常识的。

　　对于自己的“中共末日论”，沈大伟给出五个理由，其中包括中国官场腐败、经济下行压力增大、自由派受到打击等等。它们大多是“中国崩溃论”老掉牙的论据，一些中国学者一时对沈大伟会去附和这些低俗的论述感到惊讶和困惑。

　　沈大伟危言耸听的文章再给中国社会提了个醒：美国即使“温和的”学者都在盼着中国发生什么!那些保守的强硬派们就更不用说了。中国从根本上改变自己的国际舆论环境面临重重挑战，西方主流舆论的对华唱衰有可能增加中国发展的不确定性，我们对西方的防范既不可过头，但也决非是可有可无的。

　　刊登在《华尔街日报》上的这篇文章预测，中国不太可能出现“和平崩溃”，一旦中共“陨落”，这个过程将是“长期、复杂、暴力的”。沈的这部分分析倒是流露出几许西方的“真心思”。西方从未想过中国将有“和平的民主过渡”，他们的目标只有“中国崩溃”，而从未考虑中国人的福祉。他们对中国的和平与发展同国家“崩溃”一起殉葬毫不在乎。

　　沈大伟如果做“中国崩溃论”的先锋鼓吹者，他的学术结局一定是悲剧性的。他前后矛盾，情绪化，对耸人听闻结论的热衷明显高于对搜集新证据的热情。这已经涉及到了学术作风和操守，不简单是某一个学术结论的对错。

　　绝大多数学者都生活在各自的社会环境中，不刻意讨好这个环境是个永恒的考验。中国学界有这个问题，美国学界看来同样有。还是请沈大伟们自重并三思。

　　延伸阅读：

　　今年2月27日沈大伟在智库布鲁金斯学会上的演讲

　　沈大伟2月27日在智库布鲁金斯学会说，中国对自己在国际上的定位，对于自己想要什么并不清楚。

　　沈大伟是在布鲁金斯学会举办的有关中国外交政策演变的一场研讨会上这么说的。这位中国和亚洲事务专家说，中国国内关于中国应扮演何种国际角色的争论从2008年就开始了，目前还在继续。

　　他说，中国的国际定位危机反映在外交关系上，那就是外交行为并没有连贯性。一方面，人们看到中国领导人出席20国集团和联合国等多边场合、在全球事务中进行调停斡旋，似乎扮演着“负责任的大国”角色;另一方面，人们又可以看到外交部发言人和网上民族主义者的强硬言论，中国在领土问题上与邻国产生争议，以及中国在偏远的大陆为了获得资源而进行的“新殖民主义”等。

　　报道称，中共十八大之后，中国展开更加积极的外交，中国似乎抛弃了邓小平“韬光养晦”的战略。从“亚洲新安全观”到“亚洲基础设施投资银行”，外界认为中国在一步步挑战二战后美国领导的国际政治、经济和安全体系。

　　沈大伟说，中国对现存的国际秩序当然有相当的不满意，但这并不表示中国要推翻整个体系。

　　他说：“现在中国虽然资源还不是那么丰富，却越来越发达，我们看到一个更具‘修正主义’姿态的中国。中国对二战后自由体系的不满也越来越显现。不过这并不意味着中国想推翻整个自由体系。我是说，他们对部分体系比如经济体系从整体上说还是很满意的。至于安全体系，他们从来就没有满意过，他们的确在寻求对此做出修改，甚至将其推翻。对于人权和其他社会体系，中国的表现比较模糊，他们可能寻求将其剔除。对其他全球治理问题，他们则倾向于个案解决。”

　　沈大伟说，上世纪70年代以来，由于缺乏资源，中国选择了以务实的姿态加入美国领导的国际体系。

　　具体到美中关系上，沈大伟说，“韬光养晦”还是中国对美国的一个有效运作方式。他说，中国现在所做的是希望“冻结”美国。

　　他说：“在我看来，中国在美中关系上采用的策略是战术性的。他们只是‘敷衍’或是‘冻结’美国。他们在全球或是亚太区域建立关系的同时，他们的最佳希望不是‘反对’美国，而是‘冻结’美国。”

　　沈大伟强调，美国现在要做的就是寻求可以合作的领域，同时管理好两国的“战略竞争”关系。他还说，在全球治理方面，中国还不是美国的好伙伴。

　　2014年6月25日沈大伟在美国《国家利益》上刊文

　　目前，普遍的观点认为中国的主宰地位是无可阻挡的，世界必须适应这个亚洲巨人作为一个——可能已是——全球性大国的事实。十年来，“中国崛起”的预言已小有规模，所有人都描绘了一幅中国成为21世纪主宰者的图景。这种看法可以理解，而且普遍存在——但却是错误的。

　　记得不久前，在20世纪80年代，类似的预言也曾出现过，即日本将成为“世界第一”，加入大国精英俱乐部——但不久后日本陷入30年的停滞期，而且它一个(经济上的)单向度强国，并不具备大国特质所需的较为广泛的基础。因此，当提到当今中国时，持有一些清醒和质疑的态度是可取的。

　　的确，中国是世界上最重要的正在崛起的大国——远远超过印度、巴西和南非的能力——在某些领域它已超过俄罗斯、日本、英国、德国和法国等其他“中等强国”的能力。

　　但能力并不是衡量国家实力和国际实力的唯一标准——也不是最重要的标准。历代社会科学家已确定一个更重要的实力指标，那就是影响力——驾驭局势和左右其他国家行动的能力。

　　当然，各国利用自身实力去影响其他国家实力的行为和事态发展有各种方式：吸引、说服、拉拢、强迫、报偿、诱导、威胁或动用武力。

　　当我们关注当今中国在世界舞台上的存在和行为时，我们需要超越其表面上令人印象深刻的能力看问题，并提出质疑：中国真的正在影响其他国家的行动和各领域国际事务的发展趋势么?简要的回答是：就算真的有，也并不多。可以作出这样的结论，即中国在极少的——如果真的有的话——领域，能够真正对其他国家构成影响、设立全球标准和左右全球趋势。而且中国也没有尽力参与解决全球问题。中国是一个被动大国，它的反应表现是当爆发国际危机时回避挑战并躲藏起来。正在持续的乌克兰危机和叙利亚危机就是近来北京被动反应的绝好例子。

　　此外，当仔细衡量中国的能力时，它们并不非常强大。很多指标仅是在数量上令人印象深刻，但在质量上并非如此。缺少高质量的实力，让中国缺乏实际影响力。中国有一句谚语：外硬内软。如果在很多令人印象深刻的数据表面下进行挖掘，你会发现其普遍存在的一些弱点、阻碍发展的重要因素以及成为一个全球性大国的不牢固的根基。中国可能是一只21世纪的纸老虎。

　　这可以从以下五个方面进行剖析：中国的国际外交、军事能力、文化存在、经济实力和国内因素，则五个方面决定了中国的全球地位。让我们逐一进行审视。

　　从形式上看，中国外交的确已走向全球。尽管与国际社会融为一体且北京采取积极的外交政策，但在外交活动领域，中国仅是一个不完全大国，这是显而易见的。一方面，他表现出一个世界主要大国的特征。它是联合国安理会的常任理事国、20国集团及其他全球重要机构的成员，以及所有重大国际峰会的参与者。另一方面，中国官员在这些场合和大量全球挑战问题上仍表现得非常消极和被动。中国并不是领导者。它未能重塑国际外交，推动其他国家的政策，促成国际共识、组建联盟并解决问题。

　　中国军事能力是其作为一个不完全大国的另一方面：它是一个日渐强大的区域性大国，而绝非一个全球性大国。中国尚不具备向亚洲邻国以外的地区投放军力的能力，即便在亚洲地区，其军力投放能力仍非常有限。目前，根本无法确定中国能否在周边500海里内(如在东中国海和南中国海的争端中)投放军力，以及能否在冲突中坚持足够长的时间而获胜。自1979年以来中国没有打过仗，现在中国的军队还未经受国战争的考验。

　　从硬实力转向软实力，中国作为一个全球文化大国崛起效果如何?并不好。没有其他社会接受中国文化的暗示，也没有其他国家想要模仿中国的政治体制，其经济体制在其他地方也无法复制。尽管自2008年以来中国政府投入巨大努力和资源，试图打造自己的软实力并改善自己的国际形象，但中国在国际上的声誉仍是毁誉参半。　　

中国作为一个经济强国情况又如何?这是大家希望中国成为一个全球性大国和领导者的一个方面——但中国的影响力比预想的要弱。就像其他方面一样，它在数量上令人印象深刻，但在质量上很弱。中国是世界最大的贸易国，但其出口的通常是低端消费品;其产品的国际认知度极低;它仅有一小部分跨国公司在海外成功运营。

　　衡量中国国内实力的其他标准还显示其在全球排名并不高且不够正面。2014年，美国自由之家就各国新闻自由的程度进行排名，中国在197个国家中排名183位。世界银行的全球治理指标一直对中国在政治稳定与控制腐败、政府效率、管理质量、法治程度和问责方面的评级偏低。

　　这是当今中国的概貌。再过10年或20年，中国的全球地位或许在个方面都会大幅提高，可能会在于美国类似的全球基础上进行运转，但就目前而言，中国充其量只是一个不完全的全球性大国。

　　The Coming Chinese Crack-Up（WSJ，March 6， 2015）
　　The endgame of communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping’s ruthless measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point
　　DAVID SHAMBAUGH
　　This past Thursday, the National People’s Congress convened in Beijing in what has become a familiar annual ritual. Some 3,000 "elected" delegates from all over the country-ranging from colorfully clad ethnic minorities to urbane billionaires-will meet for a week to discuss the state of the nation and to engage in the pretense of political participation.
　　Some see this impressive gathering as a sign of the strength of the Chinese political system-but it masks serious weaknesses. Chinese politics has always had a theatrical veneer, with staged events like the congress intended to project the power and stability of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. Officials and citizens alike know that they are supposed to conform to these rituals, participating cheerfully and parroting back official slogans. This behavior is known in Chinese as biaotai, "declaring where one stands," but it is little more than an act of symbolic compliance.
　　Despite appearances, China’s political system is badly broken, and nobody knows it better than the Communist Party itself. China’s strongman leader, Xi Jinping , is hoping that a crackdown on dissent and corruption will shore up the party’s rule. He is determined to avoid becoming the Mikhail Gorbachev of China, presiding over the party’s collapse. But instead of being the antithesis of Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Xi may well wind up having the same effect. His despotism is severely stressing China’s system and society-and bringing it closer to a breaking point.
　　Predicting the demise of authoritarian regimes is a risky business. Few Western experts forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union before it occurred in 1991; the CIA missed it entirely. The downfall of Eastern Europe’s communist states two years earlier was similarly scorned as the wishful thinking of anticommunists-until it happened. The post-Soviet "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 to 2005, as well as the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, all burst forth unanticipated.
　　China-watchers have been on high alert for telltale signs of regime decay and decline ever since the regime’s near-death experience in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Since then, several seasoned Sinologists have risked their professional reputations by asserting that the collapse of CCP rule was inevitable. Others were more cautious-myself included. But times change in China, and so must our analyses.
　　The endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun, I believe, and it has progressed further than many think. We don’t know what the pathway from now until the end will look like, of course. It will probably be highly unstable and unsettled. But until the system begins to unravel in some obvious way, those inside of it will play along-thus contributing to the facade of stability.
　　Communist rule in China is unlikely to end quietly. A single event is unlikely to trigger a peaceful implosion of the regime. Its demise is likely to be protracted, messy and violent. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Mr. Xi will be deposed in a power struggle or coup d’état. With his aggressive anticorruption campaign-a focus of this week’s National People’s Congress-he is overplaying a weak hand and deeply aggravating key party, state, military and commercial constituencies.
　　The Chinese have a proverb, waiying, neiruan-hard on the outside, soft on the inside. Mr. Xi is a genuinely tough ruler. He exudes conviction and personal confidence. But this hard personality belies a party and political system that is extremely fragile on the inside.
　　Consider five telling indications of the regime’s vulnerability and the party’s systemic weaknesses.
　　First, China’s economic elites have one foot out the door, and they are ready to flee en masse if the system really begins to crumble. In 2014, Shanghai’s Hurun Research Institute, which studies China’s wealthy, found that 64% of the "high net worth individuals" whom it polled-393 millionaires and billionaires-were either emigrating or planning to do so. Rich Chinese are sending their children to study abroad in record numbers (in itself, an indictment of the quality of the Chinese higher-education system).
　　Just this week, the Journal reported, federal agents searched several Southern California locations that U.S. authorities allege are linked to "multimillion-dollar birth-tourism businesses that enabled thousands of Chinese women to travel here and return home with infants born as U.S. citizens." Wealthy Chinese are also buying property abroad at record levels and prices, and they are parking their financial assets overseas, often in well-shielded tax havens and shell companies.
　　Meanwhile, Beijing is trying to extradite back to China a large number of alleged financial fugitives living abroad. When a country’s elites-many of them party members-flee in such large numbers, it is a telling sign of lack of confidence in the regime and the country’s future.
　　Second, since taking office in 2012, Mr. Xi has greatly intensified the political repression that has blanketed China since 2009. The targets include the press, social media, film, arts and literature, religious groups, the Internet, intellectuals, Tibetans and Uighurs, dissidents, lawyers, NGOs, university students and textbooks. The Central Committee sent a draconian order known as Document No. 9 down through the party hierarchy in 2013, ordering all units to ferret out any seeming endorsement of the West’s "universal values"-including constitutional democracy, civil society, a free press and neoliberal economics.
　　A more secure and confident government would not institute such a severe crackdown. It is a symptom of the party leadership’s deep anxiety and insecurity.
　　Third, even many regime loyalists are just going through the motions. It is hard to miss the theater of false pretense that has permeated the Chinese body politic for the past few years. Last summer, I was one of a handful of foreigners (and the only American) who attended a conference about the "China Dream," Mr. Xi’s signature concept, at a party-affiliated think tank in Beijing. We sat through two days of mind-numbing, nonstop presentations by two dozen party scholars-but their faces were frozen, their body language was wooden, and their boredom was palpable. They feigned compliance with the party and their leader’s latest mantra. But it was evident that the propaganda had lost its power, and the emperor had no clothes.
　　In December, I was back in Beijing for a conference at the Central Party School, the party’s highest institution of doctrinal instruction, and once again, the country’s top officials and foreign policy experts recited their stock slogans verbatim. During lunch one day, I went to the campus bookstore-always an important stop so that I can update myself on what China’s leading cadres are being taught. Tomes on the store’s shelves ranged from Lenin’s "Selected Works" to Condoleezza Rice’s memoirs, and a table at the entrance was piled high with copies of a pamphlet by Mr. Xi on his campaign to promote the "mass line"-that is, the party’s connection to the masses. "How is this selling?" I asked the clerk. "Oh, it’s not," she replied. "We give it away." The size of the stack suggested it was hardly a hot item.
　　Fourth, the corruption that riddles the party-state and the military also pervades Chinese society as a whole. Mr. Xi’s anticorruption campaign is more sustained and severe than any previous one, but no campaign can eliminate the problem. It is stubbornly rooted in the single-party system, patron-client networks, an economy utterly lacking in transparency, a state-controlled media and the absence of the rule of law.
　　Moreover, Mr. Xi’s campaign is turning out to be at least as much a selective purge as an antigraft campaign. Many of its targets to date have been political clients and allies of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin . Now 88, Mr. Jiang is still the godfather figure of Chinese politics. Going after Mr. Jiang’s patronage network while he is still alive is highly risky for Mr. Xi, particularly since Mr. Xi doesn’t seem to have brought along his own coterie of loyal clients to promote into positions of power. Another problem: Mr. Xi, a child of China’s first-generation revolutionary elites, is one of the party’s "princelings," and his political ties largely extend to other princelings. This silver-spoon generation is widely reviled in Chinese society at large.
　　Finally, China’s economy-for all the Western views of it as an unstoppable juggernaut-is stuck in a series of systemic traps from which there is no easy exit. In November 2013, Mr. Xi presided over the party’s Third Plenum, which unveiled a huge package of proposed economic reforms, but so far, they are sputtering on the launchpad. Yes, consumer spending has been rising, red tape has been reduced, and some fiscal reforms have been introduced, but overall, Mr. Xi’s ambitious goals have been stillborn. The reform package challenges powerful, deeply entrenched interest groups-such as state-owned enterprises and local party cadres-and they are plainly blocking its implementation.
　　These five increasingly evident cracks in the regime’s control can be fixed only through political reform. Until and unless China relaxes its draconian political controls, it will never become an innovative society and a "knowledge economy"-a main goal of the Third Plenum reforms. The political system has become the primary impediment to China’s needed social and economic reforms. If Mr. Xi and party leaders don’t relax their grip, they may be summoning precisely the fate they hope to avoid.
　　In the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the upper reaches of China’s leadership have been obsessed with the fall of its fellow communist giant. Hundreds ofChinese postmortem analyses have dissected the causes of the Soviet disintegration.
　　Mr. Xi’s real "China Dream" has been to avoid the Soviet nightmare. Just a few months into his tenure, he gave a telling internal speech ruing the Soviet Union’s demise and bemoaning Mr. Gorbachev’s betrayals, arguing that Moscow had lacked a "real man" to stand up to its reformist last leader. Mr. Xi’s wave of repression today is meant to be the opposite of Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost. Instead of opening up, Mr. Xi is doubling down on controls over dissenters, the economy and even rivals within the party.
　　But reaction and repression aren’t Mr. Xi’s only option. His predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao , drew very different lessons from the Soviet collapse. From 2000 to 2008, they instituted policies intended to open up the system with carefully limited political reforms.
　　They strengthened local party committees and experimented with voting for multicandidate party secretaries. They recruited more businesspeople and intellectuals into the party. They expanded party consultation with nonparty groups and made the Politburo’s proceedings more transparent. They improved feedback mechanisms within the party, implemented more meritocratic criteria for evaluation and promotion, and created a system of mandatory midcareer training for all 45 million state and party cadres. They enforced retirement requirements and rotated officials and military officers between job assignments every couple of years.
　　In effect, for a while Mr. Jiang and Mr. Hu sought to manage change, not to resist it. But Mr. Xi wants none of this. Since 2009 (when even the heretofore open-minded Mr. Hu changed course and started to clamp down), an increasingly anxious regime has rolled back every single one of these political reforms (with the exception of the cadre-training system). These reforms were masterminded by Mr. Jiang’s political acolyte and former vice president, Zeng Qinghong, who retired in 2008 and is now under suspicion in Mr. Xi’s anticorruption campaign-another symbol of Mr. Xi’s hostility to the measures that might ease the ills of a crumbling system.
　　Some experts think that Mr. Xi’s harsh tactics may actually presage a more open and reformist direction later in his term. I don’t buy it. This leader and regime see politics in zero-sum terms: Relaxing control, in their view, is a sure step toward the demise of the system and their own downfall. They also take the conspiratorial view that the U.S. is actively working to subvert Communist Party rule. None of this suggests that sweeping reforms are just around the corner.
　　We cannot predict when Chinese communism will collapse, but it is hard not to conclude that we are witnessing its final phase. The CCP is the world’s second-longest ruling regime (behind only North Korea), and no party can rule forever.
　　Looking ahead, China-watchers should keep their eyes on the regime’s instruments of control and on those assigned to use those instruments. Large numbers of citizens and party members alike are already voting with their feet and leaving the country or displaying their insincerity by pretending to comply with party dictates.
　　We should watch for the day when the regime’s propaganda agents and its internal security apparatus start becoming lax in enforcing the party’s writ-or when they begin to identify with dissidents, like the East German Stasi agent in the film "The Lives of Others" who came to sympathize with the targets of his spying. When human empathy starts to win out over ossified authority, the endgame of Chinese communism will really have begun.
　　Dr. Shambaugh is a professor of international affairs and the director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His books include "China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation" and, most recently, "China Goes Global: The Partial Power."