美國人哀嘆：為何中國比我們還更會搞資本主義？

美國人哀嘆：為何中國比我們還更會搞資本主義？轉貼

時代不同了。13年前，江總訪美的時候，小克也像今天小奧這樣熱情接待過老江，可那時候，美國人是居高臨下，把中國當小學生看待，時不時會指點指點、訓導訓導。而眼下胡總訪美，卻讓很多美國人心裡酸酸的，也說不出是高興還是難受，反正不太自在吧。按理說，胡總來一趟，就簽了四五百億的商業合同，美國人應當高興才對。可當他們把美國和中國的現況一比，比出差距了，比得不那麼自信了，甚至不只是不自信，而是有點不知所措，有些失落感了。這不，我下面要向大家介紹的這篇文章，作者乾脆認輸了。連搞資本主義也干不過中國，那美國人還有什麼值得驕傲的呢？

（聲明，為了方便，這裡採用意譯加趣譯）

Why China Does Capitalism Better than the U.S.
By Tony Karon

始於2008年的全球經濟衰退，讓我們看到一個最據偉大諷刺意義的事實，即共產黨統治的中國，竟然比我們美國的民選政府，更會應負和處理資本主義的危機。中國的經濟刺激方案，開支比俺們的還要大，對抗經濟衰退的效果也好得多啊。他們的錢大多用在建設基礎設施，從而進一步奠定了將來經濟發展的基礎。你看看他們建了多少樓房和高鐵，而我們呢，一直在發補貼給那些沒的吃沒得住的人。

正當我們西方的這些民主國家苟延殘喘之際，中國的經濟卻咆哮地往前突飛猛進。在過去三十年，中國讓5億人脫貧，從而迅速創造了世界上最大的中產階級，為本國提供了長期的消費需求的引擎。你當然可以指責說，他們的貧富差距太大，社會不公很嚴重，可資本主義制度下，不都這樣嗎？大家是彼此彼此、半斤八兩。 美國人的收入不平等實際上是發達工業國中最嚴重的。2009年，有4300萬美國人正式生活在貧困線以下，這是51年來最高的紀錄。

中國在為將來經濟發展所做的準備，對於應付未來的挑戰方面，也勝美國一籌。胡總對美國罕見國事訪問，是在他們用自己的辦法，成功地抵禦了金融危機之後，也象徵著一個新時代的開啟。美國式的自由理念將不再是主導。美國實在沒有什麼可教給中國人的了。中國模式的核心是政府向國有企業注入龐大的資金來達到刺激經濟的目的。我們的自由經濟系統在這方面是一籌莫展。奧總花了那點錢，就已經被「茶黨」們罵的狗血噴頭了。

中國領導人現在終於有資格罵美國人了，我們的債務接近一萬億美元。民調顯示，更多的中國人相信他們的國家正朝著正確的方向發展，而這樣看自己國家的美國人就少了。中國應對經濟危機的成功，一個重要的原因就是，中央集權的制度，讓政府有能力快速做出重大而複雜的經濟決策，不像我們，國會天天為怎樣花錢打架，錢不能到位，等錢到了，問題也更嚴重了。

真是「三十年河東，三十年河西」啊。19年前，當蘇聯的解體之際，誰也想不到會出現現在的局面。我們以為，歷史將以西方自由民主的全球化而告終呢。

承認這樣的認知錯誤，不僅需要良好的風度，也需要智慧和誠實。我們不是為中國專制辯護，它的弊端和腐敗也是無可爭辯的。沒有民主，最終還是會阻礙中國的進步。不過，令人不解的是，雖然中國共產黨領導人不是選舉出來的，但他們也會順應民意。也許是，不這樣做不行，一個通過農民起義發家掌權的黨，一定比誰都更明白廣大勞動人民憤怒的潛在破壞力。

美國的現行制度，似乎對國家的長期的危機束手無策。中國人能夠快速地適應新形勢，作出困難的決定，並加以有效實施。而美國人引以為豪的三權分立、互相制衡的憲法和政治生態，則基於對中央集權政府的不信任感。我們的政治系統本來是為了確保個人自由和充滿活力的私營企業。但這個系統現在出了問題了，它現在已走向兩極化，已經搞得思想僵化。目前的情形非常清楚的顯示，美國人根本沒有勇氣來著手處理他們所面對的長期的財政挑戰孔。的確，美國的民主體系可能有一種內在的合法性，是中國的體系所缺乏的，但如果一個政府如果因為自身的分裂和兩極分化，以至於無法正常運作，那它絕對不會是別人學習的模式。

在美國錢已經成為的政治選舉的王牌。最高法院認可任何企業有權使用他們的財力來支持自己的候選人，抵制和封殺對自己不利的候選人。所以，無論是醫療改革還是經濟刺激計劃，由於特殊利益集團的參與，要麼不能落實，要麼最後搞出一個能取悅某些利益集團的折衷方案，而不太可能按照全社會的整體利益來立法。這樣一來，就不可能出現高效而合理的決策。更不可能有解決長遠問題的能力。

中國的情況恰恰相反，政府可以凌駕在公民之上。例如，要建一個大壩，150萬人搬遷，想不搬遷也不行，不會有什麼有效的管道讓你可以抗議。但是，中國的系統不會讓任何個別的企業，有權否決或左右政府的決策。中國政府的決策，不會為了某部分人的利益，而犧牲國家的整體利益。

一句話，目前看來，中國的社會制度，可能比美國的自由制度更具有適應能力和生命力。

Why China Does Capitalism Better than the U.S.
By Tony Karon

One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party-ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism's crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing's stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown, and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.

As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China's economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly creating the world's largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there's massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and here more people are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it — the 43 million Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 was the highest number in the 51 years that records have been kept.) (See TIME's photoessay "The Rise of Hu Jintao.")

Beijing is also doing a far more effective job than Washington is of tooling its economy to meet future challenges — at least according to historian Francis Fukuyama, erstwhile neoconservative intellectual heavyweight. "President Hu Jintao's rare state visit to Washington this week comes at a time when many Chinese see their weathering of the financial crisis as a vindication of their own system, and the beginning of an era in which U.S.-style liberal ideas will no longer be dominant," wrote Fukukyama in Tuesday's Financial Times under a headline stating that the U.S. had nothing to teach China. "State-owned enterprises are back in vogue, and were the chosen mechanism through which Beijing administered its massive stimulus."

Chinese leaders are more inclined today to scold the U.S. — its debtor to the tune of close to a trillion dollars — than to emulate it, and Fukuyama notes that polls show a larger percentage of Chinese people believing their country is headed in the right direction compared to Americans. China's success in navigating the economic crisis, says Fukuyama, was based on the ability of its authoritarian political system to "make large, complex decisions quickly, and ... make them relatively well, at least in economic policy."

These are startling observations from a writer who, 19 years ago, famously proclaimed that the collapse of the Soviet Union heralded "the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." (See "TimeFrames: An Eye on China, Old and New.")

Fukuyama has had the good grace and intellectual honesty to admit he was wrong. And he's no apologist for Chinese authoritarianism, calling out its abuses and corruption, and making clear that he believes the absence of democracy will eventually hobble China's progress. Still, he notes, while they don't hold elections, China's Communist leaders are nonetheless responsive to public opinion. (Of course they are! A Party brought to power by a peasant rebellion knows full well the destructive potential of the rage of working people.) But the regime claims solid support from the Chinese middle class, and hedges against social explosion by directing resources and investment to more marginal parts of the country.

China's leaders, of course, never subscribed to Fukuyama's "end of history" maxim; the Marxism on which they were reared would have taught them that there is no contingent relationship between capitalism and democracy, and they only had to look at neighbors such as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore to see economic success stories under authoritarian rule — although the prosperity thus achieved played a major role in transforming Taiwan and South Korea into the noisy democracies they are today. Nor were Beijing's leaders under any illusions that the free market could take care of such basic needs as education, health care and infrastructure necessary to keep the system as a whole growing.
But Fukuyama is also making a point about the comparative inability of the U.S. system to respond decisively to a long-term crisis. "China adapts quickly, making difficult decisions and implementing them effectively," Fukuyama writes. "Americans pride themselves on constitutional checks and balances, based on a political culture that distrusts centralised government. This system has ensured individual liberty and a vibrant private sector, but it has now become polarised and ideologically rigid. At present it shows little appetite for dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges the U.S. faces. Democracy in America may have an inherent legitimacy that the Chinese system lacks, but it will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern." (See "China's High-Speed Rail.")
Money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the U.S. political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court-recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests. So, whether it's health reform or the stimulus package, the power of special interests in the U.S. system invariably produces either gridlock, or mish-mash legislation crafted to please the narrow interests of a variety of competing interests rather than the aggregated interests of the economy and society as a whole. Efficient and rational decision-making it's not. Nor does it appear capable of tackling long-term problems. (Comment on this story.)

China is the extreme opposite, of course: It can ride roughshod over the lives of its citizens. For example, building a dam that requires the forced relocation of 1.5 million people who have no channels through which to protest. But China's system is unlikely to give individual corporations the power to veto or shape government decision making to suit their own bottom line at the expense of the needs of the system as a whole in the way that, to choose but one example, U.S. pharmaceutical companies are able to wield political influence to deny the government the right to negotiate drug prices for the public health system. Fukuyama seems to be warning that in Darwinian terms, the Chinese system may currently be more adaptive than the Land of the Free.