福布斯 法治中国？

中国刚刚结束它的第十七次党代会，胡锦涛获连任，下一代的党领导人就位。对新的一代有什么期待呢？

　　他们会不会着手配合经济改革的政治改革？在差不多30年里，经济改革把中国改造成市场经济，产生9%到10%的年增长。

　　在后毛泽东时期（开始于1976年毛泽东逝世以及邓小平成为中国最高领导人），中国并非全无改革。为了避免极权和一人统治，邓小平指示党的领导人连任不得超过两届。

　　外界观察家曾对胡锦涛领导下的、当前一代的党领袖寄予厚望。它是中国现代史上受过教育最好的一代，不像他们的共产党前辈，中国当前的高层领导人在中国最优秀的机构受教育，例如北京大学和清华大学。

　　尽管他们谈政治和法律改革，但这些领导人所受到的是工程师教育，建大坝和道路的兴趣高于引入政改的兴趣。中国当前的领导人已经导入政策以期缩小农村与城市、沿海与内地的经济差距。他们面对中国经济快速发展带来的日益严重的环境和水供应问题。同时，九十年代末打开的政治话语空间收窄了。

　　外界观察家曾寄望中国充满活力的企业家阶层以及日益壮大的中产阶级，期望他们成为资产阶级的基础，可比得上西方伴随工业革命崛起的中产阶级，成为西方民主的阶级基础。

　　然而，中国崛起的中产阶级不是一个独立的实体。它的企业家的经济生命依赖党。他们需要党官员的帮助来启动和维持他们的企业。地方官员决定他们能否获得资源、土地和市场。没有官员的支持，他们不能在经济上生存。同时，党拉拢企业家入党。党的新成员如今有三分之一来自中国崛起的中产阶级。尽管中国迈向市场经济，融入世界经济体系，但它的第四代领导人巩固了中国的一党专政，并引入程序使之更为持久。

　　因此，今天的核心问题是新一代的领导人是将追随当前领袖的脚步，还是引入政改，扩大政治话语空间。

　　两个最经常被援引的“新一代”名字是李克强（Li Keqiang）和习近平（Xi Jingping）。他们和前辈相似，在中国的精英大学受教育，但又有很多不同之处。他们才五十出头，比当前领导人年轻十岁。这意味着他们经历了文革教育年轻人反抗权威的岁月，经历了上山下乡。尽管他们可能没有参加文革期间和之后的政治运动，但他们属于质疑的一代。此外，不像他们的前辈，他们没有被培训成工程师，而是接受法律教育，这可能令他们建立法治的兴趣比建造中国经济基础设施的兴趣浓厚。毕竟，是戈尔巴乔夫（他是俄罗斯第一个接受法律教育而不是工程师教育的党领导人）开放了苏联社会。

　　当然，正如我们所看到的，年轻的、受过更良好教育的中国领导人（他们主持一个充满活力的市场和国际经济）并不能保证中国在不久的将来朝民主方向迈进。然而，如果中国当前处理日益严重的不平等、环境恶化和日增的抗议等紧迫问题的办法不成功，中国的新一代领导人可能更愿意转向民主与法律程序，疏导日增的不满，使之成为不那么破坏性的行动和取得更有建设性的成果。（作者 Merle Goldman）

A Rule Of Law In China?

China has just concluded its 17th Party Congress, which re-elected its present, Communist Party leader Hu Jintao, to another five-year term, and has put in place the next generation of party leaders. What can be expected from this new generation?

Will they embark on political reforms to match the economic reforms that have transformed China into a market economy and produced 9% to 10% growth for almost 30 years?

In the post-Mao Zedong era, beginning in 1976 with Mao's death and the assumption of power by his Long March comrade Deng Xiaoping, who became China's paramount leader, China has not been completely devoid of political reforms. In reaction to the totalitarian, repressive one-man rule under Mao, who launched disastrous political campaigns culminating with the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Deng decreed that no party leader should serve more than two five-year terms.

This political reform helped move China from a totalitarian state, in which virtually every aspect of life was controlled by the party--or more specifically, by one man--to an authoritarian government. The one-party state retains government control of the media and cracks down harshly on political dissent, but its population is allowed to develop more personal and artistic freedom.

Outside observers had great expectations for the current generation of party leaders, led by Hu Jintao, when it came to power in 2002. It is the best educated generation in China's modern history. Unlike their Communist Party predecessors, whose education had been generally haphazard, China's current top leaders were educated at China's most elite institutions, such as Peking University and Tsinghua.

Although they talk about political and legal reforms, these leaders have been educated as engineers and are more interested in building dams and roads than in introducing political reforms. In fact, the major political reform of the post-Mao era--the elections of village heads and village councils--had occurred in the late 1980s, when Deng was the paramount leader.

China's current leaders have introduced policies to narrow the economic inequalities between rural and urban areas and coastal and inner provinces. They have faced up to the increasing degradation the enviroment and water supply, problems caused by China's fast-paced economic development. At the same time, they have narrowed the space for the political discourse that opened up in the late 1990s.

While addressing the issues of economic and social disparities and talking about "democratic" reforms, in reality, they have stepped up political repression by arresting defense lawyers, freelance intellectuals, newspaper editors, journalists and cyber-dissidents who have challenged the party's authority and attempted to assert their political rights.

Soon after Hu Jintao came to power, a number of outspoken journalists were arrested in an effort to rein in the media. The group Reporters Without Borders report that 50 journalists are in prison today in China, more than in any other country. Prior to the convening of the 17th Party Congress, there was a renewed crack-down on dissent.

Outside observers had expected that China's dynamic entrepreneurial class and growing middle class, spawned by economic reforms, would become the basis for a bourgeoisie, comparable to the middle class that arose in the West with the industrial revolution and became the class base for Western democracy.

Unlike what happened in the West, however, China's rising middle class is not an independent entity. Its entrepreneurs are dependent on the party for their economic livelihood. They need the help of party officials to initiate and maintain their enterprises. Local party officials determine whether they can get access to resources, land and markets. Without the support of party leaders, they cannot survive economically.

At the same time, the party is co-opting China's entrepreneurs into the party. A third of the party's new members now come from China's rising middle class. Despite China's move to a market economy and integration into the world economy, its fourth generation of leaders has reinforced China's authoritarian, one-party state and introduced procedures to make it more durable.

So a central question today is whether the new generation of leaders tapped at the 17th Party Congress will follow in the footsteps of the current leaders or, alternatively, introduce political reforms and broaden the space for political discourse.

The two "new generation" names most cited as possible successors to the current leaders are Li Keqiang, a prodigy of Hu Jintao, who also rose through the China Youth Leagues and was party head of Liaoning province in China's Northeast, and Xi Jingping, currently the party boss of Shanghai.

Both resemble their predecessors in that they have been educated at China's elite universities, but they differ in important ways. They are in their early 50s, about 10 years younger than the current leaders. This means they came of age during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when Mao, in an effort to dislodge members of the party whom he believed were conspiring against him, mobilized the Red Guards--members of the younger generation, particularly the educated youth, who were sent out to rebel against authority.

Following orders from Mao, these Red Guards not only rebelled against the party, but against all authority, including their teachers and families. When they created chaos, Mao then sent them to the countryside to learn from the peasants. In the countryside, they saw the Communist revolution they had fought for had not transformed peasants' lives--the peasants continued to live in poverty. When they returned to the cities after Mao's death in the late 1970, some of them began to question party authority and call for political reforms, which resulted in the Democracy Wall movement of 1978-1979.

Even if Li and Xi may not have participated in political movements during and after the Cultural Revolution, they were members of this questioning generation. Moreover, they entered political life during the 1980s, when party leaders appointed by Deng Xiaoping, such as Hu Yaobang, in office 1980-1987, and Zhao Ziyang, in office 1987-1989, talked about the need for political reforms. In addition, unlike their predecessors, they were not trained as engineers, but were educated in the law, which may make them more interested in establishing the rule of law than building China's economic infrastructure.

After all, it was Mikhail Gorbachev, Russia's first party head trained as a lawyer rather than an engineer, who opened up Soviet society, stopped the repression of Soviet dissidents, and sparked the beginning of the end of the Communist system in the Soviet Union.

Still, the late 1980s Gorbachev scenario, which allowed more freedom of speech and association that led to the implosion of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1990s, deters party leaders from following a similar path. In fact, the goal of China's current leaders' continuing crackdown on dissent and independent political discourse and association is to ensure the Chinese Comunnist Party does not follow the path of the former Soviet Union.

Certainly, as we have seen, a younger, better-educated leadership in China, presiding over a dynamic market and international economy, does not guarantee China will move in a democratic direction in the near future. However, if the repressive methods of China's current authoritarian populist leaders prove unsuccessful in dealing with the urgent problem of increasing inequality, environmental degradation and growing protests, China's new generation of leaders may be more willing to turn to democratic and legal procedures to channel rising discontent into less disruptive actions and more constructive results.

Merle Goldman is a professor emerita of history at Boston University and an associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. Her most recent book is From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China (Harvard University Press, 2005).