卫报 阳光下的权力

胡锦涛15日在中共十七大开幕式上所讲的很多话令人很难不表示同意。中国共产党没能达到人民的期望。它没有处理好年增长率10%带来的环境和社会后果。腐败猖獗。贫富差距加大，东部沿海繁荣城市与西部内陆贫困农村之间仍然不平衡。所有这些都说对了，而且在过去十年的大部分时间里，领导层一直警告这些事情。

　　问题不在于诊断，而在于治疗。自从中国中央政府下放社会服务、卫生和教育的责任，地方当局就把与企业的合同作为抵消支付这些服务的负担的一种方法。它们不能出售土地，但它们让土地的使用权私有化。利润丰厚的圈地开发合同滋养腐败。该党表示它去年惩罚了超过9.7万名成员，并演示对身居高位的腐败官员的审判，但它仍然没能克服这个问题。

　　胡锦涛对挑战一党制的政治变革只是匆匆点过，没有给出把直接责任扩大到村领导选举之外的时间表。但他确实使用了一个新奇的词语。他表示必须让权力“在阳光下”运行，以确保它得到正确行使。即使他还没有准备好放松党的权力垄断，他确实设想扩大“党内民主”，让7300万党员有更多的机会给政策和领导投票。其实际意味尚不明确。

　　党的应对跟不上中国发生变化的速度。如果它要解决经济增长的质量问题，而不仅仅是数量问题，胡锦涛还必须把眼光放到党外日益壮大的专业人员、活动律师和环保主义者队伍，寻求帮助。中国的非政府组织限制在地方层面。如今确实是时候释放中国的公民社会（civil society）了，而不是把它视为对一党制的挑战。

Power in the sun

Leader

Thursday October 18, 2007

The Guardian

Much that President Hu Jintao said as he opened the 17th party congress in Beijing on Monday was hard to disagree with. China's Communist party has failed to live up to the expectations of its people. It is not tackling either the environmental or social consequences of an annual growth rate of 10%. Corruption is endemic. The gap between rich and poor is growing and so too is the imbalance between booming cities on the eastern seaboard and grinding rural poverty in the western interior. All of this is true and the leadership have been warning about such things for much of the past decade.

The issue is not the diagnosis but the cure. Ever since China's central government devolved responsibility for social services, health and education down the chain of command, local authorities have used contracts with entrepreneurs as a way of offsetting the burden of paying for these services. They have not been able to sell land, but they have privatised its use. Lucrative contracts for high-rise developments that concrete over scarce arable land feed corruption. The party says that it punished over 97,000 members last year, and staged show trials of highly placed miscreants, but it still cannot master the problem.

Mr Hu made only the most cursory of nods to political changes that challenge the one-party system and gave no timetable for expanding direct accountability beyond the election of village chiefs, the lowest level of government. But he did use a curious phrase. He said power must be exercised "in the sunshine" to ensure that it is exercised correctly. If he was not prepared to loosen the party's monopoly on power, he did envisage an expansion of "inner party democracy" which would give 73 million party members more opportunities to vote on policy and leadership. What this means in reality is unclear. As Mr Hu spoke, the two most widely tipped prospective members of the new politburo, Xi Jinping, party boss of Shanghai, and Li Keqiang, boss of the Liaoning province ,were lined up at the front of the Praesidium, their physical proximity to the source of power an indicator of their bright political prospects. Some habits die hard.

China is changing more rapidly than the party can cope with. If it is to address the quality of economic growth, rather than merely its quantity, Mr Hu must also look outside the party to the growing ranks of professionals, campaigning lawyers and environmentalists for help. Chinese non-governmental organisations are tolerated on a local level as long as they do not form national associations. It is surely time to tap China's civil society, rather than view it as a challenge to one-party control.