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发表于 2006-3-1 12:49:26
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The Chinese economy is not merely inefficient; it has also fallen victim to crony capitalism with Chinese characteristics—the marriage between unchecked power and illicit wealth. And corruption is worst where the hand of the state is strongest. The most corrupt sectors in China, such as power generation, tobacco, banking, financial services, and infrastructure, are all state-controlled monopolies. None of that is unprecedented, of course. Tycoons in Russia, after all, have looted the state’s natural resources. China, at least, boasts genuine private entrepreneurs who have built prosperous companies. But China’s politically connected tycoons have cashed in on China’s real estate boom; nearly half of Forbes’ list of the 100 richest individuals in China in 2004 were real estate developers.
Various indicators, pieced together from official sources, suggest endemic graft within the state. The number of “large-sum cases” (those involving monetary amounts greater than $6,000) nearly doubled between 1992 and 2002, indicating that more wealth is being looted by corrupt officials. The rot appears to be spreading up the ranks, as more and more senior officials have been ensnared. The number of officials at the county level and above prosecuted by the government rose from 1,386 in 1992 to 2,925 in 2002.
An optimist might believe that these figures reveal stronger enforcement rather than metastasizing corruption, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Dishonest officials today face little risk of serious punishment. On average, 140,000 party officials and members were caught in corruption scandals each year in the 1990s, and 5.6 percent of these were criminally prosecuted. In 2004, 170,850 party officials and members were implicated, but only 4,915 (or 2.9 percent) were subject to criminal prosecution. The culture of official impunity is thriving in China.
What’s worse, corruption is now assuming forms normally associated with regime decay. Corruption involving large numbers of officials used to be rare. Now it’s rampant. Regional data suggest that large-scale corruption rings account for 30 to 60 percent of all the cases of graft uncovered by authorities. In some of the worst instances, entire provincial, municipal, and county governments were found to be tainted. In Heilongjiang Province, a corruption scandal involved more than 400 local officials, including the former governor, the former organizational chief of the party’s provincial committee, a vice governor, the chief prosecutor, the president of the provincial high court, and eight of the province’s 13 party bosses. According to official reports, in Shenyang (the capital of Liaoning Province), Fuzhou (the capital of Fujian Province), and more than 30 other counties and prefectures, groups of senior local officials, including party chiefs and mayors, have been on the payroll of organized gangs involved in murder, extortion, gambling, and prostitution.
As ominous as the corruption itself is what these scandals are beginning to reveal about the government’s legitimacy. In their confessions, corrupt officials often blame their misdeeds on a loss of faith in communism. There is anecdotal evidence that senior party officials have taken to consulting fortune-tellers about their political careers. The ruling elite in China, it appears, is drifting and insecure. Fearful about what the future may hold, some officials do not want to wait even a few years to turn their power into wealth. In 2002, almost 20 percent of the officials prosecuted for bribery and nearly 30 percent of those punished for abuse of power were younger than 35. In Henan Province in 2003, 43 percent of local party bosses caught up in corruption were between 40 and 50 years old (as compared with 32 percent older than 50). China has seen its future leaders, and a disproportionate number of them are on the take.
The Two Chinas
With elites cashing in quickly, ordinary Chinese are falling behind. Estimates from various sources, including the World Bank and the Chinese government, suggest that income inequality has increased at least 50 percent since the late 1970s, making China one of the most unequal societies in Asia. A recent study reports that less than 1 percent of Chinese households control more than 60 percent of the country’s wealth (by comparison, 5 percent of the households in the United States own 60 percent of the wealth). Rising inequality, to be sure, is not unusual in countries moving toward a market economy, but China’s neo-Leninist system, warped incentives, and elitist policies have amplified the trend.
A generation ago, the offspring of the ruling elite took up positions in the government or military; today, they go into business. The social ramifications of their self-dealing are particularly evident in real estate, where peasants regularly earn less than 5 percent of the value of their land while developers pocket 60 percent, with the remainder going into local government coffers. Privatization, too, offers insiders a chance to hit it rich by gobbling up state assets on the cheap. A recent study showed that 60 percent of privatized state enterprises were sold to their managers. As a result, 30 percent of all private-firm owners are now party members.
Meanwhile, basic services and good governance for ordinary Chinese are falling further behind. According to the World Bank, China’s governance ranks in the bottom half of all the countries in the world. China underinvests in crucial social services, especially education and public health. Government expenditures on education fell nearly 20 percent as a share of total education spending in the 1990s. In rural areas, home of China’s poorest citizens, 78 percent of the education budget must be raised from peasants through local taxation and fees, while Beijing provides only 1 percent of the funding for rural education.
In public health, the consequences of misspending are even more severe. Government money, which accounted for 36 percent of all health expenditures in the 1980s, plunged to less than 15 percent by 2000. China has hospitals and equipment, and its per capita spending is higher than comparable developing countries. But these resources are among the most unequally distributed in the world. The World Health Organization rated the fairness of the Chinese healthcare system below all countries except Brazil and Burma. According to China’s own Ministry of Health, two thirds of the population lacks any type of health insurance, and about half of the sick do not seek professional medical treatment at all.
Democracy Delayed
Rapid economic growth has not yet produced China’s much-anticipated political pluralism. Perhaps, some observers speculate, China is still too poor to afford democracy. But with a per capita income of nearly $1,500 ($4,500 if you consider people’s purchasing power), China is richer than many poor democracies. It’s not poverty that is holding up democracy; it’s a neo-Leninist state and the crony capitalism it fosters.
In part, democracy itself has been a victim of the country’s economic expansion. However flawed and mismanaged, the country’s rapid growth has bolstered Beijing’s legitimacy and reduced pressure on its ruling elites to liberalize. Democratic transitions in developing countries are often triggered by economic crises blamed on the incompetence and mismanagement of the ancien régime. China hasn’t experienced that crisis yet. Meanwhile, the riches available to the ruling class tend to drown any movement for democratic reform from within the elite. Political power has become more valuable because it can be converted into wealth and privilege unimaginable in the past. At the moment, China’s economic growth is having a perverse effect on democratization: It makes the ruling elite even more reluctant to part with power.
Lavish government spending on law and order helps to ensure that power-sharing won’t be necessary in the near future. Since the Tiananmen Square tragedy, the party has invested billions in beefing up the paramilitary police force (the People’s Armed Police) that has been deployed in suppressing internal unrest. To counter the threat posed by the information revolution, and especially the Internet, the Chinese government has blended technological savvy with regulatory might. The Chinese “Internet police,” officially known as the Ministry of Public Security’s Internet and Security Supervision Bureau, is reportedly more than 30,000 strong. Its Beijing branch proudly claimed that, in 2002, it participated in a multi-agency exercise to see whether the government could rid the Internet of “harmful content” within 48 hours of the onset of an emergency. (During the exercise, all “harmful content” was removed in 19 hours.) The party’s refined strategy of “selective repression” targets only those who openly challenge its authority while leaving the general public alone. China is one of the few authoritarian states where homosexuality and cross-dressing are permitted, but political dissent is not. Domestic opposition groups and individuals who might challenge the party’s authority are left isolated and powerless.
The emerging social elite, by contrast, is co-opted and coddled. The party showers the urban intelligentsia, professionals, and private entrepreneurs with economic perks, professional honors, and political access. For example, nationwide, 145,000 designated experts, or about 8 percent of senior professionals, received “special government stipends” (monthly salary supplements) in 2004; tens of thousands of former college professors have been recruited into the party and promoted to senior government positions. At least for now, the party’s charm campaign is working: The social groups that are normally the forces of democratization have been politically neutralized.
China’s neo-Leninist regime has formidable resources—but much more serious defects. State-directed investment, made to secure the political loyalty of key constituencies and advance personal careers, will prevent China from realizing its economic potential. The corruption of the state will likely deepen. The deterioration of the public health infrastructure and education systems will generate social tensions and mass alienation, thus eroding the party’s base of support and increasing its vulnerability to the economic or political shocks that will inevitably come.
China has already paid a heavy price for the flaws of its political system and the corruption it has spawned. Its new leaders, though aware of the depth of the decay, are taking only modest steps to correct it. For the moment, China’s strong economic fundamentals and the boundless energy of its people have concealed and offset its poor governance, but they will carry China only so far. Someday soon, we will know whether such a flawed system can pass a stress test: a severe economic shock, political upheaval, a public health crisis, or an ecological catastrophe. China may be rising, but no one really knows whether it can fly.
Minxin Pei is senior associate and director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). |
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