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 纽约时报：六四天安门屠杀赢得的稳定已经成为昨日黄花 |
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dck
加入时间: 2004/04/02
文章: 2801
经验值: 4649
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作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
纽约时报：六四天安门屠杀赢得的稳定已经成为昨日黄花
Rumblings From China; [Op-Ed]
Full Text (735 words)
Copyright New York Times Company Jul 2, 2006
Nicholas D. Kristof
In the 17 years since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy
movement, China has enjoyed an economic miracle and remarkable
political
stability. But my hunch is that that period of smooth sailing is now
coming
to an end.
Wildcat protests, some violent and involving thousands of people, have
been
exploding around the country. By the Chinese government's own count,
there
are now more than 200 protests a day, prompted by everything from
layoffs to
government seizures of land.
The protests may grow if, as seems likely, China's economic model
appears
less miraculous in the years ahead.
Labor costs are rising, and increased attention to the environment will
also
raise production costs. The rapid aging of China's population (a huge
problem in coming decades) will reduce the labor force's share of the
population. It's also hard to sustain 10 percent annual growth rates as
the
base becomes steadily larger.
All this is likely to mean somewhat lower growth ahead. Some low-wage
manufacturing jobs may move to cheaper countries like Vietnam, Pakistan
and
Bangladesh.
Job shortages already anger newly minted university graduates. So even
a
modest slowing of China's growth rate would mean more economic
frustration
for people to protest about.
The upshot is that I sense more fragility in the system than at almost
any
time in the 23 years that I've been visiting or living in China. Party
officials say they feel it, too, and I think that's why the leadership
is so
reluctant to devalue the yuan: it doesn't want to risk factory
closures, job
losses and unrest.
These protests are becoming a part of daily life. When I was outside
the No.
2 Intermediate People's Court in Beijing, as my Times colleague Zhao
Yan was
being tried inside on trumped-up charges of leaking state secrets, a
cluster
of peasants appeared with red banners denouncing the seizure of their
land.
They pushed a wheelchair-bound 80-year-old, who was savvy enough to cry
whenever a camera came near.
''We're just ordinary people with no power and no money,'' shouted the
demonstration's leader, Jin Xinhua. ''There's nothing we can do but
protest.''
It's possible to see the rise of protests simply as the evolution of
China
into a more open society. Some in the Communist Party leadership have
argued
for following the Taiwanese model toward greater democracy, and one
attraction for Beijing is that the Communists might well win free
elections
if they held them.
But evolution doesn't seem to be President Hu Jintao's vision of the
future;
he's a man who has praised North Korea's political model.
The basic problem for Mr. Hu is that the incentives have changed over
the
last half-dozen years, encouraging more challenges to the system. As
one
dissident told me, in the past getting in trouble would mean a 10-year
term
in prison, alone and forgotten. ''Now, if I go to prison,'' he said,
''I'll
get out after a year, and I'll be a hero.''
True, some people are sent to prison longer (like my colleague, Mr.
Zhao),
but few people seem much intimidated.
''I'm not worried,'' laughed Jiao Guobiao, a professor who was fired
from
Beijing University for writing scathing essays about the Communist
Party --
which he continues to write. ''If they want to arrest me, let 'em.''
The upshot is a growing boldness spreading throughout the land. On this
trip, a half-dozen people regaled me with stories about State Security
(China's K.G.B.) giving them confidential warnings to toe the line --
which
they scoffed at.
This boldness is significant because over the last half-century, the
times
when Chinese rose up to demand broad political change (1956, 1976,
1986,
1989) have not been the times they were most upset, but the times they
were
least scared. And now again, they're not very scared.
So the country today reminds me of early 1989, before the Tiananmen
protests, or of South Korea and Taiwan in the mid-1980's as citizens
began
defying the dictatorships in those places. All around China, from
Thailand
to Indonesia to Mongolia, rising incomes and education levels
eventually led
to major protests demanding more accountable government.
I'm a believer in China, and I think it will end this century as the
most
important country in the world -- after a wild ride. For now, my
premonition
is that the ferment in China will grow, and that the long calm since
Tiananmen may be coming to an end.
作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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