2013.05.14 中国经济即将进行大改革？

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中国经济即将进行大改革？
当北京准备召开一次重要的政治会议时，其领导人被认为正在计划该国自1978年以来最重大的经济变革。

作者：Damien Ma
MAY 14, 2013
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李杰/路透社

中国共产党第十八次代表大会召开六个月后，关于中国改革的辩论和争吵仍在继续。无论是国内还是国外，对于中国政府是否会战略性地推进雄心勃勃的经济改革议程，还是再次浪费机会，意见仍然不一。一个必然的结果是，即使假设中南海将采取改革议程，这通常也是一个充满了对这种改革的范围和程度的警告的假设。对许多持怀疑态度的人来说，无论出现什么样的改革，都将是软弱无力的，也许是太少太晚。


但是，对于经济改革的内部拥护者来说，事情实际上可能正在向好的方面发展。据《悉尼先驱晨报》可敬的约翰-加诺特（John Garnaut）说，一些潜在的严重改革正在进行中，《纽约时报》也证实了这一点。Garnaut写道。

与领导层关系密切的消息人士说，中国正在起草一份旨在避免经济危机的全面改革的蓝图。

这些改革旨在振兴世界第二大经济体，因为人们对腐败、浪费性投资和地方政府债务增加的趋势的担忧在加深。
据一位与政治局常委有密切关系的消息人士透露，领导党的中央财经领导小组的刘鹤被赋予了为大约10月召开的共产党第十八届三中全会准备一份七点蓝图的任务。

有几点是值得注意的。首先，任命刘鹤负责制定 "改革计划 "的任务一般应被解释为一个积极的信号。刘鹤对这种艰巨的努力并不陌生，他曾被广泛传言为中国 "十二五 "规划的主要设计者，大多数观察家都称赞这一蓝图是实现中国经济转型的强大计划，尽管过于宏大。第二，如果三中全会的时机属实，则再次证实了之前的猜测，即新领导层希望为其改革的展开注入历史意义。正如埃文-费根鲍姆和我最近在《外交事务》上写的那样。

如果中国领导人真的选择在三中全会上宣布新的改革，那将是因为它充满了政治象征意义：正是在1978年的另一次三中全会上，中国市场改革的设计师邓小平赢得了对愿景的共识，使中国走上了成为世界第二大经济体的道路。

对于不经意的中国观察家来说，像全会这样不起眼的共产党活动可能完全没有意义。但事实上，它具有相当大的历史意义。1978年的时候，中国的元老邓小平清楚地知道，仅仅有一个经济改革计划是必要的，但还不够。还需要的是一个持久的政治共识，将计划推进到执行阶段。当时的政治显然更加复杂。整个中华民族刚刚适应了后毛泽东时代，并从十年的文化大革命的残酷政治中觉醒。这是一个有毒的环境，甚至建议进行市场改革，而且很容易脱轨。正如前党的高级官员和赵紫阳的亲信鲍彤的一个说法，他说："我不知道。

有时，历史会与自己产生共鸣。1969年，在共产党准备召开第九次党代会的时候，林彪提出了一个观点，即应该停止持续的革命进程，党应该把注意力转向发展生产力的方法。如果毛泽东能接受这个观点，那么林彪也许会成为下一个邓小平。

但情况恰恰相反，因为这个建议深深地激怒了毛泽东，导致他们之间出现裂痕。转眼到了1978年，在三中全会上，邓小平也有同样的想法，认为应该停止持续的革命进程，全党应该把注意力转向建设现代中国。幸运的是，华国锋不是毛泽东，幸运的是他接受了邓小平的建议。

华国锋和邓小平在三中全会前同意，三中全会将向前看而不是向后看，并避免与 "历史遗留问题 "纠缠在一起。(他们的意思是，三中全会不会关注辩论所有针对人的莫须有或错误的政治指控问题。） 他们决定，需要的是 "团结起来，面对未来"。
这种团结并不是预设的，政治平衡也不容易维持。邓小平和他的支持者们需要相当的政治智慧来维持改革的势头和理由。当时，邓小平似乎完全明白，中国 "现代化 "的宏伟任务，无论如何定义，都要比他的生命更长。他的解决方案是什么？他亲自挑选了两代领导人--江泽民和胡锦涛--将他开始的国家建设再延续20年。

当邓小平于1997年去世时，中国经济只有不到1万亿美元。现在，它是一个超过8万亿美元的庞然大物，具有深远的全球利益。今天的改革，无论其形式如何，都必然与30多年前的改革不同，因为中国本身已经发生了巨大的变化。对变革的期望也必须与今天的体制利益和政治动态的现实联系起来。在最初的改革浪潮中，变化的范围和速度都很深刻，主要是因为中国的起点很低。   

尽管如此，新的领导层似乎再次寻求将历史目的灌输到他们的改革议程中，这在很大程度上是为了塑造必须进行这些改革的政治环境。他们以民族复兴和伟大为号召--这是一种历史悠久的动员民众的策略--来继续推进中国的现代化项目。

现在，新领导层能否通过在三中全会上对改革进行总结性论证来缓解它有意或无意造成的压力？不管怎么说，秋季会议变得更加有趣了。


Damien Ma是保尔森研究所的研究员，他专注于投资和政策项目，以及研究所的研究和智囊团活动。此前，他是欧亚集团（一家政治风险研究和咨询公司）的首席中国分析师。



Big Reforms on the Way for China's Economy?
As Beijing prepares for a major political meeting, its leaders are thought to be planning the country's most significant economic changes since 1978.

By Damien Ma
MAY 14, 2013
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Jason Lee/Reuters

Six months after the 18th Communist Party Congress, debate and bickering over reforms in China rages on. Both inside and outside the country, opinions remain divided over whether Beijing will strategically push forward an ambitious economic reform agenda or squander the opportunity once again. A corollary is that even assuming Zhongnanhai will take on a reform agenda, it is usually an assumption riddled with caveats about the scope and extent of such reforms. For many of the skeptics, whatever reforms that may emerge will be weak and perhaps too little too late.


But for internal champions of economic reforms, things may in fact be looking up. According to the estimable John Garnaut of the Sydney Morning Herald, some potentially serious changes are in the works, a point corroborated by the New York Times as well. Garnaut writes:

China is drawing up a blueprint for sweeping reforms aimed at averting an economic crisis, sources with close ties to the leadership say.

The reforms are aimed at revitalising the world's second-largest economy amid deepening fears about a trend of rising corruption, wasteful investment and local government debt.
Liu He, who leads the party's Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, has been given the task of preparing a seven-point blueprint for the Third Plenum of the 18th Communist Party Congress, which is due in about October, according to a source with close ties to several members of the Politburo Standing Committee.

A few points are worth noting. First, appointing Liu He to the task of creating a "reform plan" should generally be interpreted as a positive sign. Liu is no stranger to such herculean efforts, having been widely rumored as a leading architect of China's 12th Five-Year Plan, a blueprint that most observers laud as a formidable, if overly ambitious, plan to achieve China's economic transition. Second, the timing of the Third Plenum, if true, reaffirms previous speculation that the new leadership is hoping to imbue their reform rollout with historical import. As Evan Feigenbaum and I wrote recently in Foreign Affairs:

If Chinese leaders do choose the third plenum as the place to announce new reforms, it will be because it is pregnant with political symbolism: it was at another third plenum, in 1978, that Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's market reforms, won consensus around the vision that set China on its course to becoming the world's second-largest economy.

For casual China observers, something as obscure as a Communist Party event such as a plenum may mean absolutely nothing. But it in fact carries considerable historical weight. At the time in 1978, Chinese patriarch Deng understood clearly that simply having an economic reform plan was necessary but insufficient. What also was needed was an enduring political consensus to move the plan forward to the execution stage. The politics of that time were decidedly more complicated. The entire Chinese nation was barely coming to grips with the post-Mao Zedong era and awakening from a decade of the brutish politics of the Cultural Revolution. It was a toxic environment in which to even suggest market reforms, and it could have easily been derailed. As one account from Bao Tong, a former high level party official and close confidante of Zhao Ziyang, has it:

Sometimes, history resonates with itself. In 1969, as the Communist Party was preparing for the Ninth Party Congress, Lin Biao put forward the view that the process of continuous revolution should be stopped, and the Party should turn its attention instead to ways to develop productivity. If Mao had been receptive to this idea, then maybe Lin Biao would have gone on to become the next Deng Xiaoping.

But the opposite occurred, because the suggestion angered Mao deeply, causing the rift between them. Fast forward to 1978, and the Third Plenum, where Deng Xiaoping thought the same thing, that the continuous process of revolution should be stopped, and that the whole Party should turn its attention to building a modern China. Luckily, Hua Guofeng wasn't Mao, and fortunately he accepted Deng's suggestion.

Hua and Deng agreed ahead of the Third Plenum that it would look forwards rather than backwards and avoid getting tangled up in "problems left over by history." (By this, they meant that it wouldn't concern itself with debating the issue of all the trumped-up or mistaken political charges against people.) They decided that what was needed was "unity to face the future."
That unity wasn't preordained nor was the political equilibrium easily maintained. It took Deng and his supporters considerable political acumen to sustain the momentum and justification behind reforms. At the time, Deng seemed to fully grasp that the grandiose task of Chinese "modernization", however defined, would take longer than his lifetime. His solution? Personally select two generations of leaders -- Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao -- that would continue the nation-building he began for another 20 years.

When Deng passed away in 1997, the Chinese economy was just under $1 trillion. It is now an $8 trillion-plus behemoth with far-reaching global interests. The reforms of today, whatever shape they make take, will necessarily be different from those more than 30 years ago, because China itself has transformed dramatically. The expectation of change must also be tethered to the reality of today's institutional interests and political dynamics. Under the initial burst of reforms, changes were profound both in their scope and speed, largely because China was starting from such a low base.   

That said, a new leadership appears to once again seek to instill historical purpose into their reform agenda, in large part to shape the political environment in which these reforms must be carried out. They have appealed to national rejuvenation and greatness -- a time-honored tactic to mobilize a popular mandate -- to continue the project of Chinese modernization.  

Can the new leadership now relieve the pressures that it, deliberately or not, has created by making a closing argument on reform at the Third Plenum? Either way, the fall conclave just got a whole lot more interesting.


Damien Ma is a fellow at the Paulson Institute, where he focuses on investment and policy programs, and on the Institute's research and think-tank activities. Previously, he was a lead China analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and advisory firm.