上個月我在一次國際會議上偶然和中國最有名的一所大學的常務副校長遇見。他和我的經歷有許多相似之處。我們年齡相仿，都是在文革後第一批通過高考進入大學的「新三級」學生。他在美國一所名校的法學院進修過。因此可以說他對西方是十分了解。我們在會議結束後談起中國的現狀和民主前景等一系列問題。
當然，我們的看法十分不同，但是，他的觀點中對我印象最深刻的是每當我指出中國現有體制中的問題時（如腐敗，人民的個人權利得不到保障，發展模式不可持續，政權缺乏根本合法性等），他都會反駁，並用美國政治生活中被公認的許多問題來支持他的中心觀點：即中國的專制體制雖然有許多問題，但西方民主制度也好不到那裏去。
根據我的觀察，這種觀點在中國國內有很大的市場，許多(至少是在表面上）認同中國現有體制的精英分子都會用類似的說法來證明中國不需要民主化。
西方民主確有弊端
持這類觀點的人在一點上並沒有錯，即民主體制有許多內在的局限和弊端。而且，一直被認為代表西方民主體制的美國在最近的表現十分讓人失望。西方左派人士對民主的批評我們基本上都熟悉。民主體制的最重要的缺陷在於這類政治制度並不能解決平等和「問責」問題
（即被選舉出來的政治精英並不一定對選民負責）。民主體制中普遍存在著「搭便車」現象，導致少數利益集團擁有極大的政治影響力進行經濟尋租。民主體制也不能徹底消滅腐敗現象。
另外，美國的民主體制最近出現政治「極化，」共和黨和民主黨之間的政治競爭已墮落成一種「零和遊戲。」同時，政治獻金使美國的政治生活腐敗，議員們花在籌款上的時間已佔據他們工作時間的一大部分。能夠為議員籌款的利益集團和富人已形成一個危害美國民主正常運作的勢力。最近美國賭業大王艾德爾森（他擁有澳門和拉斯維加斯超級大賭場）宣稱將捐1億美元給共和黨來打敗奧巴馬總統，就是一個極端但有代表性的例子。
但是這些民主體制內在的局限與弊病和美國民主制度的退化能夠證明中國的專制政治體制不需民主化嗎？
民主體制勝於專制體制
我們可以從三個方面來表明儘管民主體制有許多局限和弊病，但是這類政治制度遠遠優越於專制體制，包括中國現有的一黨專制政體。
第一，我們可以比較專制和民主體制中的各種弊病的嚴重程度和可改性。雖然民主體制中存在著腐敗，不平等，特殊利益集團等弊病，但是專制體制中這類問題更嚴重。
如果我們查一下國際透明組織（一個總部設在柏林的國際民間組織）公布的腐敗感覺指數(Corruption Perception Index)，世界上最廉潔的政府絕大多數是在民主國家。在前25名最廉潔的國家裏只有（半民主的）新加坡，香港和卡塔爾不是民主政權。 而最腐敗的政府基本上都是專制政權 。在最腐敗的25國中，除了（半民主的）巴拉圭以外，其餘都是專制政權。從平等和社會公正角度來看，世界上被認為比較平等和公正的國家中，大部分是民主國家。其中，最平等和公正的是北歐的社會民主國家。從體制的自我改造能力（即可改性）角度來看，民主體制顯然有更強的可改性。多黨制下的政治競爭，定期的自由和公正的選舉，媒體和輿論的監督與壓力，以及民間社會的政治參與都為民主政體不需通過革命來進行自我改造提供了必需（但是不一定是充分的）條件。
相比之下，專制體制缺乏內在的自我改造能力。這類體制要改變方嚮往往是通過兩種代價慘重的途徑實現。一是被民眾通過革命推翻（如前蘇聯的垮台和阿拉伯之春），二是一場自我製造的政治災難（像中國的文革）。比較民主和專制體制各自的弊病時，最能說明問題的是這一現象：幾乎沒有人會提出通過專制來解決民主體制中的問題。但是，絕大部分人都會支持通過民主來解決專制體制中的問題。
第二，在討論不同政治體制的相對優越性時，最重要的標準並不是哪類體制能夠提供更好的物質生活（雖然用這一標準衡量，民主一點不會比專制遜色），而是哪個體制對普通人民最基本的權利的保護程度。用這標準來衡量，民主顯然要比專制優越。人的基本尊嚴在民主體制下能夠得到保障。舉一個很小的例子，尚未見到和聽說在一個民主國家中普通民眾跪在官員或政府大院前的這種事情；而在中國，這類現象十分普遍（假如中國成了民主國家後，這種事情不可能再發生。我們只要看一下現在的台灣就可以得出這一結論）。另一個實例是最近在中國陝西安康市鎮坪縣曾家鎮發生的慘案。因無錢繳納4萬元生二胎的罰款，一位普通農婦被強制大月份引產。這類事情在一個民主國家不可能發生。
第三，從專制走向民主是歷史潮流。在世界上的180多國家中，有120個國家是通過選舉來產生政府領導人的。在這120個國家中，三分之二（即80個）是在過去40年中通過轉型建立的新民主政體。其中，許多國家的經濟發展水平要低於中國。根據用國際購買力計算，中國的人均國民收入已達8500美元。這一水平高於50多個發展中民主國家的人均收入。 根據政治學對經濟發展和民主轉型的研究，中國的經濟發展水平已達到所謂的「民主轉型安全門檻。」即當一個國家的人均收入超過6000
美元（按購買力算），民主政權一旦在這個國家形成，基本上不可能重返專制。如果我們用這一眼光來看中國，中國雖然經濟增長飛躍，但在政治上已落後於世界上大部分國家。
在和中國那位名校領導討論這些觀點時，我不知道他是否被說服。但是，我想如果他有一個自由和根據良心的選擇，很難想像他會希望他的後代永遠生活在一個專制政權統治的社會裏。
Minxin Pei: Why China Can’t Adjust
CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA
– China’s
current economic slowdown has no shortage of causes: Europe’s
financial turmoil, sputtering recovery in the United
States, and weak domestic investment growth,
to name the most commonly cited factors. Since exports and investment account,
respectively, for 30% and 40% of China’s
GDP growth, its economy is particularly vulnerable to weakening external demand
and accumulation of non-performing loans caused by excessive and wasteful
spending on fixed assets.
But China’s
vulnerability to these factors, as serious as they are, is symptomatic of
deeper institutional problems. Until these underlying constraints are
addressed, talk of a new consumption-based growth model for China,
reflected in the government’s recently approved 12th Five-Year Plan, can be no
more than lip service.After all, China’s major trading partners, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and senior Chinese officials themselves have long recognized the structural vulnerabilities caused by excessive investment and low household consumption. And, for nearly a decade, China has been urged to undertake reforms to redress these economic patterns, which have undermined the welfare of ordinary Chinese and strained the global trading system.
The best-known feature of China’s macroeconomic imbalances is heavy dependence on exports for growth, which is typically attributed to weak domestic demand: as a middle-income country, China lacks the purchasing power to consume the goods that it produces. With nearly unlimited access to advanced-country markets, China can tap into global external demand and raise its GDP growth potential, as it has done for the past two decades.
If this view is right, the solution is straightforward: China can correct its imbalances by increasing its citizens’ incomes (by cutting taxes, raising wages, or increasing social spending), so that they can consume more, thereby reducing the economy’s dependence on exports. Indeed, nearly all mainstream economists prescribe this approach for China.
But there is another explanation for China’s excessive export dependence, one that has more to do with the country’s poor political and economic institutions. Specifically, export dependence partly reflects the high degree of difficulty of doing business in China. Official corruption, insecure property rights, stifling regulatory restraints, weak payment discipline, poor logistics and distribution, widespread counterfeiting, and vulnerability to other forms of intellectual-property theft: all of these obstacles increase transaction costs and make it difficult for entrepreneurs to thrive in domestic markets.
By contrast, if China’s private firms sell to Western multinationals, such as Wal-Mart, Target, or Home Depot, they do not have to worry about getting paid. They can avoid all of the headaches that they would have encountered at home, because well-established economic institutions and business practices in their export markets protect their interests and greatly reduce transaction costs.
The Chinese economy’s institutional weakness is reflected in international survey data. The World Bank publishes an annual review of “the ease of doing business” for 183 countries and sub-national units. In its June 2011 survey, China was ranked 91st, behind Mongolia, Albania, and Belarus. It is particularly difficult to start a business in China (151st), pay taxes (122nd), obtain construction permits (179th), and get electricity (115th).
Faced with such a hostile environment, Chinese private entrepreneurs have been forced to engage in “institutional arbitrage” – taking advantage of efficient Western economic institutions to expand their business (most export-oriented businesses are owned by private entrepreneurs and foreign firms).
Unfortunately, as China has already claimed a large share of the world’s merchandise exports (10.4% in 2010) and economic stagnation in the West is constraining external demand, this strategy can no longer work. But reorienting their businesses toward the Chinese domestic market requires far more than government policies that put more money in consumers' pockets.
In order to enjoy the same low transaction costs that they have in exporting, China’s entrepreneurs need a much better business environment: an effective legal system, a sound regulatory framework, a government that protects their brands by fighting intellectual-property theft, dependable logistics and distribution networks, and a graft-resistant bureaucracy.
China cannot create such an environment quickly. In essence, the Chinese government must transform a predatory state into a nurturing one, and treat private entrepreneurs as creators of wealth rather than targets of extraction. In nearly all other countries, such a transformation was accomplished by establishing the rule of law and/or moving from autocracy to democracy.
The impossibility of sustaining growth in the absence of the rule of law and political accountability presents the Chinese Communist Party with an existential dilemma. Ever since it crushed the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the party has vowed not to surrender its political monopoly. The investment boom and the globalization dividend of the last two decades allowed the Party to have its cake and eat it – maintaining its rule on the basis of economic prosperity, while failing to establish the institutions critical to sustaining such prosperity. Today, this is no longer possible.
So in a sense, the Chinese bubble – as much an intellectual and political bubble as an economic one – has burst. As China’s economic deceleration exposes its structural vulnerabilities and flawed policies, the much-hyped notion of “Chinese exceptionalism” – that China can continue to grow without the rule of law and the other essential institutions that a modern market economy presupposes – is proving to be nothing but a delusion.
Minxin Pei is
Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College.