黄亚生:民主终将会赢——对李世默“两个政治制度”的批判
作者:黄亚生 译者: 国有汪汪汪
Earlier this year, economist Yasheng Huang (watch his 2011 TED Talk) sparred with Eric X. Li in the pages of Foreign Affairs on a similar topic to today’s TED Talk. The TED Blog asked Huang to expand on his argument in his ongoing conversation with Li.
今年早些时候,经济学家黄亚生与李世默在美国《外交事务》(Foreign Affairs)上进行了辩论,所围绕的话题与今天TED演讲的主题相似。TED博客邀请黄亚生进一步阐释观点,继续与李世默围绕此问题的对话。
Imagine confusing the following two statements from a cancer doctor: 1) “You may die from cancer” and 2) “I want you to die from cancer.” It is not hard to see a rudimentary difference between these two statements. The first statement is a prediction — it is saying that something may happen given certain conditions (in this case death conditional upon having cancer). The second statement is a preference, a desire, or a wish for a world to one’s particular liking.
想象一下一位癌症医生做出如下两种令人混淆的论断:一,“你可能死于癌症”;二,“我希望你死于癌症”。我们很容易就看出这两个论断的基本不同。第一个论断是一种预测,是说在特定条件下(在此情况下是指得了癌症)一些事情可能发生。第二个论断则是一种偏好,一种愿望,或者说,是想让世界成为自己喜欢的样子的一种愿景。
Who would make such a rudimentary mistake confusing these two types of statements? Many people, including Eric X. Li, in today’s TED Talk. The Marxian meta-narrative drilled into Li’s head — and mine in my childhood and youth in the 1960s and 1970s — is a normative statement. When Marx came up with his ideas about evolution of human societies, there was not a single country in the world that even remotely resembled the communist system he advocated. The communist system Marx had in mind had no private property or of ownership of any kind. Money was also absent in that system. The Marxian version of communism has never come to fruition and, most likely, never will. Marx based his “prediction” on deduction; his successors did so by imposing their wish, enforced by power and violence.
那么谁会混淆这样两种论断,犯这样的低级错误呢?有很多人,包括今天参加TED演讲的李世默。马克思主义元叙事钻入了李世默的脑袋——上世纪六七十年代也钻入了童年和青年时代的我的脑袋里。当马克思产生人类社会进化想法的时候,世界上甚至根本没有任何一个国家,与他所提倡的共产主义体制有一丁点相似。马克思所想的共产主义体制没有任何形式的私人财产和产权。那个世界中连钱都没有。马克思版的共产主义从未实现,很可能永远也不会实现。马克思通过推理进行“预测”,而他的后继者则以权力和暴力强行推行自己的愿望。
By contrast, the narrative that was apparently fed to Li when he was a “Berkeley hippie” is based on the actual experience of human affairs. We have had hundreds of years of experience with democracy and hundreds of countries/years of democratic transitions and rule. The statement that countries transition to democracy as they get rich is a positive statement — it is a prediction based on data. In the 1960s, roughly 25 percent of the world was democratic; today the proportion is 63 percent . There are far more instances of dictatorships transitioning to democracies than the other way around. The rest of the world has clearly expressed a preference for democracy. As Minxin Pei has pointed out, of the 25 countries with a higher GDP per capita than China that are not free or partially free, 21 of them are sustained by natural resources. But these are exceptions that prove the rule — countries become democratic as they get richer. Today not a single country classified as the richest is a single-party authoritarian system. (Singapore is arguably a borderline case.) Whether Li likes it or not, they all seem to end up in the same place.
相比之下,这种曾令仍作为伯克利嬉皮士的李世默感到厌倦的叙事,是基于真实的人世经历产生。我们已有几百年民主经验,和数百年/次的民主过渡和治理实践。有一个实证性论述是这样说的,当国家更富有时候他们便倾向于转向民主国家,这个预测是有数据支持的。在1960年代,大约25%的国家实现了民主。今天这个比例是63%。还有更多的例子显示了独裁国家是转向了民主体制而不是其他道路。世界上其余国家也明确的表达了对民主的偏爱。正像裴敏欣指出的,在所有25个比中国人均GDP更高的不自由或者部分自由的国家中,有21个是靠自然资源来支撑的。但是这些都是论证中(国家更富有时候他们便倾向于转向民主体制)的例外。今天,没有任何一个被列为最富有的国家还是一党专政。(新加坡可以说是一个边缘情况。)无论李世默喜欢与否,他们都在同样的地方被终结。
Are democracies more corrupt? Li thinks so. He cites the Transparency International (TI) index to support his view. The TI data show that China is ranked better than many democracies. Fair enough.
民主制度会崩溃吗?李世默认为是这样,他举出了国际清廉指数(TII)来支持他的论断,TII的数据显示中国的排名比许多民主国家还要好。我勉强同意。
I have always thought that there is a touch of irony with using transparency data to defend a political system built on opacity. Irony aside, let’s keep in mind that TI index itself is a product of a political system that Li so disparages — democracy (German democracy to be exact). This underscores a basic point — we know far more about corruption in democracies than we do about corruption in authoritarian countries because democracies are, by definition, more transparent and they have more transparency data. While I trust comparisons of corruption among democratic countries, to mechanically compare corruption in China with that in democracies, as Li has done so repeatedly, is fundamentally flawed. His methodology confounds two effects — how transparent a country is and how corrupt a country is. I am not saying that democracies are necessarily cleaner than China; I am just saying that Li’s use of TI data is not the basis for drawing conclusions in either direction. The right way to reach a conclusion on this issue is to say that given the same level of transparency (and the same level of many other things, including income), China is — or is not — more corrupt than democracies.
我一直认为用清廉指数来为一个不透明的政治体系来辩护是很讽刺的。先把讽刺放到一边,先让我们记住TII本身就是一个李诋毁的民主政体的产物(准确的说是德国民主)。下面要讲的是一个基本的观点:在民主国家中的腐败要远远多于我们知道的在那些集权国家中的,因为民主国家按照定义就更透明,并且有更透明的数据。我更相信在民主国家中比较腐败程度,而不是机械的套用在中国与其他民主国家的比较中,这就像李世默所不断重复做的,但从根本上说是有缺陷的。他的方法混淆了两种效果:一个国家透明程度如何以及一个国家腐败程度如何。我不是说民主国家就一定比中国干净,我说的是李用的数据不能作为得出上述任何一个方向的结论的基本依据。在这个问题上想要得出结论的正确方法是:在给定同样的透明度下(以及同样水平的许多其他指标,比如收入)中国有/没有比民主国家腐败。
A simple example will suffice to illustrate this idea. In 2010, two Indian entrepreneurs founded a website called I Paid a Bribe. The website invited anonymous postings of instances in which Indian citizens had to pay a bribe. By August 2012 the website has recorded more than 20,000 reports of corruption. Some Chinese entrepreneurs tried to do the same thing: They created I Made a Bribe and 522phone.com. But those websites were promptly shut down by the Chinese government. The right conclusion is not, as the logic of Li would suggest, that China is cleaner than India because it has zero postings of corrupt instances whereas India has some 20,000 posted instances of corruption.
一个简单的例子就会阐明这种观点。在2010年,两个印度企业家成立了一个网站叫“我行贿”。这个网站让帖子以匿名的方式张贴印度公民不得不行贿的例子。截止到2012年8月,这个网站记录了20,000起腐败的报告。一些中国企业试着做同样的事情,比如他们创造了“ I Made a Bribe“和” 522phone.com”但是这些网站很快就被中国政府强行关闭了。正确的结论并不是像李的逻辑所说的,中国比印度更干净因为他有着零纪录的腐败案例而印度政府有着20,000起腐败案件。
With due respect to the good work at Transparency International, its data are very poor at handling this basic difference between perception of corruption and incidence of corruption. Democracies are more transparent — about its virtues and its vices — than authoritarian systems. We know far more about Indian corruption in part because the Indian system is more transparent, and it has a noisy chattering class who are not afraid to challenge and criticize the government (and, in a few instances, to stick a video camera into a hotel room recording the transfer of cash to politicians). Also lower-level corruption is more observable than corruption at the top of the political hierarchy. The TI index is better at uncovering the corruption of a Barun the policeman in Chennai than a Bo Xilai the Politburo member from Chongqing. These factors, not corruption per se, are likely to explain most of the discrepancies between China and India in terms of TI rankings.
对于国际透明组织的努力工作我们应该给予尊重,但是他们的数据在处理腐败感知和腐败发生率的不同上有着非常差的表现。民主国家无论在美德还是恶习上,都要比集权国家更要透明。我们之所以知道印度更腐败部分上是因为印度有着更高的透明度,并且他有着一个可以闲聊的一群人,他们不害怕挑战并批评政府。(在一些例子中,我们看到他们坚持用摄像机进入酒店纪录转移到政客手里的现金)另外,低级的腐败比那些发生在高级政治阶层中更容易被发现。TII更容易发现发生在Barun一个警察的腐败,而不是在重庆的政治局成员薄熙来。这些因素更容易解释一大部分中印TII排名的不同,而不是腐败本身。
Li likes to point out, again using TI data, that the likes of Indonesia, Argentina and the Philippines are both democracies and notoriously corrupt. He often omits crucial factual details when he is addressing this issue. Yes, these countries are democracies, in 2013, but they were governed by ruthless military dictators for decades long before they transitioned to democracy. It was the autocracy of these countries that bred and fermented corruption. (Remember the 3,000 pairs of shoes of Mrs. Marcos?) Corruption is like cancer, metastatic and entrenched. While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize new democracies for not rooting out corruption in
黄亚生:民主终将会赢——对李世默“两个政治制度”的批判
作者:黄亚生 译者: 国有汪汪汪
Earlier this year, economist Yasheng Huang (watch his 2011 TED Talk) sparred with Eric X. Li in the pages of Foreign Affairs on a similar topic to today’s TED Talk. The TED Blog asked Huang to expand on his argument in his ongoing conversation with Li.
今年早些时候,经济学家黄亚生与李世默在美国《外交事务》(Foreign Affairs)上进行了辩论,所围绕的话题与今天TED演讲的主题相似。TED博客邀请黄亚生进一步阐释观点,继续与李世默围绕此问题的对话。
Imagine confusing the following two statements from a cancer doctor: 1) “You may die from cancer” and 2) “I want you to die from cancer.” It is not hard to see a rudimentary difference between these two statements. The first statement is a prediction — it is saying that something may happen given certain conditions (in this case death conditional upon having cancer). The second statement is a preference, a desire, or a wish for a world to one’s particular liking.
想象一下一位癌症医生做出如下两种令人混淆的论断:一,“你可能死于癌症”;二,“我希望你死于癌症”。我们很容易就看出这两个论断的基本不同。第一个论断是一种预测,是说在特定条件下(在此情况下是指得了癌症)一些事情可能发生。第二个论断则是一种偏好,一种愿望,或者说,是想让世界成为自己喜欢的样子的一种愿景。
Who would make such a rudimentary mistake confusing these two types of statements? Many people, including Eric X. Li, in today’s TED Talk. The Marxian meta-narrative drilled into Li’s head — and mine in my childhood and youth in the 1960s and 1970s — is a normative statement. When Marx came up with his ideas about evolution of human societies, there was not a single country in the world that even remotely resembled the communist system he advocated. The communist system Marx had in mind had no private property or of ownership of any kind. Money was also absent in that system. The Marxian version of communism has never come to fruition and, most likely, never will. Marx based his “prediction” on deduction; his successors did so by imposing their wish, enforced by power and violence.
那么谁会混淆这样两种论断,犯这样的低级错误呢?有很多人,包括今天参加TED演讲的李世默。马克思主义元叙事钻入了李世默的脑袋——上世纪六七十年代也钻入了童年和青年时代的我的脑袋里。当马克思产生人类社会进化想法的时候,世界上甚至根本没有任何一个国家,与他所提倡的共产主义体制有一丁点相似。马克思所想的共产主义体制没有任何形式的私人财产和产权。那个世界中连钱都没有。马克思版的共产主义从未实现,很可能永远也不会实现。马克思通过推理进行“预测”,而他的后继者则以权力和暴力强行推行自己的愿望。
By contrast, the narrative that was apparently fed to Li when he was a “Berkeley hippie” is based on the actual experience of human affairs. We have had hundreds of years of experience with democracy and hundreds of countries/years of democratic transitions and rule. The statement that countries transition to democracy as they get rich is a positive statement — it is a prediction based on data. In the 1960s, roughly 25 percent of the world was democratic; today the proportion is 63 percent . There are far more instances of dictatorships transitioning to democracies than the other way around. The rest of the world has clearly expressed a preference for democracy. As Minxin Pei has pointed out, of the 25 countries with a higher GDP per capita than China that are not free or partially free, 21 of them are sustained by natural resources. But these are exceptions that prove the rule — countries become democratic as they get richer. Today not a single country classified as the richest is a single-party authoritarian system. (Singapore is arguably a borderline case.) Whether Li likes it or not, they all seem to end up in the same place.
相比之下,这种曾令仍作为伯克利嬉皮士的李世默感到厌倦的叙事,是基于真实的人世经历产生。我们已有几百年民主经验,和数百年/次的民主过渡和治理实践。有一个实证性论述是这样说的,当国家更富有时候他们便倾向于转向民主国家,这个预测是有数据支持的。在1960年代,大约25%的国家实现了民主。今天这个比例是63%。还有更多的例子显示了独裁国家是转向了民主体制而不是其他道路。世界上其余国家也明确的表达了对民主的偏爱。正像裴敏欣指出的,在所有25个比中国人均GDP更高的不自由或者部分自由的国家中,有21个是靠自然资源来支撑的。但是这些都是论证中(国家更富有时候他们便倾向于转向民主体制)的例外。今天,没有任何一个被列为最富有的国家还是一党专政。(新加坡可以说是一个边缘情况。)无论李世默喜欢与否,他们都在同样的地方被终结。
Are democracies more corrupt? Li thinks so. He cites the Transparency International (TI) index to support his view. The TI data show that China is ranked better than many democracies. Fair enough.
民主制度会崩溃吗?李世默认为是这样,他举出了国际清廉指数(TII)来支持他的论断,TII的数据显示中国的排名比许多民主国家还要好。我勉强同意。
I have always thought that there is a touch of irony with using transparency data to defend a political system built on opacity. Irony aside, let’s keep in mind that TI index itself is a product of a political system that Li so disparages — democracy (German democracy to be exact). This underscores a basic point — we know far more about corruption in democracies than we do about corruption in authoritarian countries because democracies are, by definition, more transparent and they have more transparency data. While I trust comparisons of corruption among democratic countries, to mechanically compare corruption in China with that in democracies, as Li has done so repeatedly, is fundamentally flawed. His methodology confounds two effects — how transparent a country is and how corrupt a country is. I am not saying that democracies are necessarily cleaner than China; I am just saying that Li’s use of TI data is not the basis for drawing conclusions in either direction. The right way to reach a conclusion on this issue is to say that given the same level of transparency (and the same level of many other things, including income), China is — or is not — more corrupt than democracies.
我一直认为用清廉指数来为一个不透明的政治体系来辩护是很讽刺的。先把讽刺放到一边,先让我们记住TII本身就是一个李诋毁的民主政体的产物(准确的说是德国民主)。下面要讲的是一个基本的观点:在民主国家中的腐败要远远多于我们知道的在那些集权国家中的,因为民主国家按照定义就更透明,并且有更透明的数据。我更相信在民主国家中比较腐败程度,而不是机械的套用在中国与其他民主国家的比较中,这就像李世默所不断重复做的,但从根本上说是有缺陷的。他的方法混淆了两种效果:一个国家透明程度如何以及一个国家腐败程度如何。我不是说民主国家就一定比中国干净,我说的是李用的数据不能作为得出上述任何一个方向的结论的基本依据。在这个问题上想要得出结论的正确方法是:在给定同样的透明度下(以及同样水平的许多其他指标,比如收入)中国有/没有比民主国家腐败。
A simple example will suffice to illustrate this idea. In 2010, two Indian entrepreneurs founded a website called I Paid a Bribe. The website invited anonymous postings of instances in which Indian citizens had to pay a bribe. By August 2012 the website has recorded more than 20,000 reports of corruption. Some Chinese entrepreneurs tried to do the same thing: They created I Made a Bribe and 522phone.com. But those websites were promptly shut down by the Chinese government. The right conclusion is not, as the logic of Li would suggest, that China is cleaner than India because it has zero postings of corrupt instances whereas India has some 20,000 posted instances of corruption.
一个简单的例子就会阐明这种观点。在2010年,两个印度企业家成立了一个网站叫“我行贿”。这个网站让帖子以匿名的方式张贴印度公民不得不行贿的例子。截止到2012年8月,这个网站记录了20,000起腐败的报告。一些中国企业试着做同样的事情,比如他们创造了“ I Made a Bribe“和” 522phone.com”但是这些网站很快就被中国政府强行关闭了。正确的结论并不是像李的逻辑所说的,中国比印度更干净因为他有着零纪录的腐败案例而印度政府有着20,000起腐败案件。
With due respect to the good work at Transparency International, its data are very poor at handling this basic difference between perception of corruption and incidence of corruption. Democracies are more transparent — about its virtues and its vices — than authoritarian systems. We know far more about Indian corruption in part because the Indian system is more transparent, and it has a noisy chattering class who are not afraid to challenge and criticize the government (and, in a few instances, to stick a video camera into a hotel room recording the transfer of cash to politicians). Also lower-level corruption is more observable than corruption at the top of the political hierarchy. The TI index is better at uncovering the corruption of a Barun the policeman in Chennai than a Bo Xilai the Politburo member from Chongqing. These factors, not corruption per se, are likely to explain most of the discrepancies between China and India in terms of TI rankings.
对于国际透明组织的努力工作我们应该给予尊重,但是他们的数据在处理腐败感知和腐败发生率的不同上有着非常差的表现。民主国家无论在美德还是恶习上,都要比集权国家更要透明。我们之所以知道印度更腐败部分上是因为印度有着更高的透明度,并且他有着一个可以闲聊的一群人,他们不害怕挑战并批评政府。(在一些例子中,我们看到他们坚持用摄像机进入酒店纪录转移到政客手里的现金)另外,低级的腐败比那些发生在高级政治阶层中更容易被发现。TII更容易发现发生在Barun一个警察的腐败,而不是在重庆的政治局成员薄熙来。这些因素更容易解释一大部分中印TII排名的不同,而不是腐败本身。
Li likes to point out, again using TI data, that the likes of Indonesia, Argentina and the Philippines are both democracies and notoriously corrupt. He often omits crucial factual details when he is addressing this issue. Yes, these countries are democracies, in 2013, but they were governed by ruthless military dictators for decades long before they transitioned to democracy. It was the autocracy of these countries that bred and fermented corruption. (Remember the 3,000 pairs of shoes of Mrs. Marcos?) Corruption is like cancer, metastatic and entrenched. While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize new democracies for not rooting out corruption in
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