“麥當勞必勝”:中國人習慣選擇多種咖啡，他們會要求多種政治選擇。

“政權更迭”這個短語跟應用於伊拉克的預防性戰爭教條有關。但另一種政權更迭一直是自尼克鬆總統1972年對華開放三十五年以來，大部分時間裏美國對華政策的關鍵。

自從1989年政治事件後，美國政策的目標一直是（而且常常被宣稱是）穩步顛覆中國的政權。對共產主義的治療應該是與資本主義世界通商：貿易可以把中國潛在的侵略性力量導入建設性的、和平的渠道。

這種以貿易力量馴服人類精神的信仰有著十九世紀的血統。格萊斯頓（William Gladstone）和其他人認為戰爭代價太大，因為它們會破壞貿易。在二十一實際，經濟決定論（例如，十九世紀的馬克思主義學說）被聚焦到馬克思主義者建立的最後一個重要政權——中國。

十九世紀把曆史變成一個專有名詞——曆史，一種有著自己的必然演變的生動事物。如今，許多人透過曆史相對論的鏡頭（可能帶有玫瑰色彩）看中國：

反對民主的中國領導人“站在曆史錯誤的一邊”，而且“如同柏林牆最終倒塌，我隻是認為它是不可避免的”（比爾.克林頓）。“貿易不僅僅關乎金錢，還關乎道德。經濟自由化締造自由的習性。而自由的習性締造民主的期待……。與中國自由地貿易，時代站在我們這一邊”（喬治.W.布什）。在中國“有一種無法阻擋的勢頭”邁向民主（托尼.布萊爾）。

這種理論並不僅僅是一廂情願的想法，它認為資本主義不可避免帶來信息和決策前所未有的廣泛的散布，並要求誠信的倫理和守諾的合法政權。那些讚同這個理論的人可以從中國最近加強私有財產保護的做法中略感安慰，此舉給予個體一種個人權利，而他們對個人權利的胃口可能變成對人民民主的政治要求。

但料想事情並非如此。料想孟捷慕（James Mann）把所有這些稱為平穩版本（Soothing Scenario）是對的。

孟捷慕是莫伊尼漢學派（Moynihan School）的，在他的新書《中國幻覺：我們的領袖如何解釋中國的鎮壓》中，已故的莫伊尼漢尖刻地談到，從中國回來的西方遊客印象更深刻的是蒼蠅的缺席，而不是自由的缺席。孟捷慕認為平穩版本的含義——即在中國做生意的美國投資銀行家一定是自由鬥士——有點太想當然了。

他也不相信劇變版本（Upheaval Scenario）。這種版本認為中國政權不會屈從於從列寧主義到民主的和平的、增量的滑翔，而會在經濟紊亂和政治不滿的痙攣中滅亡。他的第三種版本就是從現在開始的數十年裏，現代化將讓中國無限製地變富，而且因此在地緣政治上更奪目，但專製不會明顯減少。

大企業和平穩版本的其他倡導者用孟捷慕的“不予考慮的詞匯”來反駁像他那樣的懷疑論者：懷疑論者在從事反映“冷戰思維”的“修理中國（China bashing）”時是“煽動性的”。盡管這種理論是“接觸”中國將改變中國，但孟捷慕不禁問：究竟誰在改變誰？

平穩版本認為，苛政要求民智封閉和公眾覺悟的缺失，但在無線電話和互聯網滲透的今天，這是不可能的。但孟捷慕認為像微軟、穀歌、雅虎等公司和政府的審查和安全監督可以合作。

孟捷慕告誡“麥當勞必勝”的信念，這種信念認為，由於中國人吃的東西跟我們越來越像，他們就會越來越像我們。這跟“星巴克謬論”相關——認為隨著中國人習慣選擇多種咖啡，他們會要求多種政治選擇。

他最令人不安的論點是：大城市裏“富裕的、啜飲星巴克、買公寓、開汽車的居民”不會是民主的先鋒，而會反對它。這樣的居民可能有三億，但還有十億非常貧困的農村地區的中國人。在列寧主義體係下發家致富的少數人會認為多數人的統治符合他們的利益嗎？

孟捷慕蔑視許多認為美國精英提供平穩版本的浮華經濟動機論，他是對的。然而，在他論辯的情緒中，他很可能低估了當今商業文化的自主和改革力量。但是，仍然讀他的書，作為監督2008年北京奧運媒體采訪的指引，這是自1936年柏林奧運以來最有預示性的奧運。

來源：美國《華盛頓郵報》/ 作者 George F. Will


Real Change In China?

By George F. Will
Thursday, April 26, 2007; A29

The phrase regime change is associated with the doctrine of preventive war as applied to Iraq. But another sort of regime change has been the crux of U.S. policy toward China through most of the 35 years since President Richard Nixon\'s opening to that nation in 1972.

Since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the objective of U.S. policy has been -- and often has been proclaimed to be -- the steady subversion of China\'s repressive regime. The cure for communism is supposed to be commerce with the capitalist world: Trade can turn China\'s potentially aggressive energies into constructive, pacific channels.

This faith in the power of trade to tame humanity\'s animal spirits has a 19th-century pedigree. Think of William Gladstone and others who thought wars would become too costly to contemplate because they would disrupt trade. In the 21st century, economic determinism (e.g., Marxism, a 19th-century dogma) is being focused on the last important regime founded by Marxists -- China.

The 19th century turned history into a proper noun -- History, a living thing with its own unfolding inevitability. Today, many see China through (perhaps rose-tinted) lenses of historicism:

Chinese leaders who oppose democracy are on the wrong side of history and just as eventually the Berlin Wall fell, I just think it\'s inevitable (Bill Clinton). The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral. Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy. . . . Trade freely with China, and time is on our side (George W. Bush). In China there is an unstoppable momentum toward democracy (Tony Blair).

The theory, which is more than wishful thinking, is that capitalism ineluctably brings about an ever-broader dispersal of information and decision-making, and requires an ethic of trust and a legal regime of promise-keeping (contracts). Those who subscribe to this theory can take some comfort from China\'s recent strengthening of protections of private property, which gives a sphere of sovereignty to individuals whose appetite for sovereignty, once whetted, might become a demand for a politics of popular sovereignty.

But suppose this is not so. Suppose James Mann is right to dismiss all this as the Soothing Scenario.

In his new book, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression, Mann is of the Moynihan School: The late Pat Moynihan spoke acerbically of Western visitors who returned from China more impressed by the absence of flies than by the absence of freedom. Mann considers the Soothing Scenario\'s implication -- that American investment bankers doing business in China are necessarily freedom fighters -- a tad too convenient.

He also distrusts the Upheaval Scenario, which is that China\'s regime will not succumb to a peaceful, incremental glide from Leninism to democracy but rather will perish in a spasm of economic dysfunction and political discontent. His Third Scenario is that decades from now, modernization will have made China immeasurably wealthier, and hence more geopolitically imposing, but not significantly less authoritarian.

Big business and other advocates of the Soothing Scenario use what Mann calls the lexicon of dismissal to refute skeptics like him: Skeptics are being provocative when they engage in China bashing that reflects a Cold War mentality. But although the theory is that engagement with China will change China, Mann wonders: Who is changing whom?

The Soothing Scenario says: Tyranny requires intellectual autarky and the conion of the public\'s consciousness, which is impossible now that nations are porous to cellphones and the Internet. But Mann says companies such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are cooperating with the government\'s censorship and security monitoring.

Mann warns against McDonald\'s triumphalism, the belief that because the Chinese increasingly eat like us, they are becoming like us. That is related to the Starbucks fallacy -- the hope that as the Chinese become accustomed to many choices of coffee, they will demand more political choices.

His most disturbing thesis is that the newly enriched, Starbucks-sipping, apartment-buying, car-driving denizens of the large cities that American visitors to China see will be not the vanguard of democracy but the opposition to it. There may be 300 million such denizens, but there are 1 billion mostly rural and very poor Chinese. Will the minority prospering economically under a Leninist regime think majority rule is in their interest?

Mann is rightly disdainful of many meretricious and economically motivated arguments that American elites offer for the Soothing Scenario. In his polemical mood, however, he probably underestimates the autonomous and transformative power of today\'s commercial culture. Still, read his book as a guide for monitoring media coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the most portentous Games since those in 1936, in Berlin.

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