吹噓韓國是民主第一世界國家李世默韓國是半主權國家，一句話鎖死七寸

但誰能斷言當前這種強製趨同的過程就沒有造成痛苦呢 that the party's performance track record gives the party its legitimacy And I mean I saw your TED talk You actually referred to the Pew Research and Financial Times survey to show like the incredibly high approval rate of the Communist Party by their citizens Then if the party is incredibly popular as you say why does the party feel the need to regulate the media and the internet Restrict freedom of speech and right to protest and arrest dissidents I mean if they're so confident they can just hold elections Hello my name is Xinyin Li and I'm a former president of the Oxford Union and Asia Pacific Society I would like to first thank my friend Eric for giving me the honour of interviewing him As Paris said Eric is the most successful and one of the very first venture capitalists from China And what's even more amazing is that he's also the most interesting and the most talked about A public intellectual from China after his viral TED talk I had a similar discussion with Eric at the Parliament yesterday And actually one of the audience members in the talk was Lord Geoffrey Howe And he came up to Eric after the talk and said it was one of the most thought provoking and profound talks in China he's ever been to You probably would not agree with Eric's subversive views But I hope that you can feel the same way as Lord Howard did yesterday So Eric I would like to first begin by asking you this You spent your youth in China at the height of the cultural revolution And in your viral TED talk which most of the audience members probably have watched already You say you were disillusioned by the failed religion of your youth in China and went to America to learn about the West You worked your way to get degrees from Berkeley and Stanford and became a successful salesman in Rose Perra's campaign You even got involved in Rose Perra's presidential campaign And seriously participated in American liberal democracy as we would all expect from your democracy loving speech You seem to have drive in the West but you now are very skeptical of the idea of liberal democracy And even more skeptical of the idea that liberal democracy is desirable for China and is compatible with China How did this shift in your view take place You know when I was your age I knew everything You know how it feels I do because I was there And when I knew everything and when you knew everything you are predisposed to buying into neat formulas that explain all of the world And you're predisposed into believing that there's a solution to every problem and there's a grand solution to the grand problem And of course I knew everything when I was growing up and I grew up with the narrative that there was a certainty in this world and the whole world was moving in the same direction and it's for certain that we would go from primitive societies through slavery to feudalism to capitalism and ultimately end up in the communist utopia It didn't quite work out that way And of course when I was coming of age and I was a student in America I was still young and I was fed another story And that was neat too A beautiful formula where the individual emerge as a sovereign unit of all societies and 1 3 billion or 6 billion individuals will vote ourselves to paradise And it was a beautiful story too But then of course I left America I returned to my native country and I traveled everywhere and I studied I went to Africa I went to Southeast Asia I grew my business in China And the world turned out to be more complex than that And more nuanced than that And more interesting I think The formula that was devised after the Cold War where every country must follow to achieve prosperity didn't really work out for most of those countries that prescribed them and followed them You can go to all those countries in Africa and Southeast Asia They followed the playbook They did everything by the book But it didn't work out for them And they can't go back They're in trouble China didn't do that And it did work out to some extent There were many problems of course But the fact is still that it led to like I said the greatest most significant improvement in the way of life for the largest number of people in the shortest time in history Also during your speech you said one might be very counterintuitive to audience members here You said what did they get wrong It turned out that the party has not been holding back or reacting to China's modernization but leading it Self correction the ability many attribute to democracies has been a hallmark of the party's governance And you've been actually arguing that the Chinese political system is at least self correcting as Western liberal democracy if not more But how does the party self correct their policies I mean in the absence of institutional liberal democracy free press judicial oversight popular vote what is the mechanism through which the Chinese model informs the party of being wrong about their policies You know let me first address the second half of your question which is you know the overriding assumption in the last few decades by political scientists is that democracy is self correct Democracies are uniquely capable of changing courses and reforming themselves to adapt to the times It turns out the facts are if you're political science how many are poli sci students here I don't know if you're political science students It turns out at least so far the evidence indicates that electoral democracies are extraordinarily rigid They can't change course So many interests are involved You know Frank Fukuyama my friend the political scientist is called American system vitocracy Everybody can veto everything They can't do anything In fact Faris Akaria another great American commentator has recently written that you know the American political system should change itself into a parliamentary one Because the circumstances in America are such that a parliamentary system could work better But of course it's simply not possible It will not be done So even within democratic models of governance it is nearly impossible to change from a parliamentary one to a presidential one or vice versa Let alone any wider range of changes And I think political reforms are badly needed in America and Europe But why is it not happening Because these systems are extraordinarily rigid The Chinese system so far it's not going to be forever The one party system happens to be very agile I use this one particular example For the ten years before the 18 th Party Congress last year we had nine members at the standing committee of the Politburo which is the highest ruling body in the country And it turned out that the power was too diffused decision making process was dragging and didn't work quite well So what did they do at the 18 th Party Congress They took it down to seven Imagine taking the U S Senate from 100 people to 88 It won't happen regardless of how urgently needed it may be So the Chinese system is very very agile And now the reason why I would advance the case that it is agile because the Chinese Communist Party happens to be one of the most meritocratic and upwardly mobile political organizations in the world today If you conduct a good analysis the leadership of the party emerges from the grassroots I know there's a lot of talk about princelings and what have you but if you really take a look at the numbers I studied the Central Committee before the 18 th Party Congress I haven't gotten around to study the current one but I think it generally holds true In the last Poly Bureau of 25 people only five of them came from so called princeling background any background of privilege whether it's wealth or power The other 20 including the President and the Prime Minister came from entirely ordinary backgrounds In the Central Committee in today's Central Committee the percentage of people who come from a background of any privilege is even smaller Compare that to the U S Senate for instance How many are sons of senators and sons come from wealth Compare that I would say if we conduct a survey if you conduct a study and compare the Chinese ruling elites at the Central Committee level or whatever level you want to choose and compare that across the board against developed countries from America to Europe against developing countries from the Philippines to South Korea the entire country of South Korea where just there was run by princelings from politicians to travel CEOs to university presidents who are all sons of university presidents So if you make that comparison I would suggest that the party the percentage of people who come from the grassroots in the upper echelon of the party is probably the largest period And it is this ability if you go to any Chinese university I was studying for my PhD at Fudan The party recruits at the very grassroots level the best and the brightest students who come from the countryside they join the party and they move their way up slowly step by step And the selection process is very meritocratic and very tough even for Xi Jinping the new general secretary He's a princeling happens to be princeling But you know it's amazing The party has been in power for 64 years He is the first he is the first head of state head of the party who comes from a background of political leadership No one else has So but even for him the career path took 30 years He worked his way up from village chief county chief mayor vice mayor mayor of provincial By the time he made it to the top he had managed 150 million people and a couple of trillion dollars in combined GDP The track record is amazing And you don't make it to the top unless you go through that grinding machine of the party system So I think the ability to recruit people from the grassroots regardless of the background and allow them the upward mobility to move up is the key to the party's ability to adapt because the upper echelon the ruling elites are the same generation of the people they're ruling and come from the grassroots so they know the conditions of the country So you think the rise of princelings is a fiction Well I think the numbers indicate that It's simply I think the numbers will continue to indicate that even to a greater extent if you analyze the next line up the ministerial level cadres and the mayoral level cadres the percentage of princelings is dropping Even now it's small But it will continue to drop if you look at the future line up for the next 20 years There are hardly any princelings I see two actually out of thousands that have any hope of making it to the top I mean you mentioned in the speech today that the party's performance track record gives the party its legitimacy And I mean I saw your TED talk You actually referred to the Pew Research and Financial Times survey to show like the incredibly high approval rate of the Communist Party by their citizens Then if the party is incredibly popular as you say why does the party feel the need to regulate the media and the internet Restrict freedom of speech and right to protest and arrest dissidents I mean if they're so confident they can just hold elections Good question You didn't ask that yesterday This is how you get me So I think it doesn't have a lot to do with popularity or confidence I mean I think it has to do with the idea of free speech really freedom of speech And I would like to suggest that the degree of space for debate for public debate for public speech should be calibrated by the conditions of a society at particular times And I think history will tell whether China's current degree in space or conducive for its long term success But to simply say that freedom of speech is I think oversimplifying You know the modern Western political ideology of so called freedom of speech I think is a fallacy It doesn't exist It's no society has absolute freedom of speech Every society based on its conditions regulates speech It's based on the ideology of freedom of speech is based on the idea that somehow free somehow speech is not act Therefore it's harmless Therefore it should be allowed absolute freedom But of course it's contrary to human experience over thousands of years Speech is act and speech has been capable of doing harm and have done harm to human societies since time immemorial In Europe one does not have to trace back further than 1933 to remember a case where powerful speech by one man amplified under the right conditions of the time and the place end up doing great harm and destruction to millions In today's Europe they're still grappling with the same situation In Greece blood and death was involved with speech In France is a speech to cover your face Does that hurt social cohesion In Germany because of its particular conditions particular history publishing certain books is banned So let's come back to China Contemporary China is experiencing social transformations of which the speed and scale are unprecedented in human history Under such conditions the fragility of social stability can be easily disrupted by amplified speech So I think responsible governance should take that into consideration And whether the current range of freedom is proper I think history will judge I think you give a good account of the past track record of the party and we cannot deny the pace and scale of the economic miracle that the party has brought to China However I think all of us here are not only interested in the past but also in the future I mean most of the East Asian countries that achieved first world status in the last half century Let me guess South Korea and Taiwan Yeah I mean achieved under authoritarian regimes but once their income got higher they turned democratic Do you think that's going to happen for China in the future The presumption of that question is problematic The question presumes somehow that income has something to do with the desire for a particular political system It's of course not the case Because after the Cold War many many more very very starving poor countries adopted democracies Didn't do anything for them But so yes South Korea and places like Taiwan and a few places income has risen and they wanted democracy I would argue under unique circumstances you know South Korea was a semi sovereign country And Taiwan they were under the umbrella of the Cold War and they made that choice They had to I think But that's a longer and more complicated discussion But my point is there is no link between income and the desire for a particular political system There are many many more very very poor countries Didn't make a dime and wanted democracy I mean then how long do you think the system is going to last I mean Well I think it depends on many many variables Can they continue to perform I think they will continue to perform for some time probably within my generation And second will democracy continue to fail I mean most countries look at cases I mean most countries most of the non Western countries who adopted electoral democratic regimes did so not because of faith as the West has I would argue democracy is an outgrowth of religious and cultural traditions But for non Western countries they adopted them because they thought it would work And they looked at the precedence looked at those cases And now the cases have reversed Democracies are not working in most places In fact it's doing great harm So will it continue If that trend continues then the probability of China adopting democracy will be less Who would be that stupid to copy something that doesn't work I mean then do you think the Chinese political system is an alternative to Western liberal democracy Well it's an alternative for China I mean I don't think I do want to make the point that the Chinese political system at the moment is suitable for China under the current conditions And it is not exportable Because I mean I think political systems work When they work they work because they are suitable for the cultural conditions and the times And they are unique across different cultures and different times And the Chinese system seems to be optimal at the moment But I would say that I think the only thing that's exportable is the idea that there are alternatives And each country if you want to succeed and want to prosper should look for a path that's suitable for your own circumstances And not blindly copy others And that is exportable But not the model itself I'll just ask a couple more questions about international relations During your talk in South Korea you predicted the coming of new world disorder And you cleverly used the phrase warring states as a metaphor for our time And you said the following the world is not coming together under a unified system Its underlying narrative is dead Its underwriter is no longer able to pay for it The most significant rising power is not interested in making a new one Perhaps warring states is a proper metaphor of our time The Chinese seem to be looking ahead and beginning to formulate a new framework What presidents see proposed to President Obama during their California summit as great power relations Why do you see the coming of new world disorder and an era of warring states Since the end of World War II international relations have been dominated by what I call a narrative dichotomy A narrative dichotomy is a single fault line story What it says is and of course of historical determinism So after World War II the narrative dichotomy is that the whole world is divided into by a single fault line Soviet communism against liberal democracy and capitalism And they both armed themselves to the teeth and took their ideas from continent to continent caused untold sufferings by many people And in the end the Soviet Union collapsed hence the American century So that's the first phase of the narrative dichotomy The second phase is after the Cold War Then it was assumed that the world is moving towards a different utopia the utopia of liberal democracy And there's a single fault line The single fault lines are between those who are democratic capitalism and have adopted that system and those who are not refused to or are not yet And it's a struggle between these two And I would argue that we are at the end of that phase The narrative dichotomy the single fault line narrative no longer reflects the realities of our world It just does not The best example would be say Middle East today Human conflicts conflicts among nations states and groups are now driven by multiple fault lines The Western alliance led a decade long project to remake the Middle East It turned out the world is much more complex now than a narrative dichotomy The ethnic religious cultural fault lines nationalist fault lines proved to be much more consequential than the single fault line between democracies and dictatorship And we're witnessing that again in Syria And in Southeast Asia in East Asia the same thing I mean is the fault line between democracy and dictatorship is going to define the conflicts among China Korea and Japan Of course not Nationalist fault lines proved to be much more persistent and consequential So the current global architecture which is underwritten and paid for and run by the United States led Western alliance is based on that narrative dichotomy of that single fault line story And that story no longer reflects realities Therefore it's costing the captain of the global architecture America much more now than the benefits So I think it's a matter of time before America begins to the American people begin to ask for their country back And they already are beginning to do so The British people are asking for their country back I think Syria is probably a watershed event in that perspective And so what I'm saying is we are entering a phase I call warring states Meaning there is no pre designed architecture that you could plug in and run your policies Different states and different participants different actors are behaving in their own interests whether it's nationalist economic or political ideological or ethnic or religious whatever it may be And so we're in uncharted waters And we'll go through decades of that period and we'll see what emerges And also during your speech there you said China is not a revolutionary power and it is not an expansionary power And as a South Korean we know that at the core of Chinese tradition there is so called a belief Zhonghua which refers to Chinese belief that China is the center of the universe I mean if you see the past history South Korea Japan and other neighboring nations were categorized as barbarian nations and had to pay tribute to China and conform to Chinese culture tradition I mean I think this conflicts with your view of China as a non expansionary power I mean what is your take on this Well I think we ought to distinguish between theories and a factual statement like China is the center of the universe I'm kidding I want to make a real distinction here between an outlook of centrality which is the Chinese outlook It's been around for centuries and thousands of years and an outlook of universality These are two very very different outlooks Centrality meaning I'm at the center of the world Keep barbarians out but not invading them Or you're kicking me out Yeah That's right Keep But maybe if they pay tribute we'll take them But at most At most So if you compare If you look at the last two three thousand years there have been centuries centuries when China was I don't know a third of the world's GDP or something Maybe half I don't remember the numbers Okay Check Ferguson's book It tells you It has a chart And what During those periods what China did to other countries and compare with other empires whether Rome or Britain or other empires when their share of the global power was half of what China's share was and what they did to other countries And so I think it's a matter of degree Yeah This is my last question You suggest a non interventionist policy to the United States and other major powers of the world And you say give China time allow it the space and independence to continue on its own path live and let live Perhaps that would produce an outcome more suitable to all And you also pointed out during your lecture that America can no longer afford to spread democracy freedom and liberalism around the world and can no longer afford to save countries in humanitarian crisis I know that you predict the so called new world disorder but is that a desirable outcome I mean do we actually want to live in a world where we can no longer rely on the international organizations and America and other major Western powers to sort our humanitarian crisis Well I'm a businessman and I'm a political scientist So I'm not interested in normative statements I'm interested in analytical statements where we analyze what will happen not what should happen I mean the question of what should happen is so complex It's influenced by how we grew up the religions what church you went to It'll take weeks The analysis today and the analysis I'm interested in is what will happen And I think what will happen is not whether it's good or bad I mean I actually think it's more interesting I wouldn't use the word good It's more interesting It's more interesting to let an architecture emerge without pre design without a foregone conclusion The foregone conclusion has to be enforced has to be coerced People have to coerced to accept it but without a foregone outcome And I think that's the more interesting world but it could cause more suffering But who is to say that the current process of forced convergence is not causing suffering Yeah Thanks

風蕭蕭_Frank

小夥吹噓韓國是民主國家和第一世界國家。李世默：韓國是半主權國家，一句話鎖死七寸

主持人介紹嘉賓李世默及其背景

提問：李世默如何從信奉民主到表示懷疑？

李世默闡述：從教條主義到對世界複雜性的認知

西方統一模式的失敗與中國模式的成就對比

提問：中國政治製度如何實現“自我糾錯”？

選舉民主的僵化與中國一黨製的靈活性

中國共產黨的精英治理和人才選拔機製

回應：言論自由與監管的界限

駁斥：收入水平提高必然導致民主化的預設

中國模式的持續性與可輸出的經驗教訓

國際關係：新型世界失序與單一敘事終結

中國的非擴張性質與對分析性思維的強調

結語：言論自由與言論放縱的區分