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How China Won and Russia Lost
By Paul R. Gregory and Kate Zhou
Two dissimilar economic paths
Policy Review
No. 158, December 2009 & January 2010
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/72997307.html
(胡佛研究所 政策评论)
On a dark November night in 1978, 18 Chinese peasants from Xiaogang village in Anhui province secretly divided communal land to be farmed by individual families, who would keep what was left over after meeting state quotas. Such a division was illegal and highly dangerous, but the peasants felt the risks were worth it. The timing is significant for our story. The peasants took action one month before the “reform” congress of the party was announced. Thus, without fanfare, began economic reform, as spontaneous land division spread to other villages. One farmer said, “When one family’s chicken catches the pest, the whole village catches it. When one village has it, the whole county will be infected.”
Ten years later, in August of 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev lifted his nation’s 50-year-old prohibition against private farming, offering 50-year leases to farm families who would subsequently work off of contracts with the state. Few accepted the offer; Russian farmers were too accustomed to the dreary but steady life on the state or collective farm. Thus began reform of agriculture in Soviet Russia.
The results in each country could not have been more different. Chronically depressed Chinese agriculture began to blossom, not only for grain but for all crops. As farmers brought their crops to the city by bicycle or bus, long food lines began to dwindle and then disappear. The state grocery monopoly ended in less than one year. Soviet Russian agriculture continued to stagnate despite massive state subsidies. Citizens of a superpower again had to bear the indignity of sugar rations.
\title{As farmers brought their crops to the city by bicycle or bus, long food lines began to dwindle and then disappear. }
These two examples point to the proper narrative of reform in Gorbachev’s Russia and Deng Xiaoping’s China. Our narrative contradicts much received doctrine. The standard account is that China succeeded because a wise party leadership deliberately chose gradualism, retained the monopoly of the Communist Party after rebuffing democracy at Tiananmen Square, and carefully guided the process over the years. The narrative says that Russia failed because the tempestuous Gorbachev ignored the Chinese reform model, moved too quickly, and allowed the party monopoly to fall apart. This standard account is incorrect. Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, contrary to popular legend, did not agree on a reform program at the Third Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress in 1978, which installed him in power. A Chinese reform official by the name of Bao Tong later admitted as much: “In fact, reform wasn’t discussed. Reform wasn’t listed on the agenda, nor was it mentioned in the work reports.”1
Throughout the reform process, the Chinese Communist Party simply reacted to (and wisely did not oppose) bottom-up reform initiatives that emanated largely from the rural population. Deng Xiaoping’s famous description of Chinese reform as “fording the river by feeling for the stones” is not incorrect, but it was the Chinese people who placed the stones under his feet.
Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of his party in March of 1985. By that time, he knew that the Chinese reforms were successful. His reforms, contrary to the popular narrative, closely mimicked China’s. He proposed to lease land to peasants, establish free trade zones, promote small cooperative businesses, and set up joint ventures. The difference was that Gorbachev imposed these changes from above, on an urban economy in which virtually all citizens worked for the state. Gorbachev’s reforms either were ignored or they were enacted with perverse consequences. Bottom-up reforms worked in China; top-down reforms failed in Russia.
Both countries began serious reform after the passing of a leader (or leadership) that abhorred reform. Deng Xiaoping and his allies succeeded Mao in 1978 after a brief power struggle with hardliners. Gorbachev succeeded the initial beneficiaries of Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, who rose quickly as young men to replace those who were executed. The forgettable Konstantin Chernenko was the last in line; there was no choice but to turn to a relative newcomer when he died. For Gorbachev, the horrors of the Stalin era were in the distant past. For Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, the excesses of Mao — the starvation of the Great Leap and the “reeducations” of the Cultural Revolution — were recent and personal experiences. Whereas Stalin had physically annihilated independent-minded party officials, Mao permitted them to survive, subsequently to take over after he was gone. Gorbachev worked his way up the party ladder as a typical apparatchik; although touted as a reformer, he had few reform ideas. His Politburo and Central Committee comrades had no real stomach for reform. Deng Xiaoping also had not worked out a reform program, but he knew enough not to oppose reforms that work (“I don’t care if it is a black or yellow cat as long as it catches mice”).
Real reforms, whether dictated from the top or bubbling up from below, require a reform constituency. In the Chinese case, a large percentage of the population was recovering from the catastrophes of the Mao years. Rural dwellers, in particular, had witnessed the chaos of the Great Leap and had seen their parents and children die from starvation during the 1958–61 famine. They learned they had to take care of themselves. The urban elite had been ripped from the cities to a life of work and reeducation in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and a whole generation had been deprived of schooling. In the Russian case, the last famine lay three decades in the past. After the war, few people were executed for political crimes (political dissent became instead a mental disorder); the Gulag had been gradually dismantled after Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech of 1956. All lived under the motto, “We pretend to work and you pretend to pay.”2 Surveys show that Russians were basically content with the system, comfortable in the bosom of their state enterprise or state farm.3 China had a reform constituency; Russia did not. Gorbachev had few reform-minded aides. He listened to the bad advice of his economists. He was opposed by an entrenched bureaucracy but supported by enterprise managers eager to cash in on ill-conceived reform.
Agriculture
Both chinese and Soviet Russian agriculture were collectivized by force. In Russia, the forced collectivization and dekulakization campaigns of 1929–31 set off a civil war in the countryside that was brutally repressed. The more prosperous farm families were either imprisoned or exiled, leaving behind dispirited peasants herded into collective farms strictly controlled by rural political bureaus and machine tractor stations. Agriculture had to dance to Moscow’s tune. In China, the land was first taken away from land owners between 1950 and 1953 following rural purges that cost between 2 million and 5 million lives. The land reform distributed plots to farmers for use but not ownership, despite resistance of the peasantry. Between 1950 and 1951 alone, 712,000 people were executed, 1,290,000 imprisoned, and 1,200,000 sent to labor camps.4
Despite observing the catastrophe of Russian collectivization, Mao forced his peasants into huge communes starting in 1958. All property, sometimes including furniture and even knives and forks, became communal. In both cases, collective farms had to deliver farm products to the state at the very low prices it dictated. They had to obey harebrained directives from Moscow or Beijing, such as massive switching to corn, planting grain on land suited for fruits, or halting the production of “decadent” tea. Although intermittent efforts were made to suppress private plots in both countries, private plots kept farm families alive and provided some meat and dairy products, fruits and vegetables, to the cities, which were peddled by peasants on street corners.
Both Deng Xiaoping and Gorbachev inherited nonproductive collective agricultures. Soviet Russia’s farm sector had sunk to such depths that a traditional grain exporter was now importing grain from Australia and America. By Gorbachev’s time, the farm population had shrunk to a quarter of its former size; only older workers remained, working perfunctorily on state land or tending their private plots. They had long been converted into wage workers and received pensions and socialized medical care, albeit of a low quality. In China, rural dwellers accounted for 80 percent of the population; compared to Russian farmers they were young and vibrant. They lived without the social guarantees of Russian farmers. In China, only the young had not experienced private agriculture. Small private plots had existed in China for 2,000 years. An elderly farmer in Jingshan village succinctly captured this historical memory: “Family farming is as natural as human desire to eat, to have sex, and to love grandchildren. We loved family farming because it gave us some freedom. The leaders thought they knew better how to live our lives. But it is our lives, isn’t it?”5 In Russia, few farm dwellers could even remember the last experiment with private agriculture in the 1920s.
The deal that Gorbachev offered his farmers in 1988 was that they could have their own plots of land with 50-year leases from the state. His offer was a “contracting system” whereby land leasers would deliver quotas to the state but could keep what was left over. He had virtually no takers. Russian farmers were embedded in state agriculture, from which they could “take” seed, fertilizer, and tools under the principle “they belong to everyone and hence to no one.” Chinese farmers were not made such a generous offer. Instead they began to quietly distribute the land, with each family delivering production for the state quota. Gorbachev called for decollectivization from above; China’s farmers decollectivized spontaneously from below. They created their own “contract responsibility system,” initially at risk of severe punishment. There were no leaders; there were no face-to-face confrontations. It just happened. As agricultural production soared, Deng Xiaoping and his party realized they could not resist and could take advantage of something that was working. By 1982, more than 90 percent of rural dwellers were engaged in the household production system. Even after Deng Xiaoping officially supported grassroots rural reform, he did not give farmers long-term commitments, as did Gorbachev. Farmers were given one- to three-year contracts in 1982. It was only in 2003 that the state gave long-term leases in its Rural Land Contracting Law.
Entrepreneurs
The spontaneous creation of an agricultural contract system meant new supplies of agricultural products that needed to make their way to a market that still had to be created. Again Russia’s and China’s paths diverged in the reform of trade.
At the time Deng Xiaoping and Gorbachev came to power, domestic trade was dominated by state trading networks. Russia had largely outgrown rationing, although Russians had to stand in line for specific products, particularly alcohol. There existed a small “nonstate” trade network. Farmers were allowed to sell products from their private plots, and a thriving “second economy” provided goods and services that the planned economy did not. Because they operated in the shadows, it is difficult to compare respective magnitudes, but we do know that Russia’s shadow economy was well-developed. If Russian citizens wanted an experienced doctor, a car repaired, or color television, they turned to the black market. China was even more lacking in markets. Consumers received coupons for different types of goods and stood in long lines for each rationed product. In Wuhan, Hubei Province (where one of us lived for 30 years), there were more than 80 types of ration coupons for items like soap, cooking oil, meat, eggs, fish, tofu, grain, watches, bikes, furniture, and matches. At least in Russia, consumers could buy without coupons; the price was standing in line or getting scarce goods through “connections.”
Gorbachev, dissatisfied with the status quo, initiated reforms to expand markets and private trade. His reform failed. Deng Xiaoping was presented with an unsanctioned market by Chinese traders as a fait accompli. All he had to do was legalize it after its success was obvious. With millions of farmers selling, competition drove prices down to reasonable levels for urban consumers.
At the time Deng Xiaoping and Gorbachev came to power, domestic trade was dominated by state trading networks.
Gorbachev saw Russia’s shadow economy as an asset he could build upon. His May 1987 Law on Cooperatives was designed to legalize many activities that had been illegal. The new cooperatives could use property and own equipment, and they could sell at market prices; the main restriction was that they could not employ hired labor. The first “New Russian” wealth was, in fact, a product of the cooperatives.
Gorbachev hoped that the cooperatives would be the source of entrepreneurship. Following the May 1987 decree, cooperatives formed right and left, many within state enterprises, others under the auspices of social organizations. The cooperative law indeed brought the shadow economy out into the open. Its unanticipated consequence, however, was that cooperators added little to consumer welfare. Instead, they took advantage of loopholes offered by the planned economy to redistribute profits from the state sector into their own pockets. Cooperatives were formed within state enterprises under the guise of “small business”; they commandeered materials from state enterprises at low prices and then sold the output at high “cooperative” prices. They used influence to buy and then resell scarce foreign goods by bribing trade officials. A typical cooperator was a former kgb officer (known to one of us), who used his connections to buy personal computers at low prices from a state trading company and then resold them to consumers, all under the “roof” of the Academy of Sciences. He went on to become a respected deputy in parliament. Like this former kgb officer, the New Russians, spawned by cooperative laws, provided Russians with their first bitter taste of “capitalism,” which Russians subsequently associated with illicit gains (and still do to this day).
Another stark contrast should be emphasized: The Russian “entrepreneurs” of the cooperative movement were primarily city dwellers. Russian farmers, who rejected Gorbachev’s agricultural reforms, were not players. They did not produce goods that needed to be transported and marketed. China’s first entrepreneurs hailed primarily from the countryside, and they got their start by marketing farm products in the cities.
Private trade developed in China at the grassroots level, emerging from rural regions and prospering because it filled a vital need. The rural contract responsibility system created huge agricultural surpluses which had to be marketed outside the state system. Farm products had to be moved over long distances, either directly or through intermediaries — in violation of laws and without contracts that could be enforced in courts. A herculean task. But it was done by the tens and then hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs pushing the frontier of what was allowed. In effect, Chinese farmer-trader-entrepreneurs had to create completely new institutions for transporting and selling agricultural products. Once in place, they could be used to do the same for other goods and services. These initial entrepreneurs were not beneficiaries of state reform. Instead, they had to find ways to destroy socialist institutional barriers and create markets. The Chinese entrepreneur had to juggle profits and security. For most, a mistake meant confiscation, a jail sentence, or worse.6 The entrepreneur, operating in the grey area of legality, had no access to state capital. The state banks refused to serve any private businesses until June of 1988 and even then with tight restrictions.
China’s early trader-entrepreneurs had to first overcome the problem of distance between producers and consumers. Since the late 1940s, the state regarded long-distance trade as a speculative, capitalist activity and branded those involved as criminals. In the early 1960s, such traders were labeled as “bad elements.” Some lost their jobs or were sent to labor camps while others were put on neighborhood watch lists to be supervised closely. Even in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the sight of policemen chasing and confiscating a rural peddler’s goods was common.7 One Chinese entrepreneur compared his early business ventures to an untrained acrobat walking a tightrope: “I was excited about the huge market opportunities while scared to death of returning to a prison cell. I lived a life of constant sweat, sleepless nights, and thumping heartbeats.”8 Throughout the early 1980s, farmers in north Jiangsu packed their bikes with chickens, ducks, and other fowl, crossed the Yangzi River, and shipped their products by rail to urban centers in the Yangzi basin. “A million roosters cross the mighty Yangzi” was the expression of the day.9 By 1983, the majority of consumers in major cities purchased their products in free markets rather than in government stores. Within one year (between 1979 and 1980), most state vegetable markets, except the highly subsidized Beijing and Shanghai markets, were out of business.
\title{Most of China’s early entrepreneurs had farming backgrounds or, at a minimum, were from farm families.}
The creation of a vast market in farm products was only the start. Once one institution was created, others had to follow. Private traders operated without permission to travel and could not stay in state-run hotels. Thus, entrepreneurs developed a network of private hotels. Remarkable stories of hardy entrepreneurs providing goods and services not available from the state economy abound: A rural minority woman from Hunan began her business by buying shoes in major cities and selling them in her hometown, Baojing. She had to leave her three children behind during her one- or two-month journeys. She lived frugally and invested in building new houses. When returning from her mountain sales trips, she bought herbs, mushrooms and other local goods and resold them in county markets. After a decade of hard work and helping her children get college degrees, she settled down and collected rent every month from the six houses she had built over the years. She is one of the nouveau riche in her hometown.
Most of China’s early entrepreneurs had farming backgrounds or, at a minimum, were from farm families. The richest Chinese citizen in 2007 was the daughter of a poor farmer from the southern province of Guangdong, whose family became wealthy after acquiring large tracts of land and distressed assets in the countryside, where there was no real estate business, in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, her father developed affordable townhouses and holiday homes for China’s growing middle class.10 Other rural entrepreneurs did not make their way into a top ten list, but their success stories are equally striking. After their release from the communes in the early 1980s, rural entrepreneurs left their villages to establish restaurants, laundries, and small manufacturing businesses in major cities. Friends and relatives followed, as explained by a Wenzhou entrepreneur: “My neighbor set up a small laundry shop in Shanghai and made some money. My brothers and I borrowed 80,000 Yuan from relatives and friends, plus our 21,000 Yuan in family savings. When we went to Shanghai in 1995, we found out that there were already too many shops of this kind. This is why we turned to dry cleaning.” Like entrepreneurs elsewhere, Chinese private entrepreneurs set up their businesses through the three Fs (friends, family, and fools).
Corruption served as an unexpected weapon of entrepreneurs, without which they could not have navigated the narrow channel separating success from prison. Entrepreneurs had to “wear a red hat” (register a family business as a part of a formal legal organization), set up their businesses as sham collective enterprises, or find “big shots” or “mothers-in-law” to serve as patrons to give them protection. Without such cover, they could not issue receipts, keep books, pay taxes, write contracts, or open bank accounts. Many rural private businesses could not have survived the tax burden on private companies without such devices. Two farmers in a village of Fujian Province set up a packaging factory. Everyone in the village knew that the factory belonged to them but the factory was officially a village collective. By using the collective’s name, the private village factory paid lower taxes and even received low-interest loans. After paying 5,000 Yuan in “management fees” to the village head and another 1,000 to the township government, the village factory went about its business unhampered.
The success of China’s entrepreneurs in creating the institutions of private markets is told by some remarkable statistics. In 1978, state enterprises generated about 80 percent of China’s gdp, while the rural commune produced the other 20 percent.11 There were no private businesses. By 1997, there were 961,000 private enterprises and 28.5 million small family private firms. By 2002, the nonstate sector’s share exceeded two-thirds of gdp, with the share produced by truly private companies comprising more than half. By 2004, there were more than three million private companies employing more than 47 million workers.12 Before 1980, entrepreneurial activity in China was illegal. Today, there are over 40 million entrepreneurs, whose businesses employ over 200 million and generate two-thirds of industrial output. The state had no choice but to accept the reality of burgeoning farmers’ markets and private trade. The improvement in product quality and the disappearance of long food lines convinced urban residents, as well as government leaders, of the power of grassroots entrepreneurial activities. The state could not curtail such activities without inflaming the entire populace, although it periodically tried. In 1988, the government made it theoretically legal to own private businesses but in practice imposed strict controls over private urban markets, including steep fees to regulate them.
Private business originated in agriculture, spread to the cities, and then returned to the countryside as rural-based industry. Many large private manufacturing firms developed in predominantly agricultural provinces (Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong, Hunan, and Sichuan). China’s largest agribusiness, the Hoep Group, was founded by the Liu brothers, who left the city to found their company in a rural part of Sichuan province. Wang Guoduan, a rural entrepreneur from southern Guangdong province, built the largest refrigerator maker, Kelon Group; Huanyuan, China’s largest air conditioner maker, is based in the agricultural province of Hunan. China’s first automobile exports will likely come “from the agricultural hinterland of Anhui province, where Chery is located.”13 Rural Wenzhou entrepreneurs provide capital and consumer goods to the cities, and their private capital financed its airports and highways.
Globalization and fdi
Let us now turn to the two countries’ quite different experiences with respect to international trade. Both China and Russia began from the same starting point. Each had a strict system of centralized controls exercised by a foreign trade monopoly. Both Mao and Stalin believed in self-reliance and were reluctant to depend on other countries. Soviet Russia had carved out a trading bloc of communist states in Eastern Europe, which limited reliance on the West. Both countries missed out on the huge postwar expansion of trade as they turned inward.
China’s success in attracting foreign capital and know-how and selling manufactured products in foreign markets is well documented, and the steady hand of Deng Xiaoping and his successors in promoting Chinese globalization cannot be denied. Opening an economy to world markets is not something that can be done from below. China’s leaders were not without a model. They could not but notice the remarkable transformations of the nearby Four Tigers of Southeast Asia. China’s entry into the global marketplace dates to 1980, when the first free trade zones were established, bordering Hong Kong territory. The rest is history. In 1978, China’s trade accounted for less than 1 percent of the world economy. China is now the world’s third-largest trading nation with 6 percent of world trade. China’s economy is more dependent on trade than even Japan’s and South Korea’s.
Gorbachev could not help but be impressed by China’s successes in international markets. The globalization of the Russian economy was to serve as a centerpiece of his reform program. Gorbachev’s January 1987 joint venture law (accompanied by proposals for free trade zones) mimicked the Chinese laws of a few years earlier and for good reason. By the time he took office, China was attracting the largest amount of foreign direct investment of any emerging market country. Gorbachev hoped that opening Russia would make reform painless. In his first years in office, he anticipated an “acceleration” of output based upon the utilization of new technologies largely acquired from Western partners.14
Both China and Russia had a common communist past and both had abundant human resources. Russia was initially better off because of its trained scientists and engineers. Gorbachev threw open the doors to Russia but no one came, contrary to the Chinese experience. This puzzle is easily explained, but it makes the Chinese success even more intriguing.
Why did Russia fail in attracting foreign direct investment? Western investors had to cast a dubious eye on investments in Russia. Only a few Russians had experience in world markets, and they had all worked for the foreign trade monopoly. There was no one who could credibly explain to foreign business what would happen if contracts were violated, how investments could be secured in the absence of private property laws, or how these investments were to be integrated into what was still a planned economy. Western concerns were being asked to make huge infrastructure investments in energy in the absence of any law on subsoil resources. There was simply no credible intermediary to stand between Russia’s desire for foreign investment and the willingness of the West to risk its capital in Russia.
Russia lacked a Russian Diaspora. A few Russians had emigrated to the United States and Israel. But China had a “Greater China” that numbered in the millions of Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Southeast Asia, and North America. These “Greater Chinese,” especially in Hong Kong and Taiwan, still had roots on the mainland. They had demonstrated their business acumen, and they understood the potential of a low-wage country with abundant human resources strategically situated in the heart of booming Southeast Asia. These Greater Chinese intermediaries could explain to investors how to invest and with whom. Who could be trusted? Who could not? Which government officials are reliable? Equally important, these intermediaries were successful and had business and property outside of China that could be used as collateral for doubting foreign investors.
The largest number of overseas Chinese, most of whom were refugees from China, resided in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and China’s first lesson in global exchange was from nearby Hong Kong. Before communist rule, the inhabitants of the capital of Guangdong (adjacent to Hong Kong), were considered city slickers, while Hong Kong was full of country bumpkins. As Hong Kong surged, several million Guangdongese escaped to Hong Kong, where they participated in its economic miracle. Friends and families lined up in long queues in Guangzhou to receive hand-me-downs from their Hong Kong friends and relatives. Young urban women wanted to marry only men with overseas family relations.15 When the Chinese government first set up Special Economic Zones in Shenzhen (near Hong Kong), Zhuhai (near Macau), Shantou (the hometown of Hong Kong refugees), and Xiemen (near Taiwan), the Chinese borrowed their new rules and regulations directly from Hong Kong. Guangdong entrepreneurs copied the Hong Kong model of “Front Shop, Back Factory,” while others set up joint factories together with Hong Kong small business owners. Using family and cultural ties, Hong Kong cousins were able to overcome red tape. Hong Kong business tycoon Gordon Wu (a Princeton graduate) built the first toll expressway linking Guangzhou to Hong Kong by promising to cede it to the Chinese government after 15 years. Hong Kong, with the largest container port in Asia, provided both hard and soft infrastructure for China. It was through Hong Kong that Chinese goods first reached global markets. Taiwanese investors began to flood into China in the early 1990s, circumventing a ban on business with China by going through Hong Kong. They used China for manufacturing bases to contend with increasing world competition. By 2004, Taiwanese investment comprised close to three percent of China’s gdp. In 2001, the Chinese state itself took a giant step towards further globalization by becoming a member of the World Trade Organization (wto). wto membership gave China incentives to be a responsible global trade partner.16
State-owned enterprises
Gorbachev inherited an economy in which virtually the entire citizenry worked for the state. State-owned enterprises (soes) dominated industry, trade, and even agriculture. The notorious collective farms had been de facto converted to state farms. In China, the majority of citizens did not work for the state when Deng Xiaoping took over. They worked instead for collective farms, which had to meet delivery quotas. If things went bad, there was no state bailout. They were on their own. In Soviet Russia, proposals for reforming soes had been floated since the early 1960s. In Mao’s China, the “word ‘reform’ wasn’t even in the vocabulary of state leaders.”17 Despite these different backgrounds, Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping devised very similar reforms of soes with similarly poor results. Gorbachev incorporated earlier reform ideas in his Law on Enterprises of July 1987. Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang initiated an urban contract responsibility in 1984 based on the success of rural reform, as Deng Xiaoping decided “to apply the rural experience to urban economic system reforms.”18
In both countries, soes formed the core of the planned “commanding heights” of heavy industry, defense, transportation, and finance. They could not be turned over to private owners without destroying both the planning system and the socialist foundation of society. Insofar as soe production was integrated into a national plan, they could not be allowed to fail. Instead, they operated under “soft budgets” under which their losses were automatically covered. They were managed by powerful ministries, regional officials, and party leaders; they employed millions of relatively pampered workers who depended upon them for wages and benefits. All of these formed a powerful interest group against meaningful reform, or to turn reform perversely in their favor. Gorbachev had no choice but to address the problem of soes from day one of his reforms. China’s leaders could afford to postpone dealing with their soes.
\title{Gorbachev inherited an economy in which virtually the entire citizenry worked for the state.}
In both cases, the remedy applied was to reduce the tutelage over soes, give them more decision-making authority, and provide incentives to operate their enterprises more efficiently. In spite of their different settings and backgrounds, both reforms did the same things: soes were still required to deliver planned outputs to the planning system but they could keep above-plan output, which they could sell at higher prices. Managers and employees could retain more profits for bonuses and investment. They could increasingly buy inputs and sell outputs through “direct links” with other soes. In both cases, planners fixed the prices of goods that went through the planning system, which were exchanged among soes. Thus, the same product (say, steel) could be bought and sold at two or more prices, the lowest one being the state official price.
Unwittingly, both Russia’s and China’s soe reforms created a “perfect rent generating machine.”19 In both countries, managers set up small businesses and cooperatives within their factories, which they used to strip state assets. They diverted production from the planned to the cooperative sector where they could sell at higher prices. Easy profits were made by buying inputs (often from oneself) at fixed state prices, diverting them to cooperative production, and then selling at much higher prices.
The remedy to such blatant rent-seeking and corruption in both countries was a tough bankruptcy law. Gorbachev’s 1987 enterprise law actually required soes to cover their costs; there were to be no bailouts, supposedly. But there were no bankruptcies. Unprofitable state enterprises argued that closing them would put restive workers on the streets and would deprive the state of essential production. Bailouts continued unabated. In 1986, the Chinese government under Zhao Zhiyang and Deng Xiaoping introduced a bankruptcy law, which mobilized vested interests to remove reform-minded leaders like Hu Yaobang and Zhao Zhiyang (both party secretaries). When the state again started to force bankruptcies in 1998 and 1999, local government officials sold assets (mostly for real estate) to rapacious ex-officials and politically linked private companies for their own use.
The failure of the enterprise law produced catastrophic results in Russia. Planned production collapsed, soes refused to supply each other, and the planned economy ceased to function for all practical purposes.20 Unlike in China, where hardliners still had the power to undermine reform, Gorbachev retained the power to push his reform through. He even went so far as to break up the party bureaus that oversaw the economy, prompting an abortive coup by hardliners. In December of 1991, the ussr split up into 15 separate republics that began their own independent reforms.
\title{China’s SOEs continued to operate inefficiently and corruptly, but they did not cause China’s economy to collapse.}
China’s soes continued to operate inefficiently and corruptly, but they did not cause China’s economy to collapse as they did Russia’s. Technically insolvent soes continue to be bailed out. Although the state sector currently accounts for a third of gdp, more than 70 percent of state bank loans go to soes. Despite their decreasing share of the economy, soes continue to control most natural resources, including land, mineral deposits, forest, and water resources. They are a major source of corruption. According to one estimate, rent seeking and official profiteering take between 20 and 30 percent of China’s gdp.21
How can China thrive with such inefficient and corrupt soes? China’s fabled growth is the combination of the high growth of agriculture, private business, and international companies with the slower growth of the state sector. Moreover, China’s soes are probably not as inefficient. In Russia, there were no benchmarks for soes. In China, soes coexist with joint ventures and foreign banks, and they face competition from private businesses encroaching on their markets. Joint ventures provide yardsticks to measure soe performance. In 2006, labor productivity in foreign-invested enterprise was nine times that of other companies (primarily soes).22
The strength of the rest of the economy has given China’s leadership breathing room to experiment with remedies, such as restructuring SOEs into conglomerates (something Gorbachev tried without success), setting up shareholding companies, and creating stock markets in Shenzhen and Shanghai to raise capital for key state factories. The soe problem is also solving itself through attrition. The number of soes fell from 118,000 in 1995 to 27,477 in 2005.23 Since 1996, soe employment declined by 44 million jobs, more than half of which were in manufacturing. Part of this attrition is simply due to corruption as managers “spontaneously privatized” soes by diverting their assets into their own pockets.
Lessons for the present
China and russia in the 1980s offer a unique case study in why some reforms work and others do not. The contrast refutes the notion that a strong, perhaps totalitarian state, is required for successful reform. In the Russian case, a one-party state attempted to impose reform from above and failed. In China, a one-party state opened the economy but resisted grassroots reforms, which it grudgingly accepted after their success could no longer be denied. For decades, a small group of Russian liberals lobbied in vain for reform. They finally got their chance when a reform-minded party leader was elected, but there was no real constituency for reform. In China, there was a massive grassroots constituency which clearly understood reform’s potential benefits. They acted quietly on their own, according to the Chinese saying, “Do more but say less; do everything but say nothing.” The Chinese rural population, as outsiders, had nothing to lose. With more than 80 percent of Chinese people pushing for change, reform could not help but penetrate the social and economic psychology of the Chinese mind.
Bottom-up reform cannot be resisted because it requires no negotiations, avoids confrontations, and it spreads like an unstoppable plague. Top-down reform can be killed easily by ridding the leadership of reformers or by high-level sabotage. Chinese-style reform was made possible by special circumstances — the tradition of small private agriculture and trading, the recent catastrophes and purges, and China’s backwardness as an agricultural economy. If Chinese leaders had faced the same circumstances as Gorbachev, they would have failed as miserably. Gorbachev had to confront the insoluble problems of large state industrial enterprises; the Chinese could afford to wait and watch them shrink in relative size.
Each country’s present is affected by its past. In both cases, their initial reforms began more than a quarter century ago. China’s leaders subsequently did not change course: Each new party leader honored the policies of his predecessor. In Russia, the Soviet Communist Party was disbanded. There was a burst of democracy and market economy under Yeltsin, followed by a retreat on both fronts under Putin. Russia is now ruled by a duumvirate, one of whom has a kgb background and who reinstated a form of totalitarian rule.
The paths of China and Russia continue to diverge: China’s communist leaders watch the state-controlled commanding heights shrink. China’s entrepreneurs have built, against all odds, private manufacturing. Large state companies cannot compete against private domestic or foreign companies. They are kept alive by state subsidies and preferences, but there may come a day when this is no longer the case. Russia’s corporate giants are direct descendants from Soviet enterprises; none have been built from the ground up. They were privatized to urban, politically connected insiders under Yeltsin. Most stripped assets, but some began to create shareholder value after then-President Vladimir Putin promised them secure property rights. In a fateful reversal, Putin concluded that the commanding heights belonged to the state, and Russia’s large companies were renationalized. Those that remain in private hands do so with the understanding that they serve state interests, not those of shareholders.
Each country seems to have learned the wrong lesson from the other — China that political reform will destroy the Communist Party and Russia that only a strong authoritarian leader can make reform succeed. China’s ruling party continues to resist political change. Putin and Medvedev continue to strengthen authoritarian control.
Both Russia’s and China’s histories reveal that politically-operated and state-owned enterprises cannot compete. Russia’s current leaders are compounding their problems as they take control of more and more of the industrial economy. These new Russian soes face little or no competition. Russia’s new leaders have driven out foreign ventures, and private entrepreneurs would face physical danger if they encroached on their markets. It’s likely that Russia’s giants — Gazprom, Lukoil, Rosneft, and the like — will become even more inefficient and operate for political rather than economic gain.
China’s leaders face an interesting dilemma, the resolution of which will affect their future. Starting in 2001, the Communist party began to co-opt business leaders into the party-state network. As members of the party-state elite, China’s entrepreneurs gained the opportunity to earn profits by using connections rather than entrepreneurship. In 2007, the party and state passed China’s first property law, which legalized private property. How this law will be enforced remains to be seen, but it represents a key step towards creating a rule of law in place of political arbitrariness. China’s entrepreneurs face a choice: Will they compete as entrepreneurs in the even playing field of a rule of law, or will they become like party apparatchiks, using their party status to gain “unearned” profits? If they choose the latter, they will kill the competitive goose that lays the golden eggs. The result could be a China that falls into a stagnant oligarchy like that of Russia. Napoleon once said, “Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” It depends which China will awake — a nation of entrepreneurs or oligarchic party officials.
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Paul Gregory is the Cullen Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Houston and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Kate Zhou is Professor of Chinese Political Economy and Comparative Politics at the University of Hawaii. She is the author of How the Farmers Changed China (Westview, 1996) and China’s Long March to Freedom, Grassroots Modernization (Transaction, 2009).
1 Bao Tong, “A Pivotal Moment for China,” Radio Free America’s Mandarin Service (December 12, 2008), available at http://newsblaze.com/story/20090106100021zzzz.nb/topstory.html.
2 Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (Harper and Row, 1987), 19.
3 Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich, The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System: An Insiders’ History (M.E. Sharpe, 1998), xxi–xxiv.
4 Xinwen wubao, “The New China’s Oppression Campaign against Counter-reactionaries,” China.com (2006).
5 Kate Zhou, interview with Chu Bo, farmer in Tongxi village (February 1986).
6 Keming Yang, “Double entrepreneurship in China’s economic reform: An analytical framework,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology (Summer 2002); Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
7 The struggle between urban police and street vendors was common in major cities. On many occasions, one of the authors personally witnessed police chasing and then beating street vendors in the early 1980s in Wuhan and Beijing (1983 to 1984).
8 Kate Zhou, interview with Mu in Beijing (July 1997).
9 Kate Zhou, How the Farmers Changed China: Power of the People (Westview Press, 1996).
10 Robin Kwong, “China’s billionaires begin to add up,” Financial Times (October 22, 2007).
11 Guojia Tongjiju. Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1987 [Statistical Yearbook of China] (Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1988).
12 “Private enterprises expanding quickly,” People’s Daily Online (February 04, 2005).
13 Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (Cambridge University Press, July 2008).
14 Gorbachev, Perestroika, 19.
15 Kate Zhou, interview with Professor Ouyang in Guangzhou, (August 5, 1986).
16 Nicolas Lardy, “China Enters the World Trade Organization,” Integrating China into the Global Economy (2002), 2.
17 Bao Tong, “A Pivotal Moment for China.”
18 Deng Xiaoping, “To Speed up Reforms,” Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (People’s Press, 1988), 1444.
19 Anders Aslund, Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed (Peterson Institute for International Affairs, 2007), 58.
20 Paul Gregory, “Bureaucrats, Managers and Perestroika: The First Five Years. Results of Surveys of Soviet Managers and Officials,” in The Soviet Economy Under Gorbachev (nato, 1991), 188–202.
21 Wu Jinglian, “shichanghua congnanlai? Daonanqu?” [“Whither the Reform of Market?”] (September 12, 2008).
22 John Whalley and Xian Xin, “China’s fdi and Non-fdi Economies and the Sustainability of Future High Chinese Growth” (National Bureau of Economics, May 2006); Matt Nesvisky, “Will Super-High Chinese Growth Continue?” NBER Digest (November 14, 2006).
23 Wayne M. Morrison, “China’s Economic Conditions,” Congressional Research Service Report to Congress (May 13, 2008).
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本文刊载于1999年1月1日的《南方周末》第9版
迎着新年初升的太阳，让我们轻轻地作个道别，说一声：“再见，一九九八。”
回望逝去的365个日夜，我们所有的努力，都是为了证明“我是一个记者”。
透过记者的眼睛，我们现场目击了朔州假酒荼毒生灵的惨祸；
透过记者的眼睛，我们奋力传递了昆明“铲除恶霸”的呼喊；
透过记者的眼睛，我们仔细观察了中国电信反垄断的艰难进程；
透过记者的眼睛，我们忠实记录了亿万军民战胜世纪洪水的巨大勇气和抗争精神……
有人说，人在履行职责中得到幸福；
也有人说，履行一项职责时总会感到是在还债， 因为它决不会令我们自己非常满意。
记者所履行的职责，何尝不是对公众的一种“还债”————
他要告诉人们世界上发生的新闻，
他还要告诉人们新闻背后的真相。
对于这样一项职责，我们当然时时力有不逮，但我们愿意为此而竭尽全力。
植物的生命要靠它的绿叶显示，新闻的生命要用它的真实担保。
面对世俗的力量，尽管生命有时也会显得脆弱，尽管我们也不都总是那么坚强，但是，我们决不苟且于虚伪和庸俗，决不。因为我们深深懂得，尊严是人类灵魂中不可糟踏的东西。
读者也许还记得伐木工人的最后一个劳模吧。为了寻找他，以便寻找长江上游水土流失的真相，我们的记者排除了“报喜不报忧”的地方干扰，翻山越岭，穿过一个又一个伐木点，终于找到了生病住院的主人公，这位老伐木工发自内心的忏悔，为“寻找长江的伤口”留下了最真实的言说和最切肤的痛。
我们的许多报道，就是不断发现和不断寻找的结果。
记者的眼睛不仅仅为发现事实寻找真相而睁开，记者的眼睛也常常被真情打动，而轻轻闭上。
在东北灾区，滔滔洪水已退，漫漫严冬将临，迎着刺骨的寒风，一位大嫂对我们的记者悠悠地说了一句：“我们需要什么？太多了，国家哪帮得过来，今年灾情这么普遍，自己苦点都没啥……”言者毫不经意的话语，却令闻者心头一热，久久为之发烫。
面对如此重灾巨创，柔弱之躯内蕴藏的宽厚与善良，谁说不是一种坚强？
也正是人民所固有的善良和坚强，唤起我们一种不可摧毁的希望。也只有那些曾抱住几块脆弱的木板，在狂风暴雨的急流中颠簸过的人，才能体会到一个晴朗的天空是多么的可贵。
告别一九九八，回访我们报道过的新闻，作恶多端的孙小果终于被一审判处死刑，身心俱疲的改革者董阳终于在他乡找到知音，而中国电信也终于开始降低消费者们抱怨已久的不合理收费……这就是世道人心。
是的，希望从来也不抛弃弱者。希望就是我们自己。
本文刊载于1997年12月26日《南方周末》第17版
岁末，有一种特别的牵挂，缠绕着我们的心。让我们牵挂的人，就是千万个陌生的“你”。
回望一道走过的1997，我们共同经历了多少大事：“万众送小平”的啜泣犹在耳边低回；“香港回归夜”的焰火还在眼前闪耀；党的十五大响鼓重捶声震寰宇；三峡“世纪梦”牵动亿人的心……
日子在交织着泪水和欢笑中匆匆流逝，日子也在交织着担忧和希望中匆匆走来。无论这日子曾经多么地不平常，走进寻常百姓家，它就变成了实实在在的柴米油盐酱醋茶。而平平常常的日子，也具有打动人心的力量，哪怕是弱小者的生存，也和“强”字分不开。活着，就意味着“生”之顽强。
读者也许还记得，“芳草地”曾经登过一篇《深秋的北风》：在北京的大风天里，一个下岗男人坚守街头卖他的梨，妻儿来了，苦劝不回，他说，他要为这个家担负起一种责任。
我们自以为饱经沧桑，阅透了人生，心早已磨出厚茧，可是，一篇朴素的文章，一段质朴的对话，一个感人的细节，仍足以令我们鼻子发酸，心头发烫。我想起了一位女作家十多年前说过的一句话：“你的心并不是粗砺荒漠的一片，那光明的一隅，会永远充满了温情地留给世上无助的弱者。”
当弱者努力摆脱无助让自己站得更直时，我们的心又何止充满温情。我们把永远的尊敬留给他们。
走过1997，我们有梦圆的欢欣，也有梦碎的痛苦，而执著于梦想的追求，使我们天涯咫尺，息息相通。
就在几天前，一位读者给编辑部写来了他亲历的一件事：在湛江开往海口的轮船上，百无聊赖的他买下一份《南方周末》，尚未读完，就已经泪流满面。他把报纸递给了正在甲板上追逐嬉闹的一群素不识的少年，少年们看完报纸，也如塑像一般陷入了沉思。
深深地打动了这一群人的，是老榕的文章，那篇取自网络、感动过无数人的《大连金州没有眼泪》。当轮船靠岸，各自东西，少年们也许很快就淡忘了这不期然而至的邂逅，但是，在甲板上触动他们沉思的东西不会湮没。中国足球梦碎金洲的夜晚，也许是老榕儿子10岁的生命历程中最寒冷的一夜，但就在那寒冷之夜的第二天早晨，孩子幼小的心灵已经开始照耀着一种特殊的阳光，那就是理想和希望。
我们无法想象没有理想没有希望的日子，就如同我们无法想象没有阳光的日子一样。正因为有了阳光赋予生命的作用，地球才没有变成石头。
莎士比亚告诉过我们：“草木是靠着上天的雨露滋长的，但是它们也敢仰望穹苍。”而在穹苍之上，“同一个太阳照着他的宫殿，也不曾避过我们的草屋。” 迎着新年初升的太阳，陌生的朋友，我们同行。
希望从来也不抛弃弱者。
希望就是我们自己。
本文刊载于1999年1月1日的《南方周末》
这是新年的第一天。这是我们与你见面的第777次。祝愿阳光打在你的脸上。
阳光打在你的脸上，温暖留在我们心里。这是冬天里平常的一天。北方的树叶已经落尽，南方的树叶还留在枝上，人们在大街上懒洋洋地走着，或者急匆匆地跑着，每个人都怀着自己的希望，每个人都握紧自己的心事。
本世纪最后的日历正在一页页减去，没有什么可以把人轻易打动。除了真实。人们有理想但也有幻象，人们得到过安慰也蒙受过羞辱，人们曾经不再相信别人也不再相信自己。好在岁月让我们深知“真”的宝贵——真实、真情、真理，它让我们离开凌空蹈虚的乌托邦险境，认清了虚伪和欺骗。尽管，“真实”有时让人难堪，但直面真实的民族是成熟的民族，直面真实的人群是坚强的人群。
没有什么可以轻易把人打动，除了正义的号角。当你面对蒙冤无助的弱者，当你面对专横跋扈的恶人，当你面对足以影响人们一生的社会不公，你就明白正义需要多少代价，正义需要多少勇气。
没有什么可以轻易把人打动，除了内心的爱。没有什么可以轻易把人打动，除了前进的脚步……
这是新年的第一天，就像平常一样，我们与你再次见面，为逝去的一年而感怀，为新来的一年作准备。祝愿阳光打在你的脸上。
阳光打在你的脸上，温暖留在我们心里。有一种力量，正从你的指尖悄悄袭来，有一种关怀，正从你的眼中轻轻放出。在这个时刻，我们无言以对，惟有祝福：让无力者有力，让悲观者前行，让往前走的继续走，让幸福的人儿更幸福；而我们，则不停为你加油。
我们不停为你加油。因为你的希望就是我们的希望，因为你的苦难就是我们的苦难。我们看着你举起锄头，我们看着你舞动镰刀，我们看着你挥汗如雨，我们看着你谷满粮仓。我们看着你流离失所，我们看着你痛哭流涕，我们看着你中流击水，我们看着你重建家园。我们看着你无奈下岗，我们看着你咬紧牙关，我们看着你风雨度过，我们看着你笑逐开……我们看着你，我们不停为你加油，因为我们就是你们的一部分。
总有一种力量它让我们泪流满面，总有一种力量它让我们抖擞精神，总有一种力量它驱使我们不断寻求“正义、爱心、良知”。这种力量来自于你，来自于你们中间的每一个人。
所以，在这样的时候，在这新年的第一天，我们要向你、向你身边的每一个人，说一声，“新年好”！祝愿阳光打在你的脸上。
因为有你，才有我们。
阳光打在你的脸上，温暖留在我们心里。为什么我们总是眼含着泪水，因为我们爱得深沉；为什么我们总是精神抖擞，因为我们爱得深沉；为什么我们总在不断寻求，因为我们爱得深沉。爱这个国家，还有她的人民，他们善良，他们正直，他们懂得互相关怀。
从温家宝后来的施政风格，结合《再回兴义忆耀邦》看来，他在胡耀邦身上得到了某种工作作风的传承
上星期，温家宝在《人民日报》发表署名文章，纪念已故21周年的前中共中央总书记胡耀邦，一时激起人们复杂的政治想象。尽管文章只是通过一段作为上下级之间的工作交往展开，来表现对政治前辈的工作作风的钦佩，丝毫不涉及，或者小心回避了对主人公的政治评价，看上去只是一篇怀人忆旧的人生随笔。但人们还是不免从字面以外去猜想文章的意义。
温家宝总理日理万机忙不胜忙，当然没有必要抒写闲情逸致。他背诵的任何一句古诗和写下的任何一个句子，当然服从他的政治安排。迄今为止，温家宝是以个人名义写文章纪念胡耀邦的最高级别的官员。温家宝的“抒情散文”，并没有发在《人民日报》的文化副刊，而是在要闻版，即从来都是发表政治信息的版面上的。或者说，温也不会不通过党组织而以个人名义发表这样的文章。所以，《再回兴义忆耀邦》还是应该作为一篇“政治文章”来读。
它的言外之意，即包含着对胡耀邦的政治评价。文章的发表本身，就是评价。如此高调地纪念一位逝去的政治人物，这个人当然就是“政治好人”了。至于文章叙述的“带病工作”、“夜访农家”、“不按基层干部安排的路线走”之类的情怀和作风，倒还在其次。许多失败的政治领袖，也并非没有这些方面的特质。
中国的政治家在官方和民间的评价和声望，往往并不互证互信。对于胡耀邦，民间一般以为他多少还是一个敏感人物。查网络上胡耀邦的履历，最后一句是：“1987年1月，中共中央召开政治局扩大会议，同意胡耀邦辞去总书记职务的请求。1987年11月当选为中共第十三届中央政治局委员。去世后葬于江西省九江共青城。”连去世的年月日都是“隐去”的。今天的青年，对这个名字应该是陌生的。他们不知道为何过来人提到他会唤起如此复杂的感情和丰富的政治想象。
民间对已故政治领袖的纪念，无非体现出对现实政治的期待。而一个政治前辈被后辈以个人的名义公开纪念，只需要一个原因，那便是此公具有相当的民间声望。发表署名文章纪念政治前辈，是一种公开的政治表态。按照相关政治章程，温家宝的总理任期即将届满，留给他直接施展政治抱负的时间有限。相信一个政治人物面对这样的时刻，内心应该充满外人难以想象的复杂而强烈的情愫。其中或许正包含着一个政治人物对于“人去”之后的“政声”，或者“人亡”之后是否“政息”的顾念。
胡耀邦和温家宝分属上承下接的两代政治家。胡耀邦生于1915年，新中国建立时才34岁，到80年代，成为最后一代经过武装夺取政权的政治领袖。温家宝生于1942年，迎接新中国时，还是7岁懵童，在红旗下成长，成为第一代没有打过仗而掌握政权的政治领袖。1987年，依照组织安排，一个45岁的政治新星跟随一位72岁的政治领袖到基层，时间长达十多天。45岁而正在问鼎权力高层的政治人物是多么年富力强。任何一个建筑工地的脚手架上都会爬着这个年龄的男人。当年的温家宝还颧骨突出，面容清癯。从温家宝后来的施政风格，结合《再回兴义忆耀邦》看来，他在胡耀邦身上得到了某种工作作风的传承。
笔者在看到胡耀邦总书记要求中央办公厅副主任温家宝“夜访民情”和“吩咐不按下面安排的路线考察”的情节，自然会有所感触。因为十多年后，成为国家总理的温家宝已经出了名的爱这么干。20世纪初，一户在重庆某段山区公路边上目力可及的农家，一位劳动妇女没有任何预兆地迎来了贵为总理的客人。这个“基层安排以外”的行程，成就了“总理帮农妇熊德明讨薪”的现代传奇。
但是，所有这些，就是温家宝纪念胡耀邦的时候最想说的吗？这些千百年来每一个亲民勤政和体察民情的政治家一直惯用的工作方法，就是现代政治的精髓，是当今中国最需要的政治策略吗？中国的政治家真正需要突破的，是下层官员的“安排”，而不是自下而上地一级一级地筑起政治的合法性，建立持续稳定的制度保障。随着权力的接力棒在一代又一代的政治领袖之间传递，这样的选择或许是越来紧迫，甚至成为严峻的考验了。回答这些问题，超越前辈政治家，或许就是纪念前辈政治家最重要的功课。
引用
You might have heard ironic uses of the Chinese phrases "getting soy sauce,""doing push-ups," and "playing hidden cat," but the latest catchphrase to catch fire among China’s Internet users just sounds wrong from the get-go: "Temporary rape."
你或许已经听过“打酱油”、“做俯卧撑”、“躲猫猫”这些中文词的讽刺用法，不过在中国网民中引发轩然大波的最新流行语从一开始听起来就有问题：“临时性强奸”。
The back story behind this term: In June, two men, then-employed as civilian police assistants in the city of Huzhou, Zhejiang province, sexually assaulted a young woman after having dinner and drinks with her. They were subsequently arrested, charged with rape, and tried by a local court, which last week sentenced each of the men to a three-year prison term. In explaining the relatively light sentences imposed, the court said the defendants had committed a "temporary crime on a whim" and had turned themselves in to police shortly afterwards, according to Zhejiang Online, a government-backed provincial news portal.
这个词背后的故事是这样的：今年6月，浙江湖州两名男子在与一名女子吃饭喝酒后对其实施强奸，当时二人还是协警。二人随后被捕并被控以强奸罪，该案由一家地方法院审理。法院上周判两人各入狱三年。据政府支持的省级新闻网站浙江在线的报道，法院对量刑相对较轻的解释是，两被告属临时性的即意犯罪，且事后主动自首。
Critical Chinese Internet users soon delved into the meaning of "temporary" as used by the court. It "stands for informal and short-term behavior," wrote one online commenter. "So is there a difference between formal and informal, long-term and short-term when it comes to the crime of rape? …What does it mean to describe a crime as temporary, fixed or permanent?"
富有批判精神的中国互联网用户很快就研究起法院使用的“临时性”这个说法的意思。一名网络评论人士写道，“‘临时’既是非正式的和短时间的行为，难道强奸犯罪还有‘非正式’和时间的长短之分？……犯罪还有临时、固定、长期之分？”
Within a few days, "temporary rape" has become one of the most debated topics on the Internet. On Tianya, one of China’s largest Web forums, one discussion of the case has drawn nearly 8,000 participants and garnered close to a million page views.
没过几天，“临时性强奸”就成了网上最热门的争议话题之一。在中国最大的网络论坛之一天涯上，对此事的讨论已吸引近8,000人参与，浏览量接近100万次。
Chinese media also weighed in with sharply worded commentaries. "The various online catchphrases all convey the same anxiety about justice. A lack of trust in the judicial system always emerges through some individual cases that go beyond common sense," said an article in the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News.
中文媒体也提出了言辞尖锐的评论。广州《羊城晚报》的一篇文章说，在这些网络流行语的背后，潜伏着的是网民对公正的一致焦虑。对司法的不信任总是透过一些超越常识的个案集中宣泄出来。
So far, the majority of the online posts and media opinions have taken a negative tone toward the court’s reasoning. People are also adding "temporary" to other words to highlight the twisted logic involved. Examples include "temporary bribery taking," "temporary murder" and "temporary divorce, no asset separation."
迄今为止，网上的绝大多数贴子和媒体评论都对法院的推论持否定态度。人们还纷纷在其他词前面加上“临时性”一语，以突出其中的牵强逻辑。诸如“临时性受贿”、“临时性杀人”、“临时性离婚，谢绝分财产”等等。
In other cases, such as "playing hidden cat"–which emerged in connection with the death of a 24-year-old prisoner from a severe brain injury–the public attention generated through the widespread use of a single phrase has prompted authorities to conduct follow-up investigations and eventually punish those found responsible.
在与“躲猫猫”等其他一些网络流行语相关的事件中，这些词的广泛应用吸引了公众的注意，由此促使有关当局进行了后续调查，最终惩处了相关责任人。“躲猫猫”一词的出现与一名 24岁犯人因严重脑部损伤而死有关。
On Tuesday, Xinhua reported that a higher court in Huzhou has requested review of the rape case.
新华社周二报道称，湖州市中级法院已要求就这起强奸案展开复查。
魏一帆 更新于2010年04月19日
What’s so great about him? He’s not as deep as Lu Xun. He’s not as wise as Hu Shi. He’s not as noble as Mother Teresa, nor is he as heroic as Lin Zhao or Zhang Zhixin. Of course, Han Han is average compared to sages at home and abroad, which is no different from any of us. But this is precisely why he is influential.
Value your own grief like Han Han does
By Xiao Shu (笑蜀)
Han Han (韩寒) was named by Time magazine as “one of the most influential people in the world” in 2010, and of the 200 selections, his name was near the top.
People began to debate whether or not one could say Han Han actually has global influence, but this kind of talk is useless. The ones who need him most are his compatriots, not global society. Therefore, it’s more important that he have influence at home than abroad.
A massacre occurred in Hepu, Guangxi a few days ago. A murderer attacked some mothers and their children as they exited school. Two died and five were injured.
Not long before that, Zheng Minsheng (郑民生) committed several murders in Fujian Province. This devil of a man decided to repay society by killing 30 children, simply because he was upset with reality. He may not have succeeded, but he still took the lives of eight children with the blade of his knife.
Children are the future of a nation and should be accorded the best protection. But in our society it is the children who are hurt most. They are the ones who have born the brunt of suffering through the vaccine and milk powder scandals, as well as the “tofu construction” projects (豆腐渣建筑). And now those who want to take revenge on society are targeting children. Some say Zheng Minsheng is mentally ill, which is the same thing the authorities in Guangxi said about the man there. With so many children maimed, how can there be only one or two of these sick people?
There is no doubt that our country is still strong and that it will continue to become stronger. But strength is not a panacea. In one respect, economic output has been steadily increasing, and in another, it has been hard to contain the festering sores of this momentum, such that children have become victims and foreign media shout in disbelief. Children do not need to pay the price for the development of society.
This is why Han Han’s influence in China is so important. We don’t just need a strong country. Even more so we need civil society and Han Han is an example of this.
Han Han’s status is on the rise today, but some are not convinced it should be. What’s so great about him? He’s not as deep as Lu Xun (鲁迅). He’s not as wise as Hu Shi (胡适). He’s not as nobel as Mother Teresa, nor is he as heroic as Lin Zhao (林昭) or Zhang Zhixin (张志新). Of course, Han Han is average compared to sages at home and abroad, which is no different from any of us. But this is precisely why he is influential. The more average he is, the more universal he is, and this allows him to better spread his message. There are many elements to his personality which are all very normal. We have them too. But he has something that we don’t. It’s the temperament of a citizen. It’s his will and authenticity.
His will and authenticity give him the ability to speak freely, to speak about his grief over this society. Just like salt, though, we don’t need too much of it. Just a little is enough. But his boundaries are utterly different from ours. He speaks his mind about the things he loves and hates. But does he pay any price for this? Is there a weight he can’t bear? No, and this shows why no matter how profound our helplessness is, it’s not as deep as we think. We don’t need to frighten ourselves this way.
Just look at Han Han. He’s honest, happy and open. He speaks about his pain but he doesn’t need to wallow in tragedy. He doesn’t dwell on gloom and doom. Disease often comes from suppression, but he doesn’t suppress or begrudge himself. He speaks out. He speaks about a kind of salvation, about having dignity and health. We can be normal people like this too, sharing in his dignity and health. We can share a normal life.
This is the aim of civil society. It’s not about resisting, rebelling against, or subverting anything. It’s about treating and curing each and every person. It’s about the self regeneration of every cell in our society. It’s not surgery. It’s a more precise reform, a micro-evolution that uses the new life of society to contain its festering ulcers. This is the most realistic and feasible choice we have. No doubt sages are important. They show the spiritual heights that humanity can attain. But they are so far removed from us, that oftentimes we cannot realize our hearts desires or muster the courage for that kind of commitment. However, this is not important. We have Han Han and can learn from him. He’s just a bit ahead of us. We can reach his level with a little effort, or maybe we can just tip toe our way there. What in the world is stopping us?
Han Han has become popular because of the way he values your grief, the way he values your right to express your pain. Through this our society can reduce the number of lunatic murderers. We can save our children. We can save ourselves.
NOTE: This is a translation of an editorial which appeared in Southern Weekly on April 15, 2010. The original can be found here.
You might have heard ironic uses of the Chinese phrases "getting soy sauce,""doing push-ups," and "playing hidden cat," but the latest catchphrase to catch fire among China’s Internet users just sounds wrong from the get-go: "Temporary rape."
你或许已经听过“打酱油”、“做俯卧撑”、“躲猫猫”这些中文词的讽刺用法，不过在中国网民中引发轩然大波的最新流行语从一开始听起来就有问题：“临时性强奸”。
The back story behind this term: In June, two men, then-employed as civilian police assistants in the city of Huzhou, Zhejiang province, sexually assaulted a young woman after having dinner and drinks with her. They were subsequently arrested, charged with rape, and tried by a local court, which last week sentenced each of the men to a three-year prison term. In explaining the relatively light sentences imposed, the court said the defendants had committed a "temporary crime on a whim" and had turned themselves in to police shortly afterwards, according to Zhejiang Online, a government-backed provincial news portal.
这个词背后的故事是这样的：今年6月，浙江湖州两名男子在与一名女子吃饭喝酒后对其实施强奸，当时二人还是协警。二人随后被捕并被控以强奸罪，该案由一家地方法院审理。法院上周判两人各入狱三年。据政府支持的省级新闻网站浙江在线的报道，法院对量刑相对较轻的解释是，两被告属临时性的即意犯罪，且事后主动自首。
Critical Chinese Internet users soon delved into the meaning of "temporary" as used by the court. It "stands for informal and short-term behavior," wrote one online commenter. "So is there a difference between formal and informal, long-term and short-term when it comes to the crime of rape? …What does it mean to describe a crime as temporary, fixed or permanent?"
富有批判精神的中国互联网用户很快就研究起法院使用的“临时性”这个说法的意思。一名网络评论人士写道，“‘临时’既是非正式的和短时间的行为，难道强奸犯罪还有‘非正式’和时间的长短之分？……犯罪还有临时、固定、长期之分？”
Within a few days, "temporary rape" has become one of the most debated topics on the Internet. On Tianya, one of China’s largest Web forums, one discussion of the case has drawn nearly 8,000 participants and garnered close to a million page views.
没过几天，“临时性强奸”就成了网上最热门的争议话题之一。在中国最大的网络论坛之一天涯上，对此事的讨论已吸引近8,000人参与，浏览量接近100万次。
Chinese media also weighed in with sharply worded commentaries. "The various online catchphrases all convey the same anxiety about justice. A lack of trust in the judicial system always emerges through some individual cases that go beyond common sense," said an article in the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News.
中文媒体也提出了言辞尖锐的评论。广州《羊城晚报》的一篇文章说，在这些网络流行语的背后，潜伏着的是网民对公正的一致焦虑。对司法的不信任总是透过一些超越常识的个案集中宣泄出来。
So far, the majority of the online posts and media opinions have taken a negative tone toward the court’s reasoning. People are also adding "temporary" to other words to highlight the twisted logic involved. Examples include "temporary bribery taking," "temporary murder" and "temporary divorce, no asset separation."
迄今为止，网上的绝大多数贴子和媒体评论都对法院的推论持否定态度。人们还纷纷在其他词前面加上“临时性”一语，以突出其中的牵强逻辑。诸如“临时性受贿”、“临时性杀人”、“临时性离婚，谢绝分财产”等等。
In other cases, such as "playing hidden cat"–which emerged in connection with the death of a 24-year-old prisoner from a severe brain injury–the public attention generated through the widespread use of a single phrase has prompted authorities to conduct follow-up investigations and eventually punish those found responsible.
在与“躲猫猫”等其他一些网络流行语相关的事件中，这些词的广泛应用吸引了公众的注意，由此促使有关当局进行了后续调查，最终惩处了相关责任人。“躲猫猫”一词的出现与一名 24岁犯人因严重脑部损伤而死有关。
On Tuesday, Xinhua reported that a higher court in Huzhou has requested review of the rape case.
新华社周二报道称，湖州市中级法院已要求就这起强奸案展开复查。
作者: 南方周末记者 黄秀丽 发自湖北孝感 2010-04-15 01:55:11
■“执拗” 的法官冯缤，在发现难以用法律诉讼为妻子维权后，遂走入了上访之路。他的上访，是由诸多搏出位的表现组成的，穿着法袍溜进最高人民法院去递状子，穿着法袍到省高院门口喊冤、拦车……
■他这样做，仅仅是为了要求法院依法立案、审理。周围多数人认为他不识时务、自毁前程，而他自认为是在为“法律的信仰而战”
上访法官冯缤
法官告法院
“按照法律，他的维权没有错；按照现实，他全错了！”
湖北省高级人民法院门口，一名身着法袍的中年男子，高高举起了白底黑字的大号“冤”字。
这是湖北省孝感市中级人民法院的法官，叫冯缤。为了妻子的劳动争议纠纷，他已经和自己的“东家”——孝感中院打了3场官司。虽然熟稔司法程序，但他仍然只有以上访甚至“骚扰”领导的方式，才促进了此案的立案和审理。
对此，冯缤的一名同事评介：“按照法律，他的维权没有错，甚至他的执拗还值得赞赏；按照现实，他全错了！”
冯缤和法院的冲突发生在2008年6月4日。当天，法院召开会议清退后勤工人，要他们和市劳动局下属的一家劳务派遣公司签合同。31名工人中，所有人都在“清退临时人员表”上签了名，冯缤的妻子——清洁工人胡敏除外。
胡敏的理由是，她是孝感中院惟一一个工作了10年的后勤工人。按照该年新施行的劳动合同法，法院应当和她签订无固定期劳动合同，她应当成为法院的正式职工，而不是一名合同两年一签，随时可能无工作可做的劳务派遣工。法院没有理会胡敏的要求，直接停掉了她的工作。
冯缤认为法院的行为违反劳动合同法，遂亲自代理妻子的案件，将自己的“东家”告上孝感市劳动仲裁委。
孝感市中院副院长魏俊生认为胡敏“工作时间满10年”的说法是胡闹。
“法官告法院”的劳动仲裁，迟迟没下，超过了法定审限45天。冯缤就到劳动局讨说法，未果。遂在劳动局门口拦车喊冤，结果和执法监察大队副队长李某打了一架，被打成轻伤。
轻伤本可以提起刑事诉讼，但警方认为，两人都是公务员身份，“作调解处理算了”。但冯缤又把孝感市公安局告上法庭。
如此折腾之下，孝感市仲裁委终于对冯缤之妻“10年的劳动关系”予以了确认。不过，仲裁委并不认为法院应该和胡敏签订无固定期劳动合同，其理由是劳动合同法当时实施只有半年，管不到以往的9年半。
“简直不懂法。”冯缤拒绝签收仲裁裁决，决定对法院提起诉讼。
搏出位，才立案
用尽上访手段的法官冯缤说：“这几年法律白学了。案子能进入诉讼程序，简直是自己用命换的。”
但想和法院打官司，要跨过“立案”这道门槛就很难。冯缤在法院工作了20年，从民庭的书记员到现在司法行政处的助理审判员，对立案难他深有体会。很多敏感案件，立案庭的法官会找各种理由拒收诉状。
2008年9月28日，他将诉讼材料邮寄到湖北省高级法院，“这样挂号信的签条就是凭证，他们就没法以‘没收到诉状’的理由推诿。”一个星期后没有回音，他决定到北京反映问题。他认为，他毕竟是法官，最高人民法院是他的“娘家”，应该倾听他的“冤屈”。
10月份的一个早上，他来到最高人民法院信访局。门口聚集着一大群上访者，几个穿着法官服的人问他们：“有没有省高院的判决？”省高院的判决书，是在最高法院上访的前提，否则就没法进去拿号。
冯缤看了眼自己身上的法官服，灵机一动，径直往门里走。“你干嘛的？”门口一位法官问：“你干嘛的？你进去干什么？”
冯缤反问：“领导交办的事，需要告诉你吗？”法官打量了他一下，挥手放行。
他拿了号走进接待室，填完表，将材料递进接待窗口。工作人员将材料扔到一边，说：“你的事我们管不了，去找省委政法委。”“心都凉了。”冯缤形容当时的心情。他曾经在立案庭做过多年的信访接待，对每次上访都会做详细记录，然后报给领导。轮到他上访了，得到的却是不理不睬。
怀着绝望的心情，冯缤又去了国家信访局和全国人大常委会信访局，几乎是同样的结果。
回到孝感第二天，冯缤决定到湖北省高院上访。坐上凌晨3点的火车，5点多就赶到武昌，6点多就站在高院大门口苦等。白纸上写着黑字“冤”字，一身法官服，胸前别着法院的院徽。他的样子引来了大量围观者，还有好心人给报社爆料，甚至有法官以个人身份偷偷对他表示同情。但是十几次的苦等，没有一个人正式接待他。
“想死的心都有。”他设计了两套自杀方案，一是自焚，二是混进法院跳楼。终于有一天，他不再温和地站在门口守候，而是堵门，不让车辆进出，“车出来就用头往上撞。”终于惊动了保安，惊动了立案庭庭长。庭长将他拉进法院：“你要干什么？你的事院长早就知道了，回去吧，我们研究了。”
一个多月后，12月14日，湖北省随州市曾都区法院的法官给他送来了传票，告诉他已经立案了。显然，这与他的“上访成果”有关，是省高院指定立案的。冯缤却是满心的无奈：“这几年法律白学了。案子能进入诉讼程序，简直是自己用命换的。”
对他的上访行为，副院长魏俊生“已经头疼了3年”。魏向南方周末记者痛陈了冯缤上访诸招式“给工作带来的妨害”。同样是诉讼审限问题，冯一次一次地到省高院喊冤；一口咬定劳动局局长违法，半夜在孝感市委门口等市委书记，“害得法院一次一次派车去接他回来”。为了应付上级的追问，法院还专门写了一个冯缤上访的情况说明。
“他一个人在败坏全省法院法官的形象。”冯缤的一名同事这样形容他。
“司法考试考傻了？”
对于法院提出的所有赔钱方案，冯缤一律拒绝，他决心抓住法律这根唯一的稻草，执拗到底。
自从代理妻子打官司之后，冯缤发现他的法律信仰不断地撞到现实的墙壁。
曾都法院仍然认可胡敏与孝感中院10年的劳动合同关系，判决孝感中院补齐胡敏10年的社会保险金，但不能签订无固定期劳动合同，理由是湖北省和孝感市清退事业单位的临时工的两个文件属于劳动法与劳动合同法中规定的“劳动合同订立时所依据的客观情况发生重大变化，致使原合同无法履行”。
随州市中院除维持原判决外，还另行判决孝感中院补偿胡敏6000元。
对于二审法院的“照顾”行为，冯缤并不领情。相反，他认为审案法官理解法律有问题。冯认为：“劳动部对‘客观情况’的解释是不可抗力、或企业迁移、被兼并，企业资产转移等等，两个为了应对劳动合同法的文件难道是不可抗力？”他还认为，劳动合同法已经实施了，难道省里的文件比国家法律的效力还大？
于是冯缤继续申诉、上访，彻底沦为孝感市的不稳定因素之一。肩负机关干部工作的副院长魏俊生，不得不花大量时间做冯缤和胡敏的工作。他甚至请出冯缤在孝感市人大工作的亲戚来说服胡敏。魏说，胡敏签了劳务派遣合同，有社保，而且法院还可以让她回来上班，亲戚听了也连连说好，然而“冯缤两口子脑筋还是转不过来。还在四处告，四处闹”。
“他就想让胡敏转为正式工人。”魏俊生说，“招一个人进来要考试，市政府组织部门要考核的，法院说了不算。”
冯缤却称，31名临时工中，有人凭着关系，只有三四年工龄就转了，“为什么胡敏有资格却不能转？”
在冯缤的同事、司法行政处的李发年等人看来，冯缤的维权是应该支持的，但他的设想毫无现实可操作性，因为即使市政府的清理行动有问题，法院也不可能不执行。
即使是劳动法领域专家，北京律师时福茂也认为，冯缤的行为注定了要与现实碰壁，虽然他的诉讼请求于法有据。劳动合同法规定，工作10年，只要劳动者提出，就必须签订无固定期限劳动合同。然而，在时福茂代理的案件中，这一强力保护劳动者的措施没有一例实现。法院碍于各方因素，不敢下判，大都判决强行解除双方劳动关系，用工方支付双倍的工资赔偿。
2009年9月，随州市中院的终审判决下来之后，冯缤与法院的对峙逐渐从言语发展到暴力。10月31日，冯缤在法院食堂用饭勺敲击院长占云发的后脑勺，结果被拘留10天。
送他进拘留所的是孝感市三里棚派出所所长潘俊。潘俊已经为冯缤的事多次出警，对辖区内的这名身份特殊的“捣蛋分子”，他深怀同情，又无可奈何。
过去，冯缤被众人认为是有前途的法官，2007年就通过了司法考试，并被任命为助理审判员。但现在，无论是潘俊还是冯缤的同事，都认为冯缤似乎很难遵循现实原则行事，而是执著于法律条文。甚至有同事这样开玩笑，“他是不是考司法考试考傻了”。法院办公室主任叶蕾对此也深为不解：“他上访付出的代价太多了。他为什么不好好做法官，为什么不能走一条和大家一样的路？”
但冯缤认为他是在为“法律的信仰”而战。“中国的法治每一步都要流血，如果我的鲜血能够唤醒司法机关的良知，死是值得的。”在四壁空空的家里，冯缤这样解释付出和收益不成正比的维权行为。
因为害怕法院出什么“幺蛾子”，他甚至让妻子呆在家里不去工作。现在，孝感中院已将6000元补偿金交到曾都法院。但冯缤拒绝领取。对于法院提出的所有赔钱方案，冯缤一律拒绝，他决心抓住法律这根惟一的稻草，执拗到底。
（实习生王芳军对本文有贡献）
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