关于是否存在中国模式的争论，已经有20多年了。如何解决双方的相互争论，有无答案？丹佛大学教授赵穗生认为，中国经济高增长的背后的确有很多问题，中国不仅应该努力改变经济结构，实现经济增长模式转型，同时应该进行政治改革，使得政治体制制度化、建立更加负责的政府，以增加政府的支持度与合法性、保证政权的延续。如果中国能完成上述两个转型，那么中国模式将是存在的而且是有效的。反之，无论是经济增长的放缓，还是政治合法性的下降，最终都会导致中国模式的终结。

The China model is essentially a story of the hyper-charged economic growth led by an authoritarian state. Maintaining almost three decades of double digit annual growth, China was seen as an almost unstoppable powerhouse, governed by competent and committed leaders. The seemingly unstoppable growth, however, lost steam, falling from the last double digit of 10.41% in 2010 to 9.3% in 2011, 7.76% in 2012, 7.75% in 2013, 7.3% in 2014 and 6.9% in 2015. While the Chinese leaders as economic managers seemed in a league of their own for decades, ‘as growth slows sharply and markets fear more bad news, the stewards of the world’s second-largest economy appear to be losing some of their golden touch’.The panicked decision to inflate the stock market and the rush to save the crash of the bubble with administrative and punitive measures in 2015 was widely condemned as haphazard and ineffective. The subsequent rush in currency devaluation spooked stock markets around the world and rippled across the global economy with scary headlines, such as ‘China leading world towards global economic recession’, ‘China’s economy is at a tipping point’ and ‘Will China crash?’.

The economic downturn begs a revisit to the China model. Back in 2008, David Shambaugh believed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime learned from the negative lessons of other failed communist states and adapted effectively and proactively to reform and rebuild itself institutionally, thereby sustaining its legitimacy and power. He became very bearish in 2015, writing that ‘the endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun … We cannot predict when Chinese communism will collapse, but it is hard not to conclude that we are witnessing its final phase’.While very few scholars foresaw the immediate collapse of the regime and economy, Daniel Lynch declared ‘the end of China’s rise’ and the start of the ‘lost decades’ as Japan experienced after a seemingly endless period of rapid growth.Minxin Pei challenged the key component of the China model, ‘a competent autocratic regime run by clever technocrats and decisive politicians’ as one of ‘several long-cherished myths’ blasted apart by ‘the relentless economic slowdown and the unfolding panic in China’s financial markets’. Stein Ringen found that the Chinese government was ‘incompetent and impotent’ facing the economic downturn: ‘What has become visible through the recent mishaps is that the government and its leaders are in fact not delivering steady management’.

Indeed, after the days of double digit growth were over, it was not clear if Chinese leaders knew how to manage the resulting turbulence. As one Western investor suggested, ‘People are beginning to realize the Chinese government is not omnipotent and omniscient. In fact, like many of us, sometimes they don’t have a clue’. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman agreed that ‘The big news here isn’t about the Chinese economy; it’s about China’s leaders. Forget everything you’ve heard about their brilliance and foresightedness. Judging by their current flailing, they have no clue what they’re doing’. As the economy wilted and capital fled the country, the Chinese state’s strong capacity to make centralized decisions was no longer the envy of the world: ‘A black box produces awe when things go well. But when they don’t, that opacity causes anxiety and fear … Its remarkable opacity is not simply about economics but about politics and governance in general’.

The economic downturn, however, did not shake China model defenders’ confidence in Chinese leaders who, unencumbered by the electoral messiness, could make necessary adjustments to a new normal, managing the economy with a deft hand. After the 2015 summer fiasco, Han Zheng of the Beijing Foreign Studies University insisted that China, as the world’s biggest democracy, produced generation after generation of able leaders based on meritocracy to sustain the miracle of rapid economic development. While his article created a fair amount of amusement on the Chinese Internet, a People’s Daily editorial rebottled the argument that ‘the China model has come to the end’ (‘中国模式已走到尽头’), claiming that Chinese economic growth had come through the period of gear shift from high speed to a new normal through structural adjustment. The slowdown was the result of proactive action and was under the control of the Chinese government. As an optimist on Chinese economy, Nicolas Lardy also argued that the pace of Chinese creation of nonagricultural jobs was accelerated and both real disposable income and consumption expenditures of households were growing strongly. Services, not industry, had come to drive China’s growth.

This article argues that, trading economic growth for people’s consent to its rule, the Chinese state pursued economic growth at all costs. China’s growth was thus known as ‘blooded (带血的) GDP’ produced with the costs of a large amount of human death and injuries; ‘black (黑色的) GDP’ produced with the costs of environment pollution; and ‘low efficient (低效的) GDP’ produced with excess inventory without effective demands.

Performance legitimacy became the leadership’s default solution to a vast array of political and social challenges and potential sources of discontent. Following an export-led growth strategy and marshalling massive investment in infrastructure, China’s growth model, however, revealed itself as unsustainable not only because of the abrupt slowdown related to the rising labor costs, over-built manufacturing capacity and increasingly competitive international market, but also because of the increasingly tense breakneck growth engendered from rampant corruption, a growing wealth gap and environmental destruction. While the alluring story of China’s high growth blinded its dark side for a long time, these problems cannot be hidden as China’s growth plummeted and the regime legitimacy was at stake. The economic downturn was nothing more than an expedient time for Chinese leaders not only to transform China’s growth model from export and investment-driven to qualitative internal development but also to build institutional checks on the state authority and hold the state accountable. If China is able to complete the transition on both fronts, the China model will stand, but a sustained downturn or a lost decade or two could declare the end of the China model.

Three waves of the China model debate

The China model debate came in three waves. The first wave started after the publication of Joshua Cooper Ramo’s ‘Beijing Consensus’ article in 2004, asserting that China found a unique path of modernization through a willingness to innovate, taking account of quality of life as well as economic growth, providing enough equality to avoid unrest, valuing independence and self-determination and refusing to let other Western powers impose their will. Ramo’s provocation was criticized by some scholars. Scott Kennedy saw the Beijing Consensus as a myth because China did not follow any of its tenets. Barry Naughton found that China’s initial conditions of development disqualify Chinese experiences from easy generalization to other developing countries. Suisheng Zhao argued that while China presented a successful model of rapidly economic growth and relative political stability, the China model was not durable nor an alternative to the Western model of modernization.

The second wave of the China model debate came after China mobilized the entire nation to host the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Many Chinese scholars joined the debate enthusiastically, reflecting their nationalist pride of the Chinese state, which not only impressed the world with the success of the Olympic Games but also weathered the global financial crisis that started in 2009 better than many Western countries. As a result, the China model surged as a popular term in the so-called ‘discourse of greatness’ (盛世话语) that includes such terms as ‘China in ascendance’ (盛世中国), ‘the China path’ (中国道路), ‘the China experience’ (中国经验), ‘the China pace’ (中国速度), ‘the China miracle’ (中国奇迹) and ‘the rise of China’ (中国崛起).

The new wave coincided with the 30th anniversary of the economic reform and the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic. One celebration conference produced a lengthy book of about 630 pages on the China model. Wu Zipan, the Party Secretary of Beijing University, wrote in the preface that ‘due to the steady and high speed economic growth and the political stability in the past 30 years, we are confident to declare a unique China model of modernization’. The book’s editor, Professor Pan Wei at Beijing University, explained that the China model featured a state-led economic development, including the state control of land and raw materials of production; state-run financial industry and large-scale enterprises; a free labor market and free commodity and assets; and the communist party leadership produced by a unique selection and evaluation mechanism of officials and an advanced, selfless and united ruling group.

Some Western scholars were attracted to the China model due to the self-doubt in their own economic and political systems. Struggling in the economic recovery with problems like debt, unemployment and political gridlock, they became suspicious of ‘the ability of free markets, or representative democracy for that matter, to pre-empt resource misallocation’.  Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History that asserted the triumphalism of liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War, wrote in 2011 that ‘The first decade of the 21st-century has seen a dramatic reversal of fortune in the relative prestige of different political and economic models’. While the US democracy was widely emulated after the end of the Cold War and lightly regulated ‘Anglo-Saxon’ capitalism was seen as the wave of the future in the 1990s, one decade later, the automatic admiration for all things American gave way to a much more nuanced and critical view of US weaknesses. Another scholar argued that ‘China provides an important example of an alternative to the neo-liberal project that had come to dominate developmental discourses in the first part of the millennium’.  One observer at the 2010 Davos Conference found that ‘China is in the vanguard of a revival of state-led capitalism, with the Beijing model being increasingly admired by other emerging economies’.

The Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao administration, however, was cautious to avoid endorsing the China model, reflecting their hesitancy to engage in ideological debate and their concern over the emerging perception of a China threat. Making a response to the criticism of China for promoting its model to developing countries, Premier Wen Jiabao at the Forum of China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) IV in 2009 said that neither the ‘Washington Consensus’ nor the ‘Beijing Model’ offered prescriptions for Africa’s development, which should be based on its own conditions and follow its own path, that is, the African Model. Some Chinese scholars and officials also expressed their suspicion of the China model. Li Junru, former vice-president of the CCP Central Party School, warned in 2008 that ‘claiming the full shape of the China model did not meet the facts and was very dangerous’ for two reasons. First, ‘we may become self-contented and blindly optimistic’; second, ‘we may change the direction of reform. The target of our reform is the old system. If we state that China model has already taken shape when the old system is not entirely reformed and the new system is not improved and finalized, we are likely to change the target of reform into such model and regard it as the target of the reform’. In his commencement speech at the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University in July 2010, Qin Xiao, former chairman of China Merchants Group, a large-scale, state-owned enterprise, did not tell the elite school graduates how to launch their careers in business and government but criticized the proponents of the China model as advocating a state-led and nationalistic economic development, political power structure, and social governance against enlightenment and universal values. China’s modernization was not only to seek power and wealth (国强民富), but, more importantly, to construct modernity with enlightenment values (启蒙价值) of liberty, rationality and individual rights. To construct a modern nation-state with an institutional framework based on market economy, democratic polity and rule of law, China’s modernization path cannot be unique.

The third wave of the China model debate started after President Xi Jinping came to office in 2012, calling for the China Dream of great national rejuvenation. For Xi, the China model was not simply a product of the rapid economic growth during the reform years but a result of the continued search for power and prosperity led by the CCP after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In his famous speech on the ‘two undeniables’ (两个不能否定) on 5 January 2013, he insisted that ‘the historical period after economic reforms [in 1978] must not be used to reject the historical period before economic reforms; and the historical period before economic reforms must not be used to reject the historical period after economic reforms’. In other words, he rejected the idea of dividing the PRC’s history into a Mao era and a post-Mao era, with the subtext that any such division would tend to denigrate Mao and thereby skirt dangerously close to denying the legitimacy of CCP rule altogether. On 17 March 2013, Xi proposed his ‘three confidences’ (三个自信), i.e. confidence in: (1) the theory of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’; (2) China’s current path; and (3) its current political system (理论自信、道路自信、制度自信). This was his answer to the ‘three crises of confidence’ (三信危机): in socialism (信心危机), Marxism (信仰危机) and the party (信任危机), which had sprung from the reassessment of Maoism instituted by Deng Xiaoping during the early years of reform.

In addition, Xi’s China model promoted Chinese exceptionalism against Western values. In his first overseas visit to Moscow as the president in March 2013, he stated that ‘Only the wearer knows if the shoe fits his foot. Only the people of the country know best whether or not the development path is appropriate for the country’.  Speaking to a European audience in April 2014, he said that ‘China’s unique cultural tradition, unique historical fate, and unique national conditions have determined that China has to follow the road of development that fits Chinese characteristics’.  Talking at Peking University on 4 May 2014, Xi told the students that ‘while we should learn from all civilizations in human society, we cannot forget our ancestors (数典忘祖) and cannot copy the development models of foreign countries. Nor can we accept any instructions imposed by foreigners (外国颐指气使的说教)’. These statements made clear that because China was unique, only quintessentially Chinese could accommodate China’s national circumstances (国情). Foreign models were not applicable in realizing the China dream.

Encouraged by Xi’s endorsement, a collection of interviews with 15 Chinese scholars argued that the success of the China model came from ‘China’s confidence in its path, theory and system’,  i.e. Xi’s three confidences. Zhang Weiwei, the founding director of Fudan University’s China Development Model Center and author of The China Shock: The Rise of Civilizational Nation, a book recommended by President Xi, claimed that China was not an ordinary country but a civilizational country with four characters: a super-large population, a super-sized territory, a super-long history and a super-rich culture, which shaped China’s development model, with all its possible ramifications for the future trajectory and beyond. As the only country of such a type in the world, a millennia-old civilization fully coincides with the morphology of a modern state … It is as though ancient Rome was never dissolved, and continued to the present day, making the transition to a modern nation-state, with a central government and a modern economy, incorporating traditional cultural elements, having a massive population in which everyone speaks Latin.

With such confidence, nationalistic Chinese scholars presented the China model as an alternative to the Western model. Claiming that ‘China has greeted the time of its confidence when the Western elites have lost their confidences’, the author used ‘the three bests’ to describe China: ‘the best time, the best system, and the best developed country in the world’.  Eric X. Li, a venture capitalist in Shanghai, declared that the world witnessed the birth of a ‘post-democratic future’ in the capital of the Middle Kingdom, thanks to the CCP’s adaptability, system of meritocracy and legitimacy with the Chinese people. The country’s leaders consolidated the one party model and challenged the West’s conventional wisdom about political development and the inevitable march toward electoral democracy. Li wrote that 

with a few exceptions, the vast majority of developing countries that have adopted electoral regimes and market capitalism remain mired in poverty and civil strife. In the developed world, political paralysis and economic stagnation reign. The hard fact is this: democracy is failing from Washington to Cairo.

Hu Angang, an economist in Beijing, suggested two grand trends of the twenty-first century: the inevitable decline of the US and the rise of China. According to Hu, the US started rising in 1870–1913, reached its peak in 1945–1955, remained a great power in 1955–1990, became a hegemonic power in 1990–2000, and fell into the American sickness (美国病) and started declining in 2000 with the following four symptoms: arrogance (骄傲自满, 自高自大); war addiction/military intervention (战争过瘾, 军事干预), capitalist crisis disease (资本主义危机) and excessive military expenditure (过度军事开支). In contrast, China had been on a rising trajectory since the founding of the PRC in 1949. Following Xi’s ‘two undeniables’, Hu argued that Mao had narrowed the economic gap between China and the US during the first golden development period in the 1950s. Although Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution slowed the pace of China’s rise, Mao’s mistake did not arise due to China’s political system but his policy (在于政, 不在制). Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening-up started the second golden decade of development. Because China’s political system had an advantage over the US system, China would inevitably overtake the US.

Daniel Bell, a Canadian political philosopher at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, was the best-known Western proponent of the China model. He argued that the key component of the China model was meritocracy, by which leaders were selected by means of examination and advanced by performing well at lower levels of government. Chinese officials were evaluated for their ability to promote economic growth in a variety of jobs, with an expectation to make tough choices for the long-term good. This system was firmly entrenched not just because it was rooted in Chinese political culture but also because it delivered the economic goods. The obvious success of this system in solving problems and creating economic growth gave political leaders legitimacy in the eyes of Chinese people. To prove the advantage of the China model over Western models, Bell devoted an entire chapter of his book to tallying up American democracy’s flaws in contrast to Chinese-style meritocracy.

Compared to the powerful supporters, the skeptical voice of the China model was very weak during Xi’s years. Zhang Weiying in Beijing University was among very few. Listing the China model as one of his six major conceptual traps (理念陷阱) of China’s reforms, Zhang argued that

China’s economic success is not because it found a good model but because it found its comparative advantage in the free market system. As a country of late development, China took full advantage of the managerial and technological products produced by the free market economies.

Wang Xiaolu, from the China Reform Research Foundation, criticized the promotion of the China model as a mistake because it advocated the monopoly of state-owned enterprises and state intervention in the economy. Tong Dahuang, the editor of China Youth Daily, cautioned that the China model was not duplicable and unsustainable.

Author: Suisheng Zhao, member of the International Advisory Committee and senior fellow at the Charhar Institute, associate professor at the Overseas Chinese Executive Leadership Academy of Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council

Source: Journal of Contemporary China, Volume 26, Issue 103, 2017.