250
China’s Communists, Resilient in Face of Change



图片是8月6日奥运火炬在北京传递过程中，围观群众的一张照片。不过美国的记者似乎对中国的政党更加感兴趣，全文大部分内容都是在讨论中国政府的一些他们比较关心的问题，并多次引用一些政府官员的话，但全文的总体方向还是积极的，认为奥运会在北京举行使中国人民（china's communists）更加团结、更有凝聚力，奥运会也是中国的一个机遇！

原文链接：http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/0 ... ml?pagewanted=1&;_r=1&hp

BEIJING — As Beijing was starting construction on its main Olympicstadiums four years ago, China’s vice president and leading politicalfixer, Zeng Qinghong, warned the 70 million members of the rulingCommunist Party that the party itself could use some reconstruction.

Mr.Zeng argued that the “painful lessons” from the collapse of otherCommunist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe could not beignored. He said China’s cadres needed to “wake up” and realize that “aparty’s status as a party in power does not necessarily last as long asthe party does.”

Mr. Zeng, who is now retired, was alluding tothe pressures of economic liberalization, political stagnation andglobalization that many analysts have argued would ultimately toppleone-party rule in China. The Olympics also posed a pressure point assome analysts wondered whether the expectations and internationalscrutiny brought by the Games might help crack open anotherauthoritarian political system — as happened in Seoul in 1988.

Butif the Olympics have presented unmistakable challenges and crises, theCommunist Party has proved resilient. Public appetite for reform hasnot waned, but the short-term byproduct of the Olympics has been anupsurge in Chinese patriotism that bolstered the party againstinternational criticism after its crackdown on Tibetan protesters inMarch and the controversy over the international Olympic torch relay.

Economicand social change is so rapid in China that the Communist Party issometimes depicted as an overwhelmed caretaker. But in the seven yearssince Beijing was awarded the Games, the party has adapted andnavigated its way forward, loosening its grip on elements of societyeven as it crushes or co-opts threats to its hold on political power.

Theparty has absorbed entrepreneurs, urban professionals and universitystudents into an elite class that is invested in the political statusquo, if not necessarily enthralled with it. Private capitalists may besymbols of a changing China. But the party has also clung tenaciouslyto the most profitable pillar industries and the financial system, andit is not always easy to distinguish the biggest private companies fromtheir state-run counterparts in China’s hybrid economy.

Facedwith public anger over corruption, Chinese officials are now requiredto attend annual training sessions in a nationwide, if not alwayssuccessful, program to raise competency. And if officials long sinceabandoned efforts at Maoist-style thought control, the propagandamachine can still stir up nationalist passions, or shut them off,depending on the party’s priorities.

“This is a very reflective party,” said David Shambaugh, a political scientist at George Washington Universityand author of “China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation.” “Theyare adaptive, reflective and open, within limits. But survival is thebottom line. And they see survival as an outcome of adaptation.”

Theultimate question is whether adaptation alone is enough. Many analystssay the lack of democratic reform is constraining China’s economicefficiency and that reforms are needed to confront issues like starkinequality and environmental degradation. Thousands of protests eruptevery year over illegal land seizures and official corruption. TheTibet crisis revealed Chinese nationalism as a major political force,even as it exposed unresolved domestic issues about freedom of religionand minority rights. To some analysts, the harsh official response toTibet revealed an insecure, defensive leadership.

“The partydoesn’t have self-confidence in its legitimacy,” said Zhang Xianyang, aliberal political analyst in Beijing. “So the government overreacts inthe face of social turbulence. I think the regime is not as strong asoutsiders and the common people think.

“But they are not as weak as they feel themselves.”

Party Business

Forthe Communist Party, China’s selection in July 2001 as host of the 2008Olympics was a political and historic coup: a gift they could deliverto a thrilled citizenry and a new focal point, seven years in thedistant future, which could be used to rally national pride.

Insidethe party, leaders were intently focused on the viability of theirsystem. The party faced no organized opposition; none is allowed. Butthe leadership, fretting about historical trends, had commissionedexhaustive autopsies of the collapse of the Soviet Union and theEastern European governments. By June 2001, a month before the Olympicannouncement, the Communist Party’s Central Committee organizationdepartment, which oversees party promotions and training, had publisheda blunt report that revealed deep public anger and recommended “systemreforms” to address problems of official corruption and incompetence.

China’s economy was soaring, and the country was preparing for entrance into the World Trade Organization.But if free trade could boost China’s exports, the party report alsowarned that deeper integration into the world economy “may bringgrowing dangers and pressures, and it can be predicted that in theensuing period the number of may jump, severelyharming social stability.”

The dismantling of theplanned economy had already presented an ideological challenge: What todo about the emerging class of capitalists who were rapidly accruingwealth? Admitting capitalists struck old guard Marxists as apostasy,but it made smart politics for a party leery of any group emerging as arival for power. Less than two weeks before the Olympic announcement,former President Jiang Zemin chose the party’s 80th anniversary to declare that capitalists should be invited to join its ranks.

Reformershoped private businesspeople might one day prove a force fordemocratization. But today, together with the flow of party officialsinto the business sector, the mixing of money and power has renderedsharp distinctions about the state and private sectors less meaningfulthan they seem in the West. Businessmen have established closer linksto the government and the party to get access to state bank loans andtap into the network of officials who control land and governmentcontracts. College students eyeing a career in government or academiaoften make the same calculation.

“The party seems happy withthat,” said Bruce Dickson, a China scholar at George WashingtonUniversity and author of the new book, “Wealth into Power: TheCommunist Party’s Embrace of China’s Private Sector.” “They are notlooking for diehard ideologues. They want to co-opt people into theirsystem. And they’ve been far more successful than people realize.”

Beyond managing the rise of private enterprise, the party also faced the collapse of much of the state-owned economy.

Thestate’s share of the economy fell to about 35 percent in 2006 from 80percent in 1997, according to a recent analysis in China EconomicQuarterly. But that declining share does not reflect declininginfluence. The party’s analysis of the collapse of the Soviet blocfaulted post-Communist countries for rushing too recklessly intoprivatization. To preserve the party’s pre-eminence, senior officialsadopted a policy of selling off small enterprises with lower profitmargins while keeping a grip on the biggest industries.

Today,the state still exercises effective control over natural resources likeoil, gas and coal; oil refining, production of steel and ferrousmetals; telecommunications, transportation and power generation; andthe financial system.

Arthur Kroeber, managing editor of ChinaEconomic Quarterly, said officials have injected competition into thestate sector by pitting state-owned entities against one anotherwithout surrendering control over strategic industries.

“They have retained all the industries that have huge scale and large cash flow,” he said.

Change Agent

Ifanything has been a change agent in Chinese society, it has been theInternet. In 2001 China had 26.5 million Internet users. Today thefigure is 253 million, the most in the world. One of those millions isa software engineer named Lu Yunfei, who joined the crowds at TiananmenSquare on the night Beijing won the Olympics.

The next year, Mr. Lu began surfing the Web and soon stumbled across news accounts of a visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumiof Japan to a controversial war shrine honoring Japanese soldiers,including some accused of atrocities in China. Infuriated, he becameone of the legion of the country’s cyber-nationalists.

“I made aU-turn in my life as a result of the Internet, as a result of freedomof information,” said Mr. Lu, now 33. “The patriotism movement is aresult of the development of the Internet.”

Freedom ofinformation always has been considered essential in liberalizing China,and the Internet has disseminated amounts of information onceunthinkable. Despite an Internet firewall and tens of thousands ofcensors, dissidents still post petitions that once would have goneunheard. Farmers post videos of demonstrations on YouTube.But nationalism also has flowered online into a complicated force thatthe party has often managed to cultivate for its own purposes. In 2005,amid a diplomatic standoff between China and Japan, thousands ofChinese protesters held raucous anti-Japan demonstrations in Beijing,Shanghai and other cities. Initially, the government condoned theoutbursts, even though such protests are illegal. But eventually, asthe protests expanded, the police shut them down.

This year’sOlympic controversies pushed Chinese nationalism onto a world stage. Inthe days after the violent Tibetan riots, state media carried hours ofcoverage of ethnic Tibetans assaulting Han Chinese as well astelevision documentaries praising economic policies in Tibet. WhenWestern leaders began calling on China to show restraint as itsuppressed the uprising, Chinese nationalists rallied to the party’sdefense online.

The patriotic anger intensified in April after the ugly anti-Chinaprotests that marred the Olympic torch relay in London and Paris.Voices preaching moderation, or questioning the government’sresponsibility in the Tibet crisis, were drowned out. As happened threeyears earlier during the anti-Japan protests, officials initially gavetacit approval to the fervor and even a boycott of the French retailerCarrefour before reining things in to create a more harmonious imageahead of the Games.

Harnessing Pride

Forthe Communist Party, nationalism has always been a centraljustification of its rule. Schoolchildren are taught a heroic narrativeof the party as the savior of China in 1949 and the savior of Tibetfrom feudalism and economic backwardness. If Westerners often viewChina through the prism of the Cultural Revolution and the 1989Tiananmen crackdown, Chinese are taught about the Opium War and thecolonialist advances into China by Japan and the West.

“Nationalismand patriotism mean love your country,” said Mr. Zhang, the politicalanalyst. “The Communist Party was so clever because they linkednationalism to loving the party. They said the party was the same asthe country.”

Li Datong, a former editor of a top state-runmagazine who lost his job after clashing with propaganda authorities,said officials in charge of mass media and the Internet try to leavelittle to chance. He said the country’s army of censors dipsanonymously into the Internet debate by paying part-time writers 5 mao,or about 7 cents, to steer public opinion and monitor the tone ofdebate online.
“Their job is to post articles on the B.B.S. tobalance public opinion,” Mr. Li said, referring to the Bulletin BoardSystem where many Internet users interact. “The netizens call them the5 mao party. If they get a post on a B.B.S., they get 5 mao.”

Mr.Lu, the cyber-nationalist, said Chinese patriots make distinctionsbetween country and party. During the Tibet crisis, he used his Website to highlight provocative postings criticizing the Western newsmedia or Tibet separatism, as part of the nationalist outpouringsupporting the party. But in recent weeks, the Internet has been filledwith angry posts — many later censored — blaming the government for arecent energy agreement with Japan.

When it comes to the Olympics, though, party and nation seem inseparable.

“Forordinary Chinese, even if they can’t really articulate it, they feelthe Olympics are a very important opportunity for China to demonstratestate power,” Mr. Lu said.

好长。。。。

我还是喜欢看中文

一点一点来

看不懂...

XmzzsE xgduoamadnzr, afcjvmlfnfki, [link]http://yzvypnlkshlz.com/[/url]]yzvypnlkshlz[/link], http://zhlcneiwutir.com/

biased