Wei Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue: A896-W577

魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号： A896-W577

Release Date: October 18, 2015

发布日：2015年10月18日

Topic: The Way Out for the Chinese Economy -- Wei Jingsheng

标题：中国经济的出路 -- 魏京生

Original Language Version: Chinese (Chinese version at the end)

此号以中文为准（英文在前，中文在后）

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The Way Out for the Chinese Economy

-- Wei Jingsheng

Recently, there is news that Chinese imports have been in decline for eleven consecutive months, with more than a 20% decline in September. There are also reports of increasing empty shipping container rates month after month at the US Pacific coast ports, which further illustrates the weakening of Chinese imports. Chinese exports to the US have also dropped 5% in the past few months.

Putting these messages together, they illustrate an important trend that China's foreign trade is rapidly shrinking. The export-oriented economic environment secured by Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin is rapidly falling. The model of development through cheap labor has come to an end. Even without Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), China's foreign trade-oriented development model has already come to an end.

What to do afterwards then? It looks like Xi Jinping is not sure. The so-called 13th Five-year plan of China that is being discussed is full of nonsense and jargon -- it is even returning to Hu Jintao's "Scientific Development Concept," which is almost as to talk about the utopia of Communism. I think that is because Xi Jinping is not sure what to do, besides helplessly kowtow to the politics ruled by the elder leaders.

According to the normal rules, or according to others' experience, the initial stage of trade-oriented development was not wrong. It is the model of rapid economic development relying on the developed economies. After World War II, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, etc. all successfully took this path. With different situations, the experience was also different.

The experiences of Europe and Japan were the first type. After they restored their economy with the assistance from the USA, they soon embarked on a development path consisting of a combination of independent development and relying on the huge US market. Although their growth was not particularly fast, one step followed another; their development was very uniform. Till this day, they are neck and neck with the United States, and now are among the several largest entities in the world economy. This type is typical of sustainable development.

The experiences of Taiwan and other Asian Tigers were the second type. This type may also include Brazil and some other initially developed countries that have been remaining at the second level. They also began like Japan and Europe, gaining rapid development by relying on an export-oriented economy. However, they did not embark on the path of independent development. They were overly reliant on exports, and finally ran into the bottleneck of that development. After their ultra-high-speed development, they have spent years of stagnancy, with slow development. They have to come back for make-up classes, as the remedy of the development difficulties.

The third type is that of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and perhaps China as well. This type of development followed the scholarly utopia of a planned economy, coupled with authoritarian politics that excluded the role of a market. Its intensive industry was capable of rapid development, while the serfdom-like development of agriculture and light industry could not keep up with that pace. This example is called a shortage economy. The overall growth rate was very slow and not sustainable. Finally, the overall political and economic system collapsed.

During the earlier period of the Communist rule, China took the Soviet model, with a rapidly developed industry, while being always short of supplies in people's lives. If Mao Zedong died ten years later, China might have finished the same path in the 1980's that the Soviet Union finished in 1990's. This possibility is because the Chinese traditional culture is built on the basis of a market economy, and is even less adaptable to serfdom and despotism.

The Communist leadership of Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, just had the chance to change the development type. China was able to jump from the third type to the second type of economic development, to get on the export-oriented economy of the development model that the Four Asian Tigers followed. Of course it would be the best result if China had timely jumped into the first type of development model.

Unfortunately, the Communist Party leadership has an immutable goal that is to maintain the political system of the one-party dictatorship. The suppressed Democracy in 1989 was not just a political setback, but also a setback of the opportunities for economical transitions. Jiang Zemin was successful in opening the markets in the United States and the West, which only prompted China to continue its even more deformed path of export-oriented development through cheap labor.

Because of political tyranny, inevitably there is unfair distribution. The minority ruling class in China inevitably tends to gain the extreme exploitation of early capitalism. It uses so-called completely free market economic laws to treat labor; and a combined market economy with a monopoly of a semi state-owned economy to deal with the market.

China's domestic market is shrinking, thus it needs to rely on foreign markets. The growth of the living standard of the Chinese is slow, which brings social problems. Unfairness brings highly developed rent-seeking behavior in the market, which is commonly referred to as the rapid spread of corruption. In addition, the widening wealth gap is causing psychosocial anger in the society, even social unrest. It already is not as simple as if the economic development was merely not sustainable.

Now with the changes in the international environment, the export-oriented economy is certainly not able to carry on. What will follow as a chain reaction is the rapid economic downturn, or even collapse. In viewing the rule of bottleneck transitions represented by the Four Asian Tigers, China must reform the political system, develop the intellectual resources and production enthusiasm, replacing the import-type of intellectual property rights, or at least not impeding the import of intellectual property rights, for the sake of a sustainable economy of independent development. For this purpose, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and other countries have embarked on the path of democratization. The speed and extent of democratization is proportional to the speed of getting out of the bottleneck.

The development path of Xi Jinping is just the opposite. He nailed down the biggest variable factor, the political reform, to set up the main obstacles for solving economic development. This leads to lack of investment motivation domestically, with the fleeing of a lot of private capital, and without a foreseeable future for the industrial upgrading in China.

The official investment guidance has not been encouraging small and medium enterprises to upgrade. Instead, the Chinese government is promoting so-called the Belt and the Road (The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It is trying to sell the steel, cement and railway technology, which is contributing to the official capital exodus. This action is just like the preparatory work of the dictators in the Third World before they lost their power, instead being responsible to the Chinese economy. The only difference is the scale.

To thoroughly review the behavior of the Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang clique since they took power, we can conclude that they do not have a clear understanding of the current situation and future development path of China. They are also not knowledgeable of the coming plight that China is falling into. This is not even comparable to "going across the river by reaching the rocks on the bottom" promoted by Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun. What Xi & Li did could be summarized by two Chinese proverbs: "a blind person telling of the shape of elephant by touching one part of its body" and "catching a fish by drilling through wood".

Just as Mr. Li Ka-shing (of Hong Kong) recently put it: ignorance is the greatest enemy of mankind. Rigid political ideology is the greatest enemy of all inherited types of politics. The ancient Chinese said: only when we know ourselves and know the others, could we win every battle. This saying is not only true about war, but with even more true about economic and social development.

To hear Mr. Wei Jingsheng's related commentary, please visit:

http://www.weijingsheng.org/RFA/RFA2015/WeiJS151015ChineseEconomyWayOut.mp3

(Written on October 14 and recorded on October 15, 2015. Broadcasted by Radio Free Asia.)

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中文版

Wei Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue: A896-W577

魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号： A896-W577

Release Date: October 18, 2015

发布日：2015年10月18日

Topic: The Way Out for the Chinese Economy -- Wei Jingsheng

标题：中国经济的出路 -- 魏京生

Original Language Version: Chinese (Chinese version at the end)

此号以中文为准（英文在前，中文在后）

如有中文乱码问题，请与我们联系或访问:

http://www.weijingsheng.org/report/report2015/report2015-10/WeiJS151018ChineseEconomyWayOutA896-W577.htm

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中国经济的出路

-- 魏京生

最新消息说；中国的进口连续十一个月下降，九月份下降了百分之二十多。又有消息说；美国太平洋沿岸港口的空箱率逐月上升，进一步说明了中国进口的疲软。还有消息说；中国对美国的出口，在过去的几个月里也下降了百分之五。

把这几个消息联系起来看，说明了一个重要的趋势，就是中国的对外贸易正在迅速地萎缩。邓小平和江泽民争取到的外向型经济环境正在快速地流失。靠廉价劳动力发展的模式已经走到了头。即使没有奥巴马的跨太平洋伙伴关系协定，简称TPP(The Trans-Pacific Partnership)，中国的外贸导向型发展模式也走到了头。

下边怎么办，看上去习近平心里没有底。正在讨论中的所谓十三五计划，听上去都是些废话和套话，居然还回到了胡锦涛的科学发展观。这也就和共产主义的乌托邦差不多了。我觉得除了无可奈何向老人政治低头以外，就是心里没有底，不知道该怎么办了。

按正常规律，或者按照别人的经验教训，初级阶段靠外贸导向型发展没有错，这是依靠发达国家快速发展经济的模式。二战后的欧洲、日本、台湾和韩国等等都很成功地走过了这条道路。其中情况也各不相同，经验也各不相同。

第一个类型是欧洲和日本。它们在美国的援助下恢复了经济之后，很快就走上了自主发展与依托庞大的美国市场相结合的发展道路。速度不是特别快，但一步紧跟着一步，发展很均匀。至今仍然与美国并驾齐驱，成为世界经济的几个最大的实体，是可持续发展的典型。

第二个类型是台湾和亚洲四小龙。也许还包括巴西和其它一些至今还是第二水平的初步发达国家。他们开始也和日本、欧洲一样，依靠外向型经济快速发展。但随后并没有走上自主发展的道路，而是过渡依赖外向型发展道路，最终走上了发展的瓶颈。超高速发展之后，多年徘徊不前，发展缓慢。不得不回过头来补课，以收亡羊补牢之效果。

第三个类型是苏联和东欧，也许加上中国。是学者乌托邦式的计划经济加上专制政治，排斥市场作用。其集约化的工业发展很快，农奴制的农业和轻工业发展赶不上趟。这被称为短缺型经济。整体发展速度很慢，而且不可持续。最终政治经济整体垮台。

中共早期走的是苏联模式，工业发展很快，而人民生活永远处于短缺状态。毛泽东如果晚死十年，中国在八十年代可能就会走完苏联到九十年代才走完的历程。这是因为中国的传统的、建立在市场经济基础上的文化，更加不能适应农奴制和专制政治。

以邓小平、胡耀邦和赵紫阳为首的领导集团，恰好有机会扭转了发展模式。从第三个类型跳到了第二个类型，学习四小龙走上了外向型经济的发展模式。如果能够适时地跳转到第一个发展模式，当然是最好的结果。

遗憾的是，共产党领导集团有一个不可改变的目标，就是维护一党专政的政治体制。八九年的民主运动被镇压，不仅仅是政治挫折，而且也是经济转型机会的挫折。江泽民成功地开放了美国和西方的市场，促使中国继续在依靠廉价劳动力的外向型发展道路上，走出了一条更加畸形的道路。

由于政治的专制，分配必然不公。少数统治阶级必然倾向于早期资本主义的极度剥削。即以所谓完全的自由市场经济规律对待劳工；市场经济与垄断的半国营经济相结合来对付市场。

中国国内市场萎缩，需要依赖国外市场。人民生活水平增长缓慢，带来社会问题。不公平带来的市场寻租行为高度发达，也就是通常所说的腐败迅速蔓延。加上贫富差距拉大造成社会心理愤怒，以至于社会动荡。这已经不是经济发展不可持续这么简单了。

现在国际环境的变化，外向型经济肯定是搞不成了。之后的连锁反应是经济的快速下滑，甚至崩溃。纵观以四小龙为代表的瓶颈转型规律，为了自主发展可持续的经济，就必须改革政治体制，开发国民的智力资源和生产积极性，替代进口型的知识产权，至少不会阻碍进口知识产权。为此韩国、台湾和巴西等国相继走上了民主化的道路。民主化的速度和程度，与走出瓶颈的速度呈正比。

而习近平的发展道路却是背道而驰。他把最大的可变因素政治改革钉死在那里，给解决经济发展设置主要的障碍。这就导致国内投资动机不足，私人资本大量外逃，产业升级遥遥无期。

官方投资导向不是鼓励中小企业升级换代，而是搞什么一带一路、亚投行。他们试图推销钢铁、水泥和铁路技术，从而促使官方资本大量外逃。这动作很像第三世界独裁者们下台前的准备工作，不像是要对中国的经济负责。差别只在于规模大小而已。

纵观习近平、李克强集团上台以来的行为，可以判断他们对于中国的现状和将来的发展道路没有清醒的认识。甚至对中国将要陷入的困境，也懵然无所知。这还不如邓小平、陈云的摸着石头过河，真正是在盲人摸象，缘木求鱼。

正如李嘉诚最近所说的那样：愚昧是人类的大敌。思想的僵化是所有继承型的政治最大的敌人。古人说：知己知彼，才能百战不殆。不仅战争如此，经济和社会发展更是如此。