Wei Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue:A901-W582

魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号：A901-W582

Release Date: November 22, 2015

发布日：2015年11月22日

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

标题：中国经济的出路之三 -- 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 III

-- Wei Jingsheng

The last time we talked about several basic common sense ideas for the Chinese economy to get out of crisis. Of these ideas, one of the most important is the rule of law and democracy. Just as the pioneer of modern jurisprudence, Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, noted, the reason that China was able to maintain a leading position in economic development after a number of wars in the past two thousand years was because China had a market economy under legal protections.

Mr. Montesquieu did not mention that the reason that this high-speed development was not continuous, but instead had its ups and downs, was because the legal system in China was not carried out continuously. This process was called "cycles of stagnation" by the radical scholars from the May Fourth Movement. When it was in its upswings, which were the early periods when a dynasty was just established or in resurgence, laws were carried out rigorously and the society was in order. Thus its economic development was fast and stable. During the periods when the legal system was corrupted, there would be economic stagnation or retrogression with disorder until the dynasty eventually collapsed. Scholars called it the Periodic Law as the lessons learned from the Chinese history.

Why was it that the legal system that started well could not end well? Chinese scholars and people think it was due to corruption and moral deficiency; or disintegrated traditional ethics. Before the real reasons were found, these specious arguments had been popular for thousands of years. But those arguments are just the prevarication the ruling class and their scholars used to fool people.

There were also some scholars who got closer to the real reasons. So in order to effectively protect the law, there were a variety of supervision and restriction mechanisms designed in ancient China. This shows that the ancient Chinese knew the ugly side of human nature that must be supervised and restricted, in order to avoid its ascendancy. The main aspect of supervision and regulation is to protect the effective functioning of the legal system.

The ancients even knew that the destruction of the legal system came not from the common people, but mainly from the powerful bureaucratic wealthy class even at the highest authorities of the emperor. Thus the literature coming from the hearts of the Chinese people set up the black faced Bao Gong and Hai Rui (two legendary judges in Chinese history), as the deified models of maintaining law to be the ideal in people's minds.

But why did these ideals always soon burst? The law soon was unable to be the shield to protect the people, nor a fixed scale to maintain a fair market. The reason is because those people who executed the law would violate the law. The institutional members of the supervision and constraints were from the same official arena who knew each other and found it hard to defy human nature to enforce law. Thus despite the needless repetition of the supervision and restriction mechanisms, they would still gradually lose their effectiveness, and ultimately become useless.

In order to achieve the effect of supervision and regulation, the ancient Chinese devised a system of avoidance, to send law enforcement officials away from their home, disallowing them to judge on the cases related to their relatives and friends. However, the legal system was being destroyed from top to bottom, and bribery was not only limited to friends and family. Even though the Chinese established a defamation mechanism for whistleblowers to facilitate the people to report violations, it still could not stop the corruption of the legal system.

Why? The Westerners found the crux of the problem, which was the separation of judicial and executive rights, to prevent the interference of administrative authority against the judicial power and to ensure a relative judicial independence in order to fulfill its social function. People worship Bao Gong and Hai Rui as their ideals, precisely because they were not intimidated by the executive powers and were able to execute their judicial power independently, thus protecting the rights and interests of the people.

But what if there was a dispute between Emperor and Bao Gong? Who would be the judge? If the emperor set up a draconian law, how could Bao Gong overthrow it? There was only one way for ancient and modern people, that is to overthrow the emperor and dynasty, thus start all over again for another round of the cycle. Such can only be regarded as the way of last resort, which does not really solve the problem for continuously carrying out a rule of law and economic development.

The Westerners thought of another way, which was to let the people legislate to protect their own rights and interests, as well as to monitor and restrict judicial and administrative bureaucrats. This purpose is the true role of the electoral system and the parliamentary system. The parliamentary system ensures people's power of legislation, supervision and restriction, while the electoral system ensures the representatives of the people comply with the will of the public instead of their own will. That is the democratic system.

The democratic system ensures not only the interests of the people, but also fairness during the operation of the market. It would be fair to treat every citizen equally, instead of only those people who got rich first. Without the protection of democracy, without the participation of all citizens, the so-called protection offered by a bureaucratic capitalist dictatorship is just an extremely unreliable lie.

Now, only one-third of China's annual gross domestic product is for domestic consumption including the luxury consumption of the local tyrants and corrupt bureaucrats. Besides a small portion kept as social accumulation, most of the remaining two-thirds of the GDP has fallen into the hands of the Chinese and foreign capitalists. According to the estimate of the authoritative department, now more than one trillion dollars are transferred out of China every year, while more than one hundred million Chinese are living below a poverty line of $1.90 a day.

Chinese billionaires top the world, while Chinese poor also top the world now. Why is it so polarized? Without the guarantee of democracy under the rule of law, people cannot gain their deserved share. This is the main cause of poverty, as well as the root cause of the Chinese economy entering its failure and being unable to have a sustainable development.

Conversely, only the lawlessness of one-party dictatorship would ensure the existence of a large number of poor and cheap labor, thus to ensure that Chinese and foreign capitalists become rich through the use of cheap labor. The existence of these capitalists and the corrupt officials is the root cause of the abnormal development of the Chinese economy, which is entering into crisis. This is the chain reaction of the Chinese economic development model.

Without the elimination of one-party dictatorship from the top, there will be no fair market and rule of law. Without a fair legal system and fair market, it is impossible to improve people's discretionary consumption, thus expanding the domestic market in China. A development model relying solely on exploitation of markets in the developed countries has been unable to continue, nor to rescue the economic crisis in China.

It was said that the one-party dictatorship couldn't be shaken. If so, then it can only result in revolution. For people's rights to survive, there would only be a revolution. Revolution will not be chosen by the Chinese people, but by the choices of Xi Jinping.

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

http://www.weijingsheng.org/RFA/RFA2015/WeiJS151105ChineseEconomyWayOut3.mp3

(Written on November 4 and recorded on November 5, 2015. Broadcasted by Radio Free Asia.)

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中文版

Wei Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue:A901-W582

魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号：A901-W582

Release Date: November 22, 2015

发布日：2015年11月22日

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

标题：中国经济的出路之三 -- 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/report2015-11/WeiJS151122ChineseEconomyWayOut3A901-W582.htm

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中国经济的出路之三

-- 魏京生

上一次我们谈到了中国经济走出危机的几个基本常识。其中最重要的，就是法制和民主。正如现代法学先驱孟德斯鸠所指出的，中国在过去的两千年里能够几经战乱，却保持了经济发展的领先地位，就是因为中国拥有在法律保障下的市场经济。

孟德斯鸠先生没有提到的是，这种高速发展的经济之所以没有一直持续下来，而是波浪式的起起伏伏，用五四时期的激进学者的说法叫做周而复始，循环停滞，其主要原因是法制不能善始善终。在上升阶段，也就是王朝初建的时期，或者中兴的阶段，法制严谨，秩序井然。因而经济发展就快速而又稳定。而法制败坏时期，经济停滞或者倒退，秩序混乱最终王朝崩溃。这就是被学者们称之为周期律的中国历史教训。

为什么法制不能善始善终呢？中国的文人和老百姓都认为是腐败，是道德缺乏；或者是人心不古，礼崩乐坏。在找不到真正的原因之前，这些似是而非的说法流行了几千年。但那是统治阶级和无聊文人忽悠老百姓的搪塞之词。

也有一些文人接近了解原因了。所以中国古代为了保障法律的有效，设计了各种各样的监督和制约机构。这说明古人早就知道人性丑恶的一面，必须加以监督和制约，以免其泛滥成灾。而且监督和制约的主要方面，就在于保护法律体系的有效运作。

古人甚至知道，对法律体系的破坏，并非来自于小民百姓，而是主要来自有权有势的官僚富商阶级，直至最高当局的皇帝。所以出自于民心的文艺作品，就把黑脸包公和海瑞，树立成为维护法律的神化了的典型，作为老百姓心目中的理想。

但是这些理想为什么总是不久就会破灭？法律也很快就不再成为保护老百姓的盾牌，也不再是维护市场公平的硬性尺度。原因就在于执法犯法。监督和制约的机构成员，来自于同一个官场，抬头不见低头见，很难违逆人情执法。所以监督和制约的机构虽然叠床架屋，仍会渐渐失去应有的效果，最终形同虚设。

为了实现监督和制约的效果，古人又设计出了回避的制度。让执法官员远离自己的家乡，也不得审判自己亲戚朋友的案件。但是法制是从上到下被破坏的，行贿受贿又不限于亲朋好友。甚至三千年前就设立了举报用的诽谤木，方便百姓举报违法行为，却仍然不能阻止法制的败坏。

为什么呢？西方人找到了症结所在，这就是司法和行政必须分离，才能阻止行政权力对司法权力的干涉，才能保证司法相对独立地完成它的社会功能。人们崇拜理想中的包公和海瑞，正是因为他们不受行政权力的干涉，独立执行司法权，保护了老百姓的权利和利益。

但是如果包公和皇帝之间起了纠纷呢？谁来裁判？如果皇帝立一个恶法，包公有什么办法推翻它呢？古人和今人都只有一个办法，就是推翻这个皇帝和皇朝，另起炉灶开始又一圈循环。这只能算是没有办法的办法，并未真正解决法制和经济持续发展的问题。

西方人想到了一个办法，就是让人民来立法保护自己的权利和利益，并且监督和制约司法、行政的官僚们。这就是选举制和议会制的真正作用。议会制保证了人民的立法、监督和制约的权力，选举制保证了议会的代表遵从民意而不是自行其是。这就是民主制度。

民主制度不但保证了老百姓的利益，而且保证了市场运作的公平。而且是对所有人一视同仁的公平，不是对一部分需要先富起来的人的公平。没有民主制度的保护，没有全体公民的参与，所谓靠官僚资产阶级专政给予的保护，是极其不可靠的谎言。

中国每年生产总值的三分之一，是老百姓的消费，其中还包括了土豪官僚们的奢侈腐败消费。另外的三分之二价值，除了一小部分作为社会积累，大部分都落入了中外资本家和贪官污吏之手。据权威部门估算，现在每年有上万亿美元资金转移出中国，同时有上亿的人民生活在每天一点九美元的贫困线之下。

中国的亿万富翁世界第一，而中国的贫困人口也是世界第一。为什么会如此两极分化？没有民主保障下的法制，人民不能争得自己应得的份额，是贫困的最主要的原因；也是经济走入困境，无法持续发展的根本原因。

反过来说，只有一党专政的无法无天，才能保证大量贫困人口和廉价劳动力的存在，才能保证靠廉价劳动力发财致富的中外资本家的利益。而中外资本家和贪官污吏的存在，正是中国经济畸形发展走入危机的根本原因。这是中国模式经济发展的利益链条。

不从链条的顶端一党专政改变，就没有公平的法制和市场。没有公平的法制和市场就不可能提高老百姓的消费，也就没有国内市场的增量。仅仅依靠剥削发达国家的市场，这样的发展模式已经无法持续下去了，也已经无法解救中国的经济危机。

据说一党专政不可动摇，那就只能革它的命了。为了老百姓自己的生存权利，只能革它的命了。这不是老百姓选择的，是习近平选择的。