• 沒有找到結果。

Gordon Chang's the Coming Collapse of China and the Question of Methodology

N/A
N/A
Protected

Academic year: 2021

Share "Gordon Chang's the Coming Collapse of China and the Question of Methodology"

Copied!
4
0
0

加載中.... (立即查看全文)

全文

(1)

Book Reviews

June 2002 235

Issues & Studie s 38, no. 2 (June 2002): 235-263.

S

PECIAL

B

OOK

R

EVIEW

S

ECTION

Gordon G. Chang's

The Coming Collapse of China

(New York: Random House, 2001), 344 pages.

Gordon Chang's The Coming Collapse of China and the Question of Methodology

Gordon Chang's The Coming Collapse of China is a controversial book that boldly predicts the imminent collapse of the communist regime in mainland China— the party that has led the most populous country in the world through the most rapid of growth over the last two decades. If economic performance, particularly in terms of growth, is the single most important legitimating mechanism in a developing country, then one should predict the diametrically opposite, i.e., the strengthening of the developmental state of China amidst ostensibly unstoppable high growth. In addition to growth, the ability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime to manage the business cycle, contain inflation, and manage a "soft landing" in the 1990s is equally impressive. What possible reasoning would motivate Gordon Chang to come up with such a dismal prediction of the Chinese communist regime?

Chang's arguments rest on many facts that are well known to China watchers all over the world: the shock of World Trade Organization (WTO) entry, waves of factory closedowns, the swelling of the ranks of the unem-ployed, a rapidly growing income gap between classes and regions, labor unrest, the banking crisis, the stock market bubble, ecological disasters,

(2)

ISSUES & STU DIES

236 June 2002

and various other grave challenges to both economy and society. The ex-istence of such problems did not, however, hinder mainland China from achieving remarkable growth in the past nor lessen the regime's total con-trol over society. Even though such social problems may become further aggravated in the future, there still seems no sufficient ground from which to announce the coming breakdown of the system. The growth of China's economy has possibly reached its peak, as the slowing down of the economy in the latter half of the 1990s clearly shows, and the dark side of China's development could thus become so overwhelming that a delicate balance is tilted, and the system begins to show cracks that ultimately may lead to an overall breakdown. Such a scenario, however, seems a long- or at least mid-term prediction and does not warrant warnings of the regime's "coming collapse."

I would not question the sincerity of the author or his astute instincts. He probably does see signs that prove sufficient to convince him that the system is not likely to hold up for long. There is a strong conviction in his remarks that repeatedly reveals itself: a morally corrupt regime such as China's simply cannot survive long. Translated to political science jargon, this means an authoritarian regime with no legitimacy in the eyes of the people cannot sustain its rule for a long duration of time. Putting together economic and moral judgments, and giving the benefit of doubt to the author's sincerity, one still does not, however, reach the same conclusion of a coming collapse of China; at the very least one is led to question how the author came up with such a prediction. One is tempted to ask what methodology has the author used. Unfortunately, Chang's methods are not clearly presented in the book.

Nevertheless, The Coming Collapse of China is an exciting and challenging piece of work for it arouses academic debate concerning the stability— both now and in the future— of the CCP regime. Those pre-dicting stability must also reveal their methodology before we can accept their ostensibly plausible conclusions. Growth and stability of the last two decades is not a sufficient reason to predict growth and stability in the future. Those endorsing the cyclical theory of social development would predict slowdown and instability in the coming years. One thus has to

(3)

Book Reviews

June 2002 237

delve into the factors that determine stability in the Chinese system and come up with a theory that knits those factors together before any predic-tion can be made. In this way, The Coming Collapse of China is immature from a social scientific standpoint, although the author does not need to care much about social science given that the book is intended for general readers.

If one takes a careful look at the way in which the European com-munist regimes collapsed in 1989-91, one finds that intra-regime power struggle is as equally important as the overall deterioration of the social and economic conditions as a factor causing the meltdown of those systems. There is a conspicuous lack of discussion in regard to the ruling elite in The

Coming Collapse of China, seemingly suggesting that the Chinese system

would break down without a precipitating intra-party struggle. This is not plausible. The coincidence and interactions of social malaise and high-level power struggle are necessary conditions for the breakdown of an autonomous communist regime. Actually, the existence of economic and social crises alone cannot lead one to predict imminent collapse of the regime, as the North Korean example vividly proves.

In addition to elite politics, predictors of regime collapse/stability should present a theory concerning the relations between economic growth and regime legitimacy—a subject of contention in the field. For example, both the regime and its critics welcome China's post-Tiananmen economic prosperity for different reasons. Chinese leaders in the Forbidden City delight in seeing a booming economy and restored political stability under the party's full control. The critics, on the other hand, cast their hope on the modernizing and liberalizing effect of continued economic development and predict a possible political transformation in the early twenty-first century. Who is right? Can they be both correct?

The lack of methodological sophistication in The Coming Collapse of

China is no proof that its prediction is wrong. Those predicting the

op-posite outcome should come up with a methodology of their own. That methodology should at least integrate three factors: the sustainability of growth, the relation between growth and regime legitimacy, and the role of elite politics. Before these factors are discerned and carefully knit into an

(4)

ISSUES & STU DIES

238 June 2002

explanatory framework, one cannot accept or reject what Chang predicts.

The Coming Collapse of China poses an intellectual challenge to the

aca-demic world, not in proving or disproving his predictions, but in examining our own methodologies.

YU-SHANWU

National Taiwan University Taipei, Taiwan

China and the WTO: The Coming Collapse?*

Gordon Chang's Coming Collapse of China holds that China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) could trigger a political crisis that will lead to the collapse of the current regime. He posits that the first signs of this are already apparent in the wrenching restructuring of the past few years, as rapidly increasing imports have forced inefficient firms to cut jobs, sending the number of jobless rising to levels unprecedented in recent decades.

Unemployment is sure to rise even higher as China implements its WTO commitments to further open its domestic market. Chang and others believe that this, combined with endemic corruption and rapidly rising in-come inequality, makes it only a matter of time before the regime's position comes under threat. Such predictions are reinforced by claims that the Chinese economy has already been in a severe slump for the past four years, with the real rise in gross domestic product (GDP) only a fraction of the 7 percent-plus a year claimed by the authorities.

Beijing has contributed to outside suspicions of its official data on economic growth by not disclosing how it adjusts what are clearly exag-gerated numbers passed up by the Chinese provinces. While the national

*This article originally appeared in the June 14, 2000 issue of the Asian Wall Street Journal and is reprinted in this slightly modified form by permission of the AWSJ.

參考文獻

相關文件

For ex- ample, if every element in the image has the same colour, we expect the colour constancy sampler to pro- duce a very wide spread of samples for the surface

6 《中論·觀因緣品》,《佛藏要籍選刊》第 9 冊,上海古籍出版社 1994 年版,第 1

You are given the wavelength and total energy of a light pulse and asked to find the number of photons it

好了既然 Z[x] 中的 ideal 不一定是 principle ideal 那麼我們就不能學 Proposition 7.2.11 的方法得到 Z[x] 中的 irreducible element 就是 prime element 了..

volume suppressed mass: (TeV) 2 /M P ∼ 10 −4 eV → mm range can be experimentally tested for any number of extra dimensions - Light U(1) gauge bosons: no derivative couplings. =>

For pedagogical purposes, let us start consideration from a simple one-dimensional (1D) system, where electrons are confined to a chain parallel to the x axis. As it is well known

incapable to extract any quantities from QCD, nor to tackle the most interesting physics, namely, the spontaneously chiral symmetry breaking and the color confinement.. 

• Formation of massive primordial stars as origin of objects in the early universe. • Supernova explosions might be visible to the most