《The Economist》 2011/03/19
THE pursuit of happiness, runs one of the most consequential sentences ever penned, is an
unalienable right. That Jeffersonian sentiment seems to have influenced even China’s normally
strait-laced, rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), which has just
wrapped up its annual session. Increasing happiness, officials now insist, is more important than
increasing GDP. A new five-year plan adopted at the meeting has been hailed as a blueprint for a
“happy China”. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, however, appeared downright miserable as he
described the challenges he faces.
At the end of the ten-day meeting, Mr Wen told journalists that his remaining two years in office
would be “no easier” than the preceding eight. Keeping the “tiger” of inflation in its cage would be
hard enough, he said (the NPC approved a target of 4% this year, compared with inflation of
nearly 5% in February). But corruption was the “greatest danger”. A few days before the session
began, the railways minister, Liu Zhijun, had been dismissed in connection with a huge bribe-
taking scandal.
The five-year plan called for 7% annual average growth in GDP between now and 2015,
compared with a far-exceeded target of 7.5% set in 2006-10. Mr Wen said lowering growth
without raising unemployment would be an “extremely big test”. But, he said, China had to
change its pattern of economic growth, because it was (using a hallmark phrase) “unbalanced,
unco-ordinated and unsustainable”.
The idea of promoting happiness spread over the country like a huge grin early this year when
provincial governments began laying out their own five-year plans. Guangdong province declared
it would become “happy Guangdong”. Beijing (which is a province-level administration) said it
wanted its citizens to lead “happy and glorious lives”. Chongqing municipality, another province-
level area, said it wanted its people to be among the happiest in the country. Officials now often
talk of setting up “happiness indices” by which government performance should be judged.
The word’s popularity among bureaucrats is more an attempt to please leaders in Beijing and
show sympathy for the less well-off than a sign of any real determination to change their ways.
Many lower-level governments have continued to set investment-driven GDP-growth targets that
are far higher than Mr Wen’s. Some of his goals, such as building another 36m subsidised homes
by 2015, will require the co-operation of local governments. They are adept at evading such
tasks.
Mr Wen does not see political freedom as having much to do with happiness. In August last year
he raised hopes among some liberal-minded intellectuals when he made a flurry of statements
about the importance of political reform. Since then, the repression of dissidents has been
stepped up. Dozens have been rounded up or put under surveillance in order to prevent them
from responding to anonymous internet-circulated calls for an Arab-style “jasmine revolution” in
China. To deter any protests, police security during the NPC was even heavier than usual.
At his press conference, Mr Wen repeated some of the language he had used last August on the
need for political reform. This included a warning that China’s economic gains could be wiped out
if the country failed to reform politically. He also said people needed to be able to “criticise and
supervise” the government. But he offered no guide to how this should happen, and stressed the
need for change to be “gradual”, “orderly” and “under the leadership of the party”. He said it
would be wrong to draw comparison between the situations in the Middle East and north Africa
and that of China.
The NPC’s chairman, Wu Bangguo, went further, telling delegates that the country faced an
“abyss of internal disorder" if it strayed from the “correct political orientation”. He also declared
China had achieved its goal of setting up a “socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics”.
The Communist Party said in 1997 that it would do this by 2010, but never made it clear how
progress would be assessed. China’s struggling band of independent lawyers, who are often
spurned by courts and harassed by police for trying to defend victims of official wrongdoing, are
probably not celebrating.
The government’s crackdown on dissent apparently includes a strengthening of China’s internet
firewall to make it more difficult to use software to evade blocks on sensitive foreign websites.
Some websites in China recently carried a report that 11% of respondents to an opinion poll
believed national happiness is boosted when they express themselves freely on the internet. If
only they could.
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