许多发展中国家已意识到，民主不是包治百病的灵丹妙药。对这些彷徨者来说，中国的成功无疑更具有启发性。中国的崛起与西方民主国家的衰落，向全世界提供了鲜明的对照。当然，中国模式的政治制度不可能取代西式选举民主，因为中国从不将自己的政治模式包装成普世通用的典范，也不会对外输出。但中国的模式足以启发各国思考，如果一国政治制度不契合本国的文化、历史条件，结果一定是水土不服。中国模式的意义，不在于向世界各国提供足以替代民主制的灵丹妙药，而在于从实践上证明了良政的模式不是单一而是多元的，各国都能找到适合本国的政治制度。24年前，政治学家弗朗西斯福山预言民主将一统天下，慨叹历史从此终结，世界陷入一片静寂。现在看来，福山是杞人忧天，一个更精彩的时代正缓缓拉开帷幕。

（本文原文刊发于最新一期美国《Foreign Affairs》杂志，作者中文首发于观察者网站）

"Reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, (January/February 2013). Copyright 2013 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. ()

李世默是上海的风险投资家和政治学者，阅读该作者专栏请点击 

The Life of the Party 

The Post-Democratic Future Begins in China

By Eric X. Li

January/February 2013

ERIC X. LI is a venture capitalist and political scientist in Shanghai.

In November 2012, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held its 18th National Congress, setting in motion a once-in-a-decade transfer of power to a new generation of leaders. As expected, Xi Jinping took over as general secretary and will become the president of the People's Republic this March. The turnover was a smooth and well-orchestrated demonstration by a confidently rising superpower. That didn't stop international media and even some Chinese intellectuals, however, from portraying it as a moment of crisis. In an issue that was published before the beginning of the congress, for example, The Economist quoted unnamed scholars at a recent conference as saying that China is "unstable at the grass roots, dejected at the middle strata and out of control at the top." To be sure, months before the handover, the scandal surrounding Bo Xilai, the former party boss of the Chongqing municipality, had shattered the CCP's long-held facade of unity, which had underwritten domestic political stability since the Tiananmen Square upheavals in 1989. To make matters worse, the Chinese economy, which had sustained double-digit GDP growth for two decades, slowed, decelerating for seven straight quarters. China's economic model of rapid industrialization, labor-intensive manufacturing, large-scale government investments in infrastructure, and export growth seemed to have nearly run its course. Some in China and the West have gone so far as to predict the demise of the one-party state, which they allege cannot survive if leading politicians stop delivering economic miracles.

Such pessimism, however, is misplaced. There is no doubt that daunting challenges await Xi. But those who suggest that the CCP will not be able to deal with them fundamentally misread China's politics and the resilience of its governing institutions. Beijing will be able to meet the country's ills with dynamism and resilience, thanks to the CCP's adaptability, system of meritocracy, and legitimacy with the Chinese people. In the next decade, China will continue to rise, not fade. The country's leaders will consolidate the one party model and, in the process, challenge the West's conventional wisdom about political development and the inevitable march toward electoral democracy. In the capital of the Middle Kingdom, the world might witness the birth of a post-democratic future.

ON-THE-JOB LEARNING

The assertion that one-party rule is inherently incapable of self-correction does not reflect the historical record. During its 63 years in power, the CCP has shown extraordinary adaptability. Since its founding in 1949, the People's Republic has pursued a broad range of economic policies. First, the CCP initiated radical land collectivization in the early 1950s. This was followed by the policies of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s to mid-1970s. After them came the quasi-privatization of farmland in the early 1960s, Deng Xiaoping's market reforms in the late 1970s, and Jiang Zemin's opening up of the CCP's membership to private businesspeople in the 1990s. The underlying goal has always been economic health, and when a policy did not work-for example, the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution-China was able to find something that did: for example, Deng's reforms, which catapulted the Chinese economy into the position of second largest in the world.