李世默：示威者应停手——雨伞革命无关民主

本文作者为春秋发展战略研究院研究员李世默，英文版于今日（10月6日）刊发于美国《华盛顿邮报》网站，中文版由作者授权观察者网独家首发。

媒体鼓吹的“占中”叙事话语是，香港人对政治不满，因此要争取民主、反对北京的暴政。这种说法是错的。真相是一小撮激进——有些甚至只是天真——的意识形态狂热分子将合理的民众实际诉求改头换面，冒称争取香港的自主地位。可以说，“占中”属于全球性“广场治”（Maidancracy，maidan即臭名昭著的基辅独立广场，乌克兰革命诞生地）运动的一部分。如果任由其发展，香港不会有好结果。

冷战终结后，“广场治”运动层出不穷。从前苏联到东南亚，从阿拉伯到乌克兰，“广场治”运动影响了数以亿计的民众。开罗解放广场、基辅独立广场和香港的“广场治”具有某种共同特点。首先，民众都对国家现状和未来走向有所不满。其次，实际参与者大多出于善意，关切自身处境和社会福祉。但这种运动通常都是由抱有强烈意识形态企图心的政治活动家所领导。结果，运动宗旨变成了推翻政府甚至整个政治体制。第三，媒体摇旗呐喊，煽风点火，最终往往如其所愿，局势恶化不可收拾。第四，“民主”是这些人共同打着的旗帜。

这些运动一旦遭到暴力镇压，往往会失败，酿成流血惨剧（叙利亚即是一例）。在少数成功例子里，随之而来的也是满目疮痍、国破家亡（想想乌克兰，十余年来的不断颜色革命造成领土分裂，国将不国）。有些国家的“广场治”运动走上了恶性循环：涌向广场、推翻一个政府，然后再回到广场推翻下一个政府（埃及即是一例）。同时，老百姓经受着经济瘫痪、政治动荡甚至暴力威胁。

香港也出现了苗头。数万名抗议者霸占了这个世界金融中心的核心区域，坚持要按照他们设想的方式选举特首。他们甚至为现任特首梁振英设定了下台日期。更令人担忧的是，抗议者们与不满生活遭到打扰、生计受影响的居民发生了零星的暴力冲突。

不过，运动领头人传达的信息并不合理。因为他们所想象的香港民主目标和手段都是错的。事实上，当下香港人获得了前所未有的政治参与度。1997年以前，香港长达155年时间都是英国殖民地。28任港督都是由伦敦方面钦点，根本不考虑香港人的意见。末任港督彭定康现在自诩为民主旗手，实乃彻头彻尾的虚伪之士。

中国恢复行使主权以后，香港才具备公众参与政治治理的框架。如今，半数立法会议员由民众直选，另一半则是所谓“功能界别”。1200名香港人组成的委员会从香港居民当中选出特首。

北京方面还制定了2017年特首普选的方案，候选人由提名委员会推举——后者皆由香港居民组成。当下动乱的近因是抗议者要求公众直接推举候选人。

外因也很重要：社会上的不满情绪为“占中”提供了土壤，而其根源和臆想的北京“律令”毫无干系。香港正在经历经济衰退和艰难的社会转型期。随着内地市场经济开放度提高，香港基本丧失中国唯一口岸的地位。曾经提供大量就业岗位的香港制造业全都转移至劳动力更加便宜的地区。全球化进程和中国经济崛起提升了香港的金融中心地位，但经济上的好处大多流向了地产商、金融中间商和资本操纵者。收入中位数增长停滞甚至开始下降，而生活成本，尤其是住房成本，却逐年上涨。香港贫富差距之大，位居世界前列。

真实数据所反映的民众心态与示威活动积极分子所描述的截然相反。香港大学“民意研究计划”过去若干年的民调表明，80%以上的香港人最关心的议题是民生和经济问题，而关心政治议题的人群比例基本上很难超过两位数。

今年夏天“占中”造势之时，组织者共收集到80万支持票。两个月时间不到，反“占中”运动收集到130万支持票。

组织者呼吁发动“占中”已经一年之久。上述香港大学民调机构自2013年4月以来针对“占中”已经做过5次民意测验，几乎每次民调都有逾半数受访者明确反对“占中”（只有一次例外），而支持“占中”的比例只有个位数。

香港面临的经济问题对任何一个政府来说都是极大挑战。雪上加霜的是，有人煞有介事地将一切责任归咎于北京方面。抗议运动把矛头错误地指向对北京方面的担忧，由此，“广场治”的意识形态掩盖了香港问题的真正根源和出路。

但是，香港的未来并没有像街头显现的那样灰暗。香港与埃及、乌克兰有着本质上的不同。香港经济发展总体繁荣。法治并未中断。资源丰富，分配好了足以解决结构性问题。大部分香港人都希望解决实际问题，而不是沉溺于意识形态之争。最重要的是，香港还是经济繁荣、政治稳定的中国的一部分。正如英国学者马丁•雅克在《卫报》撰文：大陆是香港的未来而非敌人。

香港当下局势容不得半点松懈。如果任何一方误致局势升级，都会产生不幸后果。“广场治”再走更远会是毁灭性的。当地社会条件本不至于招致如此灾难。香港需要实干者，而非革命者。

（翻页见华盛顿邮报英文版）

The umbrella revolution won’t give Hong Kong democracy. Protesters should stop calling for it.

This is about inequality, not politics, so democracy can’t fix the problem.

By Eric X. Li October 6 at 1:01 AM

HONG KONG — The prevailing media narrative about the Hong Kong protest — namely that the citizens are politically dissatisfied and are fighting for democracy against the tyranny of Beijing — is false. What’s actually happening is this: A fringe of radical (or sometimes, more charitably, merely naive) ideologues are recasting the real and legitimate economic grievances of people here as a fight about Hong Kong’s autonomy. The movement is part of a global trend you might call maidancracy (rule of the square, from the infamous Maidan in central Kiev where the Ukrainian protests began). If carried out to its full extent, it will not end well for Hong Kong.

Maidancracy is an increasingly common post-Cold-War phenomenon. From the former Soviet Union to Southeast Asia, from the Arab world to Ukraine, it has affected the lives and futures of hundreds of millions of people. Hong Kong’s iteration shares certain characteristics with the ones in Cairo and Kiev: First, there is general popular discontent over the prevailing state of affairs and the region’s probable future. Second, while the foot soldiers are largely well-intentioned people with genuine concerns for their own welfare and that of the Hong Kong society, they are led by activists with a strong ideological agenda. As a result, their aim becomes the overthrow of the government or sometimes the entire political system. Third, the press relentlessly cheers them on and thereby amplifies the movement and turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fourth, democracy is always the banner.

These movements generally fail when they are put down violently, with tragic loss of life (think of Syria). In the rare cases in which they succeed, they lead to long periods of suffering and destruction (think of Ukraine, where more than a decade of continuous color revolutions have torn the country apart and now threaten the nation’s very survival). Some maidan movements seem to run on a perpetual cycle: get on the square to remove a government, only to return to the square to remove the next one (think of Egypt). In the meantime, paralysis, chaos and even violence reign.

Those trends have already developed in Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of protesters are occupying the central city district of one of the world’s largest financial centers demanding a particular method for electing the city’s future chief executives. They even set a deadline for the current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to resign, or else. (In accord with the typical maidan arc, violent skirmishes have begun between protesters and residents frustrated by the inconvenience and fearful of long-term threats to their livelihoods.)

But the protest message, as described by the loudest activists, is problematic, because its central theme of democracy for Hong Kong is all wrong. The degree of political participation in Hong Kong is actually at its highest in history. Before 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony for 155 years, during which it was ruled by 28 governors — all of them directly appointed by London. For Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, to now brand himself as the champion of democracy is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Only after the return of sovereignty to China 17 years ago did Hong Kong gain real public participation in governance. Today, half of the legislature is directly elected by the public and the other half by what are called functional constituencies. The chief executive, a native Hong Konger, is selected by a committee of 1,200 other Hong Kongers.

Further, Beijing has now devised a plan for voters to elect the next chief executive directly, rather than by committee, in 2017 among candidates fielded by a nominating committee — also made up of Hong Kongers. The proximate cause for today’s upheaval is the protesters’ demand for direct public nomination of candidates, too.

But the context matters: General discontent has provided fertile soil for this movement, and the sources of that dissatisfaction have nothing to do with imaginary diktats from Beijing. Hong Kong is going through a tough period of economic and social dislocation. Its unique advantage as the only port into and out of China has largely disappeared as the mainland’s own market economy scales up. Its manufacturing base, which provided ample employment, has been moved to cheaper locations. Globalization and the expanding Chinese economy have elevated the city’s position as an international financial center, but the economic benefits have mainly accrued to landowners and those who are engaged in financial intermediation and deployment of capital. Median income has been stagnant and is dropping, but costs of living, especially housing, have been rising. The wealth gap is among the highest in the world.

Empirical data demonstrates the nature of public discontent, and it is fundamentally different from what is being portrayed by the protesting activists. Over the past several years, polling conducted by the Public Opinion Program at the University of Hong Kong has consistently shown that well over 80 percent of Hong Kongers’ top concerns are livelihood and economic issues, with those who are concerned with political problems in the low double digits at the most.

When the Occupy Central movement was gathering steam over the summer, the protesters garnered 800,000 votes in an unofficial poll supporting the movement. Yet less than two months later an anti-Occupy campaign collected 1.3 million signatures (from Hong Kong’s 7 million population) opposing the movement. The same University of Hong Kong program has conducted five public opinion surveys since April 2013, when protesters first began to create the movement. All but one showed that more than half of Hong Kongers opposed it, and support was in the low double digits.

Hong Kong’s economic issues are daunting challenges for any government. But they have been made even more difficult by protesters attempting, successfully it seems, to manufacture a narrative that Beijing is the cause of Hong Kong’s troubles. By misdirecting the frustration and anxiety of Hong Kongers to Beijing, the maidancracy ideology has overtaken rational discourse about the root causes of Hong Kong’s problems and their solutions.

Given all this, the future of Hong Kong is not nearly as bleak as it looks on the streets at the moment. Hong Kong is fundamentally different from the likes of Egypt and Ukraine. The economy is largely prosperous. Rule of law still prevails. Resources are abundant and can be directed and allocated in the right ways to address the structural challenges. The vast majority of Hong Kongers want to solve problems and are not ideological. And most of all, Hong Kong remains an integral part of an economically vibrant and politically stable China. As Martin Jacques wrote in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, “China is Hong Kong’s future – not its enemy.”

At the moment, the situation is tense. If either side makes the mistake of escalating, we know that maidancracy can be destructive. Hong Kong’s current conditions do not call for such destruction. Let calm return to the City by the Harbor. Hong Kong needs problem solvers, not revolutionaries.