Mar 20, 2023 Kotkin on China: Communism's Achilles' Heel, Deterrence, and Learning from the USSR

https://www.chinatalk.media/p/kotkin-on-china-communisms-achilles

12 MAY 2023 'Winning the peace' : Professor Stephen Kotkin on why a Chinese-led peace deal is the ideal outcome to the war in Ukraine

https://thehub.ca/podcasts/winning-the-peace-professor-stephen-kotkin-on-why-a-chinese-led-peace-deal-is-the-ideal-outcome-to-the-war-in-ukraine/

历史学家斯蒂芬·科特金解释西方如何误解中国和中共（胡佛研究所）

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRaxfx_Dt8E

2024年8月7日

本视频展示了对美国杰出的历史学家、学者和作家之一斯蒂芬·科特金教授的采访剪辑。科特金自 1989 年以来一直担任普林斯顿大学的历史和国际事务教授，也是斯坦福大学胡佛研究所的高级研究员。

采访题为“五个问题问斯蒂芬·科特金”，由胡佛研究所的彼得·罗宾逊于 2022 年 1 月进行，涉及俄罗斯、普京和乌克兰等一系列话题。本视频已将原一小时采访的部分内容剪辑掉，仅包含与中国有关的部分。

议题包括：中国共产党和习近平从苏联解体中吸取的教训，西方为何错误地认为中国会随着经济增长和融入全球经济而实现政治自由化，共产主义制度及其权力垄断面临的最大威胁，等等。

历史学家斯蒂芬·科特金

除了胡佛奖学金，斯蒂芬·科特金还是斯坦福大学弗里曼·斯波利国际问题研究所的高级研究员。他还是普林斯顿大学公共和国际事务学院（前身为伍德罗·威尔逊学院）历史和国际事务名誉教授，在那里任教 33 年。他在加州大学伯克利分校获得博士学位，并在胡佛图书馆和档案馆从事研究工作超过三十年。

科特金的研究涵盖了历史上和现在的地缘政治和独裁政权。他的出版物包括《斯大林：等待希特勒，1929-1941》（企鹅出版社，2017 年）和《斯大林：权力悖论，1878-1928》（企鹅出版社，2014 年），这是计划中的三卷本俄罗斯在世界权力和斯大林在俄罗斯权力的历史中的两部分。他还撰写了从街头视角讲述斯大林体制崛起的历史，即《磁山：作为一种文明的斯大林主义》（加州大学，1995 年）；以及分析共产主义灭亡的三部曲，其中目前已出版两卷：《避免世界末日：苏联解体 1970-2000》（牛津，2001 年；修订版，2008 年）和《不文明社会：1989 年和共产主义建制的崩溃》（现代图书馆，2009 年），Jan T. Gross 参与撰写。第三卷将讨论苏联在第三世界和阿富汗的情况。科特金的出版物和公开演讲也经常关注共产主义中国。

科特金曾参加过国家情报委员会和其他政府机构的众多活动，并担任 Conexus Financial 和瑞穗美洲的地缘政治风险顾问。他曾担任《纽约时报》周日商业版首席书评人多年，并继续为《外交事务》、《泰晤士报文学增刊》和《华尔街日报》等媒体撰写评论和文章。他曾是美国学术团体理事会研究员、国家人文基金会研究员和古根海姆研究员。

2023 年 3 月 20 日 科特金谈中国：共产主义的致命弱点、威慑和向苏联学习

https://www.chinatalk.media/p/kotkin-on-china-communisms-achilles?

“你不能有一半共产主义，就像你不能有一半怀孕一样。”

尼古拉斯·韦尔奇和乔丹·施奈德 2023 年 3 月 20 日
斯蒂芬·科特金是他这一代最伟大的历史学家之一——对于对共产主义有着不健康迷恋的人来说，他是我们能找到的最接近罗伯特·卡罗的人。他最著名的是斯大林传记的前两部分。《磁山》、《避免世界末日》和《不文明社会》也是必读经典。

斯蒂芬对中国有着浓厚的兴趣，过去几年他在 ChinaTalk 时事通讯上的打开率高达 96% 就证明了这一点。

以下是我们对话的第一部分，我们讨论了：

习近平从苏联解体中学到了什么；

科特金对共产主义主要威胁的评估——“具有人性面孔的共产主义”意味着什么，以及为什么戈尔巴乔夫的改革最终摧毁了苏联的共产主义；

为什么中共更害怕颜色革命而不是北约扩张——以及习近平为什么在2020年对香港问题发难；

马列主义的双重成分：反资本主义+反帝国主义；

以及对列宁“制高点”的理解，以及当今中国的制高点是什么。

习近平最可怕的噩梦

?乔丹·施奈德：我想先给你们读几句习近平的名言。先从2013年开始：

苏联为什么解体？苏共为什么分崩离析？一个重要原因是意识形态领域的竞争太激烈了！全盘否定苏联的历史经验，否定苏共的历史，否定列宁，否定斯大林，就是搞苏联意识形态的混乱，搞历史虚无主义，导致各级党组织几乎无法发挥作用，党失去了对军队的领导。最终，苏共——一个伟大的政党——像一群受惊的野兽一样四分五裂！苏联——一个伟大的社会主义国家——四分五裂。这是过去的教训。

斯蒂芬·科特金：他说得对。他一生致力于防止这种事情发生在中国共产党身上。这是他最关心的事情；也是他不断向党的干部灌输的东西。让我们记住谁曾管理过一段时间的党校[习近平曾于 2007 年至 2013 年担任中共中央党校校长]。

党校有两个主题在中国的案例中占据绝对主导地位。一个是美国的衰落——关于美国如何颓废，美国是一个过时的强国。这种观点是完全错误的，越来越多的党内官员开始认识到这一点——这要归功于特朗普政府的马特·波廷格，要归功于普京在乌克兰的犯罪侵略，而这些侵略行为对他和习近平都产生了不利影响。但我们必须等待这一切的发生——认识到教授美国权力的终结是一种谬论。

但另一个大课题——事实上对他们来说是一个更大的课题——是避免中国出现苏联解体，因此要从各个方面、各个角度研究苏联解体，确保它不会发生在中国。这是习近平的人生项目，也是党校的大课题——这也是我认为自己的作品被盗版、翻译成中文、至少对一些人来说是一本值得研究的教材的原因之一。

乔丹·施奈德：我们来谈谈《不文明社会》。您在书中提出的观点是：西方认为异见人士和边缘人士是苏联解体的真正原因，但事实并非如此——马克思主义或列宁主义政权的垮台并不一定需要知识分子或广大公民社会的推动。事实上，这个制度很快就会自行崩溃，几乎就像银行挤兑式的发展一样。

详细阐述这一点，然后将其应用于当今中国。您认为 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代的苏联与 2020 年代的中国有哪些相似之处？

斯蒂芬·科特金：让我们承认，异见人士的勇气往往令人惊叹和鼓舞：人们愿意遭受可能的驱逐、强制流放、监禁甚至更糟的待遇，因为他们支持自由，反对政权的独裁和对公众的垄断；看到这些人令人印象深刻。

但对共产主义的主要威胁是共产主义。这是这个制度的悖论。
共产党是一个列宁主义组织。现在，如果你研究中国，你可能在很多年前读过舒尔曼的书——这本书恰好改编自菲利普·塞尔兹尼克的书《组织武器》；这是我研究所有列宁主义政权的必读书籍之一，包括中国政权。[乔丹：我读这本书是因为我记录了

我正在阅读这篇采访，可以确认它很精彩。]

列宁主义政权最引人注目的地方在于，它们既强大又脆弱。党无处不在。它笼罩着每一个机构、每一个组织——无论是在国家官僚机构、军队、教育系统，还是在中国的准私人领域。现在很难知道该怎么称呼它——我们正在关注 [Barry] Naughton 的重要干预，CCP Inc。

但无论如何，党是控制的伟大武器。但与此同时，你不能一半是共产主义者，就像你不能一半是怀孕一样。所以党要么是垄断，要么开始瓦解。没有政治改革的平衡。

[假设]你开始开放党，你开始说，“好吧，让我们在党内进行辩论，让我们有一些开放。也许我们甚至可以在党内进行一些竞争性选举。”乔丹，结果会怎样呢？有些人站出来说：“我不想要共产党。我想要另一个政党。”党内官员说：“不，不，不——我们不允许这样做。我们只允许党内辩论。我们保持共产党的垄断地位；我们只是稍微放宽了一点。”

1956 年我们在匈牙利看到了这一点。1968 年在捷克斯洛伐克看到了这一点——所谓的“布拉格之春”。我们在戈尔巴乔夫的改革中也看到了这一点。正如 [列昂尼德] 勃列日涅夫 1968 年所说——当时他是总书记，在布拉格观察 [亚历山大] 杜别克，他们报道了体制的瓦解，当时杜别克试图重振体制，使其自由化，开放共产主义，同时保持垄断——勃列日涅夫在政治局会议上说，“改革就是反革命”——或者我们称之为自动清算。我们也经历过戈尔巴乔夫时期——政治开放从哪里开始，哪里结束？因为人们不断推进，不断推进，直到他们脱离共产主义垄断。

所以你有选择。你可以结束政治改革，你可以镇压，你可以说，“我们把这个精灵放回瓶子里；不再进行政治改革。”或者，你可以让它展开，你可以想，“它终有一天会起作用——只是比我们预期的要混乱一点。”因此，戈尔巴乔夫忠于自己的信念：他相信这种具有人性化的共产主义；他相信改革的可能性；他相信自由化的共产党垄断——结果，他摧毁了苏联的共产主义。

因为党凌驾于苏维埃国家的联邦结构之上（也就是说，苏维埃国家是联邦制：有乌克兰苏维埃社会主义共和国和白俄罗斯苏维埃社会主义共和国，它们都是联邦的平等成员）——但党是一个具有军事纪律的金字塔；党在实践中凌驾于国家的联邦制之上。但是，一旦党因戈尔巴乔夫试图在政治上开放而解体，你就失去了苏维埃的中央集权国家，你得到的是自愿的联邦，联邦部分也决定他们想要退出——就像许多人想摆脱共产党的垄断一样。

因此，习近平现在正在回顾这段历史，但愿不会出现某种“有人情味的共产主义”，共产主义政治自由化即将发生——因为如果任由它一路发展下去，整个体系将土崩瓦解。

因此，这就是塞尔兹尼克借用列宁的术语所说的“组织武器”的悖论。这是列宁主义结构的悖论：全能而脆弱，没有政治改革的平衡。因此，对我们来说，中国出现戈尔巴乔夫将是救赎，因为戈尔巴乔夫有可能推翻这个政权。而对于习近平来说，这是必须不惜一切代价阻止的。

现在，如果你再深入思考一下：当然，他们可以开放经济，他们可以进行经济自由化。顺便说一句，苏联在 20 世纪 20 年代早期列宁领导下就做到了这一点，他们实际上在 20 世纪 20 年代加强了共产主义垄断，但他们开放了经济，允许合法的私人市场和市场行为；这被称为新经济政策，简称 NEP。从来没有政治上的新经济政策——他们没有开放政治体系；事实上，正如我所说，他们收紧了政治体系，并在一段时间内尝试了市场经济。但他们是共产主义者，所以市场本身不是目的：它是一种达到目的的手段。一旦国家不再挨饿（就像他们在 1921 年推出新经济政策时那样），一旦经济稳定下来，斯大林就会再次消除市场和私有财产。因为对于马克思主义者来说，基础不能是资本主义的，政治结构或上层建筑也不能是共产主义的，因为基础（社会经济结构）

资本、生产资料、谁控制它们）对马克思主义者来说是决定性的。

现在，你有邓小平和中国共产党——这是新经济政策的一个版本。共产党仍然垄断——没有政治上的新经济政策可言。当然，最终你会有一些乡村选举；现在它们已经不复存在了，原因很明显，它们威胁到了共产党的垄断地位。

所以我一直在观察，说：“在共产党领导层开始感到威胁到他们的垄断地位之前，这种情况能持续多久？”因为财富的积累——独立的、私人的财富——就是权力的积累。因此，事实上，即使你不坚持列宁主义关于基础和上层建筑的意识形态，即使你只是务实的，拥有大量金钱的人仍然拥有巨大的权力，他们实际上可能会威胁到共产党的垄断地位。

所以，我认为，在某个时候，他们需要再次打击私营部门，因为他们会觉得这威胁到了共产党对政治体系和公共领域的垄断。当然，现在他们需要私营部门来促进 GDP 增长和创造就业机会——但私营部门是一种威胁。所以，先是开放，然后是扼杀，开放和扼杀；这是可以预料到的动态——因为再说一遍，你不能半个共产党。

因此，[中国]政权所能做的事情是有限的，因为它不想自愿放弃权力。因此，它可以运作的空间——它能容忍多少私营部门、什么类型的私营部门，它能否在政治上完全开放，包括放松审查制度——这些都受到政权性质、组织武器和体制权力的限制。

如果你把这些放在一起，就会发现，共产党政权的每一天都是生死攸关的。现在，我们身处民主法治体系中：我们担心这个政策和那个政策、这个规范和那个规范、这个政治人物和那个政治人物——但我们在最疯狂、最无能、最腐败的政治人物面前幸存了下来；这对我们来说并不重要，因为我们的[体系]是建立在有弹性的机构之上的。

所以，回答你引用的习近平的话：这不仅对他们来说是每天都很重要——如果他们允许太多开放，他们的整个体系就会开始崩溃——不仅如此，他们还认为我们[在美国]可以加速这一进程，我们可以影响这一进程。

习近平和普京对美国最大的恐惧不是北约扩张之类的事情。这是所谓的“颜色革命”。所谓的“民主”、“西方价值观”、“法治”、“普世人权”渗透到中国公共领域，渗透到人民意识中，并不断传播——从而引发了开放政治体系的呼声。
他们必须每天都面对这种情况：努力从全球经济中获益，引进技术，引进外国直接投资 [FDI]，确保深化贸易联系以及他们能够操纵的对中国经济的一些依赖——但当他们这样做时，思想、价值观和实践有时会与技术和外国直接投资一起发展。所以这是一个非常难以日复一日管理的命题。我们看到他们对此有多么担心——你知道吗？他的担心是对的。

真正的威慑：威胁共产党的垄断
乔丹·施奈德：你之前谈到过通过创造政治替代方案的可能性来发挥影响力的想法。你能详细谈谈吗？

斯蒂芬·科特金：这些政权可能无能。他们可能什么都做不好。他们可以在半夜废除零新冠。人民可以看到他们有多无能。人民可能会承受后果——无论我们能估计出多少人会在深夜因重启而死亡——但只要他们能压制、否认所有的政治替代方案，他们就能继续掌权。因此，所有这些政权的游戏都是在政治领域培育和出现可能的替代方案。

这就是我们介入的地方。你想想对这样的政权的威慑。当然，你必须拥有他们害怕的军事能力；当然，你必须有其他工具可以使用，可能具有强制性，但也可能是一种威胁，这样他们就会受到恐吓，采取一些可能违反国际法或侵犯另一个国家主权或自治岛屿主权的行动；是的，你肯定要在军事和经济上威慑他们。

但威慑最终是一个政治主张。如果你把他们的GDP削减几个百分点，他们也会接受。他们

不是私募股权大亨。习近平削减了 GDP 中的个人分数。但是，如果突然出现另一种政治制度的可能性——另一种法治、自治、有真正的选举、党不再垄断——那将使他惊恐不已。而这正是我们的力量和权力。
我们在香港也看到了这一点。香港对这个庞大的大陆有多大威胁？香港是英国赠予中国人的惊人资源。如果你看看 1945 年日本占领英国香港的那一刻，日本现在已经输掉了战争——美国人宣布香港应该归还中国，归还给蒋介石，而不是英国；而英国人决定，“哦不，中国人不会得到香港。我们要夺回香港。”美国人试图通过谈判挽回面子或达成妥协——但英国人除了夺回香港之外对其他任何事情都不感兴趣；他们做到了。

蒋介石能抢在英国人之前夺回香港吗？也许能，也许不能——因为他的军队驻扎地点很复杂，因为他把重点放在满洲，因为他依赖美国的空运力量，以及所有你们熟知的变数。

关键是，英国人的强硬态度——而不是我们此刻看到的英国人的默许——意味着香港没有归蒋介石，意味着香港没有在 1949 年归毛泽东，意味着香港发展成为一个英国控制的国际金融中心，在法治下，资本的分配基于市场标准，而不是政治标准、裙带关系或共产党的决策。

所以，当你看到邓小平，看到中国奇迹，看到现代中国的故事时，人们会问我：“戈尔巴乔夫为什么不效仿邓小平？”我问他们：“戈尔巴乔夫在香港的时候在哪里？”从日本和台湾流入中国的外国直接投资和技术转让在哪里，而且是通过香港流入的？所以，这是关键变量，这是关键工具。

后来发现，这块土地非常有价值，以至于英国人在租约到期后将其归还给了中国人。我自己不会这么做，但再说一次，我当时不在权力中。

因此，我们有一个适合中国的制度。它为北京的共产党政权带来了巨大的价值。当然，街头有抗议，有要求民主的呼声，有真正的选举——有些事情在大陆是看不到的。这对中国政权有多大的威胁？从客观上来说，这很难衡量——但从主观上来说，这却是一切。这不仅仅是一个污点——这是在如今的中国共产党领土上建立的替代性政治制度。那么，它能持续多久呢？[直到]习近平决定不再继续下去。我们看到了这一点。

因此，这个政治替代故事，这种想象一个成功、自由、自豪和具有中国特色的中国的能力——这不是某种外国操纵的东西。事实上，这是中国国内创造的愿望。这才是我们真正发挥作用的地方，因为有可能在这里努力在习近平和我们试图保护的一些自由和国际秩序国家以及自治岛屿之间建立威慑。

马克思列宁主义真的消亡了吗？
乔丹·施奈德：你提到了塞尔兹尼克。您希望当今思考中国问题的人们会认真对待哪些苏联或共产主义研究经典著作？

斯蒂芬·科特金：我们的问题是，我们专注于中国的政治制度，认为它是从列宁主义结构演变而来的。所以我们有一百万本关于中国的好书，它们想象中国已经超越了列宁主义。然后我们发现列宁主义结构从未消失。事实上，正如人们所预料的那样，他们正试图强化它，恢复它的活力、力量和能量——不是通过政治开放，而是通过相反的方式，通过强硬的列宁主义结构、斯大林的列宁主义结构、毛泽东的列宁主义结构。

是时候回到这项工作了。现在是时候回到我们认为已经完成的工作了，我们的领域——中国研究、共产主义研究、苏联研究——产生了巨大的价值，尽管你们知道发生了这么多变化，但今天仍然具有巨大的价值。

然而，话虽如此，我们也必须明白，意识形态的故事更加复杂，无论是那些否定它的人，还是那些现在说它又回来了而且非常重要的人。列宁主义结构不一定完全决定政策或意识形态。是的，它限制了行动的范围，包括

政治改革（除非你想自杀）。但它并不能决定你对 x、y 和 z 采取什么政策——这些政策取决于利益集团之间的竞争、领导者的偏好以及他们所处的国际环境（是否有利于或损害他们的愿望或目标？）。

因此，理解动机和决策的复杂性、意识形态的作用以及意识形态的影响范围——这是旧文献有时过于简单或不屑一顾的，人们说这都是玩世不恭而不是意识形态。

无论是回顾过去还是回顾过去，了解这类事情真正重要的地方是：当你思考马克思列宁主义——即掌权的马克思主义——它有两个基本方面。

一个是反资本主义：这意味着市场、私有财产、雇佣劳动（或马克思所说的“雇佣奴隶制”）——这些不仅是剥削性的，而且从根本上疏远了人性或人道主义。它比不平等更糟糕，比剥削更糟糕。它是人类精神的根本性毁灭和异化。反资本主义是深刻而根本的；因此，超越资本主义（在黑格尔、扬弃和马克思主义意义上）的方式是消除私人利润、消除合法市场、在一段时间内消除雇佣劳动——认为你会到达彼岸，因为你要消除所有这些东西。当然，这导致了经济的完全国有化，以及我们从所谓的“计划经济”中了解到的其他激励问题——正如你所知，计划经济不是计划性的，而是国家化的、集中化的稀缺资源分配，这让资源变得更加稀缺。

但马克思列宁主义的另一部分是反帝国主义。在某些方面，反帝国主义同样重要。这种观点认为，西方——西方强国、西方国家，当时主要是欧洲（西方是一个更大的、非地理性的事物，现在大得多）——但当时人们认为西方是邪恶的，因为它是帝国主义的：它占领了其他国家，结束了后来被称为第三世界的主权，它[采用]直接统治的帝国主义——有时是间接统治的帝国主义，他们强迫你在经济或外交政策上做事，而不一定直接统治你的领土。当然，这发生在中国，他们称之为“百年屈辱”。

因此，反资本主义和反帝国主义是两个组成部分——你可以多或少地拥有其中一个组成部分。你可以削弱反资本主义，但你实际上可以增强马克思列宁主义中的反帝国主义。有些人认为（我不这么认为）马克思列宁主义已经消亡，因为反资本主义一度减弱。但反帝国主义从未消失：你可以说，如果以 1 到 10 的等级来衡量，它一直处于 11 级，甚至可能达到 12 级。因此，反帝国主义意味着马克思列宁主义实际上从未消失或消亡——即使你允许反资本主义在政权的思想 [或] 教学中有所减弱。所以你可以去党校，也许他们可以教你致富，并利用资本主义来加强中国政府——但他们从未放弃那个百年屈辱的故事，即反帝国主义的故事。

所以今天我们看到了反资本主义复兴的一种版本：不是摆脱市场，而是驯服市场，不是让市场掌权，而是让市场完全服从党的统治。这也适用于党所决定的最大恐惧，列宁曾经称之为“制高点”（中国人可能并不在所有情况下都称之为制高点；但当你在党校时，你会听到这些词汇）。

这意味着，例如，公共领域（教育、青年社会化、科技公司）以及私人教育、辅导，所有与价值观和对公共领域允许内容的控制有关的事情——这些都将成为制高点。当然，人工智能和生物技术等技术超级大国也将成为制高点；当然，[制高点是]他们可能认为的其他东西——无论是自然资源，还是拥有大量现金流和腐败和庇护的可能性，党的垄断企业总是喜欢这些。

所以你把所有这些放在一起，你就会开始发现，共同繁荣的理念之所以能引起共鸣，是因为它植根于马克思列宁主义的社会正义公平——“资本主义是邪恶的”、“资本主义造成不平等”、“资本主义造成各种不公正”；它部分植根于此。

所以你会发现[党]甚至可以复活

马克思列宁主义的反资本主义方面——他们可以给它注入活力——不一定是消除市场，而是让市场为他们服务。
毕竟，新经济政策（再次是列宁的概念）本身并不是目的：他讨厌资本主义；他讨厌市场；他讨厌私有财产；它只是达到目的的一种手段——当这种手段不再服务于这一目的时，你可以摆脱它。

所以我们现在看到，即使是意识形态也从未消失，因为它有反帝国主义的部分——正如我们所说，这是一个很大的部分。反资本主义可以复活或重新焕发活力（取决于你如何看待它，你认为它消失了多少）。

所以我们现在就在这里，即使是意识形态的东西——来自苏联学，来自毛泽东时代——也需要重新审视。尽管展望未来，它看起来不会与以前完全相同：已经发生了巨大的变化；中国有庞大的中产阶级；有类似金融的体系（很难知道在中国应该如何称呼事物，因为它们与我们体系中对应的东西不符，所以我们总是很难用我们已有的词汇来称呼中国的东西；这就是为什么“中共公司”比“中国公司”的故事更先进）。

但无论如何，你明白我的意思：有舒尔曼，在这之前有塞尔兹尼克。还有关于毛泽东、意识形态和文化大革命的丰富文献，以及毛泽东如何不断颠覆体制以谋取自己的权力：他攻击自己国家的官僚结构，以使其失去平衡，从而谋取自己的权力。习近平会做这样的事情吗？我不是在预测什么，我只是说那段历史值得了解。为什么会发生这种情况？这仅仅是毛泽东的任性，还是体制内部有什么东西导致了这种情况？

我最近读了周雪光的《中国治理逻辑》。我之所以提到这本书，是因为它是用组织理论理解中国的一个绝佳例子。组织理论曾经是斯坦福大学社会学系和其他系的专长；它曾经是这里的瑰宝：我们有吉姆·马奇，周雪光师从他。而 [周的] 书吸收了许多被遗忘的文献见解。它不是菲利普·塞尔兹尼克的“组织武器”、 “列宁主义政党结构”之类的东西——它是组织理论，在某些方面实际上是组织理论 101，但也是 201、301 和 501，一直到博士水平甚至更高。

如果你仔细看看，你会发现他向你展示了组织具有一定的内在逻辑和动态，有时你无法完全控制它。他还介绍了村庄竞争性选举的引入和演变（在他选择的乡镇中，有一定数量的村庄）。这是一个了不起的故事，因为它的结局并不好。选举结果不是加强了共产党的垄断，而是破坏了共产党的垄断，使党的垄断失去平衡——而且选举逐渐消失。所以我们没有那些竞争性的选举；我们没有在地方层面进行试验。但我们确实有地方试图应对中央强加的没有资金的支持的任务，这些任务使地方陷入巨额债务，破坏了他们的财政状况——但也创造了激励机制，让他们真正努力解决财政问题。

所以这是一本关于反常和意想不到的后果、关于组织理论、关于共产党试验的局限性的精彩书籍，即使在开放系统的村庄也是如此。其中的教训是永恒的。

乔丹·施耐德：让我们谈谈另一本精彩的书：约瑟夫·托里吉安最近关于俄罗斯和中国继承权的作品。您如何看待他的著作——以及其他关于苏联和中国转型时期的学术研究——告诉我们未来几年中国将面临什么？

斯蒂芬·科特金：乔的著作非常出色，我们应该强调许多方面。

一是乔让我们重新比较了苏联政权和北京的现政权——也就是说，比较了共产主义政权类型。再一次，它们有区别，而不仅仅是相似之处；即使在列宁主义结构中，也存在着重要的差异，乔也意识到了这些差异。但在我看来，能够再次将它们结合起来是一个重大成就。

当然，乔有实证维度。他有研究。他有关于苏联和中国两个案例的实际原始资料，包括继承政治、继承动态和结果。能够用一手资料和真实证据来做到这一点非常重要，而不是仅仅依靠推测、有根据的猜测或生成式人工智能风格的即兴创作

（不幸的是，这种比较非常流行）。乔再次正确地比较了这两个政权——不是简单地比较，而是正确地比较。他有充分的证据基础。

然后他又指出，这是一种垄断，垄断有特定的动态。在很多方面，它让我们重新以更深刻的经验主义理解，即这是关于个人统治的，而这种统治并非偶然地通过党的垄断统治而产生。所以你可以从 [Leon] Trotsky 那里得到这一点。在托洛茨基站在列宁一边之前，他是反对列宁的。他写了一段著名的文章，讲述了共产主义垄断将如何产生个人独裁——事实就是这样：他预测会出现的个人独裁杀死了他，而他却是建立该系统的主要推动者和推动者。所以你在乔身上看到了这种动态。我还可以谈到更多真正令人惊叹的方面。

继任动态对所有专制政权来说都很难——他们在这个问题上总是很脆弱，因为他们没有合法的方法来选拔或接任下一任领导人。这是生死攸关的问题。这是不确定的。所有的利益相关者都不知道，当政权更迭、领导人不可避免地去世时（这发生在所有凡人身上），他们的权力和不义之财会发生什么：斯大林七十年前就死了；毛泽东不到四十七年就死了；他们说“墓地里都是不可或缺的人”，等等。

但与此同时，这对他们来说很困难，因为继任问题非常不确定，那些想保护自己权力和不义之财的人可能会想自己进入这种不确定性中，试图保护自己的不义之财。所以在继任发生之前，你就会对继任问题产生阴谋和不稳定。

然后你就会看到继任政治——我们有时将其归因于政治差异，有时将其归因于哲学差异。乔在这些案例中表明政策差异并不存在，这是他取得的一项重大成就。

所以我只说最后一点：他展示的另一件事是，这些人都很强大，但并没有集体统治。有集体统治的表象；有集体统治的模仿；有某种集体统治的伪装。但即使在这种伪装下，这里也只有一个人掌权。而且没有制度化的继任，无论是苏联还是中国。

所以当我们说习近平“打破规则”、“打破禁忌”时，乔能够表明的是，其中没有什么是不可改变的。没有什么是真正打破“列宁主义、毛泽东主义、邓小平”意义上的。更多的是连续性而不是不连续性。
所以，我们一定要回去读乔的书，如果我们已经读过，就再读一遍。让我们一遍又一遍地谈论它，因为它是了解这个地方如何发展的一个重要出发点。

如果科特金执掌美国的对华外交政策

乔丹·施奈德：[3 月 6 日]，习近平说，

以美国为首的西方国家对我们实施了全方位的遏制、包围和压制，给我们国家的发展带来了前所未有的严峻挑战。

你认为这是习近平现在在公开场合乐于占据的新言论空间吗？

付费订阅者可以提前收听我们谈话的后半部分。我们讨论：

尽管——或者因为——最近紧张局势加剧，对中美关系持乐观态度的理由；

为什么科特金认为中美冷战既好又必要；

美国如何在外交上“占得先机”；

理解里根的外交政策——他既是“运动保守派”，又是“交易保守派”。

2023 年 5 月 12 日“赢得和平”：斯蒂芬·科特金教授谈为什么中国主导的和平协议是乌克兰战争的理想结果

https://thehub.ca/podcasts/winning-the-peace-professor-stephen-kotkin-on-why-a-chinese-led-peace-deal-is-the-ideal-outcome-to-the-war-in-ukraine/?

2023 年 5 月 12 日

以下是 Hub 独家报道，以私人讲座的形式由世界领先的俄罗斯历史和国际关系学者之一斯蒂芬·科特金教授发表。该讲座于 4 月中旬在加拿大多伦多加德纳博物馆举行的一场活动中发表，该活动由 Hub 执行董事 Rudyard Griffiths 共同主持。此次讲座是一场当代地缘政治大师班，将乌克兰战争与中国崛起及其对美国全球霸权的独特挑战联系起来。

对于任何试图了解当代国际事件以及如何结束乌克兰战争这一关键问题的人来说，这次讲座都是必听的。斯蒂芬·科特金花了三十多年时间教授国际关系

以及普林斯顿大学的俄罗斯历史。他现在是斯坦福大学胡佛研究所的高级研究员，在那里他为《纽约时报》、《外交事务》和《华尔街日报》广泛讲授和撰写有关全球事务的文章。对于俄罗斯历史的爱好者来说，他关于约瑟夫·斯大林的传记是必读之作。《权力悖论 1879-1928》入围普利策奖决赛，紧随其后的是大师级的《等待希特勒，1929-1941》。第三卷将于今年晚些时候出版，将讲述斯大林从第二次世界大战到 1953 年去世的故事。

您可以在 Acast、亚马逊、苹果、谷歌、Spotify 或 YouTube 上收听本期 Hub Dialogues。这些剧集得到了 Ira Gluskin 和 Maxine Granovsky Gluskin 慈善基金会以及 Linda Frum & Howard Sokolowski 慈善基金会的慷慨支持。

斯蒂芬·科特金教授：我要和你们谈谈赢得和平。我们只讨论赢得战争。但赢得战争远不如赢得和平重要。你可以赢得战争，也可以失去和平。阿富汗就是一个例子。伊拉克就是一个例子。还有许多其他例子。如果你身处战争之中，你如何赢得和平？赢得和平是一个跨代问题。

所以，如果你今天占领了某些领土，你并没有赢得和平。明天、明年或后年，有人可能会回来夺回那块领土。所以，赢得和平要重要得多，也复杂得多。大约 14 个月以来，我一直在与情报和国防领域的一些最优秀的人才讨论他们如何定义胜利，更重要的是，他们计划如何赢得和平。我只举一个例子。然后我将回到过去，稍微偏离主题，最后再给出答案，如果可以的话。如果你能容忍这种漫无目的的讨论。

因此，如果乌克兰收复了所有国际公认的领土，但没有加入欧盟，也没有得到安全保障，这算是赢得和平吗？这算是某种胜利吗？但如果它没有收复领土，而是通过加速加入程序加入了欧盟，并获得了某种安全保障，但其大部分土地仍被占领，这算是胜利吗？哪种情况是胜利？很明显，乌克兰人民两次冒着生命危险推翻国内暴君，以便加入欧洲。所以，这实际上是赢得和平的唯一有效定义。

所以，如果你想加入欧洲，让我们假设你有能力——你没有——但让我们假设你能够通过军事手段夺回克里米亚。那么，现在你的境内人口以俄罗斯为主，几乎全部是俄罗斯人，他们可能会被煽动起来对你的祖国发动永久的叛乱。这对你的欧盟加入进程有什么影响？这对你的安全保障有什么影响？当你有数百万俄罗斯人不想成为你祖国的一部分时，谁会给你安全保障？因此，胜利的定义是感性的，也是可以理解的，它与所犯下的暴行有关——整个战争都是暴行，对吧？侵略，只不过是暴行，我们听到的暴行令人心碎。与此同时，我们需要赢得和平。

那么，我们如何赢得和平？好吧，如果我们都认为这是一个有趣的问题，那么现在我们就退后一步，从一个可能出乎意料的角度来探讨这个问题，或者让我们希望它是出乎意料的。我们来谈谈中国。我们有很多关于中国的故事，但这些故事都不是真的。邓小平是一个非常了不起的人，他比我矮——我心里有一个很大的位置，可以让他看起来像邓小平，而不是保罗·沃尔克，他在普林斯顿大学离我家很近，会问我“保罗，那边天气怎么样？”你知道，就是那种胡说八道。他身高 6 英尺 5 英寸，我以前只有 5 英尺 6 英寸。

不管怎样，邓小平这个小个子，他正透过海面看着日本。他说：“你知道，这个地方被轰炸了。40 个城市遭到燃烧弹袭击，伤亡人数比遭到核轰炸的两个城市还要多。我的意思是，这个地方一片狼藉。现在，他们已经是世界第二大经济体了。发生了什么？”就在他家附近。所以他看着这一切，说他们在这里有一个秘密配方。他们制造东西。然后卖给那些疯狂的美国人。这个巨大的美国消费市场，这个美国国内市场，实在是太贪得无厌了。如果你能制造美国人想要的东西，如果它足够好，美国人会买，你就能发财。换句话说，你可以利用美国中产阶级创造中国中产阶级，通过制造这些疯狂的美国人想要的东西。

美国人会买。因为日本就是这么做的。韩国也是这么做的。台湾也是这么做的。韩国和台湾都是日本的前殖民地，日本在这两个地方的后殖民转型中都发挥了重要作用。

所以，这里有一个公式，而且是一个非常成功的公式。这个公式适用于的不是很多国家，而是东亚，所以，这就是现在的策略。所以，见鬼去吧，这个疯狂的苏联模式。不管怎样，毛泽东这个疯子，摧毁了中国的计划官僚机构，因为他在文化大革命期间把他们都派到农村去做体力劳动。他破坏了中国政府实施计划经济的能力，所以到了 70 年代末，当邓小平因改革而受到赞誉时，农民自己不想再挨饿，他们在中国南锥体，也就是季风、水稻种植、水稻种植的地区重建了市场关系。大约 3 亿农民自行重新加入市场经济，虽然没有共产党的指示，但确实有一些共产党的指示。“你可以交易洋葱，但不能交易大米。”他们交易大米，然后说：“好吧，你可以交易大米，但你只能在周二和周四交易。”他们也在周一、周三和周五交易。

因此，共产党颁布了许多关于市场经济的法令，并且勉强做出让步，允许农民自己进行市场行为。然后农民创办企业，搬到城市，外国直接投资来自日本和台湾，并通过香港，这是一个有法治的英国金融中心。还记得他们说过“戈尔巴乔夫为什么不做邓小平吗？”没有香港。没有香港。你的金融体系奖励金钱，不是出于共产党的原因，而是为了资本积累的原因。好吧，你有香港，你有日本的外国直接投资，你有美国国内市场。你拥有别人没有的要素，你有邓小平，他足够聪明，可以做到这一点。你有毛泽东，他创造了公平的竞争环境，使这一切成为可能。然后，你让共产党为3亿人的创业精神而受到赞誉，他们被放开，再次参与市场行为。

所以，这就是在中国发生的事情。这不是我们的故事。我们的故事是共产党自上而下地引入改革，这些改革是成功的。所以，中国共产党因市场革命而受到赞誉。别介意共产党官员像寄生虫一样偷走了农民企业家创立的企业。

但邓小平的战略举措是：“苏联模式见鬼去吧。我们要和苏联离婚。我们要毒害他们，让他们死掉。美国将成为我们的经济伙伴。”邓小平去了德克萨斯，参加了一场牛仔竞技表演，戴上了一顶 10 加仑的牛仔帽，你们看过照片了。这比邓小平本人的帽子多出 8 加仑，而且很管用。然后，在 90 年代，邓小平的门生江泽民上台后，江泽民又把苏联，也就是现在的俄罗斯，拉回来当情妇。所以邓小平与苏联离婚，与美国联姻，然后江泽民又把俄罗斯情妇拉回来，因为俄罗斯的军事工业综合体正在走向衰亡，江泽民和中国人又把它从死里复活，开始在俄罗斯军事综合体的基础上建立中国军队，俄罗斯军事综合体就是旧苏联的末日军事综合体，对吧？

这就是发生在中国的故事，他们抛弃了苏联，然后又把俄罗斯拉回来，但只是作为他们建设军队的合作伙伴。好吧。俄罗斯一团糟。你们当中有些人可能曾经是那里的投资者，有些人可能去过那里，有些人可能是来自那个地区的难民。90 年代一片混乱。我们有改革的词汇。再一次，就像中国共产党一样，我们假装事情被称为改革，它们是由高层指挥的，而不是他们正在经历的混乱和崩溃。好吧。在 90 年代，对吧？苏联解体在 1991 年之后一直持续，普京来了，他阻止了苏联的解体。他们在 1998 年债务危机和金融崩溃中很幸运，因为它使卢布的汇率如此之高，以至于俄罗斯产品在国外便宜得多，进口产品太贵了。

所以，它促进了俄罗斯国内工业的发展。你猜怎么着？邓小平发起的中国繁荣现在提高了全球对所有东西的需求。水泥、肥料，对吧？氨。所有的磷酸盐、金属，甚至废金属，中国人对一切都欲求不满。因此，苏联在 1998 年金融危机之后起死回生，因为

中国对全球所有事物都需求无穷。中国正以如此快的速度增长。中俄直接贸易微乎其微。几乎为零。但由于全球原材料和工业投入有限，无论是否直接贸易，所有商品的价格都在上涨。那些关注大宗商品市场的人都知道大宗商品市场波动很大，但大宗商品市场曾长期牛市，而这都是基于中国需求无穷。于是，俄罗斯卷土重来，普京这个家伙每年实现 7% 的增长，人们认为这是石油。他第一任期内的平均油价为每桶 35 美元，第二任期内的平均油价为每桶 70 美元，而他每年的增长率为 7%。当油价达到每桶 100 美元以上时，他的增长就结束了，他遇到了瓶颈。

因此，认为石油是俄罗斯增长的源泉这一观点忽略了中国在全球范围内的这种需求无穷无尽。苏联只生产了大量低质量的产品，而现在价格却非常合理。这个故事为当时的中国故事锦上添花。俄罗斯起死回生。中国让俄罗斯起死回生，就像美国通过日本模式与台湾、日本和香港一起打造中国的繁荣一样。这就是故事。

我稍微简化了一下，因为你没有 15 周的时间和 85 万美元来听完整个故事。这就是美国大学的费用。我知道，这有点荒谬。但无论如何，我们稍微简化了一下。但你在这里看到了俄中关系的发展，这是没有计划的。这是偶然的。这就是我们在科学中所说的新兴属性。如果你了解复杂性和系统理论，你就会知道这不是任何人想要的。这是自然而然发生的事情。

现在，中国已经崛起。现在中国非常成功。是的。大约有 7 亿人摆脱了贫困，这是一个令人震惊的故事。如果你自 80 年代以来就经常往返中国，你就会知道这是真的。与此同时，中国有 6 亿人完全生活在市场经济之外。他们没有受过教育，没有医疗保健，没有眼镜。他们一贫如洗，没有教育，也没有人力资本投资。他们被政权抛弃了。6 亿人大多来自内陆地区。这个数字非常可观。但无论如何，有 7 亿人摆脱了贫困，其中许多人加入了中产阶级，还有亿万富翁阶层。

那么接下来会发生什么？戈尔巴乔夫认为共产主义是可以改革的，你可以拥有人性化的社会主义，你可以复兴它。它不一定是斯大林主义的。它不一定是腐败和低效的。它会再次焕发活力。所以，他开始自由化政治体系。苏联也发生过同样的事情，1956 年发生在匈牙利，1968 年发生在捷克斯洛伐克。党决定开放和自由化，在党内进行辩论。有人站起来说：“你知道，我不想要你的党。我不喜欢你的共产党。”他们说：“不，这不是交易。我们正在自由化共产党的垄断。我们允许你在党内辩论。人们说：“好吧，不，不要党。不要共产党。换个党怎么样？”

所以，你就有了这个政治自由化没有平衡的问题。它没有停止和成功的点。你无法关闭这个过程。一旦你开放，它就会开始瓦解，垄断就会消失，因为你不能半个共产主义者，就像你不能半个怀孕一样。你要么垄断，要么不垄断。所以，你可以自由化经济。你可以允许市场经济。但你不能允许政治制度自由化，因为那样你就会失去垄断。这在 56 年的匈牙利、68 年的捷克斯洛伐克和 1980 年代的戈尔巴乔夫都发生过。所以你猜怎么着？中国共产党开始研究这个问题。他们开始研究苏联解体。

信不信由你，我们将赢得乌克兰的和平。我告诉过你这是不可能的。我告诉过你这会有点倒退和偏离。但我们会到达那里。事实上，就这一点而言，我们离目标并不远。所以，中国共产党开始研究苏联解体，他们说，“你知道吗，我们不能这样做，我们不能自由化我们的制度。我们不能在政治上开放我们的体制，因为我们最终会像戈尔巴乔夫，或者像杜别克，或者像匈牙利的纳吉·伊姆雷。所以我们不会在政治上开放它。”

因此，西方世界通过贸易和投资整合中国，以使中国在政治、法治和其他方面更像西方。而中国共产党政权拒绝开放

政治上开放，因为这是自杀。所以，我们在玩经济一体化的游戏，这会导致政治和法律转型。而他们玩的是绝不允许政治转型和法律转型的游戏。你可以谈论这个，直到你脸色发青。在过去的 30 年里——你可以写关于它的文章，你可以写一整本书——你无法说服人们，特别是投资阶层，相信中国共产党不会自杀。

有一个人。他和我一样高。他说话像乔·佩西。他写了一本被盗版的书，翻译成了中文，讲述了苏联解体，讲述了没有改革平衡。你无法在政治上开放并稳定局势。这简直就是自杀，他在这本书中证明了这一点。然后他去了中国，结果发现，他的书有盗版的中文译本，他们在党校学习。这些人都拿着这本书的破旧副本。党校的校长是谁？这个名叫习近平的省级人物。他们所学的只是没有戈尔巴乔夫，没有政治开放，从未自杀。我发现了这一点，因为我看着桌子对面，有这些中国人物——无论如何，非常有趣。

所以，现在他掌权了。他现在是首席执行官，他的故事不是对西方友好的故事，因为西方对他是一个威胁。你们在加拿大有这种模式，我们在一定程度上在更南边也有，我们在欧洲、澳大利亚和日本也有这种模式，对吧？日本是西方的，但不是欧洲的。西方是一种制度，而不是地理命题。它对中国人构成了直接威胁。台湾的存在，即另一种政治制度，对他们构成了直接威胁。所以，我们现在身处这个世界，包括邓小平时代，但我们不明白这一点，因为我们认为我们在玩一场不同的游戏，即“经济一体化导致政治转型”，而不是“在我的任期内永远不会，因为我们不会成为戈尔巴乔夫”。所以，我们玩错了游戏，或者我们没有理解我们所处的游戏。

这让我们谈到乌克兰和赢得和平，然后我们会提出问题。这对乌克兰有什么作用？所以，事实证明，为了赢得和平，你需要停战。你需要结束战斗。你看，因为乌克兰需要乌克兰。俄罗斯不需要乌克兰。俄罗斯有俄罗斯。所以，如果你有一所房子，假设你的房子有 10 个房间。我进入你的房子，偷了你的两个房间，我把它们弄坏了，从这两个房间，我又在破坏其他八个房间。你们阻止我凭借你们在战场上的勇气和智慧占领另外八间房间。但我仍占据你们的两间房间，并破坏其余房间。你们有一百多万、一百五十万的孩子在用波兰语和德语、乌克兰语以外的语言上学。一年又一年过去了。他们还是乌克兰人吗？你们没有预算，你们没有经济。你们没有关税，你们没有税收收入。你们正在死去。我们看到的那支勇敢、聪明的乌克兰军队已经死了。他们走了。他们死了或受了重伤。你们在消耗弹药，你们在消耗没有人增加生产的东西。我们只是在提供库存。

如果你想增加产量，你想开办两条新的装配线来生产军火，而你是一家私营公司，他们给你一份两年的合同，你说，“好吧，我将在 2025 年交付军火。”也许战争在 2025 年就结束了，你刚刚建造了两条新的装配线。所以，你需要一份十年的合同，而不是两年的合同，然后你才能开办两条新的装配线。否则，你就会陷入困境。这就是我们在战争中的处境。如果有人摧毁你的房子，无论你有多英勇，无论你的抵抗有多惊人，你都不会获胜。因为俄罗斯人占领了他们自己的房子，它有 1000 个房间。他们不需要你的房子，但你只有一所房子，乌克兰。

所以，早点停战吧。收回尽可能多的领土是可以的，但要有一个非军事区，一个比西巴尔干半岛正在经历的更快的欧盟加入进程。一个不会是北约的安全保障。如果你去过德国，你就会明白，北约是建立在共识的基础上的。乌克兰不可能加入北约。绝对不可能。公开讨论这个问题只会破坏北约的团结。有可能出现韩国的结果，这将非常令人不满意。还有朝鲜，这是一个威胁。家庭被拆散。破坏和重建，等等。威胁还在继续。朝鲜半岛没有和平条约，只有停战。冷战

战争结束了，但还没有结束。然而，他们有安全保障，韩国是世界上最成功的国家之一。

因此，如果乌克兰像韩国一样，停战，有安全保障，那将是乌克兰的一大胜利。这可能不是与美国的双边协议——可能是双边协议，波兰加入，波罗的海国家加入，斯堪的纳维亚国家加入，但这不是北约的保证。你越早得到它越好。如果弗拉基米尔·普京签署了一份文件，那份文件有什么价值？他会信守诺言，承诺停战，并信守诺言吗？当然不会。永远不会，除非他在北京签署这份文件。因为如果他在北京签署这份文件，他就不能对习近平竖中指。他处于危险之中。这是他唯一剩下的桥梁。他已经烧毁了所有其他桥梁。

所以你希望中国人监督和平进程，监督停战，因为这是让普京信守诺言的唯一方法。我知道这听起来很疯狂，但中国的和平提议是假的。但它不是假的。这是唯一的解决方案。所以，拜登派他的人接受停战，习近平派他的人接受停战，他们在北京签字。否则，这个人可以暂停，明年、后年或五年后去喝茶。你夺回克里米亚，你就有叛乱问题。十年或五十年后，俄罗斯人会回来。也许明年，他们会回来。鲍里斯·叶利钦要求克里米亚归还俄罗斯。鲍里斯·叶利钦在 1991 年，当时苏联还没有解体。所以，克里米亚，俄罗斯人会以某种方式从中走出来，这对赢得和平来说是困难的。

在暴行肆虐的情况下，他们屠杀你们的平民，强奸你们的妇女和女孩，绑架你们的孩子，摧毁你们的文化遗产，以消除任何证明你们确实作为一个独立国家和文化存在的证据，这是一个很难接受的论点。不能强加赔偿和战争罪法庭并收复你们的所有领土，就是赢得和平。我们还远没有达到这个目标。但我们现在比十四个月前更接近目标了。我们将看看乌克兰的进攻是否发生——他们现在实际上没有任何弹药，因为他们在巴赫穆特消耗了这些弹药。我们在一月份发送的弹药是我们战争中发送的最多的弹药，他们将这些弹药消耗在没有战略意义的领土上。现在他们要求更多，他们乞求更多。你夺回一些领土，或者你不夺回。假设你夺回了它。你如何赢得和平？如何让俄罗斯人停下来，不再试图夺回它？明年还是后年？你需要赢得和平，而不仅仅是赢得战争。

所以，这是非常不令人满意的。从某种程度上说，这非常令人沮丧。这在政治上非常困难，这是目前摆在桌面上的最好的结果，除非出现奇迹。奇迹就是俄罗斯在战场上解体，俄罗斯军队就此瓦解。十四个月来，我们一直在听说这件事，但还没有证据。这可能会发生，但没有证据。我们一直听说普京遇到了麻烦，也许会被推翻。没有证据。这可能会发生。他必须被推翻，但不是被升级的替代者推翻，而是被投降的替代者推翻。

我们一直希望的奇迹还没有发生。它们，再一次，可能会发生。战争是不可预测的，但如果你冷静地看待证据，你会看到美国和中国联合起来，迫使双方停战，这样战争就停止了，乌克兰就可以重建，建立能够吸收 3500 亿美元重建资金的机构，这是战前 GDP 的两倍。重建的最低估计是战前 GDP 的两倍，这些钱会进来，不会被偷走，也不会随着他们现在的机构消失？我不这么认为。所以你必须为加入欧盟的进程建立这些机构，才能妥善吸收重建资金。就是这样。这不是一个令人振奋的故事。但这就是摆在桌面上的故事。无论如何，谢谢你的关注。

Historian Stephen Kotkin explains how the West got China and the CCP wrong (Hoover Institution)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRaxfx_Dt8E

2024年8月7日
This video presents edited clips from an interview with Professor Stephen Kotkin, one of America’s preeminent historians, academic and author.  Kotkin has been a professor of history and International Affairs at Princeton since 1989, and is a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

The interview— entitled “Five Questions for Stephen Kotkin” — was conducted in January, 2022 by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution, and touched on a range of topics, including Russia, Putin and Ukraine. This video has edited out the parts of the original one hour interview to include only the segments pertaining to China.

Topics include: the lessons the CCP and Xi Jinping learned from the collapse of the USSR, how the West got it wrong in assuming China would liberalize politically with economic growth and integration into global economy, the biggest threat to communist systems and their monopoly on power, and more.

Historian Stephen Kotkin

In addition to his Hoover fellowship, Stephen Kotkin is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School), where he taught for 33 years. He earned his PhD at the University of California–Berkeley and has been conducting research in the Hoover Library & Archives for more than three decades.

Kotkin’s research encompasses geopolitics and authoritarian regimes in history and in the present. His publications include Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (Penguin, 2017) and Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (Penguin, 2014), two parts of a planned three-volume history of Russian power in the world and of Stalin’s power in Russia. He has also written a history of the Stalin system’s rise from a street-level perspective, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (University of California 1995); and a trilogy analyzing Communism’s demise, of which two volumes have appeared thus far: Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970–2000 (Oxford, 2001; rev. ed. 2008) and Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, with a contribution by Jan T. Gross (Modern Library, 2009). The third volume will be on the Soviet Union in the third world and Afghanistan. Kotkin’s publications and public lectures also often focus on Communist China.

Kotkin has participated in numerous events of the National Intelligence Council, among other government bodies, and is a consultant in geopolitical risk to Conexus Financial and Mizuho Americas. He served as the lead book reviewer for the New York Times Sunday Business Section for a number of years and continues to write reviews and essays for Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal, among other venues. He has been an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.

MAR 20, 2023 Kotkin on China: Communism's Achilles' Heel, Deterrence, and Learning from the USSR

https://www.chinatalk.media/p/kotkin-on-china-communisms-achilles?

"You can't be half Communist, just like you can't be half pregnant.”

NICHOLAS WELCH AND JORDAN SCHNEIDER  MAR 20, 2023

Stephen Kotkin is one of the greatest historians of his generation — the closest thing we have to a Robert Caro for people with an unhealthy fascination with Communism. He’s most famous for the first two parts of his Stalin biography. Magnetic Mountain, Armageddon Averted, and Uncivil Society are also must-read classics. 

Stephen has a deep interest in China, as shown by his 96% open rate on the ChinaTalk newsletter over the past few years.

Below is part one of our conversation, in which we discuss:

• What Xi learned from the USSR’s fall;

• Kotkin’s assessment of the main threat to Communism — what “Communism with a human face” means, and why Gorbachev’s reforms ultimately destroyed Communism in the USSR;

• Why the CCP fears color revolutions more than, say, NATO expansion — and why Xi snapped on Hong Kong in 2020;

• The twin components of Marxism-Leninism: anti-capitalism + anti-imperialism;

• And an understanding of Lenin’s “commanding heights,” and what China’s commanding heights are today.

  Xi's Worst Nightmare

Jordan Schneider: I want to start by reading you some Xi quotes. Let’s start with 2013:

Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fall to pieces? An important reason is that in the ideological domain, competition is fierce! To completely repudiate the historical experience of the Soviet Union, to repudiate the history of the CPSU, to repudiate Lenin, to repudiate Stalin was to wreck chaos in Soviet ideology and engage in historical nihilism. It caused Party organizations at all levels to have barely any function whatsoever. It robbed the Party of its leadership of the military. In the end the CPSU — as great a Party as it was — scattered like a flock of frightened beasts! The Soviet Union — as great a socialist state as it was — shattered into pieces. This is a lesson from the past.

Stephen Kotkin: He’s right. His entire life is dedicated to preventing this from happening to the Chinese Communist Party. This is what is uppermost in his mind; it’s what he inculcates in the Party cadres incessantly. Let’s remember who ran the Party School for a while [Ed. Xi was the president of the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party from 2007 to 2013].

There are two subjects at Party School that are absolutely dominant in the Chinese case. One is the supposed decline of the United States — about how the United States is decadent, the United States is a power of the past. This [viewpoint] is completely wrong, and more and more Party officials are coming to understand this — thanks to Matt Pottinger in the Trump administration, thanks to Putin’s criminal aggression in Ukraine which has backfired on both him and Xi Jinping. But we’ll have to wait for that to play out — the realization that teaching about the end of American power is a fallacy.

But the other big subject — in fact it’s an even bigger subject for them — is not having a Soviet collapse in China, and therefore studying the Soviet collapse all the way, every way, every angle, and making sure it doesn’t happen [in China]. That is Xi’s life project, [and] the big subject at the Party School — and it’s one of the reasons why I think my own work was pirated, translated into Chinese and, at least for some people, was a text to study.

Jordan Schneider: Let’s talk about Uncivil Society. The idea that you put forward in that book: the Western vision that dissidents and folks around the margins were the real cause of the fall of the Soviet Union is in fact not the case — that a collapse of a Marxist or Leninist regime doesn’t necessarily need an intelligentsia or a broad civil society to push you there. In fact, the system can just collapse on itself very quickly, in almost a bank-run-style development. 

Elaborate on that, and then apply it to China today. What do you see and not see as parallels between the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and China in the 2020s?

Stephen Kotkin: Let’s acknowledge that the courage of the dissidents is often just astonishing and inspiring: people willing to suffer potential expulsion, forced exile, imprisonment, or worse because they stand for freedom, against the regime’s dictatorship and monopoly over the public; it’s very impressive to see these people.

But the main threat to Communism is Communism. This is the paradox of the system.

The Communist Party is a Leninist organization. Now, if you were in China studies, you probably read the book by [Franz] Schurmann many years ago — which happens to be an adaptation of Philip Selznick’s book, The Organizational Weapon; it’s one of my go-to books on all Leninist regimes, including the Chinese one. [Jordan: I read this book after recording this interview and can confirm it is fantastic.]

And the most remarkable thing about Leninist regimes is that they’re all-powerful and brittle simultaneously. The Party is ubiquitous. It shadows every single institution, every organization — whether that’s in the state bureaucracy, in the military, in the education system, and, in China’s case, in the quasi-private sphere. It’s hard to know what to call it now — we’re following [Barry] Naughton’s important intervention, CCP Inc.

But in any case, the Party is this great weapon for control. At the same time, however, you can’t be half Communist, just like you can’t be half pregnant. So the Party is either a monopoly, or it begins to unravel. There’s no political-reform equilibrium.

[Let’s say] you begin to open up the party, you begin to say, “Okay, let’s have debate inside the Party, let’s have some opening. Let’s maybe even have some competitive elections inside the party.” And what happens, Jordan? What happens is some people come forward and they say, “I don’t want the Communist Party. I want another party.” And the Party officials say, “No, no, no — that’s not what we’re allowing. We’re only allowing debate inside the Party. We’re keeping the Communist Party monopoly; we’re just liberalizing it a little.”

We saw this in Hungary in 1956. We saw this in Czechoslovakia — the so-called “Prague Spring” in 1968. We saw this in [Mikhail] Gorbachev’s reforms. As [Leonid] Brezhnev said in 1968 — he was the general secretary watching [Alexander] Dub?ek in Prague, and they were reporting on the unraveling of the system as Dub?ek was trying to re-energize it, liberalize it, open up Communism while keeping the monopoly — and Brezhnev said at a Politburo meeting, “Reform is counterrevolution” — or what we would call auto-liquidation. And we lived through the Gorbachev period as well — where you start the opening politically, and where does it stop? Because people keep pushing and pushing and pushing until they’re outside the Communist monopoly.

And so you have a choice. You can end the political reform, and you can crack down, and you can say, “We’re putting this genie back in the bottle; no more political reform.” Or, you can let it unfold, and you can think, “It’s going to work at some point — it’s just a little bit more chaotic than we anticipated.” So Gorbachev was true to his beliefs: he believed in this Communism with a human face; he believed in the possibility of reform; he believed in a liberalized Communist Party monopoly — and as a result, he destroyed Communism in the Soviet Union.

And because the Party overrode the federal structure of the Soviet state (that is to say, the Soviet state was a federalism: there was the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, and they were all equal members of the federation) — but the Party was a pyramid with military discipline; the Party overrode the state’s federalism in practice. But once the Party disintegrates as a result of Gorbachev trying to open it up politically, you lose the Soviet’s centralized state, you get the voluntary federation, and the federal pieces decide they want out as well — just like many people wanted out of the Communist Party monopoly.

And so Xi Jinping is now looking back at this history, and God forbid some “Communism with a human face,” Communist political liberalization is going to take place — because it would be the unraveling of the system if it were allowed to go all the way.

So, this is the paradox of what Selznick called the “organizational weapon,” borrowing Lenin’s terminology. This is the paradox of a Leninist structure: all-powerful and brittle at the same time, with no political-reform equilibrium. Therefore, for us a Gorbachev in China would be salvation, because a Gorbachev could potentially bring down that regime. And for Xi Jinping, that is to be prevented at all costs.

Now, if you think about this a little bit more deeply: sure, they can open up the economy, they can do economic liberalization. The Soviets did this, by the way, under Lenin in the early 1920s, where they actually strengthened the Communist monopoly in the 1920s, and yet they opened up the economy to allow legal private markets and market behavior; this was called the New Economic Policy, or the NEP. There was never a political NEP — they didn’t open up the political system; in fact, as I said, they tightened the political system, and they experimented with the market economy for a time. But they were Communists, so the market was not an end in itself: it was a means to an end. Once the country wasn’t starving anymore (as it was when they launched the New Economic Policy in 1921), once things had stabilized economically, you had Stalin eliminate markets and private property once again. Because for Marxists, the base can’t be capitalist, and the political structure or the superstructure can’t be Communist and survive — because the base (the socioeconomic relations, the means of production, who controls them) is determinative for Marxists.

Now, you have Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Communists as well — it’s a version of the New Economic Policy. There still is a Communist monopoly — no political NEP to speak of. Sure, eventually you get some village elections; they’re gone now, for the obvious reason that they threatened the Communist monopoly.

And so all the time I’ve been watching, saying, “How far can this go before the Communist Party leadership begins to feel that it threatens their monopoly?” Because accumulation of wealth — independent, private wealth — is the accumulation of power. And so ipso facto, even if you don’t adhere to the Leninist ideology about the base and the superstructure, even if you are just pragmatically driven, nonetheless, people with a lot of money have a lot of power, and they could ipso facto threaten the Communist monopoly.

So at some point, I’m thinking, they’re going to need to crack down on the private sector again, because they’re going to feel that it’s threatening their Communist Party monopoly over the political system and the public sphere. Now of course, they need the private sector for GDP growth and job creation — but the private sector is a threat. So you have the opening and then the strangulation, and the opening and the strangulation; this is the dynamic you would expect — because once again, you can’t be half Communist.

So [the Chinese] regime is limited in what it can do, because it doesn’t want to give up its power voluntarily. And so the space in which it can operate — how much private sector it can tolerate and what kind, whether it can open up at all politically, including relaxing censorship — these are limited by the nature of the regime, by the organizational weapon, by the power of the system.

If you put this together, it turns out that every day is existential for the Communist regime. Now, we here in democratic, rule-of-law systems: we worry about this policy and that policy, this norm-busting and that norm-busting, this political figure and that political figure — but we survive the craziest political figures, the most inept political figures, the most corrupt political figures; it’s not existential for us, because our [system] is based on resilient institutions.

And so to answer the quote from Xi Jinping that you presented: not only is every day existential for them — in the sense that if they allow too much opening, their entire system can begin to unravel — not only that, but they think that we [in the US] can accelerate that process, that we can influence that process.

The great fear of Xi Jinping and Putin when it comes to the US is not something like NATO expansion. It’s so-called “color revolution.” It’s so-called “democracy,” “Western values,” “rule of law,” “universal human rights” penetrating the Chinese public sphere, penetrating the consciousness of the people, and spreading — and therefore giving rise to calls for opening up the political system.

And they must live with this every day: try to reap the benefits of the global economy, and import the technology, and import the foreign direct investment [FDI], and make sure they deepen the trade ties and some of those dependencies on the Chinese economy that they’re able to manipulate — but when they do that, the ideas and the values and the practices sometimes ride along with the technology and the FDI. And so that’s a very difficult proposition to manage on a day-by-day basis. And we see how worried they are about this — and you know what? He’s right to be worried.

True Deterrence: Threatening the Communist Monopoly

Jordan Schneider: You’ve spoken before about the idea of leverage by creating the possibility of political alternatives. Can you expand on that?

Stephen Kotkin: These regimes can be inept. They can fail at everything. They can repeal zero covid in the middle of the night. The people can see how inept they are. The people can suffer the consequences — whatever the number that we can guesstimate of deaths of people who are vulnerable to the reopening in the dead of night — and yet they can stay in power provided they can suppress, deny all political alternatives. So the game with all of these regimes is the cultivation, the appearance of possible alternatives in the political realm.

And so that’s where we come in. You think about deterrence for a regime like this. Sure, you have to have military capabilities that they’re afraid of; sure, you have to have other instruments in the toolkit that you can use, potentially coercively, but also just as a threat, so that they’re intimidated to take some actions that might transgress international law or the sovereignty of another country, or the sovereignty of a self-governing island; yes, you must deter them militarily and economically for sure.

But deterrence is ultimately a political proposition. If you shave a couple of points off of their GDP, they’re okay with that. They’re not private equity moguls. Xi Jinping shaves his own points off his GDP. But if, all of a sudden, there’s the possibility of an alternative political system — of an alternative rule-of-law, self-government, where there are genuine elections, where the party doesn’t have a monopoly anymore — that scares the Jesus out of him. And that’s our strength and power.

And so we saw this with Hong Kong. How much did Hong Kong threaten this gigantic mainland? Hong Kong was this amazing resource gifted to the Chinese by the British. If you look at the 1945 moment when the Japanese are in occupation of British Hong Kong, and the Japanese have now lost the war — and the Americans declare that Hong Kong is supposed to go back to China, to Chiang Kai-shek, not to Britain; and the British decide, “Oh no, the Chinese are not getting Hong Kong. We’re taking Hong Kong back for ourselves.” And the Americans try to negotiate a face-save or a compromise — but the British are not interested in anything other than reseizure of Hong Kong; and they carry it out.

Could Chiang Kai-shek have taken Hong Kong back before the British? Maybe, maybe not — because of the complexity of where his troops were located, because of his focus on Manchuria, because of his reliance on America for airlift power, and all the variables that you know well.

The point is that the assertiveness of the British — rather than the acquiescence which we could have seen from the British in this moment — meant that Hong Kong did not go to Chiang Kai-shek, which meant it did not go to Mao in 1949, which meant that Hong Kong developed as a British-controlled international financial center under the rule of law where capital was allocated on the basis of market criteria rather than political criteria, cronyism, or Communist Party decision-making.

And so you look at Deng Xiaoping, and you look at the Chinese miracle, and you look at the story of modern China — and people say to me, “Why didn’t Gorbachev do a Deng Xiaoping?” And I say to them, “Where was Gorbachev during Hong Kong?” Where was not just the FDI and tech transfer that came in from Japan and Taiwan into China — but was funneled in through Hong Kong? And so that’s the key variable, that’s the key instrument.

And then it turns out that this is so valuable [that] the British handed it back to the Chinese when the lease expires. I myself would not have done that, but once again, I wasn’t in power.

And so here we have, then, a system that works for China. It delivers enormous value for the Communist regime in Beijing. Sure, there are protests in the streets, there are calls for democracy, there are real elections — there are things which you don’t get on the mainland. How threatening was it to the regime in China? On an objective basis, it’s hard to measure — but on a subjective basis, it was everything. It was not just a blackeye — it was an alternative political system on what was now Chinese Communist territory. And so how long was it going to last? [Until] Xi Jinping decided it was not going to last anymore. And we saw that.

And so, this political alternative story, this ability to imagine a China which is successful and free and proud and Chinese — it’s not some foreign-manipulated thing. It is, in fact, a domestically created Chinese aspiration. That’s really where we come in as, potentially, working to put deterrence here in between Xi Jinping and some of the freedom and international-order countries and self-governing islands that we’re trying to protect.

Did Marxism-Leninism Ever Really Die?

Jordan Schneider: You mentioned Selznick. What’s another book people should be reading in 2023 from the canon of Soviet or Communism studies that you’d hope folks thinking about China today would take seriously?

Stephen Kotkin: The problem we have is that we focused on the Chinese political system and thought it evolved out of the Leninist structure. So we have a million really good books on China that imagine that China has transcended the Leninism. And then when we discover that the Leninist structure never went away. And in fact, they’re trying, as one would expect, to reinforce it, to bring back its dynamism, strength, and energy — not with political opening, but with the opposite, with the hardline version of the Leninist structure, with the Stalin version of the Leninist structure, with the Mao version of the Leninist structure.

It’s time to return to that work. It’s time to return to the work that we thought was done, that our field — China studies, Communist studies, Soviet studies — produced and is of tremendous value still today, despite all the changes that you know about.

However, having said that, it’s also necessary to understand that the ideology story is more complex, both from those who dismiss it and those who now say that it’s back and really important. The Leninist structure doesn’t necessarily determine policies or ideologies completely. Yes, it limits the scope of action in terms of political reform (unless you want to commit suicide). But it doesn’t determine what policy you might have on x, y, and z — those are determined in the competition among interest groups, in the leader’s preferences, in the international environment in which they find themselves (is it conducive or corrosive to their aspirations or aims?).

And so the complexity of understanding motivation and decision-making, the role of ideology and how far ideology goes — this is something that the old literature sometimes was simplistic about or dismissive about on the other side, where people said it was all cynicism and not ideology.

Here’s what’s really important to understand about these kinds of things, in going as well as looking back: when you think about Marxism-Leninism — which is Marxism in power — it had two fundamental aspects.

One was anti-capitalism: meaning that markets, private property, wage labor (or “wage slavery,” as Marx called it) — these were not just exploitative but fundamentally alienating in a humanity or humane sense. It was worse than inequality. It was worse than exploitation. It was the fundamental destruction, alienation of the human spirit. The anti-capitalism was deep and fundamental; and so the way you transcended capitalism (in the Hegelian, Aufhebung, Marxist sense) was to eliminate private profits, eliminate legal markets, eliminate wage labor for a time — thinking that you were going to get to the other side because you were going to remove all of these things. And of course, this led to complete statization of the economy and the kind of incentive problems in other things that we know from the so-called “planned economy” — which, as you know, was not planned but was a statized, centralized allocation of scarce resources that made resources even scarcer.

But the other piece of Marxism-Leninism was anti-imperialism. And anti-imperialism was just as big, in some ways. This was the idea that the West — Western power, Western countries, predominantly Europe at the time (the West is something larger and non-geographical, much bigger now) — but at the time, the idea was that the West was evil because it was imperialist: it took over other countries, it ended the sovereignty of what came to be called the Third World, it [employed] direct-rule imperialism — and sometimes indirect-rule imperialism, where they coerced you to do things in your economy or in your foreign policy without necessarily directly ruling your territory. And of course, this happened to China during what they call the “Century of Humiliation.”

So the anti-capitalism and the anti-imperialism are the two component parts — and you can have more or less of one of those components. You can diminish the anti-capitalism, but you can actually enhance the anti-imperialism in the Marxism-Leninism. Some people thought (I didn’t) that Marxism-Leninism had died because of the diminishment of the anti-capitalism for a time. But the anti-imperialism never went away: you could argue that it was, on a scale of one to ten, an eleven the whole time, and maybe even went to a twelve. So the anti-imperialism means that Marxism-Leninism never actually did vanish or die — even if you allow for the anti-capitalism to have been diminished somewhat in the thinking [or] teaching of the regime. So you could go to Party School, and maybe they could teach you to get rich and use capitalism to reinforce the Chinese state — but they never relinquished that story of the Century of Humiliation, of anti-imperialism.

So now today we see a version of a revival of the anti-capitalism: not getting rid of the markets but taming the markets, not having the markets be in charge but having the markets solely subservient to Party rule. And that goes for the biggest fears that the Party determines, what Lenin used to call the “commanding heights” (and what the Chinese might not call the commanding heights in all cases; but when you’re at Party School, that’s the vocabulary you’re going to hear).

And so that means, for example, the public sphere (education, socialization of youth, tech companies) and then private education, tutoring, all of the things that are about values and control over what’s permissible in the public sphere — that’s going to be commanding heights. And then of course, the tech superpower stuff, in the sense of AI and biotech, is also going to be commanding heights; and then of course [the commanding heights are] the other things they might deem — whether it’s natural resources, where you have massive cash flow and possibilities for corruption and patronage, which Party monopolies always love.

So you put all of this together, and you begin to see that the common prosperity idea has resonance because it’s rooted in the Marxism-Leninism social justice fairness — “capitalism is evil,” “capitalism creates inequality,” “capitalism creates all sorts of injustice”; it’s rooted partially in that.

And so you see that [the Party] can resurrect even the anti-capitalist side of the Marxism-Leninism — they can breathe life into it — without necessarily eliminating the markets, but getting the markets to work for them.

And after all, the New Economic Policy (once again in Lenin’s conception) was not an end in itself: he hated capitalism; he hated markets; he hated private property; it was just a means to an end — and when that means was no longer serving that end, you could get rid of it.

And so we see now that even the ideology never went away because of the anti-imperialism piece of it — which is a big chunk, as we said. And the anti-capitalism can be resurrected or re-energized (depending on how you look at it, how much you think it went away).

And so here we are, where even the ideological stuff — from the Sovietology, from the Mao era — needs a revisit. Although going forward, it’s not going to look identical to what it looked like before: there have been tremendous changes; there’s a huge middle class; there’s a quasi-sort-of-almost financial system (it’s hard to know what to call things in China, because they don’t correspond to the kind of stuff that’s equivalent in our system, and so we always have trouble calling the Chinese stuff with the same vocabulary that we have; that’s why the CCP Inc. was an improvement on the China Inc. story).

But anyway, you get the point: there’s Schurmann, and before that there’s Selznick. And then there’s rich literature about Mao and ideology and the Cultural Revolution, and how Mao was constantly upending the system for his own power: he was attacking the bureaucratic structures of his own state to keep them off balance for his own power. Will Xi Jinping do something like that? I’m not predicting anything, but I’m just saying that that history is worth understanding. Why did that happen? Was it solely the caprice of Mao, or was there something inside the system that went that way?

I recently read Xueguang Zhou’s Logic of Governance in China. I mention it because it’s a fantastic example of using org theory to understand China. Organizational theory was once in the sociology department and other departments here at Stanford; it was once the jewel in the crown here: we had Jim March, with whom Xueguang studied. And [Zhou’s] book incorporates so many of the insights of that literature that’s been forgotten. It’s not the Philip Selznick “organizational weapon,” “Leninist Party structure” stuff — it’s org theory, really org theory 101 in some ways, but also 201 and 301 and 501 and all the way up to and beyond the PhD level.

And if you look at it, he shows you that organizations have a certain inherent logic and a dynamic, and that sometimes you don’t fully control this. And he goes through the introduction and evolution of competitive elections in villages (in a township that he’s chosen, which has a certain number of villages). And it’s a remarkable story because it doesn’t end well. The elections turn out not to enhance Communist Party monopoly, but to destabilize Communist Party monopoly, to unbalance the Party’s monopoly — and they peter out. And so we don’t have those competitive elections; we don’t have the experimentation at the local level. But what we do have is the localities trying to cope with centrally imposed mandates that are unfunded and that put the localities into massive debt and ruin their fiscal situation — but also create the incentive structures for them to actually work in the fiscal situation in an attempt to fix it.

And so it’s a brilliant book about perverse and unintended consequences, about org theory, about the limits of Communist Party experimentation, even in villages with opening the system up. And the lessons are eternal there.

Jordan Schneider: So let’s talk about another fantastic book: Joseph Torigian’s recent work about succession in Russia and China. What’s your take on the lessons that his work — and other scholarship around transition moments, both in the USSR and in China — tell us about what we are going to face at some point in the coming years in China?

Stephen Kotkin: So Joe’s work is absolutely outstanding, and there are many aspects that we should emphasize here.

One is Joe has returned us to comparisons of the Soviet regime and the current regime in Beijing — that is to say, comparisons of Communist regime types. Once again, there are differences, not just similarities; even within the Leninist structure, there are important differences, and Joe is alive to these differences. But the idea that they can be put together once again is a major achievement in my view.

Then of course, Joe has the empirical dimension down. He’s got the research. He’s got the actual primary materials on both cases, the Soviet case and the Chinese case, in terms of succession politics, succession dynamics, and outcomes. It’s very important to be able to do this with primary-source material, with real evidence, rather than just speculation or educated guesses or generative AI–style riffing (which is very popular, unfortunately). Joe’s got the fact that he’s comparing properly the regimes once again — not simplistically, but properly. He’s got the fact that there’s a massive evidentiary base.

And then he has got the fact that this is a monopoly, and there are specific dynamics to the monopoly. In so many ways, it’s returning us to an understanding with much deeper empirics that this is about the rule of an individual, which comes about not accidentally through the monopolistic rule of the party. So you get this from [Leon] Trotsky. Before Trotsky was on Lenin’s side, he was against Lenin. And he wrote this famous passage about how Communist monopoly would produce individual dictatorship — and there it was: that individual dictatorship that he predicted would come about killed him, after he, was a major facilitator and an enabler of the creation of that system. And so you have that dynamic in Joe. And I could hit many more aspects to it that are really amazing.

The succession dynamics are really hard for all authoritarian regimes — they’re always vulnerable on this question, because they don’t have a legal way for people to be chosen or to assume the next leadership. It’s existential. It’s uncertain. All the stakeholders don’t know what happens to their power and ill-gotten wealth when there’s regime change, when the leader inevitably dies (which happens to all mortal human beings): it happened to Stalin seventy years ago; it happened to Mao not quite forty-seven years ago; they say that “graveyards are full of indispensable men,” et cetera.

But in the meantime, it’s hard for them, because the succession piece is so uncertain that people who want to protect their power and ill-gotten gains may want to move inside the uncertainty themselves to try to protect their ill-gotten gains. And so you have intrigue and destabilization over succession before succession even happens.

And then you get the succession politics — which we sometimes attribute to political differences, sometimes we attribute it to philosophical differences. Joe shows in these cases that the policy differences were not there, and that’s a really big achievement on his part.

So let me just say the final piece: the other thing he shows is that these people were all powerful, and there was no collective rule. There’s the appearance of collective rule; there’s the simulation of collective rule; there’s the pretense that there’s some type of collective rule. But one person is in charge here, even under that pretense. And there’s no institutionalization of succession, neither in the Soviet case nor the Chinese case.

So when we say that Xi Jinping “broke the rules,” “broke the taboo,” what Joe was able to show was that nothing in that was hard and fast. Nothing was really broken in a “Leninist, Maoist, Deng Xiaoping” sense. There’s more of a continuity than a discontinuity.

And so let’s all make sure we go back and read Joe’s book, or reread it if we’ve read it already. And let’s talk about it again and again, because it is a massive point of departure for understanding how this place is going.

If Kotkin Ran America's China Foreign Policy

Jordan Schneider: [On March 6], Xi said,

Western countries — led by the US — have implemented all-round containment, encirclement, and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development.

Any thoughts on that as the new rhetorical space that Xi is now comfortable occupying in public?

Paid subscribers get advanced access to the second half of our conversation. We discuss:

• The case for optimism about US-China relations, despite — or because of — the recent ratcheting up of tensions;

• Why Kotkin believes a US-China Cold War is both good and necessary;

• How the US can get on the diplomatic “front foot”;

• Making sense of Reagan’s foreign policy — how he was both a “movement conservative” and a “dealmaking conservative.”

 12 MAY 2023 'Winning the peace' : Professor Stephen Kotkin on why a Chinese-led peace deal is the ideal outcome to the war in Ukraine

https://thehub.ca/podcasts/winning-the-peace-professor-stephen-kotkin-on-why-a-chinese-led-peace-deal-is-the-ideal-outcome-to-the-war-in-ukraine/?

12 MAY 2023

The following is a Hub exclusive in the form of a private lecture given by Professor Stephen Kotkin, one of the world’s leading scholars of Russian history and international relations. It was delivered in mid-April at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Canada at an event co-hosted by The Hub’s executive director, Rudyard Griffiths. The talk provides a master class in contemporary geopolitics linking the war in Ukraine with the rise of China and its unique challenge to American global supremacy.

The lecture is a must-listen for anyone trying to understand contemporary international events and the critical issue of how the War in Ukraine is likely to be brought to an end. Stephen Kotkin spent over three decades teaching international relations and Russian history at Princeton University. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University where he lectures and writes widely on global affairs for The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Wall Street Journal. For fans of Russian history, his biographies of Joseph Stalin are essential reading. “The Paradoxes of Power 1879-1928 ” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was followed by the masterful “Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941”. A third volume, to be published later this year, will take the story of Stalin through the Second World War to his death in 1953.

You can listen to this episode of Hub Dialogues on Acast, Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify, or YouTube. The episodes are generously supported by The Ira Gluskin And Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation and The Linda Frum & Howard Sokolowski Charitable Foundation.

PROFESSOR STEPHEN KOTKIN: So I’m going to talk to you a little bit about winning the peace. We only talk about winning the war. But winning the war is not nearly as important as winning the peace. You can win the war, and you can lose the peace. Let’s call that Afghanistan. Let’s call that Iraq. Let’s call that many other examples. So, if you’re in a war, how do you win the peace? And winning the peace is a multi-generational question.

So, if you gained some territory today, you didn’t win the peace. Somebody can come back for that territory, tomorrow or next year or the year after. So, winning the peace is much more important and much more complex. So for about 14 months now, I’ve been discussing with some of our best minds in intelligence and defence, how they define victory, and more importantly, how they plan to win the peace. I’ll just give you one example. And then I’m going to go backwards in time and a little bit sideways, and then come back out at the end with an answer, if that’s okay. If you’ll tolerate that kind of meandering. 

So if Ukraine recovers all the territory that’s internationally recognized territory of Ukraine, but doesn’t get into the European Union, and doesn’t get a security guarantee, would that be winning the peace? Would that be victory of any sort? But if it didn’t regain its territory, but got into the European Union through an accelerated accession process, and got some type of security guarantee, but a lot of its land was still occupied, would that be a victory? Which one of those scenarios would be a victory? It’s pretty obvious that the Ukrainian people twice risked their lives to overthrow domestic tyrants in order to get into Europe. And so, that’s really the only definition of winning the peace that works.

So, if you want to get into Europe, let’s imagine you’re able—you’re not—but let’s imagine you’re able to retake Crimea militarily. So, then you have a predominantly, almost exclusively, Russian population now inside your borders, that can be instigated in a permanent insurgency against your country. What’s that going to do for your EU accession process? What’s that gonna do for your security guarantee? Who’s going to give you a security guarantee when you have a multimillion Russian population that doesn’t want any part of your country? And so, there are sentimental and understandable definitions of victory which relate to the atrocities that are committed—the whole war is an atrocity, right? The aggression, it’s nothing but an atrocity, and we hear about the atrocities it’s just heartbreaking. At the same time, we need to win the peace.

So, how are we gonna win the peace? Okay, so, if we agree that that might be an interesting question, now we’re going to step backwards and approach it from an angle that’s maybe unexpected, or let’s hope it’s unexpected. Let’s talk a little bit about China. We have a lot of stories about China, and they’re not true. Deng Xiaoping, who was a pretty remarkable fellow and was shorter than I am—I’ve got a big place in my heart for somebody that I can look like this to, rather than Paul Volcker, who was down the hall from me at Princeton, “Eh Paul, how’s the weather up there?” You know, that kind of nonsense. He was 6’5. I used to be 5’6.

Anyway, so Deng Xiaoping, this little guy, he’s looking over the water at Japan. And he’s saying, “You know, this place was bombed. 40 cities were firebombed with higher casualties than the two cities that were nuclear bombed. I mean, this place was a wreck. And now, they’re the second biggest economy in the world. What happened?” Right in his neighbourhood. And so he’s looking at that, and he’s saying they got a secret formula here. They manufacture stuff. And they sell it to those crazy Americans. This gigantic American consumer market, this domestic market in America, is just so insatiable. If you can make stuff that the Americans want, if it’s good enough that the Americans will buy it, you can grow rich. In other words, you can use the American middle class to create a Chinese middle class by manufacturing things that these crazy Americans will buy. Because that’s what Japan had done. And because that’s what South Korea did. And that’s what Taiwan did. Both South Korea and Taiwan are former Japanese colonies, and Japan was very involved in the post-colonial transformations in both of those places. 

So, there’s a formula here, and it was a very successful formula. And it’s not very many countries, and it’s East Asia, and so, that’s the strategy now. So, to hell with this crazy Soviet model. And anyway, Mao Zedong, the lunatic that he was, destroyed the planning bureaucracy in China because he sent them all down to the village to do manual labour during his cultural revolution. He undermined the ability of the Chinese state to do the planned economy, so that by the late 70s, when Deng Xiaoping gets credit for reform, the peasants themselves, not wanting to starve again, have recreated market relations in the Southern Cone of China, the monsoon, rice cultivating, wet rice part of China. And 300 million or so peasants rejoined the market economy on their own without any communist directives necessarily, though with some communist directives. “You can trade onions, but you can’t trade rice.” They trade the rice and they say, “Okay, you can trade the rice but you can only trade it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” They trade it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays too. 

So, there were lots of communist decrees about the market economy, and there were grudging concessions to allow market behaviour that were behind the peasants’ own activity. And then the peasants built businesses and so moved to the city and the FDI came from Japan and Taiwan, and it went through Hong Kong, which was a British financial centre with the rule of law. Remember how they say, “How come Gorbachev didn’t do a Deng Xiaoping?” No Hong Kong. No Hong Kong. You have a financial system that awards money, not for Communist Party reasons, but for capital accumulation reasons. Okay, so you got Hong Kong, you got Japan with the FDI, and you got the American domestic market. You have ingredients here that no one else has, and you have Deng Xiaoping, smart enough to do this. And you have Mao who levelled the playing field and made this possible. And then you have the Communist Party taking credit for the entrepreneurialism of the 300 million people who are let loose to engage in market behaviour again.

So, that’s what happened in China. It’s not the story we have. The story we have is the Communist Party from the top-down introduced reforms, and those reforms were successful. So, the Communist Party in China gets the credit for the Market Revolution. Never mind that the Communist Party officials stole the businesses that the peasant entrepreneurs created like parasites. 

But the strategic move from Deng is to go for this: “To hell with the Soviet model. We’re going to divorce the Soviets. We’re going to poison them, and let them die. And America is going to be our economic partner.” And Deng goes to Texas, he goes to a rodeo, he puts on a 10-gallon cowboy hat, you’ve seen the photograph. That was about eight gallons more than Deng himself was, and it works. And then, in the 90s, when Jiang Zemin, who was Deng’s protege came in, Jiang brings back the Soviet Union, which is now Russia, as a mistress. So Deng has divorced the Soviet Union, married the United States, and then Jiang brings the Russian mistress back into the picture, because the Russians have a military-industrial complex which is dying, and Jiang and the Chinese bring it back from the dead and begin to build a Chinese army on the basis of the Russian military complex, which is the old Soviet doomsday military complex, right?

This is the story of what happens in China, meaning that they ditched the Soviets and then they brought the Russians back, but only as a partner in building their military up. Okay. And Russia is a mess. Some of you might have been investors there, some of you might have visited there, some of you might be refugees from that part of the world. The 90s is a mess. We have this vocabulary of reform. Once again, like with the Chinese Communists, we pretend that things are called reform, that they’re directed from the top rather than the chaos and the breakdown in the collapse that they’re experiencing. Okay. In the 90s, right? The Soviet collapse kept going way after 1991, and Putin comes along and he arrests the Soviet collapse. They get lucky with the 1998 debt crisis and financial collapse because it makes the exchange rate of the ruble now such that Russian products are much cheaper abroad and imports are too expensive. 

So, it gives a boost to Russian domestic industry. And guess what? The Chinese boom that Deng has launched has now raised the global demand for everything. Cement, fertilizer, right? Ammonia. All the phosphates, metals, even junk metals, the Chinese can’t get enough of everything. So, the Soviet Union comes back from the dead after 1998, after the financial crisis, because of the insatiable Chinese global demand for everything. China is growing at such a clip. The China-Russia direct trade is minimal. It’s almost nothing. But because there’s a finite amount of raw materials and industrial inputs globally, it doesn’t matter if it’s direct or not, the price of everything is rising. And those of you who rode the commodity markets understand commodity markets are volatile, but there was a long bull run in commodity markets based upon Chinese insatiable demand. And so, lo and behold, Russia comes back and this guy Putin is having seven percent growth per year, which people think is oil. The average price of oil in his first term is $35 a barrel, and the average price of oil in his second term is $70 a barrel, and he’s growing at seven percent a year. And when he gets to $100-plus a barrel, his growth ends and he hits a wall. 

So, the idea that the oil is where the Russian growth came from ignores this insatiable Chinese demand, globally. The Soviet Union produced just a massive amount of low-quality stuff, and now the prices were really good. This story adds to then the Chinese story. So, Russia comes back from the dead. China brings Russia back from the dead, just as America is building China’s boom, through this Japan model, with Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong. That’s the story. 

I’m simplifying a little bit because you don’t have 15 weeks and 85 grand to hear the whole thing. That’s what college costs in America. I know, it’s kind of absurd. But anyway, so we’re simplifying a little bit. But so, you have the development of a Russian-Chinese relationship here that wasn’t planned. It’s circumstantial. It’s what we call in the sciences as an emergent property. If you know complexity and systems theory, it’s not something that anybody intended. It’s something that came together and happened.

Now, China has risen. And now China is very successful. Yes. About 700 million people lifted out of poverty, which is a breathtaking story. And if you’ve been back and forth to China since the 80s, which I have, you know it’s real. At the same time, 600 million people in China live completely outside the market economy. They’re not educated, they don’t have health care, they don’t have eyeglasses. They’re destitute, no education to speak of, no human capital investment. They have just been left out by the regime. Mostly from the interior part of the country, 600 million people. It’s very substantial. But anyway, you have the 700 million people lifted out of poverty, many of whom join this middle class, there’s a class of billionaires. 

So then what happens? Gorbachev gets the idea that communism is reformable, that you can have socialism with a human face, you can revive this thing. It doesn’t have to be Stalinist. It doesn’t have to be corrupt and inefficient. It’ll get a second wind. So, he begins to liberalize the political system. And the same thing happens in the Soviet Union that happened in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The party decides is going to open up and liberalize, have debate inside the party. And someone stands up and says, “You know, I don’t want your party. I don’t like your Communist Party.” And they say, “No, that’s not the deal. We’re liberalizing the Communist Party monopoly. We’re allowing you to debate inside the party. And people say, “Well, no, no party. No Communist Party. What about a different party?”

And so, then you have this problem where political liberalization has no equilibrium. It has no point where it stops and is successful. You can’t turn off the process. Once you open up, it begins to just unravel and the monopoly disappears because you can’t be half-communist, just like you can’t be half-pregnant. You either have the monopoly or you don’t. And so, you can liberalize the economy. You can allow market behaviour in the economy. But you can’t allow liberalization of the political system because then you lose your monopoly. And it happened in Hungary in 56, and Czechoslovakia in 68, and Gorbachev in the 1980s. And so guess what? The Chinese Communists begin to study this question. They begin to study the Soviet collapse. 

Believe it or not, we’re gonna get to winning the peace in Ukraine. I told you it was improbable. I told you was gonna be a little backwards and sideways. But we’re gonna get there. We’re not that far away, in fact, at this point. And so, they start to study the Soviet collapse, the communists in China, and they say, “You know what, we can’t do this, we can’t liberalize our system. We can’t open our system politically, because we’ll end up like Gorbachev, or we’ll end up like Dub?ek, or we’ll end up like Imre Nagy in Hungary. And so we’re not going to open it up politically.”

So, you have the Western world integrating China through trade and investment in order to bring China along to look more like the West politically, with rule of law and everything else. And you have the Communist Party regime in China refusing ever to open up politically because it’s suicide. So, we’re playing the game of economic integration, leading to political and legal transformation. And they’re playing the game of never allowing political transformation and legal transformation. You can talk about this until you’re blue in the face. Throughout the last 30 years—and you can write essays about it, you can write whole books about it—you couldn’t persuade people, especially the investment class, that the Chinese Communists were not going to commit suicide. 

There’s a guy. He’s exactly my height. He talks like Joe Pesci. And he wrote this book that was pirated, translated into Chinese, on the Soviet collapse, of how there’s no reform equilibrium. You can’t politically open up and stabilize the situation. It’s just suicide, and he proves this in this book. And then he goes to China, and it turns out, there’s this pirated Chinese translation of his book, which they study at the party school. There’s all these guys with these dog-eared copies of the book. And who is the head of the party school? This provincial character named Xi Jinping. All they’re studying is no Gorbachev, no political opening, never committing suicide. And I discovered this, because I’m looking across the table, and there are these Chinese characters—anyway, very interesting. 

And so, now he’s in charge. He’s CEO now, and his story is not a story of friendliness towards the West, because the West is a threat to him. The model that you have in Canada, and we have, to a certain extent, farther south, and that we have in Europe and in Australia and Japan right? Japan is Western but not European. Western is an institutional, not a geographic proposition. It’s a direct threat to the Chinese. The existence of Taiwan, which is an alternative political system, is a direct threat to them. So here we are now in this world that we’ve been in for the whole time, including under Deng Xiaoping, but we didn’t understand this because we thought we were playing a different game of “economic integration leads to political transformation,” rather than “never on my watch, because we’re not going to be Gorbachev.” So, we were in the wrong game, or we didn’t understand the game that we were in.

This brings us to Ukraine and winning the peace, and then we’ll go for questions. How does this work for Ukraine? So, it turns out that in order to win the peace, you need an armistice. You need an end to the fighting. You see, because Ukraine, they need Ukraine. Russia doesn’t need Ukraine. Russia has Russia. So, if you have a house, let’s say your house has 10 rooms. And I come into your house and I steal two of your rooms, and I wreck them, and from those two rooms, I’m wrecking the other eight rooms. You prevent me from taking the other eight rooms with your courage and ingenuity on the battlefield. But I’m still occupying two of your rooms and wrecking the rest of them. And you have more than a million, a million and a half of your children going to school in a language other than Ukrainian, in Polish and German. Another year passes, and another year passes. Are they still Ukrainian? You don’t have a budget, you don’t have an economy. You don’t have customs duty, you don’t have tax revenues. You’re dying. That whole courageous, ingenious Ukrainian army that we saw, is dead. They’re gone. They’re dead or severely wounded. You’re burning through your ammunition and you’re burning through stuff that nobody’s increasing production. We’re just giving stocks. 

You want to increase production, you want to open up two new assembly lines to produce munitions when you’re a private company and they give you a two-year contract and you say, “Okay, I’ll deliver in 2025, the munitions.” Well maybe the war’s over in 2025, and you’ve just built two new assembly lines. So, you need a ten-year contract, not a two-year contract before you’re going to open up two new assembly lines. Otherwise, you get stranded assets. That’s where we are in the war. You’re not winning if someone is destroying your house, no matter how valorous, no matter how amazing your resistance has been. Because the Russians take up their own house and it has 1000 rooms. They don’t need your house but you only have one house, Ukraine. 

So, armistice sooner rather than later. Regaining as much territory okay, but a DMZ, an EU accession process that’s more accelerated than the ones that the Western Balkans are going through. A security guarantee which is not going to be NATO. If you’ve been to Germany, you understand, NATO works on consensus. There’s no possibility of Ukraine in NATO. None. And discussion of that publicly can only undermine NATO unity. There’s the possibility of a South Korea outcome which would be very dissatisfying. There’s North Korea, it’s a menace. The families were separated. The destruction and the rebuilding, and everything else. And the threat continues. There’s been no peace treaty, only an armistice on the Korean peninsula. The Cold War is over except it’s not over. Yet they have a security guarantee and South Korea is one of the most successful countries in the world. 

So that would be a big victory for Ukraine, if it came out looking like South Korea, with an armistice, a security guarantee. It might not be bilateral with the U.S.—it might be bilateral plus, where Poland joined and the Baltics joined and Scandinavians join, but it’s not going to be a NATO guarantee. The sooner you get to get to that the better. If Vladimir Putin signs a piece of paper, what’s that piece of paper worth? He’s gonna keep his word, commit to an armistice, and keep his word? Of course not. Never, except if he signs the paper in Beijing. Because if he signs the paper in Beijing, he can’t flip the bird to Xi Jinping. He’s on the hook. That’s his only bridge left. He’s burned every single other bridge.

 So you want the Chinese to oversee the peace process, to oversee the armistice, because that’s the only way you can get Putin to keep his word. I know it sounds crazy, but the Chinese peace proposal is fake. Except it’s not fake. It’s the only solution. And so, Biden delivers his guy to accept the armistice and Xi Jinping delivers his guy to accept the armistice, and they sign in Beijing. Otherwise, this guy can pause and go for tea next year, or the year after, or five years. You take Crimea back, you’ve got this insurgency problem. And in ten years or in fifty years, Russians will come back for it. Maybe next year, they’ll come back for it. Boris Yeltsin demanded the return of Crimea to Russia. Boris Yeltsin in 1991, before the Soviet Union had even dissolved. So, the idea that Crimea, Russians are going to walk from this somehow, it’s tough for winning the peace. 

In a situation of atrocities, where they’re murdering your civilians, they’re raping your women and girls, they’re kidnapping your children, they are destroying your cultural artifacts to eliminate any evidence that you actually do exist as a separate nation and a culture, this is a very hard argument to accept. That not being able to impose reparations and war crimes tribunals and regain all your territory is a winning of the peace. We’re nowhere near that yet. But we’re closer to it now than we were fourteen months ago. We’ll see if the Ukrainian offensive, if it happens—they actually don’t have any munitions right now because they spent them in Bakhmut. The ones we sent in January, the most munitions we’ve sent in the war, and they spent them over a territory that has no strategic significance. Now they’re demanding more, they’re begging for more. You take back some territory, or you don’t. Let’s say you take it back. How do you win the peace? How do you get the Russians to stop and not try to take it back again? Next year or the year after? You need to win the peace, not just win the war. 

So, it’s very unsatisfactory. It’s very, in some ways, demoralizing. It’s very difficult politically, and it’s the best outcome that’s on the table right now, short of a miracle. A miracle would be Russian disintegration in the field, the Russian army just disintegrates. We’ve been hearing about that for fourteen months and there’s no evidence of it yet. It might happen, but there’s no evidence. We’ve been hearing about Putin having trouble and maybe being overthrown. There’s no evidence to that. It could happen. He would have to be overthrown, but not by an escalatory replacement, but by a capitulatory one. 

The miracles we’ve been hoping for have not happened yet. They, once again, could happen. War is unpredictable, but if you’re looking soberly at the evidence, you’re looking at U.S. and China getting together to impose an armistice on each side, so that the fighting stops and Ukraine can get rebuilt, get the kinds of institutions that could assimilate $350 billion, at the lowest estimates, in reconstruction funds, which is twice pre-war GDP. Reconstruction at the lowest estimate is twice pre-war GDP, and that money is going to come in and not be stolen and disappear with the institutions they have now? I don’t think so. So you have got to build those institutions for that EU accession process in order just to assimilate the reconstruction funds properly. So that’s it. It’s not an uplifting story. But it is the story that’s on the table. And anyway, thank you for your attention.