八次危机: 中国的真实经验

by 温铁军

" 在人们通常的意识形态中，中国没有发生过经济危机，也不可能发生经济危机，最多只能算是经济波动，而不能算是危机。但作者认为，中国不仅发生过经济危机。而且中国自建国以来的六十年间，已经发生了 8 次经济危机，而这些危机均与国家工业化阶段性特征有关：在 “城乡” 二元对立的基本体制矛盾约束下，工业化、城镇化以及整个体制的改革所产生的制度成本均向 “三农” 转嫁，因而城市的产业资本就可以实现 “软着陆”，原有体制得以维持；而不能直接向农村转嫁的危机，就导致产业资本在城市 “硬着陆”，引发政府财税金融、乃至整个经济体制的重大变革。

中国政府已经认识到 “三农” 问题对整个国民经济的重要作用，于是在 2005 年把 “新农村建设” 作为国家战略，连续增加数万亿投资以吸纳数千万 “非农” 就业的举措，最后成功地应对了 2009 年全球经济危机，实现了 “软着陆”。

本书的主要观点是：“金融海啸” 引发的全球危机，不仅是 “金融化泡沫经济” 所引起的，也是由 “内含高成本上推” 机制的西方现代政体在累积了大量的国家负债后产生的，因此中国人应引以为戒，加深对资本主义危机规律及其引发的内部乱像和外部地缘政治法西斯化倾向的认识。只有复兴生态文明，维持乡土社会内部化来应对外部性风险的综合性合作与自治，才是中国免于重蹈负债过高的现代化危机的合理选择。

Genres: China

369 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[BeingTyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

第一部分专栏资料部分和正常的历史叙述部分都还有可读性，但是一到下结论的部分就开始东一榔头，西一锤，很简单的叙述不知道为什么要用那么多从句堆砌，像是劣质的翻译作品一样，很多结论也确实不敢苟同。感觉核心内容其实几万字就可以说明白，文风异常啰嗦和繁复，以前看到的视频感觉作者说话还挺简练，但是这本代表作读起来真是折磨。第二部分是纯大棋党时刻，用最快的速度粗略浏览一遍，能发现不少错误判断。整本书更适合当一本历史书看。

[Yimeng Huo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read. Too many terminologies. But a very macroscopic perspective.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is more revealing as an example of ideological framing than as economic history. It contains historical material and occasional useful institutional observations, but its causal arguments are often underdeveloped, selective and politically evasive. Especially in the treatment of the Mao-era crises, key factors are displaced or downplayed, while concepts such as state capital, fiscal crisis and urban-rural risk transfer are made to carry more explanatory weight than the evidence supports. The dense and convoluted prose makes the reading experience even more frustrating.

The first crisis around the Great Leap Forward is presented as being caused primarily by the withdrawal of Soviet development assistance. Political and institutional failures are almost completely omitted, and Mao Zedong is not even mentioned in the chapter. I continued reading in the hope that the analysis would become more convincing, but unfortunately it only became weaker.

The third crisis is explained through a series of fairly arbitrary causal links. Foreign assistance is said to have produced fiscal deficits, which in turn supposedly led to an industrial crisis and mass unemployment. Yet large fiscal deficits would only follow from foreign assistance if the projects were mismanaged, poorly financed, or failed to generate sufficient returns. The book does not explain this mechanism. Nor does it explain how fiscal deficits translated into an industrial crisis. Only the link between industrial crisis and urban unemployment is relatively straightforward and therefore plausible without much elaboration.

Overall, this is a disappointing attempt at explaining China’s post-1949 crises. The book repeatedly turns complex historical episodes into a familiar ideological pattern: external dependency, state capital, fiscal strain, and cost transfer. That framework may occasionally generate useful observations, but here it often replaces rather than supports serious economic-historical analysis. It is also striking how external actors seem to bear much of the blame, whether they provide assistance or withdraw it. That may be convenient as an explanation, but it is hardly convincing.

[Eric Li · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wen's language can be arcane/technical (not surprised as most profs have this sort of problems). I will recommend future readers to listen to his public lectures for making the reading process easier/tolerable.

[sjtuwalker · Rating 5 out of 5]

因为一些专业术语的原因大概看懂了90%的内容，现阶段想要继续发展不能靠外需而是内需，拉动内需主要方法是使农村人口城市化，让现在的大城市(北上广深)人口变得更多等，这个过程也是要大搞基建吧？但结合之前看过的《中国巨债》似乎基建不是有效投资，有点矛盾。这两本都是好书，还需要多看看再想想。

[moccasin]

近现代史知识匮乏，借这本书，从不同的角度，得到了很多新的认知，在这之前我的个人视点还是很狭隘的…书中对未来冲击提供的解决方案，一些我在初看时大呼离谱，后来竟也觉得似乎有落地的可能性

[Xin Wei]

这本书应该成为中学经济历史课的必读书，从经济的角度看历史，抹掉了个人主义的阴影，用数据陈述中国是怎么从一个农业国，产能短缺，奇迹般的走向工业化，到产能剩余，更重要的此过程带来的成本。奇迹是有成本的。