李世默：这个百年，这个党（5）

如果上述政治改革获得落实，十八届三中全会将成为第三个三十年的起点，并开创一个新的时代。未来的三十年将是以改革开放为节点的前两个三十年的辩证结合，以构成现代中国完整、独特的历史叙述。一个全新的现代政治模式正在成形，它不同于基于选举和多党轮替的西方式现代性民主，然而它的执政能力、灵活性、反馈民意的有效性、和权力制约的创新性将超越正落后于时代的现代性。

当下，治理危机正在全球溃疡。美国的两党恶性对立导致治理瘫痪，欧洲的精英官僚主义压制下的欧盟各国民众怨声载道，发达国家在政争泥潭中越陷越深，难以自拔。在许多发展中国家，从泰国到埃及，选举民主制陷入四面楚歌。

尽管面临无数挑战和考验，中国在发展经济、消除贫困、凝聚社会等许多领域的成就出类拔萃。在习近平总书记的任期内，中国将问鼎世界第一经济大国地位。在目前的发展势头下，到本世纪中叶，中国将在综合国力的各个方面成为真正的世界大国。中国从古老的文明中走来，其现代化的道路将为世界带来全新的视野和可能性。然而，如果中国找不到成熟稳定、适合国情的政治治理模式，上述潜力就只能是镜花水月。三中全会在政治治理上启动了大胆改革，其落实将为未来中国提供稳定的政治保障，为这个古老文明的复兴铺平道路。2013年11月，在北京召开的十八届三中全会，对世界的未来影响深远。

李世默是上海的风险投资家和政治学学者。

本文发表于最新一期《外交》杂志（Foreign Affairs），观察者网首发中文全文。

英文原文：

PARTY OF THE CENTURY

THE THIRD PLENUM BEGINS THE THIRD THIRTY-YEARS

By: Eric X. Li

In November 2013, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held its much-anticipated Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Congress (the Third Plenum). Each third plenum usually sets the policy agenda for a new administration. Some project much longer-term impacts. More than 30 years ago, Deng Xiaoping famously launched his ground breaking economic reforms at the third plenum of the party’s eleventh congress. That meeting changed the trajectory of China and the world at large. After the transfer of power to a new generation of leaders at the Eighteenth Party Congress in 2012, this Third Plenum offers the world the most concrete look at how General Secretary Xi Jinping plans to lead the world’s most significant ascending power.

Most analyses have focused on the wide-ranging economic reform agenda. To be sure, the economic policy measures announced are more sweeping than most people expected and, if implemented to any significant extent, are likely to usher in yet another era of sustained economic growth. They include initiatives that will drastically change the structure of the Chinese economy, such as hybrid ownership of state companies, reduced regulatory hurdles for commercial enterprises, greater control and transferability of land for rural residents, and liberalization of the financial sector, to name just a few.

Yet, the common narrative is that, just like reformers in the past, China’s new leadership has put forth substantial economic reforms but, again, held its ground, or even backtracked, on much hoped for political reforms. It is true that the centrality of the party’s leadership has been strengthened, not loosened. As a result, some have characterized it as “turning right on economics and left on politics”.

But such views are misplaced. The Third Plenum has launched significant, and in some cases unprecedented, political reforms that will fundamentally alter how the world’s largest nation is governed.

These institutional reformulations are taking place in three critical dimensions: substantial re-engineering of the relationship between central and local authorities, unprecedented restructuring of the party’s disciplinary inspection regime and the state’s legal system, and the most significant reorganization at the highest level of decision-making mechanism in the history of the People’s Republic that will redefine the relationship between the party and the state.

REBALANCING ACT

For centuries, one of the most vexing political problems of imperial China was the balance of power between central and local authorities. Many successes and failures of governance were direct results of how this relationship was managed. A healthy balance underwrote long periods of prosperity and stability. The opposite led to coups and counter-coups and sometimes the demise of dynasties.