加拿大教授：中国选拔领导人的标准比西方苛刻得多，要求“ 德才兼备”。中国愿意做世界的榜样，但他们不输出体制。教授深度剖析中国治理模式。

Ajouté : 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]So if you want to understand China, we have to understand the dominant political culture which has been mainly confusion but you also have had these as you say these ultra hardcore realists and they're more hardcore realist like anybody in the west like they make Machavelian look like a real softy you know liberal so and and the first Chinese uh emperor who successfully unified China after the waring states period did it according to legalist principles but that dynasty only lasted 15 years because it it was viewed as too cru cruel and since then liberal the legalist tradition has been in the background but it comes back in times of chaos in the 20th century the legalist tradition came back full force right and and and and actually the the Chinese Communist Party led by Ma was explicitly legalist at some point and anti-confusion today we can see this in the in the anti-corruption campaign We tend to divide the political world into democracies where the leaders are selected by elections and all the others are put into the authoritarian. camp and it's not just a description I mean right democracies are good and authoritarian regimes are fundamentally illegitimate so we don't really distinguish between like you know China and like military dictatorships like in or like in Burma or or familyrun dictatorships like in North Korea or or absolute monarchies like in Saudi Arabia they're all kind of put in the same authoritarian camp but that really misses out on what's distinctive about China and what's distinctive about China is that it has this very long history more than two millennia of selecting leaders through meritocratic processes. Um and the most famous mechanism is by means of the examination system. For most of Imperial China to be public official, you had to first be very successful at the examinations and then have some sort of performance evaluations at lower levels of government and then be promoted that way. And more or less I label that system political meritocracy. I mean it's a very there's a Chinese term which captures it and basically the past four decades there's been this revival this reimplementation of a kind of political meritocracy where it's a very complex bureaucratic system and to be anywhere to near the top you have to have decades of experience at lower levels of government and now to get in you have to be selected first by these ultra competitive examinations to get into universities and then these ultra competitive examinations to be literally get into the government and and then be promoted through lower levels of government and more or less it's the same system in form that you had for over 2,000 years in China that's been reestablished and if you really want to understand what's distinctive about the Chinese political system I mean this is it but the other part is that it's not just that I mean it's a very complex and layered form of government right China as we know is a huge country and yes at the very top it's supposed to be more meritocratic but at lower levels of government there are some democratic mechanisms including ele elections to select leaders and to a certain extent mechanisms for deliberation and even a certain extent of freedom of speech not as much as we would like um that that is that that is involved in this selection and promotion of leaders so um so basically we have to set aside this prejudice there's only two kinds of governments one is democratic one is authoritarian it's not a useful framework because we have to distinguish between China and those other so countries that are labeled in the authoritarian camp and then we have to understand China it own terms what exactly is it? Of course, it's a highly imperfect mechanism, right? Just like democracy in, you know, Australia or Canada or or US is highly imperfect. But this is the standard that's used to think about Chinese political system and how to evaluate its progress and regress. And we have and this is so the language of political meritocracy is really essential to understand China.

[00:05:49]And this is something that is widely over overlooked and you even have to go really searching to find is this idea of this political meritocracy and I've heard you say that what they're looking for in selection of leaders and correct me if I'm wrong but is the above average ability in virtue. What is meant by that? What are the the parts they looking for in selection of of future leaders? Okay, so that's part of it. I let's say there's four things that they're looking for in very general terms. Um, one is above average, let's just say intelligence or analytical ability because especially at Hara government, the issues are very complex, right? How to manage an economy, how to think about the impact of AI, how to think about foreign relations, um, and so on. Um so so that's why those tests to get into government they're more like frankly like high level IQ tests you know so to get into anywhere near the top you can expect them to have superior analytical ability you have to have above average emotional intelligence because to be a leader in China it's not like you just have to be smart most of your day and I know this because I I served as dean you spend your time in meetings deliberating about issues with fellow leaders and you have to persuade people of different perspectives and people of different backgrounds you have to have very high level of emotional intelligence to do that. That's one thing that's important. And then you have to have this incredible capacity for hard work because literally they're working all the time. There's like even no weekend breaks, you know. Um that's one thing that when I served as public official, literally I couldn't do that because I was so tired all the time.

[00:07:27]Then my fellow leaders, I had great respect for them because they were like working all the time. It's even more so to hire government. But then the thing you mentioned is probably the most essential which is that you have to have you have to be willing to certain extent to serve the public as opposed to being corrupt meaning misusing resources for you or your own family interests or private interests. And and that's helps to explain why throughout Chinese history there's been these anti-corruption campaigns because if there's lots of corruption in the system it really undermines the whole political meritocracy because even if you have somebody in fact it's more dangerous you have somebody who's smart who has high emotional intelligence who works hard and if they're a bad person if they're corrupt that's even more dangerous. So you have to address that virtue part that's really a really key pillar for the whole political system. Of course, there's again there's a huge gap between the ideal and the practice because there's still lots of corruption in the system. But if you really want to understand why is there this ongoing anti-corruption campaign, you have to put this in in in trying to understand this kind of really what makes the system legitimate is that you have public spirited public leaders or public officials and if that's not the case, the whole system can collapse. And I've heard you speak about and I've been thinking myself on this that the just the scale of China as well. You're dealing well over a billion people, a massive land mass and the influence of decisions made in China have far more global impact than decisions made in other states. For example, I am incredibly passionate Australian. But if we make a choice on something climate change, well, it doesn't have that much of an impact. Whereas if China does it or something on a poverty, etc. instead of impacting 26 to 28 million people and you're having 1.3 1.4 billion, it's an incredibly different scale. And can you talk I guess why there's no attempt to maybe export that system because coming from this western thinking this idea at least maybe in the 2000s of you want to export your system onto other states to gain more power and how this is seen differently and maybe how ancient political thinking uh and sees and influences these >> yeah I think that's a great point you know there's this book China shakes the world you know we can understand on that title. I'm from Canada. If there's a book like Canada shakes the world, say not, they wouldn't, right? Maybe Australia, too. But as you say, what China does can literally affect the fate of the rest of the world on issues like climate change or AI regulation or or pandemics. So the leaders, they have to have concern for future generations. And this is a big problem with electoral democracies is that when they work well, which is not always, the leaders are good at representing the interests of voters, but nobody represents the interests of future generations, right?

[00:10:25]Because if there's a conflict between the current interests of voters and future generations, if you're an elected leader, you're going to side with the current interests of voters, right? So you can sacrifice like climate change in interest of providing more economic benefits for the current generation.

[00:10:39]It's hard in in a electoral democracy even if it works well. That's that's that's really the key thing that happens. So that's in China you have a the main like there's several advantages of the current political meritocracy.

[00:10:52]One is that all leaders have political experience as I implied earlier but two is that the leaders they can take a long-term horizon 10 20 30 years time and and they this is not just theory right on issues like clean energy um or climate change. I mean these these decisions have been made 20 or 30 years ago and they're only now being you know institutionalized and and implemented and having some sort of clear effect right I mean China is a leader now on clean energy uh and and that that happened because of decisions made 20 years ago you can only do that in a Chinese style political meritocracy it's very very hard to do in a system that has an electoral democracy so that's one reason why China you know wouldn't want to export its system to other countries including some that are democratic But I think the reasons are are it's not just that. I mean to have a Chinese suppl right in scale and two you have to have a history of it. You have to have it has to be the dominant political culture. I mean if you try to export in a system where there's not a history of a complex bureaucracy or this ideal of political meritocracy it would just seem so strange right? Again, if I placed myself in my old kind of Canadian shoes like 40 years ago, I would think this is kind of ridiculous to think about exporting to Canada because it doesn't fit our political culture, political history.

[00:12:11]So, China doesn't deny like the leaders, they don't deny that there's like universal values on on issues like we can call them basic human rights. Don't torture people, don't kill people, you know, genocide is bad, slavery is bad, poverty is bad. Who, you know, who's going to disagree with that? But on issues like how to organize your economy or how to select leaders, they say we should allow for variation based on the size of the country, you know, based on the dominant political culture, based on the history and based on the current national conditions.

[00:12:41]>> So that's why China has no China's will willing to set a good example. If others want to learn, fine, but there's no effort. China would never invade another country to promote its legal system.

[00:12:52]Impossible to imagine, right? Whereas you think of US invading Iraq and so on to promote democracy. I mean that that is very different mindset. There's not this kind of long history of missionary kind of this missionary impulse that we have in the west. Maybe it comes from Christianity. Um that's just not there in China. Well, I know Henry Kissinger spoke about that that you've got leaders that either either are isolationist or missionary to export you say for neoconservatism that we have seen really in the past 30 years and it's made a big return under the current administration and can you explain I guess in very simple terms how those ancient thinking idea the legalists the confucutionists and how that influences politics in China at this point and the legalists I I really put as like your your realists as as it's it's power politics without thinking about maybe the morals or ethics it and then the Confucianism on almost the almost the opposite like how does that play into because this is something that is very foreign to myself as a Australian westerner democratic liberal we don't and as someone who's non-religious I don't really look rearwards at all at least beyond or before maybe the second world war in terms of things that influence then how we would vote or decisions that are being made. How does that play out?

[00:14:20]>> Okay, so in a way it's not that foreign like think of if we want to understand American political culture, we have to understand Christianity, right? Which is about 2,000 years old. If we if we want to understand how Israel thinks, we have to understand history of Judaism and including its philosophy. If you want to understand Iran, we have to understand Islamic philosophy. So if we want to understand China, we have to understand the dominant political culture which has been mainly confusion but you also have had these as you say these ultra hardcore realists and they're more hardcore realist like anybody in the west like they make Mavelian look like a real softy you know liberal. So and and the first Chinese uh emperor who successfully unified China after the waring states period did it according to legalist principles but that dynasty only lasted 15 years because it it was viewed as too cruel and since then liberal the legalist tradition has been in the background but it comes back in times of chaos because how do you deal with that chaos it's very hard to the confusions favor what we call today soft power like persuasion unifying people through moral example having beautiful music that makes people feel a sense of community. Um having rituals that unite people and and and pro and promotes a sense of caring that doesn't work very well in times of huge chaos. Right? So in the 20th century the legalist tradition came back full force, right?

[00:15:41]And and and and actually the the Chinese Communist Party led by Ma was explicitly legalist at some point and anti-confusion.

[00:15:50]Today we can see this in the in the anti-corruption campaign. You have these legalists who are arguing we have to have harsh punishments uniformly applied. No mercy and only fear works if we want to deal with corruption. But Confucian say look if you want to eliminate corruption in the long term you have to make you have to have people internalize morality and make them feel a sense of shame when they do something bad. And and that's is the only long-term solution for dealing with corruption. So these debates are still very much alive in China today. You know, and if you if you want to understand China, the Marxist tradition has nothing to offer about dealing with corruption. Neither does the liberal or democratic tradition. Hardly anything.

[00:16:28]But these debates between legalists and and confusions on dealing with corruption go way back in Chinese history. So again, in my book, I try to bring that to life uh in in in in chapter 2 by having a debate between a legalist and a confusion, how to minimize corruption in China. I try to show that these debates are very still hugely relevant today. And yeah, >> you spoke earlier about that there are some low levels where you'd almost or you would recognize as a democratic process. At what levels do you see that in in China? Is it is it citybased? Is it province based? At what point would you maybe say, oh this is um as per the people level governance before you get into the upper echelons.

[00:17:11]>> So it's more at the village level. At the village level, you've had hundreds of millions of farmers, estimated 800 million farmers who have participated in village level elections. You know, the assumption, it's not a crazy assumption, is that the villager understands, you know, who's a good person, who's corrupt, you know, who's talented, who's willing to serve the community in the village. But when it comes to how the government, it's hard for them to make judgments. So there's been a lot of promotion of village elections. Although sometimes now it also has led to a lot of corruption. So there's there's a bit of question now of how to limit um elections in villages so as to reduce corruption. Um there's also been experiments with deliberative polling. This is where you select people randomly and have them deliberate about issues like whether um how how we should make how we should distribute the budget of our township.

[00:18:02]There there have been experiments along those lines. Um but at higher levels there's there's there's there's less of these democratic mechanisms and much more strong emphasis on meritocratic mechanisms. I mean at the city level to be a a mayor of a city or to be a party secretary um generally speaking you have had to serve at lower levels of government and you have to have a proven record of achievement. And then what's interesting about that is that you have huge competition between cities and provinces in China over how to do well.

[00:18:34]Right? So it's not like there's a kind of unified system. There's a lot of competition in the system which provides an element of diversity and sometimes experimentation. A bit less of that than before which is a worrisome sign. Um but still um there is but at higher levels of government there's some I there's still a kind of course we know that you know the current leader has accumulated power for himself but it's not one person who decides everything. We still have collective leadership where at the standing committee of the poly bureau you have seven leaders who deliberate among themselves on policies and we don't know exactly what happens. It's all pretty hidden obviously, but we can assume that that because having I mean I served when I served as dean I thought I would have a lot of authority to decide myself but actually turns out we had collective leadership with like four vice deans and three party secretaries and every decision we had to deliberate you know for hours and hours and settle on on a consensus and then we would promote outside the outside our you know committee so to speak. I'm pretty sure something like that happens at higher forms of government. It's a kind of democracy in a small circle even at higher levels of government. That said, I think, you know, as Chinese people become more educated, there's going to be need for much more freedom of speech, probably for more democratic mechanisms at higher levels of government, but short of one person, one vote to select leaders at the highest levels because that would undermine the advantage of the current system as mentioned, which is that all leaders have lots of experience. um they can take a longterm horizon and frankly they don't have to waste time doing things like you know raising funds you know or or giving speeches over and over again. They could spend more time focusing on how to solve the country's problems. So yeah that's my humble take on on the system. Well, it's very interesting to hear and speak about other systems because as someone living in the west who's watching politics, especially watching US politics very closely over the past say half decade and I think many more people have been so much more invested since say 2016 into the American system. We are really seeing that system in my opinion go from uh what may have been from maybe competence or background to branding and I use the example I say well what we saw when it was Harris v Trump we didn't see them bring on an academic onto stage or someone that has done 30 years in the civil service you bring on uh Megan the Stallion a rap musician on the Harris side or you bring on Joe Rogan, a very famous podcaster on the other side. And that this has really descended into who can run the best branding campaign, who can market themsel the best. And marketing is just propaganda. Propaganda and marketing is just you're trying to market a war to someone if you were sitting in the Kremlin or in Kev at the moment. That is propaganda.

[00:21:32]uh and that is where this has changed and the fundamentals of democracy and where you'll hear these these philosophers speak about it about where you then end up with the it's one vote one person you can end up with absolute competence then really draining out of the system.

[00:21:53]>> Yeah, I I think I think that's right. Um I look I I'm from Canada as mentioned and it's easy for me to criticize the US especially now when I think Canada is being bullied for like no obvious reason. Um um but I mean the I'm not against branding per se. You know if they still the leaders who make the decisions are competent and public spirited and if they have help from you know musicians or or artists I mean that's fine right? The the question is you know are the leaders really competent and public spirited and now the past few years there's been this trend of selecting leaders starting with a president with who in in his first term had no political experience. I mean that sort of thing would never happen in China and in the second term it's been this kind of attack on on on competence and replacing it with loyalty in in the bureaucracy which is usually worrisome.

[00:22:42]But that's it. I mean the deeper trends in in the US go the more worrisome trends I mean go go go way back right and that's really the capture of the political system by by money you know by capital you know and there's there's this kind of way of you know if you to reduce it to a slogan it's not one person one vote it's one dollar one vote I mean that goes way back a few decades and that that that trend of the political system being captured by by by big moneyed interests or this putoaucracy I mean that is the most worrisome trend to me and and that's that's been going on for decades. It's only increased in in intensity the past years. Whereas in China, I mean, tons of things wrong with the political system, you know, and I don't like the increased um you know, constraints on freedom of speech and certain extent uh curtailment of rule of law. I mean, there are lots of uh worrisome trends. Um, so I'm definitely not an apologist and I but I but at least the the political system is not captured by these you know billionaires and and and you can still have leaders who act in the national interests and ideally even in the global interest um without being severely constrained by by wealth sorry to use this term wealthy capitalists you >> with these two competing systems between the US and China do you think that the US can compete because I've said previously that I don't want to live in the Chinese system over say the liberal democratic system but I don't see how long-term when we only think in really at best 4year terms we're voting off branding and attraction rather than historical thought or selection process can it compete in the in the coming decades >> well so the US has this constitution that was pretty good, maybe even great when it was first formulated and it had strong institutions on the assumption that society wouldn't change so much.

[00:24:40]Right? So what worked in 1787, you can expect that it would also work 50 years later because society's not going to change that much. But now society has changed so much and they're still bound by these fairly archaic uh kind of institutions and obviously there's a need for for for new serious thinking about um political institutions and also empowering people who have the ability and and and and virtue to deal with new challenges. I think it's much harder to do in the US. I mean China precisely because things are so uncertain and flexible and there's much emphasis on having good people rather than good institutions. I think it's better positioned to deal with a world where the the only thing we could be sure about the future is that it's going to be radically different than now in 20 years time, right, with AI and other things and and I'm China has a flexibility to to deal with that. I'm much less confident about the US.

[00:25:33]>> Yes. I can't remember the Chinese academic but he said words the effect of in China you can't change the leaders but the system can change where in America you can change your leadership but the system will remain the same.