政治失势者与经济发展：以近代中国与日本为例

Political Losers and Economic Development: The Case of Pre-modern China and Japan

落后国家需要大量引进国外先进技术才能实现赶超,但这可能会触动既得利益,特别是当权者可能担心成为"政治失势者"(political loser)而竭力阻扰。为何近代中国在引进西方技术方面大大落后于日本呢?首先评论了已有解释的不足,然后从"政治失势者"的角度考察中日政治结构的差异。两国的"政治失势者"皆为中央政府,即中国的满清朝廷与日本的德川幕府。最大的区别在于:在中国的官僚社会中,由科举产生的地方官僚基本上为满清朝廷所控制;而在日本的封建社会中,世袭的大名藩主拥有制衡德川幕府的实力。因此,阻碍经济发展的"政治失势者"在日本很快被推翻,在中国却得以延续。这在很大程度上导致了近代中日发展的巨大反差。

Developing countries need to introduce advanced foreign technology on a large scale in order to catch up.But this may run against vested interests.In particular,those in power may worry about becoming political losers and strongly boycott.Why did pre-modern China lag behind Japan so much in terms of introducing western technology？ This paper first reviews shortcomings of existing explanations,then analyzes the differences between the Chinese and Japanese political structures from the perspective of ＂political losers.＂ The central governments in both countries were political losers,i.e.the Qing dynasty of China and the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan.The greatest difference was that in China＇s bureaucratic society,local bureaucrats selected through civil examinations were largely controlled by the Qing dynasty,while in Japan＇s feudal society,hereditary daimyo have the power to counterbalance the shogunate.Therefore,political losers in Japan were quickly overthrown,but continued to stay in power in China.This largely determined the diverging performance between pre-modern China and Japan.