李世默：特朗普颠覆“达沃斯人”三观，习近平将其刷新

【文/观察者网专栏作者 李世默】

若萨缪尔·亨廷顿泉下有知，他一定会忍不住笑出声来。十几年前，这位本时代最有先见之明的政治学家，创造了“达沃斯人”这个名词，用以揶揄那些四海为家、信奉“跨国主义”的世界主义精英们。

达沃斯人梦想中的世界，国界将不复存在，国家这个概念将被废弃，万灵的选举和市场将成为一切事物的管理机制而一劳永逸。 对他们而言，全球化不仅仅意味着经济上的互联互通，更是种涵盖政治治理、国际关系和社会价值的普世愿景。

这周，在瑞士阿尔卑斯山上，达沃斯年会迎来了中国国家主席习近平，各方精英们聆听了他的主旨演讲。对达沃斯人而言，这简直是一等一的讽刺啊（一个共产党国家准备为他们扛起经济全球化的大旗）！许多年来，达沃斯人看待中国的态度最多可以算是模棱两可。在掌控世界大局的全球性精英首肯之下，中国总算加入了世贸组织、国际货币基金组织等统摄世界秩序的重要机构。

然而，他们对中国的否定和指责从未停止过，批评中国不承担全球责任，甚至借民主和人权等问题不停地干涉中国内政。在这些全球精英口中，中国常常被称作“搭便车者”，并顽固地抵制（达沃斯人制定的）全球治理规则的大一统。

中国加入世贸组织十六年后，西方国家和日本未能履行承诺，仍拒绝承认中国的“市场经济”地位。美国本欲建立世界最大的自由贸易板块，其主导的跨太平洋伙伴关系协定（TPP）具有针对性地把中国排除在外。

贝拉克·奥巴马是名典型的达沃斯人，他在卸任前接受《大西洋月刊》深度采访，警告称中国如“……把民族主义奉为组织原则”，“作为大国却从不承担维护国际秩序的责任”……“只从区域势力范围的角度看待世界“，将导致世界动荡。

然而谁能料到，世界在六个月内发生了怎样的变化！从英国脱欧公投到特朗普赢得美国总统大选，达沃斯人的三观被颠覆了。 在普世化圣战的道路上，达沃斯人把本国人民抛在身后。

套用一句小威廉·巴克利的比喻，如今，达沃斯人认为理所应当支持自己的选民们，却站在进步的火车头前尖叫着“停车！”达沃斯人已完全乱了方寸，以至于反过来期望习近平拯救他们的世界。作为世界第二大经济体、头号贸易国，中国是否会擎起全球化的大旗？也许会。但中国的全球化将迎来全新的叙事，也许不会让达沃斯人如愿。

习近平主席在主旨演讲中，确定了中国保持和推进经济全球化的承诺。但他提出以下几点，是在座听众较为陌生的。

他指出，我们要适应和引导好经济全球化，消解其负面影响。他还强调各国国情有别，应尊重发展道路的多样性。我们必须致力于开放，但是前提是各方以包容的心态看待差异。只有如此，开放才能惠及所有人。习近平主席的演讲多次提到“全球化”一词，但几乎每一次都在前面加上了“经济”这个限定词。

中国看待全球化的立场，向来都不是普世主义的。在对外交往中，中国奉行的核心原则是，各国应在不受外部干扰施压的情况下，寻求适合自身的发展道路。正如习近平主席在演讲中所说，中国是经济全球化的受益者，更是贡献者，中国经济增长已成为全球经济的火车头，其带动作用在经济和金融危机时期显得尤为突出。

中国一向坚持对发展道路拥有自主决定权，它拒绝了达沃斯人“一刀切”的全球主义方案，立足国情，有选择地融入全球化，在一代人的时间里使6亿多中国人脱离了贫困。其他投身于全球化的发展中国家，没有哪个取得了如此非凡的成就。

如今，全球化进程遭遇困境已是尽人皆知。然而，经济和技术的长期发展趋势将继续推动世界进一步互联互通。因此，全球治理面临前所未有的挑战。

习近平主席这样说道：“中国立足自身国情和实践，从中华文明中汲取智慧，博采东西方各家之长，坚守但不僵化，借鉴但不照搬，在不断探索中形成了自己的发展道路。条条大路通罗马。谁都不应该把自己的发展道路定为一尊，更不应该把自己的发展道路强加于人。”

习主席传递给达沃斯的信息是多元主义的，与现场大多数听众平日里宣讲的普世主义截然不同。习近平不是达沃斯人，但也许这才是全球化所需要的。在全球化的列车再次启程之前，它首先需要清空重置。

（此文为作者李世默原创，翻页看英文版全文《金融时报》）

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Samuel Huntington must be laughing in his grave. More than a decade ago the prescient political scientist popularised the term Davos Man. This was the cosmopolitan proponent of “transnationalism” who dreamt of a world in which borders would disappear, states would be obsolete, and all would be governed by elections and markets. Globalisation, to him, was not just about economic interconnectedness but a universal vision encompassing political governance, international relations and social values.

This week, in an irony of the first order, the World Economic Forum welcomes President Xi Jinping, who took to the Swiss Alps to deliver the keynote address. Davos Man’s view of China has been ambiguous at best. Even as the global elites allowed Beijing into some of the institutions that govern the world order, such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, they continued their finger-wagging about global responsibilities and even internal matters such as democracy and human rights. China has been branded a “free rider”. It is seen as a holdout to the vision of a uniform set of rules for global governance.

The west and Japan have refused to recognise China as a “market economy”, as they pledged to do when it acceded to the WTO 16 years ago. The now defunct US-led effort to establish the world’s largest free trade block through the Trans-Pacific Partnership pointedly excluded Beijing.

Barack Obama, a quintessential Davos Man, warned in an interview with The Atlantic of a China that would “resort to nationalism as an organising principle”, that “never takes on the responsibilities of a country its size in maintaining the international order” and “views the world only in terms of regional spheres of influence”. Such a China, in his view, would create conflict.

What a difference six months makes. The Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s US election victory have turned Davos Man’s life upside down. In their crusade to universalise the world, they have left behind their own peoples. Now the constituents so long taken for granted are standing before Davos Man’s incoming train of progress and yelling “stop”, to borrow from American author William Buckley. The Davos Men are in such panic that they have turned to Mr Xi to save the day. Will the world’s second-largest economy now take up the banner of globalisation? Perhaps. But perhaps not in a way that would advance Davos Man’s narrative.

In his address, Mr Xi affirmed China’s commitment to preserve and advance economic globalisation. But he made a few points that might sound unfamiliar to his audience. He said we needed to adapt to and actively manage economic globalisation so as to defuse its negative influence. We must commit to openness, he argued — but openness can be beneficial to all only if it is tolerant of differences. He used the term globalisation several times but almost never without the qualifier “economic”.

China’s take on globalisation has never been universalist. Allowing different countries to pursue their own development paths without undue external influence has been the central theme of its engagement with the world. As Mr Xi pointed out at Davos, China has been a great beneficiary of globalisation — and a contributor, as its growth has served as a locomotive for the global economy, especially in times of economic and financial crisis.

But Beijing has always insisted on its right to determine the course of its own national development. By rejecting Davo’s Man’s one-size-fits-all globalism, it engaged globalisation on its own terms and lifted more than 600m people out of poverty within a generation. No developing country that embraced globalisation has managed anything close to this accomplishment.

Everyone now knows globalisation is in trouble. Yet trends in economics and technology will continue to drive ever increasing interconnectedness. This creates unprecedented challenges for global governance.

Mr Xi said: “China stands on its own conditions and experience. We inherit wisdom from the Chinese civilisation, learning widely from the strengths of both east and west. We defend our way but are not rigid. We learn but do not copy from others. We formulate our own development path through continuous experimentations . . . No country should put its own way on the pedestal as the only way.”

Mr Xi brings Davos a message of pluralism, as opposed to the universalism most of his audience has preached. He is no Davos Man. But perhaps this is just what globalisation needs. Before it can be restarted, it needs a reset.

Eric Li is a venture capitalist and political scientist in Shanghai.