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Yet in China, too, the present downturn is jangling nerves. The country is a statistical haze, but the trade figures for last month—with exports 2% lower than in November 2007 and imports 18% down—were shocking. Power generation, generally a reliable number, fell by 7%. Even though the World Bank and other forecasters still expect China’s GDP to grow by 7.5% in 2009, that is below the 8% level regarded, almost superstitiously, as essential if huge social dislocation is to be avoided. Just this month a senior party researcher gave warning of what he called, in party-speak, “a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil”. Indeed, demonstrations and protests, always common in China, are proliferating, as laid-off factory-workers join dispossessed farmers, environmental campaigners and victims of police harassment in taking to the streets.

The gap between mouth and trouser

One worry is that China’s rulers will try to push the yuan down to help exporters. That would be a terrible idea, not least because the government has the resources to ease the pain in less dangerous ways: it is running a budget surplus and has little debt. Last month it announced a huge 4 trillion yuan (nearly $600 billion) fiscal-stimulus package. Some who have crunched the numbers argue that this was all mouth and no trousers—much of it made up by old budget commitments, double-counting and empty promises. It was thus mainly propaganda, to convince China’s own people and the outside world that the government was serious about stimulating demand at home. That may yet prove to be unfair: what matters is when infrastructure money is spent, not when it is announced. Yet there is little sign that the regime is ready to take radical steps in the two areas that would do most to persuade the rural majority to spend its money rather than hoard it: giving farmers better rights over their land; and providing a decent social safety-net, especially in health care.

Still, China does at least have trousers, with deep pockets. India, in contrast, is not seen as a big potential part of the answer to the world’s economic problems. Not only is its economy far smaller; its government’s finances are also a mess. Its budget deficit—some 8% of GDP—inhibits it from offering a bigger stimulus that might mitigate the downturn (see article). This is alarming. If China reckons it needs 8% annual growth to provide jobs for the 7m or so new members of its workforce each year, how is India to cope? A younger country, its workforce is increasing by about 14m a year—ie, about one-quarter of the world’s new workers. And, perversely, its great successes of recent years have been in industries that rely not on vast supplies of cheap labour but on smaller numbers of highly educated engineers—such as its computer-services businesses and capital-intensive manufacturing.

In two respects, however, India has a big advantage over China in coping with an economic slowdown. It has all-too extensive experience in it; and it has a political system that can cope with disgruntlement without suffering existential doubts. India pays an economic price for its democracy. Decision-making is cumbersome. And as in China, unrest and even insurgency are widespread. But the political system has a resilience and flexibility that China’s own leaders, it seems, believe they lack. They are worrying about how to cope with protests. India’s have their eyes on a looming election.

It used to be a platitude of Western—and Marxist—analysis of China that wrenching economic change would demand political reform. Yet China’s economy boomed with little sign of any serious political liberalisation to match the economic free-for-all. The cliché fell into disuse. Indeed, many, even in democratic bastions such as India, began to fall for the Chinese Communist Party’s argument that dictatorship was good for growth, whereas Indian democracy was a luxury paid for by the poor, in the indefinite extension of their poverty.

But as China enters a trying year of anniversaries—the 50th of the suppression of an uprising in Tibet; the 20th of the quashing of the Tiananmen Square protests; the 60th of the founding of the People’s Republic itself—it may be worth remembering that the winter of 1978-79 saw not only a party Central Committee plenum but also the “Democracy Wall” movement in Beijing. It was a brief flowering of the freedom of expression, quite remarkable after the xenophobic isolation of the Cultural Revolution. Deng, like Mao Zedong before him, tolerated the dissident movement as long as it served his ends, and then stamped it out. In so doing he thwarted what Wei Jingsheng, the most famous of the wall-writers, had dubbed “the fifth modernisation”: democracy. China still needs it.

My Chinese Version

Asia的两大巨人在颤抖。India的经济萎靡，而China领导人的麻烦更多。

经济消沉甚至绝望席卷了全世界，其速度之快使世界的每个角落都为之震惊。这种巨变对于两个人口最多的国家：China和India来说更是突然。最近，这两个世界上增长最快的经济也难逃这场把富国折腾得够呛的经济传染病。乐天派们曾希望这两个国家的巨大的新兴市场能够把这个世界从衰退中拉回来。现在，一些人则担心情况刚好相反：这两个国家也会被整个世界拖下水。就算考虑到她们的成功的方面，这两个国家依然很穷 ———— India的营养不良的儿童占了全世界的2/5。现在，她们又要面对大量的失业。

或许，太悲观了也不好。这两个国家依然是世界经济中最有活力的国家。但是这两个国家也面临着经济低迷和政治难题。在India，其积极的形象已经受到了双重打击：经济打击和上个月在Mumbai发生的恐怖事件的打击。正如我们专门报道的那样，India的自信心来自于两个方面：一是过去5年里平均每年8.8%的高速经济增长；二是与这增长向伴随的India的国际地位和影响的提高。India的政客们也不在满足于India像Pakistan那样只是一个拥有潜在核武力的国家。India已经成为一个像China那样 ———— 一个经济高速增长的传奇。

Mumbai恐怖袭击的账要算到Pakistan的恐怖组织的头上，而且有人呼吁采取军事报复行动。这使得人们开始担心地区冲突的战火再次燃起。就在India的西边境经历多事之秋的时候，经济衰退对India的打击也既成事实。India在10月出口比去年同期下降12%；数百小纺织公司已经倒闭；即使近年来India汽车制造业的一些明星企业也都停产。其央行已经调整了对India今年经济增长的估计值，认为将滑落到7.5% – 8%。这个数字还算是乐观的。明天将滑落到5.5%，这是自2002年以来最惨的一年。

连续繁荣数年后依然保持高速增长
如果China的经济增长率也跌到像India那样，那么，不管对其本国还是对外国，都是一场灾难。本月，China正在庆祝标志着实施“reform and opening”国策的那个事件的30周年纪念。那一年，China的经济增长为9.8%。而那个事件则是在Deng Xiaoping领导下的the Communist Party’s Central Committee的一次会议。虽然reform and opening最初只是尝试性的，但到了1990s，the Communist Party更加激进地废除了大部分Maoist体系 ———— 开始实行家庭联产承包责任制、吸收巨额外国投资，并允许私有经济发展。或许，30周年不是一个里程碑，但我们容易理解为什么the Communist Party要宣告其过去30年的成就，因为，他们已经见证了人类历史上最令人震惊的经济改革。在这个拥有世界上1/5人口的国家里，已经有200 million人脱离贫困。

然而，在China，当前的经济低迷也引起了紧张。China总是在统计数据上云山雾罩，但是其上个月的贸易数字 ———— 11月出口和进口比去年同期下降2%和18% ———— 还是很令人震惊的。发电量的数字还算可靠，下降了7%。如果不发生巨大社会动荡，the World Bank和其他预测者甚至期望2009年China的GDP增长7.5%，8%的增长是不可能了。一位资深的party researcher在party-speak上发出了被他称作是“社会动乱的反作用”的警告。的确，当被解雇的工厂工人成为无依无靠的农民、环境运动的倡导者和在街上被警察伤害的牺牲者时，这些在China再普通不过的事情和抗议还在增加。

嘴把式与真把式之间的差距
有人担心，China的高层会让其货币贬值，从而扩大出口。这将是一个可怕的主意，相当重要的原因是China政府还有其他不太危险的办法来解决问题：China正在酝酿一场预算过剩且China几乎没有外债。上个月，China宣布了一个4 trillion（大约相当于$600 billion）的财政刺激计划。一些揣摩过这些数字的人认为，这个计划全是嘴把式，没什么真格的 ———— 计划中很大部分都是过去的预算、重复计算和空头承诺。因此，4 trillion计划的主要目的在于宣传，使其国人和世界相信，China政府在努力刺激本土的需求。把infrastructure money什么时候投放当作重点，而不是什么时候宣布。这样的说法可能不太恰当。但目前还没有迹象表明China政府打算去改善这两个方面：给农民更多土地权利；建立良好的社保体系，特别是在卫生保健领域。而这两个方面的改善才能使其农业人口的大多数敢于花钱，而不是存钱。

China有钱，所以，China至少还有些真把式的。India则相反，好像对于觉得世界经济问题起不了太大作用。不但因为其经济太小，就连其政府的财政都是一脑子烧锅豆腐。其预算赤字 ———— 大约占GDP的8% ———— 抑制其为减轻经济低迷而提供更大的刺激。这很令人担心。如果China为了实现每年8%的增长而为其劳动力提供每年7 million个工作机会，India打算咋整？作为一个年轻的国家，India的劳动力正在以每年14 million的速度增长 ———— 相当于每年世界新增劳动力的1/4。而且，不正常的是，India这些年来的成功不是在于那些能养活大量廉价劳动力的产业中，而是在那些只能养活一小撮受过良好教育的工程师的产业中 ———— 如：计算机服务性企业和资本集中型的制造业。