October 21, 2022
Democracy, The Most Dangerous Religion
民主，最危险的宗教
8. Chapter 8 – Rubber-Stamp Parliaments
8. 第8章 – 橡皮图章议会
By Larry Romanoff
拉里•罗曼诺夫
翻译： 珍珠
Content
目录
8.1. Introduction
8.1. 介绍
8.2. China’s Parliament
8.2. 中国议会
8.1. Introduction
8.1. 介绍
We often read in the Western press that China has a “rubber-stamp” parliament. That isn’t true, and I will deal with it below but, if we want a genuine example of a real rubber-stamp parliament, we can look much closer to home – Canada.
我们经常在西方媒体上看到中国有一个“橡皮图章”议会。这不是真的，我将在下面进行说明，但是，如果我们想要一个真正的橡皮图章议会的真实例子，我们可以看看离家更近的地方——加拿大。
In Canada, the leader of the party that wins the election automatically becomes the Prime Minister. He then selects the cabinet, which will include ministers of Finance, Foreign Affairs, Health, and so on, and which body determines all legislation to be proposed and passed. These appointments are done entirely by one man, at his option, with cabinet members freely appointed and dismissed at will. It should be apparent that a Prime Minister will appoint to his cabinet only those persons seeing the world through his pair of eyes; he is looking for compliance and conformity, not diversity and conflict. All must be reading from the same script.
在加拿大，赢得大选的政党领袖自动成为总理。然后，他选择内阁，其中包括财政部长、外交部长、卫生部长等，以及决定所有拟议和通过的立法的机构。这些任命完全由一个人做出，由他选择，内阁成员可以自由任命和解雇。很明显，总理只会任命那些通过他的眼睛看世界的人进入内阁；他寻求的是服从和顺从，而不是多样性和冲突。所有人都必须照本宣科。
The Prime Minister determines the character and the landscape, the “psyche” of the current government, which is reflected in his choice of cabinet ministers. No legislation will proceed to Parliament without the approval of the Prime Minister. In fact, no topics, legislative or otherwise, will be raised for discussion within the cabinet, without the express permission of the Prime Minister. Any cabinet member presuming to introduce unwanted topics will be shut down and/or dismissed. When Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, was Prime Minister of Canada, his traditional method of dealing with naïve junior cabinet members who dared question or contradict his proposals, was to listen carefully then to state, “Does anyone else have anything stupid they want to say.?” Once was usually enough; the cabinet members know their place. When new legislation or government initiatives are discussed within the cabinet, there may be disagreement and open debate on details, but the final form will inevitably be one that reflects the wishes of the Prime Minister. Actually, in real life, it will reflect the wishes of his external handlers and those who paid for his leadership campaign, but we needn’t go there now.
总理决定着现任政府的性格和景观，即“精神”，这反映在他对内阁部长的选择上。未经总理批准，任何立法都不会提交议会。事实上，未经总理明确许可，任何议题，无论是立法还是其他议题，都不会在内阁中提出讨论。任何推定引入不受欢迎的话题的内阁成员都将被关闭和/或解雇。当贾斯汀·特鲁多的父亲皮埃尔·特鲁多担任加拿大总理时，他处理那些敢于质疑或反驳他的建议的天真的初级内阁成员的传统方法就是仔细聆听，然后说：“还有其他人想说什么愚蠢的话吗？”一次通常就够了；内阁成员知道他们的位置。在内阁讨论新的立法或政府倡议时，可能会对细节有分歧和公开辩论，但最终的形式必然会反映总理的意愿。事实上，在现实生活中，它会反映他的外部处理者和那些为他的领导竞选买单的人的意愿，但我们现在不必去那里。
When a piece of legislation is decided upon, it is presented to Parliament for debate which, in real life, is a mere condescension to the pretense of democracy since it is already decreed that the legislation will pass. The opposition party can debate within limits, as they do, but the legislation will always pass because the governing party has a majority of votes. In the real world of politics, the parliamentary debates are a sham. Members of the governing party always debate in favor while members of the opposition invariably debate against. The opposition’s only intent is to delay and hamstring, perhaps to embarrass, the government, and to score political points that may be valuable in the next election. The ostensible purpose of the opposition, as every school child is taught, is to keep the government on its toes, and honest, to present alternatives, to illuminate flaws or dangers, but the political system is rather more abrupt and vicious than this. Government politics in every democracy is quite a dirty business, not at all the high-minded and selfless system presented in elementary text books.
当一项立法被决定时，它会被提交给议会进行辩论，在现实生活中，这只是对民主的伪装，因为已经颁布了该法案将会通过。反对党可以在一定范围内进行辩论，就像他们做的那样，但该法案总会通过，因为执政党拥有多数票。在现实政治中，议会辩论是一种骗局。执政党的成员总是辩论赞成，而反对派成员总是辩论反对。反对派的唯一目的是拖延和阻碍，或许是为了使政府难堪，并获得在下一次选举中可能宝贵的政治分数。正如每个小学生所教的那样，反对派的表面目的是让政府保持警惕和诚实，提出替代方案，阐明缺陷或危险，但政治制度比这更加突然和恶毒。每个民主国家的政府政治都是一件肮脏的事情，根本不是小学课本中呈现的高尚和无私的制度。
When new legislation is put to a vote, members of the governing party always vote in favor; they have no choice. To vote against your own government’s bills would mean eviction from the party and the end of a political career. It is virtually unheard of. Of course, all opposition members vote against the bills but, since they are in a minority, this is of no consequence and the bills always pass. No members of a democratic parliament are permitted to “vote according to their conscience” except on the most trivial of matters when the Prime Minister grants approval, and this almost never happens. In fact, the news media make a great commotion when the government leader occasionally gives his party members the “freedom” to vote as they wish rather than as they are told, presented as a great thing. Unfortunately, it’s always on a trivial issue that cannot be hijacked by some ideology.
当新立法付诸表决时，执政党成员总是投赞成票；他们别无选择。投票反对自己政府的法案意味着被开除党籍，政治生涯结束。这几乎闻所未闻。当然，所有反对派成员都投票反对这些法案，但由于他们是少数，这并不重要，这些法案总是会通过。民主议会的成员不允许“按照自己的良心投票”，除非在总理批准的最琐碎的事情上，而这几乎从未发生过。事实上，当政府领导人偶尔给予其党员“自由”投票权而不是被告知时，新闻媒体就会大肆宣传，并将其视为一件好事。不幸的是，这总是关于一些不能被某些意识形态劫持的琐碎问题。
In truth, in the real world of democratic politics, the opposition party serves no useful purpose and accomplishes nothing, simply being an enormous waste of time and money. The opposition has no power to influence the trajectory of the ruling government. It can only delay, but cannot influence or prevent any legislation or action of the governing party. The opposition is entirely emasculated, totally impotent. In real life, this is such a useless body the members might as well go home and prepare for the next election four years hence.
事实上，在民主政治的现实世界中，反对党派没有任何用处，也没有任何成就，只是浪费时间和金钱。反对党没有权力影响执政政府的轨迹。它只能拖延，但不能影响或阻止执政党的任何立法或行动。反对党完全被阉割，完全无能为力。在现实生活中，这个机构毫无用处，成员们还不如回家准备四年后的下一次选举。
The situation is not different if the governing party does not have a majority of the seats in Parliament and is forced to form a coalition with one of the minor parties. There will be some give-and-take, but the coalition agreement will state that the minority party will support the government in all Parliamentary votes, thus maintaining a majority. It is true that the ideology of the coalition party may prevent a particular piece of legislation from being presented to Parliament, but otherwise all is essentially the same.
如果执政党在议会中没有多数席位，被迫与一个小党派组成联盟，情况也没有什么不同。会有一些妥协，但联盟协议将规定，少数党将在所有议会投票中支持政府，从而保持多数席位。确实，联盟党的意识形态可能会阻止某项立法提交议会，但除此之外，其他方面基本上都是一样的。
This is not only a true, “rubber-stamp” parliament, but constitutes in the real world of democratic systems, a one-man four-year dictatorship. This is how it really is, at least in Canada and, from the information available, the situation is essentially the same in all democracies, Western or otherwise. The US is an exception due to the different structure, but the results are in many ways comparable.
这不仅是一个真正的“橡皮图章”议会，而且在现实世界的民主制度中，构成了一个人的四年独裁统治。这就是它的真实情况，至少在加拿大是这样，从现有的信息来看，所有民主国家的情况基本上都是一样的，无论是西方还是其他国家。由于结构不同，美国是一个例外，但结果在很多方面都是可以比较的。
The only place where this narrative encounters difficulty is when we have, as sometimes occurs, a weak and/or incompetent Prime Minister, and a majority of the members of cabinet and Parliament lose faith in their leader and force a change. But after the change, the situation reverts to normal, that is, to the one-man dictatorship and his rubber-stamp parliament.
这种叙事遇到困难的唯一地方是，当我们有时出现一位软弱和/或不称职的首相时，大多数内阁和议会议员对他们的领导人失去信心并迫使其改变。但改变后，情况恢复正常，即一人独裁和他的橡皮图章议会。
In summary, in a Western “democracy” like that of Canada, the Leader of the Party – the Prime Minister – has 100% control over his cabinet, and the cabinet has 100% control over all voting issues presented to the House. The Prime Minister also has 100% control of the party members’ voting who can either fall into line or leave the party, and that means the entire party will either “rubber-stamp” the Prime Minister’s wishes and decisions or be politically executed. You must vote for your ‘team’. To do otherwise is both heresy and suicide. Thus, we have, in real life, in actuality, a one-man dictatorship. In truth, it is the Western countries like Canada, not China, that have “ceremonial” and “rubber-stamp” parliaments, and that are “authoritarian dictatorships”.
总之，在像加拿大这样的西方“民主”国家，党魁——总理——对其内阁拥有100%的控制权，内阁对提交给众议院的所有投票问题拥有100%的控制权。总理还对党员的投票拥有100%的控制权，他们可以顺从或离开党，这意味着整个党要么“橡皮图章”总理的意愿和决定，要么在政治上被处决。你必须为你的“团队”投票。否则，既是异端又是自杀。因此，我们在现实生活中实际上是一个人的独裁统治。事实上，是加拿大这样的西方国家，而不是中国，拥有“仪式”和“橡皮图章”议会，而且是“威权独裁”。
8.2. China’s Parliament
8.2. 中国议会
Here is an extract from a 2010 article in London’s Sunday Times:
这是伦敦《星期日泰晤士报》2010年的一篇文章的摘录：
“When deputies gather in the ornate meeting rooms of the Great Hall of the People, they demonstrate little willingness to engage in hard-hitting discussion of the hot issues of the day – housing, inflation or job opportunities. It is not for nothing that the National People’s Congress is described by such fitting clichés as “rubber stamp” and “ceremonial”.”
“当代表们聚集在人民大会堂的豪华会议室时，他们几乎不愿意就住房、通货膨胀或就业机会等当今热点问题进行激烈的讨论。难怪全国人民代表大会被贴上了‘橡皮图章’和‘走过场’等贴切的标签。”
You would almost have to think this was a joke, but the Times went on to tell us about some of the ‘hot issues of the day’ that China’s parliament demonstrated ‘little willingness to discuss’: “One woman submitted a proposal to ban all private internet cafés. Other suggestions have included a call to prohibit the national anthem as a mobile phone ring tone, and another for a law demanding husbands pay salaries to their wives for the housework.” What can we say? Shame on China’s parliament for their unwillingness to engage in “hard-hitting discussion” of these hot issues.
你几乎可以认为这是一个笑话，但《泰晤士报》继续告诉我们中国议会“几乎没有意愿讨论”的一些“当天的热点问题”：“一名妇女提交了一份禁止所有私人网吧的提案。其他建议包括呼吁禁止国歌作为手机铃声，另一个要求丈夫为妻子支付家务费的法律。”我们能说什么？中国议会不愿意参与这些热点问题的“激烈讨论”，真是可耻。
Westerners are accustomed to the pompous, fractious, and often juvenile, posturing debates occurring in their respective parliaments. In Australia and South Korea, the “hard-hitting discussions” are literally that, since the elected members often come to blows, or hurl books and furniture at each other. Other Western Parliaments are not much better. In the US, one senator referred to an opposition member as “just a chicken-shit thief“; presumably he was enraptured by one of the “hot issues of the day”. Westerners strangely accept this as normal, and make various – and vacuous – excuses for it. But there should be no excuse for the most senior leaders and officials of a nation to engage in such emotionally juvenile behavior. The mere absence of this kind of immature stupidity in China’s parliament is used as proof of its ceremonial and rubber-stamp status, apparently implying that there is no power without idiocy.
西方人习惯于在各自议会中进行的浮夸、易怒且往往幼稚的姿态辩论。在澳大利亚和韩国，“激烈的讨论”就是字面意思，因为当选议员经常打斗，或互相扔书和家具。其他西方议会也好不到哪里去。在美国，一位参议员称一位反对派成员“只是一个鸡屎小偷”；想必他被“当今热点问题”之一所迷惑。西方人奇怪地接受这是正常的，并为此做出各种空洞的借口。但是一个国家的最高领导人和官员不应该有任何借口从事这种情绪幼稚的行为。中国议会中没有这种不成熟的愚蠢行为，这被证明是它的礼仪和橡皮图章地位，显然意味着没有白痴就没有权力。
China is managed by an open-door meritocracy with nearly 100 million members, of which the national parliament is an extension. The NPC is not a rubber stamp for a non-existent communist dictator. The nation’s annual sessions of parliament occur in Beijing with meetings of almost 3,000 deputies and advisors who represent China’s 1.4 billion people. To suggest that crucial issues are not addressed is nonsense. China’s system is simply different from that of Western countries, and that difference is arguably far superior. Once again, China is a pluralistic society, very unlike the US and most of the West. The Chinese discuss and debate as much as anyone, but the objective is consensus as to what is in the long-term best interests of the nation as a whole.
中国实行的是开放式精英管理，拥有近1亿名成员，其中全国人民代表大会是其延伸。全国人民代表大会不是不存在的共产党独裁者的橡皮图章。中国每年在北京举行议会会议，代表中国14亿人口的近3000名代表和顾问参加会议。认为关键问题没有得到解决是无稽之谈。中国的制度与西方国家完全不同，这种差异可以说是远远优于西方国家。中国再次成为一个多元化的社会，与美国和大多数西方国家截然不同。中国人像任何人一样讨论和辩论，但目标是就国家整体长期最佳利益达成共识。
This should be easy for Westerners to understand, but perhaps not. A major difference is that with only one party, everyone is on the same team and searching for the best long-term solution for the entire nation. China does not have two or three “teams” whose members’ primary preoccupation is obtaining control in the next election. Thus, Chinese government officials are not “politicians” competing on ideology, but rather “government management officials” looking for solutions. It should be obvious that such a large Parliamentary group will contain points of view from every corner of the social spectrum. The members of China’s parliament are absolutely reading from the same script when it comes to the rejuvenation of their nation, but those within the group reflect every possible kind of opinion or position.
这对西方人来说应该很容易理解，但也许不是。一个主要的区别是，只有一个政党，每个人都在同一个团队中，为整个国家寻找最佳的长期解决方案。中国没有两三个“团队”，其成员的主要任务是在下一次选举中获得控制权。因此，中国政府官员不是“政治家”，他们在意识形态上竞争，而是“政府管理官员”寻找解决方案。很明显，这样一个庞大的议会团体将包含来自社会各个阶层的观点。中国议会的成员在谈到国家的复兴时，绝对是按照同样的剧本阅读，但这个团体中的成员反映了各种可能的意见或立场。
This is true in the same way it is true for a corporation, where the senior executives and Board members may initially have widely-differing opinions on the future of the company, but their task is to amalgamate all those positions into a coherent future path. There may be prolonged and even heated discussions until the opposing points of view can all be assuaged and accommodated into a unanimous agreement but, through it all, everyone is on “the same team” and searching for the most acceptable result for the company as a whole.
这同样适用于公司，公司的高管和董事会成员最初可能对公司未来有着截然不同的看法，但他们的任务是将所有这些立场合并为一条连贯的未来道路。可能会有长时间的甚至激烈的讨论，直到相反的观点都能得到安抚和调和，达成一致的协议，但通过这一切，每个人都站在“同一战线”，为整个公司寻找最可接受的结果。
By contrast, in all “democracies” we have two or more parties whose primary interest is not the good of the nation or the welfare of the people, but of winning the next election and being in power. The governing of a nation is thus reduced to a kind of team sport where the most important consideration is a victory for “our team”. It is legend that any corporation run in this manner is heading for bankruptcy, and the inescapable truth is that this is not different for government. This is one of the flaws omitted from our elementary school textbooks.
相比之下，在所有“民主国家”，我们有两个或多个政党，其主要利益不是国家的利益或人民的福祉，而是赢得下一次选举并掌权。因此，一个国家的治理被简化为一种团队运动，其中最重要的考虑因素是“我们团队”的胜利。有传言说，任何以这种方式经营的公司都走向破产，而不可避免的事实是，这对政府来说并没有什么不同。这是我们小学课本中遗漏的一个缺陷。
But there is more. The Chinese culture is different from that of the West. When the members of China’s Parliament are discussing new legislation and new 5-year plans, they are not there to create a “TV moment” or garner votes at the expense of another – a claim nobody can make about Western governments. Those who work in Asian countries will know there are many discussions offline, that the debates, the critical examination of all aspects of issues, are done beforehand by many people in many groups until a consensus emerges. It is undoubtedly true that many of these discussions are intense, perhaps even heated, but unlike the US, Canada, and the West generally, the Chinese prefer to not hysterically hang out their dirty linen for the world to see. Family arguments are kept inside the home where they belong, with a unified face presented to the foreign neighbors. China cannot be faulted for that. If anything, the NPC is an example of how adults make decisions without the juvenile posturing and bickering that goes on in the Western political systems. Of course, this is all assisted by the existence of only one political party. Since there are no ideological ‘teams’ designed to create conflict, the members simply get down to business. It should be strikingly obvious that nobody needs those extra political parties, but the jingoists cannot think in other terms. To them multiple parties are theological in nature.
但还有更多。中国文化与西方文化不同。当中国议会议员讨论新立法和新五年计划时，他们并不是为了创造“电视时刻”或以牺牲另一个人的利益来获得选票——没有人可以声称西方政府是这样的。在亚洲国家工作的人会知道，有很多线下讨论，对问题的各个方面的辩论和批判性审查都是事先由许多团体中的许多人完成的，直到达成共识。毫无疑问，这些讨论中有许多是激烈的，甚至可能是激烈的，但与美国、加拿大和西方国家不同，中国人更倾向于不歇斯底里地把他们的肮脏内衣挂在外面让全世界看到。家庭争论保持在属于他们的家里，对外国邻居展示统一的面孔。中国不能被指责。如果有的话，全国人民代表大会是一个成年人做出决定的例子，没有西方政治制度中存在的青少年姿态和争吵。当然，这一切都得益于只有一个政党的存在。由于没有意识形态的“团队”来制造冲突，成员们只是开始做正事。很明显，没有人需要这些额外的政党，但沙文主义者不能以其他方式思考。对他们来说，多党派本质上是神学性的。
China’s major Parliamentary meetings are usually to present the final agreement. By the time the issues are presented to China’s Parliament, there may have been months of discussions in variable mixed groups of every size, with all individuals exploring all the alternatives, weeding out the inappropriate or unworkable, until everyone is on the same page. They have all participated in the evaluations, in the debates, and have already achieved the consensus sought. To object then is in some sense already too late. They then conduct a formal vote to simply to confirm the decisions they have already made. This is how the proposals reach the point where they are finally voted on, and why they normally receive overwhelming approval. It sometimes occurs that a few outliers of extremely firm conviction refuse to compromise and thus vote against a proposal, but these people are usually obstructionist and not very good “team players”, and perhaps not long for the government world. It’s really quite disingenuous to suggest that the Chinese process is a “rubber stamp” approval by people who have no power and no say. And it’s especially hypocritical since Western democracies themselves most closely resemble what they condemn.
中国的主要议会会议通常会提出最终协议。在这些问题提交给中国议会之前，可能已经进行了数月的讨论，各种规模的混合团体都在探索所有替代方案，剔除不恰当或不可行的方案，直到每个人都达成共识。他们都参与了评估和辩论，并已经达成了所寻求的共识。在某种意义上，此时反对已经为时已晚。然后他们进行正式投票，以确认他们已经做出的决定。这就是提案最终投票表决的地方，也是为什么它们通常会获得压倒性支持的原因。有时会出现一些极端坚定的信念拒绝妥协，从而投票反对提案的情况，但这些人通常是阻挠者，不是很好的“团队成员”，也许对政府世界并不感兴趣。认为中国的过程是“橡皮图章”批准，由没有权力也没有发言权的人批准，这真的很虚伪。而且特别虚伪，因为西方民主国家本身最接近他们谴责的东西。
China’s system also has an ‘opposition’, but this body has two major differences from Western governments. Also, it functions intelligently, so let’s make that three major differences. First, it does not function to ‘oppose’ but rather to consult. This body is charged with the responsibility to consider not only the government’s directions and policies but also to devise alternatives and make recommendations. And the government must by law consider and respond to all these consultations – which it does. Second, this opposition group are not the marginalised ‘losers’ as in the Western systems but a second tier of extremely competent people who were not selected to the top governing positions. And, rather than lose all this expertise, this secondary group was created to contribute to the development of their country.
中国的制度也有一个“反对派”，但这个机构与西方政府有两个主要区别。此外，它的职能是智能化的，所以让我们说三个主要区别。首先，它的职能不是“反对”，而是协商。这个机构不仅负责考虑政府的指示和政策，而且负责制定替代方案并提出建议。政府必须依法考虑并回应所有这些协商——政府也确实这样做了。其次，这个反对派不是西方制度中处于边缘地位的“失败者”，而是没有入选最高管理职位的第二梯队非常有能力的人。而且，这个次级群体不是为了失去所有这些专业知识而创建的，而是为了促进国家的发展。
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
罗曼诺夫先生的作品已被翻译成32种语言，他的文章发表在30多个国家的150多个外语新闻和政治网站以及100多个英语平台上。拉里·罗曼诺夫是一名退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级管理职位，并拥有国际进出口业务。他曾是上海复旦大学的客座教授，为高级EMBA课程提供国际事务案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生住在上海，目前正在写一系列十本书，通常与中国和西方有关。他是辛西娅·麦金尼的新文集《当中国打喷嚏》的撰稿人之一。(第2章——与恶魔打交道)。
His full archive can be seen at:
他的完整文章库可以在以下看到：
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
他的联系方式：
2186604556@qq.com
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