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Will China's Capitalist Revolution Turn Democratic?
Minxin Pei is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of China’s Trapped Transition.
by Minxin Pei
Communist China has experienced a monumental capitalist revolution in the last two decades, with an economy that is now six times bigger than it was 20 years ago. A minor player in the global economy in the 1980’s, China today is the world’s third largest trading power. But if these stunning economic statistics make you think that so much capitalist development must also have brought more democracy to China, think again.
Most Westerners believe in a theory of liberal evolution, according to which sustained economic growth, by increasing wealth and the size of the middle class, gradually makes a country more democratic. While the long-run record of this theory is irrefutable, China’s authoritarian ruling elite is not only determined to hold on to power, but it also has been smart enough to take adaptive measures aimed at countering the liberalizing effects of economic development.
Thus, for all its awe-inspiring economic achievement, China has made remarkably little progress in political liberalization. Indeed, judging by several key indicators, progress toward democracy in China has stalled, despite unprecedented economic prosperity and personal freedom.
For instance, in the mid-1980’s, Chinese leaders seriously discussed and later drew up a blueprint for modest democratic reforms. Today, the topic of political reform is taboo. Nearly all the major institutional reforms, such as strengthening the legislature, holding village elections, and building a modern legal system, were launched in the 1980’s. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989, however, not a single major democratic reform initiative has been implemented.
Instead of democratic transition, China has witnessed a consolidation of authoritarian rule – the strengthening of a one-party regime through organizational learning and adaptation. Since 1989, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been pursuing a two-pronged strategy: selective repression that targets organized political opposition and co-optation of new social elites (the intelligentsia, professionals, and private entrepreneurs).
This strategy emphasizes the maintenance of an extensive law enforcement apparatus designed to eliminate any incipient organized opposition. Huge investments have strengthened the People’s Armed Police (PAP), a large anti-riot paramilitary force whose specialty is the quick suppression of anti-government protests by disgruntled industrial workers, peasants, and urban residents. Frequent deployment of the PAP is a major reason why the tens of thousands of collective protests that occur each year (74,000 in 2004 and 86,000 in 2005) have had a negligible impact on China’s overall stability.
To deal with new emerging political threats, such as the information revolution, the Chinese government has spent mightily on manpower and technology. A special 30,000-strong police unit monitors and screens Internet traffic, advanced technology is deployed to block access to overseas Web sites considered “hostile or harmful,” and Internet service and content providers, both domestic and Western, must comply with onerous restrictions designed to suppress political dissent and track down offenders. The regime has even conducted multi-agency exercises to test whether different government bodies could cooperate closely to keep “harmful information” off the Net during an emergency.
Having learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union that a bureaucratic ruling party must co-opt new social elites to deprive potential opposition groups of leaders, the Communist Party has conducted an effective campaign of expanding its social base. The urban intelligentsia and professionals have been pampered with material perks and political recognition, while new private entrepreneurs have been allowed to join the Party.
This strategy of pre-emptive political decapitation has produced enormous dividends for the Party. In the 1980’s, its principal adversaries were the urban intelligentsia, who constituted the backbone of the pro-democracy movement that culminated in Tiananmen Square. Today, the mainstream of the Chinese intelligentsia is an integral part of the ruling elite. Many have joined the Party and become government officials, and a large percentage enjoy various professional and financial privileges.
Predictably, the intelligentsia, usually the most liberal social group, is no longer a lethal threat to party rule. Worse, without support from this strategic group, other social groups, such as workers and peasants, have become politically marginalized and rudderless.
Although the Party’s carrot-and-stick approach has worked since 1989, it is doubtful that it will retain its efficacy for another 17 years. To the extent that China’s authoritarian regime is by nature exclusionary (it can only incorporate a limited number of elites), the co-optation strategy will soon run up against its limits, and the Party will no longer have the resources to buy off the intelligentsia or keep private entrepreneurs happy.
At the same time, selective repression can contain social frustrations and discontent only temporarily. As long as much of Chinese society views the current political system as unjust, unresponsive, and corrupt, there will always be a large reservoir of ill will toward the ruling elites.
When things go wrong – as is likely, given mounting social strains caused by rising inequality, environmental degradation, and deteriorating public services – China’s alienated masses could become politically radicalized. And, unlike past protests, which have usually been allied with students or members of the intelligentsia, popular disaffection might not have the virtue of rational leaders with whom the government could talk and negotiate.
So it may be premature for the Party to celebrate the success of its adaptive strategy. China’s rulers may have stalled democratic trends for now, but the current strategy has, perhaps, merely delayed the inevitable.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006.
www.project-syndicate.org
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Fast train to Lhasa
“The first train on the world's highest railway has arrived in Tibet, marking the successful opening of the ambitious Chinese project.
The train rumbled into the Lhasa station just after midnight local time.
President Hu Jintao called the $5.7 billion project another magnificent achievement in China's socialist modernisation drive. "This success again shows the hardworking and wise people of China have the courage, confidence and ability to continue to create miracles," Mr Hu said.
"We also have the courage, confidence and ability to stand among the advanced peoples of the world." Here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1676708.htm
Chinese socialism is dragging Tibet into the modern era. Let’s hope it will bring peace and prosperity to Tibet.
railways and gondolas and yaks
I suspect the railway is not for tourism.
I wonder it the maoist rebels ,gaining power and influence as they have,will have much to say about the tibetans near Muktinath in Nepal and their yaks and gompas.
Cheers
I begin here with the
I begin here with the quotation from Minxin Pei also used by John Pratt:
In connection with this, I think it is worth considering the combinations that arise out of centralisation vs decentralisation of decision making as these apply to (a) politics and (b) economics.
China under Mao had centralised politics and economics, after the Soviet model current at the time of the Chinese Revolution of 1949. This has been the distinguishing characteristic of Stalinism, and has made enormous abuse possible. The whole society was one big pyramid and the supreme leader at the top had total control over all aspects of life, should he care to exercise it. It was a necessary part of the business for both Stalin and Mao to be self-elevated (in part by the propaganda they generated, in part by use of terror) into the status of living gods.
Stalin reportedly spent his evenings in the late 1930s going through lists of names provided by his security police, and marking those he chose for ‘liquidation’. He also laid down the law in academic disciplines as diverse as linguistics and genetics. He could snap his fingers in Moscow, and someone 8 time zones away in Vladivostok could die as a result. He will probably go down in history as the most powerful man who ever lived. Let us at least hope so.
China today retains centralised politics, but has decentralised economics by allowing the growth of private corporations. The society can be likened to a large central pyramid surrounded by a number of smaller ones.
Centralised politics with decentralised economics characterised both fascism and late feudalism in the West. China could at this point under the right crisis conditions, make a fairly easy transition to fascism, as its Marxist-Leninist ideology is moribund. For this transition to occur, an alternative political nucleus must form, most likely if the past is any guide, around a charismatic quasi-religious leader with warlord inclinations. I think this goes some of the way towards explaining the hostility of the present state leadership to the (apparently otherwise innocuous) Falun Gong movement. To allow Falun Gong free rein might open the door to a far more openly fascist alternative power nucleus, arguably because the present regime has gone a fair way down that road on its own, but with grey, uncharismatic leaders. From ABC Radio’s (22 April 2001) Background Briefing:
The point at which the Chinese government became hostile to Falun Gong occurred two years ago this week. More than 10,000 followers held a vigil outside the Communist Party compound in Beijing. Here's part of a report by the ABC's Beijing correspondent, Jane Hutcheon.
Jane Hutcheon: 10,000 to 20,000 practitioners quietly surrounded Beijing's most sensitive government building, the Central Leaders' Compound. It was an eerie sight, a silent, almost motionless protest. But for the government, it was an outrageous act of defiance.
Chris Bullock: The Falun Gong practitioners were protesting about criticisms in a section of the Chinese press. There had already been a protest in a smaller city and then a much larger group converged unexpectedly on party headquarters in Beijing. They stood and sat several-deep on the footpath, many of them reciting Master Li's teachings. The crowd snaked right around the compound, a distance of about two kilometres, and they stayed there all day. They had come to demand official recognition and respect for their practice. The crowd left in the evening, as quickly and as orderly as they had arrived, taking all their litter with them, leaving no outward sign of the protest. But their presence left an indelible stamp on China's leaders; it was the most significant protest since Tiananmen Square, ten years earlier.
The protest took the government completely by surprise, both in size and in terms of the organisational discipline. Within two months, the Falun Gong was outlawed.
Today, the Falun Gong is deeply enmeshed in a propaganda war with Beijing.
The third combination, centralised economics with decentralised politics, arguably existed in Australia during WW2. Politically, the federal system of three tiers of government still applied, but under the Manpower legislation the Director-General of Manpower had enormous control over the labour force. However, this situation remains an exception created by the demands of a national emergency. While centralised politics does not demand centralised economics, the converse is not true.
In modern economies, there is significant popular pressure for decentralisation of both spheres, and for the whole society to become a number of pyramids of various size
In early mediaeval Europe, it was possible for a male subject of a prince or baron who did not like the situation he was in to find another patron, usually through military service or by joining a monastic order. From the modern individual worker’s point of view, working for one of a number of smaller Ford companies is better than having no choice but to work for one big Ford company (ie the state). That is the fundamental reason why communists in Australia were easily able to win union elections (they were recognised as good industrial fighters) but always lost their deposits in parliamentary elections, why the Stalin example discredited the idea of socialism utterly in the eyes of all except a few working class, middle class (and even upper class) individuals in the West, and why socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe.
Socialist theoreticians have never been able to solve its fundamental problem. Its attraction is its ability to (at least in theory) override the boom-slump anarchy of the market through central planning. The source of its political strength was popular revulsion over the inter-imperialist rivalry that found its ultimate expression in devastating war. However, it requires centralisation of economic power, requiring in turn centralisation of political power, leaving ‘the masses’ no role to play, beyond turning up for work and drinking themselves into oblivion in their spare time, and no way of influencing political decisions. One historian (I forget which) described Britain in the 18th Century as “oligarchy tempered by riot.” China’s history in the 20th Century has been one of oligarchy punctuated by civil war. This process might not have run its course.
An upheaval such as China experienced in 1989 will likely occur again, and I think none know this better than the present Chinese leadership.
Democracy makes little difference
Minxin Pei writes "When things go wrong - as is likely, given mounting social strains caused by rising inequality, environmental degradation, and deteriorating public services - China's alienated masses could become politically radicalized. And, unlike past protests, which have usually been allied with students or members of the intelligentsia, popular disaffection might not have the virtue of rational leaders with whom the government could talk and negotiate."
I think this applies to nearly all nations, most of our polital leaders are abusing their power. It seem democracy makes the difference.