THERE IS a common perception among Asian and other developing nations that China is on the rise and the US is in decline. With the recent financial debacle on Wall Street and the deepening recession in the US, this perception has gained more credence. At the APEC summit in Sydney in September 2007, The Nation newspaper in Thailand editorialized: “One could easily spot who the real mover and shaker among them was. It used to be the US. That is no longer. The new mover and shaker is China.”
Some developing nations find the China model — a combination of authoritarian political control and guided market economy — an attractive alternative path to economic development as opposed to a Western-style liberal market economy. The China model affords the kleptomaniac rulers of developing nations opportunities to garner immense wealth while keeping the populations content as the living standards are lifted.
Yet is the monolithic rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sustainable in the long run? Gordon Chang (章家敦), author of the book The Coming Collapse of China, predicted in a recent speech that the CCP will lose power within the next several years. Other experts differ. Princeton University professor John Ikenberry believes that, “Ultimately, autocracies will move toward liberalism.” Bruce Gilley, a professor at Queens University in Ontario, anticipates that “a reformed CCP could enjoy electoral success in a democratic China.”
Will political liberalization inevitably follow economic reform? Can the CCP survive as a political force without accepting liberal democracy? These are relevant questions with far-reaching consequences.
The human rights manifesto Charter 08 now has more than 8,100 signatories from across China and from all walks of life. Charter 08 seeks the end of one-party rule, freedom of speech, an independent judiciary and direct elections. Whether such forces for reform can eventually prevail in China will have a great impact on the global contest between democracies and autocracies.
The legitimacy of the CCP regime is now based on its ability to raise the people’s standard of living and to enhance China’s prestige as a rising great power. Partly to satisfy the nationalistic sentiments of its citizens, China has been engaged in rapid modernization of its military, including the expansion of its nuclear strike force and development of space weapons. In order to devote so much of its resources to the military buildup in the face of poverty in the rural areas, environmental degradation and other social ills, the CCP needs its repressive tools of governance, such as the well-trained and equipped armed police, the Internet police and the system of reform through labor camps. So long as the CCP’s grip on power is firm, China will be able to pursue its agenda of military aggrandizement and territorial expansionism. This path could, in time, lead to conflict with Japan and the US over hegemony in Asia.
China is not immune to the global economic recession. Its rate of economic growth has declined to 6.8 percent in the last quarter of last year. Massive layoffs are causing unrest. In Guangdong Province, three unemployed men detonated a bomb in a hotel to extort money from the management. On Jan. 15 there were pitched battles in the city of Dongguan between striking workers and security guards. On Jan. 16, 100 security officers staged a protest after they were laid off by a state-owned firm in Shenzhen.
All along the coast, angry workers besieged government buildings after factories closed their doors without paying wages. In northern China, television journalists were punished after they reported on the occupation of a textile mill by 6,000 workers. Local officials banned the story, saying the news would “destroy social stability.”
Yet despite the growing social turmoil, the CCP is likely to retain firm control of China because of its ability to adapt and to introduce reforms that do not challenge the party’s supremacy but nevertheless serve to vent grievances and aggression. The party has co-opted the entrepreneurs by inviting them to join the CCP. Village elections have been introduced, although the process is often manipulated. To redress poverty in rural areas, tax on cash crops has been abolished.
Although the judiciary is not independent and the party can control legal outcomes, many national-level laws have been enacted in the last 30 years, including laws establishing contract and property rights and the right of citizens to sue the government in cases of abuse. As of 2007, there were more than 360,000 registered civil society organizations, including trade associations, social welfare organizations, charities, legal aid groups and environmental groups.
China’s increasingly interdependent relations with the US and Washington’s deferential stance toward Beijing serve to boost the legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China. US business in general tends to support China’s authoritarian status quo. A good example is the assistance US companies such as Yahoo, Cisco, Google and Microsoft has rendered the CCP in clamping down on Internet access.
Even if civic unrest became so intense and widespread as to threaten CCP rule, China always has the option to engage in a foreign military adventure to divert the people’s attention. An invasion of Taiwan will serve this purpose well, since US forces are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan and the government of Taiwan under China-leaning President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is not expected to put up any serious resistance.
So the CCP’s survival seems certain in the near term. What about its prospects over the long haul? Here the crystal ball becomes cloudy.
After three decades of rapid economic growth there is a huge income disparity in China. In urban areas the per capita income was about US$2,000 in 2007; in rural areas the corresponding figure was US$600. To make matters worse, local officials collude with developers to expropriate land from farmers without paying reasonable compensation. The result is a growing number of violent protests against official corruption.
China is also facing an environmental crash. The Gobi desert is spreading by almost 5,000km² per year. The government estimates the desertification has turned 400 million Chinese into environmental refugees, in search of new homes and jobs. Much of China’s arable soil is contaminated, so food is not safe. There is severe water shortage. A leading expert said several cities near Beijing and Tianjin could run out of water in five to seven years. Because of the depletion of ground water resources, cities such as Shanghai have sunk more than 1.8m in 15 years.
China’s water supplies are polluted. Nearly 700 million people drink water contaminated with animal and human waste. Air quality is poor. The country contains 20 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities. An estimated 750,000 Chinese die prematurely each year because of polluted air. Climate change is expected to exacerbate this dismal environmental crisis.
China’s problems with rampant corruption and environmental degradation is due in part to official focus on economic growth and in part to its authoritarian rule. These growing problems cannot be solved without a free media to assure transparency and official accountability, and the rule of law. Yet the CCP plans to hang on to its present system of government. During the 2007 session of the National People’s Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said China would remain at the present “primary stage of socialism,” during which it would require guidance by the CCP, for at least another 100 years.
There are several reasons why the party is unwilling to relinquish its monopoly of power. First, to preserve the wealth and power of the ruling elite and cadres. Second, once the grip on governmental means of coercion is lost, emboldened citizens would demand settlement of accounts for the party’s errors and misdeeds, eg, the Tiananmen Square massacre and malfeasance of local officials. Third, the CCP abhors Western democracy as alien to Chinese culture and contrary to Chinese imperial and hierarchical tradition, which posits that China is the Middle Kingdom destined to rule all barbarians (ie, non-Chinese states). Finally, China’s national mission is to regain its rightful place as the dominant superpower so the nation may cleanse itself of the humiliation at the hands of the West for a century after the Opium War.
The CCP fans nationalism to enhance its legitimacy. By the same token, it is easy for the party to convince itself that the one-party authoritarian rule is indispensable to the advancement of the national mission.
In conclusion, the CCP will muddle through in the near term, say for another decade, until the problems get so bad that the party can no longer suppress the social upheaval. When this happens, the CCP will either accede to fundamental political reform and open up the political process or perish.
Whether China will democratize and follow the path of peaceful development or resort to military adventure and expansionism is unknowable. However, if the US, Japan and the EU continue to engage China without taking substantive measures to steer the country in the right direction, but instead keep on feeding its nationalist pride and help build up its wealth and military power because of commercial interests, then the rise of China would most likely bring great conflict and misfortune for mankind.
For Taiwan, the best course of action is to resist China’s pressure to surrender its sovereignty and democracy, boost Taiwan’s national security both in terms of hard power and psychological defenses and avoid entanglement with China’s coming bloody internal strife or external military adventure.
Li Thian-hok is a freelance commentator based in Pennsylvania.
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