Sat, Jun 16, 2018 page8

• Chinese model not that enticing

  • By Masao Sun 孫國祥
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  US political scientist Francis Fukuyama said in his 1989 essay “The End of History?” that the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union proved that liberal democracy no longer had a competitor to counterbalance it.

  He said that the end of the Cold War represented the end point of humanity’s ideological evolution and that liberal democracy would be the final state governance system.

  Speaking at a news conference on May 30, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman An Fengshan (安峰山) said that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are entering a period of competition over systems and talent.

  The key point that makes a system more or less attractive is whether its goals comply with ordinary people’s yearning for and pursuit of a beautiful life, he said.

  Taiwanese academic Lu Li-an (盧麗安), who is based in Shanghai and has joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said in a media interview that the systems belonging to the two sides of the strait are competing with one another.

  China presents a challenge to Fukuyama’s ideas about “the end of history.”

  The main thing that makes the CCP so confident is the economic fruit of the “reform and opening up” policies that Beijing has been practicing since 1978.

  These policies have allowed its GDP to grow from US$264 billion in 1979 to US$12.8 trillion last year. Over a period of 38 years, China’s per capita GDP has grown from US$267 to US$8,836, 33 times the 1978 figure.

  China is the world’s second-biggest economy and its GDP is forecast to overtake the US in 2030.

  In 2004, Joshua Cooper Ramo, who at the time was an adviser to Goldman Sachs, published a book about China’s model of development titled The Beijing Consensus.

  This phrase went on to spawn others, such as “the Chinese model,” “the Chinese experience,” “the Chinese way” and “Chinese characteristics,” all of which refer to a system that combines an authoritarian form of government with a planned economy.

  This “Beijing consensus” stands in contrast to the “Washington consensus” — a phrase coined by British economist John Williamson in 1989, which refers to a free-market economic model under a democratic system of government.

  In 2013, Singapore-based Chinese political scientist Zheng Yongnian (鄭永年) identified China’s current rise as its fourth, the first having taken place in the Qin and Han dynasties, the second during the Tang Dynasty and the third in the Ming Dynasty.

  However, the Chinese model has not proved attractive enough to induce many other countries to follow its example and has left China’s neighbors feeling worried and threatened.

  Admirers of China’s development model are mostly to be found in developing countries, because it shows that as long as a repressive regime can maintain the stability of its rule, it can promote economic growth without going through a process of democratization, US-based Chinese political scientist Zhao Suisheng (趙穗生) said.

  Furthermore, China’s “value-free” diplomacy, meaning that it does not make its relations with other countries conditional on their accepting its values, is another thing that third-world political leaders find relatively attractive.

  Does China’s system aim to achieve what ordinary people long for, as An said, and could it be a model that other countries would want to study when deciding their paths to development?

  According to a 2016 survey of China and 12 other countries in Asia, only 7.7 percent of respondents thought that the “Chinese model” was worth studying in relation to their own countries’ development.

  In no country did the majority of respondents choose the “Chinese model” as the best option, and even in China, most people said they would rather live under the systems of freedom, democracy, rule of law and human rights that exist in the US and other democratic countries.

  Another study examined the attitudes of Taiwanese who were long-term residents of China, regarding their children’s education, their close relationships and private interactions, and their plans for retirement.

  This study found that only 24.5 percent of those interviewed were willing to let their children go to local schools, 79 percent had most of their close relationships and private interactions with other Taiwanese and only 11.5 percent said that they definitely or possibly planned to go on living in China after they retired.

  This gives a clear indication of how those people felt about blending into the “Chinese system.”

  China’s rise has indeed attracted the world’s attention, but the “Chinese system” has not swayed neighboring countries to copy or pursue it.

  Ramo thinks that other countries do not trust what he calls “brand China,” while US political scientist Joseph Nye, who conceptualized “soft power,” said that China has always suffered from corruption, inequality, a lack of human rights and problems with its legal system, so while the Chinese model has some influence in repressive and semi-repressive countries, it is not attractive to the democratic camp.

  As for Fukuyama, he said that the success of China’s economic reform policies is built on the CCP’s highly repressive rule and laws, and that the “Chinese system” lacks the legal framework and “democratic accountability” needed to restrain the power of those in government.

  Academics, Asian countries, Taiwanese long-term residents in China and even Chinese themselves do not find China’s “system” or the “Chinese model” very attractive.

  As a government spokesman, it is An’s job to speak in stern and righteous tones. He is like a makeup artist whose task is to prettify the CCP regime.

  However, the studies and survey results listed above show that the world is not so impressed by the Chinese model, while experts have many criticisms of the “Chinese system.”

  Given this harsh reality, can An and “Taiwan leavers” such as Lu really believe that there is any competition between the systems prevailing on each side of the Taiwan Strait?

  Masao Sun is former diplomat.

  Translated by Julian Clegg
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