Giggsy PO

Three Futures

There are three possibilities for China's next quarter- century. One is that there will be no transition to a different political system. What we see now— commercialized Leninism—is what we will see in another 25 years. The communist party will buy off the Chinese people with a better material way of life. There will be no rule of law if this happens, but rather continued repression. The second possibility is democracy. According to this view, the new society and the new economy will produce a new liberalized politics. The third possibility is that the contradictions of China today mean that the country is headed for fracture. An authoritarian state and a free economy are simply incompatible in this view, and explosion lies down the road.

The argument that commercialized Leninism will continue goes something like this: First, the communist leaders have no plans to abandon it, since they profit from it. Second, Beijing—which wants economic but not political change—has learned from Mikhail Gorbachev's mistake. Gorbachev tried to start with political change and then did not deliver the economic goods to the Soviet people. Third, China now has the economic muscle to pacify the losers of its reform era, such as farmers and a massive army of unemployed workers. Fourth, the Chinese state is more resourceful because of its long tradition of domestic imperial rule. Fifth, there is a lack of fanaticism: Chinese dictatorships have never been theocratic, and still have a pragmatic streak today. Finally, the leadership is more than willing to play the national glory card: space missions, the Olympic games, and communist archaeologists' attempts to prove that China is 5,000 years old (which it isn't), thus older than India. The regime thinks these achievements will keep the Chinese people happy.

The main reason to doubt that commercialized Leninism will survive is simple: It has never survived before. And besides, success is not solely in the Chinese leadership's hands. They have unleashed forces which may deny them their goal. For example, entry into the World Trade Organization is a very complicated step. As American banks start to lend Chinese currency to Chinese citizens at rates different from Chinese communist banks, what will be the effects? China has promised to allow foreign banks to expand this policy, but will it? And how will Chinese banks manage with the resulting hugely reduced deposits? Another factor to consider: Last year, 57 percent of China's exports were produced by joint-venture enterprises, which means foreign money is behind this boom. What will be the implications of that? Will foreign investment continue at a high level?

There are other reasons to doubt that the current system will last. Since Beijing has told its people that economic success is now the measure of communism's success, one severe recession might be enough to finish it off. And do not forget that the loss of the American market, due to any Sino-American rupture, would mean the loss of 30 percent of China's exports, and that would probably end the regime. Finally, economic freedom and political freedom cannot be separated for long. It was not for nothing that Adam Smith described his ideas about the free economy as a system of natural liberty, or that Friedrich Hayek called his book about the futility of centralized economic planning The Road to Serfdom.

What are the reasons for thinking that China will transform itself into a democracy? There are some hopeful signs: Other former Leninist states have adopted some form of democracy. In fact, against the predictions of many, democracy has also taken root in parts of Chinese civilization, in Taiwan and to a degree in Hong Kong. Nor is this unprecedented. There were flickers of democracy in early 20th century China, but they were overwhelmed by warlordism and the second Sino- Japanese war. Certain preconditions of democracy do exist in China: One can buy a house (though not the land it stands on); education is at respectable levels; there is limited diversification of information; and professionals such as lawyers and journalists are pushing for autonomy.

Several factors, however, oppose a transition to democracy. Rural hinterland China is a world away from the new economy of eastern, coastal, urban China. An ingrained respect for hierarchy dominates society. Village elections have been tried, but people often don't vote for what they want—rather they vote as the communist party secretary or the clan powerholders tell them. Furthermore, it is very hard to envision national democracy in China. For example, an attempt to found a farmers party in China would in fact lead to multiple farmers parties in the 28 provinces (some of these with more than 100 million people). Political pluralism would bring out the astonishing and potentially dangerous diversity among the Chinese people, which authoritarianism holds in check.

Another barrier to effective democracy is the fact that 250 million Chinese are illiterate, as measured by a very low government standard that requires knowledge of a mere 400 Chinese characters. Also, there is no national spoken language. Those who speak Mandarin can't be understood in south China. The Cantonese of south China is as different from Mandarin as Swedish is from English. Non-Chinese tongues dominate the western half of China: Turkic tongues to the west, Tibetan to the southwest, Mongol to the northwest. In sum, an attempt at democracy in China could initially produce a mess, and many bright Chinese bureaucrats know that to be true.

What is the possibility of fracture, of China breaking into pieces? The problem of governance looms large. Take the population of the United States and add that of Russia, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil and all of Western Europe, and this is still well short of China's population of 1.3 billion. Historically, the western half of the country is not Chinese at all. It has been at various times a Tibetan kingdom, part of Mongolia and a Turkic state linked with what we now call Central Asia. Economic development in Tibet and the Muslim west could embolden these minority peoples; cell phones make it easier for them to organize; plane tickets to Mecca come within reach for devout Muslims. Indeed, Chinese leaders have often talked among themselves about the dangers of civil war or fracture.

What mitigates against fracture? Most important is the fact that China's population is 92 percent Chinese. By contrast, the Soviet Union was only 50 percent Russian. Furthermore, China experienced disunity in the past, and its people as well as its government are more wary of disunity than is true in most other countries.

How and why would the political system change? There has to be a trigger in the form of a crisis in at least two of three areas: society at large, the communist party leadership and international relations. The current regime has lasted as long as it has because it hasn't had such a crisis in decades.

Chinese society may experience a crisis due to the substantial and ongoing religious revival or because of the undoubted high level of farmer dissatisfaction. But even taking social upheaval as a given, there is no split at the top of the communist party at the moment, nor does a grave international challenge loom. This is not to say that there have not been horrendous splits in the party in the past: When Mao died in 1976, his widow intended to succeed him, but so did Deng Xiaoping, who was under house arrest. Meanwhile, the politburo was split pretty much down the middle. Two rival coups d'etat were planned, and eventually Deng triumphed. The Chinese public did not know of this struggle until it was over. Had this power struggle occurred in public in the context of social turbulence and an international challenge, things might well have turned out differently in the late 1970s.

However, if the military, which is not friendly to the United States, triggered some kind of dislocation in Chinese–U.S. relations, then there would be an interaction between all three of the spheres I mentioned. The Chinese economy (and therefore the society) would be affected, and some members of the Chinese leadership would oppose this rupture with Washington. This would lead to an interaction between an international crisis, social turbulence and a major disagreement at the top of the Chinese government. The confluence of all three, or even two, would almost certainly cause political change.

I don't think the communist party's monopoly on power will last beyond 20 years. But neither do I think China will break up into pieces. The communist party may itself break up, which would lead to political competition between the different pieces. I think there will be a somewhat freer political order over this time frame, but not democracy.