The Two Chinas

Well it's the anniversary again of what the Chinese call the "June 4th Incident," and innocuous name for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. I posted about that last year so this year I want to talk about something that I feel is related. It seems to me that there are two possible future for China and after living here for a while I can't tell which will happen but I think a lot of people in the US don't really understand the situation. The first possibility is that as China becomes more and more wealthy it will become more and more open. Not just in a economic sense but in terms of government and rights as well. There is some evidence for this. China today remain incredibly oppressive but compared to the purges and the rule though fear that characterized so much of modern Chinese history things are much more relaxed. Yes the government still arrests, and often tortures, anyone they even perceive as a dissident, but they no longer go combing through society looking for people to persecute the way they did in the past. There is also the fact that there really are no developed countries in the world that aren't fairly liberal democracies. That makes a lot of people think that being a democracy is somehow invariably connected with economic growth.

Again there is some evidence for this as when a country becomes richer the new middle class that is created is no longer only happy with economic prosperity but often struggles for more social liberty as well. On top of this the transparency necessary to combat widespread corruption also can be connected to calls for more transparency at all levels of government. Finally people point out that countries like South Korean and Taiwan are good examples of countries that started as one party dictatorships and then as they became richer transformed into real democracies. Not only that but both countries have a similar culture to China. This theory that China will inevitably be transformed into a democracy is really popular today in the West where it seems that a lot of governments are essentially biding their time waiting for China to become more open. It's something always brought up when ever people talk about trade deals that trade may somehow push China to be more open. After living in China I'm no longer so sure at all that this is the case.

If one possible future for China is that trade will transform them into a Western style democracy then the other possible future is that they will essentially remain as they are a autocratic one party dictatorship with a semi-open economy but no real political liberties. First I believe people really underestimate the Communist party. The Communists know how the rest of the world views them and they actually take the time to carefully study the history of places like Taiwan and South Korea to see where their dictators went wrong. In fact they look at basically any democratic revolution in the world to see how they can avoid a similar fate. Also a lot of the recent so called liberalization in China is illusory. Yes they now have courts and a written constitution but they don't really have the rule of law, instead they have rule by law where the law is simply interpreted to mean whatever the Communist Party wants it to mean. Also every time someone tries to assert some new right that they have been theoretically given they are shot down by the government.

Also if the West is betting that economic growth leads to democracy than China has staked all its chips on the idea that those two ideas aren't really related. As they see it running a successful business really doesn't require people to criticize the government. Moreover they believe that people in China will be happy as long as they get more growth. The idea that going with the flow is a virtue and that obedience to the government is a duty didn't start with the Communist take over. These are ideas that are almost as old as China. The Communist party believes that their key to power is keeping most people sedated with good jobs. They think that while there may be a few troublemakers most people will go along with whatever they want so long as they give them opportunity. That the reason the state nearly collapsed after Mao had more to do with stagnant growth than with repression. They would note that while there are definitly some states that liberalized with growth the so far China has grown hugely and there is really little or no more liberty today in China then there was 20 years ago.

I think that the biggest mistake people make is assuming that the power of the Communist Party is hallow. They have survive far more than most repressive states and are will to go much farther to spy on and control their citizens than almost any other government on earth. It may be that in the end the growing power of the middle class will be more than they can handle but it's far from a sure thing. The depressing lesson on this real memorial day is that oppression in China may be here to stay at least for a long time.