China: The Drama of Our Time

Will China’s political system change? Will the authoritarian state be able to change quickly enough to absorb the rapid transformations in society, or will the system change in some direction beyond the boundaries of the authoritarian state?

In his classic work on reform and authoritarian systems, the American political scientist Adam Przeworski noted that a country that has introduced economic reforms, without the intention of going all the way and similarly implementing political reforms, necessarily ends up on a slippery slope. There is – fortunately – no half-way equilibrium.

In such a situation, the People’s Republic of China and its leaders are resolutely determined not to slip. The Party sees its self-evident role as continuing to lead China. Changes are to take place with “Chinese characteristics” in forms that preserve this “stability.”

In his October 2007 report to the Seventeenth Party Congress, Hu Jintao used the word democracy more than 60 times. However, “democracy with Chinese characteristics” means something completely different than democracy in the conventional sense.

The Chinese Communist Party is aware that the system must undergo changes, and numerous changes are under way. As long as the Party gets to decide, the country will remain at its core a one-party state; the CCP is to be reformed, not dismantled. I think that the changes the Party wants to implement can best be summarized by the terms “deliberative authoritarianism” or “consultative authoritarianism.”

Over time, the Party wants to create a system that is less distinguished by the one-way communication of democratic centralism and more open to providing information and offering consultation, hearings etc. on various issues in forms determined by the Party. For both Party and state elections, there are to be more Party-approved alternatives than today. Another important line is to develop the legal system and the rule of law to a greater extent than today.

The fall of the Soviet Union has been carefully analyzed by the Chinese leadership and resulted in a policy that is sharply focused on economic growth with the requisite economic reforms as well as implementation of limited political reforms aimed at consolidating the Party’s leading role.  

Mao’s class-determined view of society has been replaced by an ambition to make the Communist Party a party that attends to the interests of all its people. Through Jiang Zemin’s “three representations,” the Party has been opened up to private businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and thus in reality “capitalists.” The concept of harmony, with its roots in Confucian thought, has replaced class struggle.

Still, the “harmonious society” is to be harmonious on the Party’s terms. The Party sets the limits of tolerance. Nationalism, as demonstrated in the spring of 2008 in Tibet and July 2009 in Xinjiang, has become an important ideological factor. Hu Jintao has ordered more thorough studies of Marxism, but at the same time made Confucianism and nationalism elements establishing the legitimacy of the Party.

In this journey from class to one-party state harmony, the Communist Party has abandoned many of its goals and ideas. Nonetheless, it is easier to give up principles than give up power, including the extensive repressive power in the form of the police, military, secret service and Internet police who buttress the system.

How “resilient” can this system then be? Political scientist Andrew Nathan was to the first to coin the phrase “resilient authoritarianism.” Many China experts have been forced to recognize that they underestimated the CCP’s ability to incorporate new ideas, like the market economy, and adapt with the times. In the summer of 2008, I took part in a conference at Harvard on the theme of “adaptive authoritarianism.” One of the main themes there was that the Communist Party had shown itself to be more capable of adjusting the authoritarian system over time than many analysts had predicted. As long as the Party achieves the kind of impressive results it has since reforms were introduced, the Party will retain a kind of “results-based legitimacy.”

Trying to predict the collapse of the system is a risky venture. One of the foremost China experts in the West, Harvard professor Elizabeth Perry, argues that “one can very well maintain that the prospect of a fundamental transformation in the Chinese political system looks less promising today than it did in the 1980s, when Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang directed serious, albeit short-lived, efforts of political reform.”

There is a great deal of truth in what Perry says. The leaders in the 1980s were more open to political reforms. Nor can one deny that the system has demonstrated a far greater ability to adapt than most analysts could have imagined. Philip Pan, who is highly critical of the Chinese system, notes in his book Out of Mao’s Shadow – the Struggle for the Soul of a New China that the Chinese Party-State is “engaged in the world’s greatest and perhaps most successful experiment in authoritarian rule.” The system has “shown its resilience time and time again,” and, he argues, “political changes do not take place automatically.” At the same time, it seems clear to me that the growth of the Chinese economy and Chinese society over the last twenty years has led to an exacerbation of tensions between the system, society and the individual.

I find two somewhat related tendencies of particular importance. One is the growing demands for a functioning legal system, expressed, among other things, by increasingly frequent protests based on legal rights. People are, quite simply, demanding “their rights.” The Party has the ambition to “rule by law,” and in his report to the National People’s Congress in the spring of 2008, Prime Minister Wen talks about “strengthening rule based on law.” The reality, however, is otherwise – the Party’s presence and control of the judiciary, police, secret service and others, and In particular the power of often corrupt local functionaries over social institutions and the media. The Party’s alleged desire to change is not matched by a sufficient ability to change, and the fact that this is the case actually lies in the nature of the Party-State.

The second tendency that I find particularly interesting is the development of the IT society and what has come to be called “civil society on-line.” The rate of this development will not slacken. Civil society is growing and, in a few years, China will have over a half billion Internet subscribers and 700-800 million cellphone owners, many of these with 3G technology. The boundary between PCs and cellphones is being erased. The Party is doing what it can to use this technological development proactively and control everything it can find reason to control. Technology is continually evolving, while at the same time there are no doubt several hundred thousand people working as “Internet police” and “debate controllers”, the latter with the task of entering into debates in order to get them back In line. Still, it is clear that a slow revolution is under way.

One example that attracted considerable coverage on-line and in the media, in that order, in the spring of 2009 concerned a young woman who worked at a hotel in a small city in central Hubei province. The woman was accused of having stabbed to death a local functionary who had molested her at her workplace. The case was first viewed as an open-and-shut case whose outcome was clear. The woman had murdered someone, indeed a government official, and a long prison sentence was the obvious consequence. Just a few years ago, the result would have been a summary trial involving the cooperation of the various power interests.  

However, when it became known on-line that the obviously extremely corrupt man had walloped her on the head with a bundle of banknotes, ripped her clothes, shoved her on the couch and demanded sex, the case quickly became a major issue on-line. The general public expressed its disdain for corrupt officials and their abuse of power, and the woman became an Internet heroine. The indignation was so strong that the authorities’ admonitions to what were normally compliant newspapers and websites to respect the official line were largely ignored. Demands for a fair trial mounted. Even the national women’s organization, the All-China Women’s Federation, expressed criticism. In Beijing and Wuhan, women’s rights activists formulated their protests as living installations, as the picture of the woman in white illustrates.

The Party-State saw no other way out than to release her. This occurred in June 2009 with the reasoning that when she committed the act, she had been “mentally disturbed,” had turned herself into the police and cooperated during the investigation.

This course of events demonstrates how the one-party state’s customary treatment of a case can be undermined when the case becomes known, through the Internet and the media, and unleashes people’s anger and protests. In situations like this, there is a risk of the trial being held in reality in the media. Nonetheless, far more important than this risk is the challenge to the Party-State’s closed exercise of power that these new opportunities for protest and action entail.

There is a shift in values taking place. Individual voices are emerging from the collective in events that take on their own dynamic. People want to express their views. Suddenly, someone does it for the first time on an issue that affects them in some way, and takes a step out of the collective. The relation between the individual, society and power is no longer a given. The country is undergoing what one scholar has somewhat drastically called a “psycho boom.”

It was possible to control newspapers, radio and television, but there can never be immediate total control of the Internet. Events leak out via the web and become issues in society. A topical legal case is not just a local issue. Journalists, lawyers and activists in the civil society that is developing are helping to make such cases issues of principle. Demands based on rights are being formulated more skillfully, more quickly and in wider circles.

More and more issues in society are involved, like consumer issues, environmental issues, violence against women, and labor conflicts. New horizontal networks and on-line communities are forming and starting to make demands on being allowed to exist. Society is becoming increasingly pluralist. A more fragmented authority is evolving.

At the same time, the forms of expression increasingly transcend boundaries and are free-speaking. Pictures, film, music and text are blended in forms that are difficult to define. Satire and seriousness meld without boundaries. The regime is ready to strike back, but these forms of expression are too ambiguous and elusive for its conformist view of the world. Cyberspace is being invaded from every direction. The radar screens of the ruling power are becoming ever more schizophrenic.

In the 1970s, wall newspapers were the most important venue for critical social debates. In the late 1980s, Tiananmen Square was the place in which confrontation was concentrated. Today that place is no longer physical but rather on-line. The growth of the Internet has created a virtual room where more and more questions can be voiced about what is happening in China. With a growing civil society as its sounding board, the Internet is center stage for demands for openness, a functioning legal system, the fight against corruption and accountability; the Internet is intensifying and reinforcing civil society’s demands and expectations.

President Clinton, who had a strong conviction about the subversive importance of the Internet, thought that it would be impossible to control. It would be “like nailing jelly to a wall.”30 Control is not totally impossible, but the consequences are profound.

For the Party and the State, this change cannot simply be countered with repression. Then the pressure cooker of society would explode. The regime is acting repressively to keep control, but must also “respond” to what has happened in a way that does not generally damage the relationship between authority and citizen. Political scientists talk about “repressive responsiveness.” A growing number of examples demonstrate that, because control is well established, there may be some interest among the Party leaders in getting a clear understanding of the causes of discontent and, for instance, compensating farmers who have been illegally deprived of their land. For the Party, this change entails a difficult balancing act.

The Party has also realized the need to go out, at an early stage, with its – doctored – version of events rather than find itself on the defensive from the beginning. It is not a question of openness in a genuine sense, but rather a modernized offensive propaganda mindset.

A number of tendencies help to create an increasingly complex situation. The deep divides, growing rootlessness and rapid urbanization are clearly some of these, the rapidly rising level of education and the growing extent of the country’s and people’s international contacts are others; and the growth of extensive private ownership yet another.

A growing dilemma for both the one-party state and society is the lack of fundamental values on which to base this modern and increasingly multifaceted society. The Party is trying to give old concepts new meaning and create new concepts like “the harmonious society,” with its roots in Confucianism, and scientific development. Hu Jintao speaks of glories and shames. Nationalist ideas are spreading, in particular, among the young. Among intellectuals, there are a variety of currents. There are those that want to see more radical-left policies, those that advocate democracy, others of a more market-liberal bent, and still others with a more social-democratic orientation. Some of these currents are being incorporated into the Party or are developing relations with Party representatives. Some kind of an embryo of factions is taking form.

At the same time, religion is growing as a significant factor, Christianity as well as Buddhism. In ten to fifteen years, there may be more Christians in China than Party members. People who seek out a religion gain a new point of reference for their positions on ethical but also political matters. The Party has responded by stating that religion can add to harmony, but harmony requires respect for differences. In China, the limits of society’s tolerance for deviation are being subjected to new tests. The gaps and stress in society are leading to alienation, which exacerbates the problems.

For me, it seems likely that the combined effects of these trends is an erosion of the one-party state. Power is demystified.

How rapid the pace will be depends heavily on how the Party is able to change its own relation to society. The results of the Party’s work with political reforms to date are hardly convincing. “Stability” takes precedence. 2009 has been a year of increasing tendencies to control, like the censorship efforts on Green Dam, the expansion of the Internet police, the crackdown on the advocate group the Open Constitution Initiative and the charges against Rio Tinto employees, initially for the theft of state secrets – but also ignominious retreats as with the Green Dam and Rio Tinto cases.

At the same time, I think that it is impossible to know where all this will lead. To say that, in five or ten years, China will be a democracy in the real sense of the word, to me, verges on wishful thinking. What is more likely is that China will one day be some kind of tougher version of Singapore’s “illiberal democracy,” where there are choices but the outcome of each choice is given. Power is not to be risked in an election. The leaders in the fifth generation of the Party who will take charge in 2012 will do so with a mandate to implement reforms, over time, that consolidate the Party’s leading role. Other possible scenarios are developments in which the Communist Party is broken up into factions or loses power as a result of a specific crisis. The only thing that is entirely certain is that the course of events in this drama is not predetermined, and that China in the year 2020 will look different than China today.

In this time of financial crisis and extraordinary economic downturn, it is crucial to consider what a protracted financial crisis would mean for China. If growth in the Chinese economy were to fall to, say, 3–4 percent annually for several years in a row, the problems would mount. Many tens of millions of migrant workers would lose their jobs, millions of university students would not be able to find jobs after completing their studies, thousands upon thousands of companies would go bankrupt, banks would see their toxic assets multiply, and social unrest would increase dramatically. The country’s leadership demonstrates clear concern, with good reason, over such a development.

Would a severe crisis in some sense be in the “West’s” interest? In my view, that is not at all a given. We have every interest in a China that can continue its modernization, become integrated in the international economy and global community, and to an increasing extent shoulder its share of the responsibility for climate change and other major challenges facing the world. A China in crisis and collapse would not simply affect the Chinese people in a way that no one wants, but would also exacerbate global problems. Such a scenario would have grave consequences for the rest of the world in a number of respects. We have every reason to look forward to a crumbling of the authoritarian system, but not the decline and collapse of Chinese society.