By Samuel A Bleicher
An implicit socialcontract underlies the Chinese people's relationship with its government. Thepeople accept the autocratic Communist Party of China (CPC) regime with itscorruption and minimal public participation, and the CPC regime delivers acontinuous and rapid improvement in the economic standard of living. Thatsocial contract is now at risk, as China is on an unsustainable path that willresult in economic stagnation or decline in the coming decades.
There are severalculprits behind China's impending decline, with ecological limits topping thelist. In When a Billion Chinese Jump, for instance, Jonathan Watts cataloguesthe current and impending ecological disasters: destructive coal mining in drywestern provinces, over-utilization of fisheries, water shortages andindustrial water pollution, irreversible predation of ancient forests anddelicate grasslands - all exacerbated by the crippling effects of globalclimate change.
Then there's the absence of good governance - reliableproperty rights, honest bureaucracy, and even-handed judicial oversight - whichis not just socially undesirable, but arguably a critical barrier to continuedeconomic progress. Reporting on recent studies that correlate economic progresswith good governance, Mark Whitehouse declares in The Wall Street Journal that"China is making great progress in lifting its people from the ranks ofthe world's poorest. But if the experience of other countries is any indicator,it will need a revolution to achieve rich-nation status."
A third stress on the Chinese system is the unsustainabilityof the government's macroeconomic choices. The imbalances in China'sinvestment-heavy, mercantilist economic structure have inevitably created,according to Stratfor, "a race [not] between the Chinese and the Americansor even China and the world" but rather "a race to see what willsmash China first, its own internal imbalances or the US decision to take amore mercantilist approach to international trade."
As one or more of these constraints cause extended economicstagnation or decline, the CPC regime will be unable to deliver its promisedeconomic growth. The economic and social catastrophes on the horizon includedramatically increased reliance on expensive imported raw materials, significantlyreduced export demand, riots by unemployed export workers and recent collegegraduates, collapsing real estate prices, rapid inflation, and urban foodshortages.
Implicitly or explicitly, many of the "unsustainablepath" discussions assume that economic stagnation or decline will destroythe CPC regime once it fails to deliver its half of the social contract. Regimechange analogies abound, ranging from the historical collapse of Chinesedynasties and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes in itsEastern European allies to the Color Revolutions of the 2000s and the recentArab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria.
Most of the characteristics of contemporary China, however,are crucially different from those of the countries in which these regimechanges occurred. China's distinctive features make it unlikely that the CPCregime will suddenly disintegrate even in the face of continuing economicdifficulties. The real question is whether it will respond by evolving into amore open, participatory regime or instead become an increasingly brutal andbeleaguered autocracy. Only the Chinese leadership and people can ultimatelymake the crucial choices. The United States and the West need to walk softly toavoid being tagged as the cause of China's economic misery.
Countervailing cultural and economic Factors
Despite the easyanalogies, China's CPC regime will not inevitably follow the examples of swiftcollapse of authoritarian regimes that occurred in the Soviet Union orMubarak's Egypt. China is in a category by itself because of its demography andculture, its nationally integrated economic and political structure, and thenature of public opposition. The notion that the end of economic growth willcause the CPC regime to evaporate ignores these realities of Chinese society.
China's distinctive character begins with its culturalhomogeneity. Of China's 1.3 billion people, 92% are Han Chinese who sharelinguistic, cultural, religious, and philosophical perspectives, and a similarphysical appearance that minimizes divisive stereotyping. The peoples of theAutonomous Regions of Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang arelinguistically, culturally, and physically distinct and do perceive themselvesas non-Chinese to varying degrees. But none of the 56 recognized domesticminorities exceeds 1.25% of China's population. Tibetans, who have the mostinternational visibility, number fewer than 6 million people. Moreover,geographic realities strongly tie these autonomous regions to Chinaeconomically, and the CPC regime is strengthening those ties through Hanimmigration.
The Soviet Union is the only "regime changescenario" country that even approached China in terms of the size of itspopulation. But the Soviet Union was from the start a federation comprisingseparate republics with very different languages, cultures, religions, andstandards of living. Most of the other countries that experienced regime changeare much smaller and culturally heterogeneous. Egypt, the largest of the ArabSpring countries, has only 78 million people, about 90% of whom are Muslim.Five of China's 18 provinces are larger. The largest Color Revolution country,Ukraine, has fewer than 50 million people, of whom over 20% are ethnically andlinguistically Russian.
China's culture has maintained substantial continuity, butits economic and social structures have changed dramatically in the past 30years. Most economic activity is now part of an integrated whole, withstate-owned and nominally private corporations governmentally directed andcooperating to expand production. About half the population lives in cities.The export-oriented policies of "socialism with Chinesecharacteristics" make the wealthy coastal regions deeply dependent onaccess to overseas markets and to inland labor and raw materials.
Unlike dynastic China, agriculture is no longer the dominantelement of the country's economic system. The CPC regime's finances are nolonger dependent on taxation of agricultural production. Instead it subsidizesrural China with funds generated by exports. Its foreign exchange reserveswould support food imports through a typical drought and famine cycle. Apeasant revolt like those that strangled the imperial dynasties is unlikely totopple the current regime.
The USSR's planned economy was closed to foreign trade,relatively primitive in its range of goods and services, and skewed to benefitMoscow and St Petersburg. Its European republics and allies correctlyanticipated that they could quickly improve their living standards by breakingfrom the Soviet Union and opening trade with Western Europe. No similarincentive beckons any Chinese regions, which already benefit from and rely oninternational trade. A province that attempted to secede would suffer enormousadverse economic consequences.
Although China's average income roughly matches the ColorRevolution and Arab Spring countries, over 200 million Chinese now enjoy anurban "middle-class" life. Their economic status depends onmanufacturing, construction, and international trade and finance. China's 2008unemployment rate was 4%, and almost everyone is put to work, for both economicand cultural reasons. The 2008 reported unemployment rates were about 30% inLibya, 14% in Tunisia, and 8% in Egypt - and that was before the globalfinancial crisis. Not counting their oil exports, these Arab countries areamong the least developed, least productive in the world.
Countervailing political forces
The CPC regime now follows a well-defined corporate-styleleadership succession process with term limits, providing a degree of stabilityother Communist regimes never achieved. The excesses of Mao and the "Gangof Four" caution against allowing anything approaching one-man rule.China's desire for international respectability, along with a deep culturalbias favoring consensus, discourages anything more radical than "muddlingthrough." The regime's opaque committee system is the antithesis of the"cult of personality" found in almost all of the countriesexperiencing sudden regime change.
The CPC regime's goal is a "harmonious society"based on a "scientific development perspective". Relatively fewChinese doubt the central leadership's desire to produce economic betterment,whatever they think of its approach to human rights. It is harder for anopposition to coalesce against committees operating by consensus than against asingle highly visible, self-aggrandizing leader.
Administratively, the CPC regime is a single unifiedstructure. Officials are rotated among the provinces and typically have littlepersonal connection to the jurisdictions they run. The army similarly operatesas a unified national organization. Senior military officers are CPC membersand participate actively. These arrangements encourage loyalty to the nationalinstitutions and discourage alliances with any potential opposition orsecessionists.
China's deep economic and political involvement with theoutside world makes operating without an effective central government impractical.Splintering is also psychologically anathema to most Chinese, who are schooledin the experience of the 19th-century humiliation of "weak China" byimperialist powers. Any foreign attempt at intervention would generate aunifying backlash in the Chinese populace.
Moreover, in oureconomically interconnected, nuclear-armed world, other nations want to workwith a single central regime that has the necessary economic, political, andmilitary authority. Continued recognition of the CPC regime by internationalorganizations and major powers would undermine opposition and secessionistmovements. The emergence of another "Warring States" period (or a Taiwanese return tothe mainland) is unimaginable in the 21st century.
Many thousands ofanti-government protests, demonstrations, riots, and acts of violence takeplace in China every year. But almost all spring from local or corporatemisconduct: depraved business practices like food adulteration, shoddy schoolconstruction, environmental contamination, or arbitrary treatment of citizenswho challenge official corruption. Opposition groups often appeal for help fromBeijing, which sometimes becomes the hero by taking corrective action.
The CPC regime has aggressively attacked any nationalgroupings that it does not recognize, whether religious (Falun Gong) orpolitical (Charter 2008). Fear of a Chinese "Jasmine revolution" andthe few small Twitter-generated demonstrations that did take place in 2011spawned a pre-emptive response by the Chinese security apparatus that includedarrests and disappearances of high-visibility "trouble-makers" likeartist Ai Weiwei and 20 leading "rights lawyers". The regime alsoinitiated highly sophisticated controls on electronic communications. Theseactions neutralized whatever small immediate threat may have existed.
Few triggering events that could focus widespread anger atthe national CPC regime occur in contemporary China. Intra-partymulti-candidate elections are only held at the local level. Nothing of unifyingsignificance comparable to the rigged national elections in the ColorRevolution countries is on the horizon. Any serious opposition to the nationalregime faces great practical difficulties in the absence of opportunities tocreate nationwide organization and leadership.
The widespread outrage about the recent high-speed traincollision near Wenzhou, and the subsequent cover-up and suppression of news,suggests the possibility of a different kind of trigger. The National RailwayMinistry is directly responsible for the high-speed train program, so publichostility was directed at the national CPC regime. The government has alreadyfired three senior Railway Ministry officials and will certainly compensate theinjured parties, but those actions do not address the public's serious concernsabout policy, transparency, and due process. A truly catastrophic event likethe Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown could arouse intense and continuingopposition to the CPC regime. Still, even though nationally controlled projects,particularly nuclear energy facilities, will become more common as Chinaadvances technologically, the probability of a major disaster that could shakethe CPC regime seems quite small.
What will happen to the CPC regime?
The "regimechange scenario" examples suggest that people are motivated to bring downauthoritarian regimes when those governments pose an existential threat todisenfranchised groups, fail to institute policies designed to address highunemployment and/or rapid inflation, or engage in highly visible malfeasance topreserve themselves in the face of massive public expressions of opposition.None of these conditions currently applies to the Chinese situation.
Economic decline will nevertheless inevitably bring changes.One likely result will be more corrosive political infighting, as factions seekto protect their share of a stagnating economic pie. Another is that China willbe increasingly preoccupied with internal challenges and less interested inplaying a leadership role, or perhaps even a responsible role, in globalaffairs.
To allay intense dissatisfaction over continuing pooreconomic performance, the CPC might not re-elect a president to a second term,or a president could even resign before the end of his term. The conditionsthat generate the economic decline, however, will not go away. No new presidentwill be able to arrest the decline.
New leadership may not satisfy the public for long,especially since replacements will emerge from the same opaque process and thesame cadre of CPC members. Unlike a true election, this process will notgenerate public confidence in the new leaders or any psychological investmentin their success. Ironically, an unscheduled change in CPC leadership is likelyto be seen as an admission of failure that inspires demands for moresubstantial changes in the political system. The net result could be even moreleadership paranoia, cosmetic structural changes, and increasing influence oreven de facto control by the military and security bureaus.
Faced with insurmountable economic and environmentalproblems, the CPC regime might try various glasnost-like and perestroika-likereforms [terms referring to the mid-1980s attempts to open up and restructurethe Soviet union before its eventual collapse] that provide broader politicalparticipation. The goal would be to calm public frustrations and give people alarger sense of buy-in to the regime's policies. This strategy would includeintensified efforts to reduce local corruption.
Allowing greater use of the courts, administrative hearings,the media, and other processes to express and redress grievances could alsohelp redirect public anger from the streets. These steps might be the beststrategy to ensure that the CPC regime survives indefinitely through the hardtimes ahead.
An evolutionary expansion of public participation is notinevitable, however. The current CPC regime apparently believes that anysignificant diffusion of governing authority will lead to intolerable weakeningor demise. The possibility lurks that growing discontent over continuingeconomic stagnation will prompt it to intensify the crackdown on actual orpotential opposition voices and organizations. One acute observer, JamesFallows, thinks this process has already begun to some degree in reaction tothe Arab Spring. The resulting increase in the influence of the military andsecurity agencies could tilt government policy toward even more oppressive authoritarianism.Creeping militarism seems to be a characteristic of many authoritarian regimes,and in this respect China may not be different.
Over the long term, this approach seems likely to arousegreater public dissatisfaction and more opposition as neither economic norpolitical conditions improve. If authoritarianism and permanent economicslowdown are accompanied by continued corruption, self-dealing, repression, andunfairness, and if entrenched economic, political, and bureaucratic interestsdeflect resources from the interests of the whole people, the CPC regime willeventually face massive public opposition. In desperation, the regime mighteven threaten its neighbors militarily, either as a calculated domesticpolitical ploy or as result of the leadership's own fear and paranoia. Theoutcome would likely be destructive both for China and the outside world.
The West and China's decline
A great deal ofevidence suggests that China's current growth is unsustainable for a variety ofreasons. If so, it faces hard times ahead, regardless of the character of thegoverning regime. China's decline, especially if it results in chaoticconditions there, is likely to damage the economic well-being of the UnitedStates and the international community, which are depending on China to be theengine of global economic growth and a partner for peaceful cooperation onnuclear proliferation. Long-term economic stagnation or decline carriesimportant implications for the foreign policies of the United States and the internationalcommunity.
Over the past three decades, the United States and Europehave followed a range of policies designed to integrate China into the globaleconomic and political systems. In recent years, however, a growing chorus inCongress has argued that it is time, now that China is so strong, to insistthat it change its self-interested policies on currency valuation, intellectualproperty protection, and human rights.
But changing US and European direction at this time could bejust the wrong move.
Although China may look like a rising economic and politicalcompetitor today, that situation could quickly reverse. The wildly erroneouspredictions of "Japan as Number 1" three decades ago should warn theoutside world not to over-react to the "China threat". Punitive USmeasures in response to China's mercantilist trade and currency policies anddisregard for intellectual property rights, however justifiable on the merits,could create the impression in China that the US has created, or at least hastenedand deepened, its economic stagnation. The United States should avoid providingthe CPC regime any excuse to claim the United States is the cause of China'swoes. If the Chinese people as a whole ever adopt that view, US-China relationscould be poisoned for decades.
The United States and the international community shouldalso recognize that, as China's economy deteriorates, any confrontationalmilitary maneuvers are likely to be met with escalation rather than compromise.Confrontation would tempt a struggling CPC regime to adopt a jingoistic,rally-round-the-flag patriotism. The CPC regime already inculcates and makespolitical use of anti-Japanese feelings among Chinese born long after the endof World War II.
"Foreign threats" would serve both to encouragepublic unity and to justify crushing whatever real or perceived internalopposition exists. It would also favor increased military expenditures anddistract people from adverse economic and ecological developments. The UnitedStates should make serious efforts to avoid becoming the new enemy. It willneed to tread carefully to avoid making China's economic decline worse both forChina and the rest of the world.
Samuel Bleicher is principal in his consulting firm, TheStrategic Path LLC, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School,and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. From 2001 to 2007, he served asChief Strategist for New Initiatives in the Overseas Buildings OperationsBureau of the US State Department. From August through December 2007 he taughtAmerican law in Beijing to Chinese prosecutors, judges, lawyers, andadministrative officials in a joint Tsinghua U./Temple U. LLM program fundedprimarily by the Chinese and US governments. He can be reached at: Tato emailová adresa je chráněna před spamboty, abyste ji viděli, povolte JavaScript .