China General Discussion

[Beet]

Beet, China and Syria are two different situations, their political circumstances and demographics and recent histories are quite distinct--I don't think the same dynamics obtain in both societies. 

China is not Syria? Kind of like how Egypt is not Tunisia?

There's a difference between killing others to satisfy an ideal and rising up as a people in the fight for freedom. The former requires a disregard of human dignity, whereas the latter requires a refusal to disregard it. The American revolution could not have happened without it, neither. If submission was the best of all worlds, then Wang Jingwei had the right idea and the Chinese should have simply sat out the war waiting for the other allies to liberate them.

[2952-0-0]

There's a difference between killing others to satisfy an ideal and rising up as a people in the fight for freedom. The former requires a disregard of human dignity, whereas the latter requires a refusal to disregard it.

By far the vast majority of deaths under Mao were done out of circumstance - starvation, disease, mob violence during the Cultural Revolution, etc. Comparatively few (still being several millions) were actually massacred under Mao's orders.

And besides, Mao also led a rebellion against a cartoonishly incompetent, corrupt, and oppressive regime (which was well on the path to fascism until 1937) to fight for freedom - first against the Nazi German-backed KMT, then Japanese, and then against the US-backed KMT once again.

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I thought Beet is intellectually honest enough not to invoke Godwin's Law so easily.

[Beet]

There's a difference between killing others to satisfy an ideal and rising up as a people in the fight for freedom. The former requires a disregard of human dignity, whereas the latter requires a refusal to disregard it.

By far the vast majority of deaths under Mao were done out of circumstance - starvation, disease, mob violence during the Cultural Revolution, etc. Comparatively few (still being several millions) were actually massacred under Mao's orders.

And besides, Mao also led a rebellion against a cartoonishly incompetent, corrupt, and oppressive regime (which was well on the path to fascism until 1937) to fight for freedom - first against the Nazi German-backed KMT, then Japanese, and then against the US-backed KMT once again.

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I thought Beet is intellectually honest enough not to invoke Godwin's Law so easily.

You are the one who invoked it, sir. I had hope, however slim, for this government until the present Party Congress. Face it, the reformist energy of the Deng era was not completely exhausted after 1989, however, it is completely exhausted now. The present thugs in charge of Beijing are just a clan of gangsters out to plunder the nation for the enrichment of themselves & family & defend the status quo at all costs. And FYI, most of the deaths under Mao were under the Great Leap Forward, not the Cultural Revolution, which was the prime example of disregard of human dignity, not a fight for freedom.

[2952-0-0]

You are the one who invoked it, sir.

You can't seriously compare the present Communist Party of China with Imperial Japan. The final years of the Qing Dynasty, perhaps. Kaiserreich Germany, definitely possible. But comparing it to something equivalent to Nazi Germany is inviting ridicule.

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If you really had hope then you've been fundamentally misreading the politics for years. No matter what beliefs seem to unite the factions within the Party, they are all determined to keep the Party's hegemony. Even the so-called liberals like Wang Yang. And doesn't so-called reformist Wen Jiabao have his fingers in the property and jewelry sectors? There's literally no one who is a competent administrator and is clean.

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When Mao was a rebel, he also praised the values of freedom and democracy. The People's Daily even wrote an editorial denouncing one party rule as inherently leading to disaster. Of course he was a complete Machiavellian, even more so than Stalin. More recently I personally know two people who were directly involved in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and who knew many student leaders. Both separately had harsh words for the student leaders' sheer lust for power and disregard for any democratic decision making. Chai Ling in her own words "hoped for a bloodbath" and even accused the producers of a documentary revealing these words as being "agents of Satan", bringing a libel suit against them which was laughed out of court.

These were their words and not mine. And if you can't lead a student movement democratically, how can you lead 20% of humanity democratically? Hence, it's incredibly naive to take anyone who professes respect for "freedom" and "democracy" at face value.

And besides, take a guess who would win a democratic election held in China tomorrow, and what message would he send to voters. Hint: it definitely won't be a pro-western liberal. And even if he did win, think of how constrained he would be to actually keep his promises. Even Obama with his formidable coattails in 2008 was unable to seriously challenge the status quo aside from a half-hearted health care bill.

[Beet]

You are the one who invoked it, sir.

You can't seriously compare the present Communist Party of China with Imperial Japan. The final years of the Qing Dynasty, perhaps. Kaiserreich Germany, definitely possible. But comparing it to something equivalent to Nazi Germany is inviting ridicule.

No, I compared it with Wang Jingwei's collaborationist government. The argument for the Wang Jingwei regime was not the same as the argument for Imperial Japan. It was essentially that by not resisting Japan, China would get better 'terms' of occupation and it would save lives, and so on. It is impossible to say that had the KMT & CCP not resisted the Japanese invasion, lives would have been saved. The point is, there is a time when a man must fight.

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If you really had hope then you've been fundamentally misreading the politics for years. No matter what beliefs seem to unite the factions within the Party, they are all determined to keep the Party's hegemony. Even the so-called liberals like Wang Yang. And doesn't so-called reformist Wen Jiabao have his fingers in the property and jewelry sectors? There's literally no one who is a competent administrator and is clean.[/quote]

Yes, it's very suspicious how on the eve of the Chinese political decision, all these reports suddenly come out about Wen Jiabao's family wealth, as if the same were not true of all of the same thugs. If any of these things came as a surprise to you, you have been naive about politics for years.

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When Mao was a rebel, he also praised the values of freedom and democracy. The People's Daily even wrote an editorial denouncing one party rule as inherently leading to disaster. Of course he was a complete Machiavellian, even more so than Stalin. More recently I personally know two people who were directly involved in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and who knew many student leaders. Both separately had harsh words for the student leaders' sheer lust for power and disregard for any democratic decision making. Chai Ling in her own words "hoped for a bloodbath" and even accused the producers of a documentary revealing these words as being "agents of Satan", bringing a libel suit against them which was laughed out of court.

These were their words and not mine. And if you can't lead a student movement democratically, how can you lead 20% of humanity democratically? Hence, it's incredibly naive to take anyone who professes respect for "freedom" and "democracy" at face value.[/quote]

Ah, so the democracy activists in China are just like Mao now? How Orwellian.

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Ah, the Chinese people are demons who can't handle self determination like proper western whites. I see now. CCP forever! Long Live the Harmonious Society and the Three Represents!

[Foucaulf]

First, if I had to take a wild guess at the five new members of the politburo in 2017, they would be Hu Chunhua, Zhang Chunxian, Sun Chunlan, Wang Huning and Liu Qibao. Those are, of course, mostly useless.


Exnaderite already covered the most important point - politicians labeled as "reformers" would never support key reforms, and they believe in maintaining the Party's existence. They are reformers in the sense that they want to push inner-party democracy, be given the power to expel the bad apples at will and perhaps be more receptive to complaints in rural areas. There is, in hindsight, good reason why they were not chosen. The Party is teetering as it is, and creating rifts between the centre and the regions is very dangerous.

And, as I have said, there is a pretty substantial market liberal wing in this Standing Committee. Certainly they will follow the economic reforms of Deng and Jiang. And it is a bit naive not to realize there is already revolt going on in China, and has been for the past five years. You cannot expect a mass movement uniting a billion people for regime change unless it is civil war.

I try not to subscribe to the "suzhi" argument that uneducated Chinese cannot sustain a responsible democracy. But, even now, one of the more interesting phenomenons in China is the development of a civil society in certain areas. There's a glut of lawyers, engineers and activists taking arms in areas where the local Party officials failed - doing the job the centre wished it has time to do. That you deny the Chinese people the ability to mobilize themselves except as some revolutionary mob is a bit jarring.

[Beet]

Exnaderite already covered the most important point - politicians labeled as "reformers" would never support key reforms, and they believe in maintaining the Party's existence. They are reformers in the sense that they want to push inner-party democracy, be given the power to expel the bad apples at will and perhaps be more receptive to complaints in rural areas. There is, in hindsight, good reason why they were not chosen. The Party is teetering as it is, and creating rifts between the centre and the regions is very dangerous.

I'm the one in the middle, here. I think there can be good reforms from inside the party, but I refuse to accept a future that has no reform, and that is what I see from this Standing Committee. You guys are trying to argue from two extremes -- on the one hand, that the present government is best, on the other hand, that the reformists are insufficiently reformist. I think there could have been progress in reform within the current strucuture of government, only I do not see that happening. But I also not accept that continuing with the status quo is simply acceptable, either.

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And the most prominent one was denied an economic portfolio.

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Are you kidding? Deng launched the economic reforms. Jiang allowed Zhu Rongji restructured the entire economy and shut down thousands of state enterprises. These men will not follow anything as significant. I'm getting sick and tired of the alarmists saying that if Chinese people stand up for things such as religious freedom, it would mean armageddon. By all appearances this is the least reformist government China has had since 1976.

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Nice. The "revolutionary mob" dog whistle language tells us all we need to know about your mentality. It's great that Chinese people are attempting to construct a civil society under the hellish political party they are oppressed under, but attempts at supporting rule or law or activism or environmentalism will fall short in the end without broader institutional support- including from the political system. Even if they win in the short run, in the long run the 'troublemakers' will be retaliated against. Just look at Chen Guangcheng. And things are getting worse, not better. As the present Party Congress undeniably underscores.

[2952-0-0]

No, I compared it with Wang Jingwei's collaborationist government. The argument for the Wang Jingwei regime was not the same as the argument for Imperial Japan. It was essentially that by not resisting Japan, China would get better 'terms' of occupation and it would save lives, and so on. It is impossible to say that had the KMT & CCP not resisted the Japanese invasion, lives would have been saved. The point is, there is a time when a man must fight.

But Wang Jingwei's government was a puppet of Imperial Japan. Imperial Japan was, as you may recall, making Nazi Germany seem as amateurs. The same argument was made by virtually all the pro-Nazi puppet governments across Europe. There *is* always a breaking point, but to compare life in today's China to life under Wang Jingwei's puppet government is laughable.

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That Wen Jiabao has sketchy deals was an open secret for years. I myself am doing research for a professor writing a book on this issue. But regardless, even the most reformists on the Politburo understand they must "hang together or hang separately", so don't expect a Gorbachev or a Yeltsin. They know they can get away with corruption so long as it doesn't threaten the Party's leadership. In which case, even their erstwhile allies will turn on them.

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Well, Mao himself was a democracy activist at one point. The last batch of democracy activists weren't entirely democratic either. Everyone in China above age sixteen has either read The Art of War or is familiar with the principles.

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A better comparison is post-Soviet Russia. Yeltsin seized power from Gorbachev by riding the demands for faster reforms (as opposed to Gorby's half-hearted reforms), leading to a decade of national decay and misery for the Russian people under the guise of "democracy". Meanwhile, former Party bureaucrats became billionaires by scooping up state assets for nothing. A decade later, a former KGB agent staged a coup and immediately began consolidating power. He then jailed said Party members-turned-billionaires and renationalized their assets, while blaming westerners and democracy for the chaos under Yeltsin and calling the end of the Soviet Union the "biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century". So under these circumstances, wouldn't continued gradual change under a less naive Soviet leader even if it does lead to intra-Party corruption be better both for Russians and the world than the sudden collapse of 1991? The world dodged a bullet there; it's entirely plausible that Yeltsin's Russia would have met the fate of Weimar Germany.

Underlying point, it's extremely dangerous if any long-standing dictatorship (especially a superpower with nukes) ends chaotically. The best case scenario would be a gradual transition to a Singapore-like regime. In any case the Party leadership is facing constant pressures which will force even Jiang's cronies to admit complacency is not an option even for their selfish goals. There must be plenty of Politburo members secretly praying for Buddha to send Jiang on the path to reincarnation.

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I expected better from you.

[Beet]

No, I compared it with Wang Jingwei's collaborationist government. The argument for the Wang Jingwei regime was not the same as the argument for Imperial Japan. It was essentially that by not resisting Japan, China would get better 'terms' of occupation and it would save lives, and so on. It is impossible to say that had the KMT & CCP not resisted the Japanese invasion, lives would have been saved. The point is, there is a time when a man must fight.

But Wang Jingwei's government was a puppet of Imperial Japan. Imperial Japan was, as you may recall, making Nazi Germany seem as amateurs. The same argument was made by virtually all the pro-Nazi puppet governments across Europe. There *is* always a breaking point, but to compare life in today's China to life under Wang Jingwei's puppet government is laughable.

Well yes, there is more modern technology in China today. Of course, the CCP has killed far more Chinese than Imperial Japan, so I suppose you have a point there.

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Wow, you've really jumped the shark with this one. I'm not a Maoist, and the Tian'anmen Square protests was not a Maoist uprising. The real Maoists are hardline progovernment ultraleftists, which is precisely the opposite of the liberals, but I think you already know that, you're just obfuscating it in an Orwellian manner. What's true is false, and what's false is true, and so on.

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No.

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And after a decade, the people still did not choose to return to the Soviet Union.

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LOL. Could you get any more mouthpiece-of-the-party hardliners? This argument was very convincing in 1993. It was still somewhat convincing in 2006. It's not longer convincing. You know what? A Putinite regime would be a massive, revolutionary improvement over the current regime. For all of United Russia's authoritarianism, the press in Russia is freer than in China, there is more room to participate in politics, to engage in civil society, in Russia than in China. There are elections in Russia and not China, and yes, they do reflect changes in the popular will to some extent. The only people who long for a return to pre-1991, even with all the setbacks of the 1990s, are people in their 70s and 80s. I would be overjoyed with a pseudoauthoritarian regime in China, similar to the one Russia enjoys.

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Congratulations, you've just lost the debate, according to Godwin's law. (Amazing that you violated the law after having the brass to accuse me [falsely] of doing it)

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Yes, it's dangerous for the frog to jump out of warm(ing) water, but it's also dangerous for it to stay. In some ways, a long, slow ossification of society, a decline by stagnation, Japan-style, is even worse than a 1990s-Russia style disaster. Russia has recovered from the 1990s, and has more personal freedom and wealth than ever. Japan is still sinking. Sometimes the sudden shock is worth more than the suicide of complacency. I don't think time is on China's side because the population is aging and one day, the largest generation will be in the sunset of their lives. If the country hasn't reformed by then, the biggest opportunity has already been lost.

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Congratulations! We agree!

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That how I'd felt before. But as you said, even the reformers don't want much reform, and now even they have lost. I don't see much room for hope at this point.

[2952-0-0]

Well yes, there is more modern technology in China today. Of course, the CCP has killed far more Chinese than Imperial Japan, so I suppose you have a point there.

I wonder when this veil of silence over the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution will end. Only recently did the KMT/CPC civil war become acceptable to discuss. But the reasons to revolt in today's China don't fundamentally exist.

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To be fair, the Tiananmen Square protests were driven by government corruption rather than one party rule per se. The pro-democracy liberals were a loud minority. But the intention is not to make two plus two equal five, but merely to state that due to historical precedent, there's good reason to be suspicious of anyone claiming to champion freedom and democracy. Not just in China, but all over the world. The US State Department can use this piece of advice.

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Doubtful there's really that much difference between Putinite Russia and the Chinese oligarchy. According to the last Democracy Index, China is ranked next to Azerbaijan and Belarus. Similarly authoritarian Russia is ranked between Jordan and Madagascar. Most creepy? China was ranked 3.14, the same score of Mubarak's Egypt in 2010. Putinite Russia may be better, but not by that much. All the tricks the CPC uses to maintain power, Putin also uses to a somewhat lesser extent. With the added plus of allowing the Kremlin-controlled opposition to win elections which don't fundamentally challenge his rule. Finally, believing the end of the Soviet Union was a mistake is different from wanting it back. But rule by a former KGB officer/Tsar is somehow creepier than rule by an oligarchy of seven.

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1) I was not the first to compare something to an equivalent of Nazi Germany.
2) Just search "Weimar Russia" and you'll see this was a serious concern during Yeltsin's days.

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The Japanese leadership has not (yet, as long as government bond yields remain zero) experienced any shock to reform. Japanese people are generally rich and content with life. But even the most greedy of Politburo members cannot be tone-deaf to problems which while individually are manageable, become a threat when they pile up. They stand to personally suffer, after all. The problem comes when they reform enough to stave off threats to themselves, but not enough to address structural problems they have no interest in addressing. It's a risky game. But anyways, no one, not even pro-western liberals who are actually dissatisfied by CPC rule, want to follow Russia (which is ossifying again under Putin). They're far more interested in Taiwan. Where, by the way, both main parties recognize the importance of maintaining good relations with you-know-who.

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Seems like Hu had pulled a trick by forcing five PSC members to step aside in 2017. Hopefully Jiang will have left, allowing different replacements. In retrospect it's a huge relief that Bo Xilai was dramatically turfed instead of allowed to linger around. And just this week, the foreign press reports the Chairman of PetroChina is being "investigated" over the mysterious Ferrari crash. A week is a long time in politics.

[Foucaulf]

I'm the one in the middle, here. I think there can be good reforms from inside the party, but I refuse to accept a future that has no reform, and that is what I see from this Standing Committee.

To say there is "no reform" is a bit extreme. In this Standing Committee I can see legitimate debates over the validity of State-Owned Enterprises and land reform. The way I see it is that the centre has to keep economic growth above 7%, or otherwise they are lost. If the public debt becomes unsustainable, I do believe structural changes will take place - though you are free to criticize me on that.

You guys are trying to argue from two extremes -- on the one hand, that the present government is best, on the other hand, that the reformists are insufficiently reformist.

Of course this committee could've been better - replace Jiang's people with Wang Yang, Li Yuanchao and Liu Yandong and you have a hell of a leadership. I'm just disagreeing against your claims that this highest echelon of the CPC is the most conservative since 1976...

And, as I have said, there is a pretty substantial market liberal wing in this Standing Committee. And the most prominent one was denied an economic portfolio.

If you are referring to Wang Yang, I'm sure he will be assigned a vice premiership. Though he is not in the Standing Committee that does not mean he gets a nice administrative position. No one is denying he has talent, but that he is too stubborn to navigate the CPC's future problems.

I'm getting sick and tired of the alarmists saying that if Chinese people stand up for things such as religious freedom, it would mean armageddon. By all appearances this is the least reformist government China has had since 1976.

Again, you miss my point; they are already standing up for those freedoms. But it is the regional officials who punish them, and not the centre. You have to keep in mind that this election to the centre is not the worst thing ever, but that this election does not settle the infighting within the party either.

Like I've said, this is clearly not the least reformist government China had. By all means this group of people is more receptive to the market than the second Hu Jintao Standing Committee.

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Retaliation is not a sure thing. Local party bosses have a choice between punishing activism or learning from it -whichever option serves them better when they are reviewed.

The Chen Guangcheng case is an interesting point. The party elite wanted him to shut up, but it was the local party bosses who placed him under brutal house arrest. Instead of viewing it as a case where the CPC is incontrovertibly moving towards its doom, view it as just another example as the twisted promotion politics in the party.

I will not dispute that China has gotten worse in the past five years. But it is Hu's rather paralyzed central administration that fostered this regionalism and corruption. I do not think this standing committee will bring Armageddon to the Party. It can save it for another five years, which is not a completely bad thing.

[anvi]

Beet, I don't like the current standing committee either, neither do I like the autocratic and repressive ways that the government cracks down on speech, political dissent or certain kinds of religious practice.  Nobody is saying they approve of any of these things, and practically none of the Chinese friends or students I have approve of them either.

But what you're talking about is bringing about a political change in China through violence or mass rebellion.  That's a decision that the Chinese populous makes, not you.  Since the late '70's, the bulk of Chinese in the largest urban areas have felt, on the whole, that their lives have improved because of party governance, in terms of their economic well-being, their educational opportunities and in terms of their political lives (neither they nor their children have to worry about struggle sessions and neighborhood searches in passing anymore).  On top of that, rural economic reform was one of the first things the new regime in the late '70's and early '80's did, ending collectives, allowing farmers to develop side-industries and so forth.  In the last several decades, though many farmers have seen their production decline to the breaking point, in many cases they blame it on getting crowded out on the market and not because of government policies, and in any event, education has become more widely available to them in the last twenty-five years too. 

Now none of this is to deny that there are problems, and the Chinese populous not only knows about them and complains about them frequently, but they also often stage anti-government protests on a sustained basis when the problems appear to them to be stark or really threatening (factories poisoning water-stores in the countryside, for example).  But the appointment of a lackluster standing committee is not going to provoke the populous at large into a rebellious mood--as long as they are at least perceived to continue to attend to steps that result in economic development, and as long as they're perceived to stand strong for Chinese interests in international relations--given the legacies of the 19th and 20th centuries--, they're not going to get that riled over that.  They don't really expect the CCP to undertake dramatic government structural reforms.  If you find that disappointing, then blame the Chinese populous.  They don't, in the aggregate, maintain this stance out of ignorance nor out of some stereotypical cultural values regarding social harmony.  They don't believe or trust what government leaders say about many things, but they're not about to risk stark means which would constitute a major threat to their own lives and the lives of their families if they still see the balance of their circumstances as either favorable or tolerable and in the absence of anything which strikes that balance in the decisively opposite direction, it will stay that way.

And that lack of expectation is another element of CCP rule that explains the party's staying power.  The government does indeed help bring about such results by controlling the media and creating "nationalist diversions" at crucial times of political upheaval (think of how the Japanese "takeover" of Diaoyu Dao was made into a big deal at the very time when Xi disappeared and Bo and his wife were being dealt with).  In certain senses, protest and not outright uprising has been the most effective means of prompting government change, as the government has to large degrees accommodated such protests over the long run.  They have accommodated on hukou policy by relaxing restrictions, on "private schools" for urban migrant workers, on legally codifying more and more regional exceptions to one-child policy restrictions, and so on.  There is a nice collection of essays that illustrates this strategy of government accommodation to protest in edited by Mark Seldon and Elizabeth Perry called Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance in the Routledge series on Asia's Transformations that details a lot  of this quite well.  The government might just kill people who start a rebellion, but, depending on the conduct of the protest, they might accommodate protestors in various ways, and this latter fact, to me, at least partially explains why protests have become so prevalent in modern China. 

I agree with most of the sentiments you're expressing, Beet, but on the ground level, China is not Syria, and you that fact is too important to dismiss with a terse analogy that doesn't fit.  As fas the top leadership in China has been perceived by most of the populous in the last thirty years, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were not even close to being perceived by the Chinese populous like Qaddafi or Asad were in Egypt and Syria, and even if people either don't know him yet or who don't think highly of him, Xi Jinping isn't perceived to be on a par with these other figures either.       

[politicus]

Chinese civil wars generally cost tens, hundreds of millions of lives.  It's easy for us sitting in comfy chairs by the glowing lights of our computer screens to wish for the overthrow of a regime, especially when we don't have to suffer the costs.  Sometimes the satisfaction of fulfilling our own political ideals comes at too great a cost for others.  Just a thought.

1. A civil war is not the only way to change regimes violently.
2. History doesn't necessarily repeat itself. The nightmare scenario of a return to 1920s warlord driven anarchy is not that realistic. It happened in a feudal China with much weaker institutions and a lower technological level.

My point was that the (now crony-capitalist) former communist one party states in Asia seems almost impossible to democratize, whereas right wing dictatorships in both Europe, South America and Asia have reformed when their economies developed to a certain level and the popular pressure from a larger and stronger middle class became to great. The crony-capitalist one party state seems to be the most tenacious kind of dictatorship, so the party itself is the most important obstacle to overcome.
A military dictatorship might actually be a necessary transitional stage since it would break the party's control over society. I see no real progress towards democracy as long as the party remain in control.

[anvi]

I appreciate your points, politicus, and I understand what you're saying  But it's hard for me to see a scenario where an attempt to violently overthrow the government would not invoke a civil war in China.  There are lots of people, many of them in industry, many with nationalist sentiments, and so forth, who have various but important things at stake in the current system.  I'm also not sure I'd like to see a military overthrow, since members of the PLA are not, to my knowledge, fans of democratization.  And, while the following is in no way meant to be a comment about any people's "ability to govern themselves," democracy is not like wallpaper; one doesn't just put it up in the form of certain institutions and expect it to function well immediately.  The development of democracy also requires a socialization process in which people of different cultural heritages have to imbibe lots of basic assumptions about citizenship for which there may not be many precedents in the culture in question. That's not a statement about any fixed cultural essence or innate ability of certain peoples, since I don't believe in either of these at all.  It's about process, I think.  And there is also something to be said for allowing societies do develop democracies according to their own precedents, values and goals. 

In a certain way, maybe having a lackluster regime like this one will enhance the likelihood of popular discontent, if they are really not only as politically anti-reformist but also economically incompetent as I am hearing.  If they do a bad job, it might prompt a change in course.  Other only superficially political reformers like Wang Yang and Wen Jiaobao might actually, by virtue of their very competence, ensure the persistence of the political status quo for a longer period.

In any case, it's perhaps just not in me to call for massive civil unrest that would inevitably result in incredible personal devastation for so many people, which furthermore has no guarantee of succeeding, just to witness the furthering of what my own political ideals are.  And revolutions are a tricky business too; lots of things can go wrong with them, lots of things can be made worse, and those things are especially prone to happen without the social transformations that building a democratic culture and not just a democratic polity require.  Sun Zhongshan, in some inexact and general but important ways, was right about some of these issues, but his ideas were overtaken after his death by the fervor of the Guomindang and Gongchandang parties, which were, as it happens, both revolutionary parties.   

[Beet]

First of all, how is Xi Jinping better than Assad? And secondly, how do we know what the Chinese people think without a poll? I'm shocked at how conservative people are here. When the Egyptian protests broke out, hardly a single person except the jmfcsts and myself opposed it. I opposed it because I mistakenly thought it was going to be a 1979 Iran style Islamic revolution. Yet when it comes to China I am the biggest democrat on the board. And I didn't even support democracy in China until last week.

You can only bask in the glories of the late '70s and early '80s for so long. Deng Xiaoping is dead. We're in the 21st century now. In terms of political evolution, China is last among major countries. Behind India, behind Africa, behind Russia and South America. Even Iran has elections. Sun Yat Sen would be aghast, that 100 years after the revolution that capped his career, China is still like this. In his lifetime he saw the beginnings of national electoral democracy in China, in ours lifetimes we fail to see even that. The Yuan Shikais still control China. The future belongs to countries with strong institutions, the rule of law, transparent and inclusive political systems, cultural pluralism, and deep capital markets. All of which the CCP blocks. The CCP doesn't even support the interests of China in foreign policy. The CCP's dominance makes Taiwan much more hostile to China, as the prospect of any sort of even loose union with a dictatorship is justly abhorrent to most Taiwanese. As long as the CCP is in power, the U.S., the world's sole superpower, will see China as an adversary. The CCP is massively detrimental to China's interests in international relations if looked at from this perspective.

Every single one of you experts is apologizing for the CCP. This is a political party, mind you, that bans religion, bans freedom of speech, bans political opposition, forcibly appropriates property, forces women to have abortions, is openly corrupt, is propping up regimes such as North Korea, committed Tiananmen, and so on. How long must Korea endure the perpetual division of its country, with one half being effectively a giant prison? When will Chinese acknowledge that the division of Korea is China's doing, and without the CCP, Korea would have been united long ago? This is just amazing.

Screw the CCP. These guys can be thrown against the wall, that's my view and I know you guys have the "mature" considered view, and I'm the one who advocates chaos and I don't know history and there are real consequences and dangers and blah blah blah. But I think if things don't change in 10 years, 20 years and more you will see that keeping this party in power without reform-if that is what happens- was a historic mistake and a tragedy. And for every Martin Luther King Jr., there's a Malcolm X. For every moderate reformer there's got to be a radical behind him making the establishment fear enough not to string the moderate reformer up on a telephone pole the first time they get the chance. And whether it's a General Secretary who's willing to let puppet states be free like Gorbachev, or a fruit vendor in Tunisia, it's clear that change doesn't happen without action. It's determined by people and what they do.

[Beet]

To say there is "no reform" is a bit extreme. In this Standing Committee I can see legitimate debates over the validity of State-Owned Enterprises and land reform.

You can see legitimate debates? Amazing! They will go into their little room and who knows what they could be doing in there, they could be having a giant circle jerk, a bunga bunga party, or they could be having high minded debates about the "validity" of land reform. Or they could be dividing up the spoils. Who knows? It's all inscrutable to us. In five years, they will emerge again, and divide the spoils again.

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Well we better hope that China's economy massively crashed then.

Of course this committee could've been better - replace Jiang's people with Wang Yang, Li Yuanchao and Liu Yandong and you have a hell of a leadership. I'm just disagreeing against your claims that this highest echelon of the CPC is the most conservative since 1976...

Um, speculating that there could be legitimate debate doesn't prove it's not the most conservative leadership since 1976. There's been legitimate debate in every Standing Committee since then. Of course, we don't really know what's going on.

And, as I
If you are referring to Wang Yang, I'm sure he will be assigned a vice premiership. Though he is not in the Standing Committee that does not mean he gets a nice administrative position. No one is denying he has talent, but that he is too stubborn to navigate the CPC's future problems.

No, I'm referring to Wang Qishan.

Again, you miss my point; they are already standing up for those freedoms. But it is the regional officials who punish them, and not the centre. You have to keep in mind that this election to the centre is not the worst thing ever, but that this election does not settle the infighting within the party either.

It's the center that keeps the regional officials in power. This whole idea about the corrupt local officials, and if the peasants could only get to see the Emperor King he would in his enlightened majesty cure everything is not uniquely Chinese, but it is practically universally naive. Peasants' superstition should not be brought up as serious points here.

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Really? That's not what I'm getting from the sources I'm reading- most of the sources say the chances for economic reform have dimmed.

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Every country has promotion politics, not every country does what happened to Chen Guangcheng- having him put under house arrest.

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So your conclusion is-
1) The continuance of the party is good
2) Everything bad is Hu's fault, hence the current pro-Jiang standing committee is even better

BS on both counts.

[Beet]

Doubtful there's really that much difference between Putinite Russia and the Chinese oligarchy. According to the last Democracy Index, China is ranked next to Azerbaijan and Belarus. Similarly authoritarian Russia is ranked between Jordan and Madagascar. Most creepy? China was ranked 3.14, the same score of Mubarak's Egypt in 2010. Putinite Russia may be better, but not by that much. All the tricks the CPC uses to maintain power, Putin also uses to a somewhat lesser extent. With the added plus of allowing the Kremlin-controlled opposition to win elections which don't fundamentally challenge his rule. Finally, believing the end of the Soviet Union was a mistake is different from wanting it back. But rule by a former KGB officer/Tsar is somehow creepier than rule by an oligarchy of seven.

Um, we found out that Putin is actually still popular in some parts of Russia. Maybe not in Moscow, but in the rural areas of Russia, they actually do support him. The point is, there were Tian-anmen style protests in Russia and Putin allowed it repeatedly. He did not send out the troops to commit a massacre or hunt down the opposition like what happened with Falun Gong. There was an election where United Russia actually emerged ahead. His popularity is tested. Russia is light years ahead of China right now in political development- and that's saying something.

[Beet]

1. A civil war is not the only way to change regimes violently.
2. History doesn't necessarily repeat itself. The nightmare scenario of a return to 1920s warlord driven anarchy is not that realistic. It happened in a feudal China with much weaker institutions and a lower technological level.

Thank you! One of the biggest propaganda points of the CCP (all of which have been repeated here) is that "without the CCP, there would be no new China" i.e., we would go back to warlordism and Japan would conquer China again, and everyone would get addicted to opium and women would have their feet bound and so on. Utter BS. It's like they trot out that line about how they liberated Tibet from slavery-- implication being that without them, slavery would still be legal in Tibet or the Dalai Lama supports slavery. Or how they're so good for implementing land reform, not mentioning that Chiang Kai-Shek also did land reform on Taiwan. In '76 Mao had everyone so terrified, when he died, Chinese people were afraid they wouldn't knwo what to do without him. His first successor actually had a policy "whatever Mao wanted, is right". Only later, people realized they were better off without Mao. The CCP is the same way. They've got everyone thinking they're the only one keeping the ship afloat, when in fact China would be better off if its 1.3 billion people were granted the freedom to have a real civil society. They rule by fear. I know their talking points and pretty much all of them have been used in this thread. I don't think there's ever been a thread in the history of Atlas Forum with such sustained and voluminous defense of an authoritarian regime by almost all of the resident country experts. The only one that comes close was seanobr's fascinating but apologistic posts on North Korea.

[Beet]

One more post. anvi's post is not totally apologistic so let me respond to a few of these points

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Has something changed since last year? Or last month?

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Again, has something happened since last year?

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I don't see any significant change. The screws are tightening, not loosening. Hence the need for a radical change in direction, and not more soothing gradualism.

[2952-0-0]

Um, we found out that Putin is actually still popular in some parts of Russia. Maybe not in Moscow, but in the rural areas of Russia, they actually do support him. The point is, there were Tian-anmen style protests in Russia and Putin allowed it repeatedly. He did not send out the troops to commit a massacre or hunt down the opposition like what happened with Falun Gong. There was an election where United Russia actually emerged ahead. His popularity is tested. Russia is light years ahead of China right now in political development- and that's saying something.

So what? The Communist Party also enjoy genuine legitimacy among most Chinese people. All dictatorships know they need to somehow sustain genuine popularity. Even Hitler was adored by ordinary Germans until Barbarossa started turning bad; people were even signing petitions asking the Fuhrer to rein in the Gestapo! If multiparty elections were held in China starting tomorrow, the Communist Party would win a landslide, though the candidate nomination process will get literally bloody. And while Putin will tolerate the opposition venting frustration in public, rest assured he'll deploy his entire security apparatus if they become a serious threat to his rule. I'm not sure Xi Jinping enjoys half the authority Deng Xiaoping had to order the security forces to break up a repeat of 1989. Li Peng is blamed more for the massacre more than Deng Xiaoping even by dissidents.

Finally, there are mass riots almost every month in China. I'm not sure how that is considered less of a test of the Party's popularity than periodic elections, since there's much more at stake.

Thank you! One of the biggest propaganda points of the CCP (all of which have been repeated here) is that "without the CCP, there would be no new China" i.e., we would go back to warlordism and Japan would conquer China again, and everyone would get addicted to opium and women would have their feet bound and so on. Utter BS. It's like they trot out that line about how they liberated Tibet from slavery-- implication being that without them, slavery would still be legal in Tibet or the Dalai Lama supports slavery. Or how they're so good for implementing land reform, not mentioning that Chiang Kai-Shek also did land reform on Taiwan. In '76 Mao had everyone so terrified, when he died, Chinese people were afraid they wouldn't knwo what to do without him. His first successor actually had a policy "whatever Mao wanted, is right". Only later, people realized they were better off without Mao. The CCP is the same way. They've got everyone thinking they're the only one keeping the ship afloat, when in fact China would be better off if its 1.3 billion people were granted the freedom to have a real civil society. They rule by fear. I know their talking points and pretty much all of them have been used in this thread. I don't think there's ever been a thread in the history of Atlas Forum with such sustained and voluminous defense of an authoritarian regime by almost all of the resident country experts. The only one that comes close was seanobr's fascinating but apologistic posts on North Korea.

Isn't it a bit naive to think that even if the Communist Party vanishes never to reconstitute in any reincarnation, everything will magically change everything down to the village level? In any post-CPC regime, the government will be filled with ex-Party members who enjoy the same networks. The State Owned Enterprises will still be filled with Party hacks who will still zealously guard their privileges. Ditto the lower levels of government, and the PLA. I even know a Chinese student who's engaged to a daughter of one of Li Peng's cronies. He looks forward to his plum job in the power sector, safe in the knowledge that even if a regime change occurs, not that much will change, after I specifically asked whether he fears for job security. What does that tell you?

Bottom line: merely occupying Tiananmen Square for a few weeks and somehow getting the entire Politburo to resign and introduce major reforms will not lead to regime change. The CPC will still exist in all but name, since all the bureaucratic power structures behind it will merely profess solidarity and carry on as usual. Therefore, for a real regime change you seem to advocate to occur, the entire power structure would have to be destroyed. Mao came close to doing so, but still came short. The last time a massive bureaucratic power structure was destroyed was under Stalin in the 1930s. I don't see that as a role model for democracy.

My question would be, what would you yourself do if you magically became all seven Standing Committee members tomorrow? By 2020, there must be a mass media not under significant intimidation, there must be passably free and fair elections, the soldiers must stay in their barracks, lower levels of government must actually listen to directives, and the bosses of state owned enterprises must genuinely believe they're providing a public service. I look forward to your timeline.

[Foucaulf]

First of all, I apologize for my last post; I drank quite a bit before typing it so it may not have made the most sense, and I may have well done the same here. But let's start with this quote.

Screw the CCP. Those guys can be thrown against the wall, that's my view and I know you guys have the "mature" considered view, and I'm the one who advocates chaos and I don't know history and there are real consequences and dangers and blah blah blah

Do you think I don't fantasize about a violent revolt toppling the CPC and seeing the party bosses' heads roll down in rivers of blood? Of course I do - so do plenty other Chinese. Nobody here is enamoured with the party. Nobody is pleased with the way China has paralyzed itself in the past years. I personally feel like crap when you accuse me of being an apologist for the state.

But here's a belief of mine that you'll find jarring - Sun Yat-sen was a bad administrator. He couldn't organize an uprising that wasn't crushed, and fellow revolutionaries were calling for his head. His only success was begging for money from the Chinese expats and others in America, while other people led the ground forces to victory. Did you know who had the military connections to emerge victorious after the Xinhai Revolution, and considered by Sun Yat-sen to be the best man to be president? - Yuan Shikai!

Why do I say this? It is to show that, in the one century in which Chinese constitutionalism has been a thing, the ideologues and the intellectuals have no idea who they're dealing with. They were outplayed, which may have had been a bad thing had they known anything about ruling hundreds of millions of Chinese.

I'm rehashing arguments at this point, but, I'll tell you that any Chinese with a sufficient passion wants to gun down the CPC. Yet most have more to live for - including family and a career - than to risk their livelihoods fighting against the Party. Some don't, and they fight and get gunned down. So they keep fighting. They don't need a hoary ideologue to justify their material need to rebel, and often that hurts more than it helps.

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Nobody actually believes that point. The problem is and remains to be that, without the CPC, there will be no China as it is. The thought is unthinkable. A member of the Communist Party can be a politician, bureaucrat, landowner, capitalist or celebrity. What happens if the CPC collapses? Chinese capitalism, with little binding legal tradition, relies on the CPC. And, in a sense, the quid-pro-quo nature of interaction between private citizens and the CPC says more about China than the Party.

Say the central structure of the Party disappears. Either the patron-client relations survive and business goes on as usual; or they continue just without the party member, in which case the only recourse for the disadvantaged is violence. The cycle spins and spins.

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And yet said peasants do believe that (not the last part, obviously). What are you going to do about it?

That may have been too snarky, but you didn't touch on my point that party infighting will continue. The choice of the Standing Committee, made up of the most uncontroversial and well-connected administrators, reflect that. The party rank-and-file are not happy. The elite can see the writing on the wall. And that is why I think economic reforms could happen - their lives depend on it. Their desire to continue having absolute power trumps any ideological concerns, and those concerns are based on what has historically worked anyway.

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At this point I'm just blathering on to rid me of the ignominy of being a CPC apologist, so whatever. I just want to let you know that I never mind a mass uprising, but I find it absurd that you chose to be so outraged about the central leadership after this particular election. Everyone on this committee can administrate, and the problems they have to face stem from decades of wanton growth to centuries of Chinese political tradition. I don't envy their jobs, and I sure as hell will not defend their failures.

But we are at a point where Chinese society is becoming untethered. Radical change will bring forth suffering upon the middle classes most at this point still find to be too much. But the rich will leave in time and the patronage remains. Maybe some rights activists will return, only to realize that the Chinese working class could care less - the same way they treat all politicians. I hope you agree that a conversation needs to be held in China on the importance of Western constitutionalism for that ideology to succeed here. The irony is that those who can advance such a thing all rely on connections in the Party!

[anvi]

Well, Beet, I'll just say a few things briefly.

it's very easy to find incidents of setbacks, halting change, reversals of course, and all the rest of it, in CCP's China.  The CCP often handles things in profoundly regressive and repressive ways; there is no arguing with that.  I'm not justifying the way they are handling things, and I too wish China had a far more democratic government now than it does.  But, even were China to be governed by a democratic polity now, the 1.5 billion person population, the 135 million and rapidly growing numbers of migrant workers in China, the cronyism in private and public sectors, all of them would still present enormously difficult challenges that could not be solved immediately or easily, or free of pain to everyone. Just changing the leadership and overhauling the institutional structure of the Chinese government is not going to result in stories like the ones you linked immediately disappearing from those media outlets or there continuing to be terrible difficulties associated with them.

I'm not pro-CCP.  But I am anti-millions of people dying to get rid of the present crop.  If that disappoints you, I'm sorry.  But, then again, I don't get to decide that matter any more than any poster on this thread.

Beet, you respond much more quickly on a thread where someone argues with you than you do on a thread when someone's trying to defend your position.    Just teasing.

[2952-0-0]

But here's a belief of mine that you'll find jarring - Sun Yat-sen was a bad administrator. He couldn't organize an uprising that wasn't crushed, and fellow revolutionaries were calling for his head. His only success was begging for money from the Chinese expats and others in America, while other people led the ground forces to victory. Did you know who had the military connections to emerge victorious after the Xinhai Revolution, and considered by Sun Yat-sen to be the best man to be president? - Yuan Shikai!

Why do I say this? It is to show that, in the one century in which Chinese constitutionalism has been a thing, the ideologues and the intellectuals have no idea who they're dealing with. They were outplayed, which may have had been a bad thing had they known anything about ruling hundreds of millions of Chinese.

From a rational perspective, Sun Yat Sen should be remembered as naive and out of touch instead of being elevated to almost George Washington levels of adoration. Even from his perspective he should have foreseen that handing the Presidency to Yuan Shikai, who had already proven to be manipulative and scheming under Cixi, would kill the nascent Chinese democracy in its crib. The Warlord Era, after all, began when Yuan had gutted the Constitution, suspended the National Assembly, and declared himself Emperor, which finally provoked the entire army under his command to splinter and rebel.

[Frodo]

Foucaulf, Anvi, and Ex-Naderite:

Do you see China gradually (too slowly perhaps for Beet's liking) liberalizing and democratizing to the point it becomes a multiparty parliamentary democracy -perhaps by mid-century?  

[anvi]

Frodo, it's really hard for me to predict that.  There are a lot of political theorists in Singapore and even in mainland China writing about the need to establish culturally Chinese forms of democracy.  One of those theorists, in mainland China, is named Jiang Qing, and he is an advocate of a kind of tricameral legislature in a parliamentary system with familiar forms of upper and lower house being elected and majority parties choosing a prime minister, while a third house, so so-called "House of Junzi" (Noblemen), constituted of people who have passed updated Confucian-style civil service exams, would serve in a policy advisory and approval role.  I don't think his works have been translated into English though.  There is another theorist in the Philosophy Department at the National University of Singapore named Sor Hoon Tan who several years ago wrote a book called Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction, in which she suggests that the development of democracy in China will have to begin with community and region-level cooperative associations and then work its way into municipal, provincial and then national levels of government, so that the populous can become socialized into and learn how to decide matters of importance to them through collaborative deliberation.  She is often invited to China to give talks, though, and her book has just been translated into Chinese as well. There are other political theorists in mainland China who write more superficially and vaguely about developing democracy in China too, but these two are probably the most serious academic advocates, in my view.

But this is all on the level of theoretical works.  The problem with the CCP is that they just maintain very tight control of municipal and provincial political processes, and even though there is marked factionalism within the party, the selection process of new generations of leadership is the result of a combination of influence and power-peddling and "inbreeding" at the highest levels.  I concede freely that it's hard for me to see, even among people like Wang Yang, how that insular system can unravel without literally being cracked open.  But the potential costs at this point, given the sheer numbers of people with so much at stake in the system, including the PLA, would, in my view, by incredible and not obviously worth it.  Revolutions in China in the past century have been utterly disastrous, and have never produced their intended results.  Will a thoroughgoing political restructuring happen in China in the next fifty years?  I don't know, but at the moment, I don't honestly see a path to it.  I wish something like what Tan talks about could slowly unfold, but I'm not terribly optimistic that it will.