China General Discussion

[Beet]

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.

Well of course. When someone's trying to defend my position I feel no need to respond, for I am in agreement. I had a job once where my boss wanted me to send him weekly status updates, and I would send them week after week and he would never comment on them. Finally after several months, I asked him what he thought of them, and he looked up and said, "What do you expect me to say, good job?" And I walked away feeling foolish. That is generally how I am now, although it may make me seem more belligerent and aggressive than I really am in real life.

One of the lines of argument I take issue with which is used against all arguments for change goes like this- "If we get the change you want, then do you think rainbows and unicorns will start raining form the sky? Will the brown and yellow and white children of the world join hands and start singing kumbaya? Har-har-har!" Of course not, but I am talking about a big change here. I am not talking about something trivial. Just because a democratic China would still have corruption, abuse of power, and bad policies, it does not mean it is not worth it! Just look at India... they have corruption, bad policies, and abuse of power, and my Indian friends never stop complaining about it. But they would never trade their current political system for better infrastructure. In 50 years, barring some sort of catastrophe with Pakistan, I think you will see India pulling ahead of China, not only a more dynamic economy but a more creative, diverse society with much more soft power and influence around the world.

The corollary that I also take issue with is the notion that a revolution would cause the deaths of "millions" of people and would be comparable to the upheavals of the early 20th century. This is exactly what I mean when I say the party rules by fear. Of course, there is no such thing as a revolution that caused its "intended" results, except in the broadest possible sense. However, the evidence from recent revolutions and other upheavals suggest that recent ones are not nearly as bad as the ones of the early 20th century. When the Moscow Spring started in December 2011, no one was predicting that it would be like the 1917 revolution all over again. Recent populist uprisings, whether successful or not, have tended to end with little or no loss of life.

[Beet]

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.

You're flailing. Actually, we have no way of knowing what would the result of an election in China. Even let's say there's a heavily controlled election in which the only opposition parties are really also controlled by the CCP and only opposes in name, as in Russia. We would still have a much better indication of the popularity of the regime from such an election. The politics of China would be undoubtedly transformed. Sure, somebody calling themselves a communist would probably win, simply because there doesn't exist any other organization or infrastructure capable of winning. But what that would mean in terms of practical politics would be a much bigger difference from the status quo than the differences between any of the standing committee contenders or factions currently. The entire structure of politics would be transformed, and the responsiveness of the center to the people would be greater.

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So you bring up the multitude of mass riots to support the party's popularity?

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.

Precisely! But that is what I have been arguing all along. If there was a peaceable transition to democracy initiated by the elite of the CCP, they would still remain elite after said transition. Although the structure of politics would change, the faces in politics would not have to change at all. All the reason why the CCP has little to fear from political reform.

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There you go again, with the wailing and gnashing of teeth. We aren't going back to the '30s or Mao. The CCP has you soiling your pants and they're the only ones standing between China and the '30s. See what I'm talking about? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

What's lacking here is confidence. You guys don't think China can effectively survive without the CCP. I think not only can it survive, but it will thrive better without the CCP than with it.

The CCP has two scenarios. Scenario 1- initiate a peaceful political reform process. Under this scenario, after political reform is completed, everything you wrote is true. The same faces are in power, they have to learn to play a new game but it's one that's eminently playable, they lose nothing.

Scenario 2- a violent, bottom-up initiated revolution, like the Arab Spring. In this case they face the choice of becoming either Mubarak or Assad. Either way, everything they've gained in the past 30 years is flushed down the toilet. Once a political revolution that they can't control begins, they're up sh_t creek.

Hence my argument that it's best for the CCP to initiate political reform itself.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democracy

[Beet]

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.

Of course, I am aware of history. The difference between you and I is I don't subscribe to the notion that because the winner has won, that that means they are the best. There are some times in history that those who have the most immediate political power are not the ones best suited to run the country. Yuan Shikai is a perfect example. The only reason he had power is that he happened to be in command of the biggest regiment of troops. He knew nothing about running the country, which is why his regime fell apart almost immediately. And then the warlord era began. His only function in history was to derail China's first parliamentary democracy. Hence, his life is one of the greatest tragedies in China's history.

As an aside (this is independent of the arguments about democracy I am making here), you may disagree with me, but IMO, the three greatest tragedies of modern Chinese history are
1) The crushing of the Taiping Rebellion by the British. The Taiping may have had nutty religious ideas, but they were basically the Meiji of China. They believed in copying the west, building railroads, modernizing education and institutions, and so on. They were 50 years ahead of the Qing.
2) Yuan Shikai's overthrow of the KMT Nanjing regime. It killed Chinese democracy in the crib and ushered in the era of warlordism.
3) The CCP's victory in the Chinese civil war. Led to tens of millions of needless deaths through Mao's mistakes and set China back by over 30 years.

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Well, almost everyone who dies in every revolution has more to live for. If only those who were so downtrodden that risking their livelihoods in an attempt to overthrow the government passed a rational cost-benefit analysis, no revolution would have ever happened.

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Me: One of the biggest propaganda points of the CCP is that "without the CCP, there would be no new China."

You: Nobody actually believes that point. The problem is and remains to be that, without the CCP, there would be no new China.

Me:

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The same patron-client relations will survive.

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

I'm going to get up tomorrow, eat my breakfast, go to work, get some things done (hopefully), waste some time on Atlas, then return home.

Peasants are idiots, however. How do you think Mao came to power in the first place?

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Well I certainly hope you are right that economic reforms will continue, and that the party rank-and-file are not happy. However the problem with "party infighting" is that we don't know anything about it. I mean, it's politics, so there will always be fighting, but we don't know much about the content, nature or outcomes. It's too inscrutable. That's the problem with these closed political systems. You can't say anything about the struggles inside them. So you can't really draw any conclusions from them. It's not much exaggeration to say that all we know is that every five years, seven or nine faceless suits walk out from behind the curtain.

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Well sure, a conversation needs to be had. That can be agreed on. The present election is not so much the reason why I think radical change needs to occur as the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm sure you'll agree that even before the present Party Congress, there was scant evidence for hope of change. I've already outlined the reasons behind my thinking-- I maintained hope in the party so long as I could find some evidence that it was willing to change. But there is none. In fact, things are getting worse, and have been for some time. So I have no hope for the Party, and no hope for China without continued reform either. Hence, I have adopted a position that is radical in the Chinese context. But it is really based on a balanced and considered thinking through of things. Unless you think that one of these two things are true a) the Party will continue reforms, including political reforms, or b) China doesn't need the aforementioned reforms, then the only possible conclusion is that China needs the Party GONE. If one rejects A and B then one must accept my conclusion. It's the immutable rule of logical reasoning.

[anvi]

Beet,

What we are talking about is that a transition of China to a democracy would, as far as anyone can tell now, require an overthrow of the CCP.  There are, for me, several things that follow from that fact.

First of all, while the value of democracy for mainland Chinese people might indeed be great, so great that after 50 years, they would be as unwilling to part with it as Indians, they have to get there.  And the manner of China's getting there is nothing like India's.  India was colonized for a century and during the period had quasi-democratic governmental structures established.  When the British left, the Indian politicians collaborated on setting up their own representative system; it didn't require a revolution as a total political transformation of China would.

In the case of an attempted revolution, who do you think the PLA is going to line up with?  To whom are their fortunes and prospects staked?  Sure, some of them might break away or refuse to defend the government, just as the first PLA units sent to break up the Tiananmen protests refused to attack the protestors in order to disperse them, but units were eventually found who did it quite swiftly and repulsively.  The PLA has an active force of about 2.5 million, with more in the form of reserves and paramilitary groups.  The possibility that a revolution in that country could "end with little or no loss of life" is nil.  Really.  Absolutely nil.  It's not just fear-mongering, it's numbers.

There is a dimension of this problem that is very personal to me too.  I have many close friends in China, my girlfriend's mother and family live there, my former stepdaughter lives there.  Many of these people live in Beijing and environs.  They have in some cases labored hard their entire lives and are trying to maintain their health in their retirement, in others they are getting educations, trying to build livelihoods and improve their circumstances.  I am not particularly anxious to watch them have their lives put at grave risk in the middle of a national bloodbath and at the mercy of a revolutionary attempt that has every possibility of failing tragically in the attempt, and in any event suffer incredible hardship, if the circumstances are not dire enough to warrant it.  And a lackluster and somewhat regressive standing committee are not, to my mind, dire enough circumstances.  When you talk like you are talking in this thread, you give me the impression that, in the tendrils of your "rule of logical reasoning," the fates of people, real individuals on the ground, are not as important to you as your political ideals, and that bothers me.  

I had a number of friends who were active participants in the Tiananmen protests of '89.  They were there in the square for several months, they were committed young people at the time, they were there when the bullets, grenades and tanks came and fled into the night as their friends got mowed down and thrown into shackles for months on end.  They have since told me tons of stories about two of the leaders of the reform movement, Wang Dan and Chai Ling, and their feelings about how things unfolded and what has happened since.  Wang at the time, despite his devotion to the protests, when it became clear that a crackdown was immanent, urged his fellow protest leaders to disperse the crowd; people had been there for months, sanitary conditions were deteriorating rapidly, people were getting sick, and he thought that, by focusing national attention on the need for reform for months, the movement had done all it could for now and should live to continue the struggle.  Chai Ling, on the contrary, cowed her followers in the square to stay, even if the crackdown happened, and even predicted in interviews that the crackdown would happen, that much blood would be shed, and that it had to take place.  Chai got her way.  But, just before the onset of the attack on the students, Chai Ling fled, leaving those that had voted at her urging to face down the coming horror behind to fend for themselves, and came to the U.S. to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Wang, who had tried to persuade his fellow protestors to disperse before anyone was hurt, stayed in the square despite his cals not being heeded, was injured, watched his friends die, and spent months in prison before being released to study in the U.S., even though he dreaded leaving his parents behind.  My own friends, who were there in the square, still burn with rage about Chai's betrayal, and speak fondly of Wang's loyalty.  They wonder now if any young people in China could demonstrate Wang's fortitude and leadership.  But, to a person, they all conclude now that remaining in the square only to be slaughtered by the armed forces was not worth it.  Some acknowledge that at least some of the reforms they had been calling for were carried through in the following ten years, though you can bet that all of them hate the CCP with a bitter resentment for what they did.  But they also, again to a person, testify to me that it was naive of them to ever believe that this iron-fisted regime would ever back down in the face of only a few thousand protestors, even when literally the whole nation had overtly, vocally and financially supported their cause.  They say pursuing reforms through other avenues is much more likely to work out in the long run, even though the intermediate period will be persistently difficult, and even if they don't, conditions, even in the worst of circumstances, are better for people if they can work hard and carve out hope for themselves in their daily lives.  

Beet, these friends of mine are from China, they suffer modern China's difficulties far more than you and me.  In thinking about my own position on this issue, I'm compelled to take their word over yours.

[Beet]

And what makes you think that I would agree with Chai Ling in that case? Of course it made sense for the students to leave the square voluntarily. As practically all of them did. Most of the massacre occurred in the streets leading up the square, no the square itself. Hardly anyone was killed in actual square.

Do I support a Syria-style insurgency for China, one that goes on for months even as entire towns and cities are levelled? No. In the Syrian case, perhaps the uprising was a mistake to begin with. The people should never have protested again Assad, or if they did, they should have given up as soon as it became apparent he was not going to yield, and they certainly should give up now. I am sure most Syrians, disgusted with both sides, want the war to simply be over.

What I am saying is just, poke the beast and see what happens. Then, decide what you want from there. The Egyptian protests in January 2011 didn't know what was going to happen. They went out on January 25 to the ministry of security-- they could have been massacred. But they went. Most likely they knew they were not going to be massacred for protesting for one day, and neither would the same thing happen in China. Tian'anmen only happened after months of humiliation. It doesn't mean you have to fight to the death. Just do something. You speak as if Tian'anmen is the end-all and be-all of Chinese democracy and that any attempt at regime change would simply be a replay of the past. But China has changed since 1989. There is a new generation that has grown up since then, and each new generation has its own unique task to fulfill. It might not be political revolution, but it's not necessarily a repeat of the past either. Sure, if you poke the beast it'll lash back, but it might also collapse like a heap of salt. All of these regimes look immutable at first, but not all of them are.

You ask, are circumstances dire enough to warrant poking the beast? The obvious answer is that yes, for some Chinese, they are; and for others, they are not. Of course, it is not the direness of circumstances that makes revolution a good idea. Egypt in 2011, Russia in 1991, or France in 1789 were not the direst that those countries had experienced up to that time. In most cases they were the best. But it was precisely because times were relatively good that revolution was possible.

You ask, is it just about the makeup of the standing committee? Am I calling for blood over seven faceless men in suits? Not quite. As I said, the standing committee's just the last straw for me. Things have been getting worse for years. But don't underestimate the standing committee either- the makeup may seem trivial to us, but it isn't. This is the rulership of 1.3 billion people for five years- quite a long time. And the only say that people outside the top echelons of the CCP have over what happens is the choice either to revolt or not revolt, because these mens' power is kept by force.

Yes, there's a person dimension for you. There's a personal dimension for me, too. If you ask people in China whether they agree with me or you, I'm sure you can get a lot of people who say they agree with you, but there'll be people who say they agree with me, as well-- that they'd risk their lives if a mass movement started. That they'd join it. There aren't any immutable, eternal or objective truths here. People in China also have differing opinions and their willingness to act or not act is also variable. Like any human behavior it is also a function of circumstances that can come about arbitrarily.

In any case, there's no dispute by me that the people on the ground are the ones who are going to have to decide themselves. I may have an opinion that I post on here, but it's not like I'm going to put a gun to someone's head and force them to revolt. Functionally, what I'm doing here is making argument, stirring up trouble, prodding the beast in my own way, even if it's in the wrong language. More than anything, though (since no-one in China will likely read this) I'm debating three of you at once, and I find it quite disappointing the amount of heated self-righteousness about "my friends in China" and "revolutionary mobs" and "Stalin" in defense of this dictatorship that my half-serious, half-joking one-liner has created. You would think, from the reaction here, that Xi Jinping and his fellow thugs are holding up the whole sky. All I am saying is that the entire Politburo could taken out back and unceremoniously shot, and China would probably be better off. What's so controversial about that?

[Beet]

[anvi]

You think I'm invoking the experiences of my friends from China to show off "heated self-righteousness" and defend the CCP?  Ok.  I'm invoking them because they've actually had experience with this that they think they learned some important lessons from, things I myself, at least, wouldn't have learned by sitting in a chair and reading books, which is mostly all I do.  I'm also invoking them because I happen to care about the welfare of people I know and love there.  If you consider such concerns illegitimate and irrelevant varia of this kind of discussion that are just an indulgence in self-righteousness, then fine.

What it's decidedly not is an excuse to "defend" the CCP.  I'm hardly arguing that China would not be better off if the Standing Committee or the entire CCP were gone right now.  I agree entirely that it would be.  Probably most Chinese people would agree too.  I just think you're really underestimating the great costs, and incredibly great risks of failure, of a revolution there, and a more careful estimation of these ought to be part of the equation.  JMO

[2952-0-0]

You're flailing. Actually, we have no way of knowing what would the result of an election in China. Even let's say there's a heavily controlled election in which the only opposition parties are really also controlled by the CCP and only opposes in name, as in Russia. We would still have a much better indication of the popularity of the regime from such an election. The politics of China would be undoubtedly transformed. Sure, somebody calling themselves a communist would probably win, simply because there doesn't exist any other organization or infrastructure capable of winning. But what that would mean in terms of practical politics would be a much bigger difference from the status quo than the differences between any of the standing committee contenders or factions currently. The entire structure of politics would be transformed, and the responsiveness of the center to the people would be greater.

I think you're being naive about who Putin really is. Having a KGB agent who used a Reichstag fire-like incident to stage a coup and then rule as a Tsar is much scarier than seven empty suits who preside over a vast selfish bureaucracy. In the former, Putin wants power for power's sake. In the latter, they want power to line their pockets. It's possible for the latter to compromise if push comes to shove, but not the former.

And in any case, I've never, ever, heard of any Chinese people, even those who really are tired of CPC rule, talk of Gorbachev and Yeltsin in positive terms.

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When was the last time Putin compromised with *any* protesters, other than say some nice words on TV?

Precisely! But that is what I have been arguing all along. If there was a peaceable transition to democracy initiated by the elite of the CCP, they would still remain elite after said transition. Although the structure of politics would change, the faces in politics would not have to change at all. All the reason why the CCP has little to fear from political reform.

There you go again, with the wailing and gnashing of teeth. We aren't going back to the '30s or Mao. The CCP has you soiling your pants and they're the only ones standing between China and the '30s. See what I'm talking about? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

What's lacking here is confidence. You guys don't think China can effectively survive without the CCP. I think not only can it survive, but it will thrive better without the CCP than with it.

The CCP has two scenarios. Scenario 1- initiate a peaceful political reform process. Under this scenario, after political reform is completed, everything you wrote is true. The same faces are in power, they have to learn to play a new game but it's one that's eminently playable, they lose nothing.

Scenario 2- a violent, bottom-up initiated revolution, like the Arab Spring. In this case they face the choice of becoming either Mubarak or Assad. Either way, everything they've gained in the past 30 years is flushed down the toilet. Once a political revolution that they can't control begins, they're up sh_t creek.

Hence my argument that it's best for the CCP to initiate political reform itself.

So essentially this argument is:

"The CPC is rotten and has to go, but it will still exist in practice anyways".

What does that mean?

Anyways, in case you're still not convinced, here's a poll of 12000 Chinese adults which risked the careers of several brave journalists. And please, don't say it's propaganda to portray a rosy picture of the Party: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9660715/Eight-in-10-Chinese-want-political-reform.html

So while the headline is the vast majority want political reform, an almost equally vast majority are satisfied with the way China is going, and that the want gradual political reforms. And when asked what should be the most important goal for China, 32% cited raising living standards and social equality. Democratic reforms were second at 20%.

Still not convinced? Take a look for yourself: http://www.pewglobal.org/database/

You'll notice you are free to compare the difference between public opinion in China today and that in, say, Egypt in 2010. If the Chinese public become as dissatisfied as Egyptians in the late 2000s, then I'm sure Politburo members will start arranging for retirement in, say, Cuba.

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And is that really a good comparison?

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Seriously, who is this intended to kid?

Anyone is free to spout ideals about freedom and democracy, and by all means please do so. But it pays to be aware of what actually occurs and what happens between the lines. Especially when there are actual people rather than figures in books involved.

[2952-0-0]

Thinking about this topic for a while (actually for months), I figure that if China somehow pulls off a smooth transition to even a Singapore-like regime with the renamed CPC as the dominant party, the people with most to fear won't be in China (since they're still in control). They'll be within the Washington Beltway. Because by then, China will be capable of deploying exponentially more soft power and put a respectable face on challenges to US hegemony, something which has never existed since World War Two.

A lot of policymakers in Washington will be genuinely flummoxed that this new China is unwilling and, worse, unable to merely toe its line. Armed with new soft power it will influence South Korea and Japan to "realign" (the former as part of a tacit deal over Kim-land). Whatever happens to Taiwan, it will see no purpose in continuing its relationship with the US.

This will endanger not just US alliances in the Asia Pacific region but also the Middle East. What plausible justification is there for US troops in Japan? And given recent developments in the energy market, what purpose is there for a US presence the Middle East, other than the political football that can't be named without being called anti-Semitic? And with the US gone from these two regions, what purpose does NATO serve?

Finally, as current account balances in China, OPEC, and Japan (the latter having horrendous finance problems) shrink, this new Chinese government will find it tempting to reduce buying US Treasury Bonds. I personally have spoken to many ordinary people who resent the CPC for lending money to the country which is "arming to kill us". Take a guess what knock-on implications will result.

It's obvious this would be the most dramatic global realignment since the Berlin Wall's fall.

I'm sure these lettered agencies are aware of this, but will all these yahoos on Capitol Hill and the White House understand?

[Beet]

I think you're being naive about who Putin really is. Having a KGB agent who used a Reichstag fire-like incident to stage a coup and then rule as a Tsar is much scarier than seven empty suits who preside over a vast selfish bureaucracy. In the former, Putin wants power for power's sake. In the latter, they want power to line their pockets. It's possible for the latter to compromise if push comes to shove, but not the former.

A difference without a distinction. Unless you think it means the CCP will quickly compromise with protesters because they would still be able to line their pockets in a post-revolutionary regime, provided that they compromise with the forces of change. In that case, it's an argument for initiating change.

In any case, you can say what you want, I would be overjoyed if China had Russia's political system. Even Russia's political freedom score is objectively above China's, so the people who have analyzed this have judged Russia's system freer. Heck, even saying nice words about political protesters would be the equivalent of repudiating the April 26 editorial, which was the holy grail of the Tian'anmen types. Fact is, thousands of Russians attempted precisely what I'm advocating here. And under Putin, it didn't lead to millions of people dying or him sending the entire Russian army out. It resulted in little or no loss of life. Putin did not declare  martial law in the winter of 2011/2012. He didn't send tanks to Moscow. Nobody died. So he's a better man than you guys think Xi Jinping is. You can argue all you want but that will not change this.

So essentially this argument is:

"The CPC is rotten and has to go, but it will still exist in practice anyways".

What? I never said that. All I said is that it's possible for pre-revolutionary elites to still be elites after a revolution under certain circumstances. That should not be controversial in the least.

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Ok, so let's break down this poll.
80% of people want political reform, agree with me. Point 1.
85% of people think China will face greater challenges in the future; I agree. Point 2.
70% say reform should occur gradually; I agree that's the best outcome. Point 3.
70% say the government should face greater scrutiny against corruption; I agree. Point 4.
70% think the government should expand access to health care, pensions, and social security; I agree. Point 5.
67% say economic growth in the past decade has been at least somewhat satisfactory; I agree. Point 6.

It's remarkable that despite living in the heavily censored political environment they do, 80% of Chinese will still say they'll support political reform to a journalist. It's probably more like 90% at least. I don't think the Propaganda department is doing a very good job. Perhaps they need to upgrade their methods.

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Basically what this poll is telling me is that the party is hanging on by bribing the people with economic growth. Essentially the same thing you see in Saudi Arabia last year during the Arab Spring, when the Monarchy suddenly announced an increase in subsidies and welfare. The oil states except for Libya (which suffered outside intervention) bypassed the Arab Spring because the governments were able to spread the wealth, so to speak.

I understand the hope of the CCP is that the Chinese nation will become forever a nation of those who care only for money and material status, and are driven forever by greed, satisfied only with bread and a full stomach. The level of materialism and soullessness has reached levels that Donald Trump could only dream of. No political freedom, no artistic freedom, no equal rights, no rule of law, no religion, no culture, no civil society. Just Gucci bags and Audis... well, it's understandable. But the economy will not boom forever. It's already slowing. Bad debts are much higher than is reported and are building up quickly. One day economic growth will stall. When that happens what I hope is the Chinese people will one day wake up and see that just materialism is not enough. As it was said, "one does not eat by bread alone." And when that day happens, the *actual people* and not just figures in books, will revolt, and destroy the actual CCP, not just the one in books. And people will die. Maybe I will even go over there and die. Perhaps I may be the only one. But it will be worth it.

[Beet]

Thinking about this topic for a while (actually for months), I figure that if China somehow pulls off a smooth transition to even a Singapore-like regime with the renamed CPC as the dominant party, the people with most to fear won't be in China (since they're still in control). They'll be within the Washington Beltway. Because by then, China will be capable of deploying exponentially more soft power and put a respectable face on challenges to US hegemony, something which has never existed since World War Two.

A lot of policymakers in Washington will be genuinely flummoxed that this new China is unwilling and, worse, unable to merely toe its line. Armed with new soft power it will influence South Korea and Japan to "realign" (the former as part of a tacit deal over Kim-land). Whatever happens to Taiwan, it will see no purpose in continuing its relationship with the US.

This will endanger not just US alliances in the Asia Pacific region but also the Middle East. What plausible justification is there for US troops in Japan? And given recent developments in the energy market, what purpose is there for a US presence the Middle East, other than the political football that can't be named without being called anti-Semitic? And with the US gone from these two regions, what purpose does NATO serve?

Finally, as current account balances in China, OPEC, and Japan (the latter having horrendous finance problems) shrink, this new Chinese government will find it tempting to reduce buying US Treasury Bonds. I personally have spoken to many ordinary people who resent the CPC for lending money to the country which is "arming to kill us". Take a guess what knock-on implications will result.

It's obvious this would be the most dramatic global realignment since the Berlin Wall's fall.

I'm sure these lettered agencies are aware of this, but will all these yahoos on Capitol Hill and the White House understand?

If this is an attempt to say Washington will not welcome a democratic transition, you are mistaken.

[jaichind]

Based on my many visits to different parts of Mainland China, I tend to agree that if Western style elections were held on Mainland China today (not that I feel that such a system would be optimal given the current situation on Mainland China today, in fact I feel it would be a bad idea), the CCP would win.  On the other hand, the CCP would likely lose in many regional elections (mayors, governors, county magistrates.)  On the whole the population support CCP at the macro level but are very negative on CCP at local government levels.

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.

[jaichind]

Given I am from Taiwan Province I tend to be biased in favor of the Taiwan model.  Even in the 1950s the KMT held elections at the local level and was ready to and indeed lost some of them but the central government was not open to popular election.  It was only in the 1990s when that took place.  In fact the Taiwan experience should be a cautionary tale,  macroeconomic policy in the 1950s to 1980s were excellent but began to drop in quality starting in the 1990s with the rise of populist pressures of an election system.  Elections at the highest level did not prevent corruption as corruption in last twenty years are no better and in fact worse than it was in the 1950s-1980s.  Popular democracy from a pure econimical point of view was a net negative.

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.  

[jaichind]

I find the CCP line "without the CCP, there would be no new China" with great revulsion.  "New China" was a disaster from the 1950s to the 1970s.   Only by betraying their basic principles did the CCP manage to survive and make up for some lost ground from the disasters of their program.  The KMT also claims the rights to the founding of a "new China" a la 1911.  Of course even as a radical right KMT supporter, over the last few years I also have moved againist the idea of "New China" given the record of 1911-1949.  Overall I have now moved to a position that the fact that Old China failed was a myth.  Yes, we were defeated in 1895, but it was a close run affair and could have easily gone the other way.  The record 1911-1978 "New China" was a great disaster with the exception of the early 1930s when the KMT did produce some economic advancement in Southern China most of which were wiped out in the war with Japan.   I suspect many Chinese with a good historical perspective would most likley feel the same way I do.  But they are unlikely to confront the consequence of such fact, which is all the efforts of the last 100 years a waste.  We destroyed at great expense something that really did not fail to create a disaster that we are just recovering from.

Of course many on the Mainland buys the CCP line on "New China."  Over the last couple of decades the CCP policy are slowly converging toward my views (mostly a far right chinese nationalist capitalist view) and while on the Mainland I found myself with the ironic position of defending the CCP (as a hardcore supporter of the KMT) againist the attacks on the CCP by disgruntaled members of the CCP (some of them had been members for over 40 years.)  But while many on the Mainland would privately complain about the CCP their views on issues that the CCP blast out a lot of propaganda actually match that of the CCP.  One of the CCP policy which I oppose with intensity is the "One Chila Policy" which I view as genicide againist the Chinese people.  Even people who hold CCP in low esteem support this policy and I had many many debates with people while I am on the Mainland on this issue. None were turned by my arguments.  In other words, CCP propaganda, if repeated enough, works.  Another example is general rejection of the FaLungGong sect.  In my case I also am very negative on the sect which I view as a cult. But I found it interesting that people who had no problems saying they are negative on CCP also spout the CCP line on FaLungGong.

[Beet]

Well I have just returned from discussing with some other Chinese and I am more depressed than ever. One guy I found, beats his cousin if he does not do well in school. The Chinese mentality is that education is everything. Not surprising, given China's history. But call me Westernized or whatever, I believe that success in formal education is missing the point. I really do believe that what drives economic growth is creativity, and that to have creativity one must cultivate the individual. This is one area where the West is still superior, and as uncomfortable as it is for Chinese to admit it, it is true. This is a problem shared by both Taiwan and mainland China.

I find it fascinating, the discourse over the one child policy is very, very different in China vs. the West. In the West, it is accepted that demographics is destiny, and that China's low birth rate means its future doom as a power. Economist even went so far as to project a date when the Chinese nation will no longer exist due to no Chinese bering born. Among Chinese, the view is totally different. It is accepted that China has too many people, and China's problems stem from being a poor country due to its large population. Under this view, China might gradually loosen the one child policy after GDP per capita reaches $10,000 or more, however it will not until then. The focus is more on quality of life rather than number of people. That said, I am opposed to the one child policy myself, but I do find it interesting how differently it is framed.

I do think that the Qing dynasty overthrow was fascinating because just on the eve of the Xinhai revolution they were moving towards peaceful reform towards what would probably have been some sort of constitutional monarchy with progressive economic policies. Particularly the years 1905-1911. Ironically the Qing government was horrible for China from 1790 until 1905, during all this time it remained in power. After 1905, it began to be progressive but was overthrown in just six years, followed by chaos. A case could be made that at every possible major historical turn in China's history, the worst possible result occurred.

[politicus]

I find it fascinating, the discourse over the one child policy is very, very different in China vs. the West. In the West, it is accepted that demographics is destiny, and that China's low birth rate means its future doom as a power. Economist even went so far as to project a date when the Chinese nation will no longer exist due to no Chinese being born. Among Chinese, the view is totally different. It is accepted that China has too many people, and China's problems stem from being a poor country due to its large population. Under this view, China might gradually loosen the one child policy after GDP per capita reaches $10,000 or more, however it will not until then. The focus is more on quality of life rather than number of people. That said, I am opposed to the one child policy myself, but I do find it interesting how differently it is framed.

That may be the case among rightwingers and economists in the Anglophone world, but generally the belief that most of the worlds current problems stems from the Earth being overpopulated is quite widespread in the West. Its dominant in continental Europe.
Eastern China is a terribly crowded place and the Han Chinese colonization of the West is quite problematic and is no viable solution to the problem. Internal conflicts could easily undermine Chinas stability and hence its development and ability to influence other countries, so I think the Chinese got their priorities right.

The UN is very worried that the worlds population will not stabilize until 2100 (unlike 2050 which they previously estimated) and probably will stabilize at a higher level than he 10-10,5 billion which used to be their estimate.

[Mr. Morden]

I find it fascinating, the discourse over the one child policy is very, very different in China vs. the West. In the West, it is accepted that demographics is destiny, and that China's low birth rate means its future doom as a power. Economist even went so far as to project a date when the Chinese nation will no longer exist due to no Chinese being born. Among Chinese, the view is totally different. It is accepted that China has too many people, and China's problems stem from being a poor country due to its large population. Under this view, China might gradually loosen the one child policy after GDP per capita reaches $10,000 or more, however it will not until then. The focus is more on quality of life rather than number of people. That said, I am opposed to the one child policy myself, but I do find it interesting how differently it is framed.

That may be the case among rightwingers and economists in the Anglophone world, but generally the belief that most of the worlds current problems stems from the Earth being overpopulated is quite widespread in the West. Its dominant in continental Europe.

I don't know that that's inconsistent with what Beet is suggesting.  One can say that a given country will benefit as a world power from keeping its own population growth up, even while the planet as a whole will suffer if world population keeps growing.

[politicus]

Fair point, but he seemed to mix the relative power argument and the idea of general benefits of a large population.

But I dont think the relative power argument is right either. In Chinas case the country already has an extremely large population and a huge strain on resources and infrastrcture so their entire society would function better if their population was smaller. If they dont stop population growth social conflicts over resources will ruin their internal stability and therefore also theirpolitical and economic potential on the world stage.
The US has managed to be dominant in most fields with "only" 300+ million inhabitants. Once you get above a certain share of the worlds population its quality not quantity that matters.

as a radical right KMT supporter.

Just what this thread needs...

[anvi]

I am actually interested in learning more about the development of modern Chinese pedagogical approaches to education.  I've done seminars and partial classes on traditional and modern educational systems in China and have taught in Japan for a stretch of about a year and a half, but have not really looked into the origins of the model of "teacher lectures, student just memorizes" very much, a model that has taken root in much of East Asia.   

The establishment of Western-style universities, with modern curricula, dates back to the late nineteenth century, and the Confucian civil service exams were abolished nationwide in 1905.  Of course, scientific and technical learning (li ke) have since that time been of foremost in mainland education in different contexts, while the humanities (wen ke) have fallen somewhat into the background.  But I wonder if the active-teacher, passive student roles map onto that change in some significant way.

Even though, in classical Chinese education, the content of study was largely humanistic and focused on the texts of antiquity which did have to be committed to memory, from everything I can tell, the pedagogical roles of students were very active ones in much of Chinese history.  The Confucian texts that students had to master were themselves significantly in the form of shoter or longer conversations between teachers and students, where students are represented as questioning, challenging, doubting, and sometimes even being better than their teachers.  The medieval ("Neo") Confucian records of the most prominent Song and Ming dynasty teachers are also in the literary form of conversations.  Moreover, the process of writing the Confucian civil service exams often required lots of student creativity, at least at certain periods of the exams' histories.  The students not only had to write at least semi-original commentarial essays, but also compose their own poems in the requisite styles and write practical essays on how to implement certain political principles in solving administrative problems of various kinds.  So, in many periods of classical China, students were required to be both active and creative in interaction with teachers and examinations, despite the fact that they were studying and reading, and surely were still expected to memorize and master, "the classics" as their content.  This kind of pedagogical pattern can be seen prolifically in Tang and Song Buddhist literature as well.

My point, I guess, is that modern individualism is not the only context in which the expectations that students should be active and creative can thrive.  Based on my studies of classical Chinese education, the relatively passive postures of students strike me as a departure from, and not consistent with, classical Chinese pedagogical practice.  So I wonder, and intend to find out somehow, whether or to what degree the roles of teacher and student we see in Chinese and East Asian classrooms now actually comes out of the movements here that led to the adoption of modern and, in origin, largely foreign content like the sciences, technical training and so on.  I'm hardly sure that such is the case, but based on my much greater familiarity with classical Chinese education, I do suspect that something like this is what happened.   

[jaichind]

As someone that went through Chinese and American educational system in equal amounts of time I completely with you.  I find the American system vastly superior to the Chinese system (both Mainland and Taiwan regions.)  To me it is not just creativity of which your position mostly matches that of myself so there is not much I can add on top of what you said.  It is also about teamwork.  One genius of the American educational system is its use of team sports as a critical part of the educational process.  Team sports simulates very well the corprate enviornment that most people have to go through.  They have to be team players that competes as a team againist external rivales and go through internal competition in a constructive way that does not hurt the effort to compete externally.  Chinese as individuals might be "smarter" than their Western counterparts using some educational metric but Chinese organization for sure lose to their Western counterparts.

Well I have just returned from discussing with some other Chinese and I am more depressed than ever. One guy I found, beats his cousin if he does not do well in school. The Chinese mentality is that education is everything. Not surprising, given China's history. But call me Westernized or whatever, I believe that success in formal education is missing the point. I really do believe that what drives economic growth is creativity, and that to have creativity one must cultivate the individual. This is one area where the West is still superior, and as uncomfortable as it is for Chinese to admit it, it is true. This is a problem shared by both Taiwan and mainland China.

I find it fascinating, the discourse over the one child policy is very, very different in China vs. the West. In the West, it is accepted that demographics is destiny, and that China's low birth rate means its future doom as a power. Economist even went so far as to project a date when the Chinese nation will no longer exist due to no Chinese bering born. Among Chinese, the view is totally different. It is accepted that China has too many people, and China's problems stem from being a poor country due to its large population. Under this view, China might gradually loosen the one child policy after GDP per capita reaches $10,000 or more, however it will not until then. The focus is more on quality of life rather than number of people. That said, I am opposed to the one child policy myself, but I do find it interesting how differently it is framed.

I do think that the Qing dynasty overthrow was fascinating because just on the eve of the Xinhai revolution they were moving towards peaceful reform towards what would probably have been some sort of constitutional monarchy with progressive economic policies. Particularly the years 1905-1911. Ironically the Qing government was horrible for China from 1790 until 1905, during all this time it remained in power. After 1905, it began to be progressive but was overthrown in just six years, followed by chaos. A case could be made that at every possible major historical turn in China's history, the worst possible result occurred.

[dead0man]

link

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[Beet]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-xi-20130608,0,2308743.story?page=2

See? I told you guys this guy was rotten. Xi Jinping has been a conservative hardliner all along, as he is from the "princeling" faction, aligned with Jiang Zemin and the Shanghai Clique, which cut its teeth mowing down students at Tian'anmen Square. The next year, Deng Xiaoping pardoned Shanghai for its role in the Cultural Revolution and initiated the Pudong development zone.

The only reformist on the Standing Committee right now is Li Keqiang. When he was younger he made some comments about how China should adopt the U.S. political system. That probably cost him the General Secretaryship. Now he's been relegated to liberalizing the economy, but he's in a tough spot.

The Hu-Wen axis was also relatively reformist, as they are associated with the Communist Youth League faction; of the two Wen is the only one who actually cares about reform. In 2010 he realized his time was nearly up and he started making some speeches calling for reform. However, before he could get any momentum the Arab spring happened and scared the CCP sh**tless. No matter, the next year, he tried again, aided by the fall of well known hardliner Bo Xilai. But at the last minute his legs were cut out under him by none other than the New York Times. I don't think the U.S. has ever influenced internal Chinese politics to such as extent, as when the NYT published a lengthy exposition of Wen's family's properties just prior to the Party Conference. It completely destroyed the reformists.

The 2012 party conference was the worst and most disappointing since 1976. All hope for reform is now dead. As sad as it is, violent revolution is the only hope now for pluralism in China.

[Mr. Morden]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/26/china-riots/2458683/

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[jaichind]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/496864/20130805/china-one-child-policy-end-population-ageing.htm

"Chinese authorities have said they are considering lifting their controversial one-child policy by the end of 2015, according to reports"

It seems the PRC regime might switch to a two child policy.  Thanks goodness.  This is an absurd policy which outlived its usefulness back in the early 1990s as far as I am concerned.  Everytime I visit Mainland China this is the topic I debate locals the most where I fiercely oppose the "One Child Policy" and most locals tend to support it.  The other is my insistance on going back to the Traditional Chinese script from degenerate Reformed Chinese script.   

[dead0man]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/26/china-riots/2458683/

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As the keeper of the world peace, the United States of America should put every effect to stop the violence in China.