China General Discussion

[Beet]

A rare crack in the facade of unity of the CCP.

Link

Not sure yet what this merits yet... The Financial Times' coverage thus far is the best, although it's behind firewall, so you'll have to search Google News to get the links.

[Beet]

Oh, wow.

You are impressed by this?

There's a tradition that every time a new batch of leadership ascends, they must throw a regional party boss under the bus.

Who was thrown under the bus in 2002-2003?

[Beet]

Can somebody merge this thread into the new China general discussion thread for me?

[Beet]

Uh, all I see so far is a lot of rumors and innuendo. Bo Xilai hasn't even been kicked out of the Politburo, has he? Given the inaccurate rumors that have flown around weibo, and how little in China has changed for the past twenty years, one can forgive us outside observers for a little skepticism here. Arguably, it shows how hungry people are for change that they'll grasp on anything to try to make it blow up into something bigger than it is.

[Beet]

China should simply reach an agreement with the ASEAN countries with claims in the Spratlys to jointly divide and explore the area. Otherwise, it doesn't matter what you claim, they can't go ahead to exploit any potential oil reserves in the region due to the territorial disputes anyway.

[Beet]

Why would the countries with good claims to the Spratlys concede anything to the PRC?  The Paracels, sure, share the wealth, but not the Spratlys.

To reach a political agreement settling the area of control, and thus not have to spend money on an arms race. Instead giving them the opportunity to jointly explore and exploit the area. The current situation is unresolvable and is preventing the area from being used, although if you are an environmentalist with Greenpeace that may be a good thing. But the main Filipino interest in the area is for the potential economic benefits, just as with China and everybody else [well, except for some hotheaded nationalists and generals who have both their own self interest and pigheadedness to ignite reason for China's sabre-rattling]. In the status quo, it provides no benefits and is only a sink for military spending. This is one area where Europe is still far ahead of Asia; they would recognize great power politics as 19th century thinking. Asia would do well to banish it into the past as well.

[Beet]

The US must leverage its position in SE Asia to form a bloc of nations opposed to China. Getting an agreement would be a good way to do that. But I'd like to see an APTO, so what do I know.

Out of the US wheelhouse- it depends entirely on what China does. If China plays nice and builds economic relations with ASEAN, then they will be drawn into the Chinese orbit and there's nothing the US can do about it. However if China is aggressive and bullying, it'll drive these countries into the arms of the US and all we have to do is open them- which shouldn't be hard (given that we've been there before already- the muscles are already well trained). In other words I think it's more of China's choice than the US choice how this plays out. The US can't force China's neighbors to be hostile to China. Nor should it.

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What letter?

[Beet]

Chinese people should focus on China's problems and not so much on Japan.

[Beet]

These "fenqing"? It is astonishing and depressing how anyone could still adhere to fascism in this world!

[Beet]

So Xi hasn't been killed or sidelined...

Is this only another proof of Chian regime's lack of transparency ?
Or was this an attempt to counter-attack from conservatives/maoists after Bo Xilai's fall ?

I mus say that, while Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were said to be "reformers", they were disappointing (especially Hu).
This time round, I feel that there may be some reformist changes and not only from the PM (it's almost a tradition now to have a "reformist-liberal" PM: Zhao Ziyang, Zhu Rongji, Wen Jiabao, Li Keqiang probably), but also from the Nr.1.

And with the end of Zhou Yongkang and the likely promoting of Wang Yang, Wang Qishan and Meng Jianzhu (a more moderate security man), maybe it's time to be mildly optimistic about Chian politics.
The problem seems to lie in the army, currently...

I continue to hold out hope that the CCP will decide that political reform is in its interest. The Arab Spring has shown that forcible revolution from below is unpredictable and can arise at any time, and that ideologically vacuous authoritarian regimes cannot hold effective power in the face of such a sustained uprising. At least, without destroying the country in the process, and even the PLA is not likely to accept such an outcome. On the other hand, the CCP can look at democratic transitions in Spain, Latin America, the former communist bloc, and even Taiwan as examples where top-led political reform led to positive outcomes for the incumbents. They were still politically privileged after the transitions and in many cases led majority parties and even ruled the country.

In foreign relations, the relation between the US and China will be the most important of the next 50 years. In the worst case scenario, world war or a repeat of the 20th century in Asia. In the best case scenario, the two countries learn to accomodate and cooperate with one another. The relationship will be much easier to manage if China becomes democratic. Currently, ideological considerations prevent the US from ceding power in the western Pacific to China, as it views China's authoritarian regime as a potential threat. A democratic China that embraced liberal values would be more like Japan or South Korea. It would mean the US would probably give China more breathing space in the western Pacific. In that sense, it would be worth more than 10 aircraft carriers...

[Beet]

Wang Yang isn't there? All the press reports are saying the progressive reformist faction got crushed by the dead hand of Jiang. China may really need an Arab-Spring like event to get political change.

[Beet]

A violent transfer of power might be preferable, if it gets rid if the CCP

[Beet]

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.

Was the Syrian uprising a mistake then? Should the opposition of that country simply surrender to Assad, for the sake of preserving a harmonious society?

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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