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  • Economic Transition and political progress in China

    Posted on October 31st, 2009 dabao No comments

    We had a speaker back in January Minxin Pei from the Carnegie Endowment who offered some interesting rebuttal to the theory that economic progress will lead to democratic opening up. He argues for the political elite driven political system in which economic progress actually inhibits political progress. First he cites the
    negative correlation between econ success and democratization because it legitimizes authoritarian governments. Citing the history of 70 democratized countries only 5-6 have been rich countries most have been poor.
    Today China practices selective repression maintaining an elite force of 250k-500k riot police to suppress uprising and Internet police and what he calls social cooptation. This last point is very interesting that points out that China has learned from overthrow of authoritarian regimes (and Tianmen) is by social elites not by peasants so the gov is actively coopting urban intelligentsia into its ranks by maintaining a technocracy in powerful gov positions and benefits for academics. It’s pretty sad that they have been so successful using this basic principle is the more you have to lose the less you willing to shake the boat.
    Question: is this sustainable? Pei doesn’t think so for several reasons. Everything depends on maintaining high rate of econ growth, corruption and inequality are key structural weaknesses and hypocrisies in the system (no inheritance tax, no unions, no capital gains tax). Authoritarian regimes cannot coopt everyone in the elite class so people will be left out and constitute new source of change. New middle class and civic activism are becoming politically active for environmental issues, corruption won’t challenge directly but will eventually show that cccp is incompetent inproviding healthcare and environment may be the entry points for Chinese society to become more empowered. He believes the change is coming in the next 10-20yrs. Very interestingly, he pointed out the vulnerabilities of China to any political transition or democratization given its imperial system of enforcing rule on Tibetans and Muslim ethnic groups that fundamentally do not want to be a part of the Chinese state. When China transitions to democracy, it will fall apart. At that point if Taiwan will break away as well and war will likely ensue.

    Finally, I thought an interesting comment from the crowd was that of a professor who pointed out that industrialization has historically weakened democracies in the West as well including Europe and the US further reinforcing the thesis that economic progress does not lead to democratization. What do you think?