Why a Leninist state cannot survive, Q&A with David Shambaugh - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

There is not shortage of experts who predict China cannot survive as a Leninist state, but David Shambaugh is certainly one of the more prominent ones. Journalist Ian Johnson sits down with him for the New York Times and discusses the future of current China.

Ian Johnson:

Q. Since Napoleon, the world has been awash with predictions about China. Do we need another?

A. Nobody has a crystal ball, but China specialists should at least try to unpack and understand these dynamics. It is particularly important at this juncture in China’s development, as there are so many uncertainties and unprecedented challenges. 

Q. Would it be fair to say that you believe that Leninist parties are incapable of maintaining power in the long run? It seems that either they hold power through repression, as in the Soviet Union, and thus settle into terminal decline, or they open up and end up reforming themselves out of existence, as in Taiwan.

A. I believe that the record shows that Leninist regimes possess fewer sources of legitimacy, power and longevity than liberal states. Moreover, as you note, the only Leninist-type regime that reached the status of a newly industrialized economy that China has today was Taiwan in the 1980s. Taiwan politically liberalized and democratized — as did South Korea and other Asian authoritarian states — and it powered the island’s economy to a fully developed level. That is precisely China’s challenge today: politically liberalize and become a developed economy or remain stuck in “hard authoritarianism” and stagnate economically. 

Q. Does this mean foreign countries needn’t worry too much about China’s rise? Perhaps all they need is a bit of military and foreign policy vigilance to prevent adventurism and the Chinese Communist Party system will do itself in in the long run?

A. That’s correct. I argued in my last book [“China Goes Global”] that China is a “partial power” — lacking in many categories of national power. That book looked at China externally, whereas this new book looks at China primarily internally. When one carefully examines China’s sources of power, I find multiple weaknesses instead of strengths. As a result, I have been uncomfortable for some time with the “China rise” narrative, because I think it falsely exaggerates China’s strengths and underplays its weaknesses.

More at the New York Times.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
Earlier we discussed with Ian Johnson the emergence of a new metropolis, combining Beijing and Tianjin

 

The problem: China has no clear direction - Howard French

+Howard French 

China´s lack of direction or ideology, makes it very hard to make sense out of its future, writes author Howard French in ChinaFile, in a contribution to the David Shambaugh debate on the demise of the communist part. "Such is the degree of uncertainty we must all live with."

Howard French:

Perhaps the next most important point to be made, and it has not been heard enough in this discussion, is that no one knows where China (or the world) is heading, say twenty, or even ten years down the road. Mao oversaw rapprochement with the U.S. in order to counter the Soviet Union, and this can be said to have brought capitalism to his country, which was clearly not his aim. Deng embraced capitalism, and that can be said to have led to a near existential crisis for the Party around the issue of democratization. The U.S. embraced China also in order to balance the Soviet Union, as well as, a bit later, to seek markets. This ended up in the creation of what now appears ever more like a peer rival, after a brief period of monopolarity in the world. Unintended, even undesirable consequences are the name of the game in matters of state and in international affairs, and however assertive and determined Xi Jinping may appear to us now, in the early phases of his rule, it is a safe bet that his drive to realize a Chinese dream will produce many things he could never have dreamed of—or desired. It is also for the least plausible that Xi’s remarkable apparent confidence is a kind of compensation for deep anxiety at the top in China: a recognition that the country is walking a tightrope. 

I defer to others on the specifics of China’s known challenges, but a few points seem fairly obvious. The early, and one might say easy, phase of China’s takeoff is over. That period consisted in large measure of stopping doing stupid things and inflicting damage on oneself. Moving forward now from here becomes exponentially more difficult. This means finding a way to sustain relatively high growth rates, when almost everything points to a natural, secular slowdown. It means coping with environmental challenges on a scale never seen before. It means dealing with the emergence of a middle class, and everything that political science suggests about the difficulties that this poses for authoritarian regimes. It means finding a way through the middle income trap. It means restraining corruption that in this view is, if anything, even worse, meaning more systemic, than commonly recognized. It means coping with the accelerating balancing of nervous neighbors. It means somehow coping with issues of ethnic and regional tensions and stark inequality. It means drastic and mostly unfavorable changes in demography. And it means doing all of these things, and facing any number of other serious challenges that space doesn’t allow one to detail here, without the benefit of a coherent or appealing ideology other than nationalism and, one says tentatively, budding personality cult-style leadership. 

We don’t know how this is going to turn out. For every success one can point to involving China, it is easy to point to at least one stark and serious problem, or potential failing. I don’t share Shambaugh’s confidence in predicting the demise of the Chinese Communist Party, but it does not strike this reader as a reckless prediction. It should not surprise us, and neither should its opposite, China’s continued relative success. Such is the degree of uncertainty we must all live with.

More arguments in ChinaFile. Earlier, 

Arthur Kroeber explained why Shambaugh is wrong.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out recent list.  

Related articles

• Communist angst in Beijing: Economic reality threatens party's 'mandate of heaven'
• China's Waste and the Largest Wealth Transfer in History
• Tiger-Beating Clip Makes Xi China's First Cartoon President
• President Xi Jinping unveils new slogan to govern China
• PLA invited to participate in Victory Day Parade in Russia
• The Coming Chinese Crack-Up - WSJ

Why China is not cracking up - Arthur Kroeber

+Arthur Kroeber 

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by David Shambaugh on March 7 claims the Communist Party is falling apart. Economist Arthur Kroeber explains in ChinaFile why he is wrong. The next episode in a longstanding "China-is-collapsing" tradition.

Arthur Kroeber´s closing remarks:

Finally, there is no evidence that the biggest and most important political constituency in China—the rising urban bourgeoisie—has much interest in changing the system. In my conversations with members of this class, I hear many complaints, but more generally a satisfaction with the material progress China has made in the last two decades. Except for a tiny group of brave dissidents, this group in general displays little interest in political reform and none in democracy. One reason may be that they find uninspiring the record of democratic governance in other big Asian countries, such as India. More important is probably the fear that in a representative system, the interests of the urban bourgeoisie (at most 25% of the population) would lose out to those of the rural masses. The Party may well be somewhat insecure, but the only force that might plausibly unseat it is more insecure still. 

Predictions of Chinese political collapse have a long and futile history. Their persistent failure stems from a basic conceptual fault. Instead of facing the Chinese system on its own terms and understanding why it works—which could create insights into why it might stop working—critics judge the system against what they would like it to be, and find it wanting. This embeds an assumption of fragility that makes every societal problem look like an existential crisis. As a long-term resident of China, I would love the government to become more open, pluralistic and tolerant of creativity. The fact that it refuses to do so is disappointing to me and many others, but offers no grounds for a judgment of its weakness. 

Seven years ago, in his excellent book China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, Shambaugh described the Party as "a reasonably strong and resilient institution....To be sure, it has its problems and challenges, but none present the real possibility of systemic collapse." That was a good judgment then, and it remains a good judgment now.

More arguents in ChinaFile.

Arthur Kroeber is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference. Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Sizing up China´s political risks is an art in itself. Are you looking for more experts on China political risks at the China Speakers Bureau? Do look at this list.  

Related articles

• The Endgame Of Communist Rule In China Has Begun
• Sorry, America: China Is NOT Going to Collapse
• Xiaomi forecasts sales up over 30% in 2015
• The endgame of Communist rule in China?
• Harrods boss banks on Prince William's China visit to boost department store