Published May 20th, 2007 by Future Atlas
The China model: “wealth without liberty”
Writing in the Post, James Mann argues that China is increasingly a political model for the world, combining an authoritarian system with successful wealth creation.
He notes that the Chinese middle class is content with or at least acquiescent to the current system, indicating “that a nation’s elite can be bought off with comfortable apartments, the chance to make money, and significant advances in personal, non-political freedoms (clothes, entertainment, sex, travel abroad).”
It is not clear that the China offers a long-term model for authoritarianism, however.
- Political freedom has increased too — the “non-political freedoms” that Mann lists all used to be within the realm of politics and thereby restricted. This pattern continues, and even allows for thousands of protests a year, and — spottily — discussion of issues that fall clearly in the realm of politics.
- Mann suggests that the “business community is hardly independent of the party; in effect, it is the party, linked to China’s power structure through financial connections or family ties.” That in itself is a route to political change: Chinese business interests may be at odds with authoritarianism. For instance, to participate in global stock markets effectively, ever more Chinese will have to have unfettered access to global news flows. Business will have an interest in predictability that militates against arbitrary Party / bureaucratic interferences.
- China’s engagement with the world does constrain the Chinese political system. Consider the current scandal about tainted products. Part of the outcome is likely to be increased transparency to the outside world, and additional limits on the power of connection and money in the economy, replaced by objective criteria partially imposed by the outside world.
- The middle class continues to be trained for a more democratic system, making more decisions for themselves in more spheres, gaining access to ever-broader information streams, and glimpsing more and more alternatives to the present Chinese political model.