astralis

canmoore,

not sure what you mean by the "end to Chinese Communism". do you mean the party, or the ideology? the ideology is long dead and buried, although a few old-skoolers grumble about it and try to resurrect the dead once in a while (not that anyone listens).

the party's going to be camping out for a while.

i'm not quite as optimistic as gunnut, in that the CCP will become just another major political party. IF all goes well, in the next few decades we will see the CCP in the role of singapore's PAP, or (most optimistically) japan's LDP circa 1970-1990. according to the CCP's own timeline, it doesn't expect to enter even the -bottom rung- of the "developed nation" club until ~2050-2075.

well, if things are going okey-dokey then, china just might have a shot at the dream of the multi-party democracy.

ArmchairGeneral

WHOA. Seriously? That's very, very interesting. I wonder what that would look like.

__________________
"Apocalyptic thought is curiously pleasurable."
-Theodore Dalrymple

astralis

armchair general,

there's been talk going on for a long long time about expanding voting practices (zhao ziyang first talked about it back in the mid-80s, it got shelved until roughly '94-96 after tiananmen). right now it's been stuck at the "village" level for a while, but the progression is supposed to go:

village --> township --> district --> province

they would be able to elect officials and people to generally take care of things going on within their respective areas of influence. however, CCP holds the final say in most matters, as well as remaining in control of country-wide domestic/foreign policy. in terms of time, well, wen jiabao once told tony blair that they were thinking of going to the township level in the next few years.

if that's the case, that'd actually be slightly better than singapore-style democracy, because over there, if opposition candidates even get ELECTED, the authorities like to play a game of "oops, your power/water/gas in just your district has to be shutoff due to unexplained accident."

Zhang Fei

Canmoore: China is still Communist in the sense that everything that happens is done for the benefit of the Communist Party and its members - as must be the case for a government that is answerable only to a self-appointed leadership. At the moment, the party has temporarily freed up certain markets in order to create the economic growth required to prevent the kind of economic problems that broke up the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Whether economic reforms persist - i.e. not the addition of new reforms, but the retention of old reforms - is an open question. Domestic industrialists are starting to demand that foreign manufacturers and service sector companies be excluded from the Chinese market. Policymakers have started to shackle foreign companies that have been in China for several years, while welcoming new foreign investors in. (The new restrictions and regulations on existing foreign companies in China are giving new foreign investors pause, of course. They realize they might be next in line for a thorough shafting).

China's real ideology no longer has to do with Marxism (if it ever did - I always saw it as cover for a new dynasty that carried out Robin Hood policies on a large scale - except unlike the case of Robin Hood, millions of Chinese property owners were executed to accomplish this, and Chinese peasants never actually got to own what was taken away from the deceased property owners - the Communist Party merely lent it to the peasants, i.e. the CCP owned it all). Rhetoric aside, the party's guiding principle is now mainly about saying and doing whatever it takes to keep the party in power. Some measure of economic freedom is currently the fashion. It appears to me that a large number of Chinese workers are now employed in the private sector. Some of this had to do with new business formation and new foreign investment and some of it had to do with the privatizations of state-owned companies.

But the real bottom line involves staying in power. My feeling is that whatever happens in the economic realm, the Party would no more relinquish power than the Last Emperor handed over the reins of power voluntarily. There is only one Chinese leader who has done so in recent Chinese history. His name is Lee Teng Hui, the former leader of Taiwan's Kuomintang dictatorship. It is possible that the Chinese Communist Party might follow in his footsteps, but the Party has bathed itself in blood in the 60 years (in a manner unprecedented even in China's blood-soaked history) since it won the jackpot and crowned itself emperor. The question is whether - if the Party gives up power - aggrieved friends and family members will start taking down party members much as Kurds and Shiites are going after Baath Party members in Iraq.

Triple C

Exactly. The People's Republic of China's finances are kept a float by foreign investment, and the #1 investor are US based. Taiwan is not that far off. Invading Taiwan and antagonize the US are going to cause major pains in China, and that's putting military outcomes aside.

The Chinese Communist Party will not reliquish its power tamely. This is evident for all mindful China watchers. Tiananmen Square comes into mind, as well as China's handling of recent domestic unrests--DoD estimates at 2003 that they numbered at the thousands, and the ones that did not dismiss itself were put down by PLA militiamen.

cris29

I really want the next world war too be in the pacific, i think all europe hopes for that too. Hope fully the chinese will start a war with taiwan and usa etc will get involved

Triple C

The resilience of the Chinese Communist Party is the direct result of its monopolization on the levers of power. The CCP has absolute control of the PLA, the para-military forces, the secret police, schools, and the media. 'Civil society' as such does not exist in China; every organization, political or otherwise, must have Party Representatives appointed by the government.

For example, every department in the Beijin university has its communist party membership holding representative that has veto powers over every department decision. Christian churches too are under the supervision of the Party, and this has been a stumbling block between Vatican-Beijin relationship in spite of mutual will to work out a formal treaty. The same goes for TV channels and newspapers.

Furthermore, the Chinese people are not eager to ruin their livelihood by overthrowing the party, as the party is precieved as the facilitator if not the author of economic growth. Ecnomic growth paradoxically strengthened, not weakened, the party's hold. In the byzantium legal and political enviroment, Chinese businessmen would do well to befriend people in high places and that relationship of co-existence is the key to prosperity for the Chinese middle class.

I am not saying that the Chinese Communist Party would last forever. But if it does end, it ain't ending with a whimper.

astralis

zhang fei,

market reform in china IS the party giving up power, after all, what is the central thesis to communism (or maoism)? but in any case, market reforms have been such that they have weakened the CCP's political power. the CCP tried to dictate to banks to stop lending money. it's failed.

by the way, lee denghui is not a particularly good example. the fact that he was even voted into power, and that he was selected by the KMT at all, is a demonstration that at that period of time, taiwan had already begun serious reform. the KMT knew that the taiwanese economy had grown to such a point that without internal reform- which also meant embracing native Taiwanese- their party was going to go away. either peacefully or violently. so no, he wasn't the one that really gave up power. the person who really made moves to that aspect, and evidence shows that it was not ALTOGETHER voluntary, was chiang ching-kuo.

china is headed towards that point. it's still far away, though.

the CCP would have to be as dumb as rocks if they gave up power in such a way that would lead to their own execution, b'aath party style. they haven't shown themselves to be that stupid. they know the history behind them, and apparently, the public has forgiven them for it, because they've shown that the current leadership is a good deal better than mao was in the 60s and 70s.

if china didn't disintegrate that way in the cultural revolution, or in the interim between mao's death and deng's rise, it's doubtful it will disintegrate that way in the future.

astralis

triple C,

i would argue this point differently. the resilience of the CCP post-6/4 is because it has- perhaps temporarily- won the backing of the people with its economic reforms. this is what is keeping it afloat, far more securely than their control of the PLA, PAP, etc etc.

by the way, CCP control of schools and media is not as iron-fisted as you name. there have been quite a few whistle-blowers within the media, for example. some of them get canned, some of them even get jailed; however, a few get through, and sometimes even influences official policy.

also, civil society doesn't necessarily need to include other parties. taiwan had a pretty good civil society prior to the KMT ceding power in the 80s. same with japan and its LDP. instead, civil society includes things such as community involvement and institutions. there has been evidence of the NPC and the chinese judicial branch being given greater say than in the past, with the once certain 100% support within the NPC for CCP decrees no longer so certain, and with the judicial branch sometimes slapping down the CCP.

obviously china's still an authoritarian country. but it's less authoritarian than it was 15 years ago. i personally do think if the CCP -does- go away, it probably WILL go with a whimper, KMT-style.

Davis_Chan

wow,really an old threat

__________________
It was when the Great Way declined,that human kindness and morality arose.
It was when intelligence and knowledge appeared,that the Great Artifice began.

Zhang Fei

There is no "way" to giving up power - either they do it or they don't. If they do, they put themselves in danger, whereas if they don't, they remain safe unless a successful popular revolt occurs, with segments of the armed forces and intelligentsia peeling off to support the rebels in the manner that has characterized all successful Chinese rebellions. If I were the Communist leadership, there is no way I would consider giving up power - I would put myself and my family in mortal danger.

The idea that the public has forgiven the Party for its atrocities is silly. The public at large doesn't know about these atrocities. Besides, the public doesn't avenge the deaths of faceless individuals. Only the friends and relatives of these individuals do.

The Cultural Revolution involved rival communist factions trying to out-Mao each other. That was merely a power struggle between rival communist factions who were ultimately after the same thing - a Maoist utopia. They agreed on everything except who should hold power. The transition between Mao and Deng was similar in that way - Deng merely differed from Mao in his approach to achieving the socialist paradise. These were simply petty rhetorical debates between murderous plutocrats trying to find a way to cling to power at the expense of other factions. Relinquishing power would lead to something more elemental - a settling of scores not among the rarefied clique of communist plutocrats, but between China's Communist aristocrats and their serfs. Remember what happened to Ceaucescu? It could happen to the Communist Party.

Zhang Fei

astralis: I'm afraid that's wrong. Elections occurred on Lee Teng Hui's watch. Several years after he was appointed undisputed supremo of the Kuomintang. You can list all of the fuzzy societal forces factors you want, but if Lee hadn't opted for democracy, it wouldn't have happened. It's pretty clear, from Hong Kong's example (which grew way more prosperous than either Taiwan or Korea under British rule, and is still way more prosperous), that democracy isn't essential to economic growth - economic liberalization is way more important. Lee wasn't chosen by Chiang just because he was Taiwanese - he was appointed because he was the major talent in the Kuomintang - for the KMT dictatorship to survive, it needed not a figurehead, but someone willing to crack the whip, just as Chiang Kai Shek had decades earlier. The fact is that Lee could have ruled until he died, just like Chiang and his son. But he gave it all up. Are China's new emperors willing to do the same? I seriously doubt it - too much blood has been shed.

astralis

Zhang Fei,

there certainly is. do you think that the CCP right now has the power that it held when mao was sitting on top?

as for the idea that the public at large "doesn't know about these atrocities", um, enough people died during the famines of the 50s, the GPCR, the democracy wall movement, the protests of the 80s, 6/4, even the current day farmer protests, that i would argue that the public DOES know what happened to some degree in the past.

if they didn't, then they would be every bit as politically malleable as they were back in the 60s and 70s. the CCP does NOT have the legitimacy or the authority that it did back then, and that is because it knows it carries quite a bit of historical baggage. you yourself argue it- you say that too much blood has been shed. that implies that the public has gotten tired of this blood-shedding.

the way that deng "differed from Mao in his approach to achieving the socialist paradise" was to, oh, DESTROY everything that mao was working for, for the past 30 years. good-bye communes. welcome the west. foreign trade. free-market reforms. yeah, i'm SURE deng wanted a "socialist paradise". no, what he wanted was continued rule of the CCP.

elections occurred on lee denghui's watch because he had realized that his own ascension to the top of the KMT was emblematic of a paradigm shift in the taiwanese polity. the KMT had realized that it couldn't ignore the natives any longer, or else they would all flock to the DPP. that would create a situation ripe for regime change, and maybe payback for 2/28.

if lee had NOT opted for democracy, there was a good chance that taiwanese politics would have gotten even more polarized. the DPP was not going to go anywhere, unless you're looking at military action against them.

and THAT possibility was distinctly ruled out (although parts of it were tried in the late 70s and early 80s, what with "mysterious beatings" and "disappearances") by the mid-80s, when chiang ching-kuo got rid of martial law.

lee ruling until he died? well, perhaps, if by "die" you mean either DPP extremists getting to him, or his own party turning on him. if you remember, in 1993 quite a few of the old-KMTers accused lee of being autocratic, and split off to form their own party (the New Party). and we're not even talking about the even more conservative "palace faction" here, whom got fairly close to turning him into a figurehead altogether.

so no, it was important for lee deng-hui to continue the reforms set into place by chiang ching-kuo. both for taiwan and his own continual rule (which was incidentally strengthened whenever there were elections). so it's far from "giving it all up".

as for china's new emperors doing the same- well, they're not feeling the pressure now. but they will, when the middle-class comes into its own.

wangrui961

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Triple C

Astralis,

Sorry for a belated response.

I would not underestimate CCP's control over state and society. The CCP's control over society, while definately weakened, is still going strong. A visiting professor to Taiwan told me that before he came the conference host and the invited Chinese scholars are warned not to discuss any issue in regard to cross-straight relations, or there will be consequences! Of course the party has its own representative to moniter the conference. This particular professor's field of expertise is Medieval Romances and was going to give a lecture on the Song of Roland. While the media is allowed to criticize the government in technical aspects of their policy, no open discussion of the party's legitimacy or the state of human rights in China is allowed. Relatively few Chinese media suffered crack down because they have been very diligent in self-censorship. Even so, arrests and disappearances of Chinese journalists and lawyers still occur. One lawyer who is the defendant of an imprisoned journalist just disappeared a month ago after returning to China from a conference abroad.

There is certainly plenty of community involvement and instituitions in China, but all of them had to be registered and monitered by a party representative. Furthermore, when the stakes are down the Chinese judiciary had opted to keep to themselves. They have been silent in the government's brutal crack down on Falung Gong, or more recently the Wai-Chuan (Rights Protection) movement. Just last year the PLA was mobalized to crack down on a village because its peasants had protested over local official corruption. CCP has certainly kept a tight lid over 6/4. It is virtually a non-event in offical Chinese history. It is not mentioned by any media. There is no anniversary memorial of any kind observed in Beijin last year or the year before that. The fact that 6/4 had ceased to exist in the public view testifies to the efficiency of the Chinese state. If some survivors still remebers 6/4, it seems that they are trying mighty hard to forget it.