TW: Much is made of the Chinese economy and its potential impact on world relations. I believe Chinese governance as an alternative to Western liberal democracy may have as great an impact. Western liberal democracy has been the primary aspirational and/or imposed governance model for over two hundred years. It will likely remain the dominant model as long as places like Brazil, Mexico and India are pursuing their modified democratic models.
Yet the Chinese model of centralized control is proving highly adaptable even in a post-communist environment. Furthermore if one reviews what the Chinese have done in improving their governance model, one almost becomes envious. They have rigorously identified weaknesses with their approach and aggressively made changes to improve their governance.
Many of the challenges they have identified should feel familiar to Westerners (i.e. corruption, unaccountability, ossified politicians etc.). The means by which they shape public opinion should also appear familiar. Finally one sees a populace less worried about liberty and fairness and more worried about a government that provides economic growth and security.
The Chinese model is deeply flawed at least for those interested in liberty and self-determination but if they can adapt perhaps our scelrotic political structures could use some more aggressive adaptation as well.
From Economist:
"...After [Tianammen Square], the Communist Party set about transforming itself. It launched a vast historical investigation into how political parties fall, and how they stay in power. Everyone was scrutinised, from Saddam Hussein to Scandinavian social democrats. The conclusion: adapt or die.
The outcome is a wholesale reinvention of the party...Shortcomings that were identified included corruption...lack of accountability in decision-making, no convincing ideology, and an ossified structure...the 74m-strong party has fired whole armies of time-servers. Bright technocrats and entrepreneurs have been recruited. Retirement rules have been revamped (the Soviet Union’s gerontocracy was noted). Party members have gone back to school: three weeks a year and three months for every three years of mid-career training. More appointments are open to peer scrutiny before they are filled. The Communist Party is vastly more able to govern.
Some in the wishful West will see this as a proto-democratisation of a Leninist state. The opposite is the case. Staying in power is the party’s only credo now that revolution has been jettisoned. It is the sole reason for revamping the mechanisms of power.
...the party turned to Western techniques of public relations and mass media, manufacturing consent by guiding public opinion in certain directions while barring it from others...the party’s approach as emphasising achievements, not allowing bad news during holiday periods or around sensitive dates (including June 4th), and not raising problems that can’t be solved (unemployment, inequality). It talks up the economy, regularly demonises the United States and uses Orwellian newspeak to shape the debate about certain subjects (“party-state” is banned in public discourse in favour of “the political party in power”). It presents stories in ways that encourage people to take sides. It turns natural disasters into quasi-religious occasions of national solidarity. And always, always repeat after me: “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.”
...Shaping the online debate while using controls and surveillance to block most of what it does not want surfers to see, the internet is an example of how the party has corralled mainland Chinese into what Ms Brady calls “a virtual mind prison”—though one with plenty of fun and games to keep people entertained. In 2000 Mr Clinton said that trying to control the internet in China was “like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall”. The Communist Party seems to have managed it.
This is little comfort to Westerners projecting their hopes for democratic change on to China. Nor is there any sign that Chinese intellectuals identify with the myriad grievances of their poor countrymen, as they did during the Tiananmen protests. And the growing middle class appears more fearful of the great unwashed than of the depredations of a party that once was at war with the bourgeoisie. So no national movement challenges the party’s monopoly. The state might yet prove unable to meet growing demands for health care and schooling. Leadership splits might threaten the party, as they did in 1989, with China now facing its biggest economic test since then. But for now, the Communist Party glides smoothly upon the tide of history."
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13741467
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