China’s Wary Communists Posted by Jacob Stokes

The Atlantic’s James Fallows has a piece out in this month examining whether the Chinese public is less happy with the Communist Party and more combustible than it seems. Not much of the content is groundbreaking for anyone who follows China, but it’s interesting to note a series of questions Fallows raises. After listing all the usual reasons used to explain why China’s authoritarian government hasn’t suffered the same fate as many in the Arab world – economic growth, regular transfers of power within the party, relatively few young people in need of work – Fallows notes the Party’s strong response to the “Jasmine” protests and asks:

Why, then, has the government reacted as if the country were on the brink of revolt? Do the Chinese authorities know something about their country’s realities that groups like Pew have missed, and therefore understand that they are hanging by a thread? Or, out of reflex and paranoia, are they responding far more harshly than circumstances really require, in ways that could backfire in the long run?

The piece is notable because it clearly went to press before last month’s high-speed rail crash. That accident seems to have justified the Party’s response to the Jasmine Protest (not in humanitarian terms of course, but rather in their estimation that much discontent lurks under the surface). David Pilling explains that Beijing’s leaders are worried because they see cracks in the so-called Beijing Consensus. Those cracks have widened significantly in the wake of the rail disaster, especially with the middle class, which the Party has done much to co-opt in recent years. 

China’s high-speed rail network, built in less than a decade, is the world’s longest. Its trains were supposed to travel at speeds that would put Japanese technology to shame. Instead, the crash has exposed hubris, incompetence and corruption in a single, tragic crunching of metal. Perhaps not since Tiananmen Square more than 20 years ago has the Communist party looked so naked in the face of public contempt….

A middle class revolt is particularly dangerous for the Chinese leadership. It undermines a recent truism of Chinese analysis, sometimes referred to as the Beijing consensus. This contends, among other things, that people don’t worry too much about democracy, freedom of expression and free markets so long as they have a technocratic leadership capable of delivering economic progress… China’s middle class wants a leadership that can contain corruption, ensure safety and not put pride above engineering principles. It wants, in the arresting words of a commentary in the People’s Daily – of all places – economic growth that is not “smeared in blood”.

As we look at Chinese power moving forward, it’s important to understand the fragility of the political system the power rests on.

Photo: Fox News

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