Posted on 03/09/2006 6:05:56 AM PST by Dark Skies
Frontpage Interview's guest today is Gordon G. Chang, the author of The Coming Collapse of China (Amazon link).
FP: Gordon G. Chang, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Chang: Thank you very much.
FP: You believe that the Chinese Communist Party will fall from power by the end of this decade. We are talking about just a few years. What do you see here and why? And how is this compatible with the fact that China is getting more prosperous? What will replace the Party?
Chang: As China gets more prosperous, it is becoming less stable. Senior Beijing officials now face the dilemma of all reforming authoritarians: economic success endangers their continued control. As Harvard's Samuel Huntington has noted, sustained modernization is the enemy of one-party systems. Revolutions occur under many conditions, but especially when political institutions do not keep up with the social forces unleashed by economic change. And as history shows us, nothing irritates a rising social class like inflexible political institutions. The most interesting trend about protests in recent years is not that they are becoming more frequent, getting much larger, or growing more violent. The most interesting trend is that we are now seeing middle-class Chinese, the beneficiaries of the last quarter century of progress, taking to the streets.
Beijing’s policies seem designed to widen the gap between the people and their government, thereby ensuring greater instability for the foreseeable future. Today there’s unimaginable societal change at unheard of speed thanks in large part to government-sponsored economic growth and social engineering. Yet at the same time the Communist Party stands in the way of meaningful political change.
Because senior officials don’t allow political change of substance, the authorities must resort to force to stop the spread of unrest. But the use of the coercive power of the state is only a short-term solution—force just makes protests even harder to control next time. The leadership will not, or cannot, come to terms with the causes of unrest.
Ultimately, the one-party system will be replaced by democratic institutions. The transition won't be easy, however. China will probably experience years of uncertainty, instability, and turbulence.
Glazov: The government of China has instituted a policy that has resulted in the murder of one million baby girls every year for the last ten or more years. Do you think the market is going to end that?
Chang: What will end the one-child policy is the Chinese people. This draconian edict is unpopular across China, from tiny inland hamlets to the mighty coastal cities. Ordinary citizens will not put up with it for much longer. In fact, many of them are now ignoring this policy.
FP: Is America's policy of engaging China succeeding?
Chang: Beijing's foreign policies are definitely changing for the better as the result of America's generous and enlightened efforts to bring China into the international system. Beijing is no longer the outlander or the revolutionary that it was during the Maoist years. China will one day be a constructive participant in world affairs.
But it is not one today. Our policy is the grandest wager in history. We are hoping to make China a more responsible power. So far, all we have done is make it a more powerful one. We may not be creating the next Soviet Union, but we are nonetheless enabling a country that now considers us a foe. Today, China is the primary obstacle to disarming North Korea, is one of the main supporters of Iran's nuclear weapons program, is a friend of most every reprehensible regime on the planet, is the world's master proliferator of nuke technology, and is the only country that actively plans to kill Americans.
Our government seeks to engage China, which means that Washington is not willing to talk honestly about that country's behavior. Today, we overlook, ignore, and sugarcoat. The risk for us is that the Chinese will bring down the current American-led international system long before China would otherwise become a responsible power. We are playing an enormously dangerous game, and we seldom talk about the risks.
Unfortunately, positive change will not come as fast as it should, in part because we have created a set of perverse incentives. The Chinese engage in bad behavior. We reward them. So they continue their irresponsible conduct. We reward them still more. In these circumstances, why would they ever change?
So is our policy toward China succeeding? Not yet. Will it succeed? Yes, in the long term. But there may be no long term.
FP: You think that North Korea could start a chain of events that might bring down the current American-led international system. Kindly explain.
Chang: North Korea is the only nation to have withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the global pact that is at the heart of the global arms control regime. By its defiance, Pyongyang is shredding those rules and inspiring other bomb builders. Iran's atomic ayatollahs are defying the international community at this time because they saw that North Korea's Kim Jong Il did the same a few years ago and has gotten away with it.
What will our world look like when dozens of hostile and unstable regimes can trigger Armageddon? Perhaps things could turn out okay, but it is more likely that we will transition to a world that is unfamiliar to us, perhaps the most dangerous world imaginable. An international system that cannot defend its most vital interests against one of its weakest members cannot last. So this could be where the world writes its history for the next hundred years.
FP: What is the most urgent and important bilateral issue between Washington and Beijing?
Chang: The most important and urgent issue is China's proliferation of nuclear technologies and its diplomatic support for regimes like North Korea and Iran that covet the most destructive weapon in history. No other issue comes close. Why? Because nukes are the only weapons that pose an existential threat to the United States.
When Hu Jintao visits Washington in April we need to make it clear to him that nuclear proliferation is the litmus test of our relations. We have been patiently engaging the Chinese for decades, and now is the time for them to act constructively. After all, what is the point of trying to integrate them into an international system that they are trying to destablize through proliferation of nuclear technologies?
FP: What effect will the 2008 Olympics have on China?
Chang: The awarding of the Olympic games both strengthens and weakens the regime. Of course, many Chinese think better of the Communist Party for winning the right to host this event. There is an added inflow of foreign investment and sponsorship money. Tourism will increase for sure. On the other hand, the regime will be weakened as the process of modernization accelerates.
One thing the games will not do is change the leadership. Beijing has already won its prize, and senior officials see little or no need to yield to world opinion. The regime won’t change; the people will.
One more point about the Olympics. Beijing will employ every resource at its command to ensure stability in the run up to the games. It is unlikely, however, that the central authorities will be able to maintain a high level of vigilance indefinitely. Squeezing too tight now, the Communist Party will eventually have to relax its grip. The latter part of this decade promises to be a time of even greater instability for China.
FP: Gordon G. Chang, thank you for joining us today.
Chang: I appreciate your interviewing me.
Have they deported him yet? Has he had any visitations from the friendly neighborhood security services?
By 1921 thanks to W.W.I, civil war, and other turmoil Russia was in shambles.
This is from a book review of Russia's Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921-1929 by Alan M. Ball (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
The reviewer is Richard M. Ebeling, August 1991.
"Russia was not ready for a full and immediate leap into either socialism or communism. What Russia needed, at least for a time, was a return to bourgeois capitalism. . .
"In the spring of 1921, Lenin announced the institution of a 'New Economic Policy.' . . . Agricultural land was returned to the ownership and control of the peasants . . . Retail businesses, small companies and medium-sized industries were permitted to be established. Only foreign trade and what the Bolsheviks called the 'commanding heights' of the economy — heavy and large industry — remained in state-owned and state-managed hands. [Sound familiar?]
"The economy boomed. Food supplies, while not particularly cheap, were available in plentiful supply in all the cities. Shops were filled with consumer goods, and service industries abounded. Freed from the dead hand of total and rigid central planning, the entrepreneurial spirit blossomed among the Russian people. The Russians showed themselves to be as industrious and productive as any of the peoples of the West, once they had the opportunity to earn profits on the market, and once they could own private property and feel a degree of security in its possession. . . .
"The party apparatus resented the reestablishment of a 'capitalist class.' . . .
"Russia's limited capitalism was hampered and straight-jacketed at every turn. But what the Nepmen demonstrated is that Russia could be wealthy and prosperous . . .
"[it all ended in 1929] With Stalin's rise to power in the Communist Party, total central planning was reinstituted. Private property was again nationalized. Then, in one of the worst crimes and tragedies of the 20th century, Stalin ordered the collectivization of all farming into state farms; and his plan was effected through planned famines, mass murders and deportations to slave labor camps in Siberia."
[End of excerpts. My emphasis and comment]
Red China is much more likely to follow this pattern. The difference is the Chi-com party cadre are many of the "Nepmen." The Chi-coms have killed off more citizens than Stalin. Their "great leaps" upon the backs of citizens killed tens of millions. A few tens of millions more won't matter.
This has been the Chi-com version of NEP. Deng and the Chi-coms studied NEP even before Mao died, I believe -- Deng even grilled Armand Hammer about his experiences in Russia at the time.
You're probably right. I know the Chinese government are control freaks. They can't stand anything getting out of their hands.
So China may go to central control of the strong sort and choke off incentive, at which time Chinese products will be junk again, like Russian manufactured goods.
What time period was he in China?
Agreed. Appeasement is a horribly dangerous game.
And those who think themselves wisest at the game usually lose the most . . . including their heads . . . in more ways than one.
I have never observed that
doom and gloom necessarily avoids alighting and resting where it's not 'needed.'
Sometimes it seems to be attracted most quickly to where the potential/probability for it is ignored unfittingly and unwisely.
I read somewhere that they invited him back to mainland to check things out, but this was couple years ago.
During much of the 1930s, many considered Hitler to be just this sort of eccentric and iconoclastic strong man. Today, the same sorts of folks play down the rise of the PRC and SCO.
Right out of the Neville Chamberlain playbook. We learned precisely nothing from WW2.
From my own experience, I don't think it was play out this way. Russians never owned anything and were serfs for hundreds of years. In China, a merchant class developed, probably because of China's location. They are the Jews of Asia.
Most of the up and coming "capitalist" younger princelings unanamously support the Beijing Party Line and relish becoming CCP bigwigs. Aparatchiks wearing Gucci ....
Impressive.
Did he learn Chinese?
I met some of the old China hands when I lived there. They were a special breed. Great folks. And well respected by the common Chinese people as well as by the scholars.
Very interesting article.
If it ends outsourcing...if it gives me an opportunity to sneer at free traitors everywhere and say, with my last breath of life, "I told you so." then it will be worth it.
I have no children - but many of the free traitors do. And those children will pay the price.
Just getting a little start on the "I told you so."
BTTT!
Interesting.
I can certainly understand enjoying staying in Asia. Love the people.
Reasonable considerations.
Though I believe that the puppet masters already have at least 3-4 DIFFERENT more or less free energy technologies held in reserve because they would destroy the controllers' centralized means of control through power and gasoline distribution.
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