considering a "post-democratic" china

a week or so ago, i found myself at a tiki bar listening to a man ramble about china.  mostly he amalgamated whatever he had heard on tv: that china kept their money artificially which their economy growing and that their economy would overtake ours eventually.  we have been hearing this for years. the american image of china consists of the looming threat of a gigantic economy and population and simultaneously a poor chinese populace repressed by a brutal communist government.

china may have a lot of surprising both/ands.  more to the story than just when china will overtake the u.s. economically, there may be a lot of surprising statistics about china to consider.  in a recent issue of foreign affairs, shanghai venture capitalist and hedge manager eric x. li provides a view of what he calls the "post-democratic" future of china, which contrary to popular western belief is built upon a meritocratic government that provides for its people with wide popular support.  in opposition to li's argument, foreign affairs has concurrently published commentary by yasheng huang, a mit professor, who argues that the chinese communist party does not have the strong popular backing that li claims and must quickly push toward a wider democracy if it wants to avoid a cultural and economic crisis such as the country saw with the cultural revolution.

while i agree with eric li that democracy as america understands it may not be necessary for a successful and prosperous china, huang points out several relevant problems with li's analysis.  however, the issues that yasheng huang brings up may still be resolved in a manner unique and appropriate to the government and economy currently in place and the contemporary culture of china.

to begin with let’s consider some statistics concerning democracy that eric x. li mentions in his argument.  li cites a poll conducted by the pew research center in 2011 reporting that "87 percent of respondents noted satisfaction with the general direction of the country, 66 percent reported significant progress in their lives in the past five years, and a whopping 74 percent said they expected the future to be even better."  noticeably these figures do not account for any specific government entity or personality or for party approval in general.  this may be an affect of the difference between concerns that preoccupy the chinese populace.  li argues that, "Instead of demanding abstract political rights, as many in the West expected, urban Chinese are focused on what are called min sheng (livelihood) issues."  average chinese citizens concern themselves more with securing a comfortable daily life, with being able to afford food, comfortable accomodations, leisure, healthcare, transportation, and so forth than with government censorship or party mechanics or autonomy necessarily.

countering li's arguments, yashang huang argues that the Chinese population may not be as happy with the Communist Party as the polls li cites suggest.  "In a country without free speech, however, asking people to directly evaluate their leaders' performance is a bit like giving a single-choice exam."  huang cites a survey titled How East Asians View Democracy which shows that "72.3 percent of the Chinese public polled said they believed that democracy is 'desirable for our country now,' and 67 percent said that democracy is "suitable for our country now.'"  neither poll cited by li nor huang directly accounts for chinese sentiment of the current government and Communist party; both polls measure more abstract ideas such as desire for democracy and general satisfaction with life.  in contradistinction to li, yashang huang argues that the while the Chinese Communist Party may govern in radically different ways than it would have fifty years ago, many of the changes to policy and economic advances seen in china have democratic foundations.  he sees the decentralization of power in recent decades as the cornerstone to chinese development and growth.

li calls for an enlarged role for private business and nongovernmental agencies providing services to accomodate those "livelihood" issues, such as healthcare and education.  he also foresees further financial liberalization and expanded inclusion in party politics.  he notes that rampant corruption in the ccp, if not stemmed, could set back progress within the country.

in shayang huang's opinion, the chinese communist party has not yet addressed its past massive policy failures, such as the tragedies of the cultural revolution or the tiannamen square massacre.  with an economy dependent on the global market, such as china's, if global demand stagnated, and standards of living within china suffered, tensions between the governing party and the wider population could mount to another conflict as seen in the past.

a high standard of living helps support the legitimacy and efficacy and power of any government.  li points to general dissatisfaction in the american public for its government: "The approval rating of the U.S. Congress among the American people stood at 18 percent in November.  The president was performing somewhat better, with ratings in the 50s. And even support for the politically independent Supreme Court had fallen below 50 percent."  the american public does enjoy a high standard of living which may dissuade in some way any great outcry or movement to change the government and its policies.  that nascent contentment in a rising chinese middle class may mean that the communist party could sustain its grip on power for a while.  however, if as eric li predicts, the party becomes more inclusive, i predict that the acceptance and demand for democracy that huang cites will become integrated into the policies and procedures of the party so that slowly the country will completely transform.  looking at the instability and recent shifts in the global economy, it may however be beneficial to the stability of china and the communist party to integrate democratic change sooner rather than later.  while i am not sure that china can indefinitely maintain a "post-democratic" government, i do believe that they do not have to kowtow to the specifically american mixture of capitalism,  liberization, and democracy (and subsequent stagnation) that our society advocates.  there must be the possibility for a definitely chinese solution.