Wed, Sep 21, 2005 page8

• China's rise and world democracy

  • By Arthur Waldron
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  When most people look at China's course over the last decade or so, they are struck by four things. First is dramatic economic growth. Second is a huge increase in military power. Yet another is an ever more prominent role in diplomacy and international organizations. And fourth is the continuation, unmodified, of the Communist Party dictatorship.

  These four characteristics add up not simply to China, but to the cliche "a rising China." I do not have time today to qualify that phrase, though I would like to. Thus, had I time I would say something about the hidden weaknesses of China's current economic growth: its reliance on foreign rather than domestic entrepreneurs and markets, and on cheap labor rather than skills and creativity; its domination by the government rather than society; and the corruption and growing inequality associated with it.

  Let me suggest, however, that everyone read the chapters on Singapore's economy in Chee Soon Juan's Your Future My Faith Our Freedom (Singapore: Open Singapore Centre, 2001). They apply very well to China, except that China is incomparably more corrupt.

  With respect to China's headlong military buildup, I would develop the argument that it is the product not of any real external threat, but rather of an internal need to invoke security to justify autocratic rule. I would note how the buildup is increasing tension and distrust in the region, which harms China not least, and note that a democratic China would be a far better neighbor.

  Worsening repression

  On the last point, dictatorship, I would stress the reality that in spite of economic and technical progress, the People's Republic still remains dictatorial and repressive. Hopeful observers talk of more and more openness, of increased respect for law, greater institutionalization and transparency of government processes, and so forth.

  And while it is certainly true that the average urban Chinese today has a lot more personal space and many more options than a few decades ago, he or she is still a subject of Party rule, not a citizen having any say in governance. In certain ways repression is actually getting worse.

  Consider, for example, the extent to which the Internet in China has been turned from a liberating technology into a means of surveillance and oppression, with the indispensable help of foreign companies.

  As for political institutionalization, consider this: If we asked Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) just how he got his job, and when and how his successor was going to be chosen, he would not honestly be able to answer. Neither he nor any of his predecessors have been chosen by any rule-governed process, not even by Party rules, and unless something changes dramatically, that will be the case for whoever follows him.

  I stress that China is a dictatorship because, as will be seen, a general reluctance exists to state this fact. If it remains such, Asia's future will be blighted. If it changes, then all will benefit.

  Two methods

  When analysts look at international behavior, some start on the outside, and some start on the inside. Those who start on the outside interpret a country's actions as above all reactions to what others have done. Germany, for example, adopted the course of rearmament in the 1930s because of the intolerable terms of the Versailles treaty imposed by the victors. Similarly many observers argue that today China does this or that not by choice, but in unavoidable reaction to something someone else has done: a misstep by Washington, a provocation from Tokyo, etc.

  Those who start on the inside look at how the regime is structured and how it attempts to use the outside world. For example, they look at how the Kaiser's Germany prevented a solution of the 1914 Balkan crisis because in fact it wanted a war, for reasons having everything to do with Germany and little to do with the Balkans.

  The Germans call this the study of innenpolitik or inner politics. It is the approach George Kennan took in his famous 1947 article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," to explain why wartime ally Moscow had suddenly turned against the West. It was not, Kennan maintained, that Washington or London had somehow offended or threatened the Soviet Union. It was simply that Stalin needed an external enemy to justify his dictatorship, and once Hitler was gone, he chose the West for that role.

  Diverting attention

  Let us use this second, inner politics approach, to look at "Rising China." Like the Soviet government in the post-war period, the regime in Beijing is trying to maintain its hold on power at a time when it faces no enemies and could liberalize. But it has decided that its power is paramount. To do this it must create a sense of tension and threat to divert its people's attention from their own pressing needs, not least for political reform. How does this choice affect the prospects for world democracy?

  First, of course, it prevents the development of democracy in China, which would be a tremendous step forward. Second, it drives xenophobic propaganda and military buildup inside China.

  Third, the policies Beijing adopts towards its own people as it attempts to stay in power greatly complicate her relations with other countries. Thus the detention of a New York Times reporter or the collaboration of Yahoo! with the Chinese secret police to jail a journalist deeply alienate foreign media and opinion. The persecution of religions upsets believers and non-believers outside of China. No matter how brightly Chinese leaders smile to foreigners, these domestic issues are a black cloud over their heads that follows them wherever they go.

  Mistreating minorities

  Now consider the way that Beijing treats its own non-Chinese people. This links inner policy directly to the world. When Korean refugees or Korean minority people are mistreated, or when Beijing claims the ancient Korean state of Goguryo as its own, this undermines her efforts to win over Korean public opinion. When Mongols inside of China see their population overwhelmed and their culture marginalized, with their sacred lamaseries turned into Disneyesque tourist sites, this alienates the neighboring, genuinely democratic, Mongolian Republic.

  Mistreatment of minorities within China can bring real danger. Thus, as Beijing struggles, using violence, to keep the Muslim Turks of East Turkestan, or Xinjiang, under control, it sends a powerful anti-Islamic, anti-Turkish message to the restive Muslim Turkish populations of the five now-independent states of West Turkestan, formerly under Soviet control, as well as to the entire Muslim world.

  When Beijing systematically destroys Tibetan civilization and keeps hostage the second most important incarnate Buddha, the Panchen Lama, that offends not only Buddhists but also India specifically, and world opinion in general.

  In her own Hong Kong, China has labored mightily to stop the freedom and democracy she promised in 1988. Or consider Taiwan. Here Beijing's attempts to stifle, isolate and divide are tireless, resourceful, unending, and are, I regret to report, enjoying some success.

  China's current attempt to keep the lid on things at home, moreover, is not limited to domestic repression and pressure on close neighbors.

  A bad crowd

  Here we can learn something by asking and answering the question, who are China's friends? Hers is a great civilization and a proud history, so one might expect that her closest friends would be peers: other great states such as Japan, India, Germany, France, England, Canada, Australia, the US and so forth. The states that account overwhelmingly for global economic and intellectual progress are dynamic countries, and are in every case liberal democracies.

  But in fact China's ties with all of these countries are strained in one way or another, and her closest friends turn out to be a rather different group. Thus we have seen, in May, Beijing accord a highest grade diplomatic welcome with red carpets, 21-gun salute and pledges of undying friendship and alliance to the appalling dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, only two weeks after he had brutally massacred anti-government demonstrators in Andijan. In June Hu reciprocated, with a state visit to Uzbekistan.

  In July the honored visitor was none other than Robert Mugabe, the oppressor of Zimbabwe, who has managed to bring starvation to a state that was once celebrated for its agriculture, and stayed in power only by rigging elections and brutally crushing his opposition.

  Closer to home we have North Korea, a place so horrible that its citizens flee to China, but one that Beijing supports with massive food and energy subsidies. Then there is Burma, a country whose people have traditionally harbored deep distrust toward the Chinese. Yet now Burma is becoming a Chinese client and military base aimed at India and Southeast Asia. Why? Because the generals who voided the election in which the democratizers of Aung Sang Suu Kyi were victorious, share a common interest with Beijing in keeping their own people down, and need military and financial assistance that most other states will not provide.

  Last July, China's foreign minister Li Zhaoxing (李肇星) skipped the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum to visit Rangoon as a show of solidarity with the regime there. In Sudan, China makes massive investments, and supports the regime, which is killing off its opposition, both directly with money, factories and weapons, and indirectly at the UN by blocking Security Council attempts to take action.

  In the Western hemisphere, China cultivates close relations with two of the least free states, Venezuela and Cuba. China is close to the military and anti-democratic elements in Russia. She is deeply involved in nuclear proliferation, and in the provision of money and technical help to anti-democratic forces.

  Leading dictatorships

  To sum up, ever since 1989, when Communism began to fall in the west, but was maintained in China by bloody crackdown, Beijing has felt isolated and sought to invigorate cooperation among the remaining dictatorships, of which she is of course by far the greatest.

  What has been the effect of this policy? I would like to be able to report that the free countries of the world, including my own, the US, and Taiwan, have stood up steadfastly for their values and insisted that China free her own people as she joins the international community. But that, to our shame, would be quite incorrect. Making dictatorship accepted, if not respectable internationally, has been one of the most harmful effects on world democracy of China's rise.

  [This article will be continued tomorrow -- Ed.]

  Arthur Waldron is the Lauder Professor of International Relations in the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also vice president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington (www.strategycenter.net). The above has been taken from his speech delivered at the first Biennial Conference of the World Forum for Democratization in Asia in Taipei on Sept. 17.
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