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China's dark triumph
The success of its economy poses a serious challenge to liberal democracy.
By Ian Buruma

January 13, 2008

2008 will be China's year. The Olympic Games -- no doubt perfectly
organized, without a protester, homeless person, religious dissenter
or any other kind of spoilsport in sight -- will almost certainly
bolster China's global prestige. While the U.S. economy gets dragged
down further in a swamp of bad property debts, China will continue to
boom.

Exciting new buildings, designed by the world's most famous
architects, will make Beijing and Shanghai look like models of 21st
century modernity. Chinese entrepreneurs will be featured more and
more in those annual lists of the world's richest people. And Chinese
artists, favored by their newly rich compatriots, will command prices
at art auctions that many others can only dream of.

To come back from near destitution and bloody tyranny in one
generation is a great feat, and China should be saluted for it. But
China's success story is also the most serious challenge that liberal
democracy has faced since fascism in the 1930s. This is not because
China poses a great military threat. War with the U.S., or even
Japan, is only a fantasy in the minds of a few ultra-nationalist
cranks and paranoiacs.

No, it is in the realm of ideas that the China model is scoring
victories because the country's material success (despite its
consequences for the natural environment) is making its
political-economic model look like an attractive alternative to
liberal democratic capitalism.

Contrary to what some pundits are saying, Chinese capitalism is not
like 19th century European capitalism. The European working class,
not to mention women, may not have had the right to vote 200 years
ago, but it was possible to have many forms of organized life, for
all social classes, that were independent of the state. Even during
the most ruthless phases of Western capitalism, civil society in
Europe and the U.S. was made up of a huge network of clubs, parties,
societies and associations ranging from churches to sports clubs. The
same was true of far-from-democratic China before Chairman Mao
Tse-tung crushed everything that challenged the absolute monopoly of
his Communist Party.

Since the death of Maoism, Chinese individuals have regained many
personal freedoms, but not the freedom to organize anything
politically, or otherwise, that is not under the control of the
party. Communism may be bankrupt as an ideology, but in its lack of
civil society, China has not changed. The China model is sometimes
described in traditional terms, as though modern Chinese politics
were an updated version of Confucianism. In fact, however, a society
in which the pursuit of money by the country's elite is elevated
above all other human endeavors is a very far cry from any kind of
Confucianism that may have existed in the past.

Still, it's hard to argue with success. If anything has been put to
rest by the Chinese rise to wealth, it is the comforting idea that
capitalism, and the growth of a prosperous bourgeoisie, will end up
inevitably in liberal democracy. On the contrary, it is precisely
that same rich middle class, bought off by promises of ever-greater
material gains, that hopes to conserve the current political order.
It may be a Faustian bargain -- prosperity in exchange for political
obedience, indeed abdication -- but so far it is a bargain that has
worked.

The China model is not just attractive to the new elites of coastal
China. It has a global appeal. African dictators, or indeed dictators
everywhere, who walk the plush red carpets laid out for them in
Beijing love it. The model is non-Western, and the Chinese do not
preach to others about democracy. They are hardly in a position to do
so even if they wanted to. But China is also a source of vast amounts
of money, much of which will end up in the pockets of the tyrants
themselves. Corruption is not the point, however. The real success is
ideological. By proving that authoritarianism can be successful,
China is an example to autocrats everywhere, from Moscow to Dubai,
from Islamabad to Khartoum.

China's appeal is growing in the Western world as well. Businessmen,
media moguls, architects -- they all flock to China. What could be a
better place to do business in, or to build stadiums and skyscrapers,
or to sell information technology and media networks, than a country
without independent trade unions, or indeed any form of organized
protest that could hinder business? Meanwhile, concerns for human
rights, or civic rights, are denigrated as outmoded or expressions of
arrogant Western imperialism.

There is, however, a fly in the ointment. No economy keeps growing at
the same pace forever. Crises occur. What if the bargain between the
Chinese middle classes and the one-party state were to come unstuck
because there is a pause, or even a setback, in the race for
ever-more material wealth? This has happened before. The closest
thing, in some ways, to the China model is 19th century Germany, with
its industrial strength, its cultivated but politically neutered
middle class and its tendency toward aggressive nationalism. In the
case of Germany, nationalism became lethal when the economy crashed
and social unrest threatened to upset the political order.

The same could happen in China, where national pride constantly
teeters on the edge of belligerence toward Japan, Taiwan and,
ultimately, the West. Aggressive Chinese nationalism, nascent for the
moment, could turn lethal too if its economy were to falter and the
pact with the middle class were to fall apart.

The only way to deflect domestic unrest would be to deflect it toward
targets abroad. Because this would not be in anyone's interest, we
should wish all the best for China in 2008, while sparing a thought
for all the dissidents, democrats and free spirits languishing in
labor camps and prisons, and hope that they will live to see the day
when the Chinese too will be a free people. It might be a distant
dream, but what is the New Year season good for, if not for dreaming?

Ian Buruma is a contributing editor to Opinion. He is a professor of
human rights at Bard College, and his most recent book is "Murder in
Amsterdam: The Killing of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance."
























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