Pitman Potter

China’s Lessons from the Mid-East

Author(s): Pitman Potter

Published: 02 Mars 2011  

Op-Ed

As we reflect on the tumultuous events that have shaken North Africa and the Middle East over the past month, we can identify factors that led to the popular uprisings across the region. While significant differences distinguish the local circumstances leading to unrest and upheaval in particular areas across the region, several common factors are evident:

1. Concentration of political power under single party rule.
2. Concentration of economic power among kinfolk of regime leaders.
3. Entrenched disparity between rich and poor.
4. Lack of opportunity for increasingly well-educated young people.
5. Declines in relative prosperity of common people.
6. Rampant corruption.
7. Rampant abuse of power by police and security officials.
8. Wide access to internet and social media.

As we consider these factors and their role in the social unrest in the Arab world, we cannot help but think of China, where political power is concentrated by law in the Communist Party. Where major economic enterprises are controlled by family members and close associates of regime leaders. Where income inequality is rising - China’s Gini Coefficient is among the highest in the world, measuring 41.5 and ranking between Burundi and Senegal. Where college graduates and young peasants alike are having increased difficulty finding jobs. Where the prosperity delivered during the years of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin has levelled off considerably and in some instances even declined due to inflationary pressures and slowing growth. Where corruption is rampant across the political and economic system. And where an increasing proportion of people (420 million by last count) have access to the internet and/or social media. As we are seeing elsewhere, these are not conditions that support stability.

And yet, faced with news about popular unrest against authoritarian states elsewhere, the Chinese leadership has chosen to devote most of its efforts to censoring information. At a recent meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Central Party School, the focus of action by the regime centred primarily on restricting access to international information about the political crises in the Middle East. These messages have been repeated in the official state media.

For those of us who hope for the best for China, this is hardly encouraging. While restricting information may be expedient in the short-term, political crises are not resolved fully and sustainably except by addressing underlying causes. This is as true for China as for Egypt or anywhere else.

China faces a myriad of problems, some circumstantial, some systemic. The rapid pace of development has unavoidably created economic distortions and inequities that potentially can be resolved over time with concentrated effort. Recent efforts to improve the tax system and to invest in public services in the areas of education and health are encouraging. The relative novelty of the legal system has led unavoidably to problems of institutional capacity that could be resolved with time and attention. Gradual improvements in the training and funding of judges and courts are noteworthy, although ongoing repression and brutality against lawyers and human rights advocates continues.

Aside from these sorts of circumstantial challenges, however, systemic problems pose a significant threat to the government’s efforts to build a prosperous and stable China. The toxic combination of corruption and what Premier Wen Jiabao termed the “over-concentration of power” has contributed directly to regulatory failure on a range of critical issues ranging from environmental protection to labour relations.

As well, problems of unequal distribution of opportunity, repression of open political debate, manipulation of legal institutions for economic gain, and abuse of police powers can be attributed directly to the systemic issues of over- concentration of political authority and economic power - and their handmaiden, corruption. These problems, entrenched as they are, ultimately threaten the sustainability of prosperity in China.

Solutions to these challenges may require reconsideration of some of the basic ideological and policy tenets that have made them possible. Wider distribution of political authority and economic power can create broader communities of stakeholders who can lend legitimacy to the regime and facilitate its capacity to deliver prosperity. Efforts to institutionalize a peaceful leadership transition (something that has not been done in many Middle Eastern states) has potential to build legitimacy for the PRC regime, but controlling corruption requires a much stronger commitment of political capital. In the relational world of China’s political economy this means in effect a willingness by political leaders to tell their families and friends that they will not be promoted for personal economic or political gain and will not be protected from the legal and administrative consequences of improper activity. Painful as this may be – and the experience of Hong Kong in establishing the Independent Commission Against Corruption reveals just how painful and difficult the process is – China’s future depends on the capacity to confront the major dilemmas of over-concentration of power, and the problems of corruption that result.

China is not Egypt. China’s size alone poses considerable obstacles to systemic change, not to mention the entrenched practices of the ruling elite and the powerful mechanisms of control that they have established. But the factors that spurred unrest and political upheaval in Egypt and elsewhere are present in China – and in many cases are more severe. China’s Gini Coefficient is significantly worse that Egypt’s, while instances and severity of police abuse in China easily match those in Egypt or Tunisia. And while for the moment, the security forces (a critical factor in the Mid-East uprisings) have remained loyal to the PRC Party/state, as we saw in 1989 this can change. Though the example of Libya (or the Tiananmen massacre, to which Ghaddafi apparently looks for inspiration) reveals the cost of political change for the demonstrators, the costs for the state can be severe as well. Friends of China can only hope that the ruling regime will learn the lessons available from the political upheaval in Egypt and elsewhere and develop the political courage to bring about meaningful institutional reforms that will enable peaceful and sustainable development in China for years to come. Failure to do so may well bring about costs that are more than China or the world can bear.