What's wrong with China

By Deauwand Myers

In less than two generations, China has lifted more people out of poverty than any other country in recorded history. Only Korea's miraculous economic development can be considered more impressive.

Yet, the price for the breakneck speed of China's economic ascension has been high: widespread graft and corruption on every level of the military and civilian state apparatus, concentration of wealth to the urban few, pronounced and ubiquitous environmental degradation, and the rank pursuit of wealth by many of the Chinese citizenry without regard for the rule of law.

President Xi has started a highly publicized, government-touted anti-corruption campaign, ensnaring high-ranking, powerful, wealthy Communist Party officials, leaders of state-run industries and the military elite.

Xi's concentration of political power: early nurturing of a personality cult around his musings and speeches, leading old and new government agencies (like the Chinese version of America's National Security Council), and the marked increase of state censorship of the Internet, political thought and recent Chinese history, are all meant to show his firm grip on a rising China and steely resolve to combat corruption.

Xi and his counterparts are correct in their fear of graft presenting an existential threat to the Chinese Communist Party's sole grip on power.

Government corruption wastes billions of dollars every year in China. It stifles much-needed reforms of issues such as tackling pollution, liberalizing the banking sector, and reigning in dark loans in provincial shadow markets.

The Chinese government fears a restless, angry and disaffected Chinese population.

It should. But the answer to this problem isn't legalism transplanted from China's imperial past. Xi knows history, but misunderstands the lessons from it. Legalism, where the emperor and his advisors centralize government power by strictly (and subjectively) enforcing laws, only works when the population is poor, less educated, and ill informed.

Legalism is the control of the judicial system by the government. This way, party officials can mete out "justice" to rivals and threats, real or perceived, while protecting their family and friends.

As China becomes wealthier and more educated, younger generations will learn about Tiananmen Square, and the disastrous results of Mao's Revolution, or that other countries enjoy the rule of law, not the fear of rule.

China is experiencing a brain drain of sorts because wealthy Chinese people want clean air and water and a better education for their children. They also want democracy, something the Communist Party fears.

To truly stop graft, China needs an independent and transparent judicial system. However, an independent judiciary necessarily requires a major shift towards democracy. The Chinese Constitution would be enforced. There would actually be freedom of religion. The state couldn't take land from individuals as it saw fit, or punish foreign companies while protecting domestic ones. Political thought would be protected, to some extent, by a judicial branch unanswerable to the government.

The government, then, would be relinquishing an effective and far-reaching tool in consolidation of power, something even a casual observer of current Chinese political affairs knows is not desirable for the Communist Party.

In many ways, Xi and his comrades are deploying methods used by lesser nations, like North Korea, in an attempt to maintain Party dominance and control. The critical difference is this: the North Korean state does not fear its population.

Most North Koreans are so beset with abject poverty and hunger that there's little energy to even conceive of a government coup, or incremental political change. Even though North Koreans are slowly gaining access to the outside world, for the most part North Koreans don't engage the international community via commerce, culture or much of anything else.

Most Chinese people, even poor people, have some access to information, technology and nutrition. The state can try mightily to repress dissent and thought contrary to its ideology, but eventually, this will become untenable and unenforceable.

President Xi wants to be an emperor in the age of Google. He wants to be emperor of an upwardly mobile populace increasingly aware that all is not well in the land of a thousand dragons.

If Xi really wants to be as consequential as Mao and Deng Xiaoping, clearly something his large ego aspires towards, he will need to rethink his fondness for Chinese history as a sociopolitical blueprint, rather than what it should be read as ― important, but of a past that necessarily cannot return.

Finally, the Communist Party needs to concede this point: capitalist, liberal democracies, in some variant, are the best forms of governance humanity has come up with thus far. Democracy provides rule of law, safety, fairer distribution of resources, a thriving culture and sustainability to the largest percentage of people more than any system preceding it.

In the long-term, a quasi-authoritarian/capitalist regime cannot be sustained.

Either China will collapse into an impoverished dictatorship, or a thriving, capitalist democracy.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.