Pervasive corruption, lawlessness among the ruling elites, and a sense of a loss of direction permeating all levels of Chinese society. The conditions for another Tiananmen may be there.
The Western media has largely missed the most significant development in Chinese politics these days. It’s not the dramatic downfall of Bo Xilai, although the incident is one of the most important events in elite politics in post-Deng China. Rather, it’s the stirrings that have revived contentious political issues banished from polite society in China since the Tiananmen crackdown more than two decades ago.
Of course, one is unlikely to find the discussion of such sensitive issues in most official publications (although some media outlets affiliated with official publications have been particularly adventurous in carrying articles on these topics in the past few months). The range of issues is wide and diverse. Despite disagreement among participants in this incipient post-1989 Chinese intellectual renaissance, the discussion is fast converging on three critical issues. First, there appears to be a widely shared consensus among China’s thinking class that the country’s economic reform is either dead or mired in stagnation. Second, those who believe that economic reform is dead or stuck argue that only political reform, specifically the kind that reduces the power of the state and makes the government accountable to its people, will resuscitate economic reform (some advocate for more radical, democratizing changes, although the consensus on this particular point has yet to emerge). Third, the status quo, which can be characterized as a sclerotic authoritarian crony-capitalist order, isn’t sustainable and, without a fundamental shift in direction, a crisis is inevitable.
Such signs of an intellectual awakening are worth noting for many reasons. Its timing is certainly significant. Many people would connect this development with China’s pending leadership transition. In China, as in most other countries, pending changes in leadership usually stimulate discussions among the intelligentsia about the future of the country and the accomplishments or failures of the departing leadership. Chinese intellectuals, mostly liberals, may want to seize this once-in-a-decade opportunity to reignite a debate on whether the existing political system serves the country’s long-term needs of economic development, social justice, and national unity.
Another, perhaps more important reason, is that more than two decades after the Tiananmen crackdown (and after Deng Xiaoping famously admonished his colleagues there should be “no arguing,” essentially ending the ideological debate among the ruling elites over whether post-Mao China was embracing capitalism), members of China’s thinking class have come to realize that the post-Tiananmen consensus, which might be characterized as giving economic reform and development a chance to solve China’s political problems (one-party rule and poor governance), has basically broken down. In other words, the post-Tiananmen model, all but intellectually bankrupt, provides no useful guidance in the coming decades.
One may be tempted to dismiss such discussions as idle chatter among marginalized Chinese intellectuals. This would be a mistake. Some of the participants in these discussions are influential opinion makers or advisors to the Chinese government. Their views reflect the thinking of at least some insiders of the Communist Party. So the frustrated tone and anxiety conveyed by their views could suggest that more open-minded elements in the party, some of whom may be in line to assume senior or important positions as a result of the leadership transition, share the same sense of crisis and urgency.
Photo Credit: ssristu
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Kexin Renlei
“China’s thinking class”? As if all those who aren’t intellectual elites don’t think? Are you serious?
RussRamey6
The PRC and PLA may be building their economy like Japan in the 1980′s-a house of cards.
Real wealth is not measured in things, but in wealth producing assets. As the PLA continues to rape the country thru crony-capitalism and the gerontocracy dies off, it will be interesting to see how the highly motivated and productive youthful china takes off…we need to give them inspiration not political hype…
Spartan
On John Chan’s behalf I’d like to say that I’m currently working at a university in North East China and can access this website without a VPN. They didn’t even block the recent article about another potential Tienanmen. However, the average Chinese person doesn’t possess the reading ability to understand articles at this level of English.
Censorship in China is very odd. The local internet bars used by the average person block sites such as the NY Times and this site which have plenty of articles about Tienanmen and more recent news of civil unrest in China, but these very same sites, I believe, are allowed for students and private internet users (who tend to be more educated and have more money, but don’t necessarily read English too well in a significant number to cause political trouble) so they don’t believe they’re being censored too much. I could be wrong though on the actual intentions of this.
I don’t agree with most things John Chan says, but facts are facts.
Richard
@Spartan
You said :They(CCP) didn’t even block the recent article about another potential Tiananmen. However, the average Chinese person doesn’t possess the reading ability to understand articles at this level of English.
So does the CCP block those article about another Tienanmen in Chinese?The major medium in China,
Spartan
@Richard
Everything is blocked in Chinese about the Tienanmen Square incident or anything related to it in mainland China (I think it’s not blocked in Hong Kong though). I’ve never personally met a Chinese student or average Chinese citizen in mainland China who understands the significants of what happened in 1989. Perhaps they know that something very bad happened that day and heard second hand stories, but they don’t know the impact it had on their country or the rest of the world. If they do manage to get a VPN I don’t think it’s one of the first things they seek to understand (they probably seek to understand porn first), nor do they trust the sources they read because they’ve been told to be distrustful of foreign, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong sites. (I think the government told the public shortly after the incident that the students had been manipulated by foreigners to attack the regime or something, but I don’t remember the specifics on this). Honestly, I’m a grown man (and I’m not even Chinese) and this situation really hits home because this event, especially in regards to Tank Man, had such an influence on the rest of the world.
Whenever a nationalistic Chinese acquaintance in a discussion about politics or history seeks to talk down to me because I’m a foreigner, I politely ask them to name to me the five most influential Chinese people in the last one-hundred years. If they can’t name Tank Man, then the discussion is over and I tell them to research who Tank Man is before they wish to speak to me again about politics, otherwise I just can’t take them seriously.