Many academics have made the case that the quality of authoritarian rule in Egypt, Tunisia and other toppled dictatorships has lagged behind that in China, causing a breakdown in the former but not the latter. Beijing has developed crack internal security forces for dispersing crowds and constructed its regime around a hegemonic, well-established political party. While these explanations have merit, researchers had identified similar authoritarian support in the Arab world immediately before the turbulent year of 2011. One key to the resilience of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt were their “robust” security forces, which were well-trained and armed – thanks in part to generous American support – and supposedly fiercely loyal to the regime.
Meanwhile, Mubarak and Ben Ali were carefully institutionalizing their regimes by constructing hegemonic political parties and skillfully using nominally democratic elections and legislatures to maintain regime cohesion and co-opt potential challengers. Meanwhile, in China, presumed to be bolstered by more effective institutions, public scandals surrounding high-ranking leaders, such as the wealth of Wen Jiabao’s family or the dramatic fall of Bo Xilai, and the malfeasance and corruption of middle and low-ranking officials, reveal that politics within the CCP may not be as orderly, managed and predictable as once imagined.
But, of course, the Chinese regime has not collapsed and does not seem to be in its death throes. This is puzzling in some respects, because the country experiences annual protests that reportedly topped 180,000 as recently as 2010. Clearly popular discontent is high and Chinese citizens participate in contentious politics in large numbers, but these remain mostly localized affairs targeted at local issues, such as corrupt, low-ranking officials who engage in land grabs. Aside from the June 4 incident of 1989, they have not transformed into protest movements coordinated on a national scale and positioned against the central government itself, as appeared rapidly in Tunis and Egypt’s Tahrir square.
So why have Chinese citizens trended towards localized protests rather than the national protest movements seen in the Arab spring? As discussed in an important body of research, one source of this difference is linked to the structure of the state itself. In China, unlike most autocracies – including Mubarak’s Egypt and Ben Ali’s Tunisia—the state is highly decentralized. Local governments are given a substantial level of autonomy over development policies as well as social management – decisions related to dealing with popular challengers through repression or alternatively, the extension of concessions.
Since local authorities make decisions over the carrots and sticks used to address the demands of citizens with a high degree of autonomy, these officials rather than the national leadership or the regime itself are the primary target of most protest actions. In fact, it is a common phenomenon in China that aggrieved locals will appeal to the Center for assistance against corrupt local officials, even making reference to local officials’ poor enforcement of central directives and policies.Thus, the struggles faced by everyday Chinese are often directed at particular local officials and local issues, limiting the desire of protestors to take the dangerous leap of coordinating their actions across local communities to challenge the regime itself.
As a consequence, much like the Middle East, the years 2011 and 2012 have been ones characterized by very high levels of protest activities in China. However, because of the decentralized nature of the Chinese state, these battles have been ones won and lost by claimants contesting local officials rather than challenging the regime itself.
Steve Hess is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and East Asian & Pacific Rim Studies at the University of Bridgeport’s College of Public and International Affairs. He is a specialist on contentious politics in authoritarian regimes with particular emphasis on China. He is the author, most recently, of the forthcoming article in the International Political Science Review, “From the Arab Spring to the Chinese Winter,” from which this piece was adapted.
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Wulfen
If China's governance cannot catch up with its development, diversity
will bring society more destructive power than vitality. In this
scenario the West will win without any costs. Yet linking peace and
prosperity is possible for China, if the PLA would cease inciting the
population to hate and war and allow the Chinese colonies of Tibet,
Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia to revert to independent nations (without
such overwhelming numbers of Han Chinese colonists in their midst). We
love the Chinese, but we can no longer tolerate the war-mongering PLA.
The entire world stands with the Chinese people, the Uyghurs, the
Mongols and the Tibetans as they try to rid themselves of the PLA
disease.
This is why we have decided on China's eventual dissolution into six
separate countries, beginning with a free Tibet, an autonomous Xinjiang
and an Inner Mongolia which will unite with Outer Mongolia into a new
federated republic. Along the coast, the Han Chinese will separate into
three independent countries based on their three principal rivers, thus
becoming competitive with each other and helping to drive the world
economy to new heights. In this way, the PRC will devolve into
normal-sized countries, not a behemoth accounting for 1 out of every 5
human beings on the planet. Simply put, the PRC is too big for peace in
the world on the long term.
Your article can spout any "happy" feelings you want. It is your
diversity that is destroying China, because it isn't natural. It's
imposed by the military. Tibetans do not think of themselves as Chinese,
as they immolate themselves in protest. Uyghurs do not see themselves
as Chinese, as they firebomb police stations. Mongols do not feel that
they are Chinese, as they stalk and kill PLA soldiers in their homeland.
In fact, they all think and feel and see that the Han Chinese are
colonizing their native lands and subordinating them under Chinese
institutions.
It is for these people that Mr. Abe was told what to do, which is to
engage China in an Air-Sea Battle that does not harm the Chinese
mainland, since we intend that the present Chinese factories and
industries continue as strong as ever. We are simply in the process of
eviscerating the PLA's military capabilities in the air and on the seas.
That is our intention, plain and simple, with the Senkakus as the
centerpiece of this game-changing chess move.
So, delude yourselves all you want, if you believe that China will be
allowed to continue with its colonizing ambitions in Tibet, East
Turkistan, Inner Mongolia. Japan is militarizing, as we insist it does.
Japan is well versed in the arts of war against China, as the Nipponese
military has proved repeatedly over hundreds of years. Now, with
superior US training and sophisticated weaponry, the Japanese Navy and
Air Force (regardless of what you call them) are well-positioned to
annihilate their Chinese counterparts in the East China Sea arena.
Want to know what we told Abe that you're too afraid to report?
Destroy China's bluster! Sink their entire naval fleet! Shoot down every
Chinese aircraft! Leave them nothing with which to threaten the
sovereignty rights of their neighbors…ever again. And prepare the way
for the dissolution of the PRC into six independent countries within the
community of nations. We welcome the Chinese people as responsible
world citizens once the PRC is relegated to the historical past…the
bad old days.
senatorMark4
Stupid B. Rich. While there may very well be revolutions that evolve by needlessly trying to "die for freedom" that has never really proven the most obvious method. Sure, Ghandi-man succeeded in non-violence against the Briish, but the poor Dalai Lama had no success against a determined Chinese regime willing to shoot. Also, the Jews of Germany surely suffered by whining for relief from the Germans.
IN reality, the surest way to bring a revolution in thought to the front is to force the aggressive side to make that decision. Solzhenitzen, once arriving at the gulag, realized that very fact. Force the opperssor to decide if they want to die to enforce their oppression.
Would Germany have had a holocaust if every German officer arriving to roust the Jews was met with a 7.62 NATO barrage?
Billy Bostickson
Why wasn't there a Chinese Spring? Possibly because the miserable downtrodden Chinese are enjoying wallowing in the winter of their discontent and lack of courage? Or, more likely, because of the Han national history education brainwashing campaign implemented since the Tiannamen square Massacre by the CCCP counter revolutionary capitalist roadster lackeys in a last ditch desperate attempt to save their miserable hides from the inevitable wrath of the revolutionary industrial proleteriat on the day of reckoning when the last CCCP member will be hung from the guts of the last factory slave owner?
John Chan
@Billy Bostickson,
Why wasn’t there an American Spring? Possibly because the debt ridden Americans are scared to death of the unmanned drones watching them overhead by the FBI and Homeland security, it they misbehave FBI and Homeland Security will down grade their credit rating so that they can shop excessively.
Billy, are you sure you are not a Japanese? Your last sentence is 4 lines long; it made up a bunch of words but made no sense. Can you rearrange your troll again, so that people can understand what you are trolling?
Imperial Washington’s War Against China
Good question. One should also ask Imperial Washington and Caesar Barrack H Obama (i) Why the Chinese economy did not collapse due to a financial melt-down because of an attempted Wall-Street induced property market collapse? (ii) Why did the Chinese economy not collapse due to an attempted Wall-Street induced stock market collapse? (iii) Why did the Chinese economy not collapsed due to a Washington-Wall-Street offensive to mislead Beijing to increase the value of the Yuan? And now (iv) Why did the Chinese government and economy not collapsed due to a covert US instigated "Chinese Spring"?
Last but not least, we have yet to see how Imperial Washington will use the false flag Chinese military "interns" hacking US companies and organizations to launch a cyber attack on CHinese infrastructure, principally its energy grid which will bring down everything.
Imperial Washington is friendly and not hostile? Any Chinese who supports Imperial Washington against the Chinese, ought to be shot. Similary the US CIA and other spies operating out of the US Embassy, running out of control all over China spying, target marking strategic chinese installations, and recruiting Chinese agents and moles for Washington.
Bill Rich
Facing a brutal regime that doesn’t mind starving and beating tens of millions of its own people, what choice do Chinese have ? Die for freedom ? There aren’t too many of those. And those willing are all dead, or in prisons.
John Chan
@Bill Rich,
USA has the highest prison population in the world despite it is only 20% of China’s population; besides the USA government and Congress rather bail out the rich 1% instead of feeding and shielding the American poor and unemployed; it is the Americans either die of starvation or being sent to prisons so that the prison operating companies can make handsome profits by charging prisoners excessive telephone fee when the prisoners call home.
Chetwynd
First of all, this is an article whose focus is on the wrong question. The author proves that China is not a dictatorship–one party rule notwithstanding–when he discusses decentralization. The Arab regimes, like real dictatotorships, were highly centralized. Another important factor ignored by the author is Wikileaks and its intimate revelations. The "Arab street" was made aware of just how corrupt their leading officials were, their families and their friends. This article misses the whole point. In fact, what the author says about China could be said in the context of the US, with the exception that it's not the locals but the federals who the people despise the most. The US system and the Chinese system might be the only two systems of monoculture in history that had a foolproof method of defusing and dispersing protestors.
Super Genius
Why wasn't there a Chinese Spring? A lack of Islamist radicals.
Libertatis Vindex
Ghanghis, it's quite pathetic that you made the comment that you did under your "name", as it was the name of a barbarian conqueror that the chinese despised, both him and his people, id est: the mongolians.
FrancisChalk
The so-called Arab Spring had little or nothing to do with a yearning for freedom, and everything to do with installing fundamentalist Islam to rule in place of the much more secular dictators. Thus, the question “why no Chinese Spring?” is absurd.
Ghanghis
We Chinese will never,ever fall for the arWest trickery of Freedom of Speech!
Just say, we saw through the trick and the treachery. Democracry will evolve at our own speed and will take a form that is suited to Chinese civilisattion. There is no such thing as absolute freedom.
At the moment, we are more free in some sense then the USA, as US citizen are now denied the due process of the law and judiciary. All it needs is just for their President to sign off and their lives is forfeited.It make a mockery of the saying 'No guilty unless proven'……so much for western democracy!!
Philipp Cross
Bill Rich's comment is right. BTW regards to Ai Wei Wei. :)
mata hari
Why are you so worried about "Chinese Spring" and not your own "US Spring"? Why do you ignore your own "elephant in the room"? Why does your media blackout, censor, omit, downplay, manipulate, distort, disinform, misinform about the phenonomenal worldwide "Occupy Wall-Street" protests? Such a major world event or popular uprising and demonstrations in the Western and Eastern worlds becomes a non event for the news barons and stations? Unbelievable! One can only conclude free speech, free media and democracy is really nothing but a sham; a phony. And this article serves only the powers-that-be to propagandarize against an imaginary enemy, hoping to cause it to be become less "competitive" if it has a bad image. The US is a sick country. not much diffrent from the days the Fuehrer of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler.
Gabriel
You are confused, Ghanghis. The US has replaceable leaders, at least constitutionally. We have freedom of the press, and, yes, the press is run by elitists who collaborate with their political counterparts, but there are alternate forms of communication that are protected under our Constitution and backed up by our courts. Real courts, not party-machine monkey courts as you have in China. In China, you can be arrested and "detained" indefinitely and tortured horrifically without anyone being notified what you are charged with or if you are even in custody. That is not law and order it is the very opposite, and it is Medieval, at best.
China, currently (because of the party), is a kleptocracy funded primarily by slave and near slave labor, run by the elitists who serve only their own interests and torture and kill anyone who challenges them. True, American politicians serve only themselves, for the most part. The primary difference is we can, and do, replace our leaders without bloodshed, thanks to our founding fathers, NOT the current generation of trash in Washington.
Nothing is invented in China, only stolen. Your economy is run on the backs of slaves and stolen intellectual property and stolen goods. Your military consists of stolen technology and purchased aircraft carriers. You cannot invent anything or create anything because the only ones educated well enough to do so in your country are the runny-nosed brats born into the party. Few of them have the creative ability to invent tomorrow’s breakthroughs. In America, it is not the children of elitists who create the future, it is often the dropouts who carve the new path. Greatness is hiding in a small village in an unknown province in China, but will never be discovered because she or he was not born into the handpicked privilege of the party and therefore has no upward mobility. It requires freedom of the populace at large, Ghanghis. You have upward mobility in a society so the great can rise from any corner of the country, not just from the princelings and their children, which of course it never does. Don’t fall too deeply in love with your chains, just yet, Ghanghis. There is only so much you people can steal, and the real genius in China is hiding in the shadows outside the party.
The new China begins when the communist party ends.
John Chan
@Gabriel,
American Patriot Act can detain you indefinitely without charge and send you to Guantanamo Bay for tortured horrifically without anyone being notified. The American courts can be coerced into a Kangaroo court behind the closed door in the name of national security.
USA is a kleptocracy ruled by oligarchies. China leaders have fixed terms and are replaced via voting, except certain posts, all of them have to retire at age 60, which the American does not do so their leaders can steal the nation longer.
“Nothing is invented in USA, only stolen” is as valid as “nothing is invented in China, only stolen”. Slaves only exist in the USA, not in China. Lincoln tried to free the slaves, but he was stopped by a bullet from the American people.
Ivy League and private schools make your American is not the children of elitists a blatant lie. American is born out of British who are snobbish and maintains a near caste society; hence you are in denial about racial discrimination in the USA by smearing China and glossing over USA’s ugly reality.
The new USA begins when the 99% realizes they are the surfs of the 1%.
AntiMao
See? Even your arguments are stolen. Why don't you use your moral equivalence arguments to explain the 70 million Chinese starved to death by the incompetence of Mao's Great Leap Forward? Then you can explain away the countless millions tortured and murdered in the Cultural Revolution. Then you can cap off your prose with a justification of the wholesale murder of teenagers in Tiananmen Square on 6/4/1989. There are zero analogous crimes commited by the US government. US citizens cannot be moved to Guantanamo Bay, contrary to your factually incorrect statement; none have, ever. No one has been tortured at Guantanamo Bay outside of waterboarding, not exactly like having toothpicks pushed into your testicles as is common when Chinese nationals are tortured for questioning the government.
superstj
I'm chinese and I disagree with what you say. Define Western trickery of Freedom of speech please?
John Chan
@superstj,
I would say Western trickery of Freedom of Speech has two components
1. Internally, suffocating freedom of speech thru pervasive means so that people are deprived from the freedom of speech but they still consider they have freedom of speech.
2. Externally, using freedom of speech to undermine, subvert and destroy other nations or targets for insidious purposes.
Manufacturing consensus and fabricated reality are the most common western trickery of Freedom of Speech.
The Diplomat is a typical Western trickery of Freedom of Speech, it is using freedom of speech to demonize China and spread fabricated “China Threat.” In the USA nobody has the freedom of speech to question the legitimacy of the Fed, but every American considers he has the freedom of speech.
AntiMao
Freedom of speech "undermines, subverts, and destroys nations for insidious purposes"? And your solution would be government propoganda supplanting the free expression of ideas to establish a single source of information that serves only the elite party members? That is the thinking of the fascist/communist: tyanny is true freedom, oppression is liberty, thought control is critical thinking. It does not contain an atom of logic, only blind allegiance to the religion of Chinese fascism.