http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/world/10128675.html
Published: 30/05/2007 12:00 AM (UAE)
China's model races ahead of American capitalism
By James Mann, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
The Iraq war isn't over, but one thing's already clear: China won. As the
United States has been bleeding popularity and influence around the world,
China has been gaining both.
That's largely because it has been coming into its own as the first
full-blown alternative since the end of the Cold War to Washington's model of
free markets and democracy. As the US model has become tarnished, China's has
gained new lustre.
For authoritarian leaders around the world seeking to maintain their grip
on power, China increasingly serves as a blueprint.
Beijing has shown dictators that they don't have to choose between power
and profit; they can have both.
Today's China demonstrates that a regime can suppress organised
opposition and need not establish its legitimacy through elections.
It shows that a ruling party can maintain considerable control over
information and the internet without slowing economic growth. And it indicates
that a nation's elite can be bought off with comfortable apartments, the chance
to make money, and advances in personal, non-political freedoms.
This all adds up to a startling new challenge to the future of liberal
democracy. And the result is ominous for the cause of freedom of dissent
worldwide.
China's single-party state offers continuing hope not only to such
largely isolated dictatorships as Burma, Zimbabwe and North Korea but also to
some key US friends who resist calls for democracy (say, Egypt or Pakistan) and
to America's neighbours in Cuba and Venezuela.
The China model has emerged from the confluence of two independent
developments over the past decade. Each stands on its own, yet the interaction
between the two has been especially toxic for democratic values.
First has been the failure of US foreign policy, symbolised by the war in
Iraq. US foreign policy has been dominated by a school of thought that
emphasises military power and has tied the spread of democracy to the use of
force.
This has not only failed but also undermined support for democracy. US
attempts to export free markets and political liberty by force have been unable
to bring even security, much less prosperity, to Iraq. And they've eroded our
appeal and clout worldwide.
The second key development has been Communist Party's staying power and
economic success. Just after the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, Western
pundits predicted the Chinese government had one foot on a banana peel: Any day
it would fall or be forced to embrace far-reaching political reform to survive.
Instead, China's economy expanded by nine times and the party remains firmly in
control.
Westerners next seized on the internet as the inevitable liberator of the
Chinese. "Information will knock down the bamboo curtain!'' went the refrain.
Instead, Chinese cops in the 500 cities that have established internet police
bureaus are stamping out dissent by monitoring people using politically
sensitive websites.
China's stability has belied the forecasts of Western leaders that
growing prosperity in China would significantly alter its one-party political
system.
Over the past decade, presidents, prime ministers and others have
frequently offered a soothing scenario about how China will inexorably move
towards freedom and democracy.
President Bush has repeated many of these same themes: "Trade freely with
China, and time is on our side.'' British Prime Minister Tony Blair two years
ago noted China's "unstoppable momentum'' toward democracy. Not quite.
Optimists
The optimists assume that once a country becomes more affluent, its
emerging middle class will press for democratic change. But in China, the
middle class - still a tiny proportion of the overall population - supports or
at least goes along with the existing political order, which after all made it
middle class in the first place.
The ruling party allows urban elites the freedom to wear and buy what
they want, to see the world, to have affairs, to invest and to profit mightily;
in return, the elites don't challenge the Communist Party's hold on power.
Moreover, China's new business community is hardly independent of the
party; in effect, it is the party, linked to China's power structure through
financial connections or family ties.
In economic terms, China doesn't fit into the standard model of a
free-market system, either. American magazines and television programmes have
for years joyously proclaimed that China has "gone capitalist'' - a supposed
sign that the Chinese are becoming like the Americans.
In fact, China's fast-growing economic system is quite different from the
American model - a fact not lost on other countries.
China is unique because of its sheer size and the allure of its massive
markets, but repressive regimes are nevertheless increasingly looking to
Beijing. In return, China has in recent years helped prop up Zimbabwe, Sudan,
Uzbekistan, Cuba and North Korea.
How can US leaders turn things around? The most important change is
conceptual. We must get beyond seeing every policy dispute involving China as a
choice between "engagement'' and "isolation''.
Those loaded words set up a false selection and have little meaning
anymore. With the world's third-biggest trading economy, China is already
engaged.
We must also get beyond the notion that our trade, investment and
interaction with China will transform its political system.
Any serious policy must be based on China as it is, not on our mistaken
assumption that prosperity and liberty inevitably go hand in hand. Trade and
investment should be evaluated for their economic costs and benefits to the
United States, not for their political impact on China.
Above all, the US should approach China through the lens of its national
interest. That includes not just security and prosperity but America's interest
in a world with open political systems and the freedom to dissent.
If we don't take China's new model as seriously as the rest of the world
does, we could find that we're the ones on the wrong side of history.
James Mann, author in residence at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H.
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, is author of "The China
Fantasy''
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