I’m not just asking about the Hong Kong situation, but in general, is China’s Communist Party stable in their political control over the country?
I’ve heard the CCP has learned quite a bit from the old Soviet powers, especially from their mistakes. As a layperson what they’ve accomplished thus far seems to be impressive.
But looking forward I don’t know if the CCP has a sustainable model that will continue work into the future – or if a major crisis is imminent.
I’ve also heard that China is a country in political transition. If this is true it’s very interesting, and I’d like to hear anyone’s opinion on whether a smooth transition to full democracy is possible, or even the end objective.
That’s an interesting question. I have no idea of the answer, but here are a few things we cam consider.
China is moving lots of people from the countryside to the city. That establishes even more of a mass of potential demonstrators. If there is a downturn, and these people become unemployed, there could be the potential for lots of problems.
They are reasonably successful at censorship today, but the Hong Kong situation seems to be stressing out the censors, especially as the people find more ways of expressing discontent. Can censorship keep up with technology? Say someone invents a point to point communications technology, where smartphones running the app transmit a message to surrounding phones, not going through a central server. How do they censor that?
I think there is an expectation of continued economic growth. If that stops because of any reason - internal slowdown, world slowdown, moving of manufacturing to other locations - we could see a lot of people no longer willing to participate in the growth in place of freedom bargain.
The is all assuming that the central government doesn’t loosen its grip. If it does things can get even more interesting.
Aren’t Chinese people more concerned with trying to raise their standard of living or dealing with environmental pollution than their form of government at the moment? It doesn’t seem, to me at least, like government form would be the most pressing priority right now. Plus the Chinese government seems competent at running the country. It is authoritarian, but it isn’t run like a middle east kleptocracy. If the government is running things well then there is less incentive to rebel even if they are authoritarian. It seems like they are doing that.
Both reasonable answers. Im always reminded of how wrong Soviet experts in the West were at predicting the fall of the USSR. With almost any authoritarian regime its difficult to get an accurate reading of how stable such a society is. As has been mentioned a lot will probably depend on future economic growth in China.
China has a lot of serious fault lines and some pretty fragile systems of managing power. The Party is far from an all-powerful monolith- it is at the mercy of the major cities that drive the economic growth that provides legitimacy. The party has only a few tools to work with- nationalism, a military that isn’t particularly necessary, and it’s own waning prestige.
With that in mind, economic growth is still happening, and the Party has gotten much smarter at managing their challenges, including making good use of various safety valves, handling the media and provide safe outlets for dissent.
I would predict one way or the other right now. I don’t think the are facing imminent political collapse, but it will be interesting to see what the future brings.
Communist and authoritarian are two different things. Russia is no longer considered communist but you could still say they’re pretty authoritarian. At one point I mightve said as wealth elevates certain citizens, the biggest wealth earners could become powerful enough to challenge the CCP. But Putin in Russia pretty much shut down that idea. There was a Russian oil magnate who challenged Putin. He was jailed and mysteriously died in prison. The CCP will hold on unless a great, sweeping majority of Chinese citizens rise up to take them down.
Xinjiang is a powder keg. Tibet gets more attention (and what will happen after the Dalai Lama passes is probably not going to be pretty) but Xinjiang is going to be the source of some very bad problems in China.
What would happen to Chinas flag and it’s emblems? Would they remain the same? Or would they be different, because the flags and emblems they have are of the party that won power in 1949, it’s not necessarily a ‘national’ flag.
China is politically stable as long as it can keep in comfort it’s 1.5+ billion people. Then 300 million of them revolt and they can destroy 30 tanks by merely punching them.
Well what about the people who already have lifted themselves from poverty? They have a home and a job. They are hardly likely to wait until the rest of the country reaches the same level and the ar clears before they become restive and want a say in how the country is governed.
If Chinas economic growth falters, people will begin to question the competence of the government and start to demand representation. Growth does not go on forever.