I think this is going to happen more quickly because I think even at the moment there are signs of rising social tensions within China. There were 12 million petitions to the central government in 2008 because people were dissatisfied with the decisions of local courts; problems of labour unrest. And then there the problems of ‘mass incidents’—there were maybe 90,000 of these in 2009. This is a lot of social discontent and I think the Communist Party has two options. One is to tough it out and continue to repress and hope eventually things will work out. The other is to reform and deal with the courts, civil society and political opposition in a more sustainable way.
The drawback for the Party is that any of this will mean the monopoly of power it has will go and it will just have to deal with that. I don’t think it can tough it out. If tries, it may well end in terrible bloodshed, which has been the historical template for dynastic change in China. But, I think the Communist Party is very pragmatic in the end, and I think it will try and combine reserving as much power for itself as possible and ceding territory bit by bit to potential opponents, when those opponents start to draw blood.
The current leaders have one characteristic, and that’s that they are all fairly internal—none of them have studied abroad and none of them have had much international exposure. Of the nine members of the Politburo, which is the apex of Chinese decision-making, none of them have studied or lived abroad. So, their international outlook is limited in some ways. That’s not to say that they aren’t international in their outlook, but it’s also not like they have had very profound exposure to the rest of the world. In the end, their key thing is to reform things for the Chinese economy and the domestic Chinese situation. I don’t see any big sign that they’ve got the vision and the global perspective to deal with the kind of problems they’re going to have to deal with in the next decade—Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, and social unrest.
They are going to have to think creatively and constructively. China’s relations with the world at the moment are quite assertive and fractious, and they can’t continue like that. They have to have a more positive vision of what they are and what they want. In the short-term, I’m extremely pessimistic; in the mid-term, I’m relatively pessimistic; in the long-term, I am wildly optimistic. I think by about 2030 we will be looking at a robust democracy in China.
Kerry Brown is a senior fellow with Chatham House’s Asia Programme. This interview was conducted by Amy Foulds.
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Unrest is not necessary about politics at all. The government can appease most of the interests mentioned in the transcript without democratising China’s political structure. Calls for democracy get a lot of attention in the west but they radiate from a small minority.
stephen
With regard to Mainland China, democracy has six elements: freedom of expression, conscience (right to independently think and believe in any scientific idea, philosophy or religion), and peaceful assembly; multiparty system; judicial independence; nationalization of the military; universal election; federalism or local autonomy.
I hereby make this prediction: Mainland China will become a democracy with all of the above six elements included by January 1, 2020.
bigben
I agree that China will become a democracy. But the big question is what type of democracy? The “liberal democracy” championed by the west or another form of democracy with “Chinese characteristics”. Some scholars are already coming up with terms such as “merit democracy” (Singapore model), “Confucian democracy”, “dominant party democracy”, etc.
Young
As a chinese, I am sorry to say that I don’t agree democracy will come ture in China.
Just research how chinese people to choose their reprenstative. It’s just like a joke. There exist no possibility to voting the one you really want, even that nobody knows anything about the candidate. Democracy in China is nothing rather than vote.