That's what people said 30 years ago when Deng Xiaoping was driving reforms. The thought was that China's steady economic liberalization would inevitably lead to political liberalization. That had been the typical trend in other countries, but the Chinese Communist Party has proven to be surprisingly skilled at managing dissent and maintaining power.
It could still happen, but predicting the future in politics is hard.
> but the Chinese Communist Party has proven to be surprisingly skilled at managing dissent and maintaining power.
It's entirely a wrong idea to think political system should evolve this quick.
China's political system inherits form 2k+ years of feudalism tradition. The system is largely static, with unsubstantial decorative changes here and there. And eventually it collapsed in the face of Western invasion. This humiliation period spans almost last a century, and is defined as the "Century of humiliation" [1].
The unique timing, and combination of various rather lucky events gave birth to the CCP.
CCP took an approach that is seemingly unconventional, while fundamentally is just another round of emperor-style dynasty evolution. Mao was effectively an emperor, who by chance or intentionally managed not to have his own heir. He also did exactly what has been done before in the history, where new emperor killed almost all of the people who helped him ascend the throne, because these powerful people would become a threat to his heir (be it his own blood line or someone else).
Nonetheless, in less than a few decades, China went through feudalism to communism. This level of change is unprecedented and would likely be impossible in the future.
After culture revolution and the open border policy, China's political landscape also changed a lot. Not in the same scale of the CCP and PRC's establishment, but still quite spectacular compared to any other countries in the world.
1. China's economic growth allows more free expression of opinions through various of channels. In a nutshell, any democracy is a compromise between rational economy groups with matching political power. China's economic growth allows many individual to gain the power necessary to influence the political system. Is this system better or worse than western democratic system? Hard to say, but it's different.
2. Chinese people learnt to respect the bottom line of the CCP, but find constructive ways to express their dissent over government or political polices. People can easily overthrown low-&middle-ranked government officials by showing hard evidence of corruptness over various non-official channels. Such channels, like Weibo, Wechat groups, are regulated, but is not shutdown. The rate is maintained in a way that CCP's bottom line is always maintained, and without touch that, things can be liberal.
3. Chinese people have learnt the truth of propaganda both internally and internationally. I would rate Chinese people the most independent-minded group of citizens in the world. Chinese people are incredible at recognizing propaganda and superficial arguments that bear limited practicality.
CCP also was changed substantially. It now has over 80MM members, and vast majority of them are from all sorts of social background that has nothing to do with elite or any form of privileged groups. However, the bad thing is that CCP now becomes a bed for marrying the powerful and the rich. The rich ones join the rank of power list of CCP.
The whole thing is moving towards the direction as most Western countries, i.e., the political system becoming a tool for the rich and powerful to maintain their status.
In conclusion:
> The thought was that China's steady economic liberalization would inevitably lead to political liberalization
China's political system has changed drastically over the same period, much more than any other country in the world.
In the foreseeable future, China will not move in the direction desired by the western countries. Thousands of years of political wisdom have taught Chinese people to balance between different ideologies and maintain the peaceful life of themselves. The only possibility of such change is that a foreign power invaded China and forced her reform in a fashion that is different than what Chinese people collectively desire.
Extreme conditions will not be tolerated, and irresponsible social revolution will not be welcome. Chinese people will be following their own wisdom in finding the true liberation of the nation, most likely through the continuous economic growth.
That's like the relationship between typical Chinese parents and their offsprings. Are the parents abusive compared to western counterparts? Yes. Does the offsprings get what they need to grow and become independent? Yes. Then why destroy such relationship? The answer, of course, is not to do such a thing.
>In the foreseeable future, China will not move in the >direction desired by the western countries. Thousands of >years of political wisdom have taught Chinese people to >balance between different ideologies and maintain the >peaceful life of themselves. The only possibility of such >change is that a foreign power invaded China and forced her >reform in a fashion that is different than what Chinese >people collectively desire.
Sorry, this is nonsense. The peacefull years of the empires gonge before, where everything but peacefull- and held several fierce civil wars, which usually endeded when one party captured chinas rice-lands and starved the other party to death (Centralisation by Geography). China is basically where the English Society was pre Democracy. A class of nobleman (party-members) is partially subverted by rich citizens.
Rice-lands are traditionally in the Wu language region, also known as Jiangnan. That is why the Grand Canal was built - move rice to the north. Traditionally, gaining control of the country is all about capturing the Central Plain known as Zhongyuan, sadly it has no overlap with your beloved rice land.
> I would rate Chinese people the most independent-minded group of citizens in the world. Chinese people are incredible at recognizing propaganda and superficial arguments that bear limited practicality.
Agreed. In my experience, while Chinese (particularly those who've been abroad) are of course well aware of the propaganda they're subject to, they're still influenced by it. Just as people in other countries are.
The defence against that is
* a vibrant, strong, diverse media landscape
* an education that emphasises anti-authoritarian, critical thinking (and not unquestioning adherence to dogma).
In my opinion, most of Europe fares reasonably well on both points. The USA sort of middling. China bad. I'm unsure about today's Russia.
This is a very nice window into the mind of Chinese citizen, thank you!
A few ideas/memes/modes of thinking stand out and are quite similar to what I see in Russia (I believe it's basically a mix of coping strategy and a deeper level of propaganda):
- "western democracy" as something homogenous, as something that can have "an alternative". In reality "western democracies" are very different between each other and are a spectrum (compare the US, France, Sweden and Japan), but every dictatorial regime that I know bundles all those countries up as "western liberal democracies" and contrasts itself with them as a whole. This makes sense from a propaganda standpoint, but precludes from seeing a multitude of futures free from oppression. It's always either "the West" or "our own unique way".
- "we have a different way. Is it better or worse? Hard to say" — this is very typical sentiment in Russia, too. However, it's a moral cop out: if you pick your moral principles and stay true to them, it's very easy to say if one system is better or worse than other. Do you think that citizens should have free speech or do you believe that citizens are hapless children that must be cared for by their government? As soon as you decide that the answer to "is state censure good or bad?" becomes trivial.
- "see, we have ways to change things for the better, too! Here are a few cases: …" — every oppressive regime that wants to be stable has some controlled outlets for people's anger. People are angry over corruption and inefficiency? Execute a few low-level/out-of-favor scapegoats, censure transgressions of the rest, kill or imprison dissenters and continue business as usual. It always works like that.
- "it's the way our people are [except a few dissenters who did that to themselves]". I see a clear contradiction between your tone in "Thousands of years of political wisdom have taught Chinese people to balance between different ideologies and maintain the peaceful life of themselves" and all that euphemistic talk of "controlled channels" and "learnt to respect the bottom line of the CCP". Do you?
- "yes we do have all that propaganda but we are wise enough to not pay attention to it". That's exactly what a lot of people who lived in USSR say! What they miss (and what became obvious when USSR fell) is that good propaganda is multi-layered: there's always a superficial stuff about The Glorious Leader that may impress simple minds, and there is deeper unseen influence. Those memes of "our own way", "West as a whole", "it's the way our people are", "we are impervious to propaganda", the over-arching cynicism are all pushed into public discourse as a part of propaganda and they affect everyone.
And yes, the cynicism disguising as "wisdom". That is perhaps the mightiest propaganda weapon from at least Soviet times.
"see, we have ways to change things for the better, too!" There were "changes" in your old USSR days, but was there anything like having a Communist party actively supporting capitalism? In China, it is called the 1978 reform. If you call this "controlled outlets", well, that is gotta to be a pretty big one.
You do realize that you use a reform pushed from the top as an example of a change coming from below, right? It's not even an "outlet", it's just yet another autocratic decision by ruling elite. It can be aimed to give an impression of social progress, but fundamentally it's still the same way of governing.
Talking about political liberation, British Hong Kong is probably the worst example one can pick - UK took it in 1840 but refused to let the island to be ruled by its own people for 140 years. The highest ranking officials were always appointed by the UK government, what is worse - they were _ALL_ white [1].
The British government only decided to reform the political system in Hong Kong after the handover was decided. That was 140 years after Hong Kong was illegally & brutally robbed & axed from China. One doesn't need to be smart to figure out what was the real motivation for that reform.
Interestingly, for some people, it was totally okay for UK to deny any real meaningful political reform in Hong Kong for 140 years, yet the rules for CCP is apparently different.
It's a difficult topic to debate the situation of the short history of a small place. Like any such contended area, they are subject of heavy contention of powerful nations with complicated historical and cultural traditions.
Although it's roughly the same that 1) British installs a governor; and 2) CCP installs a governor through superficial election. Nonetheless China is not a democratic country in western standard, despite itself claims to be people's democratic dictatorship [1].
On the other hand, people general fear that Hong Kong will be changed into more like mainland China, instead of continue the improvement.
I think the rich and powerful around the world, universally are conscious that any form of democracy is a camouflage, if they manage to indulge their people in superficial arguments, or simply be content with their lives.
From British's perspective, there is little motivation to give Hong Kong what's being enjoyed by a sovereign nation, because Hong Kong is a colonial entity. And people are nevertheless happy because they compare themselves with mainland China.
After that, British might be thinking to stir instability by allowing political reform; or they might be thinking now they are indifferent in maintaining their ruling, so they might just give what the people want. Either way, that causes inconvenience in CCP's ruling over Hong Kong.
Does it really matter? Not really. Once Hong Kong becomes economically inconsequential, no one really cares much.
For example, do we care Syria people being murdered by ISIS, which US and Russian and China and etc. are still fighting their own little conflicts and are not trying to resolve the root causes? Absolutely not. Or only in a degree that is less than how Trump steal Hilary's presidency. After all, Syria hardly affect how people live here in US.
As highlighted in other articles linked in this thread, there have been discussions by the UK to grant more autonomy to HK since the 1950s, but it was opposed by China.
And yes, the governors of UK colonies have generally been from the UK (thus, incidentally, predominantly white). So?
It could still happen, but predicting the future in politics is hard.