No Change for China

Has the media been overemphasizing the social importance of Chinese middle-class protests in order to advance the perception of a growing Chinese civil society? Former reporter James Mann and author Gordon G. Chang touched upon this important issue at a recent Heritage Foundation forum.

“Scholars dismiss talk of China’s collapse as they downplay one concern or another, but the point is China faces these challenges all at once, not one challenge at a time,” argued Chang. These challenges include inflation, unpaid social security benefits, runaway corruption, and a deteriorating environment. More importantly, Chang sees ongoing political repression in the midst of economic liberalization as an insurmountable obstacle for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“Most interestingly, we are beginning to see middle-class Chinese—the beneficiaries of decades of reform—take to the streets. They take to the streets whenever they think that their rights are threatened,” said Chang. He added, “If there is one unifying theme for unrest in China today, it is the desire for justice, the demand to be treated fairly.”

According to modernization theory, economic liberalization precedes democratic freedoms. Thus Chang argues in Commentary magazine that “But the real lesson of the fall of the Soviet Union is otherwise—that when necessary reform is delayed too long, radical political transformation becomes all but inevitable.”

Chang is not alone in forecasting the impending civil society movement in China. Describing the controversy surrounding the Shanghai maglev train line expansion, New York Times reporter Howard French writes that “the coalescing of homeowners here around issues like property values, environmental safety, urban planning, and how tax money is spent is seen as the strongest sign yet of rising resentment among China’s fast-growing middle class over a lack of say in decision making.” French then quotes a young businesswoman complaining about her lack of influence on government spending.

The assumption that middle class protests over economic disputes could snowball into widespread protests is shared by many democracy-favoring publications. French writes of the January Shanghai protests, “But if a citizens’ movement here did manage to force the government to reverse its plans, disgruntled citizens in cities all over China could take their cue from Shanghai.”

Similarly, a June 2007 Economist editorial argues that “the protests in Xiamen [over the proposed paraxylene plant] must be worrying to officials in Beijing. Urban environments have been deteriorating across the country. If tolerance among the middle classes were to crumble, unrest could spread.”

But despite proclamations of “rising resentment” in China, citizens continue to appeal to authority figures for a resolution. A March Associated Press article covering the ongoing Shanghai maglev protests describes a much smaller demonstration—about 50 citizens—who formed a “human chain” and peacefully hung banners appealing to Premier Wen Jiabao’s benevolence to “help the old and young.”

The AP article also quotes a Chinese protestor, Qi Jingfang, as saying “We’re not against the government, we just want to protect our homes.”

Some scholars are more skeptical that China’s widely-publicized protests could spark a nation-wide revolt. Mann, a former news reporter, said “There can be disorder, there can be riots in many different parts of the country, but unless there is a concerted nationwide movement and unless, I think, it reaches into the elites and affects the Chinese government’s ability to use force when necessary to put down this disorder…then 78,000 riots doesn’t mean very much.”

Mann considers the paramount question whether the CCP can coopt or repress any revolts which arise. He said, “It’s very tempting, and we all indulge in it, to see one big riot, incident of peasant unrest, in Guangdong and then another one in Sichuan, and say ‘boy things are really going up and this is really gonna spread.’”

Mann is the author-in-residence for Johns Hopkins University, and argues in his book, The China Fantasy, that leaders in U.S. foreign policy have naively assumed that trade will promote democracy in China—all the while perpetuating elite Chinese repression through an influx of American investment.

Other scholars echo Mann’s assessment. Junhan Lee, a politics professor at South Korea’s University of Incheon, examined the nine successful Asian democratic transitions and argued in 2002 that all but one involved four common traits: college student-led political demonstrations, the middle class as a “main locomotive” for democratization, opposition leaders explicitly calling for democracy, and persistence in the face of government repression.

Lee also made a strong distinction between political and economic protests. He writes, “Political protest is directed at political changes, while economic protest aims at, for instance, increases in salaries or improvements in the work environment.” The Xiamen and Shanghai protests, while directed against corrupt government leaders, were, arguably, focused on economic and environmental conditions. Their symptomatic calls for reform likely would not fit Lee’s political protest model.

The CCP has been careful to limit all avenues of political activism and potential areas in which a civil society could grow—that is, except in the environmental movement. But, as Jean-Philippe Beja notes in his 2006 article for Social Research Journal, Chinese “civil society has been growing in a space designed by the Communist Party, and it still does not enjoy any kind of legal guarantees that would provide for its institutionalization.” Instead, Beja argues, the CCP has redirected the intelligentsia’s efforts from political revolution to reform “from within,” or “good governance” practices.

The Chinese middle class may also have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. “In addition, I think that the emerging middle class will be in some ways not just tied to regime, but deeply mistrustful of political change which will jeopardize the economic benefits that it has,” said Mann. Or, as Asia scholar Li He wrote in Asian Affairs: an American Review, the influence of the Chinese middle class has remained “weak” because its members “are primarily utilitarian in orientation, not really seeking radical change in the current one-party rule. What they are essentially asking from the government in a higher autonomy is their socioeconomic life, e.g., protection of their private property or their children’s education.” He added, “Only in ‘politically safe’ areas (such as the environment) have they contested the government’s policies.”

If Mann or He is right, real freedom may remain a far-off dream until the Chinese people specifically call for political reforms such as multiparty elections, a free press, and the rule of law. Chang strongly disagrees, however. Remembering the swift fall of the Soviet Union, he said “The party is feared, but I believe that at the first sign of serious trouble people will gain the hope that they can actually change things. Then the political system will disintegrate within moments.”

We can only wait and see.

Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia.