A Color Revolution in China? Keep It Red

【原文标题】A Color Revolution in China? Keep It Red
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【来源地址】http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/opinion/07iht-edli.html?ref=global


SHANGHAI — The empty chair at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony inOslo on Dec. 10 will no doubt be a cause for Western politicians andcommentators to again condemn China’s authoritarian regime.


The Norwegian Nobel Committee that awarded the Peace Prize to the jaileddissident Liu Xioabo represents those in the West who believe a colorrevolution such as those that took place in Eastern Europe would leadChina down the path of Western-style liberal democracy.

In this, they are utterly ignorant of China’s history and the nature ofmodern China. The revolution they seek, if it happened, would bringanything but liberty and responsibility. The revolution that is takingplace they miss completely.

Given the opacity of its political system and penchant forbehind-the-scenes decision-making, subtle but important signals inBeijing often get lost in transmission. Such appears to be the case withthe plenary session of the ruling Chinese Communist Party held inOctober. Predictably, the West focused its attention on the promotion ofMr. Xi Jinping, the heir designate, as the most notable accomplishmentof the meeting. An even more consequential political development wascompletely overlooked: The final communiqué.

On the surface, the communiqué seemed to be full of official clichés anda return to a strident claim of “socialism with Chinesecharacteristics.” But rather than an empty slogan, the phrase embodies aconsistent developmental and political strategy that seeks to strike adifficult balance — achieving high growth rates through a market economywhile relying on one-party political institutions to ensure socialjustice and peace. This strategy is the anchor of China’s relativelypeaceful emergence into the global order.

Skeptics may justifiably question whether the strategy is achieving itsobjectives, pointing out rising inequality, corruption, social unrestand international conflicts. But they forget to ask, “What if?” Forexample, “What if a color revolution does sweep across China andoverthrows its one-party regime?”
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What happens after the euphoria is over? Will a post-Communist Chinadeliver greater liberty and prosperity to the Chinese people? Will it bea less nationalist and more responsible power?


For all its shortcomings, the current one-party state in China is astatus-quo power in two important respects. First, it is the initiatorand protector of China’s enormously successful free-market developmentmodel. One of history’s greatest ironies is that in today’s world, themost pro-market party is the Communist Party in China. True, China’seconomic success ensures the party’s political survival, but this hasalso ensured social peace in addition to improving the livelihoods,individual liberty and personal dignity of hundreds of millions ofordinary Chinese.


Second, in spite of the recent perceptions of an assertive China, theCommunist Party is not seeking global hegemony or even regionaldomination. Its foreign policy is based on pragmatism and realisticnational interests, not grandiose projects of ideologicalself-glorification. The reason is quite simple: Given China’s economicinterdependence with the rest of the world, and its dependence oneconomic performance as a source of legitimacy, the Party has all theincentives in the world to maintain a pragmatic foreign policy. China isperhaps the greatest beneficiary of the status quo, so why change it?

Of course, skeptics may counter by pointing to China’s risingnationalism as evidence that Beijing will be forced to challenge theWestern-made status quo. But this is confusing nationalist barking withaggressive biting. For all its nationalist rhetoric (there is plenty ofit in China’s cyberspace), actual Chinese government behavior on foreignpolicy has been by and large moderate and restrained. Should a colorrevolution overthrow the Communist Party, who can guarantee thecontinuation of such a course, especially if extreme nationalists — withdemocratic credentials — gain power in a post-Communist regime?

Only by staying the course of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”can China’s development lead to ever enhanced liberty and prosperity forthe Chinese people, and its ascendancy lead to a largely peaceful andresponsible power on the global stage.


It is this irony, this oxymoron, that is disorienting to many Westernobservers: that the Chinese Communist Party is the guardian of China’sfree-market development; that the socialism it deploys is the protectorof liberty and property; that the Party is the only authority that canensure moderation in China’s international relations.


To understand this, one must look deeper into Chinese cultural history and the nature of the modern Chinese nation state.


Those who look at China from the outside often see a rigid Confucianhierarchy. What they tend to miss is the deeply egalitarian valuesunderlining Confucian morality.


“Those who want to farm are entitled to land.” This most primitivecommunist value is deeply rooted in Chinese culture. Almost everydynasty began with the new emperor confiscating land from big landownersand evenly distributing it to the population. This is how each newdynasty gained moral authority. Over time, land ownership would againbecome more concentrated, the dynasty would be overthrown and the cyclewould begin anew. The 1949 Communist revolution led by Mao Zedong couldbe viewed as another beginning of such a cycle.


The second pertinent aspect is the nature of modern China itself. TheWestern nation-state was shaped by bourgeois revolutions that aimed toadvance and protect “liberty and property.” China never had such abourgeoisie. It was literally dragged into modernity by the militarypowers of the West. The modern Chinese nation-state was built in the20th century by the peasantry led by the intelligentsia. Rather thanliberty and property, egalitarianism and communitarianism formed itsmoral foundation.


The respect for individual liberty and private property that informedthe modern West were never within the core construct of the modernChinese nation-state. Instead, China’s national sovereignty was theresult of violent struggle against foreign aggression. Only with theknowledge of this historic background can one recognize how miraculouswere the changes that Deng Xiaoping launched 30 years ago.


In effect, the Chinese Communist Party leveraged its moral authority asthe vanguard of the common man to hold back the egalitarian impulses ofthe Chinese people and guide a rapid and unprecedented expansion ofindividual liberties and private property rights.


Further, its unquestioned role in redeeming China first from thehumiliating subjugation by Western powers and then from Japaneseaggression gives it the unique ability to moderate Chinese nationalismtoward the outside world.


Maintaining this moral standing — hence the slogans of socialism andnationalism — is crucial for China to continue on this path.Western-style electoral democracy, as advocated by the West and someinside China, could only lead to tyrannical populism and its twinbrother, extreme nationalism.

Today, respect for liberty and private property are at their highest inChina’s entire history. It is unprecedented that the rise of a nation ofChina’s size at such speed is taking place largely in peace. Let’sallow it to continue. If it means that the chair in Oslo will remainempty for decades and generations, so be it. The alternative is farworse.