z**********e
发帖数: 22064 | 1 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659
The Coming Chinese Crackup
By
David Shambaugh
March 6, 2015 11:26 a.m. ET
The endgame of communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping's ruthless
measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point
Chinese President Xi Jinping, front center, and other Chinese leaders attend
the opening meeting on Thursday of the third session of the National People
's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua/Zuma
Press
Despite appearances, China's political system is badly broken, and nobody
knows it better than the Communist Party itself. China's strongman leader,
Xi Jinping, is hoping that a crackdown on dissent and corruption will shore
up the party's rule. He is determined to avoid becoming the Mikhail
Gorbachev of China, presiding over the party's collapse. But instead of
being the antithesis of Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Xi may well wind up having the
same effect. His despotism is severely stressing China's system and society
—and bringing it closer to a breaking point.
Predicting the demise of authoritarian regimes is a risky business. Few
Western experts forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union before it occurred
in 1991; the CIA missed it entirely. The downfall of Eastern Europe's
communist states two years earlier was similarly scorned as the wishful
thinking of anticommunists—until it happened. The post-Soviet “color
revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 to 2005, as well
as the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, all burst forth unanticipated.
The Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the site of pro-
democracy demonstrations in 1989. Photo: National Geographic/Getty Images
China-watchers have been on high alert for telltale signs of regime decay
and decline ever since the regime's near-death experience in Tiananmen
Square in 1989. Since then, several seasoned Sinologists have risked their
professional reputations by asserting that the collapse of CCP rule was
inevitable. Others were more cautious—myself included. But times change in
China, and so must our analyses.
The endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun, I believe, and it has
progressed further than many think. We don’t know what the pathway from now
until the end will look like, of course. It will probably be highly
unstable and unsettled. But until the system begins to unravel in some
obvious way, those inside of it will play along—thus contributing to the
facade of stability.
Communist rule in China is unlikely to end quietly. A single event is
unlikely to trigger a peaceful implosion of the regime. Its demise is likely
to be protracted, messy and violent. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility
that Mr. Xi will be deposed in a power struggle or coup d’état. With his
aggressive anticorruption campaign—a focus of this week's National People's
Congress—he is overplaying a weak hand and deeply aggravating key party,
state, military and commercial constituencies.
The Chinese have a proverb, waiying, neiruan—hard on the outside, soft on
the inside. Mr. Xi is a genuinely tough ruler. He exudes conviction and
personal confidence. But this hard personality belies a party and political
system that is extremely fragile on the inside.
Consider five telling indications of the regime's vulnerability and the
party's systemic weaknesses.
A military band conductor during the opening session of the National People'
s Congress on Thursday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photo:
Associated Press
First, China's economic elites have one foot out the door, and they are
ready to flee en masse if the system really begins to crumble. In 2014,
Shanghai's Hurun Research Institute, which studies China's wealthy, found
that 64% of the “high net worth individuals” whom it polled—393
millionaires and billionaires—were either emigrating or planning to do so.
Rich Chinese are sending their children to study abroad in record numbers (
in itself, an indictment of the quality of the Chinese higher-education
system).
Just this week, the Journal reported, federal agents searched several
Southern California locations that U.S. authorities allege are linked to “
multimillion-dollar birth-tourism businesses that enabled thousands of
Chinese women to travel here and return home with infants born as U.S.
citizens.” Wealthy Chinese are also buying property abroad at record levels
and prices, and they are parking their financial assets overseas, often in
well-shielded tax havens and shell companies.
Meanwhile, Beijing is trying to extradite back to China a large number of
alleged financial fugitives living abroad. When a country's elites—many of
them party members—flee in such large numbers, it is a telling sign of lack
of confidence in the regime and the country's future.
Second, since taking office in 2012, Mr. Xi has greatly intensified the
political repression that has blanketed China since 2009. The targets
include the press, social media, film, arts and literature, religious groups
, the Internet, intellectuals, Tibetans and Uighurs, dissidents, lawyers,
NGOs, university students and textbooks. The Central Committee sent a
draconian order known as Document No. 9 down through the party hierarchy in
2013, ordering all units to ferret out any seeming endorsement of the West's
“universal values”—including constitutional democracy, civil society, a
free press and neoliberal economics.
A more secure and confident government would not institute such a severe
crackdown. It is a symptom of the party leadership's deep anxiety and
insecurity.
A protester is pushed to the ground by a paramilitary policeman March 5,
2014, in Beijing before the opening of the National People's Congress nearby
. Photo: Associated Press
Third, even many regime loyalists are just going through the motions. It is
hard to miss the theater of false pretense that has permeated the Chinese
body politic for the past few years. Last summer, I was one of a handful of
foreigners (and the only American) who attended a conference about the “
China Dream,” Mr. Xi's signature concept, at a party-affiliated think tank
in Beijing. We sat through two days of mind-numbing, nonstop presentations
by two dozen party scholars—but their faces were frozen, their body
language was wooden, and their boredom was palpable. They feigned compliance
with the party and their leader's latest mantra. But it was evident that
the propaganda had lost its power, and the emperor had no clothes.
In December, I was back in Beijing for a conference at the Central Party
School, the party's highest institution of doctrinal instruction, and once
again, the country's top officials and foreign policy experts recited their
stock slogans verbatim. During lunch one day, I went to the campus bookstore
—always an important stop so that I can update myself on what China's
leading cadres are being taught. Tomes on the store's shelves ranged from
Lenin's “Selected Works” to Condoleezza Rice's memoirs, and a table at the
entrance was piled high with copies of a pamphlet by Mr. Xi on his campaign
to promote the “mass line”—that is, the party's connection to the masses
. “How is this selling?” I asked the clerk. “Oh, it's not,” she replied.
“We give it away.” The size of the stack suggested it was hardly a hot
item.
Fourth, the corruption that riddles the party-state and the military also
pervades Chinese society as a whole. Mr. Xi's anticorruption campaign is
more sustained and severe than any previous one, but no campaign can
eliminate the problem. It is stubbornly rooted in the single-party system,
patron-client networks, an economy utterly lacking in transparency, a state-
controlled media and the absence of the rule of law.
Moreover, Mr. Xi's campaign is turning out to be at least as much a
selective purge as an antigraft campaign. Many of its targets to date have
been political clients and allies of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. Now
88, Mr. Jiang is still the godfather figure of Chinese politics. Going after
Mr. Jiang's patronage network while he is still alive is highly risky for
Mr. Xi, particularly since Mr. Xi doesn’t seem to have brought along his
own coterie of loyal clients to promote into positions of power. Another
problem: Mr. Xi, a child of China's first-generation revolutionary elites,
is one of the party's “princelings,” and his political ties largely extend
to other princelings. This silver-spoon generation is widely reviled in
Chinese society at large.
Mr. Xi at the Schloss Bellevue presidential residency during his visit to
fellow export powerhouse Germany in Berlin on March 28, 2014. Photo: Agence
France-Presse/Getty Images
Finally, China's economy—for all the Western views of it as an unstoppable
juggernaut—is stuck in a series of systemic traps from which there is no
easy exit. In November 2013, Mr. Xi presided over the party's Third Plenum,
which unveiled a huge package of proposed economic reforms, but so far, they
are sputtering on the launchpad. Yes, consumer spending has been rising,
red tape has been reduced, and some fiscal reforms have been introduced, but
overall, Mr. Xi's ambitious goals have been stillborn. The reform package
challenges powerful, deeply entrenched interest groups—such as state-owned
enterprises and local party cadres—and they are plainly blocking its
implementation.
These five increasingly evident cracks in the regime's control can be fixed
only through political reform. Until and unless China relaxes its draconian
political controls, it will never become an innovative society and a “
knowledge economy”—a main goal of the Third Plenum reforms. The political
system has become the primary impediment to China's needed social and
economic reforms. If Mr. Xi and party leaders don’t relax their grip, they
may be summoning precisely the fate they hope to avoid.
In the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the upper reaches of
China's leadership have been obsessed with the fall of its fellow communist
giant. Hundreds of Chinese postmortem analyses have dissected the causes of
the Soviet disintegration.
Mr. Xi's real “China Dream” has been to avoid the Soviet nightmare. Just a
few months into his tenure, he gave a telling internal speech ruing the
Soviet Union's demise and bemoaning Mr. Gorbachev's betrayals, arguing that
Moscow had lacked a “real man” to stand up to its reformist last leader.
Mr. Xi's wave of repression today is meant to be the opposite of Mr.
Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost. Instead of opening up, Mr. Xi is
doubling down on controls over dissenters, the economy and even rivals
within the party.
But reaction and repression aren’t Mr. Xi's only option. His predecessors,
Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, drew very different lessons from the Soviet
collapse. From 2000 to 2008, they instituted policies intended to open up
the system with carefully limited political reforms.
They strengthened local party committees and experimented with voting for
multicandidate party secretaries. They recruited more businesspeople and
intellectuals into the party. They expanded party consultation with nonparty
groups and made the Politburo's proceedings more transparent. They improved
feedback mechanisms within the party, implemented more meritocratic
criteria for evaluation and promotion, and created a system of mandatory
midcareer training for all 45 million state and party cadres. They enforced
retirement requirements and rotated officials and military officers between
job assignments every couple of years.
In effect, for a while Mr. Jiang and Mr. Hu sought to manage change, not to
resist it. But Mr. Xi wants none of this. Since 2009 (when even the
heretofore open-minded Mr. Hu changed course and started to clamp down), an
increasingly anxious regime has rolled back every single one of these
political reforms (with the exception of the cadre-training system). These
reforms were masterminded by Mr. Jiang's political acolyte and former vice
president, Zeng Qinghong, who retired in 2008 and is now under suspicion in
Mr. Xi's anticorruption campaign—another symbol of Mr. Xi's hostility to
the measures that might ease the ills of a crumbling system.
Some experts think that Mr. Xi's harsh tactics may actually presage a more
open and reformist direction later in his term. I don’t buy it. This leader
and regime see politics in zero-sum terms: Relaxing control, in their view,
is a sure step toward the demise of the system and their own downfall. They
also take the conspiratorial view that the U.S. is actively working to
subvert Communist Party rule. None of this suggests that sweeping reforms
are just around the corner.
We cannot predict when Chinese communism will collapse, but it is hard not
to conclude that we are witnessing its final phase. The CCP is the world's
second-longest ruling regime (behind only North Korea), and no party can
rule forever.
Looking ahead, China-watchers should keep their eyes on the regime's
instruments of control and on those assigned to use those instruments. Large
numbers of citizens and party members alike are already voting with their
feet and leaving the country or displaying their insincerity by pretending
to comply with party dictates.
We should watch for the day when the regime's propaganda agents and its
internal security apparatus start becoming lax in enforcing the party's writ
—or when they begin to identify with dissidents, like the East German Stasi
agent in the film “The Lives of Others” who came to sympathize with the
targets of his spying. When human empathy starts to win out over ossified
authority, the endgame of Chinese communism will really have begun.
Dr. Shambaugh is a professor of international affairs and the director of
the China Policy Program at George Washington University and a nonresident
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His books include “China's
Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation” and, most recently, “China Goes
Global: The Partial Power.”
Corrections & Amplifications:
A photo shows a protester in Beijing being pushed to the ground by a Chinese
paramilitary policeman before the opening of the National People's Congress
in March 2014. An earlier version of this article contained a photo caption
that incorrectly said the incident was this month. (March 9, 2015) | t**********9
发帖数: 1019 | 2 BIG BIG真有可能变成中国的戈尔巴乔夫，尽管他自己并不这么想。真是感谢网络，中
国人再也难被愚民统治了。 | n*******r
发帖数: 2010 | 3 又在给你家美爹卖命上蹿下跳， 美爹赏你几个钢镚？
ruthless
attend
People
【在 z**********e 的大作中提到】
: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659
: The Coming Chinese Crackup
: By
: David Shambaugh
: March 6, 2015 11:26 a.m. ET
: The endgame of communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping's ruthless
: measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point
: Chinese President Xi Jinping, front center, and other Chinese leaders attend
: the opening meeting on Thursday of the third session of the National People
: 's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua/Zuma
| z**********e
发帖数: 22064 | 4 你们都没看出来，这个沈大伟，是拿了曾庆红的钱，来搞习包子的。
他说习近平会把共产党搞垮，其实就是在给江泽民、曾庆红、薄熙来等的死党提供打击
习的炮弹：你们看，美国人都幸灾乐祸地说习快把共产党搞垮了，要让共产党不垮，必
须把习弄下来，让薄上。
要是沈没有拿钱，那就是说，薄熙来上台，对美国有好处。
【在 t**********9 的大作中提到】
: BIG BIG真有可能变成中国的戈尔巴乔夫，尽管他自己并不这么想。真是感谢网络，中
: 国人再也难被愚民统治了。
| r**o
发帖数: 4614 | 5 呵呵, 现在土共内部都通过海外媒体打击政敌了, 这出息啊.
越出这样的妖蛾子, 就越是说明丫的软弱, 你丫真有实力, 用得着挟洋自重吗?
薄熙来这货, 把儿子送去英国美国读书, 同时还精分到国内唱红歌. 连自己屁股上的屎
还没擦干净就开始立牌坊. 这种人上台, 对手开心还了不及了.
【在 z**********e 的大作中提到】
: 你们都没看出来，这个沈大伟，是拿了曾庆红的钱，来搞习包子的。
: 他说习近平会把共产党搞垮，其实就是在给江泽民、曾庆红、薄熙来等的死党提供打击
: 习的炮弹：你们看，美国人都幸灾乐祸地说习快把共产党搞垮了，要让共产党不垮，必
: 须把习弄下来，让薄上。
: 要是沈没有拿钱，那就是说，薄熙来上台，对美国有好处。
| t**********9
发帖数: 1019 | 6 的确，他对江胡评价还挺高，不过看他对所谓国外专家的描述倒挺新鲜，他们是不是都
拿钱了来中国为党站台的啊？ | l******n
发帖数: 11737 | 7 我从头搜到尾没看到提“Bo"啊
薄上台对美帝也没好处吧，也是借着红二代背景宣扬民族主义的。
【在 z**********e 的大作中提到】
: 你们都没看出来，这个沈大伟，是拿了曾庆红的钱，来搞习包子的。
: 他说习近平会把共产党搞垮，其实就是在给江泽民、曾庆红、薄熙来等的死党提供打击
: 习的炮弹：你们看，美国人都幸灾乐祸地说习快把共产党搞垮了，要让共产党不垮，必
: 须把习弄下来，让薄上。
: 要是沈没有拿钱，那就是说，薄熙来上台，对美国有好处。
| D******g
发帖数: 289 | 8
ruthless
attend
People
米犹沈大伟的民族利益私货行为太明显了吧。
后满清国政府官员贪腐的时候就不断写文赞美。
一看习大反腐不利米犹渔利，就跳出来攻击。
【在 z**********e 的大作中提到】
: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659
: The Coming Chinese Crackup
: By
: David Shambaugh
: March 6, 2015 11:26 a.m. ET
: The endgame of communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping's ruthless
: measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point
: Chinese President Xi Jinping, front center, and other Chinese leaders attend
: the opening meeting on Thursday of the third session of the National People
: 's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua/Zuma
| l**********1
发帖数: 2980 | | v****g
发帖数: 11080 | 10 尼玛，不知你从哪里看出沈大伟收了庆红的钱，他明显是对包子打击异议人士仍然采取
高压手段有怨念，反过来对庆红的相对温和和“开明”比较赞赏而已吧。
【在 z**********e 的大作中提到】
: 你们都没看出来，这个沈大伟，是拿了曾庆红的钱，来搞习包子的。
: 他说习近平会把共产党搞垮，其实就是在给江泽民、曾庆红、薄熙来等的死党提供打击
: 习的炮弹：你们看，美国人都幸灾乐祸地说习快把共产党搞垮了，要让共产党不垮，必
: 须把习弄下来，让薄上。
: 要是沈没有拿钱，那就是说，薄熙来上台，对美国有好处。
|
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