A Question of Populism

Missing from the domestic side of the China debate is the question of how the Chinese populace view their government. This History News Network piece is a useful step towards getting to the roots of this:

"The party's own actions have helped it stay in control. By making the surprising move of accepting entrepreneurs into its ranks, it has co-opted a potentially threatening group, and it has pulled back from micromanaging many aspects of private life, a cause of much discontent in the 1980s.

But the party has also gotten lucky breaks in the international arena and been helped by unexpected post-1989 developments in the wider world. In the early 1990s, Russia's decline and Yugoslavia's free-fall into chaos benefited the Chinese Communists. These phenomena allowed the party to say to the Chinese people, in effect: "You may be sick of Communism, but there seems to be something worse out there -- post-Communism."

Closer to home, the crisis sparked by North Korea's nuclear ambitions has helped the party too. North Korea is a Communist state led by the notoriously erratic Kim Jong-Il. It is isolated from most other nations but has long had close ties to China. Whenever Kim behaves outrageously, the United States, Russia, Japan and South Korea appeal to the Chinese Communists for help, treating Beijing as the world's best hope for keeping Pyongyang in check. This allows the party to say to the Chinese people that it has been successful in raising China's status in the realm of global diplomacy.

The general instability of 21st-century geopolitics has also bolstered the party. One argument the party uses to convince the Chinese people that it should remain in control is that, in times of global unrest, nations without strong, stable governments become vulnerable to being bullied or even invaded."

It's absolutely true that the any regime, even a totalitarian one, derives its power from the consent (or submission) of the governed. And all the evidence points to the fact that China's population will not overthrow its government anytime soon. Part of the reason why, besides the amazing material prosperity and the international developments listed above, is that the CCP has been remarkably successful in adopting a nationalist stance. The population acknowledges it as the legitimate successor in a line nearly six thousand years old. This legitimacy is very important.

Here's a thought experiment: say America occupied China tomorrow, with virtually no resistance, completely dismantled the CCP, and absorbed the PLA into a home occupation force like the Japanese Kanto Army. Assume no other power intervened, every relevant international authority accepted the legitimacy of the occupation, and a competent official was appointed to run the occupation regime. It would still fail. Why? There would be no way in hell that the Chinese would ever accept the American occupiers as the legitimate rulers, no matter how powerful the occupation regime was or how much force it employed.

The CCP also exploits this nationalism for use as a means of manipulating domestic sentiment. Witness for instance, how it redirects domestic discontent over corruption into anti-Japanese or (at times like the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade) anti-American feeling. The CCP is secure and the likes of James Mann are wrong--it has everything to do with legitimacy, not just wealth.