Cost of revival

End of an Era, predicts how China has appeared a relative haven of stability and growth, and look at China’s authoritarian reform revival is undermining its rise. A frozen political system has fuelled the rise of Communist party and the systematic underdevelopment of institutions of governance among state and society at large as economic cleavages have widened with worsening social unrest.

Western experts predicted that China would become more liberal – perhaps even democratic – as it became richer and world production capital. The educated and confident middle class would demand a say in government decisions, following the policies adopted by South Korea and Taiwan.

Since Xi Jinping assumed the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, all these predictions have fallen apart. Xi has overseen tightening of censorship and the imprisoning of cores of moderate activists and cleared a path for himself to remain President for life, all the while maintaining robust economic growth and expanding China’s global influence.

Carl Minzner, a New York Based academic describes in End of Era the country grew the record GDP-per capita level at which its east Asian neighbours democratised. But Carl argues in China, this prosperity is threatened by the run to harder authoritarianism. Minzner,  explains how the Xi’s predecessor Hy Jintao, dating the peak of liberalism to 2003 when legal activists and investigative reporters successfully campaigned to end a form of arbitrary police detention.

But with Xi in power, merely hastened to centralise power and curtail freedoms in places such as Hong Kong. He praised recent reforms to reduce political influence on courts, through notes that they fall short of full rule of law. Under Xi, some citizens sued government officials and received answers to freedom of information requests.

The reform of opening up by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, saw China move from an economic backwater to the world’s second-largest economy and top trading partner of more nations than the US.

End of an Era paints a sorrow picture of life in China: college graduates struggling to find jobs, the high wage growth reaching 20 percent in 2011 and Xi’s efforts to curb foreign influences. China is trading more with the world than ever, and Chinese people are travelling the world more often and studying abroad in greater numbers.

 

End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise by Carl Minzner, Oxford University Press £19.99/ $ 29.95, 272 pages.