China’s
Future: Implications for US Interests
Introduction
and Key Findings
Robert
Sutter
September
1999
The
National Intelligence Council (NIC) routinely sponsors
conferences with outside experts to gain knowledge
and insights to sharpen the level of debate on critical
issues. The views expressed in this conference summary
are those of individuals and do not represent official
US Government positions or views.
Strategic
Analysis Program
The
National Intelligence Council and the Federal Research
Division of the Library of Congress hosted an all-day
seminar at the Library of Congress on September
24, 1999 assessing the five-year outlook for China's
domestic development and international security
behavior. Entitled "China's Future--Implications
for the United States," the seminar featured seven
formal presentations by prominent academic specialists
complemented by commentaries by nine China specialists
from the US Intelligence Community. The Directors
of the China offices in the State and Defense Departments
offered concluding remarks on the implications of
the conference findings for US policy toward China.
Panelists and commentators focused specifically
on political leaders and institutions, economic
and social trends, security and foreign policies,
and the overall prospects for China through 2005
(see seminar program). The main thrust of the deliberations
reflected cautious optimism about China's future.
The regime appears resilient enough to deal with
most anticipated problems internally. China is wary
of the United States and is gradually building military
power. But unless Beijing is challenged by unexpected
circumstances, China is unlikely to break with the
United States or engage in disruptive military buildups
or aggressive foreign behavior.
Political
Leaders and Institutions
China's current third-generation leadership and
its likely successors will continue the process
of political regularity and institutionalization
that has made China's political behavior much more
predictable than it was during the Maoist period
(1949-76). The political leaders lack charisma but
are more technically competent and much less ideologically
rigid than past leaders; they are aware of the problems
they must face and are prepared to deal with at
least some of the most important ones.
Some
of the seminar participants noted that the coming
fourth-generation leaders did not share the same
background; a number also questioned the capabilities
of the leaders in comparison with their predecessors.
Fourth-generation leaders came of age during the
Cultural Revolution but often have diverse political
views and lack the binding solidarity of experiences
that the previous generations of leaders gained
on the Long March and during the Anti-Japanese War,
for example. Collectively, fourth-generation leaders
are seen as less dogmatic and confrontational, more
compromising, and more highly educated. The level
of political skills of the fourth generation also
was questioned.
Composed
of large number of lawyers and economists, the fourth
generation is more capable and innovative than previous
leaders when confronted with economic and social
problems; their behavior is more technocratic and
pragmatic when dealing with domestic and foreign
policies. Despite being more highly schooled than
their predecessors and the beneficiaries of numerous
and varied exchanges with the United States and
other countries, the forthcoming leaders have a
limited understanding of the West.
The institutionalization
of China's politics is the result of a proliferation
of institutions from the top down. Accompanying
this growth in the number of institutions is a distinct
break with the Maoist past as evidenced by growing
regularization and routinization. Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) and National People's Congress (NPC)
sessions and plenums have been regularly scheduled
and held since the late 1970s, and planning and
budgetary cycles are adhered to. The principles
of class struggle have been replaced by budgets
geared to a socialist market economy and political
constituencies. Socialist laws continue to be promulgated,
although enforcement remains problematic. Some seminar
participants argued that however important institutionalization
is, one of the most significant changes in China's
political landscape is occurring outside of the
state--the growth of civil society amid the increasing
wealth and influence of businessmen and academics.
A stabilizing
factor, increasing institutionalization means less
arbitrary decisionmaking. A disadvantage is that
China's current (and future) leaders may not be
as decisive as Deng Xiaoping because they are hemmed
in by the growing bureaucracy and procedures.
The military
has less representation at the top-level CCP Politburo.
Some participants approved this development, but
others saw a bifurcation between the CCP and the
People's Liberation Army (PLA). This trend also
occurred in the Soviet Union before its demise and
could be a precursor to future instability in China.
An urban, educated elite, the current leadership
is civilian based: only two of the twenty-four members
of the Politburo have military experience or could
be considered "military politicians." The majority
of Politburo members, seventeen of twenty-four,
have experience in the more modernized, coastal
provinces. Seminar participants pondered the meaning
of the civilian majority and wondered if the military
will be able to muster sufficient support for its
modernization programs.
Leadership
succession, nepotism and favoritism, and increased
corruption also were discussed. Though China's politics
are becoming more stable and predictable, with the
battles being fought on the institutional level,
personal rivalries and relations will remain important
and cannot be ignored.
Economic
and Social Trends
Economic growth will outpace population growth,
continuing the overall rise in the standard of living
that has characterized Chinese development over
the past two decades. A young, highly trained labor
force with modern technical skills will increase
in numbers. The infrastructure of rail, roads, and
electronic communications greatly reduces perceived
distance and helps to link the poorly developed
interior to the booming coastal regions. Chinese
development remains heavily dependent and will deepen
its dependency on foreign trade, investments, and
scientific/technical exchange. The regime faces
daunting problems--notably ailing State Owned Enterprises
and a weak banking/financial system. Also worrisome
are the increasing number of unemployed and laid-off
workers, decreasing inventories, a high real-interest
rate, the divestiture of military enterprises, and
bad loans and bankruptcies. The leadership has taken
concrete steps recently to remedy a few but certainly
not all of these problems and weaknesses.
One result
of China's external outreach will be the growing
importance of ministries with outside thrust, such
as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the
Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation
(MOFTEC). The latter, especially, will become more
important if Beijing joins the World Trade Organization
(WTO). Central regulatory bodies such as State Economic
and Trade Commission (SETC) also will become more
important; the old bureaucracies and their stakeholders
associated with the planning system, such as the
State Planning Commission (SPC), will become less
important and have to reinvent themselves for alternative
functions. If China must privatize and institute
a market economy to be successful, the changes this
approach creates in society will clash with the
very nature of the Communist ideology and authoritarian
political system favored by Beijing.
Manifestations
of social discontent seen recently with demonstrating
peasants and laid-off workers and Falungong sect
members are likely to continue, but these developments
have a long way to go before they pose a major threat
to the regime. Notably, they need to establish communications
across broad areas, establish alliances with other
disaffected groups, and put forth leaders prepared
to challenge the regime and gain popular support
with credible moral claims. Success also requires
a lax or maladroit regime response. The attentiveness
of the regime to dissidence and the crackdown on
the Falungong strongly suggest that Beijing will
remain keenly alert to the implications of social
discontent and prepared to use its substantial coercive
and persuasive powers to keep it from growing to
dangerous levels.
A variety
of current sources of social tension and conflict
in China might present opportunities for expressions
of discontent. Groups that might exploit such tensions
include those people living in the poorer interior
provinces (versus the richer coastal regions), ethnic
minorities, farmers, members of the unemployed or
underemployed floating population, laid-off state-enterprise
workers and other laid-off workers, students and
intellectuals, and members of sects such as the
Falungong.
Security
and Foreign Policies
China will remain dependent on its economic connections
with the developed countries of the West and Japan.
Nonetheless, Chinese nationalism will exert pressure
to push policy in directions that resist US "hegemony"
and the power of the United States and its allies
in East Asia, notably Japan. Beijing will resolve
these contrasting pressures by attempting to stay
on good terms with its neighbors and by keeping
open economic and other channels with the United
States while endeavoring to weaken overall US power
and influence in East Asia and elsewhere in its
long-term attempt to create a more "multipolar"
world. Military modernization will continue at its
current or perhaps a slightly more rapid pace--an
outlook that poses little direct challenge to the
already modern and advancing militaries of the United
States and its allies and associates in East Asia,
except in such nearby areas as Taiwan, where the
Chinese development of ballistic and cruise missiles
poses notable dangers.
China
also sees a challenging international security environment
and is apprehensive about several international
security trends. It is particularly concerned about
the perceived US "containment" and military "encirclement"
of China, US national and theater missile defense
programs, and the potential for Japan to improve
its regional force projection capabilities. Despite
some successes in military modernization, the PLA
remains limited in its ability to quickly absorb
sophisticated weapon systems and to develop the
joint operations doctrine necessary to use these
weapons effectively.
Taiwan,
however, is China's main security focus, and it
is the biggest problem, both politically and militarily,
in China-US relations. The issues of continuing
US arms sales and missile defense deployments in
the region remain problematic for the future. China
and the United States are attempting to find common
ground and interest in rebuilding in the wake of
the Belgrade embassy bombing. Beijing will continue
to press for reunification with Taiwan. China's
overtures to South Korea and Japan are a possible
counter to Washington's moves vis-a-vis Taiwan.
What
Could Go Wrong
The relatively sanguine outlook noted above would
be fundamentally called into question by possible
scenarios addressed at the seminar.
Internal
Paralysis/Overriding Crisis. A combination
of political, economic, and/or social crises could
overwhelm the Chinese regime and lead to policy
paralysis or regime failure. A major downturn in
the economy, a rapidly developing, politically oriented
dissident movement backed by large numbers of economically
and socially disaffected people, combined with leadership
divisions and a struggle for power at top levels
in Beijing, would be the main ingredients for this
scenario to come about. The possibility of this
happening over the next five years was noted by
several speakers, though it was generally seen as
less than likely.
Crisis
Over Taiwan. This scenario assumed that
Taiwan would continue down the path toward independence,
continue to receive strong backing from the US,
and Beijing would feel it had little recourse other
than major military pressure on Taiwan (conferees
generally agreed that PLA modernization would not
be sufficient to enable it to invade the island
successfully). The crisis would lead to a break
in economic and other constructive US-PRC ties,
resulting in a stand-off, developing into a new
cold war between the United States and China in
East Asia. Several speakers expressed worry that
anticipated trends regarding Taiwan could lead to
this scenario, though they judged it unlikely that
the PRC would allow a standoff to reach the point
of cutting off advantageous economic relations with
the United States.
US
Policy Implications. Seminar commentators
were downbeat about the near-term outlook for progress
in US-China relations, noting that domestic trends
in both capitals make forward movement difficult,
with the possible exception of an agreement on China's
entry into the WTO. A few endeavored to defend the
administration's efforts to "build a constructive
strategic partnership" with the PRC--a concept roundly
criticized by the nongovernment specialists at the
seminar. US-China military relations were seen as
likely to develop only slowly over the next few
years.
Schedule
Welcome
9:00-9:05
AM
Robert L. Worden, Chief, Federal Research Division
Opening
Comments
9:05-9:15
AM
Robert G. Sutter, Moderator, National Intelligence
Officer for East Asia
Panel
One
9:15-10:45
AM
Political Leaders and Institutions
Li
Cheng - Recent Leadership Trends and Changes
Lyman Miller - Institutional
Trends and Prospects
Commentators: Kurt Hockstein and Clifford Edmunds
Panel
Two
11:00-12:30
AM
Economic and Social Trends
Barry
Naughton - Evolving Economic Developments
Martin Whyte - Social Trends and Stability
Commentators: William Newcomb and Karen Jones
Panel
Three
2:00-3:30
PM
Security and Foreign Policies
David L.
Shambaugh - Trends in International Security
Policies
Commentators: Ronald Christman, Donald Kilmer,
and Paul Heer
Panel
Four
3:45-5:15
PM
Summary: Overall Prospects for China
Ezra
F. Vogel and Arthur Waldron - Political, Economic,
Social, and International Security Trends, 2000-2005
Commentators: Stephen Schlaikjer and John Corbett
Contributors
Ronald
Christman is with the
Defense Intelligence Agency.
John
Corbett is with the Office of the Deputy Secretary
of Defense for International Security Affairs.
Clifford
Edmund is with the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service.
Paul
Heer is with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Kurt
H. is with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Karen
J. is with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Donald
Kilmer is SIGINT National Intelligence Officer,
National Security Agency.
Li
Cheng is Professor of Politics at Hamilton College.
Lyman
Miller, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover
Institution.
Barry
Naughton is Professor of Economics, University
of California, San Diego.
William
Newcomb is with Intelligence and Research, Department
of State.
Stephen
Schlaikjer is China Director, Bureau of East
Asian Affairs, Department of State.
David
Shambaugh is Professor of Political Science
and International Affairs and Director of the China
Policy Program, George Washington University.
Robert
G. Sutter is National Intelligence Officer for
East Asia, National Intelligence Council.
Ezra
Vogel is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social
Sciences, Harvard University.
Arthur
Waldron is Lauder Professor of International
Relations, University of Pennsylvania and Director
of Asian Studies, American Enterprise Institute.
Martin
King Whyte is Professor of Sociology, George
Washington University.
Robert
L. Worden is Chief, Federal Research Division,
Library of Congress.
Figure
1
China and Neighboring Countries
Fourth-Generation
Leadership
in the PRC: Collective Characteristics
and Intragenerational Diversities
Cheng
Li
While
this generation of leaders will be diversified in
their foreign policies as well, most of them tend
to emphasize (or perhaps overemphasize) the importance
of economic might, more specifically, the role of
science and technology in what they often call the
information age. They will work hard to change China's
international image. They are cynical about the
moral superiority of the West, resentful of Western
arrogance, and doubtful about the adoption of a
Western economic and political system to China.
Yet, even at the time of crises, such as the tragic
incident in Belgrade, they understand the need for
cooperation rather than confrontation. Their policies
toward the US will be firm, but not aggressive.
Shortly
after Jiang Zemin and his so-called "third generation
of leaders" replaced Deng Xiaoping, China began
to face a new round of political succession. This
is no surprise because Jiang is already 73 years
old, and two other top leaders, Premier Zhu Rongji
and head of the National People's Congress Li Peng,
also are in their early 70s. The average ages of
members of the Standing Committee, Politburo, and
Secretariat of the 15th Central Committee (CC) of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1999 are 67,
65, and 65, respectively.1
When the next party congress convenes in 2002, these
three pivotal, hierarchical leadership organizations
all will be occupied by people with an average age
of 68 to 70.
Jiang
and other top leaders certainly are aware of the
importance of selecting their own successors. Jiang
reportedly will hand over, one at a time, three
important posts that he currently holds (President,
Secretary General of the Party, and Chairman of
the Military Commission) to the new generation of
leaders.2
The elevation
of 55-year-old Hu Jintao to vice president of the
state during the Ninth People's Congress (NPC) in
1998 was the first major sign of the rise of the
fourth generation of leaders. Along with Hu, two
other Politburo members in their 50s, Wu Bangguo
and Wen Jiabao, are now in charge of China's industrial,
agricultural, and financial affairs on the State
Council where they serve as vice premiers. Zeng
Qinghong, who is in his late 50s, is now the head
of the Party's Organization Department and is in
charge of personnel affairs in the CCP. The rise
of the fourth generation of leaders is most evident
at the provincial and ministerial levels. Li Changchun,
55, the youngest in the Politburo, serves as Party
boss of Guangdong (now China's richest province).
Li Keqiang, 44, was recently appointed Governor
of Henan (now China's most populous province). Last
year, all ministries and provinces went through
a reshuffling of their top leadership. After the
rearrangement, 14 of the total of 29 ministers in
the State Council were born in the 1940s. So were
12 Party bosses and 21 governors and mayors in the
total of 31 provinces and directly administered
cities.3
Although
the top Chinese leadership still is largely ruled
by the third generation of cadres, elites in their
50s and late 40s (young by Chinese standards) are
aggressively beginning to take the helm in both
central and local administrations. Suggesting now
that the political future of these prominent individuals
in the new-generation leadership is assured would
be premature. In PRC history, many appointed heirs
(e.g., Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, and Wang Hongwen under
Mao; Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang under Deng) suddenly
fell from favor. One of the current front-runners
in the fourth generation of leaders--even if not
Hu Jintao--however, probably will succeed Jiang
in the not too distant future. More important, this
generation most likely will govern China at the
beginning of the next century.
What
are the main characteristics of the fourth generation
of leaders? In what ways do they resemble or differ
from their predecessors, Jiang Zemin and the third
generation of leaders? What are the principal criteria
and institutional restraints for advancement to
high office in this generation? In addition to intergenerational
differences, are there any important intragenerational
differences among the new leadership? The fourth
generation of leaders emerges at a time when China
faces many perplexing economic and socio-political
problems such as unemployment, income disparity,
and official corruption. What initiatives and constraints
do the fourth generation of leaders have as they
respond to all these challenges? To what extent
will the coming of age of the fourth generation
of leaders change the way Chinese politics operates?
Research on Chinese politics in general, and its
leadership in particular, will be invaluable if
it can begin to address any of these questions.
Summary
of Key Findings
This
paper shows that this generation of leaders is truly
unique because they had their formative years during
the Cultural Revolution (CR) and therefore can be
identified as members of the CR generation. The
CR, arguably the most extraordinary event in contemporary
China, and the dramatic changes thereafter, had
an ever-lasting impact on the collective characteristics
of this generation:
- Because
of the disillusionment that they experienced during
their formative years, the fourth generation of
leaders in general are less dogmatic ideologically
and more open minded than their predecessors.
- Because
of the national madness and fanatic violence that
they witnessed during the CR (and the lessons
they learned from it), the fourth generation of
leaders is less confrontational and more compromising
than their predecessors in dealing with both factional
politics and social unrest.
- Because
of all kinds of hardships they went through at
a young age, especially those who were sent to
the countryside to work as farmers for years or
even a decade, they have a deep understanding
of China, particularly its problems. As a result,
they probably are more capable in dealing with
tough challenges that the country faces.
- Because
of their common technical educational backgrounds,
their domestic and foreign policies are likely
to be technocratic.
This
paper also argues that the fourth generation of
leaders is distinctive not only for its shared characteristics,
but also for its intragenerational differences.
The fourth generation of leaders is more diversified
than previous generations of CCP leaders in terms
of formative experiences, political solidarity,
career paths, and occupational backgrounds:
- Although
members of this generation of leaders share similar
memories of the CR, they often have a diverse
spectrum of political affiliations. This generation
of leaders can be divided into three distinct
groups based on the period in which they joined
the Party: prior, during, and after the CR.
- Unlike
the previous generations of leaders who usually
shared such strong bonding experiences as the
Long March, the Anti-Japanese War, and the Socialist
Transformation, this generation of leaders lacks
political solidarity. Members of the fourth generation
of leaders were often on conflicting political
sides during their formative years.
- There
are now more diversified channels through which
new leaders can advance their political careers.
Nepotism and favoritism in various forms, for
example, school ties, blood ties, mishu
(personal secretaries), and tongxiang (fellow
provincials), have played a very important role
in elite promotion. But at the same time, even
the political establishment is strongly restricting
nepotism and favoritism. Deputies in both the
Party Congress and the NPC increasingly have used
their votes to prevent both princelings and those
favored by top leaders from being elected.
- Although
both the third and fourth generations of leaders
are known for the predominance of technocrats,
more lawyers and financial experts are in the
fourth generation than in any previous generation.
All these
changes and trends will have strong implications
for the transformation of the Chinese political
system.
Sources
of Data and Methodology
This
paper is primarily part of the author's ongoing
study of Chinese technocrats and their generational
differentiation. A more quantitative analysis of
the fourth generation of leaders will appear in
a coming issue of The China Quarterly.4
A detailed discussion of the generational change
of the PRC leadership, including case studies and
more qualitative analysis, will be published in
the author's forthcoming book China's Leaders:
The New Generation.5
The data of this study are largely from the following
sources:
1. A
quantitative analysis of biographical information
about members of the fourth generation of leaders.
The data are based on two pools of comprehensive
biographical sources. The first pool includes data
on 298 political elites, obtained exclusively from
the 1994 revised edition of Who's Who in China,
which lists a total of 2,121 current leaders at
all levels above medium-sized city government.6
The 298 leaders under study are members of the youngest
group included in the volume, all of whom were born
between 1941 and 1956. The second pool is based
exclusively on biographical data of all members
of the 15th CC of the CCP and the 15th Central Commission
for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), which were released
to the public in 1999.7
This source contains a total of 459 top Party leaders
and almost half of them, 224, who were born between
1941 and 1956, are under scrutiny. The biographical
information of a total of 522 leaders from both
pools, including their demographic distribution,
educational backgrounds, and career paths, is coded
for analysis through a Microsoft Excel program.8
2. An
examination of informal networks of prominent figures
in the new generation, especially those who have
made their career advancement through school ties,
blood ties, patron-client connections such as work
experience as mishu. In addition to the above
data, this study uses other sources from Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and Japan, seeking verification from multiple
Chinese publications and the increasing availability
of Internet information from the PRC and elsewhere.9
3. A
qualitative examination of values and policies of
new leaders. For most of the PRC's history, differences
and conflicts in views and policy preferences among
leaders usually have been unknown to the public
until the political winner announces the defeat
of his enemy. But during the late 1990s, Chinese
leaders seem more accessible and more open about
their views and policies. In 1998, for example,
almost all newly appointed cabinet ministers appeared,
one at a time, on a prime-time talk show on China's
Central Television.10
In 1999, all provincial governors and party secretaries
did the same. Meanwhile, numerous books written
by, or about, new leaders recently have been published
in China.11
The Internet version of Renmin ribao (People's
Daily) now routinely provides links to the writings
and speeches of China's ministerial and provincial
leaders. The increasing transparency of the views
of individual leaders provides important information
about their policy preferences in dealing with domestic
issues and their perceptions of China's strategic
interests in a changing world.
Each
source represents a particular methodological approach.
By putting all of them together, however, we can
develop a comprehensive understanding of the main
characteristics of China's fourth generation of
leaders.
Defining
Political Elite Generations in China
Analysis
must start with concepts and their definitions.
The term 'political generations' is frequently used
but not carefully defined. Like many other biological
and sociological categories "ethnicity," "class,"
and "ideology," "generation" can be imprecise at
the boundaries.12
Defining "where one generation begins and another
ends" is arbitrary.13
In scholarly writings, generational boundaries often
are based on the combination of both birth year
and shared major life experiences during formative
years.14
In Chinese studies, a political generation is often
defined as a group of birth cohorts within approximately
15 years.15
These age cohorts have experienced the same major
historical events during their formative years (described
as between approximately 17 and 25 years of age).16
The term
"political generations" that many sinologists have
used in their studies may be more accurately identified
as "political elite generations" because the concept
has often been based on the distinctive political
experience of elites.17
One can identify five political elite generations
in CCP history: 1) the Long March veterans, 2) the
Anti-Japanese War officers, 3) the Socialist Transformation
cadres, 4) the CR grown-ups, and 5) the Economic
Reform elites (see table 1).18
This
categorization is also identical to the generational
classification of China's leadership used by the
current Chinese authorities. This scheme is, of
course, highly political because Jiang Zemin has
identified himself as the "core of the third generation
of leaders," and used this identity to consolidate
his political legitimacy as an heir to Deng. As
both a Communist student activist in France in the
early '20s and a member of the Long March, Deng
should not be seen in the same generation as Hu
Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. But by identifying Deng
as the core of the second generation and himself
as the core of the third, Jiang skipped the real
core members of the second generation, such as Hu,
Zhao, Wan Li, and Qiao Shi.19
More importantly, by appointing the core members
of the next generation, Jiang has attempted to diminish
the pressure of power contenders in his own generation,
such as Li Peng and Zhu Rongji. Similarly, Hu Jintao,
Zeng Qinghong, and their same-age cohorts, who used
to be identified as the 'third echelon' (disan
tidui), are now more inclined to be seen as
the core of the fourth generation that is in line
to succeed Jiang.
Table
1
Political Elite Generations in Communist China
In studies
of Chinese political elites, generational classification
based on age should also allow for some exceptions.
For instance, Hu Yaobang is usually seen as a member
of the second generation of leaders, although he
took part in the Long March (Hu was one of the youngest
people in the March). Most political leaders in
the PRC, however, fit into the generational classification
listed on table 1. For example, the formative years
of a majority of the third-generation leaders occurred
after the Japanese occupation. Among the 24 members
of the Politburo in 1998, only one joined the Party
before 1945.20
Most of them began their careers during the Socialist
Transformation in the 1950s.
The
CR Generation and the Fourth Generation of Leaders
How is
the fourth generation of leaders defined? On what
basis does one determine the age cohorts of this
generation? The fourth generation is composed of
those who grew up, or had their formative years,
during the CR. Generally, they acquired their first
political experiences in the course of the CR. This
study defines the CR generation as the one that
consists of those who were born between 1941 and
1956. They were 10 to 25 years old when the CR began
in 1966. They are 43 to 58 years old in 1999. Determining
the cutoff age of this generation is somewhat arbitrary.
Yet this definition is largely based on both the
"15-year span of a generation" and "formative years
between 17 and 25." The oldest among this group
was 25 years old when the CR began, and some may
have finished college and started working by the
mid-60s. The youngest member was 10 years old, a
bit too young to be an active participant, but certainly
old enough to have memories of the beginning of
the CR. Most of them were either in high school
or in college in 1966, and therefore a majority
of them served as Mao's Red Guards. They were the
most active participants of the CR. The so-called
three old classes (laosanjie), the high school
classes of '66, '67, and '68, constituted a large
portion of the CR generation. Some were among the
twelve million young men and women who were sent
to the countryside in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Some later returned to school to complete their
education, especially after 1977, when Deng reinstituted
entrance examinations for higher education. They
managed to get their careers back on-track (see
figure 2).
The CR
certainly affected this generation of leaders in
ways that were remarkably different from other generations.
Despite some important differences between subgroups
of this generation, virtually all of them believed
in Mao and Maoism (at least in the early stages
of the CR). Later, however, they were disillusioned
and felt manipulated, or even betrayed. Their idealism
was shattered, their energy wasted, their education
lost, and their careers interrupted. Some scholars
argue that, as a result of the CR, this generation
also "acquired a variety of political skills and
. . . the habit of independent thinking."21
As a Western journalist described them, members
of the CR generation "learned hard lessons about
their society and its political system."22
Many fourth-generation leaders are outspoken about
how the CR affected their political attitudes. For
example, Chen Zhili, new minister of Education and
a rising star among the fourth-generation leadership,
wrote in 1999 that "the great calamity of the CR
inflicted upon my family and myself made me first
wander and wonder, and then wake up to reality,
becoming politically and intellectually mature."23
One important
conceptual distinction should be made here: the
fourth generation of leaders is the CR generation,
but not vice versa. This is the distinction between
political elite generation and political generation.
In the CR generation, those who had a college education
and/or became political leaders were only the tip
of the iceberg. An overwhelming majority of the
CR generation lost the opportunity to be educated
during the CR and now often face unemployment and
such other problems as the increasing cost of educating
their children and caring for their parents. There
are profound differences among the members of the
CR generation.
Figure
2
China: PRC Fourth-Generation Leaders
An interesting
phenomenon in China today is that many leading figures
in various walks of life are members of the CR generation.
These include leaders of the dissident community
such as Wei Jingsheng, Wang Juntao, and Wang Xize;
Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige in film-making; Chen
Yifei and Luo Zhongli in fine arts; Liang Xiaosheng
and Wang Shuo in literature; Jing Yidan and Yang
Dongping in mass media; Li Xiaohua and the Liu brothers
in business; He Qinglian and Hu Angang in economics;
Li Yinhe and Jin Dalu in sociology; and Zhu Xueqin
and Qin Hui in history. They differ profoundly from
each other, but they are all very much aware of
their CR identities and often attribute their careers
to the lessons learned, the hardship endured, and
the wisdom derived during the CR.24
For example, Hu Angang, an economist at China's
Academy of Social Sciences, spent seven years at
a collective farm in Heilongjiang during the CR.
He recently claimed that "one who has no knowledge
of rural China does not know about China; one who
does not understand China's poverty-stricken regions
does not have a real understanding of China."25
After becoming a well-known economist in China's
capital, Hu has continued to frequently visit the
rural areas in poor and remote provinces.
Within
the fourth generation of leaders, there are some
important contrasting subgroups, shaped by variables
such as when they graduated from college, when they
joined the Party, and what their class or family
backgrounds were. A survey of the period during
which leaders joined the Party, for example, presents
an interesting finding: about half of the fourth
generation of leaders (50.9 percent in the first
pool and 48.6 percent in the second) joined the
CCP during the decade of the CR. This is surprising
because one of the major criteria of the elite recruitment
policy during the Deng era, particularly in the
early 1980s, was to eliminate those "beneficiaries'
of the CR," people who advanced their political
careers during that decade. Apparently, no sanctions
are taken against young political activists from
the CR taking leadership positions. They differ
significantly from those who joined the CCP either
before or after the CR. Those who joined the Party
before 1966 were often labeled "revisionists" or
"capitalist roaders," and some were persecuted.
Those who joined the Party soon after the CR were
usually the people who had long been denied the
opportunity for a political career because of their
class and occupational backgrounds. Liu Mingkang,
vice Governor of Fujian and a senior economist with
an MBA from the University of London, did not join
the Party until 1988. Xu Kuangdi, Mayor of Shanghai,
joined the Party as recently as 1983. These people
were politically inconspicuous before the 1980s,
when many of them worked as engineers or college
professors. In about a decade, they have risen to
China's top leadership positions.
Within
the fourth generation, variations in joining the
Party suggest that seniority of Party membership,
which was crucial in the promotion of political
elites for most of the PRC history, has now become
less relevant. More important, this generation of
leaders lacks political solidarity. Similar to the
leadership in post-Communist Russia, China's fourth
generation of leaders may lack a common ideology
and a willingness to commit to the existing political
system. They also lack a fundamental consensus on
major socio-economic policies.26
Quantitative
Findings and Contrasting Trends
This
section presents quantitative findings in three
aspects of the fourth generation of leaders that
deserve close attention: 1) the uneven distribution
of birthplace, with local leaders often selected
from their native places; 2) the dominance of technocrats
and the emergence of lawyers, economists, and financial
experts; and 3) the role of informal networks in
elite promotion and institutional restraints on
nepotism. In each of these three aspects, contrasting
trends coexist. The interactions of these conflicting
trends will determine the future direction of the
elite formation and the political participation
in the country.
Birthplace:
Uneven Distribution, Localism, and Countermeasures
Several recent studies of post-Mao leadership show
an over-representation of elites who were born in
eastern China, especially in Jiangsu and Shandong
Provinces.27
This trend of unbalanced representation by birthplace
is also evident in this study of the fourth generation
of leaders (see table 2). The largest proportion
of the fourth generation of leaders in both pools,
about 40 percent, are from eastern China, especially
from Jiangsu and Shandong. In the 1999 pool, only
1.8 percent of the leaders were born in Guangdong
and 2.7 percent in Sichuan. This contrasts with
the early years of the reform when the country was
controlled largely by "strong men" from Guangdong
(e.g. Ye Jianying) and Sichuan (e.g., Yang Shangkun,
Zhao Ziyang, and indeed Deng himself), who appointed
many of their fellow natives to important positions.28
The large
portion of the third and fourth generations of leaders
who were born in Shandong and Jiangsu is due to
several factors: the legacy of the Anti-Japanese
War, during which many third-generation leaders
joined the army from Shandong, more advanced educational
systems in some regions, and the correlation between
economic wealth and the formation of political elites.
The high percentage of Shandong natives in leadership,
some speculate, stems partially from the role of
Zhang Quanjing, a native of Shandong and former
head of the CCP Organization Department. Zhang did
not get enough votes to be elected to the CC in
the 15th Party Congress largely because of his history
of regional favoritism.29
Similarly, the high percentage of Jiangsu natives
in leadership may be, in part, because Jiang Zemin,
a Jiangsu native, likes to promote his fellow Jiangsuese.
Jiang was also known for favoritism in appointing
many members of the "Shanghai Gang" to the central
leadership.
Table
2
Distribution of Birthplaces, by Province, of the
Fourth and the Third Generations of Leaders
Source
and Notes: Liao and Fan, Zhongguo renming da, (the
1994 edition); and Shen, Zhonggong di shiwujie
zhongyang weiyuanhui zhongyang zhongyang jilü
jiancha weiyunahui weiyuan minglu. China
News Analysis, (July 1-15, 1997), Li and White"The
Fifteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
Party," 246. Population and GDP data are calculated
from Zhongguo tongji nianjian, 1996 (China
Statistical Yearbook, 1996), State Statistical Bureau,
comp. (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1996),
42-43, and 73. Percentages do not add up to 100
due to rounding. The data were accumulated and tabulated
by the author.
Nepotism
based on native places has faced much resistance
even from the Party establishment. Some institutional
arrangements have been made to curtail over-representation
of certain regions in the central leadership. In
the 15th CC, all but one of the thirty-one province-level
administrations have two full members.30
No province as such has more than two full seats
in the 15th CC. This pattern of distribution can
also be found in China's six greater military regions
of which each occupies two seats in the full membership
of the CC. Also, each province and ministry has
one representative in the CCDI. Hu Angang even proposed
a "one province, one vote" system for the membership
of the Politburo. In his view, this would give every
province a voice in Party policy and narrow the
disparity between coastal and inland provinces.31
Another
important trend in the formation of provincial and
municipal leadership during the reform era is the
selection of local officials for leadership positions
in their native areas. This trend challenges the
"law of avoidance" by which mandarins were prohibited
from serving in their native provinces and counties,
a policy characteristic of traditional China for
centuries that continued during the Mao era.32
But this has changed during the reform era.33
The trend of selecting local elites from the same
region seems to continue in this new generation
of leaders: 47 percent of provincial and municipal
leaders in the 1994 pool and 46 percent in the 1999
pool work in their native provinces, percentages
are higher than those of the third generation (37
percent).
These
findings are closely connected with two recent developments
in China's civil service: the reform of the Chinese
nomenklatura system and the local cadre elections.
The nomenklatura system has been the hallmark of
the personnel systems of Communist regimes.34
Since the 1980s, the system has changed in China:
the traditional policy was that appointees must
be chosen by superior organizations two levels above;
now, immediately superior administrative levels
choose appointees.35
In practice, this means that provincial party secretaries
and governors are responsible for appointing the
"second tier" provincial level officials and mayoral
and prefecture heads of medium- and small-sized
cities. As a result, the total number of cadres
who are supposed to be appointed by the CCP Organization
Department decreased from 13,000 to 2,700.36
The lists of names for the province-level nomenklatura
are now composed disproportionately of people from
the province in question.
The trend
toward recruitment of more native-born elites is
strengthened by the local cadre elections and by
the "election with more candidates than seats" (cha'e
xuanju), which has been adopted in Party congresses
in various levels (from grass-roots to the central
committee) since 1992. As a result, governors and
Party secretaries have increasingly acted as representatives
of their provincial interests, rather than satraps
of the central authorities. In the 1990s, local
people's congresses occasionally even have refused
to approve candidates endorsed by the central authorities,
producing what the Chinese official journal, Liaowang,
called "unexpected results."37
The central
authorities certainly are aware of the trend in
selecting local officials from their native places.
The CCP Organization Department has recently made
efforts to limit the number of provincial top leaders
who work in their native areas. In June 1999, it
issued "The Regulation of Cadre Exchange," which
specifies that 1) county and municipal top leaders
should not be selected from the same region; 2)
those who head a county and city for over ten years
should be transferred to another place; and 3) provincial
leaders should be more frequently transferred to
another province or to the central government.38
In 1999, only six provincial party secretaries served
in the province in which they were born (seven in
1998 and nine in 1997). The tension between the
demand for regional representation and the restraint
on the rise of localism has become a crucial issue
in Chinese politics. This is, of course, not entirely
new in the PRC history. What is new is the growing
public awareness of this tension and ever stronger
institutional and popular resistance toward both
the political control from the center and region-based
favoritism.
Educational
Background: Dominance of Technocrats
and Rise of Lawyers and Economists
An important change of leadership in China during
the reform era is the dramatic increase in the number
of political elites with higher education, especially
those majoring in engineering and the natural sciences.
This study of the fourth generation of leaders confirms
the trend (see figure 3). In the 1994 pool, approximately
90 percent of leaders received tertiary education
or above; among them, 72.1 percent attended a university
and 9.1 percent have postgraduate degrees. In the
1999 pool, over 98 percent of leaders received tertiary
education or above. The percentage of those who
received postgraduate degrees also increased to
17.4 percent, almost double that of the 1994 pool.
The percentage of postgraduate degrees and four-year
college degrees in the fourth generation (81.2 percent
in the first pool and 76.3 percent in the second)
is higher than that of the third generation (58.6
percent).
Figure
3
Education Trends of Third-and Fourth-Generation
Leadership
While
some leaders in the third generation attended schools
in both former Communist-bloc and Western countries,
no one in the fourth generation of leaders studied
in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.
This situation should not be surprising because
between 1949 and the early 1960s, the period during
which the third generation of leaders attended college,
China sent about 11,000 students abroad, an overwhelming
majority of whom went to the Soviet Union and Eastern
European countries.39
Now some of them have become top leaders in the
country. Seven of 22 current full Politburo members
(32 percent) studied in the Soviet Union and other
Eastern European countries, including four standing
members: Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Wei Jianxing, and
Li Lanqing.
China
did not send any significant numbers of students
abroad until 1978. According to a recent report
released from the official Xinhua News Agency, from
1978 to 1998, China sent about 293,000 people to
103 countries as students or visiting scholars.40
Over half of the total (160,000) went to the US.41
Among these 293,000 students and visiting scholars,
96,000 (32.8 percent) returned to China.42
From 1992 to 1998, the rate of those who returned
increased by 13 percent each year, partly due to
China's reform policy and rapid economic and social
development.43
Returned scholars and students also have emerged
in the fourth generation of leaders under study.
In the 1994 pool, six leaders received their degrees
from foreign universities (mainly Europe and North
America). A few leaders had academic experience
in the US as visiting scholars. For example, Chen
Zhili worked at Pennsylvania State University from
1980 to 1982. Jiang Enzhu, director of the Hong
Kong Branch of the Xinhua News Agency, was a visiting
senior research fellow in both the Institute of
International Affairs at Harvard and the Brookings
Institution. The presence of the Western-trained
elites in China's top leadership, however, is still
marginal.
Probably
the most important difference between the third
and fourth generations lies in the distribution
of disciplinary training. Table 3 shows the distribution
of academic majors among those who have a tertiary
education or above in the 14h CC and two study pools
of the fourth generation of leaders. The members
of the 14th CC consisted mainly of the third generation
of leaders. This comparison reveals several important
trends. First, the predominance of those trained
in engineering and natural sciences is evident in
both generations (the relatively low percentage
on the 14th CC may be because the academic majors
of 36.7 percent of the study pool were unknown).
These engineers- or scientists-turned-politicians
can be defined as technocrats, people who have three
traits: technical educations, professional experience,
and high posts. In a more inclusive definition,
the category of technocrats also includes experts
in economics and finance.44
Using this definition, technocrats account for 65.9
percent in the 1994 pool and 56.9 percent in the
1999 pool. The real number of technocrats in the
fourth generation of leaders should be even higher,
because some who attended the military academy also
studied engineering.45
Table
3
Comparison of the Distribution of Academic Majors
of Members of the 14th Central Committee of the
CCP and the Fourth Generation of Leaders
Source and Notes: Data on the Fourteenth
Central Committee are from Zang Xiaowei, "The Fourteenth
Central Committee of the CCP," 797 and Li and White,
"The Fifteenth Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party," 250. Data on the fourth generation
of leaders are from Liao and Fan, Zhongguo
renming da, (the 1994 edition); and Shen,
Zhonggong di shiwujie zhongyang weiyuanhui zhongyang
zhongyang jilü jiancha weiyunahui weiyuan minglu.
The data were accumulated and tabulated by the author.
Percentages do not add up to 100 due to rounding.
Second,
table 3 shows that the percentage of the fourth
generation of leaders who are trained in economics
and management, including finance, accounting, and
statistics, is about three times higher than that
of the 14th CC. Currently, young leaders who are
in charge of China's financial system are usually
economists by training. Dai Xianglong, governor
of the People's Bank, Li Jinhua, auditor-general
of the State Council, Jin Renqing, vice minister
of Finance and director of State Administration
of Taxation, and Wang Chengming, party Secretary
of the People's Bank, are all economists who graduated
from China's Central Institute of Finance and Banking
before the CR. Just a few years ago, the most important
posts in China's financial system were usually occupied
by third-generation leaders who were trained as
engineers.
Another
important difference between the third and fourth
generations is that the number of lawyers increased
among the recently elected young leaders. In the
14th CC, the percentage of those trained in law
was extremely low (0.6 percent), but in the fourth
generation of leaders, 15 (5.5 percent) in the 1994
pool and 7 (3.2 percent) in the 1999 pool are graduates
of law schools, such as the Beijing Institute of
Political Science and Law. These lawyer-turned-politicians
probably will follow the Party line in dealing with
tough issues. However, the emergence of lawyers
in provincial and ministerial leadership reflects
the efforts of the central authorities to establish
and consolidate the Chinese legal system during
the post-Deng era. China probably has issued more
laws and regulations during the 1990s than any other
country in the same period. In the early 1980s,
there were only 3,000 lawyers in a country of more
than one billion people. By 2000, China probably
will have 150,000 lawyers (the growth rate is even
more rapid than in the United States, for better
or worse!).46
The contrasts
among these groups in terms of their educational
experiences and occupational identities are important
variables that contribute to diversity of the new
generation of leaders. Engineers, economists, and
lawyers all are professional experts, but variations
in their expertise will likely lead to differences
in their political perspectives and policy choices.
While engineers and economists tend to rely more
on their own expertise in policymaking, lawyers
may be more concerned about the procedures of decisionmaking
and the socio-political consequences of policies.
Informal
Networks and Their Limits: School Ties,
Princelings, and Mishu
One of the most important trends regarding the elite
transformation in the reform era is the crucial
role of informal networks, school ties (i.e., the
Qinghua network), blood ties (i.e., children of
high-ranking cadres), and patron-client ties (i.e.,
work experience as mishu), in the recruitment
of elites. We now widely know that a significant
portion of top leadership posts in both the Party
and the state, in both central and provincial government,
are occupied by graduates of Qinghua University,
China's leading engineering school.47
The over-representation of Qinghua graduates is
also evident in the fourth generation of leaders.
It includes state leaders such as Hu Jintao and
Wu Bangguo as well as provincial top leaders, such
as Tian Chengping, 53, Party secretary of Shanxi,
and Li Jiating, 51, governor of Yunnan, and Xi Jinping,
43, acting Party secretary of Fujian. The number
of Qinghua-trained leaders in this study is twice
that of graduates of Beijing University. About 18
percent of the 15th CC members are also Qinghua
graduates. During the reform era, Qinghua has worked
to form an active network of alumni associations.
For example, the number of alumni association members
exceeded 2,000 in Shanghai and 1,000 in Guangzhou
as early as in the mid-1980s, a period in which
Qinghua graduates occupied top leadership posts
in these two cities. The over-representation of
Qinghua graduates in leadership, however, has recently
met resistance. For example, Zhang Xiaowen, president
of Qinghua and alternate of the 14th CC, was not
reelected in the 15th CC.
In addition
to school ties, having "blood ties," such as being
the child of a high-ranking official, is important
for the career advancement of the fourth-generation
leaders. Previous studies of the third generation
of leaders in the post-Mao era had similar findings.
Many of the princelings in the third generation
of leaders suffered tough times in their childhood.
Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, and Zhou Jiahua, for example,
all came from the families of Communist martyrs.
They participated in the Communist revolution during
the early years of their political careers. But
the princelings of the fourth generation usually
have had a privileged life (though in some cases
the privileged life was interrupted briefly during
the first few years of the CR). Because of this,
they are less secure than leaders of the third generation,
who could stand on their own. This was reflected
in the election of the 15th CC in 1997. Many candidates
with princeling backgrounds did not get elected
because of opposition by the congress deputies.
Bo Xilai, son of Bo Yibo and mayor of Dalian, was
an example. Four princelings, Deng Pufang, Xi Jinping,
Liu Yandong, and Wang Qishan, were among the seven
alternate members who received the fewest votes.
This suggests that nepotism in its various forms
has received growing opposition, not only from Chinese
society, but also from deputies of the Party Congress.
Patron-client
ties, especially work experience as personal assistants
to senior leaders or as office directors, also play
an important role in elite formation among the new
generation of leaders.48
In the PRC the post of mishu long has served
as a steppingstone for political elites. Song Ping,
standing member of the Politburo in the 1980s, was
Zhou Enlai's mishu in the late 1940s. Hu
Qiaomu, also a member of the Politburo in the 1980s,
served as Mao's mishu in the 1940s. During
the CR, Chen Boda, standing member of the Politburo,
served as Mao's mishu earlier in his career.
Wang Ruilin, deputy director of the General Political
Department of the PLA, served as Deng's mishu
for over three decades prior to his current post.
The fourth generation probably has had more mishu-turned-leaders
than any previous generation. This study shows that,
among the fourth generation of leaders, about 41
percent had work experience either as mishu,
or as office directors. Table 4 shows some members
of the fourth-generation leadership in the study
pools who had work experience as office director
and/or mishu. They usually work as mishu
and/or office directors for a few years and then
are promoted to much higher leadership posts.
The large
number of mishu and office directors in the
fourth-generation leadership is because senior leaders
in the second and third generations relied heavily
on the assistance from young, intelligent, and well-educated
mishu. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao served as
mishu and office directors. Indeed, Wen Jiabao
served as an assistant to three top leaders, Hu
Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang and Jiang Zemin, at different
times. While Hu and Zhao were purged as a result
of a power struggle, Wen remarkably survived and
even was promoted. This example certainly shows
Wen's "intelligence" and political capacity. In
June 1999, the provincial Party committee of Heilongjiang
selected a large number of young cadres with advanced
degrees to serve as assistants to top municipal
leaders in the province.49
The central authorities have made some efforts to
limit the nepotism and corruption that are related
to the growing power of mishu in provincial
and ministerial levels.50
But this trend probably will not change, as some
of the rising stars in the center such as Hu, Wen,
and Zeng Qinghong have made important career advancement
by having worked as mishu to top leaders.
Conclusions
and Implications
What
do all the data and analysis tell us about the real
nature of the fourth generation of leaders, and
what are the implications for Chinese politics in
the future? What is fascinating about the fourth
generation of leaders is their diversity, and many
seemingly contradictory trends engendered. The memories
of the CR of the fourth generation are shared while
their individual experience in it varied. The demands
for regional representation are made at the same
time that restraints are placed on the rise of localism.
Lawyers and economists have emerged as political
leaders, while technocrats still manage to dominate
most government and Party posts. The prevalence
of political nepotism has met increasingly strong
opposition even within the political establishment.
Table
4
Some Members of the Fourth Generation of Leaders
Having Worked as Office Director and/or Mishu
Source: Liao and Fan,
[comp.] Zhongguo
renming da cidian,1994 edition; Shen,
Zhonggong
di shiwujie zhongyang weiyuanhui zhongyang zhongyang
jilü jiancha weiyunahui weiyuan minglu;
and He Pin and Gao Xin. Zhonggong
"Taizidang" (China's Communist "princelings").
Taipei: Shih-pao Ch'u-pan Kung-ssu, 1992. The data
were tabulated by the author.
The replacement
of an older generation of leaders by a younger one
in any society can be viewed as a "regenerative
force" for a stagnant country, or as an offering
for greater change. This situation is particularly
relevant to China today when the country is undergoing
rapid transformation and faces many perplexing economic
and socio-political choices. The Chinese economy,
after over a decade of double-digit growth, has
slowed during the past two years. This slow is related
partly to the East Asian financial crisis, but mainly
to the decline in domestic consumer spending. The
Chinese people are not willing to spend money despite
the fact that private savings are remarkably high.
Under these circumstances, the rise of younger and
more capable leaders at the top will psychologically
influence the behavior of consumers. Consumer confidence
will contribute to the economic growth of the country.
One may argue that nothing is more essential to
China now than a younger and dynamic Chinese leader,
a figure like Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s
or Bill Clinton in the early 1990s.
But paradoxically,
what also is most evident in Chinese politics at
present is the broad shift from an all-powerful
single leader such as Mao and Deng, to greater collective
leadership, as is now characteristic of the Jiang
era. Post-Jiang leaders, because of institutional
restraints and their own limitations including the
lack of political solidarity, are highly likely
to rely more on power-sharing, negotiation, consultation,
and consensus-building than their predecessors.
As compared with their predecessors, the fourth
generation of leaders will be far more flexible,
more pragmatic, and less dogmatic in responding
to socio-economic pressures and political demands
within the country. Tough life experiences fostered
their political ability and practical strength in
dealing with problems. This generation of leaders
probably will have a better understanding of the
needs and concerns of their CR generation peers,
and therefore will make the regime more accountable
to the Chinese people. Among the third generation
of leaders, Zhu Rongji is famous for his intelligence,
his eloquence, and his human touch. There are more
leaders like Zhu in the fourth-generation leadership.
A member of the fourth-generation leadership recently
said, "for China the real issue is about the tension
between economic efficiency and social justice.
The real challenge for policymakers, therefore,
is to achieve the best possible equilibrium."51
As for
China's foreign policies, Yang Jieci, a newly appointed
vice minister of Foreign Affairs and a distinguished
member of the fourth generation, said that China's
policymakers should learn from Deng whose foreign
policies represent "a marvelous combination of principles
and flexibility."52
While this generation of leaders will be diversified
in their foreign policies as well, most of them
tend to emphasize (or perhaps overemphasize) the
importance of economic might, more specifically,
the role of science and technology in what they
often call the information age. They will work hard
to change China's international image. They are
cynical about the moral superiority of the West,
resentful of Western arrogance, and doubtful about
the adoption of a Western economic and political
system to China. Yet, even at the time of crises,
such as the tragic incident in Belgrade, they understand
the need for cooperation rather than confrontation.
What has emerged from the recent incidents should
not be apprehension over how quickly and unpredictably
Sino-US relations can change, but rather how rationally
and capably current top leaders, on both sides,
are able to respond to crises. A review of the recent
writings and interviews of the fourth generation
of leaders seems to reaffirm this observation.53
In short, their policies toward the US will be firm,
but not aggressive.
The full
ramifications of the rise of the fourth generation
of leaders, of course, await further study. China
is in the midst of rapid changes. Greater changes
seem inevitable as this more diversified, more energetic,
less dogmatic generation of leaders aggressively
takes the helm of power in China at the dawn of
a new century.
SCHEDULE
Institutions
in Chinese Politics:
Trends and Prospects
H.
Lyman Miller
Barring
unforeseen revolutionary change of regime or regime
collapse, institutional developments in the PRC
will likely continue trends begun at the beginning
of the Deng era and continued under the post-Deng
Jiang leadership. Continuity in the process of institutionalization
of politics and in the fortunes of particular institutions
is enforced by continuity in the leadership's agenda
of goals and priorities. The commitment to the policies
of "reform and opening up" has favored adherence
to the predictable institutional processes.
Over
the past 20 years, China has seen the advance of
a pattern of steady institutionalization in its
political processes. This pattern was deliberately
promoted by Deng Xiaoping from the beginning of
the reform era he inaugurated in the late 1970s
because it served his larger agenda of accelerating
China's rapid modernization. His relative success
in promoting institutionalization has made China's
politics far more stable, more orderly, and so more
predictable than during most of the Mao era.
The Jiang
Zemin leadership, both the beneficiary and the product
of Deng Xiaoping's efforts to institutionalize China's
political processes, has been strongly committed
to the larger modernization agenda Deng promoted.
Proceeding from this commitment, the Jiang leadership
has also advanced the institutionalization of politics
that Deng began. Aided by the steady decline of
the conservative opposition that constrained Deng,
the Jiang leadership has pressed farther ahead with
Deng's agenda than Deng was able.
The logic
of institutionalization and the fortunes of particular
institutions over the past 20 years has derived
from the agenda of regime priorities the Deng and
Jiang leaderships have pursued. These have been
economic development through marketization, integration
into the broader international political and economic
order, and military modernization. Because of this
continuity in leadership agenda (and barring unforeseen
revolutionary change of regime or outright regime
collapse), the patterns of institutional change
begun in the Deng years and continued by the Jiang
leadership will likely continue.
Institution-Building
in the Deng Era
Until
Communist regimes confront their "post-revolutionary"
transitions, institutions fare poorly in Communist
politics. An ideology that preaches, as Marxism-Leninism
does, that political institutions are transitory
"superstructural" reflections of relations of ownership
and power in the economic "base" of society, that
institutions must therefore change through revolution
as such relations change, and that the state itself
will ultimately wither away is intrinsically anti-institutional.
Under the leadership of both Lenin--despite his
ruthless emphasis on organizational discipline--and
especially Stalin, the institutions of the Soviet
party and state were created, altered, shuffled,
and sometimes discarded altogether according to
momentary needs of ideological vision and personal
power. With the passing of the founding revolutionary
generation and the emergence of post-Bolshevik leaders,
and beginning with the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev,
the CPSU replaced its agenda of social transformation
and adopted a post-revolutionary agenda of managing
modernization, codified in the 1961 Party program's
designation of the USSR as a "state of the whole
people." Thereafter, Soviet institutions, processes,
and routines stabilized--to the point of stultifying
stagnation under Brezhnev--as the agenda of politics
and the type of Soviet leader changed.
In China,
it is hard to imagine a leader as instinctively
suspicious of institutions as was Mao Zedong. Although
he contributed to the creation of the institutions
of the PRC modeled after those of the USSR in the
early 1950s, he spent the remainder of his leadership
years tearing them down for reasons of ideology
and personal power. The pattern of Central Committee
plenums after the 1956 Eighth CPC Congress signaled
the breakdown of Party institutional processes at
the top as the leadership lost the capacity to establish
consensus around policy decisions and as conflict
over power escalated. In the first three years after
the Congress--encompassing the Hundred Flowers and
anti-rightist campaigns and the Great Leap Forward--the
Central Committee held eight plenums, down through
the Lushan plenum in the summer of 1959. Over the
next three years, through 1962, the Central Committee
held only two plenums. And over the three years
from 1962 to 1965, the Central Committee held none
at all, a lapse indicating the leadership's inability
to achieve sufficient consensus to warrant convocation
of a plenum and place the final stamp of authority
on any policy decision at all. When the Central
Committee did finally meet in August 1966, its main
order of business was to authorize Mao's full-scale
assault on the institutional order itself, the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The institutions
of the Cultural Revolution era reflected Mao's ambivalence
regarding institutions. The revolutionary committees
and reconstructed Party organizations Mao sanctioned
after the demolition of Party and state institutions
in the Cultural Revolution's first two years operated
uncomfortably within a political order legitimated
only by appeal to Mao Zedong Thought, not with the
presumption of enduring institutional mandate. The
1975 state Constitution, itself a spare shadow of
the elaborate Soviet-inspired 1954 PRC Constitution,
incorporated provisions for the "mass democracy"
tactics that had demolished the standing institutional
order over the previous decade.
In the
post-Mao period, Deng Xiaoping's emphasis on conducting
politics through orderly institutional routines
contrasted starkly with Mao Zedong's innate suspicion
of institutions and his preference for spontaneous
mass action in politics. Although Deng himself was
a member of the generation of revolutionary founders,
he inaugurated the PRC's post-revolutionary phase,
signaled at the great watershed of PRC politics,
the 11th Central Committee's Third Plenum in December
1978. Paralleling the transition in the CPSU's agenda
in 1961, the plenum under Deng's leadership announced
that the foremost mission of the CPC was no longer,
as Mao insisted, "waging class struggle" under socialism,
but was instead developing the economy and improving
the livelihood of China's people. Where Mao had
seen the Party as the agent of perpetual class warfare--of
"continuing the revolution under the dictatorship
of the proletariat"--Deng understood the Party as
the manager of socialist modernization. In Mao's
eyes the institutions of the Party and state were
disposable at best and potentially oppressive, even
under socialism itself. Deng saw the institutions
of state as indispensable for implementing the Party's
modernization policies and as the regulatory agent
enforcing the discipline and order necessary for
those policies to succeed.
Based
on this transformed Party mission and alternative
agenda, Deng embarked on what must be regarded as
a vigorous program on institution-building. This
was apparent in several respects:
-
Proliferation of Institutions. Throughout
the Party and within the state, Deng promoted
the resurrection and refurbishing of old institutions
and the creation of new ones. In the Party, for
example, in 1980 the Secretariat was brought back
from Cultural Revolution extinction to coordinate
implementation of policy decisions made by the
Politburo and its Standing Committee throughout
the Party and state institutional hierarchies.
Central Committee departments and leadership small
groups re-emerged and proliferated. The National
People's Congress system resumed operation along
lines that had been normal until 1966. Through
the 1980s, a full-fledged system of functional
and procedural committees emerged that now contributes
routinely to the processes of NPC legislation.
Within the State Council, the number of state
commissions, ministries, and agencies grew relentlessly
despite repeated efforts of the top leadership
to scale them back. In inaugurating a renewed
effort at State Council reform in 1993, then Premier
Li Peng lamented that the previous efforts to
reduce and re-invent State Council bureaucracy
in 1983 and 1988 had actually ended up by increasing
it. Meanwhile, at lower levels, provincial and
local Party and government institutions saw a
parallel evolution. The revolutionary committee
structure established in the Cultural Revolution
was abolished in favor of a restored system of
Party and state institutions. These were themselves
reoriented toward administering the expanding
array of regulatory roles that governance of a
marketizing economy and, with it, a rapidly changing
society required, creating what Vivienne Shue
has called state sprawl in local government.54
- Regularization
of Institutional Process. In contrast to the
disruption of Party routines in the Mao period,
despite explicit stipulations in the 1956 Party
rules, Party Congresses and Central Committee
plenums in the Deng era and since have convened
fastidiously according to their respective five-year
and annual schedule prescribed by the 1982 Party
Constitution. Similarly, new National People's
Congresses have convened every five years, and
annual sessions have met routinely according to
constitutional provision. Within the state hierarchy,
term limits were established by the 1983 PRC Constitution
for leadership positions, including NPC chairman
and State Council premier, stipulations that have
been consistently observed since. Although the
role of state plans has changed dramatically in
step with the market transformation of China's
economy in the Deng period, the resumed process
of drafting and monitoring long-term development
plans and budgets has driven routines for long
chains of institutions throughout the post-Mao
period. This regularization of political process
in turn abetted the proliferation of policy institutions.
Specifically, policy research think-tanks and
the routine use of what Beijing calls the soft
sciences--the use of feasibility studies and Western-style
systems analysis--flourished in the 1980s and
into the 1990s. Paralleling comparable developments
during the post-Stalin "thaw" in the Khrushchev
era USSR and after, every Party and state institution
of any consequence in China now has associated
research institutions as a means of defending
and expanding bureaucratic turf in the larger,
increasingly complex policy process.
-
Emphasis on Institutional Discipline. At successive
levels of the Party, the Deng leadership created
discipline inspection commissions in 1978 that
have since attempted to monitor compliance with
Party statutes. At the February 1980 11th Central
Committee's Fifth Plenum, the Deng leadership
promulgated a detailed code of regulations for
the behavior of Party cadres. Within the state
hierarchy and with respect to broader society,
the Deng regime resumed the process of setting
down codes of socialist law begun in the 1950s
but abandoned in the intra-Party conflict of the
1960s. With the proliferation of laws and the
elaboration of the court system in the Deng era,
lawyers have emerged as one of the fast-growing
professions in the PRC. Enforcement and compliance,
of course, remain major problems, and the overall
trend may be difficult to assess in this respect.
But there is clear progress in some sectors, and
there is no doubt about the institution-reinforcing
intent of these legislative and regulatory efforts.
-
Transformation of Political Discourse. Consistent
with the change in Party and state mission, the
language of politics has changed in ways that
reinforce the overall trend of creeping institutionalization.
No longer is the vocabulary of political discourse
derived from the lexicon of Maoist class warfare.
Instead, the language of political reports to
Party congresses and plenums and to NPC sessions
seems more and more akin to the argot of budgets,
economic goals, social program priorities, and
foreign policy interests featured in the discourse
of non-Communist governments in other countries.
Stability and reform, not disorder and revolution,
became the watchwords of politics in China under
Deng Xiaoping.
Complementing
the Deng leadership's efforts to foster the institutionalization
of politics was a concurrent transformation of the
Party membership. This effort attempted at once
to encourage the retirement of the veteran revolutionary
generation who founded the PRC and dominated its
politics down through the 1980s, to purge cadres
and members recruited according to the radically
politicized criteria of the Cultural Revolution
years, and to recruit members and promote leaders
whose educational and professional expertise suited
the emphasis on economic and technical modernization
that Deng advocated in policy.
The success
of these efforts has changed the composition and
policy outlook of both the Party's top leadership
and its broader membership profoundly. The third-generation
Politburo leadership appointed around General Secretary
Jiang Zemin at the Fifteenth CPC Congress in September
1997 differs starkly from previous top Party leaderships
since 1949--including the so-called second-generation
leadership around Deng Xiao-ping that dominated
politics in the 1980s and early 1990s--in terms
of education, military experience, career patterns,
regional associations, and age on accession to top
leadership posts.55
Specifically
as compared to the Politburo membership appointed
around Deng Xiaoping at the Twelfth CPC Congress
in 1982, the Jiang Politburo, at 63 years old on
average, was nearly a decade younger. Of the 24
members of the Jiang Politburo, 18 had university
degrees; none of the 25 members of the 1982 Politburo
had a university degree, and only two had any university
training at all. Of the 18 university-educated leaders
in the Jiang Politburo, 17 had engineering or scientific
degrees. Where men from Sichuan and the provinces
subsumed under the former Central-South Party Bureau
predominated in the Deng leadership, 17 of 24 in
the Jiang leadership either hail from or worked
long portions of their careers during the reform
era in the five coastal provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu,
Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong and the two province-level
coastal cities of Tianjin and Shanghai. Of the 24
members of the Jiang leadership, 14 joined the Party
after 1949 and so had no personal experience in
the CPC's revolutionary struggle at all, while the
remainder joined either in the closing years of
World War II or in the 1946-1949 civil war years.
By contrast, in the 1982 Deng leadership, 23 of
25 leaders joined the Party before the 1935-1936
Long March. Finally, only the two professional military
leaders in the Jiang Politburo (Zhang Wannian and
Chi Haotian) have military experience; the remainder
has none at all. By contrast, 20 of 25 members of
the Deng Politburo had firsthand military experience,
and among them seven retained military leadership
roles at the time.
Turnover
of leaders at lower levels of the Party and state
hierarchy suggest even greater contrasts in terms
of education level, age, and expertise thanks to
the changes Deng fostered in Party recruitment.
Thus, future top leaderships are likely to replicate
and even increase the "technocratic" bent of the
present top leadership around Jiang Zemin as they
draw new members from the pool of leaders at levels
lower down. Also through the reform years, the Party
has grown dramatically, from 35 million members
at the time of the Eleventh Congress in 1977--immediately
after Mao's death--to 58 million members at the
Fifteenth. Much of this expansion reflected deliberate
efforts to recruit new members according to the
technocratic criteria reflected in promotions to
the Party top leadership levels, and particularly
from economic, managerial, and technical elites
emerging in the course of the economic reforms.
On the eve of the Fifteenth Congress, the Xinhua
news agency announced that over 43 percent of the
Party's members now had some level of university
education. By contrast, in 1978 only 12.8 percent
of the Party membership had at the senior high school
level or above. Clearly, thanks to the deliberate
efforts of Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues to transform
the Party membership according the modernization
goals he had established, the CPC has increasingly
become a party of emergent urban industrial, entrepreneurial,
and technical elites and no longer the vanguard
of worker and peasant proletarians.
The concurrent
efforts at institutionalizing the PRC's political
processes and at transforming the characteristics
and composition of the Party's leadership and broader
membership have produced a political order altogether
different from that which prevailed 25 years ago
under Mao Zedong's leadership. This is apparent
in several respects:
-
The Nature of the State. Increasingly since
1978, the PRC has become an authoritarian regulatory
state, not a totalitarian and transformational
one. The Communist leadership continues to reserve
decisionmaking in large areas of policy solely
to itself, although the steady institutionalization
of the political process, the incorporation of
social elites into the Party, and the reliance
on expertise have made the regime's authoritarian
politics far more consultative. Since 1978, the
regime understands its role as guiding the growth
of China's prosperity and power through marketization
on the domestic economy and participation in the
world political and economic order. Therefore,
its role domestically is to regulate the social
tensions and conflicts its goals of economic development
inevitably generates in Chinese society. Opening
what Tang Tsou called a broad zone of indifference
with respect to huge areas of social life, the
regime has tolerated a legitimate private sphere
and some measure of public associational activity
that Mao's totalitarian approach did not.
-
Politics Through Institutional Channels. The
relative success of Deng's effort to institutionalize
politics has meant that politics are now waged
within the broader hierarchies of party, state,
and military institutions and routines, not through
ad hoc extra-institutional mechanisms and mass
campaign tactics. This change appears particularly
striking with respect to relations between the
Party leadership and military brass. Throughout
the Mao and Deng eras, the extensive military
experience of the top Party leadership meant that
Party relations with the PLA were frequently mediated
through personal ties. The PLA brass could raise
issues of concern by treating directly with "Uncle
Ye" Jianying, Yang Shangkun, Deng himself, and
before that with Mao. The Jiang leadership, as
described before, is almost entirely civilian
in experience, and despite Jiang's extensive effort
to build personal relationships among the PLA
brass since becoming Military Commission chairman
in 1989, Party-military issues are now addressed
through institutional channels into the Politburo
and Secretariat. Meanwhile, comparable patterns
of interface prevail in the Party and state hierarchies.
Trends through the Deng years and since, in fact,
have shown repeatedly that even efforts to reduce
the by-products of institutionalization--excessive
bureaucracy and corruption--generate new institutions
and bureaucracy, not mass campaigns.
-
Transformation of Leadership Role and Style.
The institutionalization of politics and steady
retreat of the generation of revolutionary veteran
leaders through death and retirement through the
Deng years has changed the way the top leadership
interacts with the broader political order. Leaders
at the top--on the Politburo and its Standing
Committee--have clear-cut policy portfolio responsibilities
and sit atop of and speak for distinct institutional
hierarchies. Decisionmaking appears more consensual
and collective, and the role of the general secretary
appears increasingly one of refereeing among arrayed
institutional interests rather than one of charismatic
prophet. In part, the style of decisionmaking
may reflect the gradual narrowing of the spectrum
of ideological and policy outlooks that top leaders
reflect, thanks to Deng's efforts to match decisions
on leadership promotion to the kind of reform
policies he promoted. It is not, however, that
the top leadership no longer disagrees over the
political issues they confront--there is abundant
evidence that they have been seriously at odds
in the 1990s over policy toward the United States,
re-centralization of Beijing's role in the economy,
and reform of the state-owned enterprise system.
Nor have leadership cliques and personal ties
disappeared in Chinese politics, as the steady
advance of Jiang Zemin's "Shanghai gang" into
central positions in Beijing attests. What is
striking, however, is how much leadership differences
are played out within institutional channels and
behind a steady facade of leadership unity.
-
Relative Stability and Predictability. All
these trends have made Chinese politics far more
stable and predictable than in the Mao years.
Politics in China in recent years have played
out within routines generated by planning and
budget cycles, preparations for annual Central
Committee plenums and NPC sessions and quinquennial
Party and people's congresses, and work conferences
in various policy sectors. Meetings, policy proposals,
and paper flows have become the main fare of Chinese
politics since the Deng years, not extra-institutional
factional warfare and mass campaign tactics. The
significance of these developments analytically
is that episodes of unusual political conflict
are easier to spot because they deviate from the
regularity of institutional routines brought about
by Deng Xiaoping.
Institution-Building
in the Jiang Era
Perhaps
the foremost instance of the success of Deng's program
of institution-building was the process of post-Deng
succession and the consolidation of the Jiang Zemin
leadership itself. Jiang Zemin's reappointment as
Party general secretary at the 1997 Fifteenth Congress
without visible challenge--after eight years in
the post and following Deng Xiaoping's steady withdrawal
in the early 1990s from day-to-day involvement in
the leadership and his eventual death--stands as
the sole example in Communist politics anywhere
of the deliberate retirement of a paramount leader
in favor of a successor. Jiang's gradual accretion
through the early 1990s of the foremost positions
in the Party, state, and military hierarchies--unprecedented
since Mao's tenure in them in the 1950s--attests
to the importance of institutional standing in contemporary
politics, shored up by Jiang's gradual efforts to
build a power base in Beijing based on personal
ties by placing Shanghai cronies in the Central
Committee departments and elsewhere.
The outcome
of the most contentious leadership question at the
Fifteenth Congress--the political fate of then NPC
Chairman Qiao Shi and Premier Li Peng--also underscored
the degree to which institutional rule-following
has become established. The issue resulted directly
from the 1983 PRC Constitution's provision that
tenure as premier be limited to 2 five-year terms
and from the informal expectation that, with the
exception of the "core leader," members of the Politburo
retire from that body at age 70. By the 1998 Ninth
NPC, Li Peng would have served out his two terms
as premier and was expected to step down. Qiao Shi
by that time would have served only one term as
NPC chairman, but at 71 years old was liable to
the expectation that he retire from the Politburo.
In the months leading up to the congress, the Hong
Kong press was filled with rumors, leaks, and speculations
about debates over proposals to accommodate Li and
Qiao through the kind of institutional jerry-rigging
long a staple of Communist politics and at the expense
of institutional continuity. But these imaginings
turned out (true to form for the Hong Kong press)
to be wrong. In the end Qiao, together with all
five other Politburo leaders liable to the age 70
rule, retired, and Li Peng stayed on and took up
Qiao's post as NPC chairman the following spring.
The relative
smoothness of the succession was aided by the decline
of the conservative elders who complicated politics
for Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, both on policy questions
and on succession, as the failed tenure of Hu Yaobang
and Zhao Ziyang attests. The timely demise of Hu
Qiaomu and Li Xiannian in 1992, of Yao Yilin in
1994 and then Chen Yun in 1995 isolated Li Peng
as a conservative alternative without elder patrons,
while Deng Xiaoping's characteristically well-timed
passing from the scene only in 1997 abetted Jiang's
unchallenged position. Since then, Li Peng's political
strength has derived in part from his usefulness
to Jiang as a political counterweight to more liberalizing
leaders like Zhu Rongji, and in part to his capacity
to speak at the top for those retaining an interest
or ideological stake in preservation of the state-owned
enterprise (SOE) sector. Those include cadres in
the middle and lower levels of the State Council
and regional planning bureaucracies and the SOEs
themselves, as well as increasingly marginalized
remnant ideologues like Deng Liqun who view preservation
of the SOE sector as the badge of socialism itself
in China.
In policy
terms, this political evolution has aided the post-Deng
leadership in pressing ahead with reforms planned
in the early 1990s. At the Fifteenth Congress, Jiang
Zemin made clear both the post-Deng leadership's
allegiance to the broad framework of goals and priorities
set down by Deng Xiaoping at the beginning of the
reform era and its intention to press ahead aggressively
within that framework. The centerpiece of such efforts
sanctioned at the Congress was SOE reform, and some
of the most significant institutional changes since
then have derived from it.
A concerted
push on SOE reform has been in offing since the
1992 Fourteenth CPC Congress, which authoritatively
designated China's economic system as a "socialist
market economy," and the "Fifty Points" adopted
by the 1993 Third Plenum, which laid out general
guidance for concurrent SOE, taxation, banking,
and foreign trade reform. Action on these plans
was stalled by the unanticipated spike of high inflation
in 1994, which Zhu Rongji labored to curtail over
the following two years. That the Jiang leadership
intended to resume steps on the SOE front was clear
by the summer of 1995, when Jiang Zemin began touring
heavy industrial enterprises in Shanghai and the
northeast provinces and the People's Daily
began publishing front-page summaries of his remarks
on this score. When the December 1996 national conference
on economic work declared a victorious "soft landing"
from inflation, the leadership renewed its intention
to pursue SOE reform along lines set down in 1993.
In April 1997, the State Council publicized detailed
guidance on reorganizing viable enterprises and
dissolving bankrupt ones, establishing re-employment
centers for workers to be laid off in the process,
and erecting a supra-ministerial leading group--reminiscent
of a comparable group created to oversee implementation
of the 1985 science reforms--to supervise the process.
Jiang's political report at the Fifteenth Congress
provided authoritative sanction for the dismantling
of the SOE sector by stipulating that the predominance
of the state-owned sector is not what defines socialism
in China. The unanticipated Asian financial crisis
seemed to strengthen leadership resolve to push
ahead with the SOE reforms, not delay them.
In step
with the SOE reform push, the leadership announced
at the Ninth NPC in March 1998 a sweeping reorganization
of the State Council and plans for parallel revamping
of provincial state bureaucracies over a three-year
period. These institutional changes were not new--they,
too, had been sketched in the 1993 "Fifty Points,"
and Jiang Zemin signaled their resurrection in his
Congress report the previous fall. While billed
as a significant reduction of the State Council
organizations--from over 40 ministries and commissions
to 29--and a downsizing of its work force by half,
the focus of the intended changes affected the industrial
ministries and economic state commissions involved
in the SOE sector. Specifically:
- The
State Economic and Trade Commission (SETC), the
big winner in the State Council reshuffle, emerged
as the pre-eminent industrial and trade regulatory
body in the State Council with direct control
over several revamped industrial ministries.
- The
State Planning Commission (SPC), once one of the
most powerful bureaucracies in the Chinese political
order but in steady decline as the marketizing
reforms advanced through the Deng era, was left
with reduced planning and forecasting responsibilities.
- The
State Commission for Restructuring the Economy
(CRES), was elevated to a staff under the personal
direction of Premier Zhu Rongji, presumably to
aid him in pressing the industrial reforms ahead.
- The
reorganization of the industrial ministries was
intended to break once and for all the direct
bureaucratic link between them and the state-owned
enterprises they once managed. Meanwhile, the
purview of the Ministry of Labor was expanded
to encompass all the various insurance programs
previously managed among several ministries and
the new social security system under construction
as the safety net for industrial workers in all
sectors.
Most
of these institutional changes underscored the Jiang
leadership's activism behind reform. The rise in
prominence of the SETC accompanied the steady ascent
of Zhu Rongji. Its predecessor State Economic Commission
had been downgraded to an office by then Premier
Li Peng in launching a three-year program of economic
retrenchment in 1989. Zhu was appointed to the office
in moving to the center from Shanghai in June 1990.
Similarly, the CRES had been created by the aggressively
reformist Premier Zhao Ziyang, who directed it personally
thereafter, but Li Peng relegated it to secondary
status by appointing a lower-level official to lead
it in 1990. Together with the changes in stature
of the other two commissions, the elevation of CRES
recapitulates the configuration of supra-ministerial
commissions under Zhao Ziyang.
The other
significant institutional changes in the post-Deng
period have come in the military sector. These include:
-
Passage of the 1997 Defense Law, which codified
the PLA's mission and scope of operations on a
legal basis. The law did little to clarify the
ambiguity in the PLA's subordination to the Party
versus the PRC state that has been apparent since
Deng Xiaoping's only partially fulfilled Military
Commission reform of 1982, but it did underscore
the legalizing propensities of the Jiang leadership.
-
Reorganization of the Defense Industrial Sector.
In April 1998 the creation of a fourth general
department in the PLA--a General Armament Department--was
announced as part of a broader reorganization
of COSTIND and other research and development
and defense procurement agencies.
These
steps do not depart from the broader direction of
institutional reforms in China's military begun
in the 1980s by Deng Xiaoping, which included reorganization
of forces and military regions, resurrection and
revamping of military academy training, restoration
of ranks, and other steps. But the defense industrial
reform does underscore the emphasis given to military
modernization through technological upgrading by
the technocratic Jiang leadership, a trend evident
in the publicity it has given in the past two years
to science and technology as the key to China's
defense in the future.
Prospects
Barring
unforeseen revolutionary change of regime or regime
collapse, institutional developments in the PRC
will likely continue trends begun at the beginning
of the Deng era and continued under the post-Deng
Jiang leadership. Continuity in the process of institutionalization
of politics and in the fortunes of particular institutions
is enforced by continuity in the leadership's agenda
of goals and priorities. The commitment to the policies
of "reform and opening up" has favored adherence
to the predictable institutional processes. It has
also fostered the emergence and consolidation of
some kinds of institutions and has rendered others
obsolete. As long as the regime persists in this
policy agenda, the same logic will prevail. Also,
interaction with the international political and
economic order has in turn stimulated the creation
of institutions--such as the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs' Department of Arms Control and Disarmament--new
to the Chinese political system. International expectations
therefore now contribute to the stability of institutional
processes in ways that were not true before. Finally,
the relative success of Deng's program of institutionalization
over the past 20 years has created incentives to
abide by them and precedents making it harder to
deviate from them in the future.
A clear
test ahead of the progress of institutionalization
will be the next round of leadership succession,
perhaps at the Party's Sixteenth Congress and the
Tenth National People's Congress, scheduled by Party
and PRC constitutional mandate for 2002 and 2003,
respectively. Aside from Jiang Zemin himself (who
was already 71 at the time of the 1997 Party congress),
10 of the present Politburo line will be 70 or over
and thus liable to the informal expectation that
they retire. Among these 10 are four members of
the Politburo Standing Committee, including NPC
Chairman Li Peng and Premier Zhu Rongji. Neither
Li nor Zhu is required to step down from their state
posts, having served only a single term thus far,
although no leader has served more than one term
as NPC chairman since the 1983 PRC Constitution
was promulgated. But tenure as NPC chairman and
premier carry concurrent appointment to the Politburo
Standing Committee, and, as in the case of Qiao
Shi in 1997, Party rules may require they step down.
By this time Jiang himself may also follow the precedent
established by Deng and retire from his posts.
That
the Jiang leadership intends an orderly succession
seems clear from appointments at the 1997 Party
congress and from events since. Politburo appointments
included nine leaders who were 60 years old or younger
at the time of the Congress and who therefore may
be counted as an emerging "fourth-generation" leadership.
These include Hu Jintao, who at 56 is easily the
youngest member of the Politburo and who appears
slated to succeed Jiang. At the time of the 1997
congress, Hu had already served a full term on the
Politburo Standing Committee, during which he assisted
Jiang in running the Party apparatus, a role that
is a proven pathway to top Party leadership in Communist
politics. Hu's appointment as PRC vice president
at the Ninth NPC last year gave him a concurrent
high-level state post that lacks real political
power but that nevertheless gives him by state protocol
increased international visibility. His public appearances
since the 1997 congress also suggest a broadening
of representational roles designed to prepare him
to succeed Jiang. Whether events actually proceed
along these lines is anyone's guess, but it appears
that the Jiang leadership is preparing to act on
the succession precedents established by Deng.
More
broadly, presuming that the Jiang leadership's commitment
to the Dengist reform agenda persists, the longer
trends of institutional change begun in the Deng
period will continue. Specifically:
- As
economic and especially SOE reforms proceed, the
role of central regulatory bodies like the SETC
will continue to grow while old bureaucracies
associated with the planning system, and especially
the SPC, will continue to decline or re-invent
themselves for alternative functions.
- To
the extent that economic reforms proceed, the
stature of the People's Bank will grow, taking
on the monetary regulatory roles usually associated
with a true central bank.
- The
legislative and deliberative role of the NPC will
continue to grow, although not necessarily at
the expense of the Party. The public debate in
NPC sessions since the 1980s is better understood
as the reflection of intra-Party debates into
this state arena, not as the activism of an autonomous
center of power at odds with the Party.
- In
response not only to international expectations
and assistance but also due to domestic pressures,
the significance of the court system may be expected
to grow.
- The
authority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for
coordinating overall foreign relations will continue
its steady ascent since the 1970s, when Beijing
was permitted to join the international order.
But this authority will also be diluted by the
growth in political strength of other institutions
that are responsible for specific sectors of Beijing's
increasingly complex international interactions.
Among these is MOFTEC, which will acquire even
more standing if Beijing joins the World Trade
Organization.
- As
military modernization proceeds along lines required
by "limited war under high-tech conditions," the
political heft of the PLA Navy, Air Force, and
the strategic force units of the Second Artillery
Corps will grow accordingly over the conventional
infantry, the traditional mainstay of the PLA,
as they command resources and priority.
In short
we should expect to see more of the same, only more
so.
SCHEDULE
The
Chinese Economy Through 2005:
Domestic Developments and Their
Implications for US Interests
Barry
Naughton
The
economic there is likely to improve, and US corporations
will continue to be interested in establishing a
position in this large and growing market. The intense
competitiveness of that market is likely to continue
for the foreseeable future. As economic conditions
stabilize and incomes grow, however, there will
be substantial market opportunities in China. WTO
membership for China would provide American businesses
and farmers with direct access to a significant
and growing market.
Prologue
Since
1989, there have been many apocalyptic interpretations
of China's future, including predictions of imminent
disruption or collapse. So far, none of these visions
has come true. Instead, China has proven to be a
reasonably successful and rapidly growing economy.
What lesson should we draw from this past record?
To conclude that China is crisis proof, or immune
to unexpected turbulence, would be wrong. But we
should recognize that, in addition to factors potentially
creating instability in China, factors also act
as potential stabilizers, giving China a certain
resilience and capacity to deal with problems. Policymakers
still have significant economic levers at their
disposal, and although their understanding and control
of the economy are extremely imperfect, they can
still take steps quickly to compensate for adverse
economic developments. In addition, a policy community
within China vigorously debates economic problems.
When a degree of consensus forms about problems,
policymakers are able to concentrate on one or two
of the most critical problems and take steps to
confront--and sometimes resolve--them. Indeed, critical
outside analyses of China frequently seize on problems
that are being the focus of discussion in the Chinese
policy community. In such cases, although the problems
are real, that the system can focus on and respond
to the problems is in fact a sign of strength. Unanticipated
turbulence and even crisis may occur anyway but
probably in the wake of an unexpected and unpredictable
coincidence of factors that simultaneously challenge
the regime and cripple the regime's ability to respond
to those challenges. Outside analysts probably will
not successfully predict such a conjuncture.
In this
spirit, the current paper reviews China's economic
problems and prospects and argues for a scenario
of relative continuity. Serious challenges exist,
but the most likely scenario is that policymakers
will resolve some challenges and pass others on
to their successors. The first two sections briefly
review the background and current condition of China's
economy. The next two sections assess the policy
response of China's leadership, in the short and
medium long run. The final two sections discuss
the prospects for the Chinese economy over the next
five years, and the implication of these developments
for US interests.
Background
China's
current economic conditions have been shaped by
the approach to economic reform Premier Zhu Rongji
has taken since he assumed effective control of
economic policy in mid-1993. There are many important
differences between Zhu's approach to economic reform
and that which prevailed during the 1980s under
Zhao Ziyang (see figure 4 for a summary). In some
respects, Zhu builds upon Zhao's accomplishments,
for example, in building a market infrastructure
to support the markets Zhao helped introduce. Zhu's
reforms seek to create a "level playing field" for
the market participants created by Zhao's reforms.
In other respects, Zhu's approach is the opposite
of Zhao's. Zhu has stressed the building of authoritative
and powerful central government institutions. These
measures have involved strengthening the banking
system and giving banks more ability to make decisions
on commercial grounds, reducing their dependence
on local government-industrial complexes. On the
fiscal side, government tax revenues as a share
of total GDP have grown steadily since reaching
their low point in 1995 and are continuing to grow
in 1999 (see figure 5). Macroeconomic policy has
been relatively austere since Zhu took charge, with
high real-interest rates and relatively restrained
credit growth consistent features of the macroeconomic
environment.
Some
aspects of Zhu's policies have been unsuccessful.
Attempts to re-establish the government monopoly
in the grain trade are misguided and will probably
fail. Restructuring of state-owned enterprises has
been largely a failure. The initiative to convert
state enterprises to a "modern enterprise system"
in 1996 dissolved because government officials were
unable to agree on the specific content of a "modern
enterprise." Industrial policies for specific sectors
have not had any obvious successes and are clearly
being rethought.
Despite
these setbacks, the overall impact of Zhu's approach
has been positive. Fundamentally, this is because
Zhu has been willing to preside over the greatly
intensified play of market forces in China and allow
market forces to determine the ultimate fate of
many market participants. China has become a vastly
more competitive economy over the past few years.
This will have long-term positive effects on China's
productivity. It already dramatically has affected
the behavior of market participants.
Figure
4
Contrasting Atyles of Economic Reform: 1980s Versus
1990s
Higher
levels of competition in the Chinese economy are
due to the confluence of a number of factors. First,
macroeconomic policy has been tight enough to control
inflation and lead to deflation, beginning in early
1998 (see figure 6). Falling prices testify to the
control of aggregate demand and reflect the intense
pressures put on producers. Second, there has been
a huge expansion of capacity, particularly in industrial
sectors, following the inflow of $235 billion in
foreign investment since 1993. Third, Chinese producers
are increasingly finding it difficult to turn to
banks or local government officials to provide financial
bailouts in times of difficulty. Thus, firms face
both tougher conditions on the market side (competing
with private firms, township & village enterprises,
and foreign invested firms) and tighter constraints
on the financial side. The result has been that
firms simply have nothing to buffer them against
the forces of market competition. This fact is increasingly
recognized in China.
Figure
5
Fiscal Revenues as Part of GDP
The most
dramatic result has been the reduction in employment
at publicly owned firms. This policy has caused
substantial unemployment, which is significant as
a social problem, and also significant as an indicator
of changed economic behavior. Firms are being forced
to shed labor, either because they are restructuring
or because they are closing down. The government
permits and encourages this activity. The magnitude
of the change is quite striking. Table 5 shows that,
between yearend 1992 and 1998, state and urban collective
enterprises shed net 37 million workers, while the
private sector added 30 million workers. Traditional
public-sector enterprise employment shrank by one-third
between 1992 and 1998, and the shrinkage is continuing
in 1999. Some of this shrinkage was absorbed by
joint stock companies, some of which may be thinly
disguised state-owned companies. But all the joint
stock companies in China employed only one-third
the number of workers lost by traditional public-sector
enterprises. A significant shakeout is under way.
A further
important change relates to inventory accumulation.
For years, publicly owned firms in China have routinely
accumulated enormous stocks of materials and finished
goods. Those goods then sat around unused and unsold--often
unsaleable--for years until the value of the inventories
was eventually written off. (This situation is one
of the mechanisms of the bad debt problem in China.)
One might assume that, with tougher market conditions,
even more inventory accumulation would have occurred
in recent years. In fact, the reverse is true. Net
inventory accumulation averaged 6.6% of GDP from
1978 through 1996 and was never less than 4.7% of
GDP. In 1997, net inventory accumulation was 4.3%
of GDP, and in 1998, it was only 1.7% of GDP.56
Why this abrupt change? High real-interest rates,
falling prices for goods, and the absence of bailouts
for losses means firms are dumping inventories that
they finally realize are costly to hold.
Figure
6
Consumer Price Inflation
These
changes in economic policy and behavior form the
context of contemporary developments in the Chinese
economy. When the Asian crisis began to affect Chinese
exports, during 1998, the economy was already feeling
the impact of the changes described here. Macroeconomic
austerity was biting into economic growth, but the
full effects were greater than policymakers anticipated.
The lag effect from earlier macroeconomic austerity
was partly to blame; as was the increased responsiveness
of enterprises to macroeconomic levers, because
of their increased exposure to the marketplace.
Increased layoffs and decreased inventory accumulation
were slowing growth in aggregate demand. The "soft
landing" engineered in early 1997 was already in
danger, as the economy continued to slow. At this
point, the Asian crisis began cutting into China's
export growth, further threatening the economic
growth rate.
Table
5
Urban Workers, by Ownership
Contemporary
Conditions
The economic
problems China has encountered in 1998-99 are thus
easy to understand. The economic environment is,
to be sure, unprecedented in the Chinese context.
Chinese commentators write incessantly about the
shift from a "shortage economy" to a "surplus economy."
Outside commentators focus on deflation, arguing
that it is incompatible with the growth rates China
is posting. In fact, the "surplus economy" is a
normal part of a market economy, particularly one
as competitive as China has become. Deflation is
unfamiliar in our recent experience, but in economic
history, growth and deflation often have gone together.
China has economic problems, but they are not part
of some mysterious new economic model.
Current
conditions are most easily understood through the
medium of the real-interest rate (see figure 7).
Despite successive reductions in the nominal interest
rate, inflation has dropped much more rapidly than
have interest rates. (Subtract the growth rate of
the consumer price index, shown in figure 6, from
the nominal interest rate shown in figure 7 to get
the real-interest rate, also in figure 7). From
early 1997, real-interest rates were highly positive.
This is unusual in the Chinese context: real-interest
rates were positive in 1990-92, but were not this
high for this long. Moreover, firms are much more
responsive to interest rates, because they now anticipate
serious pressure to repay loans.
The result
of these economic forces was that, in 1997 and 1998,
growth of aggregate demand decelerated significantly,
as each component of aggregate demand weakened.
Growth of fixed investment in industry slowed markedly
(due to overcapacity, intense competition, and high
interest rates). Additions to inventories dropped
off, as described above. Consumption growth moderated,
due to uncertainties among households about future
employment and new responsibilities to pay for housing
and medical care. On top of this, export growth,
which still provided a substantial boost to the
economy in 1997, disappeared in 1998. The only real
impetus to growth in 1998 came from a government-sponsored
infrastructure investment program, which pumped
up investment--and associated heavy industrial output--during
the latter part of the year.
Figure
7
Nominal and Real Interest Rates: Short-Term Working
Capital
As of
mid-1999, there are some signs that the bottom has
been reached and that the economy is turning the
corner. This change may partially reflect the upturn
in the Japanese economy and yen, and the surprisingly
rapid recovery in the rest of East Asia. But it
also reflects the fact that the fundamental underlying
growth determinants in China continue to be reasonably
positive. Two indicators show some improvement around
midyear 1999. Export declines were most serious
in the last quarter of 1998, and since mid-year
1999 exports have been growing again, albeit slowly
(see figure 8). In addition, as figure 6 shows,
the rate of deflation appears to have slowed in
the third quarter of 1999. These are weak signs,
to be sure. Export growth is still slow, and deflation
is ongoing. But they do indicate a turning point
may have been reached at midyear 1999.
Figure
8
Export Growth Rates: By Trade Regime
Policy
Response in the Short Term
While
the underlying trends in the Chinese economy are
reasonably satisfactory, the policy response over
the past year has been mixed at best. Both in terms
of macroeconomic policy and structural reforms,
policy performance has been unimpressive.
Inconsistent
Macroeconomic Policy
Despite the attention policymakers have been paying
to keeping growth rates high, policy has by no means
been consistently directed toward stimulating growth.
Indeed, the most important central government policies
have been in direct conflict with the objective
of stimulating growth. The government has followed
a policy of a strong (over-valued) currency, high
real-interest rates, and increasing tax take from
the economy. These all should, and do, slow growth.
Moreover, the three policies are interrelated.
Interest
rates remain high for a number of reasons. First
is simply the slow responsiveness of policy. Interest
rates are adjusted infrequently, and each adjustment
is preceded by substantial debate and representations
by various interest groups. As a result, despite
six consecutive interest rate cuts, the nominal
interest rate has declined more slowly than the
inflation rate. Second, the government is loath
to relinquish the revenue it derives from high lending
rates. Ultimately, high interest rates shore up
bank profitability, from which the central government
extracts substantial tax revenue. Third, the government
argues--without much convincing evidence--that lower
deposit rates would encourage capital flight and
put pressure on the Chinese currency. Thus, high
real-interest rates contribute to a defense of the
currency value.
The government
continues to increase its tax take from the economy.
In the long run, it is good to have a healthy tax
base to support necessary government activities.
In the short run, increasing tax rates definitely
slows the economy. In China, it is most obvious
in manufacturing enterprises that find their ability
to generate internal investment funds crimped by
a tax policy that extracts a substantial share of
marginal profits. These policies all are clearly
related to the Zhu Rongji policy regime sketched
out in the opening section of this paper.
In contrast
to these standard macroeconomic policies, the government
has rolled out a substantial program of accelerated
infrastructure investment, funded by special emissions
of government bonds. The first round took effect
during the second half of 1998, had obvious effects
on growth in late 1998, and began to peter out at
midyear 1999. The government has responded by authorizing
a second round of bond-financed infrastructure investment
in the second half of 1999. These common-sense Keynesian
macroeconomic policies serve to replace aggregate
demand curtailed by the factors described above.
On balance, however, macroeconomic policies remain
inconsistent, with some restraining and some stimulating
aggregate demand.
Structural
Reform Policies
Systemic policies have firmly tackled one area of
the economy, the banking system. Finally focusing
on the problem of non-performing loans and potentially
insolvent banks, the government took several important
steps during 1998 and 1999. First, the government
has committed substantial funds to re-capitalizing
the banking system. During 1998, the Ministry of
Finance issued 270 billion yuan (about $33 billion)
of special bonds for bank re-capitalization. This
commitment is being substantially increased in 1999.
Second, Asset Management Companies (AMCs), patterned
on the US Resolution Trust Company, have been set
up to liquidate bad loans. The first AMC was established
at the beginning of 1999 and has purchased the majority
of the bad loans of the Bank of Construction. Three
more AMCs--one for each of the government-owned
commercial banks--are being established in the course
of 1999. Each AMC will have the authority to issue
bonds guaranteed by the Ministry of Finance. Although
funding authority of all four AMCs has not been
finalized, knowledgeable sources in Beijing suggest
a tentative total funding authority for all four
AMCs, plus the State Development Bank, of 1.2 trillion
yuan (about $150 billion). This is a substantial
sum, equal to about 14 percent of this year's GDP.
Third, the banks are in process of adopting a series
of new internal monitoring systems, which are long
overdue. They are shifting to a five-part classification
of loan performance that is consistent with international
practice. These changes are essential preconditions
to the shift of the banking system to a commercial
basis.57
These
changes with respect to the banking system are important.
They are also the only really important systemic
reform initiatives adopted so far in 1999. While
there has been some progress with clarifying the
legal basis for private ownership and the stock
market, these do not count as major changes from
the status quo. An important opportunity to deregulate
interest rates (instead of futilely trying to adjust
them by administrative means) is being lost. Under
current conditions, decontrol of interest rates
would lead to falling rates, which would contribute
to successful implementation of the policy. Unfortunately,
opposition to decontrol from the Ministry of Finance,
from the banks, and from the shaky insurance industry
appears to have stymied such a change for now.
Policy
Response in the Medium-to-Long Term
The pace
of government-directed institutional change has
slowed to a crawl during 1999. This slowdown reflects
the obverse of the point made in the prologue: although
the system can focus on a small number of pressing
problems, it has trouble dealing simultaneously
with a large number of necessary changes. During
1999, the system has been overwhelmed by multiple
conflicting currents. The sclerosis seems traceable
to events that have disrupted the previous policymaking
procedures, under which Premier Zhu Rongji had a
great deal of discretionary power in economic policy
making. Zhu has faced extremely difficult economic
conditions from the beginning of his announcement
of ambitious reforms in March 1998.58
During 1999, those difficulties were greatly increased
by Zhu's decision to push forward vigorously with
WTO membership; the failure of his WTO offer in
Washington; the Belgrade Embassy bombing; and the
subsequent backlash against Zhu's efforts that followed
these events. Under these circumstances, Zhu has
not been in a position to push big new agenda items.
Although
Zhu's ability to act proactively has been curtailed,
he has continued to be the indispensable person
in economic policy making. Jiang Zemin put a bit
of daylight between himself and Zhu, but also re-affirmed
his support for Zhu's policies.59
Close tracing of any important economic policy item
will reveal that Zhu continues to be the single
most important decision-maker. That is likely to
remain true as long as Zhu retains the confidence
of Jiang Zemin. Like anybody, Zhu Rongji makes mistakes,
and his policies are not always optimal. But Zhu
has a mastery of the details of economic policy
that is quite unequaled among the Chinese leadership.
If Zhu were to step down, the individual most likely
to follow him in a smooth succession would be Wen
Jiabao. It is widely felt, though, that while Wen
is smart and well educated, he is simply not ready
to step into Zhu's shoes. In this world, nobody
is irreplaceable, but Zhu Rongji would be a very
hard act to follow. For precisely this reason, an
explicit or implicit threat to resign by Zhu Rongji
gives him some leverage.
The policy
process has also been on hold through much of the
summer as political leaders jockey for position
ahead of the Communist Party plenum, now scheduled
to begin on September 19. The plenum is slated to
make decisions on enterprise management system,
marketization, and compensation. Uncertainty about
the precise configuration of policy in the next
year or two is greatly intensified by uncertainty
over the fate of China's WTO accession negotiations.
If a quick resolution of WTO membership comes this
year, WTO accession will essentially drive the Chinese
policy process for the next few years. In the absence
of WTO membership, the challenge of stabilizing
the growth path with new domestic sources of demand
will become more challenging. However, there is
no reason to expect that it cannot be done.
More
important than the current policy vacillation is
what appears to be an irreversible decision to let
market forces drive the evolution of the economy.
This decision is due to a number of factors. First,
experience has taught the Chinese leaders the limitations
of government direction of the economy. Government-led
restructuring of the public-sector economy has met
with limited success; sectorally oriented industrial
policy, with almost no success. Second, government
resources remain strictly limited. The government
simply does not have the capability to run a stable
economy and also continue to pump resources into
the bureaucratic economy. This recognition seems
clearly manifest in the government restructuring
and shrinkage that was outlined in 1998 and has
been chugging forward ever since. It is manifest
as well in "small government, big society" principles
that are repeatedly being evoked to guide reforms
of the social security and health sectors. Moreover,
as discussed below, intense pressure on government
financial resources is not likely to ease in the
coming decade.
A third
force behind the willingness to yield to market
forces is the recognition that the world is being
swept with still another wave of technical innovation
that is difficult to predict and that threatens
to leave government-directed development programs
in the dust. Chinese leaders are very aware that
Chinese-Americans have played an enormous role in
Silicon Valley and in the development of the Internet
economy. They are also aware that the Chinese Government
will not be able to devise an Internet development
program, and they believe that Chinese scientists
and entrepreneurs in China have the capability of
leapfrogging technological development stages and
propelling China to a point near the global frontier.
As a result, they are willing to allow those entrepreneurs
the freedom and security they need to go ahead.
This
willingness is reinforced by a fourth factor. The
frustration the Chinese felt after the Belgrade
Embassy bombing brought home to them quite forcefully
not only the extent of US strategic dominance, but
also the extent to which the US represents the single-most-successful
model of economic and technological performance.
While on the one hand the indignation and anger
has led to estrangement from the US, the recognition
of powerlessness also led to an increased determination
to follow US-based models of market development.
The government, I believe, has become more willing
to bear costs and impose costs on the population,
that are associated with marketization. Beijing
was already moving beyond a "reform without losers"
approach toward a policy that implied completing
marketization, even if significant social groups
lost out in the process. That policy shift has now
been confirmed by the feeling that only such a shift
will allow China as a nation to maintain significant
and growing stature in a US-dominated world. Nationalism
will induce society to tolerate reforms that impose
real costs on large social groups, such as laid-off
state enterprise workers. Such attitudes are reflected
in typical statements like this from the Communist
press in Hong Kong:
After
the embassy bombing, China's top leadership responded
to the unprecedented awareness of the masses by
repeatedly stressing the central policy of economic
construction and the need to accelerate reform.
Not only must SOE reform be accelerated . . . we
also need to increase the degree of support for
civilian (minban) high technology enterprises .
. . Beijing observers feel that the leadership can
quickly channel the indignation felt by the masses
into accelerated economic reform.60
Whether
or not this observation is correct, it reflects
widely held attitudes among China's political elites.
The
Chinese Economy Over the Next Five Years
Economic
Growth
Based on the previous discussion, we should expect
that the Chinese economy will continue to grow robustly
over the next five years. There is no reason to
believe the idea, held in some quarters, that China
has somehow entered a Japan-like period of sluggish
growth that will be difficult to shake off. Quite
the contrary, if China were to align its macroeconomic
policy instruments and single-mindedly pursue growth,
it could quickly return to a rapid growth path (with
potentially significant inflationary consequences
as a result). The challenge is rather to develop
a mix of policy instruments that will encourage
slightly faster growth along with continued restructuring
and development of market institutions. On balance,
there is no reason to revise earlier projections
that China can maintain real aggregate GDP growth
in the 7% to 8% range through 2005.60
Growth rates should begin to decline somewhat after
2005: as labor force growth slows and structural
transformation is primarily completed, around 2015,
growth rates should dip further.61
But there is little reason to expect those effects
to be manifest before 2005. Indeed, growth might
actually be higher, if productivity improvements
driven by more competitive markets start to have
a major impact on the economy.
Indeed,
in the medium run, there is some danger that China
could return too quickly to rapid growth, igniting
another stop-and-go macroeconomic cycle. East Asia
is recovering rapidly, and the Japanese economy
is beginning to play a positive role in regional
growth again. As China's economy begins to recover,
there is a danger that government fiscal stimulus
programs may last too long. This is particularly
true because of the key role of deflation in the
recent downturn. Real-interest rates are high because
of deflation: if deflation is halted because of
a combination of improving external markets and
government stimulus, expectations of the future
could rapidly shift to an inflationary mode. A decision
to devalue the currency, made after recovery has
become firmly established, would contribute to inappropriately
inflationary policies. These are not immediate dangers,
but the Chinese Government should be alert to respond
quickly to economic conditions that may change quickly.
A
Young Labor Force
There is substantial additional reason to think
that both growth and transformation will continue
at high rates over the next five years: this is
the unusual demographic structure of China's contemporary
economy. China has an unusually young labor force,
with an extremely low dependency rate. Elderly dependents
are few because China has only recently emerged
from poverty and extended individual lifespans.
Young dependents are few because of China's strict
birth control policies over the past 25 years. China's
overall dependency rate is only about 32%, meaning
that 68% of the population is of working age--an
extraordinarily high proportion. Moreover, this
structural condition will actually reach its peak
around 2005, when more than 70% of the population
will be of working age. As a result, China faces
a demographic "window of opportunity." Today the
work force is young, flexible, open to change, and
relatively unencumbered. Conversely, after about
2010, the proportion of elderly will begin to increase
rapidly. Growth will slow, and change may become
more difficult. This makes it particularly pressing
for China for press ahead with economic reforms
in the next five years or so, and also improves
the chances that society will accept and adapt to
those reforms.
WTO
or Not?
The largest source of uncertainty today is whether
China will join WTO next year. A WTO agreement would
create a new framework for exchange-rate policy,
giving China new freedom to float its currency.
Exchange-rate flexibility combined with import liberalization
would probably result in depreciation of the Chinese
currency, providing stimulus to exports and fueling
renewed economic growth. However, the ultimate impact
of WTO on exchange rates is not completely certain.
WTO accession would probably stimulate capital inflows,
creating upward pressure on the Chinese currency
as well. WTO membership would discourage some manufacturing
investment in China--since it would enable access
to the China market without necessarily establishing
a manufacturing presence. However, it would also
create a new wave of investment in distribution
and services. On balance, WTO membership will define
China's policy orientation in coming years, affecting
both macroeconomic policy and system reform.
Predicting
the future policy configuration if China does not
enter WTO is more difficult. WTO failure would increase
pressure on Zhu Rongji's political position, possibly
leading to his resignation. Although this situation
would not necessarily lead to a fundamental change
in economic policy, it would create new uncertainty
and would probably produce a less competent and
decisive economic leadership. In a non-WTO world,
China's leaders would have a much more difficult
task of stabilizing aggregate demand and generating
new sources of domestic demand. Nevertheless, the
potential domestic demand is huge. A program of
accelerated rural electrification, rural roadbuilding,
and telephone hookups, for example, could contribute
substantially to future growth.
Chronic
Unemployment
There should be little doubt that China is now entering
an era of chronic unemployment. Unemployment at
the end of 1999 will be worse than at the beginning.
China's labor experts expect an additional 3 million
layoffs from public enterprises in 1999, about the
same as in 1998. Government layoffs are expected
to total about 5 million over the next three years.
Normal labor force growth will run 9 to 10 million
new workers annually for the next few years.62
Clearly, the pressure of unemployment on China's
economic policy will be unabated for at least several
years.
The unemployment
problem for China over the next few years probably
will be chronic, rather than critical, for several
reasons. First, the burden of unemployment falls
disproportionately on middle-aged and older workers,
particularly those with less education. Young workers
are less seriously effected by layoffs and find
work more quickly, particularly those who are well
educated. Although this is unfair--particularly
to those middle-aged workers who were deprived of
the opportunity to get education because of the
Cultural Revolution--it means that the unemployed
are less likely to find effective leaders for their
discontent. Second, a large proportion of the unemployed
receive some support. Stipends for laid-off workers
are small, but are not zero: in 1998, they were
on average 27% of the average state wage.63
Many laid-off and unemployed workers have informal
and part-time jobs; many live in households with
two or more workers. Third, society has been prepared
for a long time for the idea that the government
cannot go on indefinitely supporting nonproductive
public enterprises. Public acceptance of the need
for layoffs appears to be relatively high, and if
it turns out not to be, the government directs significant
attention and coercive power to making sure that
workers do not organize.
Increased
Government Debt and Continued
Concerns Over Fiscal Capacity
Despite the increase in the Chinese Government's
ability to raise taxes from the economy, there will
continue to be significant issues over the government's
fiscal capability. In part, this is because financial
sector bailouts and macroeconomic stimulus packages
are adding to the government's total outstanding
debt. The AMCs issuing bonds with the backing of
the Ministry of Finance are not likely to realize
more than a small proportion of the value of the
assets they purchase from the banks. They are thus
extremely unlikely to redeem the bonds they issue,
and those will become part of the government debt.
Government debt, which was only 12 percent of GDP
at the end of 1997, is likely to rise rapidly to
about 30 percent of GDP. Debt service obligations
will put continuing pressure on the government budget.
At the
same time, the budget management system desperately
needs reform. Recently, the State Audit Bureau,
established in 1996, issued its first real report
to the National People's Congress on budgetary auditing.
It was scathing, reporting that the current system
of budgetary monitoring was simply not adequate
to accurately track the flow of funds disbursed
by the fiscal authorities. Over the next few years,
we are likely to see a concerted effort to establish
control over the budgetary process, subject it to
normal accounting procedures, and establish a degree
of transparency.
Continued
Financial Turbulence
Government measures begun in 1998 make it much less
likely that the state commercial banks will be the
site of a major financial crisis. State commercial
banks dominate the overall financial system. They
are also the recipient of the strongest de facto
government guarantee of depositors' assets. The
remedial actions taken by the government over the
past two years make it extremely unlikely that China's
financial system will experience an overall meltdown
precipitated by a collapse of confidence in the
state banks.
Financial
problems, however, exist in nearly every corner
of the Chinese economy. Instead of a single, catastrophic
financial crisis, we are likely to see a sustained
series of financial crises affecting many different
institutions. The 1998 bankruptcy of the Guangdong
International Trust and Investment Company (GITIC)
should be seen as the first in a long series of
financial breakdowns and scandals. Several other
so-called "ITICs" will likely be dissolved, and
some will certainly dissolve amidst acrimonious
wrangling. We should anticipate financial crises
affecting both rural and urban credit cooperatives,
as well as so-called rural cooperative funds (nongjinhui).
Down the road, there are likely to be some major
scandals surrounding some of China's pension funds,
which have been locally managed and invested and
in some cases have disappeared. Some of China's
insurance companies are in precarious condition.
As a
result, China's policymakers will be managing high
levels of financial risk throughout the next several
years. In the short run, this may even cause a flight
to quality in which the state commercial banks increase
their share of total financial system assets. Investors
will need to differentiate much more sharply the
degree of risk among different actors in China's
financial system. This process has already begun.
Continued
Privatization
Private-sector growth will continue and will accelerate
in China. The new private company law provides sounder
legal protection to private business than existed
in the past. Restructuring of formerly public enterprises,
especially from township- and village-level collectives,
is rapidly swelling the private economy. Newly supportive
policies toward private enterprise in the high-technology
fields will ensure continuance of recent rapid-growth
trends in that era.
The major
uncertainty is whether a further round of state
enterprise reform will lead to substantial privatization
of state firms in the next few years. We may have
much more information about this possibility after
the Communist Party plenum that began on September
19. On balance, the plenum probably will approve
policies that contribute to further privatization,
without directly mandating mass privatization. In
the medium run, state enterprise privatization probably
doesn't matter as much as many think. Competitive
sectors already have become extremely diverse, and
even public firms have been forced to restructure.
Monopoly sectors are still dominated by state firms,
but those firms would have to be subject to an immature
regulatory regime in the event of privatization.
This change would restrain the pace of productivity-enhancing
restructuring. Nevertheless, over the long run,
more rapid privatization would clearly contribute
to more rapid productivity growth and would increase
China's growth prospects.
Implications
for US Interests
China
will continue to have an important economic impact
on the United States. The economic picture there
is likely to improve, and US corporations will continue
to be interested in establishing a position in this
large and growing market. Under the difficult economic
conditions of the past two years, many--perhaps
most--investors in China have had difficulty making
money selling to the Chinese market. The intense
competitiveness of that market is likely to continue
for the foreseeable future. As economic conditions
stabilize and incomes grow, however, there will
be substantial market opportunities in China. Most
obviously, Chinese membership in the World Trade
Organization (WTO) would be strongly in the interests
of the United States. WTO membership for China would
provide American businesses and farmers with direct
access to a significant and growing market. Today
there are still very substantial limitations on
access to that market, particularly to those who
have not established an investment presence in China.
WTO membership will increase American exports; in
addition, it will allow US companies to earn additional
income through operations in China. From an economic
standpoint, discussion of American interests in
China should be dominated by the question of WTO
membership. WTO membership for China is strongly
in our interest and should be actively pursued on
the basis of the commitments already made by both
sides.
The next
few years are likely to see the emergence of a significant
Chinese high-technology sector, based primarily
on privately owned firms. This process is already
under way, but has just begun to make an impact
outside China. In the computer field, two of China's
best known firms, Legend and Stone, have recently
completed restructuring programs that make them
much more effective corporations. Legend has been
converted into a joint stock holding company, with
managers and workers owning 35% of the stock. Stone
has just been through China's first management buyout
and is essentially being taken private. In the field
of telecommunications equipment, an extremely capable
employee-owned (not a collective) firm, Huawei,
is rapidly taking market share away from foreign-invested
equipment firms. What these firms have in common
is a concentration of skilled manpower and an organizational
form that allows them to harness high-powered incentives
to create rapid growth.
These
firms will sometimes be competitors to American
companies and should be attracting the attention
of their rivals. But more often, these firms will
be potential partners to American firms. Despite
their relative prowess within the Chinese context,
these new private technology firms are still highly
concentrated on the low end of their respective
markets, succeeding and thriving precisely because
they have responded to the incentives to enter at
the relatively low-tech, labor-intensive end of
the market. Nowhere is this more evident than in
the personal computer business. Increasingly, American
firms that design and brand computers actually manufacture
through production chains that go through Taiwan
and include mainland China. For example, a company
like Great Wall--though not itself private--partners
with IBM in China in two respects. At one end of
the market it acts as a sales agent for IBM in the
growing Chinese market; at the other end it produces
and assembles some of the lower-end computer components.
It also sells many of these lower-end components
to Taiwan-based computer firms, which put them in
products with many different brand names. As China's
high-technology industry grows and becomes more
private, a larger part of these production chains
will relocate to China. This will help drive the
process of productivity improvement in the industry,
directly benefiting US consumers and indirectly
improving the international competitive position
of US companies, who manage the international production
chains and profit from the final product.
Finally,
the US should anticipate continued economic turbulence
from China. China's young population is adaptable,
but also inexperienced. China's financial institutions
are fragile, and some are destined to fail. American
businesses operating in China need to refine their
risk management strategies. American policymakers
need to anticipate continuing shocks coming from
China. They should be prepared to manage the resulting
impact. At the same time, it is important to see
these shocks as growth pains, rather than as signs
of an impending collapse. Financial turbulence in
China indicates the growth of an economy in the
context of immature institutions. Despite the institutional
inadequacies, it is likely that the Chinese system
will continue to display an adequate degree of resilience
to sustain growth over the next several years.
SCHEDULE
Chinese
Social Trends: Stability or Chaos
Martin
King Whyte
.
. . a continuum ranging from a very orderly stability
to a revolutionary challenge to the regime . . .
the analysis here suggests, the most likely prospect
for the immediate future is closer to the "chaos"
end of the scale, with a variety of kinds of popular
turmoil repeatedly testing but not necessarily defeating
the leadership's ability to maintain control.
In recent
years attempts to analyze and predict political
and social trends in the PRC have yielded wildly
divergent scenarios. In what might be termed the
"stability" scenario, China has been much more successful
than Russia or Eastern European countries in implementing
market reforms while simultaneously raising living
standards. The general improvements in people's
lives and the many new opportunities for enrichment
available are seen as leading to acceptance of the
political status quo, or even gratitude. When combined
with the political lessons of the 1989 crackdown,
these features of the Chinese situation are said
to lead most Chinese to have little interest in
politics or inclination to take risks to press for
political changes. As long as China's leaders remain
unified and can keep the engine of economic growth
going, according to this scenario, they should be
able to maintain the status quo and keep social
tensions and conflicts under control.
A very
different set of considerations is stressed in what
might be termed the "chaos" scenario. This alternative
stresses the wrenching and destabilizing impact
of the shift from a socialist to a market system.
As established ways of doing things and forms of
security provided by socialist institutions are
undermined, many Chinese struggle to cope and to
learn how to operate in the new system. All around
them they see reemerging the "social evils" that
socialism was supposed to eliminate--foreign ownership,
landlordism, prostitution, criminal syndicates,
and so forth. Inequalities in income and wealth
grow rapidly, and the conviction is widely shared
that those who are monopolizing the gains are doing
so through connections and corruption, rather than
due to entrepreneurship, hard work, or great skill.
The previous moral orthodoxy provided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao
Zedong thought is in shambles, but no alternative
moral vision has arisen to fill the vacuum. Increasingly
Chinese see their society as characterized by an
amoral, man-eat-man struggle, and in this context
leaders at all levels are seen as venal and self-serving.
Political controls and coercion may keep popular
anger hidden much of the time and yield an appearance
of political stability, but underneath the surface
popular anger remains at high levels, and a variety
of incidents and trends may lead to large-scale
protests and political crises. In urban areas, in
particular, residual hostility stemming from the
Tiananmen massacre in 1989 increases the popular
anger directed at the CCP. The chaos scenario, then,
leads one to see China's leadership as sitting on
top of a social volcano that may erupt at any moment.64
When
confronted with such contradictory assessments of
the situation, one is inevitably reminded of the
fable of the blind men groping at different extremities
of an elephant and trying to figure out what it
is. As a sociologist I make no claim to be able
to predict the future. This paper, however, will
attempt to describe the broader context of the changes
in China since 1978 in the hope that this context
will help us judge the likelihood that a variety
of social trends and tensions will threaten China's
political stability. As the reader will see, this
assessment will lead to the conclusion that there
is considerable truth to the trends and dynamics
stressed by both the "stability" and "chaos" scenarios,
although not necessarily in the conclusions drawn
from them. In other words, this analysis should
lead to a greater understanding of the shape of
the Chinese social elephant, but not necessarily
to an ability to confidently predict whether that
elephant will remain passive or go on a rampage.
Transformed
State-Society Relations
Conventional
wisdom holds that Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues
presided over an attempt to reform the Chinese economy
while preventing changes in the PRC's party-dominated
political institutions. However, even cursory examination
reveals that the major changes that have swept China
since 1978 have not been confined to the economic
realm. China is a very different society politically
(as well as culturally and otherwise) than it was
at the time of Mao's death, and the fundamental
changes that have occurred in the nature of state-society
relations increase the difficulty of ruling the
world's most populous society. In order to understand
these changes, it is necessary to briefly review
the nature of the political and social order of
the late-Mao era.
China
at the end of the Mao era is sometimes characterized
as an egalitarian socialist order, but the reality
was more like a rigid, hierarchical form of feudalism
with a strong admixture of Confucian statecraft.
Individuals and families were either born into (in
the case of rural communes) or bureaucratically
allocated to (in the case of urban work units) relatively
closed organizational cells where they served at
the pleasure of the state. There was little in the
way of free movement of people and information across
the organizational boundaries of this cellular system.
Although there were strenuous efforts to provide
social security and relatively egalitarian distribution
of income and social services within each cell,
the cells themselves were arranged in a vast and
very unequal hierarchy. Access to income, opportunities,
information, and everything else varied sharply
depending upon where you were in the bureaucratic
system. The social world of those in advantaged
cells (e.g., in resource-rich central work units
located in urban areas) was profoundly different
from those at the bottom of the system of bureaucratic
ranks and castelike groups (e.g., individuals in
poor villages in the hinterlands, political pariah
groups).
Authority
over this feudal-like hierarchy rested in the CCP
and ultimately in its leader, Mao Zedong. The CCP
used its control over information and communications
to ensure that no rival ideas could compete with
the official Marxist-Leninist-Maoist orthodoxy.
Extraordinary efforts were regularly made to indoctrinate
all citizens into this faith and to use political
study, criticism rituals, campaigns, and coercion
to ensure that critical and alternative viewpoints
could not be spread and threaten faith in the official
orthodoxy.65
That orthodoxy stressed themes such as individual
and group sacrifice in the pursuit of the distant
goals of socialism and communism, the constancy
of class struggle, and veneration of Mao Zedong.
Experiences of life in Maoist China produced personal
hardship and family tragedies for many. However,
any tendency to translate such experiences into
shared grievances against the system, the CCP, and
Mao was generally squelched by the quasi-totalitarian
nature of CCP control over the social order and
communications. No general public opinion could
emerge within this social order, and individuals
who harbored doubts or hostility toward Mao and
the CCP tended to feel that they were isolated and
out of step with the vast masses of enthusiastic
citizens around them, comrades who were devotedly
building socialism under the wise leadership of
Mao. Getting ahead or just getting by depended primarily
on currying favor with the bureaucratic gatekeepers
in charge of your cell, rather than on any attempt
to escape from your lot or to join with others to
challenge the system.66
When
the late-Mao social and political order is described
in these shorthand terms, that this order has since
been transformed in multiple and fundamental ways
immediately becomes apparent. Those changes began
to occur already during the Cultural Revolution
and not simply after 1978. Although the Cultural
Revolution appeared at times to be the zenith of
totalitarian controls over the masses, the reality
was more complex. The entire edifice of Party organizational
controls and regular indoctrination of the masses
fell apart for several years (roughly from mid-1966
until at least 1969), as did cellular controls on
the movement of people and information. During periods
of Cultural Revolution chaos, large numbers of people
were on the move across the face of China (particularly,
but not exclusively, young people). They had unprecedented
opportunities to observe their society directly
and to talk to individuals from other locales and
walks of life without the normal supervision and
controls of the organizational discipline of their
unit. This period of extended personal autonomy
had a profound impact on the outlooks of many Chinese
citizens, especially as their observations of rural
poverty, elite arrogance and corruption, and violence
contrasted sharply with the faiths they had absorbed
prior to the Cultural Revolution. Although Mao and
his colleagues tried to revive the CCP and its systems
of political controls and indoctrination after 1969,
the damage proved irreparable. Many Chinese citizens
by the early 1970s held an altered and darker picture
of the nature of their social order, even though
they knew that it was still dangerous to share this
view with others.
The post-Mao
changes ended this attempt to restore the former
system of totalitarian control over people and ideas
and fundamentally altered the nature of state-society
relations. As noted earlier, there were multiple
aspects of this transformation. The combination
of the repudiation of the Cultural Revolution (and,
by implication, of Mao's leadership) and the shift
from a system of bureaucratic allocation to market
distribution further undermined faith in the previous
Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought orthodoxy. The
open-door policy also brought into China vast infusions
of alternative ideas and cultural forms from which
Chinese citizens had previously been isolated. At
the same time, the belief that China was at the
vanguard of the advance toward a better socialist
future was replaced by official recognition that
China was falling behind and needed to do whatever
was necessary to avoid being left in the dust by
more rapidly developing countries in Asia. The relaxation
of CCP controls over acceptable styles of behavior,
dress, culture, religion, and thinking combined
with mass rehabilitations of victims of earlier
campaigns had similar effects. These changes encouraged
pluralism of thought and behavior and undermined
any remaining view that there was only one proper,
"proletarian" way for everyone to think and behave.
The cellular walls of China's bureaucratic hierarchy
also began to decay, with large scale migration
occurring and a growing opportunity (or necessity)
for individuals to leave the eroding security of
their own units to compete in the new market environment.
By the 1990s the socialist "social contract" had
been fundamentally weakened, with security of employment,
compensation, housing, health care, education, and
other basics of life increasingly threatened, requiring
individual and family decisions and investments
in place of bureaucratic provision.
A variety
of formulations have been used to characterize the
changes in the Chinese political economy resulting
from China's reforms. For example, analysts describe
the shift of China from a totalitarian to an authoritarian
system, from bureaucratic allocation to market distribution,
and from a socialist social contract a new social
contract based upon competition for individual and
family enrichment. Whatever the particular rubric
favored, there is general consensus that the political
atmosphere in the PRC has been dramatically altered.
Individuals and families have substantially more
autonomy in most areas of their personal lives than
they had in the Mao era, with their human rights
less systematically violated.67
They are exposed to a variety of forms of culture,
ideas, and values, rather than to the monochromatic
proletarian straight jacket of the late Mao era.
Public opinion has emerged as a political force
in contemporary China, with the CCP hard pressed
to counter attitudes and opinions that differ from
the official line. Individuals no longer feel surrounded
by zealous activists who will denounce them if they
make a comment that deviates from the approved orthodoxy.
Instead, in some instances, remaining "true believers"
may feel isolated in the midst of increasingly critical
and cynical colleagues. Political jokes at the expense
of China's leaders that would have led to personal
disaster in the late-Mao era are now widely shared
and enjoyed. I imagine Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, and
their colleagues feeling they suffer from a Chinese
version of the "Rodney Dangerfield" syndrome--no
matter what they do, they "don't get no respect."
Clearly this is not a system that has maintained
its political system intact while changing its economy.68
One might
argue that in many respects the changes that have
occurred in China since the 1970s, when taken as
a whole, can be interpreted as indicating that the
country is becoming a more "normal" society after
a decidedly abnormal, totalitarian interlude during
Mao's rule. And in any normal society, one might
generalize, having vibrant and volatile public opinion
trends and a healthy disrespect for political leaders
should not pose a particular threat to the stability
of the system. Indeed, it is a commonplace of political
analysis that political systems that allow people
to express their views and even their anger and
thus provide "safety valves" for such sentiments
are likely to be more stable than political systems
that keep such feelings bottled up.
Several
problems, however, arise with using this sort of
"return to normalcy" argument to favor the "stability"
over the "chaos" scenario. First, both China's imperial
and socialist histories and the partial nature of
the political changes since 1978 make the "safety
valve" metaphor problematic. As Frank Parkin observed
long ago in a related context, one of the virtues
of a fully developed capitalistic system is that
individual discontent tends to be vented in multiple
directions--against rivals, one's own failings,
the vagaries of the market, or fate, for example--and
not primarily against the state. However, in a state
socialist or other redistributive system, there
is a very strong tendency for the state to be either
credited or blamed for what happens in people's
lives.69
Market reforms may have been calculated by Deng
Xiaoping and his colleagues to eventually lessen
the tendency of popular feelings to be focused on
the state, but at present the state's hand in the
PRC is very far from being "invisible." Thus, Jiang
Zemin and his colleagues cannot take much comfort
in the hope that their citizens will express their
discontents in various and politically unthreatening
ways. At present the leadership will continue to
have good reason to fear the tendency for such popular
feelings to be readily converted into anger at the
system and the CCP itself.
A related
reason why the expression of popular discontent
cannot be presumed by the CCP to be normal and nonthreatening
stems from the party's efforts to maintain its dominant
organizational role in the altered political atmosphere
of contemporary China. With intermediate associations
and institutions remaining weak, hobbled by CCP
supervision, or absent, the population may often
feel that there are few or no viable channels through
which their grievances and demands for redress may
be fairly expressed and acted upon. Although some
aspects of the reforms, such as legal institutionalization
and experiments with labor arbitration, seem designed
to overcome this problem, China's reality at present
is one in which procedures for dealing with popular
grievances remain weak and ad hoc. And as Samuel
Huntington observed long ago, political systems
that arouse high popular expectations without developing
effective institutional mechanisms for handling
such feelings within the system are asking for trouble.70
To sum
up, the changes in China since the Mao era have
produced a major alteration in the relationship
between the CCP and the population. Although elements
of these changes may eventually help to promote
political stability, at the moment there remains
a problematic situation. The CCP can no longer so
effectively control mass sentiments and their public
expression, and indeed a major reason for this change
is that in the Deng era the CCP has not normally
tried to do so. When popular discontent increases,
however, and particularly when it gets translated
into mass demonstrations, the CCP tends to feel
threatened but at the same time to lack effective
mechanisms for responding. The CCP's response is
often to fall back on its repertoire of political
rituals from the Mao era--for example, by declaring
the actions in question a threat to the system,
launching a political campaign, and using coercion
to eliminate the leaders of such demonstrations
while scaring any followers. (Witness the "three
speaks" campaign aimed at elites and the over-the-top
assault on Falungong currently under way
in the PRC.) Given the wholesale loss of credibility
of the ideological symbols used by the CCP to justify
such responses, as well as the general popular distaste
for the political rituals of the Mao era, these
habitual regime responses are not effective ways
to rebuilt respect for the CCP and its leaders.
The immediately
preceding comments might be interpreted as leading
to a prediction that favors the "chaos" rather than
the "stability" scenario. However, such a conclusion
would be premature and oversimplified. My comments
to this point indicate that I agree with the portions
of the "chaos" scenario that imply that many Chinese
individuals and groups are suspicious, cynical,
and angry about recent trends. As a result we can
expect to see China's leaders at all levels struggling
in the years ahead to deal with actual and potential
mass contentiousness and fearful of the potential
for "chaos." Evidence on mass movements and collective
action around the world, however, indicates that
it takes much more than grassroots discontent and
anger to produce social movements that can threaten
a nation's political stability. Translating popular
resentments into serious threats to the system requires
a large number of intervening conditions to be present.
For example, the disgruntled need the opportunity
to broadly share their sentiments with others, resources
to use to pursue their interests and act on their
demands while resisting official dependency and
blandishments, effective leadership, a set of ideas
and claims with mass appeal, opportunities to forge
alliances with and recruit support from other groups,
conditions that direct popular anger upward against
the central state and its leaders, and weaknesses
or constraints within the state leadership that
prevent a unified and effective response (or lead
potential demonstrators to feel they have support
or even immunity from within the elite), to mention
only a few key considerations.71
In other words, if China remains politically stable
in the future, this could be due to some combination
of popular satisfaction, passivity, and fear, as
the "stability" scenario implies. It could instead,
however, stem from the regime's skill and/or luck
in squelching the many expected grassroots conflicts
and protests that occur before they escalate into
forms that threaten the system.
China's
Current Social Tensions
With
these comments as a background, we move into more
speculative terrain. The remainder of this paper
will be devoted to brief consideration of a variety
of current sources of social tension and conflict
in Chinese society, with some thoughts about which
are likely to prove most serious or difficult to
keep from escalating into a challenge to regime
stability. Among those social tensions and disgruntled
groups most often listed as potential threats to
the system are the following:
- Ethnic
tensions between minorities and Han Chinese.
- Resentments
of those in China's interior against the favored
coastal regions.
- Anger
of Chinese peasants against their low status and
persistent mistreatment.
- Discontented
and rootless members of China's "floating population."
- Hostility
of SOE workers, laid-off workers, and pensioners
at their loss of status, benefits, and security.
- Alienation
of students and intellectuals.
- Alternative
faiths and sects à la Falungong.
What
are the conditions likely to make each of these
potential sources of tension either a manageable
or a very serious threat to China's political stability?
Ethnic
Tensions
The general relaxation of political controls in
the post-Mao period reviewed earlier in this paper
has allowed a significant resurgence of cultural
and religious activity among China's nonsinicized
minority nationalities. Particularly in Tibet and
in Xinjiang, these trends have led to recurrent
protests and challenges to Chinese rule, and to
the mobilization of state coercion and controls
in response. Several conditions seem likely to make
these problems continue, including increased Han
migration into minority regions and greater awareness
of, and contacts with, ethnic and religious brethren
outside China's borders. However, the peripheral
location of the most serious conflicts and the lack
of any signs of substantial support among Han Chinese
for minority rights make it seem unlikely that these
tensions could be translated into a general threat
to China's political stability.72
Regional
Inequality and Resentments From China's Interior
State policy and economic development trends since
1978 clearly have further exacerbated already large
disparities in income and living conditions between
interior regions and provinces and favored coastal
locations. A number of Chinese political figures
have worried aloud that if nothing is done to redress
these growing disparities they will threaten China's
stability. This situation, however, seems quite
unlikely. Provinces and regions are large and amorphous
units that do not lend themselves to strong popular
attachments and protest mobilizations. Furthermore,
the implied outcome of this kind of destabilization--a
fragmentation of the Chinese state into component
provinces or other subunits--would only compound
the disadvantages of those presently living in interior
regions. Unless other considerations argue for the
benefits of separation (as with Tibet and Xinjiang),
regional disparity trends are likely to lead instead
to a variety of efforts by those in the interior
to get a better share of the pie of a unified China--through
changes in state policy, economic concessions, migration,
etc.73
Angry
Peasants
There are numerous signs that many in the Chinese
countryside are angry about their lot and increasingly
likely to become contentious. A variety of reasons
for such sentiments exist. After being the prime
beneficiaries of China's reforms in the early 1980s,
China's peasants have increasingly been losing out
as compared to urbanites. As a result, the gap between
average rural and urban incomes has widened since
the mid-1980s to levels that are higher than they
were in 1978 and are unusually large compared to
other developing societies.74
Chinese peasants also bear the brunt of an extraordinarily
coercive state-mandated family planning system that
makes difficult the ability of millions of families
to realize cherished fertility goals. Many peasants
find that they are at the mercy of local officials
who regularly impose extra taxes and fees to support
favored projects and blatantly ignore state efforts
to outlaw such "excess burdens." Although they are
freer than in the Mao era to move around and seek
economic opportunities in the cities and elsewhere,
the maintenance of the household registration system
keeps most peasants confined to a lower caste position,
subject to discrimination and mistreatment as compared
to registered residents of the locales to which
they move.
These
kinds of problems have produced an upsurge of protest
movements across the face of rural China in the
1990s, some of them quite large in scale.75
Given the fact that the CCP came to power on the
basis of a rural revolution, again some analysts
within China have seen peasant anger as a serious
threat to the system. However, there are a number
of reasons for skepticism about such analyses. First,
whatever the modest weakening of the power of China's
central authority in the reform era, conditions
today are far different from those in the 1920s
and 1930s, making the establishment of a rural "base
area" of protest against the CCP seem quite unlikely.
As with regions and provinces, it also seems quite
doubtful that rural residents identify strongly
with other peasants and feel hatred for urbanites
in general. Most rural protests seem concerned
with much more parochial violations of expected
treatment of residents of particular locales due
to the actions of local officials at one level or
another. To date the authorities have been able,
through a combination of concessions and coercion,
to prevent such local contentiousness from translating
into broader rural protest movements.76
China's rural residents may not be Marx's "sackful
of potatoes" and their growing sophistication and
knowledge of the system in which they live makes
them increasingly vigorous defenders of their rights,
rather than passive tools of their leaders.77
There is little reason to think, however, that recurring
protest activity at the grass roots in rural China
cannot be dealt with at that level without escalating
into a regime-threatening protest movement.
The
Floating Population
China's reforms have loosened the feudalistic bonds
that tied China's rural residents to their villages,
and as a result large numbers of migrants have flooded
into China's cities. At any one time it is estimated
that there are 80-100 million such members of the
"floating population," and favored cities are awash
in the resulting human tide. A recent count in Peking,
for instance, led to an estimate that that city
contained 3 million "floaters" in addition to its
10+ million regular urban residents.78
Many "floaters" manage to find short- or longer-term
jobs, but even so they retain the stigma of their
rural registration, ineligible for many of the benefits
that urbanites receive, and they are often feared
and looked down upon by the city's permanent residents.79
Their marginal connection to the urban system is
often seen as making them less likely to play by
the official rules, and they are often blamed for
the upsurge in serious crimes in cities in recent
years.
In this
case as well, however, there are reasons to doubt
that China's floating population will become a serious
threat to the system. This doubt is informed partly
by research on squatters and migrants in other developing
countries. Fears of migrants as a source of social
and political disorder are common, but instances
in which they mobilize to challenge the state are
extremely rare. Generally speaking, migrants lack
many of the structural conditions mentioned above
that might translate their resentments into an effective
political movement. They come voluntarily in pursuit
of advantages and generally stay only when they
are successful in this pursuit; their frame of reference
tends to be kinsmen back in their village rather
than favored urban residents or fellow migrants;
they often live dispersed among others with whom
they are in competition; they lack the social space,
resources, and leaders to effectively mobilize;
and so forth. All of these considerations make it
seem likely that China's urban migrants are more
a source of stability than of instability.80
SOE
Workers, Laid-Off Workers, and Pensioners
Although China's proletarians were never the "masters
of the state" that Marxism proclaimed, within the
bureaucratic structure of Mao-era China they were
fairly well treated. They generally had relative
incomes, job security, and fringe benefit coverage
that workers in other developing countries could
only envy. These advantages have been a primary
target of China's reforms, particularly in the 1990s.
With large proportions of SOEs operating at a loss
and under great pressure to cut costs and downsize,
millions of long-time SOE employees have been laid
off. Even those who remain at work are often subject
to an increasingly draconian industrial regime of
rules, fines, and close supervision reminiscent
of "scientific management" in early capitalism in
the West.81
Furthermore, many of the subsidies and benefits
that they formerly received have been weakened or
eliminated, forcing them to pay much more of the
cost of housing, medical care, schooling, and other
necessities than in the past. Some hard-pressed
firms are not able to meet their payrolls or pay
the pensions of their retirees, actions that often
spawn protests by workers and pensioners, who consider
that long-standing commitments are being violated.
As present and former SOE workers see the benefits
they enjoyed under socialism being whittled away,
all around them they can see new beneficiaries of
the reforms--for example, private entrepreneurs,
foreigners, rural migrants, and a "new class" of
officials-turned-business executives. Given these
trends it is understandable that worker protests
have escalated in recent years, and that fear of
worker protests is often seen as a primary obstacle
to a more thorough reform of the SOE system.
In this
instance the potential for serious challenges from
China's SOE workers cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Several structural features of the workers' situation
are conducive to mobilization of worker protest
movements. For example, SOE workers remain highly
concentrated in relatively large units that long
operated as highly integrated "urban villages."
The potential for solidarity and sharing of grievances
within this sort of structure seems particularly
high. The potential for leaders of organized protests
to emerge among people who have lived and worked
alongside each other for decades also seems considerable.
Anger over promises not kept, benefits withdrawn,
and jobs lost seems likely to be more politically
dangerous than the sort of envy at the more rapid
improvement enjoyed by others that is characteristic
of many other groups in China today. Furthermore,
in this case the tendency to blame the state as
the initiator of SOE reforms, rather than oneself,
rivals, or local managers, seems relatively great.
To date,
however, large-scale layoffs and other problems
of SOE workers have not been converted into serious
challenges to state authority; we can reasonably
ask, why not? Several other features of the situation
of workers seem to counterbalance the tendencies
just enumerated, and thus to preserve the status
quo. First, the writing has been on the wall for
SOE workers since the mid-1980s, so that the loss
of their privileges does not come as a shock. Their
looming difficulties presumably induced many ambitious
and dissatisfied SOE workers to find new employment
elsewhere, whether directly from their SOE jobs
or after having been laid off. The existence of
this "exit" option makes life within an SOE less
onerous than in the Mao era, and the selective nature
of the exit flow probably acts to ensure that those
who remain tend to be individuals who are relatively
grateful for retaining their dented iron rice bowls
and concerned about how they will fare if they lose
the remaining pay and benefits. In other words,
it seems likely that individuals who are potential
militants for workers' rights are also more likely
than others to leave in pursuit of better opportunities
elsewhere.
That
most SOE downsizing has taken the form of layoffs
rather than outright terminations is also a factor.
Those who are laid off continue to receive some
pay and often remain in unit-supplied housing as
well, benefits that they may fear losing if they
rock the boat. The fact that at least until recently
China's buoyant economy has provided new job opportunities
for many of those laid off, sometimes without jeopardizing
the subsistence pay and benefits they receive from
their SOE former employer, again seems likely to
reduce the potential for worker unrest to escalate
into serious challenges. We must also take into
account the regime's extraordinary vigilance against
any sign of autonomous organizing among workers
to advance proletarian claims. The paranoia of China's
leaders about the dangers of a Polish-style "Chinese
Solidarity" movement makes any effort to mount a
worker challenge against the state extraordinarily
risky.
Another
stabilizing factor is that to date most worker protests
seem to have been directed at immediate managements
and sometimes at local officials as well, and not
upward against the central leadership. There are
a variety of possible reasons for this myopic state
of affairs.82
In part what may be operating is a perception that
higher levels of the state, while ultimately the
inspiration of the reforms that are whittling away
worker rights and benefits, are paradoxically also
the main source of potential protection against
overly aggressive or arbitrary SOE management. In
other words, when a reformist manager implements
a threatening new practice that workers want to
challenge, their primary recourse is to do such
things as stage a sit-in outside local or higher
government offices to demand that their grievances
be heard. One common response to such protests is
for besieged officials to pressure the SOE managers
involved to work out concessions in order to restore
order, with the state perhaps providing new funding
to facilitate such concessions. To the extent that
this process recurs, the state may be able to burnish
its image as a protector of worker rights, rather
than as the ogre who pulled the rug out from under
the workers.83
A final
consideration is that many SOE workers and pensioners
may accept the justifications the regime provides
for its reforms. China's proletarians are only too
aware of how inefficient and unproductive SOEs were
in the late-Mao era. Even if they resent the threats
the reforms pose to their own livelihoods and work
habits, they may nonetheless accept the state's
claim that radical SOE reform is necessary in order
for China to compete economically. If the legitimacy
of such claims is accepted, then worker anger will
be directed at those who are seen as unfairly implementing
the reforms, not at the central state that launched
them. To the extent that this is the case, worker
anger as a result of SOE reforms is not likely to
translate into a serious challenge to the state.
Alienated
Students and Intellectuals
Students and intellectuals have been leading participants
in the major demonstrations and crises that have
shaken post-1949 China, ranging from the 100 Flowers
Campaign of 1956-57 to the Tiananmen demonstrations
in 1989. Student protest activity of course has
a much longer history in modern China.84
Research on mass movements elsewhere (as well as
of Marxist theory) commonly indicates that other
groups in society rarely mobilize beyond parochial
concerns unless allied with or led by students and
intellectuals. For a variety of reasons, then, we
logically should look to China's intellectual elite
when contemplating the prospects for stability or
chaos in that society.
A variety
of considerations are likely to sustain high levels
of alienation among China's students and intellectuals.
Although some of the major criticisms of the regime
raised in 1989 are not currently so important--inflation,
for example (deflation is now more of a danger)--others
continue to generate discontent. Corruption continues
to be pervasive, with the official campaigns launched
against this evil considered highly selective and
ineffective. The shopworn socialist slogans and
rituals that the regime tries to use to legitimize
its programs are widely rejected, and the absence
of an alternative moral vision is particularly troubling
to the inheritors of China's literati tradition.
Also, the legacy of the events of 1989 convinced
some members of China's intellectual elite that
the regime was so repugnant that it could not be
reformed.
Although
these considerations indicate that a reservoir of
alienation among many students and intellectuals
will remain a threat to China's leadership in the
years ahead, other developments may make another
large-scale student uprising less likely. Several
features of student life have changed in ways that
may reduce the potential for student activism somewhat.
University enrollments have expanded substantially
in the last decade, a trend that may dilute the
likelihood of college students to see themselves
as a deserving elite. The system of bureaucratic
assignment to jobs after graduation, which still
dominated in 1989 despite official promotion of
individual competition for employment opportunities,
has for the most part collapsed. Thus students are
likely to feel that they have much more control
over their own professional futures, and are less
subject to the arbitrariness and favoritism of university
bureaucrats. In addition, the authorities are much
more vigilant and even paranoid in trying to nip
in the bud any early signs of revived campus activism.
Regular threats and the annual spring "lockdown"
of Beijing area campuses indicate that any future
student-led demonstrations will have much more difficulty
building up the kind of momentum and support that
they received in 1989. The sense of partial immunity
to potential regime coercion that helped embolden
student protestors in 1989 also is no longer present.
In regard
to intellectuals in general, both official policies
and economic trends have to a considerable degree
altered the situation of the late-1980s, when the
rewards of the reforms seemed to be passing them
by. Both state-sponsored wage increases for intellectuals
and the rapid growth of new high technology employment
opportunities in the 1990s substantially have eliminated
the situation in which returns to education were
abnormally low in late Mao-era and early reform-era
PRC.85
Now once again China's knowledge workers can have
some confidence that excelling in school and at
work will lead to economic as well as spiritual
rewards. Insofar as the hypocrisy of the gap between
meritocratic slogans and China's residual bureaucratic/virtuocratic
reality was a factor in student and intellectual
anger in 1989, this should be less of a factor in
the future. In sum, although past history makes
discounting the potential for a student-led mass
movement in the future dangerous, on balance this
potential source of regime instability also appears
somewhat more manageable than in the past.
Alternative
Faiths and Sects
The discussion to this point has focused on a fairly
conventional set of potentially aggrieved social
groups and has involved a sociological analysis
of the forces likely to promote or counteract the
tendency of these groups to mobilize to redress
grievances. The challenge presented to the regime
in 1999 by Falungong alerts us to the need
to consider alternative sources of challenge to
regime stability. Although we do not yet have very
much research on the membership and organization
of this Qigong sect, its reported millions
of members span regions and social groups, rather
than representing a well-defined social constituency.86
There appears to be a tendency for the members to
be middle-aged or older and to represent a variety
of occupations in urban areas (including party cadres)
more than rural China, but still the absence of
a common social origin is notable. The sect's members
are united not by common social origins, but by
their mode of response to China's current moral
vacuum. They have found new meaning and moral guidance
in an eclectic mixture of Qigong rituals
and Buddhist and Taoist practices devised by sect
founder Li Hongzhi, and in the discipline and solidarity
they find among fellow believers in this new (but
in some ways very old) faith.
There
are several good reasons for China's leaders to
be concerned about the challenge posed by Falungong.
They were taken completely by surprise by the 10,000
or so highly disciplined Falungong members
who staged a sit-in outside Zhongnanhai in April.
They were presumably very dismayed to discover that
their longstanding and vigorous efforts to prevent
the formation of any autonomous organizations in
China had failed to halt the rise of a movement
claiming millions of members nationwide. Knowledge
of the key role played by alternative faiths and
charismatic leaders in movements that shook or overthrew
earlier Chinese dynasties (Li Hongzhi as Hong Xiuquan?)
must compound these worries. The dispersed and diverse
nature of the membership and the apparent strength
of their alternative beliefs seem to make them immune
to the kinds of carrots and sticks the regime uses
to deal with dissatisfied workers, peasants, or
students.
Despite
these ominous indicators, there are reasons to question
how much of a threat to regime stability this movement
can or will pose. Its leader is living in exile
in New York, and even with the aid of the Internet,
how well the movement can respond to regime coercion
without its charismatic leader on site to lead the
charge is unclear. The main thrust of Falungong
activities seems to revolve around personal salvation
rather than alternative social and political programs
for China. Thus members may "tune out" the political
and commercial messages of the society around them
without challenging them directly (although that
could change as a result of the current official
suppression campaign). There are no signs to date
that Falungong has tried to link up with
aggrieved peasants, workers, or other groups, a
development that would make them much more threatening.
Although the movement is very large, at the same
time it is also basically a sectarian movement in
which one has to believe in order to join and participate.
This factor cuts off large and influential parts
of China's population, including many young people,
Westernized intellectuals, and even supporters of
rival Qigong masters. In short, the regime
seems to have overreacted in claiming that Falungong
represents a serious political threat to the system.
Nonetheless, the continuing moral vacuum produced
by the collapse of beliefs in Marxism and socialism
provides fertile ground for new faiths to arise
in China, and if such faiths develop political and
social agendas and embed themselves in aggrieved
social groups, they could pose serious challenges
to the regime.
Conclusions
This
survey of potential threats to system stability
in China obviously is not exhaustive. One can think
of a number of other possible sources of instability--for
example, from a military angry about its loss of
status and forced divestiture of lucrative business
assets, or from diehard Marxist intellectuals attempting
to appeal to workers and peasants. Given our inability
to anticipate the events of 1989 and the rise of
Falungong, the possibility of new and unforeseen
groups and movements mounting a challenge to China's
leaders cannot be discounted. However, given this
major caveat, the analysis presented here suggests
several primary conclusions.
- We
can expect a high level of contentiousness and
conflict to persist in China in the future, with
the regime unable to take the support of large
portions of the population for granted.
- The
remaining weaknesses of the institutional mechanisms
for dealing with popular grievances and mobilized
discontent are likely to produce crude and coercive
regime responses in some instances, leading to
continuing human rights abuses.
- Despite
this turbulence, there is no particular group
or grievance that appears very likely to pose
a fundamental challenge to the leadership in the
next few years. If this conclusion is correct,
the same kind of muddling through and putting
out local forest fires erupting from society that
has characterized the last few years may continue.
In other words, stability of a sort is a reasonable
possibility.
- Stability,
however, seems an odd and perhaps inappropriate
term to use for the scenario envisioned here.
Terms such as "rocky stability" or "stable unrest"
seem a little closer to the mark.87
In retrospect, casting the discussion in terms
of "stability" versus "chaos" seems misleading
and simplistic. One might better conceive of a
continuum ranging from a very orderly stability
to a revolutionary challenge to the regime. On
such a continuum, the analysis here suggests,
the most likely prospect for the immediate future
is closer to the "chaos" end of the scale, with
a variety of kinds of popular turmoil repeatedly
testing but not necessarily defeating the leadership's
ability to maintain control.
- For
the present "rocky stability" to persist depends
upon several conditions that, as others have observed,
may be difficult to preserve. Economic conditions
must continue to generate many new opportunities
and jobs without producing spiraling inflation;
the leadership must maintain internal unity and
avoid splits over how to deal with social eruptions;
they must try to ensure that local protests are
dealt with quickly and effectively without escalating
and allowing alliances to be formed with other
aggrieved groups; and the elite must be willing
and able to use substantial coercion to quell
protests that escape such initial control efforts.88
- Should
these conditions not persist, the level of contentiousness
and alienation present in Chinese society is such
that future social disturbances could escalate
into regime-threatening movements. In other words,
even though what I have called "rocky stability"
appears most likely under present circumstances,
in years ahead a movement further down the continuum
toward "chaos" is by no means a remote possibility.
- If
the present analysis is accurate, the challenges
for US policy are considerable. While we have
a strong interest in China's stability, the ways
in which this stability is maintained are likely
to include measures that we find highly unpalatable.
Although we may be able to provide some forms
of assistance that will lessen the chances of
social instability--such as through fostering
continued legal reform and further development
of institutional mechanisms for expressing and
resolving grievances--our actions generally will
be quite peripheral to the development of the
sorts of social dynamics dealt with here. The
United States will also continue to face the dilemma
of how much support and face to provide to leaders
who, however vital they may be to avoiding chaos,
represent an outmoded and failed social movement
of an earlier era.
SCHEDULE
The
Future of China's Foreign Relations
and Security Posture, 2000-2005
David
Shambaugh
We
are likely to see a China that feels increasingly
insecure and nervous about its security environment,
with increasingly strained relations with major
regional powers, driven increasingly by nationalism
and impatience over Taiwan.
"Prediction
is difficult--especially about the future." --Yogi
Berra
The New
York Yankees star may not have been a Sinologist
or intelligence analyst, but his common sense wisdom
applies to this collection of assessments and estimates.
Given the spotty track record of China watchers,
it behooves us to be modest in our attempts to forecast
China's future evolution--even five years out. Yet,
this is a narrow enough timeframe to do what is
possible: extrapolate from current realities and
trends and weigh the possibilities of intervening
variables affecting the existing trajectories of
China's behavior and future course. Identification
of existing variables and extrapolation of existing
conditions, however, constitutes incomplete intelligence
analysis. Forecasting also involves considering
the potential for the unexpected--the radical event
that could disrupt straight-line trajectories. When
considering the potential future evolution of China's
foreign relations over the next five years, therefore,
one must begin by considering the possible impact
of profound domestic change.
The
Internal-External Nexus
Although
the possibility of major social upheaval, leadership
divisions, systemic political change, and prolonged
economic retrenchment do exist in China,
the likelihood of each should not be considered
as high or probable.89
Many experts, including the contributors to this
symposium, believe that China will likely "muddle
through" in these areas without dramatic change.
Yet, neither should these possibilities be ruled
out. To assume essential stability and continuity
in China would be an analytical and intelligence
failure of colossal proportions, as historical experience
has proved different. In China, expect the unexpected.
Although
the probability of major upheaval is low, each possibility
would necessarily have an impact--positive and negative--on
China's relations with the world and strategic posture.
A prolonged economic downturn would exacerbate existing
social tensions and could trigger more widespread
protests.90
Social upheaval and aggravated economic dislocations
would also impact negatively upon the confidence
of foreign investors and traders--thus exacerbating
the crises. It would also restrict funds available
for military modernization. Generational turnover
in the CCP, which will bring the "fourth generation"
of leaders to power at the Sixteenth Party Congress
of 2002, will affect China's external posture--although,
as the contributions by Li Cheng and Lyman Miller
indicate, how their view of the world will differ
from their predecessors is not clear. Elite factionalism
could affect approaches toward the United States
and--as was witnessed in 1989--elite paralysis could
fuel social discontent. Out of social unrest could
come fundamental regime change, but the process
would no doubt be protracted and bloody. Social
upheaval in China would not be positive for China's
neighbors or the global community, even if it did
result in regime change. It would no doubt result
in a refugee exodus from China, endangering foreign
investments and citizens, could negatively affect
China's proliferation stance (and could even create
a problem of "loose nukes"), and would certainly
require military action to quell disorder--thus
producing human rights abuses on a mass scale. Although
social unrest in China would bring pressure on the
regime, whether it would produce regime change and
bring to power a more liberal variant is not clear.
It could, in fact, result in the emergence of a
more draconian government in Beijing. On the other
hand, systemic political change could have a positive
effect on China's relations with the United States
and its neighbors--presuming that it produced a
proto-democratic system and more liberal regime
emerged to replace the Chinese Communist Party.
While a non-Communist Chinese Government would no
doubt pursue many of the same goals as has the CCP--economic
modernization, bringing Taiwan under national sovereignty,
resisting an expanded regional role for Japan, and
enhancing China's military power--a post-Communist
government would likely also hold more appeal to
Taiwan, would be more transparent economically and
militarily, would be less corrupt and more accountable
to its citizens, would have an improved human rights
record, and would have less reason to challenge
the role of the United States in Asia and the world.
Notwithstanding
these domestic variables and their potential impact
on China's external posture, the balance of this
paper extrapolates from current realities and examines
prospects for the future evolution of China's foreign
relations and strategic/military posture over the
next five years. It is divided into two principal
sections. The first considers China's overall foreign
policy orientation and strategic posture and assesses
the potential for continuity and discontinuity in
this sphere. It essentially concludes that China's
relations with major powers on its periphery, possibly
including Russia, are likely to become more strained
in the next five years, and that China will face
a more unsettled and stressful national security
environment. The second section examines the Chinese
military more directly. While it notes that the
People's Liberation Army (PLA) is in the midst of
implementing sweeping and comprehensive reforms
in a variety of sectors and institutions, particular
attention is paid to the weaponry that the PLA currently
fields and will likely acquire over the next five
years. Each of the sections concludes with a section
assessing the potential impact on US interests.
China's
External Orientation
Ambivalent
Security
The People's Republic of China (PRC) currently enjoys
an unprecedented period of peace and security on
its borders, yet its officials and international
affairs analysts live with a strong sense of insecurity
and suspicion about potential instability and threats
on its periphery--primarily from Taiwan, the United
States, Japan, and India. This ambivalence is manifest
as follows.
As China
enters the 21st century, the nation seemingly faces
no immediate external military threat to its national
security. China's borders are now peaceful, the
former Soviet threat has disappeared, and Beijing
has forged normal diplomatic relations with all
its neighbors. Ties to the member states of the
European Union are also sound. Relations with the
United States and Japan, however, remain fluctuant
and sometimes fractious. But this has been the case
for at least a decade. The possibility for conflict
to erupt over Taiwan's and China's maritime claims
remains, and are increasing as potential flashpoints,
although China does not at present have the military
capability to force its will in either case.
This
pacific situation is striking when compared with
China's security in the past. For many years, China
faced virtual military encirclement by antagonistic
nations. For much of its history, the PRC experienced
a very threatening external security environment.
Today, the PRC has been able to pacify its borders
and build stable and cooperative relationships with
all fourteen nations on its periphery.
China
and Russia: New "Strategic Partners"
The transformed
nature of China's regional posture is perhaps nowhere
more notable than in Sino-Russian relations, which
have moved from the brink of nuclear war to a "strategic
partnership."91
This designation was first proposed by the Yeltsin
government in April 1996, and has since become a
blueprint for Beijing's relations with other major
and medium powers. Two-way trade remains relatively
minuscule ($5.5 billion in 1998, representing only
two percent of total PRC trade volume and less than
five percent of Russia's) and is largely limited
to compensation trade and some exchange in the spheres
of machine building, electronics, power generation,
petrochemicals, aviation, space, and military technology
and weapons. The two countries set a target of $20
billion for two-way trade by 2000, although this
seems far too ambitious as the two actually have
few economic complementarities. Indeed, two-way
trade declined from $6.8 billion in 1997 to $5.5
billion in 1998. In an ironic historical reversal,
in an effort to help alleviate its basket-case economy,
Beijing even offered a $5 billion loan to Moscow
in 1998.
Reciprocal
summits between the heads of state now take place
annually, where the leaders regularly pronounce
solidarity against the "hegemonic" United States.
Lower-level governmental contacts are regular and
apparently warm. The two former enemies have now
completely demarcated their long-disputed 4,340-mile
border and have demilitarized the border region.
Both sides have placed limits on ground forces,
short-range attack aircraft, and antiair defenses
within 100 kilometers of the joint frontier. As
part of two landmark treaties--the Agreement on
Confidence Building in the Military Field Along
the Border Areas and the Agreement on Mutual Reduction
of Military Forces in the Border Areas--signed together
with Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan
in April 1996 and April 1997, respectively, China
and the other signatories agreed to force reductions
that will limit each to maintain a maximum of 130,400
troops, 3,900 tanks, and 4,500 armored vehicles
within this 100-kilometer zone.92
China and Russia have also signed several other
bilateral agreements to stabilize and enhance their
mutual security--including a nuclear non-targeting
agreement (1994) and an agreement to prevent accidental
military incidents (1994). The two military establishments
have forged particularly close relations--including
the transfers of substantial numbers of Russian
weapons and defense technologies to China (including
training). Russian arms exports to China in 1996
were an estimated $2.1 billion, comprising nearly
one-third of their total bilateral trade. Overall,
China has bought approximately $8 billion in Russian
weapons between 1991 and 1999.
Although
claiming that Russia has turned from China's adversary
to ally would be an exaggeration, and both countries
profess that this is not their goal, the new "strategic
partnership" has substantially enhanced their mutual
and regional security and gave them common cause
in opposing "hegemonism and power politics"--Beijing's
codeword for the United States.93
The 1999 Kosovo crisis helped to cement the new-found
Sino-Russian strategic solidarity, but even before
they had increasingly begun to side together by
voting in opposition to the United States in the
UN Security Council and other international forums.
There is little doubt that Chinese leaders and strategists
view the United States as the greatest threat to
world peace, as well as China's own national security
and foreign policy goals. China's 1998 Defense White
Paper is only thinly veiled on this point:
Hegemonism and power politics remain the main source
of threats to world peace and stability; the cold
war mentality and its influence still have a certain
currency, and the enlargement of military blocs
and strengthening of military alliances have added
factors of instability to international security.
Some countries, by relying on their military advantages,
pose military threats to other countries, even resorting
to armed intervention.
Thus
far, Sino-Russian opposition to the United States
and its allies has remained only rhetorical, but
it could become more tangible over time.
China's
Other Regional Relations: Pacifying the Periphery
During
the decade of the 1990s, China also mended fences
with India and Vietnam. While border disputes still
exist in each case, various confidence-building
and security measures (CBSMs) have been put into
place along the common borders and negotiations
proceed to resolve more longstanding territorial
disputes. The November 1996 Agreement on Confidence-Building
Measures in the Military Field Along the Line of
Actual Control in the China-India Border Areas was
a very significant initiative to lower tensions
and reduce the possibility of accidental conflict.
Although diplomatically correct, Beijing's ties
to Hanoi remain fragile, while Vietnamese officials
and analysts remain deeply suspicious of their northern
neighbor.94
In the
case of Sino-Indian relations, strengthened ties
literally went up in smoke with New Delhi's detonation
of five nuclear devices in May 1998. Pakistan followed
suit and could not have done so without China's
assistance to its nuclear development program over
many years. Beijing was quick to join the international
condemnation of India and has since worked to keep
pressure on New Delhi to freeze its nuclear program
and development of delivery systems. Chinese security
specialists have long viewed India as a "regional
hegemon." Similarly, many in India have long seen
China as a threat to its security. In justifying
its nuclear testing, the government in New Delhi
cited the Chinese nuclear "threat" as well as a
perceived containment policy by Beijing. As a result,
Sino-Indian relations are again filled with mutual
animosity and suspicion and have the potential for
long-term rivalry and friction.95
Following
the collapse of the Soviet Union and independence
of Central Asian states, China moved quickly to
establish diplomatic relations and has subsequently
built sound ties with its new neighbors. One of
Beijing's motivations for solidifying ties with
the CIS states is due to its own fears of ethnic
unrest among its Muslim and minority populations
in Xinjiang Province. Small arms and other support
have flowed to insurgents in China's northwest from
Iran, Afghanistan's Taliban, and sympathetic brethren
in the CIS states. Another motivation is China's
growing energy need. Central Asian oil reserves
are estimated at about 200 billion barrels, and
this has become strategically important to China
as the PRC became a net importer of crude oil in
1996 and relied on the Middle East for 53 percent
of its total imports in the same year. The PRC has
paid particular attention to Kazakhstan, with which
it has signed several accords for joint energy exploitation.
Accordingly, an oil pipeline has been built between
the two, which began to carry crude to China in
1997.
During
the 1990s, China has also recognized and normalized
diplomatic relations with the Republic of Korea,
Singapore, and Indonesia--thus taking significant
steps to stabilize its periphery and regional security.
Despite ASEAN suspicions arising from contested
claims to islands in the South China Sea, the China-Myanmar
relationship, China's military modernization program
and long-range strategic objectives,96
Beijing has also been able to build amicable ties
to Southeast Asian states. Indicative of these improved
ties, China-ASEAN trade reached $23.5 billion in
1998 (quadruple that of 1990) despite the impact
of the regional financial crisis. China's trade
with South Korea has similarly mushroomed, also
rising from a negligible amount in 1990 to $21.3
billion in 1998.
Among
its foreign relations, China's relations with Japan
and the United States have been the most difficult
and strained in the post-Cold War period. But even
here, bilateral relations have improved from the
depths of post-1989 period. To be sure, these relationships
are imbued with much historical residue and complexity,
and it is likely that they will both continue to
be characterized by a combination of limited cooperation
and friction for some time to come.
China
and Japan: Suspicious Neighbors
The palpable
tensions revealed at the disappointing Sino-Japanese
Summit of November 1998 (the first visit by a Chinese
head of state to Japan) are indicative of the continuing
deep distrust harbored on both sides. President
Jiang lectured his hosts at every opportunity about
Japan's need for further atonement for World War
II aggression. Jiang and other Chinese officials
also regularly chide Japan about the ambiguity in
the renewed US-Japan Defense Guidelines and Mutual
Security Treaty, suspecting it to be a ruse for
intervention in a Taiwan crisis or elsewhere in
Asia. The Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands remains an additional irritant. For its
part, Japan eyes Chinese nationalism and military
modernization warily. Corporate Japan is also uncertain
about the business climate in China, resulting in
a 27-percent drop in direct investment by Japanese
companies in 1998 (to $3.16 billion).97
Despite
these mutual suspicions and difficulties, both governments
have worked to keep a floor under the relationship
so that it does not devolve into a hostile confrontation.
Prime Minister Obuchi's visit to China in July 1999
was indicative of this effort, as the two sides
agreed to further institutionalize cooperation in
several fields (including bilateral agreement on
the terms of China's accession to the World Trade
Organization). Tokyo and Beijing are likely to continue
to cooperate at a governmental level, while harboring
deep distrust of each other at a societal level.
The
United States and China: From "Strategic Partners"
to "Strategic Competitors"?
Deep
suspicions also underlie Sino-American relations.98
These existed prior to the Kosovo crisis and Yugoslav
War, but they significantly worsened as a result
of the conflict and particularly the mistaken bombing
of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The revival
of Sino-US relations during 1997-98, which accompanied
the exchange of presidential visits, produced a
fragile and temporary stability in the relationship.
Domestic opponents in both countries continued to
undermine the warming trend, while the two governments
remained hard pressed to show tangible results of
cooperation to verify the "constructive strategic
partnership" both sides professed to be building.
Although some important agreements were reached--particularly
in the areas of arms control, environment, and military
ties--a subterranean skepticism existed among many
observers.
NATO's
use of force against Serbia, and particularly the
bombing of the Chinese embassy, shattered the fragile
rapprochement of the two powers. These events
produced a sea change in Chinese perspectives--civilian
and military alike--on the United States. Images
of America turned from cautiously critical to hostile
overnight. The attacks by thousands of Chinese demonstrators
on the US Embassy in Beijing and consulates elsewhere
expressed the depth of public hostility, but it
was also evident in elite attitudes and commentary.
A torrent of anti-American invective was unleashed
in the Chinese media the likes of which had not
been seen since the Cultural Revolution. The official
People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist
Party, published a series of authoritative "Observer"
and "Commentator" articles lambasting American "hegemonism,"
"imperialism," "arrogance," and "aggression," and
"expansionism." One article accused the United States
of seeking to become "Lord of the Earth" and compared
contemporary American hegemony to the aggression
of Nazi Germany.
The residue
from the embassy bombing and Kosovo crisis has introduced
new instability to an inherently fragile relationship.
It has also added to the growing strategic competition
between the two countries. China lacks the political
influence and military power to contest the United
States globally, nor does Beijing seek to wage a
Cold War-style competition with Washington. The
new strategic competition between the United States
and China is being waged over the very structure
and norms of international relations, as well as
the behavior of the United States in the world.
China seeks a "multipolar world" in which American
"hegemony" is diluted and dissolved, while the United
States seeks global "leadership." The United States
has been working to expand and strengthen bilateral
and multilateral security alliances in the post-Cold
War period, while China calls for the abrogation
of all such alliances. Differences over sovereignty
and the issue of "humanitarian intervention" are
particularly nettlesome, and there are divisions
over the role of the UN in peacekeeping operations.
Thus
far, Sino-US strategic competition has largely been
a war of words, despite the mistaken bombing of
the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and Chinese "missile
diplomacy" near Taiwan in 1995-96. Increasingly,
though, the two nation's hard national security
interests rub up against each other in the Asia-Pacific
region--particularly with regard to Taiwan's security;
US alliances and military forces in the region;
strengthening of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty
and expanded Defense Guidelines; and prospects for
theater and national missile defenses (TMD/NMD).
Beijing's opposition to Washington's "dual containment"
of Iraq and Iran is an added irritant. Institutionally,
the competition is increasingly apparent in the
United Nations Security Council and other forums,
where diplomats of the two countries debate each
other. While not yet a new Cold War of geopolitical
competition or a clash of civilizations in the Huntingtonian
sense, the essence of the new Sino-American strategic
competition is very much a clash of worldviews about
the structure and nature of international relations
and security. The contested weltanschauung
is buttressed by the growing strategic competition
over the balance of power and structure of East
Asian security and the Persian Gulf.
Although
I anticipate increased friction between Washington
and Beijing in the years ahead, these strategic
competitors need not become adversaries. Indeed,
they can cooperate in some realms while competing
in others. While having strong differences over
issues of "high security"--Taiwan, the US-Japan
alliance, TMD and NMD, NATO and other security alliances,
Iran and Iraq, etc.--the two governments do cooperate
in areas of what may be described as "low security":
fighting narcotics production and smuggling, organized
crime, alien smuggling, and environmental security.
They can also cooperate in "high security" areas
such as North Korea, stemming proliferation, and
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Thus, as figure
9 illustrates, relations between the United States
and China will embody elements of both cooperation
and competition, but I would expect that in the
strategic/security realm, they will increasingly
gravitate toward the antagonistic end of the median
point on the continuum.
There
remains an opportunity for the United States and
its allies and security partners to establish a
strategic relationship of competitive coexistence
with elements of cooperation with the PRC. Even
this kind of relationship will require constant
high-level attention to policy and hard work by
both sides, if a real adversarial relationship is
to be avoided. As apparent recently, the Chinese
leadership has realized that, despite its differences,
it must coexist with the United States and that
the United States holds the key to numerous goals
Beijing seeks economically, politically, and in
terms of China's security. For its part, the US
administration continues to ignore public distrust
of China and work toward "building a constructive
strategic partnership for the 21st century."99
The joint desire of the two governments to arrest
the downward spiral in relations, and to cooperate
together where possible, may "cushion" bilateral
ties from further deterioration.
Figure
9
China/United States: Elements for Harmony and Antagonism
China's
External Posture: Implications for the United States
Looking
out toward 2005, I foresee both continuity and potential
for change in China's foreign relations and general
strategic posture.
Continuities
-
A continued desire by both China and its neighbors
in East Asia to maintain normal, peaceful, and
mutually beneficial relations. Most, if not
all, of China's neighbors accept that they must
coexist as harmoniously as possible with Beijing
and that their national interests are not served
by having strained or confrontational relations
with the PRC. This condition is particularly true
of South Korea and ASEAN countries, but does not
apply equally to India or Japan. This said, the
vast majority of China's neighbors also seek a
sustained and strong US presence in the region
to check Beijing's occasional temptations to flex
its muscles or to attain a more lasting hegemony
of its own over the region.100
-
A view by Beijing of North Korea that places stability
and regime survival first. Above all, Beijing
seeks a stable Korean Peninsula. Despite significant
differences with Pyongyang, China does not seek
a confrontation over the DPR. Its secondary policy
goal is to maintain a strategic buffer and keep
the Communist government in power, while urging
Pyongyang to be more open and accommodating toward
the world. Regime collapse in Pyongyang would
likely fuel a sense of insecurity among China's
rulers. Beijing is also hedging against an uncertain
future by working hard to build ties to South
Korea. It remains unclear if China would support
or tolerate US troops on the Korean Peninsula,
should reunification take place.
-
A continuing strained relationship between China
and Japan. Although bilateral exchanges will
continue at the governmental and nongovernmental
levels, public opinion surveys in both countries
suggest a deep reservoir of distrust that underlies
the relationship and will continue to constrain
any real harmonization of relations between Beijing
and Tokyo.
-
Continued frictions between China and the United
States, but within parameters of competitive coexistence.
For a variety of reasons, I do not foresee a real
harmonization of Sino-US relations--much less
the achievement of any kind of "strategic partnership
for the 21st century"--but bilateral ties are
likely to be bounded by the need of both countries
for essential stability in the relationship. I
foresee a relationship by "strategic competition"
characterized by strong mutual differences over
the issues noted above, but also allowing for
limited cooperation in several areas. Provided
that China does not begin to challenge US interests
openly on a global basis, and provided that the
volatile Taiwan situation does not precipitate
a conflict that draws in the US militarily, this
kind of "bounded competition" can be expected
indefinitely.
-
Nationalism will remain a powerful influence,
and constraint, over PRC policymakers. Their
positions on several issues will be increasingly
shaped, and their flexibility constrained, by
such sentiment. Sometimes nationalism will increase
China's obstinate and sometimes confrontational
behavior, while other times it will constrain
the government's ability to pragmatically compromise
with foreign governments and organizations. Nationalism
is both an autonomous variable that exists in
society, but it is also closely linked to regime
legitimacy for the CCP.
-
Continuing problems in the Chinese economy will
cause strains for foreign investors, but increase
the importance of China's export markets--and
hence the need to maintain stable relations with
key Western nations. There is no turning back
in China's increasing dependence upon, and integration
into the global trading and financial order. This
inclusion will have a positive and moderating
effect on Beijing's foreign diplomatic relations
and perhaps its security posture.
- As
noted in the next section of this paper, China's
military modernization program will continue apace.
This situation probably will create increasing
tensions with China's neighbors and the United
States.
Discontinuities
-
Increased pressure from Beijing and escalating
tensions over Taiwan. Beijing may set a timeline
or deadline for "reunification" of Taiwan with
the mainland. If it does or does not, I would
nonetheless anticipate Beijing to increase diplomatic
and military pressure on the island. At the same
time, or as a consequence of such pressure, a
government may come to power in Taipei inclined
to ameliorate cross-strait tensions. Such a possibility
will be powerfully constrained by the separate
identity of Taiwan, which has grown stronger and
stronger over time, providing little positive
incentive to "reunify" with the mainland. The
Taiwan situation will likely more and more unstable
over the next five years.
-
Increased strains with India. Although there
has been a slight relaxation of tensions of late,
Indian and Chinese strategic interests are increasingly
divergent. The May 1998 nuclear detonations by
New Delhi ushered in a new and protracted era
of subregional strategic rivalry between the two
countries, although both profess the desire to
stabilize bilateral ties.
-
Possible strain in relations with Russia.
Sino-Russian relations are difficult to forecast,
but history and hard interests suggest friction
may lie ahead. The warming of bilateral relations
and closeness of strategic/military ties has surprised
many observers who have witnessed Chinese-Russian
tensions across the decades and generations. At
a popular level, and even among groups of certain
officials in both countries, there remains deep
suspicion (and even racism) of the other's intentions
and geopolitical position. Disputes over trade
and payment for military purchases, as well as
Chinese discontent over Russian reluctance to
supply certain weapons, production capabilities,
and training to the Chinese military, could all
stimulate friction.
When
considered together, these potential continuities
and changes suggest substantial strains in China's
external relations over the next five years. We
are likely to see a China that feels increasingly
insecure and nervous about its security environment,
with increasingly strained relations with major
regional powers, driven increasingly by nationalism
and impatience over Taiwan. In such an environment,
the Chinese military is an increasingly important
variable.
China's
Military Modernization and Reform
The most
important fact to grasp about the future development
of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is that, as
an institution, it is trying to implement an unprecedented
and highly complex range of reforms simultaneously.
The PLA is currently being reformed from top to
bottom and across every service arm, military region,
and functional department. Both incremental and
fundamental reforms are being thrust on the military
in the areas of doctrine, training, logistics, conscription,
command and control, computerization, procurement
and defense production, budgeting and external sources
of funding, force structure, and other areas. Hardly
a sphere of military life is going untouched. Any
military would have difficulty adjusting to, and
absorbing, such a full range of ongoing reforms,
and they are undoubtedly causing difficulties for
the PLA.
Although
not seeking to minimize these thoroughgoing reforms,
space constraints in this paper do not permit full
consideration of them.101
As many of the reforms are known to experts on the
PLA and are increasingly available in the public
domain,102
discussion in this section will be limited to the
weapon systems and capabilities of the PLA--with
an eye toward the kinds of weapons and capabilities
that the PLA will have at its disposal over the
next five years.103
How
Capable Is the PLA?
There has been a growing debate among "PLA watchers"
over the competence and capabilities of the Chinese
military at present and in the near-to-medium term
future.104
The truth probably lies somewhere toward the middle
of the debate: the PLA remains very backward
in virtually all conventional and nuclear capabilities,
but it is improving its capabilities and readiness
steadily, and could inflict serious damage on an
adversary in a war on its periphery. Let us
explore the reasons for this general assessment.
Deriving
lessons learned from the 1991 Gulf war and the 1999
Yugoslav War, and combining them with the PLA's
new operational doctrine of "limited war under high-technology
conditions," air and missile power have become the
weapon systems of choice in building the PLA arsenal
for the 21st century. New generations of intercontinental,
medium, and short-range ballistic missiles with
improved warheads are being developed, while priority
has been placed on acquiring MIRV and cruise missile
capabilities.105
As table 6 illustrates, the PLA now has in service
a full range of ballistic missile systems. The successful
test of the DF-31 (8,000-kilometer range) in August
1999, the apparent readiness of the DF-41 (12,000-kilometer
range) for testing, and an aggressive program to
develop and deploy the JL-2 SLBM, all are notable
improvements for China's nuclear forces.
The PLA
is also hard at work developing land-attack cruise
missiles (LACMs). A variety of programs are under
way--most trying to adapt the existing sea-launched
C-801 and C-802 for air- and ground-launched systems.
The reengineered C-801, which is cloned from the
French Exocet and designated the YJ-8, could
enter production as early as 2000. It has a 135-km
range, would incorporate GPS navigation and terrain
contour mapping (TERCOM) guidance systems, and is
likely to have accuracy up to ten meters.106
China may also turn to Russia for supply of cruise
missiles over the next few years.
At least
two new indigenous fighters also are under development.
The development of the F-10, a fourth-generation
multirole fighter, has been plagued with problems
(engine thrust, airframes, and avionics), but may
be ready for serial production in 2001-2002. It
uses a delta wing canard configuration, incorporates
stealth-like design features, advanced avionics
(from Israel), and is far advanced over the current
top-of-the-line F-8II.107
The JH-7 (FBC-1) is a twin-engine strike fighter
designed for long-range air cover missions and is
also in the flight-testing stage. There are also
recent reports of another new multirole fighter,
designated the XXJ, which is supposedly modeled
on the Russian Su-27.108
The PLA Air Force has already bought 46 Su-27 fighters,
with a contract for production of two hundred more
(designated the F-11). The 1997 contract called
for the first fifty to be assembled from kits at
the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation factory (the first
two were flight-tested in late-1998), with licensed
production to commence thereafter. The PLAAF also
reportedly closed a deal in August 1999 for purchase
of 50 to 70 Su-30 multirole strike fighters from
Russia.
Once--and
if--all these aircraft come on stream and
phased retirements of antiquated aircraft are completed,
China will still be short of strategic lift and
in-flight refueling capabilities, and thus will
remain incapable of fighting beyond its borders
and immediate periphery. But, as table 7 indicates,
these additions to the force structure will provide
a more diversified fighter complement, and will
give the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) a mixture of approximately
1,350 second-, third-, and fourth-generation fighter/interceptors--but
this will not come to pass unless all goes well
in production and testing. This would be a substantial
air force by regional standards. However, one cannot
be too optimistic on this score, given the chronic
problems that have plagued the civilian and military
aircraft industry in China. Further necessities
include pilot training for combat situations in
all-weather conditions, and regular maintenance--and
the PLAAF's record on both scores has not been commendable
to date.
Table
6
China's Nuclear Arsenal
Sources:
Shirley Kan and Robert Shuey, China: Ballistic
and Cruise Missiles (CRS Report, 1998); Department
of Defense, The Security Situation in the Taiwan
Strait (Report to Congress Pursuant to the FY99
Appropriations Bill, February 1, 1999); International
Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military
Balance 1998/99 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999); National Intelligence Council, Foreign
Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile
Threat to the United States Through 2015 (September
1999).
The PLA's
doctrine of peripheral defense has, of course, also
included increased attention to developing a blue-water
naval capability (yuanyang haijun)--although
this ambition has been severely hampered by lack
of funds, an inadequate indigenous production base
(to produce, for example, heavy cruisers, aircraft
carriers, and nuclear submarines), and lack of access
to Western sources of supply for key technologies
and armaments. China's top-of-the-line destroyers,
the Luhu and Luhai (of which the PLA Navy possesses
two and one, respectively) are outfitted with German
and American engines, French and American radars
and sonars, French helicopters, Italian torpedo
launchers, and French surface-to-air and ship-to-ship
missiles. Since 1989, China has been prohibited
from purchasing Western military equipment and there
is little sign of a relaxation on this ban anytime
soon, despite some loosening in European Union restrictions
on some electronics. Despite restricted access to
Western naval technologies and platforms, the PLAN
has upgraded electronic countermeasures, radar and
sonar, fire-control systems, and onboard armament
on refitted Luda destroyers and Jianghu
frigates. These are being supplemented by new-generation
Luda III destroyers, Jiangwei class
frigates, Houjian and Houxian missile
patrol craft, and Dayun class resupply vessels.
In all,
the PLAN has added nearly twenty surface combatants
to its fleet over the last decade. The most important
addition to the PLAN will be the two Sovremenny
destroyers currently being built in Russia's St.
Petersburg shipyards (the first began undergoing
sea trials in late-1998), and could be ready for
delivery in 2000. These vessels are armed with Moskit
(SS-N-22 "Sunburn") anti-ship missiles and Uragan
(SA-N-7 "Gadfly") surface-to-air missiles. Once
incorporated in to the fleet, these ships will pose
a distinct danger to aircraft carrier battle groups
(CVBGs). Russia has also sold four Kilo diesel electric
submarines in recent years, although the PLAN has
experienced substantial maintenance and operation
difficulties with them. There are also recent reports
indicating the possible sale of two Russian Akula
class nuclear attack submarines to the PLAN. Also
under indigenous development are several Chinese-built
Song class Type 093 and 094 (SSN and SSBN, respectively)
submarines; the former may join the fleet around
2000, and the latter around 2005 if all goes well.109
Submarine construction and operation is extremely
complicated, and the Chinese record in each has
been very poor to date. Submarine operation, especially
for SSBNs, is even more complex--and it should not
be assumed ipso facto that the PLAN will
be able to operate its new subsurface assets.
Great
emphasis is also being placed on achieving long-range
precision strike capability (LACMs) and also working
on new information warfare (IW) and other innovations
associated with the Revolution in Military Affairs
(RMA). There is no doubt that China is actively
studying these technologies (including in laser-guided
munitions, electronic countermeasures, computer
viruses, antisatellite weapons, high-powered microwave
weapons, satellite photo reconnaissance, GPS, over-the-horizon
sensors, phased-array radars, high-speed telecommunications,
etc.),110
but ambition should not be confused with capability.
These are extremely complicated technologies to
master, test, produce, deploy, assimilate, and maintain.
There exist numerous impediments--financial, human,
technological--to China's ability to build, deploy,
and maintain such high-tech systems.
From
the desire to develop these latter technologies
and weapon systems, one could infer that China is
preparing for asymmetrical military contingencies
against opponents possessing state-of-the-art militaries
(e.g., Japan or the United States), particularly
in potential conflict over Taiwan. The purchase
of aircraft, submarines, and destroyers from Russia
all appear to be "contingency driven." They seem
to indicate preparations to present a credible threat
to Taiwan in the first decade of the next century
(probably around 2005-2007). Moreover, these purchases
and the emphasis on improving ECM and IW capabilities
further suggest a readiness to engage and disrupt
US CVBGs and forces in a potential Taiwan conflict.111
The persistent attempts to acquire in-flight refueling
capability, and the development of fourth-generation
fighters, perhaps also indicate a desire to project
air power into the South China Sea and beyond.
Table
7
PLAAF Fighters
Sources: Kenneth Allen, Glen Krumel, and Jonathan
Pollack, China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century
(Santa Monica: RAND, 1995); Zalmay Kalilizad, The
United States and a Rising China (Santa Monica:
RAND, 1999); IISS, The Military Balance 1998/99
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
The 1999
Kosovo conflict has also seemed to add a greater
sense of urgency to the PLA's modernization program.
PLA analysts paid close attention to the military
dimensions of the Yugoslav War and NATO's strategy,
tactics, and weapons. They also noted that similar
tactics and firepower had been employed in the Gulf
war, including initial attacks against Yugoslavia's
command and control infrastructure; extensive electronic
jamming of both military and public communications;
remote targeting by long-range cruise missiles,
launched from sea and air; achievement of "information
dominance," making extensive use of space-based
sensors and satellites; and airstrikes launched
from as far away as North America, utilizing in-flight
refueling. PLA analysts were surprised, however,
by new features evident in the Yugoslav conflict--for
example, the use of several new weapon systems,
such as improved laser-guided precision munitions
that use a variety of new active homing and direction-finding
devices. One of these was the GBU-28/B laser-guided
"smart" gravity bomb--five of which were launched
from B-2 strategic bombers, mistakenly striking
the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
The extensive
use of cruise missiles and other precision-guided
munitions from ranges outside Yugoslav point defenses
had a major impact on PLA planners (although they
had witnessed it previously during the Gulf war);
they were particularly impressed by the increased
accuracy of such weapons. This prominence of "smart
weapons" reminded the PLA that modern wars can be
prosecuted from great distances, far over the horizon,
without visual range targeting or encountering antiair
and ballistic missile defenses, and not even being
able to engage enemy forces directly. Even the Gulf
war involved ground forces and force-on-force engagements--but
not in Yugoslavia. This realization was stark for
PLA commanders whose whole orientation and doctrine
to date had been one of fighting adversaries in
land battles on China's soil or in contiguous territory.
PLA analysts were profoundly disturbed by the very
idea that, in modern warfare, a stealthy enemy could
penetrate defenses and devastate one's forces without
the ability to see or hear, much less counterattack,
the adversary. This perceived vulnerability reportedly
prompted a review of the PLA's strategic air defenses
and defensive capabilities for jamming and confusing
incoming smart weapons.
Implications
for the United States
These lessons will undoubtedly have an impact on
PLA priorities (allocative, doctrinal, and organizational).
Although money is scarce for dramatically increased
defense expenditure in China, and China's access
to Western defense technologies and weapons is severely
limited, expect to see increased priority placed
on the PLA's ballistic missile and cruise missile
programs, information and electronic warfare capabilities,
C4I networks, and antiair defenses. These new priorities
will supplement--but also will have to compete with--the
existing emphasis on building up tactical air force,
blue-water naval, and subsurface assets.
Without
access to equipment and technologies from the West,
however, the PLA will never be able to appreciably
close the conventional weaponry and defense technology
gaps vis-à-vis Japan and the West--which
are, in fact, steadily widening. To be sure, transfers
from Russia are meeting certain "niche" needs of
the PLA, but they are far from sufficient to provide
the PLA with a power projection capability, much
less the ability to carry out a successful attack
against Taiwan. With the exception of a few "pockets
of excellence" (or what one analyst calls "pockets
of adequacy"), most Western analysts place the PLA's
conventional capabilities twenty to thirty years
behind the state-of-the-art, with the gap widening.
However, vis-à-vis China's neighbors, particularly
Taiwan, the gap is narrowing. Today, China's best
conventional military capabilities, across-the-board,
presently resemble early-1980s European equipment.
In many areas the technologies and hardware are
of 1960s or 1970s vintage. To be sure, the PLA is
attempting to plug some of its most glaring gaps
through purchases of select equipment from Russia
and Israel, but the PLA's overall conventional order-of-battle
remains extremely antiquated.
In the
area of ballistic missiles, however, China's capabilities
are considerably better--and improving. The buildup
of SRBMs opposite Taiwan is an obvious and serious
concern for the security of the island and will
challenge US responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations
Act.112
The same applies to the PLA's emphasis on developing
land attack cruise missiles. China's emphasis on
building up its ballistic missile forces will also
have important implications for the United States--for
both its forward-deployed forces in East Asia as
well as defense of the continental homeland.113
Although
the PLA's overall capabilities remain limited, a
bona fide nuclear deterrent does exist, and progress
is being made in acquiring new air and naval platforms.
It is important to recognize that these conventional
capabilities do not and will not threaten, directly
or indirectly, the United States or its Asia-Pacific
allies for the next five years. This key assessment
also applies to various scenarios surrounding a
Taiwan conflict--when the PLA can bring force directly
to bear on US forces and the island itself. For
the next five years, Taiwan's defenses should be
adequate to repel any major assault or blockade
against the island. While the PRC does currently
possess the unencumbered ability to attack the island
with ballistic missiles, it does not possess the
conventional capabilities to follow up with a successful
follow-on invasion during this period. Despite this
key judgment, it is also clear that the window of
Taiwan's self-defense is steadily narrowing. The
trendlines of the PLA's indigenous production and
exogenous procurement indicate that Taiwan's current
qualitative superiority in weapons is eroding, and
by 2005 the island will likely find itself unable
to match a more powerful PLA across a range of systems.
The window of vulnerability is widening. This judgment
has certain implications for US military sales to
Taiwan, US diplomacy toward Beijing and Taipei,
as well as the disposition of America's own forces
in the East Asia.114
Comments:
China's Future--Implications for US Interests
Arthur
Waldron
Let me
start with the image of China as a volcano, which
has been repeatedly invoked today but not really
explored. Instead of exploration we have heard some
tremendous expertise, but it has been applied only
to the immediate past and the present; the future,
to the extent we have heard about, it has been a
rather upbeat straight-line projection of the present.
With
reason or not, however, plenty of people--not in
the least Chinese--do think of China along volcano-type
lines. I know so from reactions to a speech of mine,
which I've given in Hong Kong and Singapore among
other places, and most recently at the Jiaozi Club
in Washington, the topic of which is "Would China
have a different foreign policy if it were a democracy?"
My own
view is that China is ripe for democratization:
its people are better educated and more affluent
than ever before and certainly at least as well
prepared to vote as are Mongolians and Nigerians
and South Africans, all of whom have done so recently.
Furthermore, in a real and honest election, I suspect
that rural and farming interests would be dominant--and
that as a result the focus of Chinese politics might
shift, and this would be a good thing, from territorial
disputes and ballistic missiles to things such as
drinking water supply, irrigation, education, and
so forth.
That
is not how everyone in my audiences have seen things,
however. Some people get tremendously agitated and
tell me that democracy in China would bring to power
an extreme nationalist regime. Indeed, twice I have
had questioners--well-educated, well-informed people--tell
me that "Hitler" will come to power if China democratizes.
I don't
believe this for a minute--and of course even in
Germany, Hitler came to power from a minority position
via a back-room deal--but what these responses show
is that many people have a sense that explosive
forces lie just under the surface in China. So even
though our experts today have told us that society
is pretty inert, some people clearly disagree, and
we should bear that in mind as we make our scenarios
about the future. The question is, how do we
relate those fears to today's decidedly bland presentations?
Begin
with Barry Naughton. The most important insight
I will take home today comes from Barry's paper.
It is that China's economy will continue to develop,
perhaps chiefly because there is simply no alternative
that will work to more privatization and greater
competition. The government may not be very enthusiastic.
Barry showed just how contradictory their various
interventions and measures are. But still, the net
result will be a continued if bumpy forward movement.
(Ezra also made this point with respect to the continuing
development of basic infrastructure and so forth.)
This seems a very plausible prospect to me, and
it raises the question of parallel political
change or lack thereof?
Let's
take Barry's trend and project it to its conclusion.
The result, say in a decade or so, is a functioning
Chinese economy in which all property is privately
held and in which markets rather than bureaucrats
make decisions. This is of course more than
a purely economic result. Such a Chinese society
is completely different from the one that exists
today, and has completely different needs as far
as institutions, software, and so forth, than what
China possesses today. Briefly stated, to function
that society will require clear and objective rules
and laws, and impartial and consistent institutions
to enforce them.
And in
such a society, no role exists for a Communist party.
Given the existence of rules and institutions, party
directives and so forth are unnecessary; indeed,
if they continue to meddle in such an economy they
will only undermine it. It is like the old deist
argument about the clock-maker: the best one sets
up a clock in the town square that works thereafter
with no more attention from him. If it keeps stopping
and the clock-maker has to be called, then something
is very wrong.
Well,
if the economic trajectory is as Barry describes
it--and I think he has made the case rather persuasively--then
clearly it is in contradiction to Beijing's current
political trajectory. The sorts of property and
other rights that must exist for a market system
to function simply preclude further exercise of
the sort of absolute power to which the Communist
Party is accustomed and this means that some other
sort of political system must replace it both if
economic liberalization succeeds and for economic
liberalization to succeed. Enduring success economically,
in other words, is incompatible with a continued
role for the Chinese Communist Party.
What
will replace the Party? The answer, nearly everywhere
else in the world, among all sorts, conditions,
and cultures of men, is today liberal, participatory
democracy and it is difficult to see how China can
avoid this and still be strong economically. But
we see, today, absolutely no movement whatsoever
in that direction in China--nothing even parallel
the sort of bumpy and sometimes confused forward
economic movement. If anything, we see the opposite.
The current leader, Jiang Zemin, speaks out regularly
and authoritatively against liberalization and democracy,
and from what we have heard today about his putative
successor Hu Jintao, it is hard to imagine that
he will have any contrary vision. So what happens?
We have economic and political trains on one
Chinese track, and they are pulling in opposite
directions.
Lyman
talked about the "institutionalization" of PRC politics.
I noted that because in the detailed discussion
that followed I heard nothing about institutions.
It was all the usual detailed personal political
inside baseball in which China watchers revel. Like
the fellow in the market who hangs up the sheep's
head, we put up the respectable social science rubric
of "institutionalization" but what we talked was
the same old contentless Chinese politics of personalities.
Some opening was suggested by Li Cheng's optimistic
remark that today the political elites have "no
choice" but to negotiate and compromise. I have
to say I don't believe that is the case. Even as
we speak, there is a very powerful faction of the
Chinese Communist Party that has been forcibly repressed
and excluded from any activity. This is Zhao Ziyang
and his followers--and remember he was once the
head of the whole thing. Today he is still under
strict house arrest in Beijing. Only his daughter
is permitted to visit him. He cannot meet anyone
else and has to write a letter to the Party requesting
permission to go out at all. I ask Chinese officials
about him and they say in effect--"irrelevant, a
burnt out case, everyone has forgotten about him."
Perhaps so. But if that is the case, why not release
him . . . ?
As most
of you know I am not a specialist in post-1949 China.
My work is mostly on the first half of the twentieth
century--which to me is a much more typical chunk
of Chinese time than were Maoism and even the rule
of Deng--and also a period of great creativity and
dynamism. Most every great Chinese artistic achievement
of this century--the only exception I can think
of is cinema--was created before 1949; the same
is true for education--that is when the great universities
were founded, when the first generations of Chinese
went overseas to set new standards of academic achievement
in Japan and the West. The press was incomparably
freer and the newspapers much better then than they
are now (try reading the old Chen Bao if
you don't believe me), and the economy thrived as
well--consider the Shanghai Bund, or old Hankou,
or any number of other places. But politically there
was instability.
Zhao
Ziyang is locked up because his person and his ideas
and his followers pose a mortal threat to the current
holders of power. In a democratic country, the ballot
box would decide. But in China, personal rivalries
have regularly been resolved by arrest, by assassination,
by civil war--which brings us to the very real
danger Ezra mentioned, which is that in the increasingly
complex reforming Communist China with losers as
well as winners that we have been considering, the
interests of some aggrieved group or some particular
view on an important policy matter will be folded
into normal political rivalry--the example, Ezra
gave was Peng Dehuai and Mao--thus greatly raising
the stakes. PRC right now has no mechanism for resolving
such a dispute--except for the means adopted against
Zhao, and one can question who exactly will listen
in say five years' time if Hu Jintao instructs,
"Off with his head!" Such disputes can escalate;
they can also ramify downward into the Chinese society
that Marty [Whyte] has described, to provide the
connections and common focus that he found lacking.
Nothing
at all is being done by the Party today to avoid
this danger but consider what is going on. As we
meet, preparations are being made for the fiftieth
anniversary of the PRC--with, of all things in this
day and age, a military parade of the sort that
even the Russians can no longer stomach, through,
of all places, Tiananmen Square. We have the forthcoming
publication of Jiang Zemin's "thought" in four volumes
(Deng only got three. How may will Hu Jintao merit?)
And we have the crude atavistic rhetoric of the
anti-Falungong campaign with strident Cultural
Revolution-style TV denunciations, and the equally
primitive media campaigns against Lee Teng-hui and
the United States--in the People's Daily
and elsewhere. This is the sort of thing that embarrasses
many Chinese, and rightly so. But what is it all
about? It struck me the other day. This is a
leadership struggle.
What
we are seeing now is the full repertory of leadership
struggle techniques, everything from the otherwise
obscure philosophical issues (Falungong)
to the thought reform sessions to the mass propaganda
spectacles. But who is the target of this struggle?
Who is Jiang Zemin's opponent? There seems to be
no one.
A longtime
foreign resident of Beijing had the answer. "These
guys are sick of calling people up and issuing orders
and having no one obey them." In other words, this
is a struggle for leadership. It is not against
anyone--except, collectively, the entire Chinese
foot-dragging independently minded mass of the Chinese
people and even the Communist apparat, for whom
the "leadership" at the "center" is no longer a
source of fear, let alone an object of respect.
These people need to be shaken up, and a good old-fashioned
struggle campaign is seen as the way to do so.
If Chinese
economics are gradually moving forward toward private
property and free markets, the direction set politically
is reverse--back toward the days of totalitarianism.
This situation is a fundamental incompatibility
between China's current economic and political systems,
and this will grow in the future.
Let us
now move quickly to international relations. The
same sorts of contradictions exist there. I think
it is useful to recognize--I know Paul Heer and
others disagree with me about this--that foreign
policy is not an autonomous realm. There is no obvious
set of Chinese "national interests" that define
a "Chinese foreign policy" in the absence of domestic
choices of preferences. What those preferences will
be will depend on who is in power and how he got
there. In other words, regime type makes a huge
difference. I believe a democratic China would have
a very different foreign policy from what a Communist
China has: this is obvious if the country in question
is Japan, or England, or Germany, but when it comes
to China, for too many people the only adjective
you need is "Chinese." In truth, however, regime
type is the independent variable and foreign policy
is the dependent variable.
In foreign
policy we see the same sorts of contradictions we
encountered in domestic policies. Let me begin with
a Barry Naughton-style statement of a basic truth.
China is deeply and profoundly dependent economically
on the rest of the world, both for the import of
the huge quantities of foreign capital that have
financed so much of her economic development (and
accounts for almost half her exports) and for access
to foreign markets for the export of goods. Were
either of these to change--were foreign investment
to drop or foreign markets to close--China would
be thrown into crisis.
Yet,
much of China's foreign policy directly undercuts
these interests. David has listed all the modern
military equipment China is developing and importing
and deploying, and some of the territorial and other
claims this new armory is designed to support. Asian
states want to work with China and cooperate with
her, but China's government, I think, aspires not
so much to the international condominium that is
offered as to the sort of hegemonic position in
the Asian region that it already enjoys at home.
What is the result? China has pushed forward rapidly
with nuclear and ballistic-missile technologies---but
hegemony is still elusive, and the military quest
for it is counterproductive, for long-somnolent
India has bestirred herself to build missiles capable
of reaching Beijing and tested nuclear warheads
for them, and Japan, which could acquire such capabilities
overnight, is now seriously reconsidering its security
needs. China has assisted North Korea to build intercontinental
missiles--and now South Korea, which has long forsworn
them under US pressure, is now developing missiles
at least capable of hitting all of the north. Jiang
Zemin has ventured into territory that Deng Xiaoping,
a wiser man by far, conspicuously avoided: namely,
the making of military threats against Taiwan, and
the predictable result is--more and better defense
for Taiwan.
And suppose
China really did use force against Taiwan? What
would be the result? At an absolute minimum, the
closing of US markets to Chinese trade. As a Senate
staffer put it to me with great weariness--"I know
the wording by heart [he had drafted South African
and other sanctions]--'no article, good, product,
or other item manufactured, assembled, extracted
. . . in China . . . shall be permitted to be imported
into the United States of America'" or words to
that effect.
Clearly
the Chinese Communist party's foreign policy is
as self-contradictory as is its domestic policy.
It makes no sense, if you are a trading state dependent
on capital imports and markets for exports, to threaten
and alienate your primary capital sources and chief
markets, and even if you are not, it makes no sense
to stir up arms races with neighbors who, as Japan
is, are bound to win if they decide to enter the
race. I don't take these contradictions as somehow
inherent aspects of being China--and I would urge
all of us to think more seriously about the alternatives:
why couldn't China be another democratic state,
with a thriving economy and adequate self-defense
capabilities, like England or France or Japan or
India or even Russia or perhaps Indonesia very soon?
I don't think that Beijing's current policy is an
aspect of being Chinese: it is an aspect of being
a dictatorship and being Communist--and, as George
Kennan pointed out fifty years ago, such states
find external enemies, real or imagined, very handy
as a way of diverting attention away from internal
problems.
(I'd
apply this analysis to PRC policy toward Taiwan
as well: we have heard several speakers today speak
of Taiwan as the most important problem from China's
viewpoint. I don't believe that for a minute. There
is no reason Beijing can't just forget about Taiwan
as it has forgotten about Mongolia [which was part
of the Qing empire far longer than was Taiwan, and
was separated from China much later]. Taiwan is
a "problem" only because Beijing says it is and
for as long as it says so. Compare that as a problem
to a suspicious and even better armed Japan or and
India that takes an interest in securing the basic
human rights of the Tibetans. Those are real problems
for Beijing, even if they pretend it is not).
As for
Japan specifically, I would argue that Beijing (with
a little help from Pyongyang) has already started
the train, and what we will see now is now is not
the emergence of China as a power, which David has
so carefully outlined, but rather the simultaneous
emergence of China and Japan as military powers,
which David [Shambaugh] has not mentioned at all,
but which will be a terrible headache for Beijing
and will strain Washington at both ends. A China
that rattles its missiles is a problem--but by the
same token, a US alliance with a nuclear-armed and
independently capable Japan is going to be very
different from what we have been used to.
To conclude.
We have seen two basic sets of contradictions, one
in Beijing's domestic policy and the other in her
foreign policy, and we have reason to expect that
Zhongnanhai will do little to resolve any of this,
based even on the very cautious straight-line projections
of our panelists that put into power in Beijing
in a few years by far the weakest and generally
low-candlepower government we have seen since 1949
(Ezra [Vogel] was very upbeat about the dynamic
and creative Chinese he is meeting in his programs
at Harvard, and I know just what he means--but what
about the top? Can it be that the dynamic ideas
of reform echo a lot louder at 1737 Cambridge Street
than at Zhongnanhai?) So if you ask, can these vectors
intersect? Can these trains running in different
directions conceivably crash into each other? The
answer is: of course they can.
Flying
has been described as hours of boredom punctuated
by instants of panic. Things work fine until something
small goes wrong, and that affects something else,
and that something else, and systems begin to fail
and failure cascades--all in a matter of moments--until
even that smart well-trained Swissair pilot can't
do anything and the whole plane goes down. Given
the structural defects that we have described today,
and the policy vacuum, and the weakness of leadership,
it seems quite possible to me that China will encounter
a system crisis in the years ahead. The only way
to avoid it is to begin genuine liberalizing political
reform--and all the signs are the opposite.
What
are the implications for US policy? Obviously our
interests and those of the world will be served
if China begins political change to go with its
economic change and we should do everything we can--which
is not a great deal, unfortunately--to promote that.
At the same time we must hedge against failure in
China, by constructing an international order in
the region that can welcome and accommodate a China
willing to join and play by the rules, but that
can also survive and not be destabilized if things
go wrong, even very wrong, in China, and that means
strong and durable alliances with our democratic
friends in the region, Japan most importantly, but
also South Korea, Taiwan, and the others.
SCHEDULE
Footnotes
1
For a detailed discussion of the age distribution
of leadership bodies of the 15th Party Congress
and its comparison with previous Party congresses,
see Li Cheng and Lynn White, "The 15th Central Committee
of the Chinese Communist Party: Full-Fledged Technocratic
Leadership With Partial Control by Jiang Zemin,"
Asian Survey 38, No. 3 (March 1998), 231-264.
2
Shijie ribao (World Journal), 3 March 1998,
A1.
3
China News Analysis, No. 1607 (April 1, 1998),
pp. 4-5; and No. 1613-14 (July 1-15, 1998), pp.
18-20; and Liaowang (Outlook), No. 23 (June
8, 1998), p. 4.
4
Cheng Li, "Jiang Zemin's Successors: The Rise of
the Fourth Generation of Leaders in the PRC," The
China Quarterly Issue 161, March 2000 (forthcoming).
5
Cheng Li, China's Leaders: The New Generation
(Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)
(forthcoming).
6
Liao Gailong and Fan Yuan (comp.) Zhongguo renming
da cidian xiandai dangzhengjun lingdaorenwujuan,
(Who's Who in China, the Volume on Current Party,
Government, and Military Leaders), 1994 edition,
(Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1994), for the
complete list of the categories of leaders included
in the volume, see pp. xi-xv. An overwhelming majority
of the fourth generation of leaders are not included
in the previous 1989 edition.
7
Shen Xueming and others, comp., Zhonggong di
shiwujie zhongyang weiyuanhui zhong-yang jilü
jiancha weiyunahui weiyuan minglu, (Who's Who
of the members of the 15th Central Committee of
the Chinese Communist Party and the 15th Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection) (Beijing:
Zhonggong wenxian chubanshe, 1999).
8
Two pools of data have some overlaps. The first
pool includes 95 members and alternates of the 15th
CC of the CCP. In the second pool, four people are
members of both the 15th CC and CCDI.
9
For example, Renmin ribao (People's Daily,
Internet version), Duowei xinwenwang (Multimedia
News Network: http://www.chinesenewsnet.com/), China
Directory (Tokyo: Rapiopress, Inc.); China
News Analysis (Taipei); Guangjiaojing
(Wide Angle), (Hong Kong); and Zhonggong yanjiu
(Studies of Chinese Communism) (Taipei).
10
The collection of interviews with ministers was
later published in book form. See Li Dongsheng,
ed. Buzhang fangtan lu, (Interview with ministers).
(Beijing: Zhongguo Jiancha Chubanshe, 1998).
11
For example, Wu Yi, Nüshizhang: Zhongguo
nüshizhang zhuizhong shouji (Woman mayors:
interview reports). Beijing: Zhongguo funü
chubanshe, 1999; Zhang Yuan, Chongsu zhengfu
'98 zhengfu jigou gaige jiaodian da toushi (Remolding
the government: an analysis of governmental reform
in 1998). (Beijing: Zhonghua gongshang lianhe
chubanshe, 1998); Zhong Qiujü, Kua shiji
de xinyijie zhongguo zhengfu (The new Chinese
government at the turn of the century). (Beijing:
Renmin chubanshe, 1998); and Yu Zhen and
Shi Dazhen. Buzhang yanzhong de weilai Zhongguo
(China From the Eyes of Ministers). (Changsha: Hunan
chubanshe, 1995).
12
William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The
History of America's Future 1582-2069, (NY:
William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1992), p. 59.
13
Ruth Cherrington, "Generational Issues in China:
A Case Study of the 1980s Generation of Young Intellectuals,"
British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48, No.
2, June 1997, p. 304.
14
For a theoretical discussion of political generation,
see Karl Mannheim, "Consciousness of Class and Consciousness
of Generation," in Karl Mannheim, Essays on Sociology
of Knowledge. (London: RKP., 1952).
15
Carol Lee Hamrin, "Perspectives on Generational
Change in China," unpublished scope paper for the
workshop organized by The Paul H. Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University,
June 1993, p. 1.
16
See Michael Yahuda, "Political Generations in China,"
The China Quarterly, No. 80 (December 1979),
p. 795; Marvin Rintala, "Generations: Political
Generations" in The International Encyclopedia
of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan
and Free Press, 1968); and Rodolfo Garza and David
Vaughan, "The Political Socialization of Chicano
Elites: A Generational Approach," Social Science
Quarterly, Vol. 65 (June 1984), pp. 290-307.
17
Yahuda, "Political Generations in China." Also see
Carol Lee Hamrin, "Perspectives on Generational
Change in China," p. 2.
18
At present, the reform generation, or the fifth
generation of leaders, has not emerged as a significant
elite group on both the central and provincial levels,
although the formative years of a handful of leaders
in this study occurred during the reform era.
19
For studies of some members of this generation of
leadership, see David M. Lampton, Paths to Power:
Elite Mobility in Contemporary China. (Ann Arbor:
Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan,
1986; and John Israel and Donald Klein, Rebels
and Bureaucrats: China's December 9ers (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1976).
20
For the average age distribution of the 15th Central
Committee of the CCP and its Politburo, see Li and
White, "The 15th Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party," pp. 252 and 254.
21
Yahuda, "Political Generations in China," p. 802.
22
Steven Mufson, "The Next Generation," Washington
Post, June14, 1998, p. A1.
23
Zhonghua yingcai (China's Talents), No. 5
(March 1999), p. 12.
24
For more discussion of these CR generation critics,
see Wen Lin and Hai Tao, eds. Zhongguo xinyidai
sixiangjia zibai (Recollections of China's New
Generation of Thinkers) (Beijing: Jiuzhou Tushu
Chubanshe, 1998); and Li Hui and Ying Hong. Shiji
zhiwen: Laizi zhishijie de shengyin (The Question
of the Century: Voices from the Intellectual Community).
(Zhengzhou: Daxiang Chubanshe, 1999.)
25
Hu Angang, Zhongguo fazhan qianjing (Prospects
of China's Development). (Hangzhou: Zhejiang
remin chubanshe, 1999), p. 6.
26
For a discussion of the contrasting subgroups of
post-Communist leadership in Russia, see David Lane,
"Transition under Yeltsin: the Nomenklatura and
Political Elite Circulation," Political Studies,
Vol. 45, No. 5, Dec. 1997, p. 874.
27
Li and White, "The 15th Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party," 246-247.
28
As Lyman Miller observes, "The coalition of leaders
that governed China in the 1980s consisted mainly
of leaders who either were from or had had long
career experience in China's southwestern province
of Sichuan or south China." See "Overlapping Transitions
in China's Leadership." SAIS Review 16, no.
2 (Summer-Fall 1996): 24.
29
Shijie ribao (The World Journal),
September 22, 1997, p. 2.
30
These two seats are usually occupied by the Party
secretary and governor of the province. In the municipalities
where one full CC member concurrently holds the
positions of both Party secretary and mayor, for
example, Jia Qinglin in Beijing or Zhang Lichang
in Tianjin, usually a deputy Party secretary in
the city also holds a full membership in the 15th
CC.
31
Quoted from Wu An-chia. "Leadership Changes at the
Fourth Plenum." Issues and Studies, Vol.
30, no. 10 (October 1994), p. 134. Hu Angang also
argues that the Financial Committee of the National
People's Congress should consist of 30 members (each
province has one representative in the committee).
Hu Angang, Zhongguo fazhan qianjing, p. 312.
32
Ying-mao Kau, "The Urban Bureaucratic Elites in
Communist China: A Case Study of Wuhan, 1949-1965,"
in A. Doak Barnett, ed. Communist Chinese Politics
in Action (Seattle, WA: University of Washington
Press, 1972), 227.
33
Li Cheng and Bachman, "Localism, Elitism and Immobilism:
Elite Formation and Social Change in Post-Mao China."
World Politics 42 (October 1989): 64-94.
34
John P. Burns, "China's Nomenklatura System." Problems
of Communism 33 (September/October 1987): 36-51;
and John P. Burns, "Strengthening Central CCP Control
of Leadership Selection: The 1990 Nomenklatura,"
China Quarterly 138 (June 1994): 458-491.
35
Burns, "China's Nomenklatura System," 37-38, and
40-41.
36
Wu Guoguang, Zhulu shiwuda: zhongguo quanli qiju
(Toward the 15th Party Congress: Power Game in China).
(Hong Kong: Taipingyang shiji chubanshe,
1997), 215.
37
Quoted from Burns, "Strengthening Central CCP Control
of Leadership Selection," 473.
38
Liaowang, June 7,1999, pp. 15-16.
39
John H. Jia and Kyna Rubin, "China's Brain Trust
Abroad: Students are Pivotal Players in China's
Reform and in US China Relations." International
Educator (Spring 1997).
40
Among these 293,000 people, 47,000 were sent by
the government, 92,000 sent by universities or research
institutes, 154,000 were "self-sponsored" or sponsored
by relatives or foreign institutions. See Shijie
ribao (World Journal), 12 January 1999,
A9. China Daily, however, gave somewhat different
statistics. It was reported that over the past 20
years, the country has sent 320,000 students and
scholars to 103 countries. To date, more than 100,000
of them have returned to work in the country. See
China Daily, 4 February 1999.
41
About 130,000 of them have remained in the US now.
The Chinese Student Protection Act passed after
the events of June 4, 1989, which enabled roughly
50,000 PRC students and scholars to obtain permanent
resident status. Liu Ningrong, "Niuzhuan guoyun
de liumei xuesheng" (American-trained Chinese
students are changing China) Yazhou Zhoukan
(Asia Week), 8 November 1998; and Jia and Rubin,
"China's Brain Trust Abroad."
42
About 83 percent and 57 percent of those sent by
the government or universities returned to China.
Only 4 percent of self-sponsored returned to China.
Shijie ribao (World Journal), 12 January
1999, A9.
43
China Daily, 4 February 1999, 1.
44
Most studies of technocrats in Latin America and
Asia have identified those trained economists as
technocrats. See, for example, Patricio Silva, "Technocrats
and Politics in Chile: From the Chicago Boys to
the CIEPLAN Monks," Journal of Latin American
Studies 23, no. 2 (May 1991): pp. 385-410.
45
Among the total 116 military schools in the PRC
at the end of the 1970s, for example, 40 are command
schools, 5 political schools, 54 engineering, medical
and other technical schools, and 17 flight schools.
See Li, "Organizational Changes of the PLA, 1985-1997,"
p. 335.
46
Henry S. Rowen, "The Short March: China's Road to
Democracy," National Interest, (Fall, 1996):
63.
47
For a discussion on the Qinghua network, see Cheng
Li, "University Networks and the Rise of Qinghua
Graduates in China's Leadership," The Australian
Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 32 (July 1994),
pp. 1-32.
48
For a discussion of the role of mishu, see
Wei Li and Lucian W. Pye, "The Ubiquitous Role of
the Mishu in Chinese Politics," The China
Quarterly, No. 132 (Dec. 1992), pp. 913-936.
49
Baokan Wenzhai (Newspaper Digest), July 29,
1999, p. 1.
50
A good example is the corruption case in the Beijing,
which involved Chen Xitong, Wang Baosheng and their
mishu. See Mishu, No. 7,July 1998,
p. 11-12. For the central authorities' effort to
restrain the growing power of mishu, see
Mishu, No. 1, January 1998, pp. 2-5.
51
Jin Dalu, Shiji yu mingyun: guanyu laosanjie
ren de shengcun yu fazhan (The century and fate:
survival and development of three old classes).
(Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1998),
p. 258.
52
Zhonghua yingcai (China's Talents), No. 3
(February 1999), p. 26.
53
See Li, China's Leaders: The New Generation.
54
Vivienne Shue, "State Sprawl: The Regulatory State
and Social Life in a Small Chinese City," in Deborah
S. Davis et al., eds., Urban Spaces in Contemporary
China (New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
and Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 90-112.
For an extended analysis, see also Marc Blecher
and Vivienne Shue, Tethered Deer: Government
and Economy in a Chinese County (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1996), and especially pp. 202-220.
55
The following comparison of the 1982 and 1997 Politburo
leaderships draws on a more extensive analysis in
the author's chapter, "The Foreign Policy Outlook
of China's 'Third Generation' Elite," in David M.
Lampton, ed., The Making of Chinese Foreign and
Security Policy, 1978-2000, forthcoming.
56
Zhouguo Tongji Zhaiyao [Statistical Abstract]
1999, p. 22.
57
Xie Ping, "The challenges currently facing Chinese
financial reform," Zhongguo Gongye Jingji
1999:4, pp. 23-28.
58
For an overview of the March 1998 reform "program,"
see Wang Chengxu, ed., Da Fanglue: Zhongguo Xinyijie
Zhengfu Kuashiji Tazheng Gangling [Grand Strategy:
The Cross-Century Program of China's New Administration].
Beijing: Taihai, 1998, four volumes.
59
Jiang took over the role of visible spokesperson
and putative architect of SOE reforms in the second
half of 1999, but so far it is unclear what, if
any, difference this makes. SOE reform has been
the most thankless task of policy reform in the
1990s. Jiang has now created some expectations of
SOE policy initiatives coming out of the party plenum.
Perhaps there will be some new information available
by the time this paper is discussed: it will be
interesting to see what Jiang will produce. It is
proper to have low expectations on this issue. If
the plenum calls for the withdrawal of government
ownership from competitive industrial sectors, that
would be an extremely positive sign.
60
Xin Rong, "China Reexamines China-US Relations;
The Top Leadership Decides To Accelerate Reform,"
Jingbao 1999:6, p. 23.
61
This assertion is based on methodologies similar
to that used in the World Bank, China 2020: Development
Challenges in the New Century. Washington, DC:
World Bank, 1997, pp. 20-22; 110-14.
62
Barry Naughton, "China's Emergence and Future as
a Trading Nation," Brookings Papers on Economic
Activity. 1996:2, pp. 283, 286.
63
Yang Yiyong, "Only reform can really put people
back to work," Zhongguo Guoqing Guoli, 1999:3,
p. 8.
64
Wu Yan, "Laid-off workers to get extra pay," China
Daily, August 30, 1999, p. 1.
65
For an informative journalistic version of the "chaos"
viewpoint, see James Miles, The Legacy of Tiananmen:
China in Disarray, Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1997.
66
See the discussion in my book, Small Groups and
Political Rituals in China, Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1974.
67
These comments are inspired by the framework for
analyzing subordinate orientations and actions introduced
by Albert Hirschman in his book, Exit, Voice,
and Loyalty, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1972. That scheme helped inspire a number of studies
of organized dependency in Mao-era China. See, in
particular, Gail Henderson and Myron Cohen, A
Chinese Hospital, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1984; Andrew Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism,
Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986.
67
The one clear exception to this generalization is
in the realm of family planning. See my article,
"Human Rights Trends and Coercive Family Planning
in the PRC," Issues and Studies, 1998, 34:
1-29.
68
Obviously not everything has changed. The CCP still
clings to its exclusive role at the center of the
political system and tries to prevent any autonomous
organizations from emerging and becoming influential.
Furthermore, there are clearly limits to what kinds
of political views can be expressed and how, with
individuals and groups that go beyond those limits
getting into serious political trouble. However,
on balance the boundaries of tolerated attitudes
and expression have widened considerably since Mao's
death.
69
See Frank Parkin, Marxism and Class Theory: A
Bourgeois Critique, London: Tavistock, 1979.
70
Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing
Societies, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1968.
71
The social science literature on the preconditions
for regime-threatening mass movements is extensive.
See, for example, Charles Tilly, From Mobilization
to Revolution, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
1978; Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. For
an analysis applied to the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations,
see Andrew Walder, "The Political Sociology of the
Beijing Upheaval of 1989"; Problems of Communism,
1989, 38: pp.30-40. See also Dingxin Zhao, "Ecologies
of Social Movements: Student Mobilization during
the 1989 Prodemocracy Movement in Beijing," American
Journal of Sociology, 1998, 103: pp.1493-1529.
72
Ethnic tensions in Tibet and Xinjiang, however,
could under some circumstances escalate into a serious
movement in favor of secession in these regions.
If China's leaders were unable to successfully quell
such a challenge and lost control of either of these
provinces, that loss might precipitate serious challenges
to the leaders from their colleagues on nationalistic
grounds. In other words, it is possible that ethnic
succession threats, while not generally endemic
in China and not inherently a threat to the rest
of the system even in the cases of Tibet and Xinjiang,
could, if successful, produce the potential for
a more thoroughgoing threat to the regime.
73
By the same general reasoning, it is not clear that
rising inequalities in China generally will provide
a major impetus for social discontent and political
challenges (a specter raised in the recent, controversial
book by He Qinglian, The Pitfalls of China's
Modernization). Although we lack systematic
research on Chinese popular beliefs about inequality
and distributive justice issues, it seems likely
that as in other societies, it is not so much the
size of inequalities but perceptions of the predominance
of illegitimate and corrupt means of getting ahead
that generate most popular anger. And such anger
is likely to be focused on specific groups that
are seen as unfairly benefiting or causing such
unfair benefits, rather than at inequalities in
general.
74
On the size of the rural-urban income gap, see my
article, "City versus Countryside in China's Development,"
Problems of Post-Communism, 1996, 43:9-22;
see also Azizur Khan and Carl Riskin, "Income and
Inequality in China: Composition, Distribution,
and Growth of Household Income, 1988 to 1995," China
Quarterly, 1998, 154:221-53.
75
The best-known example is the popular protests in
Renshou County in Sichuan Province in 1993. See
the discussion in Miles, The Legacy of Tiananmen,
pp. 169-73; see also Thomas Bernstein, "Instability
in Rural China," in David Shambaugh, ed., Is
China Unstable?: Assessing the Factors, Washington,
DC: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, 1998.
76
In some cases, such as in the Renshou demonstrations,
several townships within one county have mobilized
together, and in others demonstrations have erupted
in several nearby counties over the course of several
weeks. See the discussion in Bernstein, especially
pp. 107-09. However, peasant mobilizations into
a movement spanning several counties seems to have
been avoided so far.
77
See Lianjiang Li and Kevin O'Brien, "Villagers and
Popular Resistance in Contemporary China," Modern
China, 1996, 22:28-61.
78
Hao Hongsheng, personal communication to the author,
June 1999, concerning a Beijing floating population
census conducted in 1997.
79
See the works on China's migrants by Dorothy Solinger,
particularly her recent book, Contesting Citizenship
in Urban China, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999.
80
See also the discussion in Dorothy Solinger, "China's
Transients and the State: A Form of Civil Society?,"
Hong Kong: Institute of Asian-Pacific Studies, Chinese
University of Hong Kong, 1991.
81
See the discussion in Minghua Zhao and Theo Nichols,
"Management Control of Labour in State-Owned Enterprises:
Cases from the Textile Industry," China Journal,
1996, 36:1-24; see also Wenfang Tang and William
Parish, Chinese Urban Life under Reform: The
Changing Social Contract, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, forthcoming, Chapter 6.
82
Many of the most angry worker protests have been
outside of the SOE sector, particularly in the sweatshop
enterprises financed by Overseas Chinese, Taiwan,
and Korean capital. In such cases abuses of workers,
avoidable industrial accidents, and other causes
of protests understandably are directed at what
are perceived to be their source--local managers
and owners--rather than the central state.
83
The conclusion here is similar to that of Dorothy
Solinger in her essay, "The Potential for Urban
Unrest: Will the Fencers Stay on the Piste?," in
D. Shambaugh, ed., Is China Unstable?.
84
See the discussion in Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Student
Protests in Twentieth Century China, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1991; and in his essay,
"Student Protests and the Chinese Tradition, 1919-1989,"
in Tony Saich, ed., The Chinese People's Movement,
Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1990.
85
See the evidence presented in Tang and Parish, Chapters
3-4.
86
For a discussion of the revival of Qigong
masters and followers in urban China since the 1980s,
see Nancy Chen, "Urban Spaces and Experiences of
Qigong," in D. Davis, R. Kraus, B. Naughton,
and E. Perry, eds., Urban Spaces in Contemporary
China, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995.
87
The latter term is used in Steven Jackson, "Conference
Summary," in Shambaugh, ed., Is China Unstable?
Assessing the Factors, p. 4.
88
It is worth noting that the unwillingness or inability
of the new generations of East European leaders
to resort to large-scale coercion to put down growing
protests in 1989 was a key factor in the collapse
of their regimes. (When the one old-generation leader
involved, Ceausescu, proved willing, the troops
wouldn't obey.)
89
See the judgments contained in David Shambaugh (ed.),
Is China Unstable? (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe,
1999), as well as the other contributions to this
symposium.
90
See Barry Naughton's and Martin King Whyte's contributions
to this symposium.
91
See Jennifer Anderson, The Limits of Sino-Russian
Strategic Partnership (London: IISS Adelphi
Paper No. 315, 1997); Sherman W. Garnett ed., Limited
Partnership: Russia-China Relations in a Changing
Asia (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 1998).
92
Other provisions of the agreements prohibit exercises
exceeding 40,000 personnel, prior notification of
exercises and mandatory observers for any involving
over 35,000 personnel, and a limit of one exercise
each year of 25,000 personnel or above.
93
See, for example, "China-Russia Relations at the
Turn of the Century," Joint Statement of Presidents
Jiang Zemin and Boris Yeltsin, November 23, 1998.
Text is carried in Beijing Review, December
14-20, 1998.
94
This judgment is based on interviews with Vietnamese
scholars and diplomats in Washington.
95
Perhaps in an effort to defuse the rising tensions,
former Russian Prime Minister Primakov proposed
a three-way "strategic triangle" during his December
1998 visit to India. Subsequent to the Kosovo crisis,
Sino-Indian ties began to warm somewhat.
96
See Koong Pai-ching, Southeast Asian Perceptions
of China's Military Modernization, Asia paper
No. 5 (Washington, DC: Sigur Center for Asian Studies,
1999); and Allen S. Whiting, "ASEAN Eyes China:
The Security Dimension," Asian Survey (April
1997), pp. 299-322.
97
Michiyo Nakasone and James Kynge, "Obuchi Faces
Some Tough Demands From His Chinese Hosts," Financial
Times, July 7, 1999.
98
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll published
on September 14, 1999 indicated that between 60
and 80 percent of those polled considered China
to be an "adversary" of the United States: liberals
60%, women 61%, Democrats 64%, union households
69%, Republicans 75%, men 75%, and white southern
conservatives 80%.
99
See National Security Adviser Samuel Berger's press
conference statements at the New Zealand APEC meeting.
100
In this regard, see my "Chinese Hegemony over East
Asia by 2015?" Korean Journal of Defense Analysis,
Vol. IX, No. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 7-28.
101
For a fuller exposition of these reforms, see my
Reforming the Chinese Military (University
of California Press, 2000).
102
See, for example, James C. Mulvenon and Richard
H. Yang (eds.), The People's Liberation Army
in the Information Age (Santa Monica, CA: Rand,
1999); James R. Lilley and David Shambaugh (eds.),
China's Military Faces the Future (Washington,
DC and Armonk, NY: AEI Press and M.E. Sharpe, 1999);
David Shambaugh and Richard H. Yang (eds.), China's
Military in Transition (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997); C. Dennison Lane et al (eds.), Chinese
Military Modernization (London: Routledge Kegan
Paul, 1996); Hans Binnendijk and Ronald Monteperto
(eds.), Strategic Trends in China (Washington,
DC: National Defense University Press, 1998); Ming
Zhang, China's Changing Nuclear Posture (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Endowment).
103
Recognizing, of course, that the PLA's ability to
employ force requires all of the other reforms noted
above.
104
See Bates Gill and Michael O'Hanlon, "China's Hollow
Military," The National Interest (Summer
1999); James Lilley and Carl Ford, "China's Military:
A Second Opinion," ibid. (Fall 1999). Also
see the contributions to James R. Lilley and David
Shambaugh (eds.), China's Military Faces the
Future (Washington, DC and Armonk, NY: AEI Press
and M.E. Sharpe, 1999).
105
See Mark A. Stokes, China's Strategic Modernization:
Implications for the United States (Carlisle,
PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute,
1999); and Report of the Select Committee on
US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns
with the People's Republic of China, declassified
version published by US Government Printing Office,
May 25, 1999.
106
Mark Stokes, China's Strategic Modernization:
Implications for the United States (Carlisle
Barracks: US Army War College Strategic Studies
Institute, 1999), p. 86.
107
"Air Force Frontliners to See New Fighter Breed,"
Jane's Defence Weekly, op. cit., p. 26.
108
Zalmay Kalilizad et al., The United States and
a Rising China: Strategic and Military Implications
(Santa Monica: RAND, 1999), p. 57.
109
"New PLAN to Train, Purchase Vessel Mix," Jane's
Defence Weekly, op cit, p. 25.
110
See Stokes, China's Strategic Modernization,
op. cit.
111
It lies beyond the scope of this paper to pass judgment
on whether the projected complement of conventional
forces around 2005 will be sufficient to defeat
Taiwan's forces or to sufficiently disrupt American
support in such a conflict.
112
These are currently estimated by DoD as approximately
150, growing to 600 by 2005. See Department of Defense,
Select Military Capabilities of the People's
Republic of China (1999).
113
See National Intelligence Council, Foreign Missile
Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat to
the United States Through 2015 (September 1999),
p. 11.
114
Kalilizad et al. argue that such forces will have
to be built up, with logistic lines strengthened,
and readiness improved. See Zalmay Kalilizad et
al., The United States and a Rising China,
op. cit.
TOP |