The recent G20 summit confirmed the global shift in the balance of power from West to East and highlighted the financial muscle that underpins authoritarian political regimes from Russia to Saudi Arabia. But China, notes one analyst, remains in a league of its own, with $2 trillion in central-bank reserves, one reason why it will play a role in driving recovery from the current financial crisis.
China is the first country to excel in the international of free markets and free trade without conceding freer politics, claims former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten. This challenge to the basic foundations of the global system is welcomed by autocracies, but the Chinese model of “authoritarian, illiberal, proto-capitalism” lacks the “safety valves” that allow democracies to endure crises.
Yet promoting democracy in China must take into account that the ruling Communist Party has virtually discredited Western democracy as a necessary or appropriate objective, argues Damien Ma, a China analyst at the Eurasia Group. “Incremental tweaks and improvements in governance and public participation have apparently blunted the urgency for full-fledged democracy,” he suggests.
For all the CCP’s efforts at reinvention, it evidently lacks confidence in its mandate from heaven.”It is a party plagued by endemic corruption at all levels, unable to provide sufficient basic social services, terrified of collective protests, and prone to suppression rather than accommodation,” Ma notes.
Another area in which the party has sought to deflect demands for change is the business sector – often an agency for greater transparency and curbs on corruption. Initially concerned at the potentially subversive impact of corporate social responsibility, the party is content to tolerate CSR ideas, notes one observer, “insofar as they are interpreted as leaving democracy and information liberalization to one side.”
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