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China receives a lot of criticism for the lack of civil rights, with Tibet being the most recent example. I am certainly not to take any repressing force’s side; however, I believe that it is always important to understand where people are coming from before formulating an opinion.
Let’s start by quoting the CIA’s world fact book, a goldmine and a source that cannot be accused of being anti-American!
“For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. After World War II, the Communists under Mao Zedong established an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring China’s sovereignty, imposed strict controls over everyday life and cost the lives of tens of millions of people. After 1978, his successor Deng Xiaoping and other leaders focused on market-oriented economic development and by 2000 output had quadrupled. For much of the population, living standards have improved dramatically and the room for personal choice has expanded, yet political controls remain tight.”
There is no doubt that China entered a new era of its long history under Mao, even if the Chinese population had to endure terror during the so-called “Cultural Revolution”.
Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaopeng, might have played a more important role in China’s renaissance than Chairman Mao. He is the one who opened the country to economic reforms (his sentence “being rich is glorious” is famous). The 80’s mark the re-emergence of a middle-class, which had totally disappeared, but also witnessed growing discrepancies between the East and the West of the country. Needless to say, the second generation of leaders did nothing on the individual freedom front; TiananMen occurred under Deng’s leadership.
The third generation of leaders, led by Deng’s successor Jiang Zemin basically continued what Deng Ziao Peng started, but did nothing to improve civil rights, or fight rampant corruption. In December 2001, China finally joined the WTO, after 10 years of negotiations.
The current generation of leaders (President Hu and Premier Wen) has witnessed the results of their predecessors’ actions, with an economy that continues to grow in double-digit numbers, as the development of rural areas became the major focus of government policy. China has also started to pay attention to pollution.
Little has been done at the human rights level, but let’s face it: the government is getting little pressure from the Chinese themselves on this matter. And let’s face it again: the International pressure is pretty mild too; the reactions of the world leaders to a possible boycott of the Olympics are a perfect example.
I think that what really matters for most Chinese nowadays is to join the emerging middle-class, a group of roughly 70 million people today, expected to grow to 100 million by 2010 (the US middle class represents roughly 45% of the households). A looser definition of middle-class would result in almost 200 million Chinese having reached this level.
That said, a fifth generation of leaders is to take over in 2012. By then, China will have a massive middle-class, and I have no doubt that the new country leaders will have to make human rights and personal freedom among their top priorities.
The good news for us in the US is that many of the Chinese leaders from the next generation have been educated in the USA, and are therefore more likely to consider individual freedom a basic human right. By the same token, they are also likely to consider the USA a natural partner of China.
I am not saying that China will open the door to democracy. I am just saying that China is likely to keep marching to its own drum, but will rethink its whole model to include more personal freedom and more human rights.
The realization of Hu’s project for a “Harmonious Society” could well be the greatest achievement of the next generation of leaders.
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