Waiting for a Jasmine Revolution in China

I have never been a fan of the Chinese model of development; having grown up in India, and then life in America means that I have been mostly free than otherwise.  Those two awful years under Indira Gandhi's "emergency rule" were when I experienced government controls on expression.  One of my favorite Tamil magazines, Thuglak, used to have blank spaces in the commentaries--the sentences that were nuked by the censors.  Even as a kid--I was a pre-teen when all hell broke loose after the Supreme Court verdict in the case that Raj Narain had filed--I was highly uncomfortable with that political development, which all of a sudden muted India.

Of course, when we look beyond political freedom, onto issues of daily existence--from food to water to sanitation--the Chinese model has delivered a lot more than what India's government has given its people.

Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, explained that evidence is emerging that developing “countries that are economically and politically free are underperforming the countries that are economically but not politically free.” China, of course, is in the lead of the economically free but politically unfree nations. Hassett wrote, “The unfree governments now understand that they have to provide a good economy to keep citizens happy, and they understand that free-market economies work best.... Being unfree may be an economic advantage. Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preference of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state. So the future may look something like the 20th century in reverse. The unfree nations will grow so quickly that they will overwhelm free nations with their economic might.”
The kleptocrats who have ruled many developing countries in past decades have tended to come unstuck when Western aid dwindles, their own economies falter and then fall backward, and all too often rivals emerge within their armies. The China Model presents the possibility that such rulers can gain access to immense wealth through creaming off rents while at the same time their broader populations become content, and probably supportive, because their living standards also are leaping ahead.

The fascination to implement the Chinese model is, therefore, not difficult to understand.  Examples are a plenty, from Singapore which is geographically and culturally close to India and China, to Rwanda, which is in a completely different cultural and geopolitical context.

The China Model is, of course, admired in the West, too, with business leaders’ words (at platforms such as Forbes magazine conferences and the World Economic Forum, which has just instituted an annual summer session in China) providing great reinforcement for Chinese leaders. The World Bank is just one of the international institutions that champion China (its greatest client and in some ways its boss) as a paradigm for the developing world. Also fascinating is the appeal of the China Model to Russia, which as Azar Gat, professor of national security at Tel Aviv University, writes in Foreign Affairs, “is retreating from its post-communist liberalism and assuming an increasingly authoritarian character as its economic clout grows.”

Can this model last, not only in China itself but also its variations throughout the world?  Just as the world was beginning to erroneously conclude that perhaps even people prefer the Chinese model, well,

The example of Tunisia raises a related question, equally awkward. For China’s rulers, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the ousted dictator, would have been seen as following their own approach—the so-called “Chinese model” of economic growth combined with political repression—and having much success with it, or so it was assumed for many years. But the Tunisian people took to the streets to overthrow him. Did the people want something more than the Chinese model? How could that be?

One hell of a tough question, which all the dictatorial and authoritarian regimes now have to deal with.  Even in China:

evidence is strong and growing that the top leaders have become extremely nervous about the current situation, as they watch people rising up in country after country in North Africa and the Middle East, assisted by social media and the Internet. No doubt China’s leaders fear what would happen if jasmine ferment really did spread to their own masses—many of whom already harbor a lengthy list of grievances over corruption, bullying, land seizures, environmental destruction, and other items of unjust treatment. 

So, what did the Chinese government do?  Held special politburo meetings, and ...

On the morning of February 19, President Hu Jintao went to the Central Party School to deliver a speech to an audience of provincial governors and central government ministers on maintaining social stability. The speech stressed the glorious achievements of the Communist Party, emphasized the correctness of Party ideology, and in other ways bristled with unenlightening jargon. Its purpose seems to have been to present a public version of the policies decided at the secret Politburo meeting of a week earlier. Without directly mentioning the Middle East or any of the events in China that were making authorities so nervous, Hu made three basic points: one, we need to greatly strengthen control of information on the Internet; two, we need to regulate the “virtual society” that it has given rise to; and three, we need to guide public opinion in this society in “healthy directions.”

I cannot imagine this crazy system continuing on for a long time.  "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."  I hope this news is only the beginning of the end of the Chinese model:

Online calls for peaceful Chinese protests to resemble Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution" have ended with a number of reporters and citizens being bundled into Chinese security vehicles.
The protests had been planned via anonymous messages left on a U.S. website in China, and called for people to rally against the government in 13 cities including in Beijing and Shanghai to mirror the ongoing Mideast democracy movement.