China - A Long Game

LafayetteBis · May 31, 2018

From the Economist Special Report here: China In The World

Excerpt:

A long game

It is certainly true that many others draw inspiration from the West’s latter-day ... people who argue that liberal democracy, or American power, has had its day and that China is the new model and rightful global leader. The huge number of people going to the West and returning has not nudged China towards democracy. On the contrary: Chinese authoritarianism looks reinvigorated. But the engagement of Chinese people with the rest of the world on such a scale is relatively new. So, too, is the return of people educated in the West in numbers far beyond anything witnessed since Yung Wing became the first Chinese to graduate from an American university (Yale) in the 1850s.

Those returning are members of a fast-growing middle class that may have little immediate interest in challenging the status quo. But thanks to the internet (and despite energetic censors) it is better equipped to do so than any social group has ever been in the history of Communist China. It would be unwise to dismiss the potential impact on China’s long-term development of the presence of such numbers of highly networked, highly educated people with little interest in the party’s ideology.

To see what could happen, Mr Xi need look no further than Taiwan, where the KMT settled after its defeat by the Communists in 1949. As the island’s economy took off in the 1960s and 1970s, the pattern of movement abroad under the KMT’s authoritarian rule was similar to China’s today. Many members of Taiwan’s new middle class looked abroad, mainly to America, to send their children for study or for a less stifling place to live. At the peak of the brain drain in 1979, only 8% of Taiwanese who studied abroad returned to the island after completing their courses, wrote Kevin O’Neill in a paper published by the Migration Policy Institute.

But in the 1980s, as Taiwan became a world leader in high-tech manufacturing, many of those educated in the West began to see good job opportunities back home. They returned to become part of what was often called the “Taiwan miracle”. The brain drain began to reverse. By 1987, one-fifth of executives at large Taiwanese firms were returnees, says Mr O’Neill.

That turned out to be a momentous year: the one when Chiang Kai-shek’s son and successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, lifted martial law that had been in force on the island since the KMT fled there. He died the following year, to be succeeded by his protégé, Lee Teng-hui, who had studied at Cornell University. It was Mr Lee, an avowedly Christian president, who finished the job that Chiang Ching-kuo had started: turning Taiwan into a democracy. In 1996 he conducted, and won, the island’s first free presidential election.

When Mr Xi took over as China’s leader in 2012, many analysts wondered whether he might prove to be another Chiang Ching-kuo. This was not merely the wishful thinking of Westerners. A few months earlier a liberal intellectual, Cao Siyuan, had published an essay on his blog hosted by a Beijing-based magazine, Caijing, on the topic of political reform. “Some friends say it would be good if we had a leader like Chiang Ching-kuo to promote constitutional democracy,” he wrote. “But no matter whether conditions are ripe for this, as citizens we should do all we can to push for it.” Censors have yet to take down the essay.

Mr Xi himself shows no sign of thinking that conditions are ripe for change along Taiwanese lines. He clearly views the social forces unleashed by economic growth as a threat to his and the party’s grip. Nothing that is likely to happen in China in the remaining years of his rule—and there could be many of them after his decision in March to make it open-ended—will make him feel more secure.

But when change eventually comes, it is safe to assume that the ideas of Western-educated Chinese, and of tens of millions of Chinese who have visited or worked in the West, will play a vital role in the next stage of China’s political evolution. A future president of China may well, even now, be following in Sun’s footsteps: packing her bags to study abroad.
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Couldn't resist a chuckle when I saw the "her" in the last paragraph above.

I'll believe it when I see it and I am not waiting breathlessly. (First America has to elect a female PotUS, then we'll see what China can do ... ;^)

culldav · Jun 29, 2018

China is 4000 year old civilisation, and Australia is 200 year old civilisation that has been mongrelisised to the point of insanity. Who would you place your $50 on? LOL

LafayetteBis · Jun 29, 2018

culldav said: ↑

China is 4000 year old civilisation, and Australia is 200 year old civilisation that has been mongrelisised to the point of insanity. Who would you place your $50 on? LOL
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You're the only one laughing.

The Chinese would do anything to get out of China, and Australia is a better place to move to than America. (The surf is nicer ...)

culldav · Jun 29, 2018

And your point? Instead of trying to make their own country a better place, they flee to another stupid country and turn in into the same s.h.i.t -hole like the one they left. LOL

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China - A Long Game

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