A democratic China may bring as much harm to Asia as it does
good, according to a new report from an Australian defense think
tank.
In an Australian Strategic Policy Institute report, economist David
Hale warned that the peaceful, predictable economic engagement
policies of the current Beijing could be undone by the greater
democracy the next generation of Chinese leaders might bring,
writes Agence France-Presse.
"When a fifth generation of leadership assumes power in ten to
fifteen years, China could become more open and tolerate greater
dissent," the report said.
"Such a political opening could then open the door to forces such
as nationalism and populism. There is no way to predict exactly how
Chinese politics will evolve in a more democratic era, but it is a
development which could produce new challenges for the countries of
East Asia after 2020.
"An authoritarian China has been highly predictable. A more open
and democratic China could produce new uncertainties about both
domestic policy and international relations."
Such uncertainties could include military threats to other nations
in the region, Hale writes, though he notes that such threats would
be likely only if "domestic political instability... produced an
upsurge in nationalism and a search for external scapegoats."
Australian newspaper The Age reports that Mr. Hale sees
similiarities between a democratic China and the "banana republics"
of Central and South America, in part due to the increasing
economic divide in China between the rural population and wealthy
urbanites.
"If China had a democratic regime, there is a great risk that the
increasing income inequality in the country could produce a
populist regime which would suspend economic reform and plunge the
country into the kind of inflationary crises which have
characterised Latin America for much of the modern era," Mr Hale
said in the report.
The potential for trouble is already apparent from the Chinese
government's own admission of a seven-fold increase in protest
marches in the last 10 years, many by rural people upset about the
loss of their land to property developers or urban people concerned
about job losses.
The fact that Germany helped to launch a war with Britain in 1914
is a reminder that economic integration does not guarantee that a
country will have a benign foreign policy. On the eve of World War
I, 76 per cent of Germany's foreign trade was with other European
countries. As Norman Angell wrote in 1911, there should never have
been a European war because it was economic madness for the
players. Angell was vindicated by events but Germany nevertheless
allowed her alliance with Austria-Hungary to set the stage for a
conflict that engulfed all the major European nations....
The experience of 1914 is a warning that one cannot depend upon
economic factors to resolve political conflicts, but the situation
in East Asia today contains fewer political risks than Europe
during the early 20th century. The challenge for the US, China and
Japan is to continue minimising the potential for conflict through
effective dialogue, while pursing the economic integration that
will encourage further political co-operation.
[Bush and US secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] are in search of
substantive partners in this global endeavour of pushing democratic
values. The partners themselves must be deeply wedded to free
electoral process and pluralism. Thus the fateful words on the
Bush-Singh accord of July 18, 2005 : "create (together) an
international environment conducive to promotion of democratic
values, and to strengthen democratic practices in societies which
wished to become more open and pluralistic".
These are activistic words indeed. Of course, the balance of power
in Asia in the 21st century between a dictatorship of the
proletariat, China, and a thriving democracy, India, is of major
significance in the Bush-Rice decision matrix.
But if economic reform in China is widely seen as, at least
indirectly, fostering democratization, democracy in India is seen
by some as a drag on the kind of economic progress that would make
India a stronger counterweight to China. Opinions differ on how
much democracy has helped economic growth in India, and democracy's
effect on economic growth will likely play a large part in China's
decision to adopt democratic reform.
But Carl Mortished writes in The Globe and Mail that obstacles in
India's democratic society snag economic progress, whereas no such
obstacles exist for China.
There is a lingering doubt that the Indian tiger will be roused
from its 50-year sleep. India is not China; even as the [Bombay
Stock Exchange's Sensitive Index] soars, the government reached a
deal with airport workers, promising them job security after a
five-day strike created stinking rubbish heaps. Where China's
despotic gerontocrats can bulldoze teeming slums for new highways,
India's leaders must negotiate. The government sees a need for an
extra 100 gigawatts of power by 2012, but the dams and power
stations will be fought every inch of the way by petty officials,
hysterical NGOs and any babu after a buck.
These issues are unvoidable for India, Mr. Mortished writes. "It's
the price India pays for democracy."
