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A New Year for China: a new approach for the West

By Thom Woodroofe - posted Wednesday, 3 February 2010


China’s young people have become the most powerful in the world, representing the drivers and beneficiaries of its economic boom with little appetite for freedom.

Last Tuesday marked the Chinese New Year of the Tiger.

But as the country’s youth look to the future, for many their greatest desire is not for democracy but for a higher salary, an expensive holiday or a new gadget.

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It has now been 30 years since Chinese and American leaders sat down in Beijing signalling the normalisation of diplomatic relations. Economic ties since then have expanded massively with the Western world. So much so, that if that Wal-Mart were its own country it would represent China’s seventh largest trading partner.

Unfortunately alongside this, the political relationship on the part of the broader West continues to be based on a blind and deterministic logic.

To many outsiders China’s rapid economic transformation over the past three decades signals a similarly rising sentiment towards democracy. But the reality is in fact the opposite.

While China has trebled its wealth in the 20 years since Tiananmen Square, the impetus towards democracy on the part of the Chinese has largely evaporated.

The relationship between culture and commerce is clearly complex though, and while there cannot be democracy without capitalism, there can be capitalism without democracy - a model represented by modern China.

China’s youth, the so called “me” generation of those born after the adoption of the 1979 one-child policy, represent the bulwark of the current communist regime. Numbering more than 300 million, they block the path to democratisation with little appetite for reform and much to gain from the political status quo.

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While college students have often represented a hot bed of pro-democratic sentiments, party membership among this group rose from 0.8 per cent to 8 per cent between 1990 and 2001 and a third of graduate students are currently communist party members.

Despite their communist roots, these young people are still able to enjoy many of the freedoms of a young American from Beverly Hills or a young Australian from Bondi. They drink Starbucks, eat McDonalds and use Facebook.

The one major difference is not the form of government, but the economic opportunities a booming opposed to a receding economy creates. A survey by Credit Suisse recently revealed the average salaries of young Chinese professionals had risen by more than 10 per cent a year since 2005.

Furthermore, in 1995 a joint American-Chinese survey revealed that “national prosperity” was the biggest priority for 56 per cent of the population compared to “political democracy” which rated only 5 per cent.

Many young Westerners hoped that the 2008 Beijing Olympics would provide the impetus towards democracy by opening China to the world and laying the seeds for democracy. In comparison, Chinese youth saw it as an opportunity to signal to the world the effectiveness of its cocktail of economic development and authoritarian rule. The Games ultimately achieved neither. Internationally, the torch relay protests over Tibet represented the greatest setback for Chinese “soft power” since Tiananmen Square. Domestically they eroded, rather than fuelled, any democratic sentiment.

Their desire to maintain the status quo is not a product of historical ignorance born through stringent censorship measures as it is commonly hypothesised. For many, the greatest fear of democracy is empowering the peasant class to play a decisive hand in deciding who rules China and the shifts in the balance of power and economics that would usher. In this way, the rural populace is largely held in disdain and not believed to be ready to participate in elections because of demagogues and vote-buying.

China’s youth are not entirely hostile to the concept of democracy though, they just believe they should be able to predominate in a democratised polity. For the moment at least, “democracy with socialist characteristics” is serving them and the economy well.

Recognising the pragmatism of China’s desire for democracy continues to present a challenge to Western policymakers. The naïve assumption that economic expansion directly fuels democratic sentiment and that democracy itself is inevitable remains at the centre of most Western countries’ approaches to China.

While China remains essentially an unapologetic authoritarian regime these policymakers should realise that engagement with China does not in itself condone the regime’s human rights record or political control.

With China’s economically powerful youth set to swell to more than 500 million by 2015, viewing China as an inevitable convert to the religion of democracy is blind and deterministic.

The West needs a new approach to China that heightens engagement with a key economic powerhouse but tempers grandiose expectations of democracy anytime soon. China’s rising power will be constrained by its own shortfalls in freedom, irrespective of external influence.

Perhaps this could be our collective resolution for the New Year?

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About the Author

Thom Woodroofe, 21, is a foreign affairs analyst combining journalism, research, teaching and community work to advance an understanding of Australia's place in the world.

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