China’s adaptive authoritarianism is here to stay

This year, the CCP launched an Internet-based platform for ‘netizens’ to report cases of official impropriety, and has continued its pursuit of high-profile corruption investigations against senior party members, including former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai.

This anti-corruption drive comes as the CCP moves to revise land management laws to minimise exploitation by officials who profiteer by undervaluing farmland purchased from local villagers. Added to this, there are signs that this month’s third plenum of the party’s Central Committee will yield reforms to allow poorer rural Chinese to sell communally owned agricultural land and purchase urban properties.

The CCP also plans to cut coal consumption to below 65% of primary energy use by 2017, and raise the share of non-fossil fuel energy to 13% by 2017, while municipal governments in pollution-prone regions have taken steps to combat air contamination. In Beijing, for example, a smog alert system calls for restrictions on car use and pauses in industrial activity at times when there is a high risk of noxious atmospheric pollution.

Capitalist liberal democracy is still what Fukuyama called ‘the best possible solution to the human problem,’ while the survival of the CCP’s one-party state is far from a fait accompli.

Nevertheless, the success of the CCP’s adaptive authoritarianism suggests history might have been rebooted.