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Is China proselytising its path to success?

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Ushers salute in Tiananmen Square outside the Great Hall of the People before the start of the closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, 24 October 2017 (Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter).

In Brief

At the 19th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese leader Xi Jinping appeared to present China’s development path as a model for other countries to imitate. Xi stated that China’s success provides ‘a new option for nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence’. China’s socialist system, he added, offers ’Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to the problems facing mankind’.

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In a speech just over a month later, Xi seemed to retract his statement: China would ‘neither import foreign models of development nor export the Chinese model and ask other countries to copy the Chinese practice’. Is the CCP proselytising its development model or not?

Rather than seeking to export China’s own experience, Xi Jinping is championing the achievements of China’s development model and attempting to legitimise China’s system of governance — first and foremost at home, but also abroad. In the past, Beijing remained silent when others talked about a ‘Chinese’ model of development. No Chinese leader or official endorsed Joshua Cooper Ramo’s 2004 contention put forward in The Beijing Consensus that China’s development model was marking a path for other nations around the world.

Today China radiates confidence. This is partly due to its rapid economic growth and military modernisation but also due to what it sees as the United States’ decline. From the 2008 financial crisis to the election of Donald Trump with his ‘America First’ doctrine, the Chinese Communist Party has viewed the events of the past decade as a vindication of their own political and economic system.

A key message of the 19th Party Congress work report is that Western models of development have little relevance to solving China’s challenges. Xi made it clear that ‘erroneous views’ must be opposed and resisted. In other words, Western-style democracy does not feature anywhere in Xi’s vision of national rejuvenation.

Throughout his speech at the Party Congress, Xi celebrated the distinctively Chinese nature of China’s system of government — a system where the Party is firmly in control. There were 67 references to ‘Chinese characteristics’ in his speech. Aside from the usual mentions of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, Xi highlighted how aspects of China’s distinctive path of development — its socialist culture, its rule of law, its major power diplomacy and its new military forces — are all imbued with Chinese characteristics.

Some observers might see a contradiction between Xi’s emphasis on the (uniquely) Chinese characteristics of its development strategy and his presentation of China’s development path as an ‘option’ for other countries. But in China’s concept, developing countries can adapt China’s experience to their own conditions. An article in the Global Times (a tabloid affiliated with the official People’s Daily) contrasted the way in which China ‘[offers] a choice to nations that seek to develop rapidly’ with the West’s overt promotion of its democratic system.

Xi’s explicit denial that Beijing is pressuring other countries to copy China’s development model suggests an acute sensitivity to the notion that China is attempting to export its system of government. The espousal of China as an alternative single-party and authoritarian model for the world could be interpreted as a pursuit of head-to-head competition with the United States for global leadership.

So far Beijing has deliberately avoided engaging in such a contest with the United States: doing so would pit the two countries against each other as adversaries, which puts China’s quest of achieving national rejuvenation at risk.

Rather than overtly extolling its development path as a model for other countries to copy, Beijing will propagate its experience as a model from which developing countries can learn if they are seeking an alternative to Western-style democratic political systems and free-market economies.

China is simultaneously using its media organisations and other tools to ‘tell China’s story well’ as Xi instructed. Such efforts underscore the necessity to the CPP of making China’s political system attractive abroad. In their mind, this will bolster the legitimacy of the CCP and safeguard its long-term rule. Touting China’s achievements and its accomplishments is part of a calculated effort by Xi to shore up support for his leadership and for the CCP as he enters his second five-year term as Party general secretary.

China’s push to legitimise its governance model comes at a time when the support for and influence of anti-establishment populist movements are growing and when the legitimacy and efficacy of Western democracy are being questioned. This ideological challenge is just as concerning to the United States as bilateral trade deficits or even military imbalances with China.

Scholars Naazneen Barma and Ely Ratner presciently warned over a decade ago that ‘the spreading of China’s illiberalism could set scores of developing nations away from the path of liberal democracy [and create] a community of countries that reject Western views of human rights and accepted standards of national governance’. China’s extolling of its development model may signal a growing Chinese willingness to challenge the liberal international order. To counter it effectively, liberal Western countries will need to get their own democratic houses in order and prove that Western democracy produces better outcomes for its citizens.

Bonnie S Glaser is senior adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

5 responses to “Is China proselytising its path to success?”

  1. ” To counter it effectively, liberal Western countries will need to get their own democratic houses in order and prove that Western democracy produces better outcomes for its citizens.”

    Seems like China is a positive stimulus for democracy by forcing them to self-inspect and self-improve.

    The “West” wants the whole world to turn into its “proven” model that were perfected during the period when it was at the top. However I am skeptical of this kind of “end of history” narrative, as true modern liberal democracy only has couple of decades under its belt – I’d put its official start at the end of 1950s.

    Before that, every one of the countries went through a DEVELOPMENT PROCESS, fraught with its own evils and failures, before arriving at where they are today, and they did so with the advantages they accumulated over their peers during the industrial revolution and colonial periods – this is a fact seldom mentioned by those that tout the superiority of western democracy, which I judge to be a very a critical component.

    Questions also have to be asked, is China really building its own path or is simply still climbing the same development slope before arriving at the same plateau? Human rights sacrificed for perceived need for internal, national security and stability should not be unfamiliar to all the liberal country’s own histories, or indeed any human society in general. In this sense, again, Western “liberal order” enjoyed important advantages over its peers. Take cold war for example, Communist soviets and Capitalist-Liberal west did not start on the same plane – GB and US had couple hundreds years of dominance and relative secure peace in their lands (fraught with their own jaw-dropping abuses and mercantilism and what not of all kinds) that allowed them to develop their societies, while Communist Soviet had only 1-2 decades, then comes WWII and devastating war with Germany that skewed the society to more militaristic and security focused stances – these all had major impacts on the developments of possible alternatives that can credibly challenge the Western dominated societal order.

    In the end, I guess I can condense my thoughts into 3 questions:
    1. How do you define all the aspects pertaining to this “liberal order”, are they mutually exclusive with all other orders?

    2. Is the apparent superiority (aspects) of Liberal order really due to its all-encompassing innate superiority that humanity are destined to end in, or its simply a construct happenstance of circumstances that gave it a head start advantage over any possible challengers that could have their own superior aspects that liberal order cannot address?

    3.Can different human societies simply, naturally drop into the “liberal order” or does it requires extensive social fashioning process to make work – which the Europeans did for hundreds years -under unique circumstance too- before arriving at what they are today?

  2. Freedoms in China have expanded as the country becomes wealthier, and some even say there are more freedoms in China (e.g., from gun related violence) than in the United States. It seems likely that freedoms in China will increase even more over time as China further develops. Just be patient.

    It seems illiberal to tell the rest of the world not to at least look at what China has to offer. Each country ought to be free to work out their own development path, and not be bound to any single “Western model”.

    Western liberals themselves ought to re-examine their own notions of liberalism. In particular, freedoms ought to be assessed comprehensively to include (say) freedom from poverty which developed countries seem to take for granted. In fact, there is poverty even within developed countries. Arguably a narrow understanding of liberalism has led Western policy makers to pay insufficient attention to addressing poverty, both within their own countries, and elsewhere in the world.

    • I would like you to list all the freedoms you claim the Chinese have in China that U.S. citizens do not have.

      And then I will list the freedoms we have that you do not have. Let’s just see which society is free. The one based on ideas of freedom or the the one that believes that there is no freedom without one party rule that everyone simply has to accept.

      You cannot fool those of us who live in freedom. We know the difference. Many of our families have escaped from authoritarian governments. If it looks like authoritarianism, speaks like authoritarianism and acts like authoritarianism – it is.

      • Hi Donna. Thank you for your contribution. I am sure that, having lived in authoritarian regimes, you have insights into freedoms that I lack. I see freedom as a comprehensive idea, encompassing the freedom from hunger, the freedom to achieve goals and commitments that one has reason to value. Liberties are also part of this comprehensive freedom. It seems likely, and anecdotally, that the freedoms of people in China have grown still wider, in proportion to China’s economic development. It is possible, even likely, that Chinese people do not yet enjoy the same level of comprehensive freedoms as those in far richer developed countries. But I am sure freedoms in China will continue to grow over time. Peace and goodwill to you and your loved ones.

  3. 1 The author’s claim that at the 19th Party Congress of the CCP, “Chinese leader Xi Jinping appeared to present China’s development path as a model for other countries to imitate” is another red herring. It contradicts her co-authored article of 26 Oct 2017, when she wrote that “The objectives laid out by Xi for the first stage from 2020 to 2035 are primarily domestic, with the end goal of “basically realizing” socialist modernization. The only reference by Xi to China’s international role during this stage is that the country will become a “global leader in innovation.”

    2 She added that “However, in the second stage from 2035 to 2045, Xi set forth a more outward looking agenda” but that is a long way from now and President Xi will not be in office then.

    3 Even if President Xi had expressed an opinion that China’s Socialist model offers ’Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to the problems facing mankind’, does that amount to “China proselytising its path to success”? No, because, unlike the United States, China’s declared policy is not to interfere in the internal affairs of another country.

    4 But if any nation, especially among those in the impoverished Third World, wishes to leverage on China’s unique experience it will benefit enormously because in the last 39 years China rose from being a basket case in 1978 to becoming, today, the second largest economy and the biggest trading nation in the world, with a foreign reserves of about US$3.2 trillion, including US$1.19 trillion in US Treasury Bonds. The facts show that China must have done something right in the last 39 years.

    5 In sharp contrast, in the same period the United States, which had neglected to upgrade its rickety infrastructures and had, instead, wasted trillions of US dollars on endless wars to benefit the elite bankers and the US Military Industrial-Complex, descended from being a creditor nation to becoming today the largest debtor-nation in the world, with a national debt of over US$20.5 trillion and an unfunded debt of another US$222 trillion in 2014. According to GAAP the United States is already insolvent.

    6 While China lifted an unprecedented 900 million people (about three times the population of the United States or more that ALL the population in the West combined) out of poverty in the last 39 years, the US lost its industrial base and today about 45 million Americans are surviving on food stamps and about 90 million are out of the job market.

    7 Any reasonable bystander can see that the China’s Socialist model based on meritocracy, has been more successful in the last 39 years than the Western Liberal Democracy model.

    This is because, by all accounts, Greece, the birthplace of Democracy, should be the richest nation in the world but today it is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is not unexpected because according to Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” but ‘Socialism based on Meritocracy’ had not yet been tried then.

    8 And according to Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, “Western Values” are egregious and destructive. He wrote, quote:

    a)We saw Western values as Europe and North America interfered in every single corner of the planet, imposing friendly regimes, elevating the second most powerful group to a position of prominence, knowing that this group would support the foreign power, this being the only way to guarantee their position and we saw the horrific consequences of these endemic imbalances in the socio-economic tissue of countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

    b)We saw Western values in Vietnam in massacre after massacre. (3 million innocent men, women and children were killed. US Troops also dropped 21 million gallons of carcinogenic Agent Orange defoliants in Vietnam, which still cause deformed births and cancer today.) Brackets mine).

    c)We saw Western values in Iraq, where the USA and the UK, breached international law by attacking a sovereign nation (based on lies of WMD) against the precepts laid down in the UN Charter. (Brackets mine.)

    d)We saw Western values in Libya, where military hardware was again used to strafe civilian structures, where the electricity grid was targeted “to break their backs” and the water supply was bombed. And where is the war crimes trial?

    e)And today we see Western values in Syria, interfering, placing troops on the ground without invitation, launching missile attacks without any basis whatsoever, and siding with terrorist groups destabilizing the country, raping nuns, raping little girls and murdering policemen, ambulance drivers and soldiers.

    f)If these are Western values, who needs the Devil? Unquote.

    9 On 7 November 2015 President Xi declared that “a strong China will never bully any weak nation and a rich China will never humiliate any poor nation”.

    Can President Trump match that without characterizing some countries in Africa and Latin America with vulgar rhetoric?

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