After Deng the Deluge

The world is relearning a basic lesson about China: how it fits into international society depends on its internal politics. The ease of relations with China from 1976 to 1989 reflected the end of the Cultural Revolution and a great reduction in domestic repression; problems thereafter grew from the regime crisis following the Tiananmen massacre. As for the rise in tensions today, many of the factors prompting it--China's military modernization and expansion in the South China Sea, for example--clearly have something to do with looming political contention in Beijing after the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

What does the future hold? Kenneth Lieberthal ventures an answer toward the end of Governing China. The book is an encyclopedic survey of what political science has learned about the People's Republic of China--about the careers of its leaders, its structures of authority, its policy and power struggles--and in both its impressive scope and judicious flavor recalls How the Soviet Union Is Governed, Jerry F. Hough's revision of Merle Fainsod's classic, How Russia Is Ruled. So it is perhaps worth recalling Hough's prognosis for the U.S.S.R., eminently reasonable in 1979: "Any future evolution is highly likely to retain the framework of the present system in one sense or another."

Lieberthal, similarly, prophesies change for China, but most likely gradual change within existing structures. He expects the state to "employ a range of strategies to fend off challenges from a developing society" and use the security apparatus to crush any unrest. The Communist Party may abandon socialism for nationalism, but it will continue in its preeminent role. The many internal pressures--economic, demographic, and political--whose buildup Lieberthal chronicles will likely be accommodated as the system evolves in directions that can already be discerned. "While uncertainties abound," Lieberthal writes, "it appears that on balance China in the late 1990s will grow more open, decentralized, corrupt, regionally and socially diverse, militarily powerful, and socially tempestuous."

This prognosis may well be correct, and it is certainly favored by many in government and foreign policy circles. But at root it is a linear projection, and these have an intuitive psychological appeal independent of their cogency. It is difficult enough to predict rain when contemplating a clear sky, let alone imagine a day when the red flag will come down in the People's Republic. Yet the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time on December 25, 1991. Precisely because such spectacular shifts have taken place in a dozen countries--and almost took place in China in 1989--it makes sense at least to consider another future for China, one involving change more radical, less orderly, and far more discontinuous than Lieberthal foresees.

This alternative assessment says, in effect, let us for once try to recognize the preconditions for major historical change when they arise, and understand that they have inescapable consequences. Evidence for this approach abounds in Governing China, chapter after chapter of which presents in statistical detail the dramatic economic and social changes Deng Xiaoping's reform policies have wrought. For 20 years China has been growing economically about as fast as any country ever has. Huge cities have sprouted where a decade ago were only rice paddies. Tens of millions of peasants have left the countryside and moved to cities in search of work. Millions more Chinese have acquired modern education and knowledge of the world, so that thought and culture are changing as well. Communism, the ideological cement of the People's Republic, has been discredited.

Two centuries ago analogous developments in Europe set in train a process of change, conflict, and political reconstruction whose repercussions the world still feels. The consequences of Europe's military, industrial, and demographic revolutions have been thoroughly documented. The rise of cities, the spread of literacy and new ideas, and the development of a bourgeoisie were all changes the old order proved incapable of accommodating. Europe's new economy and new society demanded new state structures--with constitutions, legal systems, and citizen participation--and Europe got them, but only at the cost of much turmoil.

This pattern has been repeated wherever and whenever the same fundamental forces have been unleashed. Is it likely that China will be the great historical exception--that in 20 years it will be a vibrant economic giant, full of educated, mobile, and increasingly affluent people who nevertheless tolerate rule by a self?perpetuating politburo and its co?opted friends in society?

If the answer is no, then instead of wondering about succession, as so many pundits do, one should acknowledge that China today faces something far more complex and significant: regime transition. As this is being written, an intense battle is under way in Beijing over which party leaders will seize Deng's mantle. It is a riveting spectacle, but this particular fight will not decide China's future. When the dust settles, the important question will not be who but what. What sort of regime is China heading toward? And what will the consequences be for the world?

SEVERAL ROADS DIVERGE