Political reform is crucial for China

This, in a gist, is one of the observations — a striking one indeed — made in the 2010 Report on China's Modernization by the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The report generated much discussion and debate among netizens after it was published in late January.

China's remarkable economic success in the past 30 years is well known and well documented. It has given rise to praises from some quarters about the superiority of the 'China model'.

But the CAS report has some sobering reminders.

“Unless China embarks on reform in its basic political system, its chances of achieving full-scale modernization by the end of this century is next to zero,” the report said.

The author of the report, Professor He Chuanqi, said at its launch in Beijing that given the experience of the modernization process over the last 300 years, if China followed the same path as others, its chances of achieving modernization could be as low as four percent. Worse, if it did not wipe out feudalism, the entire modernization process could be derailed.

He attributed the low probability to various factors: China's huge population, regional imbalances, income disparity, resource depletion, environmental degradation and lagging political reform.

“Once weighting is assigned to each of these factors, one arrives at a very low probability,” he said.

Prof He, the director of the Center for Modernization Research at the CAS, is a foremost authority on the subject.

He heads a research group which has put out the China Modernization Report every year since 2001.

Professor He said that China's modernization over the past 160 years was characterized by industrial development and no attention was paid to systemic and conceptual changes.

“This is our weakness and its negative impact would become an important factor in derailing the modernization process.”

However, if China could work out a different developmental path as well as reform its political system, then the chances of hitting the 2100 modernization target would be increased to about 30 percent, according to Professor He.

The CAS project studies the modernization process over the last 300 years to find out how best China can achieve it.

It developed 138 indicators to measure advancement in political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and human development, and examined 130 nations between 1700 and 2000.

It defines modernization as having reached 'the world's top 20 positions' by these indicators. Countries ranked 21 to 45 are medium-developed, 46 to 80 are primary-developed and the rest are undeveloped.

The report said that in 2006, China was ranked 70 among 130 nations. It should be in the top 60 by 2020, the top 40 by 2050 and the top 20 by 2100.

According to these indicators and China's actual performance in 2000, the CAS study concluded that by 2050, China will attain a medium-level of modernization.

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