China’s dangerous model of power - I

As the United States has been bleeding popularity and influence around the world, China has been gaining both. That’s largely because it has been coming into its own as the first full blown alternative since the end of the Cold War to Washington’s model of free markets and democracy. As the U.S. model has become tarnished, China’s has gained new luster.

For authoritarian leaders around the world seeking to maintain their grip on power, China increasingly serves as a blueprint. Beijing has shown dictators that they don’t have to choose between power and profit; they can have both. Today’s China demonstrates that a regime can suppress organized opposition and need not establish its legitimacy through elections. It shows that a ruling party can maintain considerable control over information and the Internet without slowing economic growth. And it indicates that a nation’s elite can be bought off with comfortable apartments, the chance to make money, and advances in personal, non political freedoms (clothes, entertainment, sex, travel abroad).

This all adds up to a startling new challenge to the future of liberal democracy. And the result is ominous for the cause of freedom of dissent worldwide. China’s single-party state offers continuing hope not only to such largely isolated dictatorships as Burma, Zimbabwe, Syria and North Korea but also to some key U.S. friends who resist calls for democracy (say, Egypt or Pakistan) and to our neighbors in Cuba and Venezuela.

The China model has emerged from the confluence of two independent developments over the past decade. Each stands on its own, yet the interaction between the two has been especially toxic for democratic values.

First has been the failure of U.S. foreign policy, symbolized by the war in Iraq. U.S. foreign policy has been dominated by a school of thought that emphasizes military power and has tied the spread of democracy to the use of force. This has not only failed but also undermined support for democracy. U.S. attempts to export free markets and political liberty by force have been unable to bring even security, much less prosperity, to Iraq. And they’ve eroded our appeal and clout worldwide.

The second key development has been Communist Party’s staying power and economic success. Just after the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, Western pundits predicted the Chinese government had one foot on a banana peel: Any day it would fall or be forced to embrace far-reaching political reform to survive. Instead, China’s economy expanded by nine times, and the party remains firmly in control.

Westerners next seized on the Internet as the inevitable liberator of the Chinese. “Information will knock down the bamboo curtain!” went the refrain. Instead, Chinese cops in the 500 cities that have established Internet police bureaus are stamping out dissent by monitoring people using politically sensitive Web sites.

China’s stability has belied the forecasts of Western leaders that growing prosperity in China would significantly alter its one-party political system. Over the past decade, presidents, prime ministers and others have frequently offered a soothing scenario about how China will inexorably move toward freedom and democracy. In 1997, President Bill Clinton said China was on “the wrong side of history,” predicting that political change would come “just as, inevitably, the Berlin Wall fell.” President Bush has repeated many of these same themes: “Trade freely with China, and time is on our side.” British Prime Minister Tony Blair two years ago noted China’s “unstoppable momentum” toward democracy. Not quite.

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