China: Tiananmen II

Indian Express ^ | 05/10/12 | Minxin Pei

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Tiananmen II

Minxin Pei : Thu May 10 2012, 03:12 hrs

Bo Xilai’s downfall punctures the myth of China’s resilient autocracy

Scandals in dictatorships perform several valuable functions. They often discredit their rulers and undermine their legitimacy. In some cases, scandals may even hasten the disintegration of authoritarian regimes by causing infighting among ruling elites or triggering loss of confidence and a crisis. For academics, such scandals frequently provide test cases for validating long-held theories or assumptions about the durability of authoritarian rule.

From this perspective, the recent mega-scandal involving Bo Xilai, one of China’s political stars, is particularly useful for assessing an influential theory about post-Mao China: resilient autocracy.

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The theory of “authoritarian resilience” was formulated by leading China watchers about a decade ago to describe the apparent success of the Communist Party in managing succession politics, maintaining a meritocratic regime, and responding to public demands for better governance. For nearly a decade, this theory became the explanation of choice for those who tried to find the underlying sources of strength for a regime commonly viewed as corrupt, illegitimate, and ham-fisted.

There are many problems with this theory. The most serious one is that it is based on flimsy evidence and ex-post rationalisation, the sin of sins in academic theory-building. To put it simply, advocates of this theory believe that if things have gone right for the party for so long, it must have inner strengths analysts have overlooked.

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People may not know who Pei Min-xin is. When Tianmen Uprising broke out, he was one of the Chinese students studying in U.S. (IIRC, at Havard U.), who denounced the communist regime at Ted Koppel's NightLine . Naturally, he had to live a life in exile after the uprising was put down.

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P!

[tanuki]

This clarifies a lot about the effect of the Bo scandal on the Chinese power structure. Thankfully, this happened before the party conference. I ask my Chinese friends about what might have happened if this had occurred the new party structure had been agreed upon and the words ‘civil war’ come up.