Affluence and Democracy in China: A Complicated Relationship

The Financial Times reported in 2013 that there was “no great clamour in China for western democracy.”[1] The assumption in the West that prosperity in China will someday inevitably usher in democracy may unduly privilege Western political values in an exogenous context. The newspaper suggested that prosperity can be the source of rising pressure for political change rather than an antidote to it. In other words, the power shift between the state and individual that is unleashed by rising incomes does not necessary privilege the individual. Time and again, China’s leaders have refused to shift power to the individual at the expense of the state; social harmony, and power, are just too important. To be sure, cronyism and corruption, while endemic in China, are not esteemed cultural values, and the rising middle-class may demand that the state clamp down on the unfairness of government officials “wetting their beaks.” This would be particularly problematic if the growing upper-middle-class demand more transparency in government and more rule-of-law to instill fairness over the personal aggrandizement of government officials. However, President Xi, at least publically, would hardly object, as he set out to come down hard on corruption even in the state. At the very least, the matter of increasing wealth and democracy in China can only be complex, yet we can come to some conclusions based on Chinese history and the Chinese view of democracy being Western.

The relationship between economic development and political democracy in China is more complex than is typically presumed in the West. Put another way, the rest of the world is not made in the West’s image. That the newly affluent in China (except for in Hong Kong) would not necessarily demand democracy would strike most Westerners as bizarre. Why would not enhanced choice given the greater buying-power translate into choice in politics too? It is very possible that the Chinese newly rich would want a breed of change in government that does not reflect Western democracy. Certainly the extant ruling elite would favor such a force over one that is pro-democracy.Rather than a change of system, rising incomes may fuel a power struggle between different power-centers—one being the old and the other(s) being the new. This sort of thing happened in the Salem witch trials in seventeenth-century New England. Newly-propertied women were literally burned-to-death by city officials who favored the established landed gentry. The religious subterfuge belied the more earthly battle between old and new centers of power based at least in part on economic change.
Similarly, contending centers of power held within the Communist Party widen to include the rich and professional classes (i.e., upper and upper-middle). With the exception of the two short-lived republics attempted at the end of the Qing dynasty in the early twentieth century, China has no history of democracy, so it would not be likely that the ruling party expands to include a democratic faction.

Because the two brief republics occurred just after the Qing dynasty fell, and, moreover, because the history of China contains cycle after cycle of dynasties rising and falling, real change that includes a democratic system would most likely be possible only after the fall of the Communist Party dynasty. Considering that the Qing dynasty went from 1644 to 1910, I wouldn't look for this kind of change any time soon. Yet within the current dynasty, more pockets of limited democracy, perhaps similar to Hong Kong's, may be established, or, more to the point, allowed by the power in the status quo.

1. Philip Stephens, “Political Cracks Imperil China’s Power,” The Financial Times, January 24, 2013.

Marx and Chinese Dynasties: A Postmortem on Occupy Wall Street

My essay that suggests that the Occupy Wall Street protests should have focused on the large corporation itself (i.e., that the large corporate form be expunged from modern society) rather than on a myriad of redistribution agendas resonates with Marx’s theory of revolution. In that theory, the proletariat finally throws off the chains and subdues the hitherto hegemonic capitalists in a materialist reading of Hegel's idea that history progresses toward greater freedom of the human spirit. The redistributive push of the Occupy movement fellf short because even increased redistribution advocated would have been within extant the political-economic system that the corporations dominate and run (i.e., including Congress). If the protesters were in fact serious about confronting corporate capitalism, their movement should have been radical rather than reformist because reforms are within the system that works for and by corporations.
A radical agenda makes the existence of the modern corporation itself the issue. Absent taking that entity out of the equation (i.e., system), corporations will be able to relegate any proposal geared to “reforming” the system. In 2011, the movement itself was enabling this by allowing the protesters’ general message to pivot from "corporate capitalism" to "crony capitalism." This subtle shift was in the corporations' interest, for it meant that they themselves were no longer the target (i.e., only the "bad" ones).
Even the radical alternative, wherein the very existence of the huge concentrations of private capital are the target, may have been doomed to the sidelines of American political discourse, and thus utter failure, considering the power of corporations over the (corporate) media, which could turn a radical impulse in to a reformist whimper. Additionally, corporate CEO's could press Congress to set the FBI and even the CIA against (even a reformist) movement deemed to be a threat to the moneyed interests.
Cutting large corporations down to size from within the system so as to be consistent with being contained by democratic means may be like expecting water to go up-stream. There's the expression, You Can't fight City Hall. This holds especially if city hall is hidden at the top of towering skyscrapers on Wall Street. A lot of pressure would need to build up for an external “shock” to overcome such a system, given the inherent tendency of corporate capitalism to mitigate the power of radical agendas by labeling them as "extreme." Marx believed that at some point the pressure from the proletariat would reach the threshold at which the lava of discontent can break out of the strictures of the system undergirding the huge private concentrations of capital. I tend to agree, though I think a lot of pressure would need to build up for the energy to be sufficient to overcome the momentum of the system’s status quo. The process of pressure-building is perhaps much longer than the protesters suspect because they discount the corporations' wherewithal to effectively use the media and political elite to preserve the system by relegating threats.
It may be that we need to view the pressure-building process from a longer-term perspective. Rather than getting caught up on the sensationalistic “play by play” stories on the protests in various cities around the world, we could view the movement itself as a wave on a rising tide that might not reach shore as a tsunami until well after we are dead and gone. The tide itself, even if not the tsunami, is perhaps inexorable if the system is indeed heavily biased in favor of the "haves" at the expense of the "have-nots." In other words, in the self-perpetuating political economy, the holding companies will only get stronger; individual companies may downsize, but that is oriented to making them stronger. Even so, the efficiency in economy of scale suggests that as long as the current system continues to exist, the large corporation will endure as a basic form in corporate capitalism.
The Occupy Wall Street movement can be interpreted in retrospect as having said that the injustice latent in the large corporation itself outweighs its greater efficiency. That injustice transcends that of economic inequality to touch on the injustice of a republic-turned-plutocracy. Even the protesters recognized that a clear break from the present system would be necessary to thwart the trend away toward increasing economic inequality and decreasing representative democracy. In other words, reform is not sufficient, and yet the power needed to propel a radical alternative requires overwhelming pressure.
A political-economic cycle going back and forth between democracy and plutocracy may be natural; it may express the dynamic tension between popular rule and concentrated power. Such a cycle may be like that of Chinese dynasties through Chinese history. At some point, a given dynasty (such as the Ming) would inevitably fell on its own corrupt weight only to be replaced by a new one (the Qing) that would in turn eventually likewise fall. To be sure, democracy was not in the mix (until 1911, and then only briefly), but the cycle is relevant in that it says something about the nature of concentrated power to eventually collapse from its own weight rather than from an external shock or force. 
Confucius lived when the Chou dynasty was in decline. Could he have known how close that dynasty was to succumbing to the next one? Similarly, do Americans know precisely when the volcano of popular discontent will erupt and level or at least greatly reduce the power of Wall Street?  Given the amount of vested power invested in the status quo, considerable pressure is requisite. It is easy to see, therefore, why the Occupy Wall Street movement was marginalized so.