David Shambaugh’s on CCP Endgame

choi

In chronologic order. But it matters little which one you read first.

(1) David Shambaugh, The Coming Chinese Crackup. The endgame of communist rule has begun, argues a longtime China scholar. Xi Jinping’s campaign against  dissent and corruption is only bringing the country closer to breaking point. Wall Street Journal, Mar 7, 2015 (the essay serves as the opening article, much as Amy Chua’s excerpt of her book on tiger mom, of the Review section that comes out every Saturday).
www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659198

Excepts in the windows of the print:

“China’s political system is badly broken, and nobody knows it better than the Communist Party itself.

“Even many regime loyalists are just going through the motions.


Quote:

“China’s strongman leader, Xi Jinping, is hoping that a crackdown on dissent and corruption will shore up the party’s rule. He is determined to avoid becoming the Mikhail Gorbachev of China, presiding over the party’s collapse. But instead of being the antithesis of Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Xi may well wind up having the same effect. His despotism is severely stressing China’s system and society—and bringing it closer to a breaking point.

“The endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun, I believe, and it has progressed further than many think. * * * But until the system begins to unravel in some obvious way, those inside of it will play along—thus contributing to the facade of stability.

"Communist rule in China is unlikely to end quietly. * * * Its demise is likely to be protracted, messy and violent. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Mr Xi will be deposed in a power struggle or coup d’état. With his aggressive anticorruption campaign * * * he is overplaying a weak hand and deeply aggravating key party, state, military and commercial constituencies.

“Many of its [antigraft campaign’s] targets to date have been political clients and allies of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. Now 88, Mr. Jiang is still the godfather figure of Chinese politics. Going after Mr. Jiang’s patronage network while he is still alive is highly risky for Mr. Xi, particularly since Mr. Xi doesn’t seem to have brought along his own coterie of loyal clients to promote into positions of power.

“Finally, China’s economy—for all the Western views of it as an unstoppable juggernaut—is stuck in a series of systemic traps from which there is no easy exit. * * * overall, Mr Xi’s ambitious goals have been stillborn.


My comment:
(a) The essay is significant. I waited in vain for WSJ to translate it. (Financial Times intentionally refuses to translate some sensitive articles, usually about bleak outlooks of China. Now WSJ is doing the same. Little wonder Beijing has not blocked Chinese version of either.)
(b) The WSJ essay is easy to read. It is in fact plain. The essay keeps talking about 2009 (or 2008). Finally it marked the watershed event as Zeng Qinghong’s retirement.
(c) crackup (n): “[informal]  a collapse under strain”
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... an_english/crack-up
(d) Reference to 2009 (or 2008):

"Second, since taking office in 2012, Mr Xi has greatly intensified the political repression that has blanketed China since 2009.

"But reaction and repression aren’t Mr Xi’s only option. His predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, drew very different lessons from the Soviet collapse. From 2000 to 2008, they instituted policies intended to open up the system with carefully limited political reforms.

"In effect, for a while Mr Jiang and Mr Hu sought to manage change, not to resist it. But Mr Xi wants none of this. Since 2009 (when even the heretofore open-minded Mr Hu changed course and started to clamp down), an increasingly anxious regime has rolled back every single one of these political reforms (with the exception of the cadre-training system). These reforms were masterminded by Mr Jiang’s political acolyte and former vice president, Zeng Qinghong, who retired in 2008 and is now under suspicion in Mr Xi’s anticorruption campaign—another symbol of Mr Xi’s hostility to the measures that might ease the ills of a crumbling system.

choi

(2) 储百亮, 沈大伟：我为何对中共的执政前景不乐观. 纽约时报中文网, Mar 17, 2015
cn.nytimes.com/china/20150317/c17shambaugh/

, which is translated from

Chris Buckley, Q and A: David Shambaugh on the Risks to Chinese Communist Rule. New York Times, Mar 15, 2015 (blog)

Q & A:

(i) Q: “you published a book titled “China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation,” which highlighted the party’s potential to overcome or contain its problems

A: “My book on the Communist Party was completed in 2007 and published in 2008. The publication date is important * * * because the party had persons in the top leadership during the period I studied, notably the president and party leader, Jiang Zemin, and his ally Zeng Qinghong, the vice president, who derived the main lesson from the Soviet post-mortem that the party had to be proactive and dynamic in its leadership. So, the book was mainly about the ‘adaptation’ the party was undertaking. * * * What do Leninist parties do to cope with the atrophy and stave off inevitable decline? Essentially, they can be reactive and defensive — ruling by repression, in effect — or they can be proactive and dynamic, ruling through opening and trying to guide and manage change. From roughly 2000 through 2008, under Zeng Qinghong’s aegis, the party chose the latter. But in the middle of 2009, after Zeng had retired, it abruptly shifted, in my view. One can date it very precisely — Sept. 17, 2009 — the day after the Fourth Plenum of the party’s 17th Central Committee closed. * * * The party has choices. Repression may be its ‘default mode,’ but it is not its only option. Opening and proactively managing political change is an alternative. True, if they tried that — again — there is no guarantee that they could keep control of the process and, as in the Soviet Union, the reforms could cascade out of control, and they would fall from power anyway. So, they have a kind of Hobson’s choice or Catch-22. They can repress and bring about their own demise or they can open up and still possibly bring about their own demise. * * * I would add other factors that are contributing to public discontent with the regime: high levels of social inequality, inadequate provision of public goods, pervasive pollution and stagnating wages along with a slowing economy. For these reasons, this is why I see the “endgame” of the Communist Party as being underway. That said, my views about the protracted process of atrophy and decline of the party are more nuanced than the catchy headline used by The Wall Street Journal.

(ii) Q: "At the time [when he became Communist Party leader in 2012], you judged that he was likely to be shackled by the influence of rival leaders and party elders. That doesn’t seem to be the case, so far at least.

A: “as I argued in the Wall Street Journal piece, we should not mistake Xi’s personal consolidation of power [swiftly, rather than taking 2-to-3-year protracted process, as Shambaugh had predicted like most China watchers at the time (2012)] either with the overall strength of the party or even his own grip on power. I see both as very fragile.

(iii)
Q: You say that he’s determined not to follow Gorbachev’s fate, and yet he may end up having the same effect as Gorbachev. Could you explain how? We think of Gorbachev as a liberalizing leader who, for better or worse, opened the way to political relaxation in a way that Mr. Xi appears set against. So where do the two leaders’ fates possibly converge?

A: "My argument is that he [Xi] will likely have the same effect [empire collapse] by resisting political reforms and by embracing harsh repression. I believe that repression is seriously stressing an already broken system and could well accelerate its collapse. That is why I compared Xi to Gorbachev. Different [or opposite, contrarian] tactics, same likely result.

(iv) A: "I do not find that Xi’s slogans and 'broader messages,' as you put it, are resonating with the population. Everyone I talk with in China is not at all 'inspired' by the unrelenting tsunami of slogans pouring out of the propaganda system, many attributed to Xi himself.

Note:
(a) Hobson's choice
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson's_choice
(b) Catch-22 (logic)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)
(section 1.2 Significance of the number 22)

* catch (n): "a concealed difficulty or complication <there must be a catch>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catch