About 40 years ago, a Chinese Communist Party official said, I searched the world for best practices, they piloted carefully and created the economic miracle their country is showing today. Xi Jinping, who has just entered an unusual third term at the helm of the world’s most populous country, embodies a much more confident China that has begun to paint itself as an alternative to the West.
China’s version of the World Bank was created, and Mr. Xi launched the World Bank. Asian Infrastructure Investment BankInstead of the American Dream, he said, “chinese dreamIt describes the collective pride people feel as they overcome a century of anarchy and colonial humiliation and reclaim their status as great powers. Controlling territories considered lost, including Taiwan, is considered key to the Chinese dream. So does letting China, not the US, take the lead in Asia and elsewhere. Xi has launched China’s first aircraft carrier and first foreign military base in Djibouti.
Xi’s China arguably presents the most serious challenges for US global leadership in my lifetime, but it also gives Americans an opportunity to learn from China. success When Failure of a radically different system. I asked six Chinese scholars what Americans should learn from Mr. Xi’s tenure so far. Here’s a rundown of what they told me.
‘Invisible infrastructure’ is the most important kind
In the absence of elections, China’s Communist Party cadres rise in rank based, at least in theory, on how well they carry out the Communist Party’s priorities. For many years, the top priority was economic growth. Local authorities have turned China into the world’s workshop by funding the highways, ports and power plants that manufacturers need.Under Xi, the government’s priorities are self-sufficiency The use of industrial robots is what China’s leaders believe is key to escaping the crisis. middle income trapRising wages have made it uncompetitive in low-wage manufacturing, but it has yet to make the leap to value-added products in high-income countries.
But too much top-down planning can backfire.Harvard Sociologist Ya-Wen Lei A person who studies the impact of national policies on the diffusion of advanced technology in Chinatold me that some Chinese companies buy robots that don’t work well and exaggerate their successes to gain government subsidies or attract the favor of politicians. Few party executives worship machines beyond their practical usefulness.
“Many manufacturers don’t want or need government guidance on technology,” she told me. Some business owners complained that government subsidies were often wasted on politically linked companies.
“Invisible infrastructure” was what many Chinese companies wanted most, she said. A predictable judicial system, bank credit and fair access to land, regulations that apply regardless of political affiliation. Her findings were,The Gilded Cage: China’s Techno-State Capitalism‘ suggests that Beijing’s statements about its astonishing technological advances should be viewed with a little skepticism.
There is no ‘economic miracle’ for farmers
Mr. Xi had a privileged childhood as the son of a Communist Party cadre. But the Cultural Revolution shattered that sheltered life for him. He was sent to a remote village for seven years, where he worked hard and slept in a hillside cave house. As a result, he can claim to be familiar with rural people and issues that most world leaders cannot even imagine.
One of Xi’s most famous campaigns was his pledge to end extreme poverty. This is a tacit acknowledgment that China’s economic miracle has left hundreds of millions of rural farmers behind. Only 30% of working Chinese adults have a high school diploma.According to Scott Rozelle, co-author of Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, 80% of young people now get them, but.
According to China’s grand strategy, these unskilled workers will increasingly be replaced by robots, posing an economic challenge and a threat to political stability. Premier Li Keqiang, who was regarded as a rival of President Xi, Announced in 2020 Over 600 million Chinese rake in the equivalent of $140 a month.
Last year, President Xi declared:Total victoryDespite his success in eradicating extreme poverty in China, his success is met with skepticism. Some experts on China report that local officials handed out cash to rural families instead of initiating much-needed structural reforms.
“In many ways, rural Chinese are like the bottom of the policy-driven caste system,” Roselle told me. Nevertheless, even a flawed program to address rural poverty is better than no program at all.
Beware of personality cults
When Mr. Xi took over as Communist Party leader in 2012, China was plagued with rampant corruption and eye-popping inequalities displayed by the country’s billionaire class.A leaked U.S. diplomatic message states that Mr. really sick By an irrepressible desire among the elite. To save the ruthless Communist Party, he set out to crack down on corruption and try to put the wealth of capricious Nouveau back in his pocket by recruiting party members. He ordered the chief executive to contribute more towards “common prosperity” and showed what could happen to those who disobeyed party lines. (China’s Bill Gates, Jack Ma, appears to have been forced to relinquish control of his company, almost disappeared from public life.)
But Mr. Xi’s crackdown went too far. Increasingly, foreign investors and Chinese entrepreneurs are fleeing. Coupled with a draconian zero-coronavirus strategy, Mr. Xi Jinping’s policies have stalled the economy.
Even more worrisome is the resurgence of an atmosphere of fear and fawning that has not been seen since the days of Chairman Mao. A businessman critical of Mr. Xi Jinping was sent to prison for 18 years. The days of relative openness to intellectual debate and foreign ideas seem to be over.
Term limits and personality cult bans put in place to avoid another tyrant like Mao have gone out the window, allowing Mr. Xi to spend more time in power. . Xi has been called the modern emperor, president of all, and the most powerful person in the world. The fate of his 1.4 billion people in China once again rests on one man.
There is no question that Mr. Xi Jinping believes he is doing the right thing for his people. But that won’t work, according to his Yuhua Wang, author of “The Rise and Fall of Imperial China” and a political scientist at Harvard University. Released this monthWang has studied China’s 2,000-year history and, counterintuitively, has found that China’s central government has always been the weakest under its longest-ruling ruler.
Emperors, he explains, have always maintained power by undermining the elites who could have overthrown them—the very people who could build strong and capable governments.
“You can argue that he has good intentions,” Mr. Wang said of Mr. Xi. But the tactics he used to stay in power — crushing critics, micromanaging corporations, fanning nationalist fervor, and isolating China from the rest of the world — could ultimately undermine China. There is a possibility
Stories of authoritarian leaders who seize power while promising national greatness are familiar, if not alarming, not only to people in China, but everywhere.