In Dissent Magazine, political scientist Edward Friedman writes about the prospects for democracy in China:
The People’s Republic of China is not a fragile polity. It is an authoritarian success story. And authoritarian China is winning. African countries lean toward China. Westerners compete to do business there, on Chinese terms. And yet, the human desire not to live a life of fawning and scraping to arrogant and unaccountable ruling groups inevitably ignites a desire for political freedom.
The forces of potential democratization are defined by the particulars of an era and the peculiarities of a region. Barrington Moore, Jr.’s classic study The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy offers a model for general analysis, even though his book is about the age in which agrarian empires came to an end and industrialization created new groups with very different interests. China’s potential for democracy, in this type of sociohistorical logic, will be largely shaped by the dynamics of a region (Asia)—and by the groups and interests created by this socioeconomic moment: rapid industrialization and urbanization combined with post-Fordist globalization, the increasing importance of services, tourism (Macao attracts more gamblers than Las Vegas), advanced information technology, biotechnology, and a cohort that will live for another generation beyond the industrial-era retirement age of sixty-five.
TO COMPREHEND the likelihood of democratization in China, therefore, an analyst should look first at regional factors, then at the groups and interests shaped by rapid industrialization and a looming postindustrial future, and then relate both to the nature of the Chinese state.
