In Der Spiegel, John Lee writes about why a lack of political reform in China can no longer be blamed on the chaos of the Mao years:
First things first: Why does the building of institutions that might lead to democracy matter in China? Because in one important respect, authoritarian China is failing: While the Chinese state is rich and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) powerful, civil society is weak and the vast majority of people remain poor. The health, wealth, and well-being of Beijing and the Party are not the same as that of its people. Since the 1990s, what is good for the Chinese state is no longer automatically good for the vast majority of its people.
How then do we establish the best possible conditions that will eventually lead to greater political reforms that benefit the Chinese people? We need a strong civil society where there is rule of law. Courts need to be independent and officials need to be accountable. Private property needs to be protected, individual enterprise needs to be given a chance to succeed, basic human rights must be enforced, and the government needs to be restrained. This is the meaning of just and decent rule for the Chinese people. These are the foundations for a just society that are sorely lacking in modern-day China.
China has grown sixteenfold since reforms began. But in the absence of effective institutions that restrain the discretionary powers of CCP officials and render them accountable for their actions, it is the state and the CCP that grows stronger rather than the Chinese people and civil society.
Lee wrote a similar article recently for Foreign Policy; read it here via CDT.
