WHEN THE WALL COMES DOWN:

The real test of China's appetite for reform (Minxin Pei, January 27 2003, Financial Times)

Three powerful forces are placing pressure on China's rulers to restructure the country's political system. The biggest of these is the economy, which has become more market-oriented and more closely linked to the world. In spite of adopting policy changes that have propelled market reforms, Chinese leaders have not made state institutions market-friendly. As a result, the state has maintained its command-and-control orientation and interferes excessively in the marketplace.

That is evident in the size of the Chinese bureaucracy. Even though the share of state-owned enterprises in the economy has fallen 60 per cent since 1979, the number of officials has tripled. A bloated bureaucracy and unchecked power breed corruption. At the very least, political reform would require a painful downsizing of the bureaucracy. The proposed measures in Shenzhen suggest that administrative streamlining is likely to be the dominant theme of reforms.

The second force comes from China's changing society. Increasing affluence, economic independence, access to information and physical mobility have rendered the government's traditional means of social control obsolete. Luckily for the Communist party, the emerging middle class has not displayed much zeal for democracy. But it would be foolhardy to take its political apathy for granted. The party needs to court these elites and to incorporate them in the political process.

More important, continued political disenfranchisement is radicalising China's two biggest social groups: peasants and workers in moribund state-owned enterprises, who are relative losers in economic reform. Unable to protect their interests, these groups are increasingly turning to riots and street demonstrations to press their demands. Opening up the political process could help to defuse rising social tensions.

The third force comes from the party itself and many officials have begun to call for change. The results of a recent poll of mid-level officials at the Central Communist Party School in Beijing show that, since 2000, political reform has become the most important issue for them. Li Rui, a former personal secretary of Mao Zedong and deputy chief of the party's organisation department, published an essay recently that openly called on the party to institute democratic reforms.

But the need for such reforms does not necessarily mean that the regime will undertake them. Experience of democratic transition elsewhere suggests that few authoritarian regimes initiate, of their own accord, reforms that could threaten their hold on power. In most cases, political and economic crises have forced them to accept the inevitable.

People are so frightened about the instability that may follow the fall of Saddam; just imagine what the inevitable crumbling of Communist China is going to look like. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 28, 2003 9:34 AM