Dire predictions of China’s future

For the past several decades, those who specialize in geopolitics and global economics have spent a lot of time predicting the future of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Very few geopolitical observers have ever suggested that China is unstable and that the future of the CCP is uncertain.

It is true that the Chinese economy is facing several major challenges. Since 2021, the country’s real estate sector has virtually imploded. There is a worrying high debt loan among local government finances and even the private sector.  Unemployment, especially in the youth sector, has become a nagging problem.

One evidence of this unemployment problem is the fact that an increasing number of Chinese nationals are illegally migrating to other countries to find jobs. Surprisingly, there have been illegal migrants from China that have sought employment in the Philippines.

Despite all of these problems, the political system in China has always appeared strong. Xi Jinping is said to have full control of all levers of power in the country. Furthermore, China appears to be competitive in a growing number of technologies such as electric vehicles and biotechnology.

In contrast, other major countries like the United States and the European Union have witnessed internal political divisiveness. The current Chinese regime has always projected to the outside world competence and stability.

I found it intriguing to read a different view of China from Professor Lianjang Li of the University of Hong Kong. He has conducted surveys that would measure public support for leaders in Beijing. His conclusion is that Chinese citizens’ trust in the regime is weaker than other researchers believe.

Li argues that the high level of institutional trust in China is misleading. He says that in China, people trust the government because they “… do not have an enforceable right to retract trust through free, fair and regular elections.” This is because they have no alternative. He argues that people form preferences by choosing only among those options that are realistically available to them.

Li’s survey results show that only 28 percent of the population has total trust in Xi Jinping. Another 20-25 percent partially trust Xi. They believe in his goals but not in his capacity. Around 35 percent are skeptical of his commitment or his capacity and are not fully trusting. 10-20 percent express total distrust.

This new perspective of Li shows that people with total trust support the government and those who are skeptical tend to be politically apathetic. Li writes that people with partial trust are those who are likely to denounce and demonstrate against local authorities. Those with total distrust, according to Li, are the ones who “… join protests to express discontent, to vent anger and even to embarrass the regime and the central leadership.”

One interesting conclusion of Li is that Chinese citizens who now express total trust might change their attitude once they perceive that an option has opened up to voice distrust.

Chenggang Xu, an economist, has written that he disagrees with the optimistic view that China’s economic problems are due to its political institutions. For an economy to grow, the state needs to give up some control.

I have personally written columns in the past that China’s economy started booming when Deng Xiaoping loosened the government’s control on private business, the media, academe and even the personal lives of people. Xu writes that it was when the government allowed businesses to grow, farmers to search for new sources of income and local economies to take off that the Chinese economy boomed.

However, the country’s Communist Party state system could not tolerate the increasing autonomy of private entrepreneurs, intellectuals and the middle class that actually powered this economic expansion.

In order to regain control, Xi Jinping reversed many of the economic and social reforms introduced since the regime of Deng Xiaoping. Xi Jinping punished private entrepreneurs for criticizing CCP policies or even just running companies that became too large. Xi expanded party cells in private enterprises, tightened control over the media and increased social surveillance.

Both Li and Xu suggest that there is a bleak future for the CCP and what may come after it. Li says that the public support for the regime is based on the perception that the regime is unassailable. And this image is fragile because it depends so much on one man.

Xu notes that if the present regime were to fall, China does not have the resources it would need to rebuild, with the only forces that could reinforce order would be a faction of the CCP or the military.

Xu suggests that a financial, fiscal or geopolitical crisis such as a failed attempt to take Taiwan by force could crack Xi Jinping’s veneer of invincibility and trigger a movement against the regime.

The most worrisome theory of both Li and Xu is that a collapse of the political order would not lead to a democratic transition but a period of painful chaos that could end up with another form of totalitarian rule in China.

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