Porphyrogenitus examines China’s likelihood to transition to a democracy and doesn’t see much hope. Read Porphy’s Paranoia About China for the full article.
I agree with Porphy’s arguments regarding China and see a dark future ahead. While China is a economic powerhouse, the house is built on a fault-line. Several troubling facts point toward a clash between China and the West and within China itself.
China’s attempts to reign in democracy in Hong Kong. The call for only the “right type” of candidates sounds like something out of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
China has now implemented property rights (in the constitution if I remember properly), but is still mum regarding rights of free speech and assembly. As long as someone can accuse you of a thought crime, I don’t see property rights as being all that strong
At some point a Chinese business person (or foreign corporation) will be too large for China’s oligarchy to tolerate. They don’t have a good track record when it comes to tolerance.
I think China’s property-laws can be summed up as: We’ll have property laws who deserve to have property. And we’ll be the ones, thank you, to determine who deserves to have property.
As long as you toe the line, you’ll be OK.
J.M. – the point is, I’m dubious that we can call what’s going on in China capitalism. It’s certainly not free market economics. It’s much more like Mussolini’s system of state-directed business and there is still a large state sector and many of the so-called private companies are owned by government officials or branches of the government.
They (mostly) gave up the central planning model, and have allowed some actual private enterprise. But even the (new, remember) encoding of property rights into their laws isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be.
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China and Singapore are two examples of how capitalism does not always bring true freedom.
I am outraged that USA still trades with the PROC given its human rights record, particularly in how it denies procreative freedom to its citizens (even forcing women to have abortions) and also in how it treats Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and other folks of faith. I have yet to see any proof that the booming economic trade with China is bringing about democracy or freedom at all