Predicting decline of Communist Party earns China scholar a scolding
When China's state-owned media runs not one but two vitriolic op-eds against a foreign scholar, you can be sure the person has touched a raw nerve.
When China's state-owned media runs not one but two vitriolic op-eds against a foreign scholar, you can be sure the person has touched a raw nerve.
Veteran China watcher David Shambaugh dropped a bombshell recently in the editorial pages of by predicting that the endgame of communist rule has begun and it is progressing faster than most outside experts think.
Coming from Shambaugh, that is a real shocker, for the professor at George Washington University is no China basher, at least not up till now.
He is one of those preternaturally cautious scholars who prefer fact-based conditionals over sensational claims. In , a collection of essays by China experts edited by Shambaugh, he deliberately sets himself apart from both the "China-is-doomed" crowd as well as those who think it is ready to take over the world.
In January, he was hailed by Foreign Affairs University on the mainland as one of America's top China scholars. It must be regretting its choice now. and have gone into an apoplectic fit. But what has changed? I gather he is alarmed by President Xi Jinping's iron-fist rule and what that signifies.
"Xi's wave of repression today is meant to be the opposite of Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost," he wrote. "Instead of opening up, Xi is doubling down on controls over dissenters, the economy and even rivals within the party."
To understand where Shambaugh is coming from, you have to read his , a book I admire. He argues the Chinese regime constantly struggles between those two conditions.
Under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao , the regime has experimented with opening local party committees, voting for multi-candidate party secretaries, expanding contacts with non-party groups, and recruiting entrepreneurs and intellectuals into the party. Shambaugh thinks gradual "managed" change is an option for the communist party to survive. But that slight political opening is now out the window under Xi.
In his op-ed, he charts a frightful scenario if Xi fails with his crackdown. But there are other likely scenarios. Readers will have to judge for themselves.
