Reform unlikely, says China expert Roderick MacFarquhar
Political elite is so caught up in corrupt system that an overhaul would see end of the regime, says US professor
China's incoming leaders were unlikely to embark on sweeping reform unless they faced a life-threatening crisis, Professor Roderick MacFarquhar, a leading China expert, said in an interview yesterday.
With a little over a week before the start of the Communist Party's national congress, there has been speculation incoming party general secretary Xi Jinping may launch political reforms to address widespread social and economic problems.
But MacFarquhar, a professor of history and political science at Harvard University, said the vested interests of the political elite were so entrenched in a corrupt system that an overhaul would amount to dismantling the regime.
"They are frightened that if they start something, this might be the taking away of the stone that leads to an avalanche," said MacFarquhar, an expert on Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution era. He gave a lecture at Chinese University on Monday and speaks at the Foreign Correspondents' Club today.
It's a virtually insoluble dilemma - how do you cure corruption that's so widespread, that's from top to bottom?
Despite hopes the regime can peacefully transform itself into a democracy with rule of law, MacFarquhar said he could not see such a transition, which would require the ruling elite to give up its power and privileges.
He said it was the trauma of the Cultural Revolution that prompted reform in the 1980s.