China’s future: nation doomed to decline without major revamp of its broken political system, says academic

China’s ambitious plans, including its “One Belt, One Road” initiative – a strategy to revive the land and maritime Silk Roads dating back to the days of Marco Polo – and the massive overhaul of the world’s largest army, seem to bode well for the future of the world’s second-largest economy.

Yet one seasoned China watcher, David Shambaugh, who has a reputation for delivering sober-minded observations, is not convinced.

In his new book, the 203-page China’s Future, published in March by Polity, Shambaugh argues that China is in a state of “atrophy” and “decline”, which will continue if no major political reform takes place in the near future.

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His conclusion echoes his eyebrow-raising commentary in The Wall Street Journal last March. The professor of political science and international affairs and director of the China Policy Programme at George Washington University – one of the United States’ most prominent experts on contemporary China – argued that “the endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun”.

In the article last March, he labelled the nation’s political system “badly broken” and said that President Xi Jinping’s “despotism is severely stressing China’s system and society – and bringing it closer to a breaking point”.

The demise was likely to “be protracted, messy and violent”, he wrote in his commentary.

His latest book, which elaborates on how such conclusions were made, is full of thought-provoking, well-argued arguments that are certain to interest China watchers around the world.