IAN JOHNSON, TREY MENEFEE
ChinaFile - 12.19.14
Arthur Kroeber’s essay
is a good corrective for the mostly delusional idea that the Chinese
government is about to collapse. He also lists a series of technocratic
successes of the Xi administration, showing it to be a worthy successor
to the Deng Xiaoping model of a development dictatorship. These
successes have allowed the Communist Party to transform itself over the
past four decades, as the political scientist Richard Lowenthal put it,
from “utopia to development,” while confounding predictions that regime
change must follow.
It was also refreshing to read his point that not all problems in
China are existential. For too long we’ve been told that economic growth
must be at least 8 percent (remember those predictions?) or the regime
would collapse. Arthur argues compellingly that while the government
isn’t legitimized democratically, it is able to deliver many services
and probably has more support than people realize.
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