Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Just How Successful Is Xi Jinping?

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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