China and the Desperation of Dire Predictions

By Russell Leigh Moses

The consequences of China?s collapse will be even worse than the Soviet Union?s.

So proclaims the provocative headline of commentary from the official Xinhua news agency?that spread widely on major Chinese news sites on Thursday (in Chinese) and has since become the subject of much teeth-gnashing on Chinese social media sites.

The essay, which warns that China faces poverty and misery because of the destabilizing activity of its growing population of microbloggers, hits at the heart of the ideological divide in China and suggests conservatives are growing increasingly anxious about the direction Chinese president Xi Jinping might take as he looks to reform the Communist Party.

Pointing to economic and political turmoil in post-Soviet Russia as evidence of the dangers of embracing political reform too soon is nothing new in China, but the Xinhua essay, penned by one Wang Xiaoshi, paints an unusually dire portrait of China?s neighbor to the north. According to Wang, the Russia that resulted from the demise of the USSR ? the one where ?people truly awakened to ?democratization? and ?universal values of happiness?? ? discovered that ?GDP had fallen by half; access to the sea achieved through the centuries was gone, along with a fleet that aged, corroded and finally fell into a pile of scrap metal; where new domestic oligarchs plundered state assets; Russians lined up on the street in supply shortages; and veterans had to sell their medals in exchange for bread.?

That level of misery and misfortune, or worse, is what China faces because the country?s social media users have embraced similar values to those that led to the collapse of the USSR, according to Wang. ?Every day,? he writes, ?microbloggers and their mentors in the same cause pass rumors, fabricate negative news about [China?s] society, create an apocalyptic vision of China?s imminent collapse, and denigrate the existing socialist system ? all to promote the European and American model of capitalism and constitutionalism.?

The eventual aim of these netizens and their purported sponsors, Wang continues, is ?to incite social unrest in China, and nakedly use the masses as cannon fodder in the process.?

Social media users immediately on Wang?s analysis and proceeded to shred it, arguing that many of the figures he cited were false and many of his quotations of Russian personages were misattributed.? Some netizens wondered (in Chinese)?where Wang had been all these years, given that the world had seen other regimes recently collapse, with the lessons more about ?conquerors and dictators and their failings? than some capitalist conspiracy (in Chinese).

Among the critics was Chinese intellectual Yu Jianrong, who argued that China?s failings needed to be discussed first, especially ?the widening gap between rich and poor produced by unrestrained predatory crony capitalism on the population,? as well as an unconstrained public authority ?[guilty of] flagrant violations of the rule of law? and the subsequent ?loss of social morality.?

Interestingly, Wang?s commentary actually first surfaced online over two weeks ago,?to little fanfare. This time, with help from the party media, it went viral, which means that someone sponsored its reemergence.?It?s very likely that Party conservatives opposed to Xi?s reforms composed this essay?or at least compelled its reappearance.

Indeed, the momentum that those reforms have already marshaled in the media and Party ranks must unnerve conservatives greatly.? They?ve seen former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin throw his support to Xi.?And this week, they watched as Xi elevated six senior military officials to the rank of full general (in Chinese), further consolidating his grip on the military, a traditional conservative power base.

Anti-reformers have to be concerned about being outmaneuvered at an upcoming Party plenum in October, and at possible meetings before that at the summer resort of Beidaihe, where we can expect to see Xi and his colleagues continue to try to ?put political power in a cage.? ?Netizens aren?t buying into the nostalgia and dread that conservatives are selling; there?s every reason to believe that many of them see Xi?s reforms as worth defending.

Wang?s essay is clearly an effort by conservatives to jumpstart a debate about the new direction of the Party?and possibly, the nation. But if they really want to impact the debate, they?ll have to do better.

Russell Leigh Moses is the Dean of Academics and Faculty at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies. He is writing a book on the changing role of power in the Chinese political system.

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Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/08/02/chinese-politics-and-the-desperation-of-dire-predictions/?mod=WSJBlog

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