China’s Trapped Transition

"His argument is interesting and controversial. He suggests that the self-appointed political power monopoly enjoyed by the Chinese Communist Party makes it, in effect, a closed autocratic society, and that such societies, as Lord Acton observed, over time tend to become deeply corrupted in the absence of countervailing power. Pei argues that Chinese communism is unable to overcome its absolutist, conspiratorial origins, its ‘original sin’. This, in turn, makes the party highly suspicious of spontaneous economic and socio-political activity, especially when such activity is organised. Consequently, economic reform in China has spawned not market democracy, but a state-dominated form of bureaucratic capitalism, involving the subordination of private sector initiative to the dictates of the party-state. According to Pei, China is thus in a ‘trapped transition’. Although its leaders have adopted policies designed to encourage economic growth through enhanced productivity and controlled market competition, the country nevertheless remains trapped within an archaic Leninist political framework from which it cannot seem to escape. Eventually, he concludes, the deepening contradictions between the party’s obsessive desire to retain monopolistic political control and the pluralising pressures of an increasingly open, market-based society will catch up with China’s leaders, leading to some form of systemic paralysis and/or traumatic power transition."