The beginning of the end of China’s rise? An interview with Au Loong-Yu
Au Loong-Yu is a long-time Hong Kong labour rights and political activist. Author of China’s Rise: Strength and Fragility and Hong Kong in Revolt: The Protest Movement and the Future of China, Au now lives in exile. Speaking with Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Au discusses the factors that fueled China’s phenomenal economic rise, how they have begun to exhaust themselves, and the significance of the White Paper movement, which he argues heralds a new period in Chinese politics.
This is the second interview in a two-part series. The first interview (which can be read here) covered the nature of China’s state, its status in the world today and implications for peace and solidarity activism.
Could you outline the key factors that help explain China’s phenomenal economic rise over the past few decades?
China’s rise has been spectacular. For the past 20-30 years, China’s average annual GDP [Gross Domestic Product] growth has been about 10% or slightly less. This has meant China has managed to double its GDP every eight years. Generally speaking, any underdeveloped country that converts huge numbers of small farmers into factory workers in such a short time will experience high economic growth, given the big differential in productivity between the two sectors. Achieving this is not easy, however, because it requires a huge amount of capital. In my opinion, there are three important factors that, although inadequate in terms of providing a full explanation, are indispensable — and yet often overlooked — to explain this rapid rise.
The first factor is China’s investment rate that, as a share of its GDP, is the highest in the world. China’s ability to maintain such a high investment rate for such a long time is unprecedented. For the past 20-30 years, China’s investment rate has stayed above 40%, peaking at 45-46% in 2014-15. Some readers might remember the so-called miracle economies of the “Four Dragons”: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The first two in particular had very high investment rates. But even they only got to slightly more than 30% of GDP. So we are talking about a huge share of GDP being directed towards investments in new plants and infrastructure. That is the first explanation for China’s rise: an abnormally high investment rate over a sustained period of time.
I would add, though, that to fully understand this factor we must look at what happened in Mao [Zedong]’s era. During the first three decades of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) regime, China’s investment rate was also very high: between 1958-80, the investment rate was almost 30% each year (excluding the period after the famine in the early 1960s). By the time Mao died in 1976 the country was exhausted, but China had laid the foundation of its modern economy. It had a level of infrastructure and manufacturing that was more diversified and self-sufficient than most countries with a similar level of development. It also had a labour force with a relatively high literacy level. Without these, China’s later rise would have been improbable.
But to sustain even higher investment rates required more capital, something China could not obtain solely from domestic resources. This was the context for Deng [Xiaoping]’s historic compromise with the United States and Britain, which enabled China to start attracting foreign capital and integrate into global capitalism. At first, Western capital was hesitant to invest on a mass scale, especially after the June Fourth Massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That is why during the first stage of “reform and opening up”, the extra capital came from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two former colonies of Britain and Japan, respectively.
This brings us to the second factor, China’s colonial legacy, which is important but sometimes overlooked in analysing China’s rise. Readers may be puzzled by this idea, given colonial legacies are generally viewed as an inherent hindrance to development for developing countries. But we need to analyse this issue concretely. At particular moments, for particular reasons, the opposite can also occur. That is exactly what happened in China’s case after Deng’s historic compromise with the US empire and the replacing of Mao’s command economy with a capitalist economy.
Taiwan and Hong Kong enabled China’s rise by contributing industrial and service capital (creating jobs for rural migrant Chinese workers) and by training up the first generation of entrepreneurs and managers (which were especially rare in Mao’s China). Hong Kong was important in other ways. During the Cold War, Beijing obtained one third of its foreign currency through trade with Hong Kong, despite being tightly contained by the West. From there, Hong Kong went on to play the unique role of financial hub for “greater China”, helping Chinese corporations raise huge amounts of capital and laying the foundation for their global ambitions. Between 2010-18, Hong Kong became home to two-thirds of initial public offerings of mainland Chinese corporations. Today, more than half of China’s incoming and outflowing foreign direct investment (FDI) goes through Hong Kong. Moreover, Hong Kong essentially fulfils the function of a US dollar printing machine for China, given that the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar. Macau also played its role, even if it was more symbolic. When Deng agreed to keep the casino city open after it was returned to China, it was his way of saying to the West: “Look, if we can even allow a huge casino city with hundreds of gambling houses to exist right on the doorsteps of China, imagine how friendly we can be to capitalism.”
The importance of these colonial legacies is evidenced by the fact Deng wanted to keep “foreign forces” in Hong Kong and Macau through his promise of “One country, two systems” (hence Hong Kong’s autonomy) even after the leases on these territories expired in 1997 and 1999, respectively. Deng offered a similar compromise to Taiwan, which the latter declined. Regardless, it is true to say that without Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, we would not have seen China’s rise — at least not on the same scale.
The third factor is the party-state, which was capable of bringing together the other two factors and making them possible in the first place. Unlike what happened in Russia with the fall of the Soviet Union, when Deng reintroduced capitalism, he held onto the existing party-state. This enabled his regime to be much more ruthless in crushing any challenge from below. Beijing apologists praise China as a model “development state”, but ignore the price Chinese people have paid in pursuit of such high investment rates. Guaranteeing such a high investment rate requires suppressing consumption and wages. That means having to suppress workers to ensure they cannot organise or go on strike. Hence why during Mao’s era wages remained frozen, despite an annual average economic growth rate above 4%.
Herein lies the continuity between Mao and Deng. Deng was only a bit more moderate in the aftermath of Mao’s death, but he and his successors soon returned to Mao’s extremely high investment rate policy. Despite the CCP’s rhetoric of “serving the people”, since Mao’s era the CCP has always prioritised the pursuit of its neck-breaking industrialisation — summarised in Mao’s slogan chaoyingganmei (超英趕美, surpassing Britain and catching up with the United States) — over the welfare and living standards of the people. When workers become disgruntled, the party’s propaganda machine simply rolls out the slogan xianshengchan houshenghuo (先生產，後生活, production first, consumption later) or its military equivalent ningyao yuanzi(dan) buyao kuzi (寧要原子（彈）,不要褲子, atomic bomb first, trousers later).
There is, of course, a rationale for poor countries investing resources in infrastructure and means of production. But, in the CCP’s case, this was grossly overdone. Its abnormally high investment rate was less about socialism and a sensible modernisation program, and more about the vanity and pipe-dreams of its top leaders. In this they share much in common with voluntarist emperors such as Qin Shi Huang, the founder of the first unified state of China in 221 BC whom Mao praised for his ruthlessness.
It is important to add that alongside official propaganda about the “China dream”, which is used to justify the CCP’s ruthless pursuit of economic growth, the bureaucracy has always pursued its own dream of self-enrichment. The result of this is that the bureaucracy has hijacked the “China dream” for its own ugly ambitions. Accountable to no one except party bosses, bureaucrats have used all kinds of modernisation programs to plunder the nation’s wealth through corruption and kick-backs or founding companies.
This is not completely new. But whereas Mao’s bureaucracy could only appropriate social surplus in the form of use value, the post-Mao bureaucracy has combined the coercion of the state and the power of money to achieve its own enrichment in the form of exchange value. Through this process, the bureaucracy has consolidated itself into a new surplus-appropriating ruling class — one that views its own endless reproduction as its top priority. To ensure this it has continuously perfected the party-state’s mechanisms of coercion in order to extract as much social surplus as possible.
I want to return to the nature of this bureaucracy, but first: you referred to the historic compromise Deng made with the US. As a result of that compromise, the US began offshoring its manufacturing to China not long after. What impact did this have on China’s rise? And how can we explain current US-China tensions given this process of economic integration that has taken place over the past decades?
A decade after Hong Kong and Taiwanese companies started investing in and shifting manufacturing to China, Western and Japanese capital began to do the same. Back then, the far right ran small campaigns in Britain demanding “British jobs for British workers” in protest against such offshoring. Something similar occurred in the US. But there is a fatal mistake in the idea that Chinese workers took jobs off US or British workers. What really happened was that capitalists in the West and Japan took jobs off their “fellow citizens” and, in collusion with the Chinese regime, created much worse jobs in China. Even if the plant was the same and the numbers of workers were the same, the jobs were not the same when lower-end manufacturing shifted to China. Not only because pay and conditions were drastically worse, but because workers in China were also denied basic civil liberties and the right to organise, leaving them largely powerless.
We should also note that this process of offshoring was accompanied in China by the privatisation of many medium- and small-sized state companies and the sacking of more than 30 million workers. In this sense, China’s rise as the world sweatshop was guaranteed through the downsizing of its state sector and recruitment of an entirely new working class from the countryside to be exploited in new factories funded by foreign capital.
The end result was that capitalists in the West and Japan as well as the Chinese regime benefited greatly from offshoring and the super-exploitation of 250 million powerless Chinese rural migrant workers. At the same time, deindustrialisation in the West and Japan along with privatisation and mass sackings in China made it a lose-lose situation for working people on both sides. That was the essence of the deal struck between Deng and [US president George HW] Bush.
It is important to understand, however, that this deal began to come to an end when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. By that point, both sides were sensing that the honeymoon period was over, particularly as the US empire had not expected China to rise so quickly. Xi’s ascension, and his subsequent Belt and Road Initiative, can in many ways be understood as a response to the US’ “Pivot to Asia” under then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in 2009. This was followed by the trade wars started by [former US president Donald] Trump, who argued the US needed to impose tariffs because China had achieved a trade surplus while the US was suffering a huge trade deficit.
Trump’s argument is deceiving, though, as it ignores one important thing: much of what China exports is simply assembled parts, materials and technology imported from elsewhere in the world. That means only a very small percentage of the profits stay in China. So, the excuse for the trade war was wrong; the real reason behind the trade war was that the US — being the empire it is — could never allow a rising China to challenge its global status.
But it is also important to say that China shares responsibility for rising tensions. Deng always maintained that China’s approach towards the US should be to Tāoguāngyǎnghuì, yǒu suǒ zuòwéi (韜光養晦)、有所作為, keep a low profile and bide our time) and not try to challenge its global hegemony, at least not in the short to medium term. Xi, on the other hand, basing himself on the assessment summed up by the phrase Dōngshēng xī jiàng (東升西降, The East is rising, the West is declining), decided it was time to challenge US hegemony. Hence his slogan on foreign policy became Ganyudouzheng (敢於鬥爭，dare to struggle). The first step Xi took in that direction was his decision to militarise the South China Sea in 2015. At that point, China’s actions could no longer be defined as defensive. In militarising the South China Sea, China was not fighting the US empire; it was, first and foremost, taking away the rights of surrounding countries over their economic maritime zones. Such moves must be opposed.
How has this shift in orientation under Xi impacted on China’s rise?
Xi’s assessment not only led him to confront the US head on but to also crush Hong Kong. Of course, from the point of view of the autocracy, that the Hong Kong people would dare defy Beijing’s law on extradition was intolerable and had to be punished. The problem is that, even from the viewpoint of the collective interest of the regime, Xi went too far. Xi not only annihilated the opposition, but in practice destroyed the very institutions that underpin Hong Kong as China’s financial hub. By killing Hong Kong’s autonomy, Xi is killing this goose that lays golden eggs for Beijing.
Something similar is happening with regard to Taiwan. The truth is that the CCP has successfully integrated Taiwan economically into its orbit. If Taiwan was to sever its economic relations with China, its economy would suffer a huge blow, if not completely collapse. Moreover, the CCP’s tactic of winning over the KMT (Kuomintang) to its side has been working. But its hawkish approach towards Taiwan is increasingly counter-productive.
Previously, the West’s focus was on Taiwan’s strategic role in East Asian geopolitics. But with the advance of AI, there is now an additional concern among developed countries given the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces half of the world’s chips and about 90% of the most advanced chips. This is Taiwan’s bargaining chip. Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan has much more leverage to fend off Beijing’s aggression because if Beijing takes Taiwan by force, this would antagonise many countries. Here again, Xi’s premature showdown with the US has only worsened China’s position, as the response from Washington has been to block China from importing high-end products, especially cutting edge technology. All of this reaffirms that we are at the beginning of the end of the historic compromise between Deng and the US/Britain.
China is going to find it harder to continue growing as it has up until now. Its annual growth rate has been slowing down from 10% to 5%. On top of this, China’s economy is experiencing both a cyclical and structural crisis. Previously, China could just throw big chunks of money towards buying foreign high-tech companies or hiring top engineers from around the world as a means to catch up with the West. This option is becoming less available. Instead, it has resorted to producing high-end products at non-profitable levels through state subsidies, and the super-exploitation of workers and the environment. But this option too faces important obstacles, given not just Washington’s actions but China’s economic downturn makes it more difficult to invest as much money as before. I would also add that innovation is incompatible with the Chinese autocracy and its Orwellian society.
In all this, it is important to remember that the US empire is clearly not the “good cop” — but neither is China. The US empire is steadily declining, but China’s rise has not reached a point where Beijing can impose its will on the West. Despite this, rather than follow Deng’s advice, Xi has sought to strike out, creating enemies in the process. Xi’s leadership has not only been a disaster for Chinese people but is now even a liability for the regime. Xi must therefore assume his fair share of responsibility for the immense difficulties China faces at home and abroad.
This takes us back to the issue of the party-state bureaucracy. Given what you have said about Xi’s leadership, why does the bureaucracy not act to remove Xi? More generally, what does all this tell us about the nature of the bureaucracy?
First, it is important to say that we cannot blame everything on Xi. Hearsay suggests that Xi, in response to critics inside the party, blames his predecessors for leaving China’s economy in a mess. In some sense, this is true. After setting an example in crushing public dissent through the June Fourth Massacre, many bureaucrats felt assured that they could plunder the country’s wealth without restraint. The subsequent Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8 created a golden opportunity for municipal governments to enrich themselves by hijacking funding from the central government’s rescue package and channelling it into mega projects and real estate, while pocketing unknown portions for themselves. This paved the way for the property bubble and its eventual bursting, the effects of which Xi is now having to deal with. All those ruling elites are accomplices of the crisis facing China today. They also know that allowing Xi to remain in power means more harm than good for the country and regime. At the same time, they are deadly afraid of what may follow if they plot against Xi: what if it triggers a mass movement from below?
To fully grasp what is going on, it is useful to better understand the nature of the Chinese bureaucracy. The Chinese regime carries with it a lot of pre-modern political culture, such as blue blood worship and the hereditary “rights” of the “second or third red generation”, as well as mechanisms of personal loyalty that run through the whole bureaucracy. This means that, in contrast to the Weberian ideal concept of the impersonal characteristic of bureaucracy, China’s version is highly personal. This triggers a second mechanism, the negative selection of officials. By this I mean that the worst kind of people are more likely to get promoted while those who speak the truth or possess more merits, independent thinking and talents tend to be sidelined. In the end, what you are left with are leading bureaucrats whose most important task is to appease the emperor and work for the latter’s wildest dream, while behind the scene they nurture their own plots for personal gains.
That is why I said that innovation is incompatible with the Chinese autocracy. This does not entirely preclude China making further advances in innovation, but it does hinder it from reaching most of its potential. What effect it will have on the science and technology community, for example, is unclear. But if we look at Xi’s Zero-COVID policy, we can get a glimpse of how little influence medical specialists, for example, possess in shaping state policy. Not to mention the fact that every technological advance comes at a much higher cost as it implies terrible corruption.
Overall, the regime is entering a period of great difficulties, in which it has not yet realised that it is not an answer to the problems; rather it is a big part of the problems. That does not mean it will easily collapse of its own accord. But it does mean that any steps it takes in the technological, economic and armament race it is now engaged in with the US will bring with it immense suffering for the people.
What does the bursting of China’s property bubble and its ongoing debt crisis tell us about the state of the Chinese economy?
If you look at China’s debt-to-GDP ratio, which refers to total debt including all government and private household debt, you will see it was about 87% in the early 1990s but rose to 211% in 2010 — a rise of more than 100% in 20 years. Figures from late 2023 now put it at closer to 300%, meaning China’s debt level is triple its GDP. While some advanced economies in the West and Japan have a similar debt-to-GDP ratio, China is the only higher middle-income country with such high debt. The average debt-to-GDP ratio for middle-income developing countries is about 124%. What this tells us is that China’s high investment rate has been partially funded by a sea of debt. The property market is a typical example.
In my opinion, the bursting of this property market bubble marks a turning point in China’s rise. The reason for this is that the three factors I mentioned earlier as having contributed to China’s rise have now all exhausted their potential. Take China’s colonial legacy: this factor was always underpinned by the historic compromise between China and the US/Britain. But Xi’s annihilation of Hong Kong’s autonomy and decision to bring forward the showdown with the US has not only deprived China of a vibrant financial centre — which it badly needs amid the economic downturn — but made China vulnerable to US hostility.
The same is true for China’s high investment rate. This factor has always depended on a high growth rate, which was previously driven by converting huge numbers of small farmers into factory workers. But the regime’s rapid urbanisation program caused this pool of rural labour to dry up: while 76% of the population lived in rural areas 40 years ago, today the percentage is 35%, and most of them are women, kids and elderly. Ironically, the regime’s super high investment rate has ended the initial advantage it gained from China’s huge rural population. This problem has been further aggravated by the former one child policy — itself once an incentive for China’s high growth rate, given that the financial costs of raising many children was saved, even if only at the expense of future generations. The resultant accelerated trend towards an ageing population and lack of young workers has contributed to driving down China’s growth rate.
Furthermore, the previous high investment rate was only possible at the expense of household consumption and low wages. China’s household consumption level has declined dramatically since the early 1990s, from about 50% of GDP at the start of the 90s to a low point of 34-35% in 2014. It has gone up a bit since then, but has not hit 40%. The result is that China faces neverending overproduction and overcapacity, but a relatively narrowing domestic market as people are too poor to buy what is produced.
In practice, the Chinese government’s response has been: “Well, we do not need to do anything about this, we can just export our excess production and capital.” That is one reason why China became a leading merchandise exporter and, since the turn of the century, has become a leading capital exporter. This is also why China’s Belt and Road Initiative is not just a geopolitical project but an outlet for this overcapacity. China has basically sought to export its problem.
But this can not go on forever for the simple fact that a new trade war is looming. European countries are complaining that China’s EV cars are too cheap due to Chinese state subsidies and the US government has already said: “If you subsidise your cars, we will subsidise ours as well.” So, we are witnessing a second round in the trade war. This one is different from the first, however. In this round, I have no sympathy for the Chinese government. How can you continue to contribute more than 40% of GDP to investment when 600 million Chinese are forced to live off a monthly income of 1000 renminbi [roughly US$140]? This is super-exploitative and the exact opposite of socialism.
Socialism is not productivism; its ultimate goal has never been to increase productive forces indefinitely. That is the capitalist mindset, not the socialist mindset. By maintaining such a high investment level, the Chinese government is hurting the Chinese people and the environment — and the world. This is not to say that the retaliatory actions taken by US and European governments are right. The new trade war is a result of the toxic capitalism and productivism that they pursue. But China too has played its role in championing toxic capitalism and productivism.
It is true that one thing China counts in its favour is that much of this debt is not foreign debt. The Chinese government is very sensitive to the idea of foreign powers gaining leverage inside China, including through debt. That is why the Chinese government has always preferred to borrow a lot from Chinese people. This is safer for the regime because it knows that it can always shift the burden onto Chinese people in various forms. For example, when the trade war started in 2016, China maintained it was not scared of a trade war. One state official went as far as to say that Chinese people were ready to eat grass for a whole year if needed, as an indication of how much pain Chinese people were willing to endure.
This brings us to the third factor, the party-state. It has been the main actor forging together the two other factors to bring about China’s break-neck paced modernisation — which has become increasingly unbearable for society, people and the environment. Today, the party-state’s two inner logics — boundless greed for corruption and boundless appetite for perfecting state coercion — have created a monster in which the two logics feed into each other. The more “perfect” the state coercion, the more the bureaucracy is free from any accountability for its actions. This creates more incentives to get rich through corruption, which in turn requires more state coercion to protect the bureaucracy. But everything has a limit.
The bursting of the property market illustrates the limits of the first logic. Given urban land is state-owned and managed by local governments, this was a market that was dominated from the start by local governments, their “financial vehicles” (LGFV), and cronies bankers and developers. They were responsible for the piling up of billions of dollars of debt. They created a mega bubble in which so many new flats have been built since 2009 that alone they could house 250 million residents while the current housing vacancy rate stands at 25%.
On the other hand, the emergence of the White Paper movement in response to the government’s zero-Covid policy is an example of the limits of the second logic. The regime’s zero-Covid policy was never a regular “lockdown” to prevent the spreading of the virus. It was what I called a “lockup”, because for three years, people were locked up in their communities or homes over just a single case of Covid, with no regard for whether they had the food or medications they needed. And what for? For the naïve idea that zero Covid was achievable. Meanwhile, the regime did not even bother importing adequate amounts of the more efficient Western vaccines. What this policy did, however, was give the regime a golden opportunity to further perfect its control over people. The seeming madness also had another rationale: it was highly profitable for municipal officials and their cronies, from groceries suppliers to Covid testing companies.
The inconvenient truth for the regime, however, is that there is a limit to how much pain Chinese people are willing to endure before they rebel. And this regime has become increasingly unbearable, as we saw with the White Paper movement.
Could you tell us a bit about the significance of the White Paper movement?
The White Paper movement began as a direct response to the zero-Covid lockup but became a historically significant moment because the movement achieved a victory and, to a certain extent, the regime suffered a defeat.
In talking about this movement, it is important to acknowledge the role played by Peng Zaizhou, who, amid the pandemic and lockdown, staged a one-man protest on Sitong Bridge in Beijing on the morning of October 13, just three days before the 20th CCP Congress. As part of his protest, Peng hung two banners over the bridge, including one that read: “We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies…..We want to be citizens, not slaves”. While at the time no one heeded his call for protest, the Urumqi residential block fire on November 24 did kick off a wave of protests in more than 20 cities against the CCP’s zero-Covid lockdown policy. Protesters’ anger was largely driven by the fact that the 10 deaths in the fire were the direct result of the regime’s lockup policy, which meant no fire truck was close enough to save the victims.
From there, protests quickly came to echo Peng’s demands and ultimately forced the government to back down from its zero-Covid policy. Of course, people may dispute this, saying: “Well, the government specialist was already advising to end the zero-Covid policy because it was not working and had become impossible to implement.” That may be true. But everything that happens in China is the result of political decisions, not the decisions of specialists; it is the top leaders, the politburo, who are responsible for making the final decision. This leads us to ask a legitimate question: why the abrupt change in their policy? We do not have enough information to ascertain which was the decisive factor: dissident voices in the party leadership, specialist’s advice, or mass protests. But those dissident voices and the specialist’s advice should not be seen as counterposed to the contribution made by the mass protests. Anyone who tries to minimise or dismiss the movement altogether is wrong.
This victory was important because Chinese people have been oppressed to the point that they have essentially been denied their right to self-esteem. Many have taken to referring to themselves, in a self-mocking way, as “garlic chives” (jiucai, 韭菜), by which they mean vegetables that are endlessly harvested by the CCP regime. Others use the term “huminerals” (renkuang人礦), or human minerals, which are mined by the CCP. This gives us a glimpse into the deep pessimism that exists among the people and the sense that one cannot do anything about being repressed and exploited. Of course, not everyone thinks the same. There has been resistance — strikes have been reported in social media, for example — but it has been very fragmented, very partial and rarely political.
The significance of the White Paper movement is that though we cannot say it represents a complete shift in people’s mentality from accepting the status quo to brave resistance, the movement has awakened young people. It not only prompted common citizens to protest against lockup and workers to protest against being forced to work, sleep and eat in the same place, but resulted in them winning their own freedom — even if only temporarily. This was eye opening for many, in particular the youth.
One of the horrible legacies of the post-1989 repression was depoliticisation. We had 30 years in which young people did not dare to talk about politics. They simply focused on their studies and professional careers. But with the White Paper movement, young students took the lead in protests and became more outspoken and sharper in their attacks on the regime. They started to meet on the internet and at protests and began saying: “We should repent for the fact that we stayed silent during the Hong Kong uprising and repression, and during the repression against the Uyghur peoples. We should not allow the government to divide and rule over us.” This is very significant.
Of course, we need to be cautious about the extent of this reawakening — it is very uneven and, as a matter of fact, the movement has died down since the end of the zero-Covid policy. While at that time thousands of oversea Chinese students were demonstrating in New York, London and so on, their numbers have shrunk quite quickly, with the remaining activists now comprising very small circles. That is not surprising given the severity of repression and the unpreparedness of these young people. But the fact that discussions have taken place on social media channels such as Twitter, Instagram, Telegram and so on, among overseas Chinese students and thousands of mainland Chinese, exchanging all these political ideas and opinions, is significant progress compared to the past 30 years of depoliticisation, even if there is still a long way to go.
How does all this fit into the question of China’s rise? Well, what we are seeing is that China’s rapid modernisation and industrialisation has also transformed Chinese class structures and cultures. Today workers, partly due to their concentration in cities and partly through their own spontaneous struggles — together with the conscious work of labour NGOs in the previous stage — are no longer easily fooled by their employers. As for the urban middle class, while there was hope this class would lead the democratic movement, this never materialised. But they have gradually adopted very rudimentary ideas of accountability, of human rights, and so on.
While the CCP’s modernisation project has not yet brought about the forces that could undermine the regime in a fundamental way, it has created increasing impatience with the party itself. It is now becoming increasingly difficult for the CCP to continue with its extreme modernisation project. Even if Chinese people have not yet won any democratic rights, the White Paper movement has shown that their mindset is changing and their political awareness is rising — very slowly, from a very low starting point and in a very unbalanced manner, but nevertheless progressing.
Of course, no one can say what will happen next. We should not try to project some kind of linear progress when talking about China’s future. The CCP is acutely aware of what is happening and is thinking of ways to revert the situation. One card they may play is diverting people’s attention away from domestic issues towards external enemies — half real and half imagined. That is why the Chinese government has been increasingly adopting a war-like stance in its diplomacy. The CCP believes it may perhaps solve its domestic problems through a war with some foreign country, especially over Taiwan, or by greatly escalating existing tensions.
It is difficult to guess what the regime will do next. Nevertheless, we are clearly entering a new period, and we must prepare ourselves for it.