On the Horns of a Dilemma: Will Corruption Bring Down the Chinese Communist Part?

Will Corruption Bring Down the Chinese Communist Party?

GEORGE A. B. PEIRCE

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Author: George A. B.

Editing: Shane Mason

Peirce

Design: Natalia Kopytnik

December 2022

© 2022 by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

ASIA PROGRAM

ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA:

Will Corruption Bring Down the Chinese Communist Party?

George A.

B. Peirce

GEORGE A. B. PEIRCE

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) is a nonpartisan Philadelphia-based think tank dedicated to strengthening U.S. national security and improving American foreign policy. FPRI conducts in-depth research to find new information about U.S. foreign policy challenges and provide insightful analysis that is evidence-driven, policy-relevant, and nonpartisan. We produce research reports, articles, and summary briefs tailored to the needs of different audiences. We host public events and private briefings to make our findings as accessible as possible and to ensure the information we uncover reaches the American people and the policymakers who need it most.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges the invaluable contributions made to this article by FPRI Senior Fellow Mr. Lonnie Henley while he was serving as Senior Analyst for China at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the indispensable research assistance provided by Messrs. Raphael Chan and Jack Erickson of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Any errors or omissions remain the sole responsibility of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George A. B. Peirce is a Senior Fellow in FPRI’s National Security Program. He has been involved with national security affairs and constitutional and international law as a senior executive, attorney and law professor. From 2004 to 2016, he served at the Pentagon as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s General Counsel supporting five successive DIA Directors.

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More recently, George was Stetson University College of Law’s Culverhouse Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, where he designed and taught two new courses, International Security Law and Policy, and a national security and constitutional law seminar called The Powers of War and Peace: The President, Congress and the Courts. He has also served on the International Law faculty at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School and taught a national security law seminar as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School.

Will Corruption Bring Down the Chinese Communist Party?

Earlier in his career, George worked in private practice and at the U.S. Department of Justice, after beginning his legal career as an Army judge advocate. His military assignments ranged from duty with the 1st Infantry Division to legal oversight of intelligence activities and special operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Army, along with overseas duty in Turkey, Panama, Germany and Belgium at the headquarters of the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

GEORGE A. B. PEIRCE

Later, as an Army Reserve Colonel, George served on active duty after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the Principal Deputy Staff Judge Advocate at the headquarters of U.S. Joint Forces Command/NATO Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic. He and his colleagues advised the command on the many novel domestic and international legal issues raised by initial combat operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

George holds a BS from West Point, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MS in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University, and is also a graduate of the U.S. Army War College. He has published articles on international law and public corruption in China, and given academic and public presentations at Oxford, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, the National Defense University, and the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs at the University of South Florida.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

When the People’s Republic of China’s president and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he publicly acknowledged that the Party faced an existential crisis from pervasive corruption at all levels of Chinese government and business activity. Such corruption has put the Party’s leaders on the horns of a dilemma: If they fail to adopt political reforms that could root out corruption independent of Party control, like a free press, competitive elections, and the rule of law administered by an independent judiciary, then the crisis of corruption will continue to fester; but if the Party were to embrace such reforms, then that would inevitably lead to democratization and the Party’s loss of autocratic control of China. As one Chinese scholar aptly sums up this dilemma: “There’s a commonly used phrase: Not reforming means to wait for death. Reforming means to court death.”

China’s crisis of corruption should be of immediate interest to American political and business leaders. China is the world’s largest developing nation with the world’s second largest economy, exceeded only by that of the United States. It may justifiably be said that the United States and China are now the two most significant nations on earth, so American interests will be profoundly affected by China’s future economic and political development. A better understanding of the challenges the Communist Party faces in the coming years may prove invaluable for effective U.S. policy formulation. Such insights may also contribute to enduring and mutually beneficial economic and political relationships with China.

Accordingly, this report initially examines the historical development of China’s regime of institutionalized corruption and the toll it has already taken on the Chinese people, economy and governmental process. Then it turns to an evaluation of divergent perspectives on the future for China’s now thoroughly corrupted Communist Party and the extraordinary civilization and people it continues to rule. Finally, the article will conclude by addressing the question of whether the Party can overcome corruption and survive in the 21st century.

PERVASIVE CORRUPTION AND THE PARTY’S DILEMMA

“A great deal of facts tells us that the worse corruption becomes the only outcome will be the end of the party and the end of the state!”

Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping1

THE ALBATROSS OF CORRUPTION UNDER PARTY RULE

Over four decades after the People’s Republic of China (or China) began its transformation from an insular, commanddirected economy toward a market economy increasingly engaged in international commerce, China still lacks mature political institutions capable of suppressing the rampant corruption that permeates its economic miracle.2 This calls into question the proposition that economic reform leads inevitably to democratization of the political system.

In China’s case, one of the most conspicuously absent reform institutions is a viable legal system—the rule of law— enforced by an independent judiciary free of political control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP or Party). While history records a number of authoritarian regimes that have endured for decades without independent judicial institutions,3 there is a palpable risk that a 21st-century Chinese political, economic, and legal structure that cannot stem the tide of corruption at all levels of government and business activity may face its eventual economic and political downfall. As Wu Jinglian, one of China’s most respected economists, succinctly put it, “A good market economy should be built on the foundation of the rule of law.”4 Whether it embraces the rule of law or an effective alternative “with Chinese characteristics,” the Party today recognizes that it must address this existential threat to its political survival.

Indeed, during the CCP’s formal transfer of political power to a new generation of leaders at the 18th Party Congress in 2012, those leaders confronted the reality that the Party, and the government it controls, are so permeated by official corruption that the survival of both the CCP and the Chinese government are in jeopardy. Emphasizing this peril, outgoing General Secretary Hu Jintao opened the Party Congress by

warning his colleagues that a failure to deal effectively with such corruption “could prove fatal to the [P]arty and even cause the collapse of the [P]arty and the fall of the state.”5 His warning was echoed by incoming General Secretary Xi Jinping’s public message quoted above.

Yet in condemning corruption, Hu made a remarkable statement that only serves to highlight a potentially fatal flaw in Chinese Communist governance: He admonished his colleagues that “[n]o one is allowed to place oneself above the [P]arty organization.”6 Hu made no mention of the hazards of placing oneself above the law, nor did he refer to the rule of law. Instead, he reinforced his singular orientation to the Party rather than the law by concluding, “We must ensure that all are equal before discipline,”7 rather than calling for equality before the law. One of the critical questions raised by Hu’s parting warning and Xi’s ensuing anti-corruption campaign is whether the CCP can devise effective constraints on pervasive corruption, while also continuing to sustain economic growth, without embracing the rule of law as that term is generally understood in the West.

Thus far, the consequences of substituting the rule of the Party for the rule of law have included “China’s crisis of trust, environmental malaise, rampant piracy [of intellectual property], and official corruption.”8 Corruption in China is widespread at all levels of government and business. Within the CCP and the government, bribes are paid and received for promotions, housing assignments, official trips abroad—“anything that requires another cadre’s chop.”9

In addition to the passing of bribes at every level of government, most government departments also have the

dubious distinction of claiming one or more “overseas students,” the epithet for government officials who have absconded with state funds and fled the country. Corruption continues to flourish between high-ranking CCP cadres and the business community, and includes criminal enterprises whose profit-making is facilitated by their government allies. In the first five years of its operation, from 2014 to 2019, the Fugitive Repatriation and Asset Recovery Office of the Central Anti-Corruption Coordination Group recovered close to $ 2.6 billion from over 7,000 officials.10

Moreover, pervasive corruption is not just a concern for the CCP hierarchy. The state-run website People.cn conducted an online opinion poll in March 2022 which found that 61.7 percent of respondents identified “severely punishing corruption and maintaining social justice” as their top concerns.11 Meanwhile, the CCP continues to control a large segment of Chinese business activity conducted by state-owned enterprises, which still account for about 40 percent of China’s gross domestic product.12

The chief executives of those state-owned enterprises are all appointed by the CCP, and almost all are senior CCP members.13 And while the Party’s embrace of Marxism has dissolved, “its Leninism persists,” as reflected in the relationship between stateowned enterprises and the CCP, which “now resembles a patronage system not unlike the political-economic structural relationships characteristic of regimes like Mussolini’s Italy, Kemalist Turkey and Franco’s Spain.”14

In tandem with corrupt relations between state-owned enterprise business executives and CCP officials, smaller privately-owned businesses also bestow bribes on CCP cadres in an effort to enhance business success. These corrupt relationships between business and government are coupled with authoritarian political power over the judiciary, the news media, and even the exchange of ideas among the citizenry, as monitored by China’s two million internet police staffing what is known as the “Great Firewall of China.”15

The 18th National Congress, convened in November 2012. (Wikimedia / Dong Fang)

In addition to monitoring communications, the Party is increasingly relying on “bigdata” approaches for physical surveillance, including facial recognition software. Monitoring of the citizenry reached a new apex with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, as people were required to scan QR codes (matrix barcodes) when they entered buildings or buses and to provide daily reports of their health status to local authorities via a smartphone app. While such measures have been officially touted as part of the battle against the virus, they also enable the Party to track people’s locations “on a micro scale at any given time.”16

Such relentless monitoring of communications and movements helps to preclude the formation of any organized political parties with the ability to challenge either the CCP’s corrupt activities or its monopoly power. Taken together, these are the key ingredients in a recipe for uncontrolled corruption. Exiled economist He Qinglian has written: “Corruption has become the biggest polluter of our political and economic systems and a poisoner of our society and people.”17

Corruption in China comes in at least four flavors, as ably “unbundled” by Yuen Yuen Ang in China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption. 18 Petty theft is exemplified by local police “shaking down” foreign tourists for return of their passports—any extortion or theft among street-level bureaucrats. Grand theft includes embezzlement or misappropriation of substantial state funds, as exemplified by China’s “overseas students” described above. Speed money includes petty bribes that businesses or citizens pay local authorities to facilitate business or personal activities.19

Finally, and most significantly with respect to the CCP’s current crisis of corruption, there is access money. This “encompasses highstakes rewards extended by business actors to powerful officials, not just for speed, but to access exclusive, valuable privileges.”20 One of myriad recent examples involved former

Yangzhou city Party Secretary Ji Jianye, who received huge bribes, expensive gifts and company stock shares in exchange for granting his business cronies near-monopoly access to government construction and renovation projects. In 2015 he was convicted of taking bribes and sentenced to 15 years in prison.21 Yet as Ang illustrates, such access money corruption—crony capitalism—has facilitated China’s dramatic economic growth. She nevertheless concludes that pervasive access money transfers have also had dangerous distorting effects on the Chinese economy, and that such institutional corruption is a “perversion of formal political representation.”22

Yet until the selection of Xi as general secretary in November 2012, the CCP appeared either unwilling or unable to implement serious deterrents to this ever-expanding wave of crony capitalist corruption. Historically, significant discipline has been rare: Of the estimated 130,000 to 190,000 officials disciplined by the CCP annually from 1982 to 2010, about 80 percent received only a warning. Only about 6 percent were subject to criminal prosecution, and only about three in a hundred facing discipline received prison sentences. “Corruption [is] a high-return, low-risk activity.”23 Whether the situation may be changing with Xi’s implementation of an anti-corruption campaign remains to be seen, although it was initially described by one China scholar as “the most ambitious anti-corruption campaign since at least Mao’s days.”24 It comes at a time when, as another scholar observes, “corruption has reached a scale that threatens to undermine economic efficiency.”25

THE COMMUNIST PARTY’S POLITICAL DILEMMA

China’s current crisis of corruption places the CCP on the horns of a potentially fatal political dilemma: Unless the corruption is effectively addressed by public institutions independent of the CCP, such as an independent judicial system, competitive elections, and a free press, such corruption may eventually destroy the CCP; but if the CCP allows such independent institutions to develop and exercise governmental powers and a public voice beyond Party control, then the CCP may lose its monopoly on control of the state. As a Party official candidly put it, “[A] long anti-corruption campaign would expose the dark side of the Communist Party. If many of these things were to be exposed, the masses would lose their faith in the Chinese Communist Party. Who could accept the historic responsibility for doing this?”26 His comments perhaps reflect a recognition of the serious threat corruption poses to the CCP’s political survival, coupled with no idea how to address it decisively.

Indeed, Xi’s current anti-corruption campaign has raised the same suspicions as previous campaigns—that its primary purpose is aimed at consolidating his political power and control of the CCP leadership, as well as being an exercise in public relations to rebuild the Party’s legitimacy.27 With respect to the Party’s image and public relations, its political survival also hinges, by its own admission, on the effectiveness of the Central Propaganda Department in controlling the news media and rewriting recent history by substituting politically helpful falsehoods for historical facts. As will be discussed in Part II, the CCP often sees historical truth as a political enemy and a threat to Chinese national security.28

Inherent in the CCP’s dilemma in dealing with corruption is the related question whether China’s leaders will embrace effective political and legal reforms to help sustain the extraordinary economic development China has achieved in the post-Mao era. This would be distinct from “reforms” that are merely internal CCP administrative measures designed to reinforce the Party’s monopoly on power. For example, Xi’s ongoing anticorruption campaign is conducted by the CCP’s Central Commission of Discipline and Inspection, under the oversight of the National Supervision Commission, created by the Party in 2018—and designed to strengthen the CCP’s control over corruption investigations.29 Thus, this campaign under the auspices of the National Supervision Commission is not the equivalent of an impartial judicial inquiry independent of Party control. It therefore fails to provide the independent legal framework that some commentators view as essential to suppress corruption effectively.

Inherent in the CCP’s dilemma in dealing with corruption is the related question whether China’s leaders will embrace effective political and legal reforms to help sustain the extraordinary economic development China has achieved in the post-Mao era.

Nor does the existing Chinese judicial system offer a viable solution, either for highlevel corruption or even at the grassroots level. As quoted from a handbook for CCP cadres: “The judicial system of China is an important tool of the people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the CCP … In the course of handling every case, the people’s courts should assiduously implement the Party’s line and policies.”30 Unfortunately for senior CCP leaders in Beijing, the “party line” out in the hinterlands is often at variance with Beijing’s, because it reflects “the virtual dictatorial power of local officials.”31

This reality is reinforced by the paradox that an authoritarian party-state makes for compromised political institutions. Freed at the local level from meaningful checks and balances that would be provided by democratic government and the scrutiny of a free press, local cadres have become one of Beijing’s greatest challenges. Controlling corruption at the local level has become a mounting frustration, because “the writ of the party chief on the ground in China is as good as law.”32 In such a vast country, this reality echoes the ancient Chinese saying that “the mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away.”33

By comparison, under both Anglo-American common law and the civil law of continental Europe, the government, including the political leadership, is subject to the national constitution and laws. In contrast, Chinese civilization under the philosophical influence of Confucianism has traditionally viewed law as an instrument or tool of the emperor in ruling over his people, but not something to which he, as the Son of Heaven, was subordinate. Today, as a Chinese scholar acknowledges, “Laws in China are used as a tool of the government to control the society rather than as a tool of the society to control the government.”34

Thus, as further discussed below, China has historically embraced what one might call rule by law rather than rule of law. The CCP adopted this approach in the postMao era in an effort to provide the essential legal framework for China’s “opening up” and expanded participation in the global economy. But as one scholar explains it, “[T] he Chinese Communist Party and its leaders have never wanted to be the [W]est when they grow up.”35 In particular, the Party has firmly rejected the virtues of Montesquieu’s separation of powers principle as belonging to the “decadent bourgeoisie.”36

China has historically embraced what one might call rule by law rather than rule of law.

A WARNING TO ALL CADRES FROM DOCUMENT NO. 9

The CCP leadership’s apparent revulsion toward Western legal and political ideas has been expounded in an April 22, 2013, written assault on such ideas issued by the CCP’s Central Committee General Office, the “administrative engine room of the central leadership.”37 It was reportedly issued with the official imprimatur of Xi and is formally titled “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere.”38 After having been leaked to media outlets outside China, it has become more widely known simply as “Document No. 9.”

Among other warnings, Document No. 9 alerts CCP cadres to seven perceived intellectual sins: promoting Western constitutional democracy to undermine the current leadership and the “socialism with Chinese characteristics” system of governance; promoting “universal values” that could weaken the theoretical foundations of the CCP’s leadership; promoting civil society in an attempt to dismantle the ruling party’s social foundation; promoting “Neoliberalism” in an attempt to change China’s economic system; promoting the West’s idea of journalism, “challenging China’s principle that the media and publishing system should be subject to Party discipline;” promoting “historical nihilism” to undermine the history of the CCP, new China, and “the scientific and guiding value of Mao Zedong thought”; questioning [economic] reform and opening and the socialist nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics by, for example, calling it “Capitalist Socialism, State Capitalism, or New Bureaucratic Capitalism.”39

The CCP’s strident expression of such deep-rooted intellectual and political rejection of Western ideas and government institutions, when coupled with its reported dire warnings to cadres in internal Party

discussions, manifests the Party’s political paranoia and fragility. It is one thing to criticize foreign political, legal or economic systems as unwise or impracticable; it is another thing when one’s own academic community resorts to labeling the seven topics noted above as the “seven things that cannot be spoken of.”40 Such attempts to silence intellectual discussion reflect CCP trepidation “that the party is vulnerable to an economic slowdown, public anger about corruption and challenges from liberals impatient for political change.”41 Further compelling evidence of the regime’s underlying frailty is Document No. 9’s demand for “unwavering adherence to the principle of the Party’s control of media.”42 This is a tacit admission that truth and the free discussion of ideas are viewed as mortal threats to continued CCP rule.43

The Party’s fragile and fearful hold on power is also mirrored in its efforts to maintain a reciprocal fear among the populace it governs. Although terror is used sparingly today by the CCP (unlike during the Mao era), it nevertheless “remains essential to the system’s survival and is deployed without embarrassment when required.”44 A Party official summed it up: “People need to fear the government in China; otherwise the country will fall apart.”45

The Party’s fragile and fearful hold on power is also mirrored in its efforts to maintain a reciprocal fear among the populace it governs

THE COSTS OF PERVASIVE CORRUPTION

Within this political framework of bribes and mutual fear, the cost to modern China’s economic development from rampant corruption unchecked by institutions such as an independent judiciary, a free press, or competing political parties has been difficult to measure with precision. It has nonetheless been described as “a debilitating, multibillion-dollar-a-year scam that is eroding the efficiency of almost every organ of the Party and state.”46 Estimates of corruption’s costs to the Chinese economy “range from 4 to 17 percent of GDP—a substantial amount of resources diverted from public coffers into private pockets.”47 Shanghai-based independent economist Andy Xie Guozhong estimated in 2013 that “[c]orruption costs China some 10 percent of its [GDP].”48

(or an effective set of CCP alternatives), such widespread corruption continues to be shielded by closed political networks within the CCP.50

However, the CCP’s efforts to maintain autocratic power in the midst of pervasive corruption have been undercut by the widespread recognition that communism, as a political doctrine, is a dead letter. In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, many CCP officials disciplined for corruption acknowledged their loss of faith in both communism and the CCP, and admitted that they resorted to corrupt activities to enrich themselves and their families as a form of insurance because of their fear of China’s political future.51

There is powerful independent evidence of just how little faith Chinese elites place in the existing CCP system. Wealthy Chinese, including Party members, now have substantial offshore assets and property, offshore bank accounts, and often have children attending universities in Europe and the United States.52 “These individuals are ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, as soon as the political system is in its endgame … Their hedging behavior speaks volumes about the fragile stability of the party state in China today.”53

In addition to massive access money bribery, these activities have included, among others, illegal real estate deals, aiding and abetting large-scale smuggling operations, facilitating and participating in financial fraud, providing protection for organized crime, and selling government appointments for personal gain.49 Without the rule of law, a free press, or opposition political parties

The CCP’s efforts to maintain autocratic power in the midst of pervasive corruption have been undercut by the widespread recognition that communism, as a political doctrine, is a dead letter.

A SANCTUARY FOR CANDID DISCUSSIONS OF CHINA’S FUTURE

Remarkably, there is at least one place in the country where the possible demise of the CCP can be debated without fear of sanction: the leafy Beijing campus of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The mission of the Party School is to train and educate the country’s up-and-coming CCP officials for future leadership roles. Notwithstanding its CCP pedigree, the Party School has been described as “an intellectual free-fire zone, where almost nothing is off-limits for discussion.”54 In that spirit of intellectual freedom and ferment, one Party School professor disclosed to a visiting journalist

in September 2013 that “[w]e just had a seminar with a big group of very influential party members and they were asking us how long we think the party will be in charge and what we have planned for when it collapses. To be honest, this is a question that everyone in China is asking.”55

The Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, located in Beijing. (Wikimedia / N509FZ)

CHINA’S HISTORICAL EVOLUTION TO A REGIME OF PERVASIVE CORRUPTION

in the CCP cannot seem to implement successful supervision of ourselves … If we want to change the situation and to effectively prevent and check corruption, we must constrain and supervise power.”

Li Ruihuan, former member of the Politburo Standing Committee182

“We

CONFUCIUS, THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, AND THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN

The People’s Republic of China is a “nationstate” under the rubric of modern public international law, but China embodies more than just a political entity. It is also a “civilization-state” dating back over 2200 years, reflecting China’s unique heritage as the “Middle Kingdom” of antiquity. Chinese culture and government have been profoundly influenced by the enduring philosophy of a single man, Confucius (551479 B.C.), who lived during what is called the period of the warring or contending states (771-221 B.C.). Living in such tumultuous times, Confucius, like Plato and Aristotle, took political disunity for granted.56 His views on effective government were nevertheless embraced by Chinese emperors dating back to Han Emperor Wu-ti (140—87 B.C.) as the official philosophy of the state.57

One of Confucius’ pivotal concepts was de, which means the power by which people are governed.58 With respect to de, Confucius saw three essentials for effective government: (1) economic sufficiency; (2) military sufficiency; and (3) the confidence and trust of the people. He saw the last as by far the most important: “If the people have no confidence in their government, it cannot stand.”59

At the same time, however, Confucianism nurtured a collectivist-based value system subordinating the will of the individual to the will of the ruling elite because of the latter’s superior education and presumed moral virtue. Consequently, Chinese civilization has not fully embraced the sense of individual rights that has developed in the West. As discussed later, Mao Zedong and the CCP mercilessly exploited this collectivist tradition to impose totalitarian rule on the Chinese people.

Portrait of Confucius, Qiu Ying (1494–1552). (Wikimedia/仇英)

Notwithstanding this collectivist theme, Confucius also concluded that leaders must possess the kind of character that compels respect. Real de is thus the “power of moral example.”60 It followed that the Mandate of Heaven, by which the Chinese emperors ruled their people and were entitled to their loyalty, was conditioned on the emperor’s genuine devotion to the welfare of his people, along with his capability to promote it, and his own moral virtue. As a consequence, over a millennium before Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence, Confucius and his disciples had articulated the Right of Revolution against unworthy rulers.

“If the people have no confidence in their government, it cannot stand.”

THE RISE OF COMMUNISM AND SOCIETAL DISASTERS UNDER ‘THE GREAT HELMSMAN’

The most recent bout of Chinese political disunion and revolution ended with the withdrawal of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang regime to Taiwan and the CCP’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong in 1949.61 The CCP’s success in defeating the Kuomintang was in no small measure the result of massive public disaffection with corruption within the Kuomintang. Thus, like those emperors who had replaced predecessor dynasties that had lost the Mandate of Heaven, Mao took control of China in much the same way. But within a decade, his singularly brutal and misguided version of communist ideology had wrought nationwide disaster and mass death among his people.

Western estimates of the death toll range from 40 to 55 million. Thanks to Mao and his sycophants, the Chinese people saw their communist revolution sink into unspeakable cruelty.62 Confucius would likely have concluded that Mao had indeed forfeited the Mandate of Heaven.

The death toll in China under Mao may have been the most brutal and deadly manifestation of dictatorship in human history. As a result of Mao’s leadership, from the anti-rightist campaign to the Great Leap Forward and resulting famine, and thereafter the Cultural Revolution, moderate

By the 1960s, the CCP’s revolution, which had promised to make China rich and strong, had instead made it poor and weak, and never more isolated in international relations. By the 1970s, the Party’s promise of equality just meant that all Chinese, except the Party elite, were equally poor and visibly helpless in an international context.63 When Mao died on September 9, 1976, the Chinese nightmare under his brand of tyranny finally began to abate. By 1983, Chinese economic growth hit double digits, and gross domestic product almost quadrupled over the course of the 1980s.64

As a result of Mao’s leadership, from the anti-rightist campaign to the Great Leap Forward and resulting famine, and thereafter the Cultural Revolution, moderate Western estimates of the death toll range from 40 to 55 million.

Chairman Mao Zedong statue. Dandong, China. (Flickr/Stefan Schinning)

PERVASIVE CORRUPTION

In contrast to Marxist theories and the disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping embraced free enterprise by saying: “It does not matter if it is a black cat or a white cat; if it catches mice it is a good cat.”65 Deng’s cat theory “belonged to another universe” than the Marxism of the 1970s—it was a counterrevolution in Chinese economic and political orientation.66

Notwithstanding Deng’s embrace of economic modernization, the dramatic and violent events of early June 1989 in Tiananmen Square and in hundreds of other locations throughout the country saw the CCP’s rule challenged by thousands seeking democratic political reform. Deng’s military response crushed the demonstration in what has been described as a massacre of hundreds, perhaps thousands—the price of pulling the CCP back from the political abyss. Tiananmen represents the CCP’s “near-death experience”67 and has had a persistent influence on the Party’s political orientation and development ever since. However, any notion of checks and balances has yet to materialize, consistent with Deng’s final bargain with the Chinese people before his death in 1997—the prospect of a “good life” under a reformed economic system in return for continued CCP control of the state.68

Deng’s bargain was consistent with the profound fears within the CCP leadership generated by the Tiananmen protests. These fears were amplified by the ensuing collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. CCP leaders vowed not to repeat what they saw as Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s fatal error in attempting political reform (glasnost) in tandem with economic reform or “restructuring” (perestroika). Instead, China would embrace economic reform but without diluting the

CCP’s monopoly on control of the state: The “party-state” must endure.

The result, as discussed below, has been nothing short of an economic miracle, yet coupled with institutionalized corruption at every level of society. As the CCP’s leaders have recognized, such widespread corruption now threatens to undermine both China’s extraordinary economic progress and the rule of the Party that controls its continuing development.

Moreover, corruption and economic inequality at the local level have raised the potential for widespread social unrest, which could undermine social stability—the CCP’s number one priority.69 Corruption and the social unrest it has engendered are so widespread that in recent years the domestic outlays for maintaining public order and internal security have often exceeded those for Chinese national defense. This reflects CCP fears about the growth of “mass incidents, fraud, corruption and organized crime and the need to strengthen stability (weiwen) and harmony.”70

Corruption and the social unrest it has engendered are so widespread that in recent years the domestic outlays for maintaining public order and internal security have often exceeded those for Chinese national defense.

ECONOMIC REFORM AND THE DESCENT INTO

In the meantime, mass protests continue apace. For example, in July 2022, more than 1,000 depositors gathered outside the Zhengzhou branch of the People’s Bank of China to continue ongoing efforts to withdraw their savings from a bank facing a deepening cash crisis. They were assaulted, beaten, and dispersed by government police and security forces. Such large demonstrations over lost personal savings have embarrassed a Party promoting its avowed objective of “great rejuvenation.”71

The corruption fueling social unrest, environmental contamination, and economic inequality is concentrated in sectors with extensive state involvement: financial services, infrastructure projects, sale of land user rights, real estate, government procurement, and heavily regulated industries. Not surprisingly, the absence of a competitive political process and free press makes these sectors even more vulnerable to fraud, theft, kickbacks, and bribery. Also unheard of in the 1980s, the corrupt practice of buying and selling

appointments in the Chinese government (maiguan maiguan) is now commonplace. Group collusion in corrupt activities among officials is also widespread. The worst cases “have transformed entire jurisdictions into local mafia states.”72 The CCP, in its collective impact on the Chinese economy and society, is akin to a vast criminal enterprise with corrupting tentacles intruding into a multitude of economic and political activities, both internally and internationally.73

To be sure, Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, as noted in Part I, is apparently extraordinary in its vigor and scope, characterized as “the most sustained drive against high-level corruption since the advent of economic reforms in the early 1980s.”74 Since Xi’s ascension to the Party’s helm in 2012, the Discipline Commission leading the charge has investigated and punished more than four million cadres, including almost 500 senior officials.75 And Xi has weighed in by publicly proclaiming that “the Party requires the courage of a man ready to chop off his own snakebite-poisoned hand to save

Protestors outside the Zhengzhou Central Sub-branch of the People's Bank of China in July of 2022. (Wikimedia/河南村镇银行储户)

his own life.”76 Perhaps Xi has embraced a Confucian (or socialist) equivalent of the well-known passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “And if your right hand is your undoing, cut it off and fling it away; it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for the whole of it to go to hell.”77

Time will tell. Meanwhile, the anti-corruption campaign slackened during Xi’s second term of office and China’s economic growth rate has diminished, while persistent corruption in the economic system continues to damage China by reducing foreign direct investment. Foreign firms recognize that corrupt practices by Chinese officials could expose the firms to legal liability in a wide range of circumstances.78

has created a “kleptocracy” involving even the inner core of the Party leadership.79

The results in China have been described as appalling: “People lie and steal as if it were the most natural thing.” Books with titles like “China Covered in Lies” and “Can We Trust Anyone These Days?” populate newsstands.80 Such book titles may reflect a Hobbesian view, whereby, within China, “most Chinese believe they live in a highly unpredictable and predatory domestic environment.”81 This is coupled with a “lack of commonly shared social values—in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and three decades of go-go growth—[which] has produced a society of individual indifference and lack of collective responsibility. As a result, a moral void pervades Chinese society.”82

This moral void on the mainland is accompanied by China’s growth model and a “transactional” feature derived from the central role played by guanxi (reciprocal obligations) in Chinese society. Party cadres retain substantial control over key resources and industries and who gets access to major projects, facilitated by the exchange of access money. As David Shambaugh describes it:

More fundamentally, widespread corruption at all levels has eaten away at China’s social capital, the “glue” that allows members of a society to undertake cooperation without formal arrangements. Social capital is a vital resource that underpins successful market economies and societies, but China’s social capital, already traumatized by Mao’s totalitarian terrors, has been wounded further by the post-totalitarian surge in corruption at all levels of society. CCP public authority in the hands of high Party officials

Every day, everywhere, everyone in China turns normal societal interactions into transactional ones whereby reciprocal provision of goods and services is the norm. It is hard-wired into the DNA of Chinese culture, society, and business. This is one important reason corruption will never be controlled or eliminated in China, because Chinese expect business to be done on the basis of favoritism and personal ties. As a result of guanxi culture, there is no such concept as “public goods” … One does not do things for the simple betterment of the community.83

The anti-corruption campaign has slackened during Xi’s second term of office and China’s economic growth rate has diminished, while persistent corruption in the economic system continues to damage China by reducing foreign direct investment.

A CORRUPT RULING ELITE ABOVE THE LAW

The framework of the CCP’s corrupt and vulnerable edifice confronting a society apparently bereft of social capital is aptly described as a Leninist corporate structure. It is built on the close interrelationships between senior Party officials and business leaders, carried out under the powerful hand of the CCP’s Central Organization Department:

The best way to get a sense of the [Central Organization Department’s] job is to conjure up an imaginary parallel body in Washington. A similar department in the U.S. would oversee the appointment of the entire U.S. cabinet, state governors and their deputies, the mayors of major cities, the heads of all federal regulatory agencies, the chief executives of GE, Exxon-Mobil, WalMart and about fifty of the remaining largest U.S. companies, the justices of the Supreme Court, the editors of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, the bosses of the TV networks and the cable stations, the presidents of Yale and Harvard and other big universities, and the heads of think-tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation.84

It is difficult to conjure up a more airtight construct for ensuring both authoritarian control (at least in the short term) and the potential for its eventual collapse due to the proliferation of widespread corruption and self-dealing within such a governmental structure.

Statue of Mao Zedong in China's Yunnan Province. (Wikimedia / Roy Niekerk)

“RULE OF LAW” OR “RULE BY LAW”?

In connection with anti-corruption efforts, numerous Chinese commentators have addressed the need for legal reform, using the Mandarin term yi fa zhi guo, which is often translated as “rule of law.” However, the more literal translation is akin to “rely on law to govern the country.”85 As noted in Part I, legal rules under the CCP are tools of governance whereby the Party controls the society, not the other way around.86 Thus, while modern Anglo-American and Western European concepts of “rule of law” provide that everyone, including the sovereign, is bound by the nation’s constitution and laws, neither China’s Confucian heritage nor the arrival of communism under Mao and his successors ever embraced such a “rule of law” concept.

and there is no mechanism for making it do so.”90 In practice, therefore, the “rule of law,” within a modern Western understanding, does not exist in China today.

It may therefore be more appropriate to use the term “rule by law” when describing China’s current legal system and even some of the calls by Chinese legal scholars for substantive legal reforms. Nevertheless, the question remains whether any reforms limited to a regime of “rule by law” could be effective in stemming the tide of corruption and holding accountable the high-ranking and their collaborators. Judicial independence is undermined not only by the Beijing hierarchy but also by “local governments that wield enormous influence over the courts through their control of judicial appointments and court finances.”91

Instead, in China, “law is a tool the ruler uses, not a constraint on the ruler’s freedom.”87 Even Confucius’ reliance on moral leadership still viewed the law merely as a tool of the emperor, not an instrument by which he himself was governed.88 The same is manifestly true today under CCP rule. The People’s Republic of China has had several constitutions, all of which claimed by their terms to be the fundamental law of the land. However, as legal commentators have observed, “The constitution seems to bear no relation to the actual government of China.”89 Moreover, “the government has never been obliged to follow its precepts,

Simply put, “[T]he Chinese legal system remains structurally flawed and ineffective because the CCP is fundamentally unwilling to allow real judicial constraints on the exercise of its power.”92 Indeed, Document No. 9 takes direct aim at “independent judiciaries” as one of the “hyped” elements of constitutional democracy, which it characterizes as a “false ideological trend” that all Party cadres should reject.93

In practice, the “rule of law,” within a modern Western understanding, does not exist in China today.

MANAGING THE NARRATIVE: A PARTY AFRAID OF THE TRUTH AND THE PEOPLE

The CCP leaders’ hold on political survival today depends on more than just remaining above the law and insulated from public scrutiny. The CCP also relies heavily on its Central Propaganda Department in controlling the media and rewriting history.94

This crucial role of the Central Propaganda Department in buttressing the Party’s survival illuminates the fact that the Party fears not only the collective will of the people it governs but also their access to historical truth. Party leaders find it essential to their political survival to “manage the narrative of China … because if this narrative unraveled, it could devour them all.”95 In this context, the Party’s “Great Firewall of China” has been characterized as “more a symbol of the regime’s impotence than a protection against foreign seditious influence.”96

Bluntly stated, the CCP today is a political party fearful of both Western political ideas and the truth about its own history. Critics have emphasized that China cannot become a great power if it remains a nation

that cannot confront its own history. And the Party’s greatest burden in dealing with history is the attempt to protect the image of the Great Helmsman, notwithstanding the unmitigated tragedies he visited upon his people. Along with Stalin and Hitler, Mao ranks as one of the “big three slaughterers of the 20th Century.”97 As Geremie Barme of the Australian National University explains: Perhaps the ultimate political futility of attempting to manipulate one’s own history was best expressed by an editor of the People’s Daily, a CCP media mouthpiece, while visiting a museum in Bonn, Germany in May 2007. Having viewed an exhibit that displayed a copy of the last issue of the East German communist regime’s party newspaper, he turned to his colleagues from the People’s Daily and wryly commented, “I wonder if they’ll keep our last edition in a museum as well.”98

The China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters in Beijing. (Wikimedia / 維基小霸王)

Beijing, China (zhang kaiyv/Unsplash)

A BRITTLE AND FEARFUL AUTOCRACY

In the midst of this fragile political, economic and social situation, the CCP does not dare resort to the brute force that it used against its urban population in 1989 when confronted with social upheaval. In addition to the peril of further inflaming such protests, “just imagine,” one senior CCP official said, “what would happen to the country’s credit rating.”99 The CCP is thus left to gamble that continued economic growth will keep the people from taking action against the Party’s monopoly power.100

growth rate slows, the ethnic region that provides its most vital fresh water source could become the locus of political unrest or upheaval.103

This historical review has brought us to the present reality of a CCP rotten to the core, yet struggling (at least selectively) to rein in corruption. Not surprisingly, “Many analysts, both in China and abroad, have questioned the long-term viability of China’s current political system, in which the Party remains above the law, leadership politics is a black box, and civil society and the right to free speech and association are severely constrained.”104 Meanwhile, the CCP “has shown little [or] no interest in reforms that might threaten its monopoly on power.”105

With that as the backdrop, Part III will examine various perspectives on China’s political and economic future.

Moreover, geography dictates that the Party must avoid sectarian upheaval among those not sharing equally in its economic rise. China’s population is heavily concentrated in the Pacific coastal areas and in the riverine lowlands and alluvial valleys in the country’s center, while the plateaus and mountainous areas of the west (Xinjiang) and southwest (Tibet) are sparsely populated. But the land of the Tibetan minority population is the greatest storehouse of fresh water in the world, providing the sources of the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Indus, and Sutlej rivers.101 Beijing is acutely aware of this, even as it contemplates that by 2030, China may fall short of its water demand by 25 percent.102 Thus, the Party can ill afford to engender revolution in Tibet. Nevertheless, as Chinese society becomes more prosperous, and as China’s economic

Geography dictates that the Party must avoid sectarian upheaval among those not sharing equally in its economic rise.

DIVERGENT PERSPECTIVES ON CHINA’S FUTURE

Questions about China’s future have generated divergent perspectives in light of the existential threat to the CCP and the Chinese government posed by the pervasive corruption described in Parts I and II. Scholars and commentators have addressed questions that the CCP leadership, by its own admission, recognizes are critical concerns: What will be the consequences if corruption is not brought under control? Can the CCP effectively address corruption and survive without embracing some measure of democratization and rule of law? And, as noted at the outset, the critical corollary to these questions is whether China’s leaders will embrace effective political and legal reforms in order to sustain continued economic development, since such economic growth may be crucial to continued CCP legitimacy and control of the Chinese government. We will now examine a variety of perspectives on China’s future as the precursor to an assessment in Part IV on the most likely scenario for the CCP’s destiny.

“Historically, no communist regime has ever completed an evolutionary process of democratic transition.”

Minxin Pei, Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College183

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY OR DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM?

One of the central questions considered in this report is whether the CCP can effectively curb the corruption that threatens its political survival without embracing what has been described in the Western legal tradition as the rule of law administered by an independent judiciary beyond the control or manipulation of the Party hierarchy. This question has generated considerable scholarly discussion and debate, particularly because, to date, multiple CCP anticorruption campaigns from 1978 to the present have generally been judged to be ineffective, “in large part due to the character of the present political system,” in the words of a Beijing scholar.106 He therefore concluded that “further political reform and movement towards democracy are essential if China is to control corruption in an effective fashion.”107

This conclusion appears consistent with the view of commentator James Kynge, who asserts that “the most powerful inhibitor of political reform is corruption itself.”108 He explains that local governments in China have been “hijacked by special interest syndicates that typically consist of government officials and the most influential local business leaders.”109 These individuals collude to enrich themselves, often at public expense. Indeed, this is guanxi and crony capitalism on steroids. Kynge therefore concludes that Party leaders and their business cronies remain “implacably opposed to any reform that could unravel the web of relationships that boosts their bank balances.”110

This observation is reinforced by the views of American law professor Randall Peerenboom, who emphasizes that “the biggest source of outside interference in court decisions is not the Party but local government officials seeking to protect local interests.” He explains that the local

courts’ lack of independence makes them ineffective in dealing with “rampant local protectionism.”111 Thus, “deeper institutional reforms are necessary. However, the authorities have been reluctant to approve any such reforms, no doubt in part out of fear that a more independent court … would also be able to decide politically sensitive cases fairly and impartially.”112 Similarly, the Party hierarchy is not clamoring for such fair and impartial decisions if they involve the politically sensitive—and often corrupt— activities of the CCP’s upper echelons.

These observations can sharpen our focus on a basic question framed by the Beijing scholar quoted earlier: What might the CCP accept as a necessary “movement toward democracy” in order to stem the tide of corruption? Put another way, what existing political model might the CCP adopt for this purpose? Alternatively, would it design an entirely new model “with Chinese characteristics”? Or would the CCP, fearful of any reform that might dilute the powers and interests of its more influential members, decline to embrace any significant new reforms and continue to “muddle through” in the midst of widespread corruption, hopeful of somehow avoiding its political or economic downfall? As both Kynge and Peerenboom emphasize, CCP cadres are reluctant to endorse any legal reforms that might dilute their grip on power, privilege, and wealth.

Their views appear consistent with the perspective of Elizabeth Freund Larus, whose consideration of China’s future is rooted in the conclusion that, from the CCP’s perspective, its continued political dominance is “paramount.” She believes the CCP would seek to retain its monopoly power as the centerpiece of “democratic centralism,” where “opinions are expressed but the party makes the ultimate

decisions.”113

Larus is also emphatic in rejecting the modernization theory that economic liberalization drives democratization. She calls it “a spurious link,” and points to the fact that two of the freest economies in the world, Singapore and Hong Kong, are not (yet) liberal democracies. Thus, in her view, China’s economic liberalization does not compel the conclusion that the CCP will embrace liberal democracy.114 (Document No. 9 seems to reinforce this view, at least for the present.)

Consistent with these observations, Larus explains that when China’s leaders speak favorably of “democracy,” they are not endorsing Western-style liberal democracy but rather democratic centralism—a species of “democracy … led by the CCP.” While acknowledging that this sounds as oxymoronic as “communist capitalists,” she suggests that the CCP’s version might look like “a more classical style of democracy in which elites gather information and opinion from the masses, but deliberate and make policy independently of the masses.”115

Based on the factors discussed above, Larus concludes that the most likely scenario for China’s future political development is that it will model itself on Singapore, a “political system that has both authoritarian and democratic elements.”116 As she explains, “Singaporean politics is characterized by a dominant-party system. A dominant-party

system is open to all, but for a variety of reasons, over long periods, only one party has any real chance to attain power.”117

Notwithstanding Larus’s conclusion that the Singaporean model is the most likely scenario for China’s future political development, she identifies a number of “huge differences between Singapore and China that will make it difficult for China to emulate Singapore.”118 The first one she lists is corruption, which “is much lower in Singapore.” Indeed it is: In 2021, Transparency International ranked Singapore as 4 (very low level of corruption) out of 180 countries surveyed, the United States 27, and China 66.119 So, as Larus emphasizes, “If China’s leaders want to emulate Singapore, they need to crack down harder on official corruption.”120 Yes, they surely do, but how might they do so effectively in the absence of full-fledged rule of law, a free press, or competitive elections?

Yet the search for a viable solution may be a matter of political survival for the CCP, if China scholar Minxin Pei is correct in his assessment that endemic corruption steadily increases a country’s “systemic risks.” That is, its financial system becomes fragile, its environmental conditions become degraded, its law enforcement institutions are compromised, its infrastructure becomes insecure, and its regulatory system is ineffective.121 This sounds like a recipe for eventual political dissolution.

Shanghai, China. (zhang kaiyv/ Unsplash)

IS THERE A TAIWANESE-STYLE SURVIVAL STRATEGY FOR THE CCP?

Notwithstanding Pei’s warnings, a possible survival strategy for the CCP’s political future has been widely discussed as one that might more effectively address corruption and its consequences while potentially reducing the “systemic risks” that Pei describes. This course of development would be a gradual movement toward democracy along the lines previously followed by Taiwan. As Bruce Gilley explains, the Kuomintang on Taiwan provides an example of a way to move the CCP away from authoritarian rule (and pervasive corruption) toward substantive democracy, while retaining political control for as long as possible.122

In a similar vein, Odd Arne Westad observes that “today’s Chinese regime … has become much more like Taiwan or South Korea before democratization.” While Westad deems it “impossible to predict what will happen in Chinese politics,” he “would not be surprised” if China were to follow a pattern of democratization like that of Taiwan or South Korea, but perhaps stretched out over a longer period of time.123 Westad’s speculation about a longer time frame reflects his doubt that China will embrace a Western-style democracy within the lifetime of today’s readers.124

Taiwan does represent “the first and only democracy yet to be installed in a culturally Chinese society.”125 And the potential for significant and continuing Taiwanese influence on Chinese political evolution appears inescapable, based on the sheer volume and extent of ever-expanding China-Taiwan relationships. “The irony of Communist China’s relentless push for closer integration with Taiwan is that it may well begin to generate political convergence— but not in the way that the Communist leaders imagined.”126

As Robert Kaplan explained a decade ago in The Revenge of Geography,

Taiwan does 30 percent of its trade with China, with 40 percent of its exports going to the mainland. There are 270 commercial flights per week between Taiwan and the mainland. Two-thirds of Taiwanese companies, some ten thousand, have made investments in China in the last five years. There are direct postal links and common crime fighting, with half a million mainland tourists coming to the island annually, and 750,000 Taiwanese residing in China for half the year. In all there are five million cross-straits visits each year.127

Thus, he concluded, The goal of transforming China domestically is not a pipe dream. Remember that the millions of Chinese tourists who come to Taiwan watch its spirited political talk shows and shop in its bookstores with their subversive titles. A more open China is certainly more of a possibility than a repressive one. But a more democratic China could be an even more dynamic great power than a repressive China, in an economic, cultural, and hence in a military sense.128

In addition to the statistics provided by Kaplan, China is now Taiwan’s most important trading partner, there are now close to a million Taiwanese expatriates living and working in China, and Taiwanese companies have invested more than US$150 billion in mainland business activities.

In addition, “the reach of Taiwan-based mass media and popular culture has been intensively felt not only in the [People’s Republic of China’s] urban centers, but throughout Chinese-language cyberspace … On the evening of Taiwan’s 2008 presidential election, an estimated 200 million mainland Chinese viewers watched the ballot counting via satellite TV or the Internet.”129

Legal developments in China have also benefitted significantly from Taiwanese influence and expertise. As Taiwanese professor Yun-han Chu explains, “[Chinese] experts and bureaucrats have carefully scrutinized every aspect of Taiwan’s legal system … Taiwanese legal scholarship has been the greatest overseas source of ideas in China’s recent efforts to overhaul its civil and criminal codes, litigation and bankruptcy procedures, and regulatory frameworks.” Taiwan has thereby “become a critical source of know-how for developing a modern law-bound state, a prerequisite for liberal constitutionalism.”130 Moreover, cross-strait exchanges and cooperation have blossomed in other areas as well, including finance and banking, public administration, management science and local governance. Remarkably, when the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs revised the rules and procedures for China’s limited local elections, its officials reviewed Taiwan’s election laws as examples and sought input from Taiwanese officials.131

In Chu’s view, “Before long, China’s urban sector will demand further political opening. Taiwan’s ‘democratization in

installments’ could be a useful model for the next generation of CCP leaders, who will be under increasing pressure to find a viable exit strategy.”132 Chu thus identifies a possible route to political salvation for the CCP based on the Taiwanese experience: “The island’s experiences have demonstrated that it is possible for a hegemonic party to engineer a peaceful and gradual transition away from one-party authoritarianism on the basis of a successful record of economic modernization.”133

Finally, while speaking of the need for a CCP “exit strategy” and the eventual end of one-party rule, Chu embraces the view of modernization theorists that “developmental authoritarianism … will eventually become the victim of its own success. A highly resilient developmental authoritarian regime may find ways to slow or mitigate the corrosive effect of rapid socioeconomic modernization on its political hegemony, but there is no way to stop it.”134

Legal developments in China have also benefitted significantly from Taiwanese influence and expertise.

The Straits Exchange Foundation headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan. (Wikimedia/Meow)

BUT IS IT TOO SOON FOR A MOVE TO PLURALISTIC DEMOCRACY?

Chu’s invitation to the CCP to embark on a gradual process of democratization might be declined by CCP leaders, at least in the near term, especially if they were to embrace the cautionary views of a communist fellowtraveler from the West. Martin Jacques is a scholar who might be presumed to have a modicum of ideological empathy towards the CCP. Jacques was (perhaps still is) a member of the British Communist Party, and was an editor of the London-based monthly journal Marxism Today until its demise in 1991 (perhaps in tandem with the Soviet Union’s political death throes).

In addition, among other scholarly pursuits, Jacques has been a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Indeed, one might perceive a fairly strong message of long-term enthusiasm for the CCP in the title of his recent book, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New World Order Nonetheless, he presents a penetrating and critical assessment of the economic perils confronting the CCP, together with the continuing threat posed by corruption. On the latter, he says:

The problem [of corruption] poses a grave challenge to the Party because, if unchecked, it threatens to undermine its moral standing and legitimacy. Despite a series of major, high-profile campaigns against corruption … the evidence suggests that the problem remains huge and elusive because its roots lie deep within the Party itself and the myriad of guanxi connections.135

Jacques offers even more serious warnings about basic resource imbalances facing the Party and the Chinese economy. These warnings are based on factual realities, not political ideology. For example, China has

only about nine percent of the world’s arable land but must sustain about 20 percent of the world’s population.136 By comparison, the United States, with less than a quarter of China’s population, has three times as much arable land and its farmland has been under cultivation for one-tenth the time of China’s. Almost half of China’s forests have been destroyed, and it now imports about 60 percent of its oil supply.137 As Jacques explains, China’s economic growth has been extremely resource-intensive even though it has always been poorly endowed with natural resources. 138

Consequently, China’s current economic growth rate appears unsustainable. For example, over a decade ago, Jacques projected that if China’s economy were to continue to expand at 8 percent per year, its per capita income would likely reach the current U.S. level in 2031. That sounds good for the individual Chinese citizen until one recognizes that such growth would require Chinese consumption of two-thirds of the current world grain harvest. China would also need 99 million barrels of oil per day, whereas the worldwide daily production level in 2006 was 84 million barrels (and in 2021 averaged about 77 million barrels per day). Jacques’ obvious conclusion—which has since been validated by the recent slowdown in China’s economic growth—is that the Party can no longer pursue the resource-intensive economic plan it has hitherto relied on for rapid growth139—and political stability as well.

Jacques is also forthright in recognizing the serious economic imbalance that others have also noted. In his words, “[B]reakneck economic growth has led to China moving in a very short space of time from being a highly egalitarian society to becoming one of the more unequal in the world.”140 Indeed, by 2021, the richest one percent of Chinese

households controlled about one-third of the country’s wealth.141 Jacques sees growing economic inequality as the reason for rising public anger and resentment, “exacerbated by the widespread belief—not mistaken— that many of the new rich have achieved their wealth as a result of corruption, often through illicit deals between government officials and the managers of newly privatized companies.”142

Interestingly, Jacques’ apparent conclusion from this mix of natural resource shortages, high-speed economic expansion, glaring economic inequality, and widespread corruption is that China is not yet ready for a concerted move to a multi-party system. “It seems misconceived to argue that China is now ready for, and should become, more or less forthwith, a multi-party democracy based on universal suffrage. The country is only halfway through its industrial revolution, with over 50 percent of the population still living and working in the countryside …[A]ny move towards democracy is likely to embroil the country in considerable chaos and turmoil.”143

The Marxist scholar concludes by predicting that for the foreseeable future the most likely outcome is “a continuation of the process of reform already underway, notwithstanding the problems of governance consequent upon social unrest and chronic corruption.”144 This is an approach that another scholar describes as “muddling through,” as we shall discuss further. Jacques hedges his bets by adding: “There are many imponderables, but assuming that economic growth continues at a relatively rapid rate [notwithstanding his own warnings noted above about impending natural resource shortages] and political stability is broadly maintained [won’t that depend on continued economic growth?], then it seems reasonable to expect serious moves towards democratization within [twenty years], possibly less.”145 So, in the end, Jacques appears to forecast the ascent of China to “rule the world” based, at least in the near term, on continuing CCP efforts to “muddle through.”

Eilis Garvey/Unsplash

Advocates of the Singapore model of procedural democracy and the Kuomintang’s example of gradual democratic reform, together with Jacques in his discussion of the challenges to reform, have posited potential alternatives for CCP survival, albeit with gradual relinquishment of monolithic political control. However, other scholars and commentators paint a different picture of the CCP’s future. These forecasts are generally based on assessments of the accumulated consequences of endemic corruption and the CCP’s entrenched unwillingness to compromise its singular control of the party-state. They essentially assess the CCP’s future either as fated to end in regime collapse or, at best, survival in the short to medium term by “muddling through” and thereby at least postponing a terminal crisis.

One of the most incisive and comprehensive assessments of the CCP’s present political and economic situation and prognosis for the future is provided by Minxin Pei in his 2006 book, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy, previously cited and quoted herein. Pei begins by recalling warnings from within the CCP two decades ago. In a speech to CCP colleagues during the 16th Party Congress in 2002, Li Rui, a former secretary to Mao Zedong, applauded China’s ongoing economic rise, but then admonished his fellow Party members as follows:

[T]hese problems remain: excessively slow pace in the reform of the political system, the lagging development of democracy, the weakness of the rule of law, and the resultant pervasive corruption. … Chinese and foreign histories prove that autocracy is the source of political turmoil. As the collapse of the Soviet Union shows, the root cause is autocracy. Modernization

is possible only through democratization. This is the trend in the world in the twentieth century, especially since the Second World War. Those who follow this trend will thrive; those who fight against this trend will perish. This rule applies to every country—and every party.146

Li’s exhortation to his colleagues reflects the current political reality, as Pei assesses it, that “political reform under the rule of the CCP can occur only within the strict limits imposed by the Party. In practical terms, these limits have stunted the development of an effective legal system, constrained the constitutional role of the legislative branch, obstructed the growth of rural selfgovernment, and restricted the emergence of a civil society.”147 His conclusion is that, under these conditions, “[a] democratic transition under the rule of the CCP thus seems a distant, or even unrealistic, prospect.”148

In Pei’s view, the apparently irreconcilable conflict preventing meaningful political reform is that between market reform and entrenched Leninism. “To the extent that a market economy requires a minimum degree of the rule of law, which in turn demands institutionalized curbs on the power of the government, these two goals run counter to the CCP’s professed determination to maintain political supremacy.”149 As deposed former CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang perceptively observed, “[U]nder a market economy, after property becomes legitimate and legal, the CCP inevitably becomes corrupt … to turn society’s wealth into [its members’] private wealth. What China has now is the worst form of capitalism.”150

As a consequence, China has experienced the “runaway official corruption” described previously, and Pei sees the CCP elite’s

The

tal of China, Oct 23, 2017. [gov.cn/Xinhua]

continued unwillingness to reform “flawed state institutions” as furthering such corruption, which in turn “further undermines the effectiveness of the state.”151 This, one might conclude, creates a downward spiral of increasing corruption fueled by an increasingly ineffective governmental process.

More broadly, this downward spiral caused by corruption, coupled with an absence of political accountability, creates serious state-society tensions, especially when “institutional mechanisms for resolving them—such as the courts, the press, and government bureaucracies— are unresponsive, inadequate, or dysfunctional.”152 Pei concludes that these state-society tensions “trap the ruling CCP in an almost hopeless dilemma. As the CCP’s initial resistance to political reform has aggravated state-society tensions, rising tensions increase the risks that any such reform could get out of control, thus deterring the CCP from undertaking it. This political paralysis further fuels state-

society tensions as individual and collective grievances continue to accumulate, compounding risks of future reform.” The result is “runaway corruption symptomatic of a decentralized predatory state.”153

In the face of continuing corruption, Pei concludes that the most likely result for China will be a democratic transition triggered by regime collapse. “[W]hen the ruling elites are eventually forced to undertake even limited political reforms, the regime may have become so enfeebled by misrule and politically delegitimized that it no longer possesses the capacity to manage a gradual opening.”154 He reasons that “[e]conomic development under a predatory autocracy is ultimately unsustainable. Ironically, a democratic opening may emerge in the end, not as a regime-initiated strategy undertaken at its own choosing, but more likely as the result of a sudden crisis brought on by years of corruption, mismanagement, and institutional decay.”155

press center of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) holds a press conference in Beijing, capi-

People stand under a giant screen broadcasting news footage of Chinese President Xi Jinping attending a video conference call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Beijing. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters/Adobe Stock)

Pei’s forecast of CCP regime collapse as the precursor to democratic reform is consistent with that of Bruce Gilley, who observes that “CCP leaders are caught in a prison of their own making. They can refuse reforms and face protests, or grant reforms and lose their jobs.” Gilley concludes (writing in 2004) that, “[a]t this late stage, it is no longer possible to navigate between the Scylla of reforming and losing control and the Charybdis of not reforming and losing support.”156

As an example, he posits that if the CCP were to create a truly independent anticorruption body (which would be in contrast to the Discipline Commission controlled by General Secretary Xi) and give the media “free rein” to report on corrupt officials, such a reform would “expose the hypocrisy and rot inside the Party for all to see … The forces are unstoppable once unleashed under these conditions.” 157 For this reason, and as a counterpoint to the Taiwan model discussed above, Gilley doubts that the CCP could launch a graduated reform agenda akin to the Kuomintang’s and yet hang on for fourteen years as the dominant party, as the Kuomintang did until it lost the presidency in the 2000 elections.158

Tony Saich of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government does not rule out the possibility of CCP regime collapse, especially since “communist regimes unlike some other authoritarian systems have changed only with the collapse of the ancien regime.”159 While he nevertheless finds such systemic collapse in the near term unlikely, he identifies two potential triggers for CCP demise: (1) Economic collapse, which could be brought on by “systemic distortions in the economy and an extremely vulnerable banking system”; or (2) social tensions and inequality that force the CCP leadership “to undertake significant political reforms in an effort to retain control.”160 This appears consistent with Gilley’s conclusion that it is too late for the CCP to undertake such significant reforms and still remain in power.

However, Saich finds it more likely that the CCP will survive (again, in the short term) through a “continuation of the politics of muddling through.” He elaborates on such muddling as follows:

Bold initiatives are unlikely. An essentially technocratic approach will prevail while the leadership tries to maintain an authoritarian political structure combined with growing economic liberalization. Minimal reform is likely in the political system with a continued focus on strengthening the legal system and building capacity and skills within public administration.161

This forecast is tempered by Saich’s observation that the CCP has retained the “core features of the Leninist partystate.”162 He also recognizes, as do virtually all of the commentators, scholars and Chinese officials quoted and cited herein, that pervasive and entrenched corruption remains a critical and unresolved threat to the CCP’s political survival.163

Accordingly, in Part IV, we will address the question whether, and if so how and when, the CCP can effectively confront corruption in order to resolve the dilemma it presents for Party survival.

CAN THE CCP OVERCOME CORRUPTION AND SURVIVE?

“There’s a commonly used phrase: Not reforming means to wait for death.

Reforming means to court death.”

Zhang Lifan, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences184

XI’S CHINESE DREAM

Xi and the CCP would no doubt prefer to avoid either awaiting the Party’s political death or precipitating its early arrival. Instead, Xi has, from the outset of his installation as Party General Secretary and Chinese President, invoked a new and positive theme, the “Chinese dream.” In the face of comatose Marxist ideology and slowing economic growth, Xi’s dream emphasizes China’s rise to renewed national greatness, reinforced with a vigorous appeal to nationalism. His patriotic theme may be aimed primarily at providing a new source of Party legitimacy, even while cloaked in the simple refrain that “[t]o meet [our people’s] desire for a happy life is our mission.”164

President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, in 2019. (Wikimedia / Officia do Palácio do Planalto)

Leninist dictatorship rather than progress toward even modest democratic reforms.166

However, Xi’s dream of Chinese happiness shows no sign of embracing significant political reforms toward a more liberal society. To the contrary, his dream is apparently about strengthening the Party’s exclusive claim on power, coupled with his personal quest to consolidate his own dominance within the Politburo Standing Committee by removing the term limit in 2018 on China’s president. In doing so, “Xi signaled his intention to remain as China’s leader indefinitely.”165 Indeed, the 20th Party Congress re-elected him in October 2022 for a third five-year term as Party General Secretary, President of the PRC, and Chairman of the Central Military Committee His model for governance thus appears to embrace a regression back toward Mao’s

This is reflected in Xi’s demands for People’s Liberation Army adherence to Party discipline and in his condemnation of the Soviet Communist Party for straying from ideological purity, thereby, in his view, causing the collapse of both the party and the Soviet state.167 As noted in Part II, Document No. 9 provides a comprehensive rejoinder and warning to those who might be tempted to espouse even a hint of democratization. So, anyone dreaming a little dream of Xi needs to understand that, as he says, “The Chinese dream is an ideal. Communists should have a higher ideal, and that is Communism.”168 Ironically, Xi is perhaps the one Party leader who, by virtue of his formidable (and apparently growing) political power and influence, could begin rescuing China from pervasive corruption by initiating moves toward political reform, much as Deng Xiaoping boldly began the rescue of China from economic poverty over four decades ago. But rather than turning the ship of state to a new course toward democratization, Xi has apparently chosen to move “all ahead full” toward greater autocracy.

Xi’s dream of Chinese happiness shows no sign of embracing significant political reforms toward a more liberal society.

A REVIEW OF POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES

Xi’s regressive recipe for Chinese happiness wrapped in the warm embrace of autocracy and communism (whatever that means in China today) provides a useful introduction for addressing this report’s central question: Can the CCP overcome the political dilemma created by pervasive corruption through a remedy that allows the Party to remain in sole control of the government and the state?

By way of review, in addition to unanticipated regime collapse, the more palatable political alternatives for China’s future examined in Part III include two that would still result in the Party’s exit from monopoly power, either sooner or later. They are (1) the near-term pursuit of liberal democracy through the rule of law, a free press, and pluralism in elections (effectively choosing to be gored by one horn of the dilemma), or (2) a more gradual move toward the development of such democratic institutions along the lines of Taiwan’s transformative experience (being gored later). In the view of some advocates, the second option offers at least the possibility of stretching out CCP rule over a longer time frame, before it would ultimately succumb to full democratization.

In either case, such initiatives could provide the Chinese government with the tools needed to stem the tide of corruption—a free press, an independent judiciary, and political competition in free elections. But as explained in Part III, the development and implementation of such powerful anticorruption tools could also preclude a graceful exit from power if they triggered unanticipated CCP regime collapse.

A third alternative examined in Part III involves what has been called democratic centralism, where the CCP’s power remains “paramount” and it continues to make the ultimate decisions on all significant political and economic issues. This is the so-called “classical style of democracy” where the masses can provide information and opinions but political deliberations and significant decisions are all reserved to the Party hierarchy. As discussed previously, some have described this approach as consistent with Singapore’s present governmental process, which blends elements of both authoritarianism and democracy, but is still effectively controlled within a one-party system.

The fourth alternative for the CCP examined in Part III has appropriately been dubbed “muddling through,” where any political or economic reform initiatives would continue to be constrained by the Party’s retention of the fundamental features of a Leninist partystate. Deng’s bargain with the people would remain undisturbed. But navigating through such waters could be very hazardous, with the Party’s helmsmen attempting to avoid the Scylla of destabilizing reform while not being wrecked on the Charybdis of destabilizing inaction. As noted in Part II, maintaining societal stability (in order to remain in power) is “job one” for the CCP. And in the absence of a dominant ideology, the CCP must depend on continuing economic growth to ensure the citizenry’s contentment.

CAPABILITY AND INTENT: WHAT CAN AND WILL THE PARTY DO?

In assessing the CCP’s future course of action, we can borrow the professional intelligence officer’s evaluation of indicators provided by the Party’s capability and its intent. Accordingly, we will examine the information available on these two indicators.

The first indicator to be examined should be capability, because, irrespective of intent, whether couched in terms of political objectives, societal hopes, or a General Secretary’s Chinese dream, the CCP is limited in its future options by what it is actually capable of doing. In that regard, there is little question that the Party, in the person of the Politburo Standing Committee, sitting as it does at the pinnacle of political power, could unilaterally decide to attempt any of the following strategies:

(1) Near-term movement toward fullfledged democracy;

(2) A gradual move toward democracy in the mode of Taiwan’s evolution;

(3) Democratic centralism with the Party retaining control; or

(4) Muddling through in an effort to retain monopoly power indefinitely while avoiding unanticipated political or economic minefields (an option some might say is already underway).

Assuming, for the sake of analysis, that the Standing Committee’s colleagues would maintain Party unity and voice support for the Committee’s selected course of action,169 there are nevertheless significant economic

stressors that might limit the CCP’s capability to postpone its political departure from monopoly power under the Taiwan model, or to retain such power indefinitely under democratic centralism or muddling through. These economic stressors might also affect a decision to embrace true democracy and free enterprise, as Jacques emphasized in concluding that China is not yet ready for such a dramatic political transformation. If it were to do so, however, the issue of the CCP’s continued political dominance (or at least its enforced dominance) would be moot, having been voluntarily surrendered in free elections.

With regard to alternatives (2), (3) and (4) for either prolonging or indefinitely retaining power, the primary limitation is that they all require continued economic growth and societal stability as prerequisites to maintaining the degree of domestic political harmony necessary to sustain such courses of action. Continued steady economic growth would appear necessary to avoid political fissures within the Party or a public uprising triggered by economic discontent. Indeed, one could lead to the other. As a former U.S. diplomat explains, “ [I]f the divisions among the top leaders come into the open as they did in 1989, people will take to the streets with little fear of punishment. And if the military split too, or abandons the incumbent leaders, the entire regime could collapse.”170

Thus, the governing Party hierarchy remains acutely aware that apparent public unity at the top is critical to social stability and the Party’s political survival. Moreover, as another commentator writes, “Since the [CCP] lacks legitimacy in the classic democratic sense, it has been forced to seek performance-based legitimacy instead, by

continuously improving the living standards of Chinese citizens. So far, this strategy has succeeded, but there are signs that it will not last because of the growing income inequality and the internal and external imbalances it has created.”171

As an example, in 2021 per capita disposable income in rural China was about 40 percent of that in urban areas.172 That startling imbalance arose in significant part because the CCP’s export-led growth model includes an unbalanced development strategy favoring rapid growth along the east coast while neglecting the interior. International commerce is therefore heavily concentrated in the coastal provinces, with Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu providing about 50 percent of imports and exports.173 At the same time, “[s]trong and privileged interest groups and commercialized local governments are blocking equal distribution of the benefits of economic growth throughout society, thereby rendering futile the CCP’s strategy of trading economic growth for people’s consent to its absolute rule.”174

This strategy of trading economic growth for political subjugation (or passivity) is further undermined by the CCP’s entrenched Leninism:

[T]he CCP will remain willing to massively misallocate capital for political purposes. Major Chinese firms are weak and insecure in term of corporate structure. They depend on cheap and often free credit, operate in protected markets, and frequently are run at the mercy of professionally incompetent political insiders.175

A surprising conclusion emerges from this evidence of economic malfeasance: The CCP, which governs the second largest economy in the world today, may nevertheless lack the economic capability needed to ensure domestic harmony over

the longer term in order to ensure its unitary power while gradually moving toward democracy in the Taiwan mode. Even more likely, it may lack the economic resilience to remain in power indefinitely either as a purveyor of democratic centralism or as an autocrat muddling through in an effort to evade the economic and resulting political hazards described above.

Simply put, and notwithstanding four decades of dramatic economic growth, “China’s economy is not nearly as robust as it might seem, and its political stability, which depends heavily on continuing rapid growth, is even more precarious.”176 “As Chinese leaders well know, the greatest political risk lying ahead of them is the possibility of an economic crash that throws millions of workers out of their jobs or sends millions of depositors to withdraw their savings from the shaky banking system.”177 In that regard, the recent mass protest outside the People’s Bank of China described in Part II may be a portent of things to come.

Turning to the CCP’s intent, one should begin by recalling the multiple indications that, as far as the CCP leadership is concerned, Deng’s bargain is still in full force and effect—a “good life” (at least for some) in exchange for unchallenged CCP rule. As Larus emphasizes, the CCP views its continued political leadership as “paramount.” Moreover, as Minxin Pei has stressed, the irreconcilable conflict between market reform and the Party’s entrenched Leninism makes significant political reform beyond the motivation (or intent) of CCP leaders. Xi’s evident fondness for Maoist ideology, coupled with his quest for lifetime one-man rule, makes political reform even less likely, unless his Standing Committee colleagues bravely band together to usher him into retirement.

Thus, political paralysis is practically unavoidable when those entrenched in power recognize that any significant reforms would upend their unilateral control and expose them to significant political and financial losses. And even modest reforms could also reveal the incriminating involvement of many in widespread corruption, perhaps landing them in prison. Thus, with regard to corruption, meaningful and long-lasting reform would indeed appear self-contradictory for the Party’s current leadership: “It would be impossible to root out corruption without giving up the patronage that keeps them in power”178 and above the law. Only a new generation of Party leaders prepared to embrace democratic reforms to replace the status quo would be able (and willing) to rescue China’s political and economic future from the existential threat posed by systemic corruption.

of the Chinese state, even on a gradual, long-term basis. As discussed in Part III, Pei emphasizes that the ruling class is trapped in an almost hopeless dilemma resulting in political paralysis of its own making. This makes any gradual transition to democracy by the ancien regime highly unlikely, because of a complete lack of motivation to exit power, even if political disaster looms because of institutionalized corruption. As a senior American intelligence expert on China elaborated in 2013:

[V]ery senior leaders say with what seems to be perfect sincerity that if they cannot address the corruption problem successfully, then the Party’s hold on power may be doomed. The problem is that since corruption is so widespread, including among the families of very high officials, they can’t attack it effectively without shredding the Party’s already threadbare political legitimacy.179

Here the intersection of capability and intent may be viewed as the linchpin in concluding that the current CCP leadership cannot, and will not, choose a future course of action to control corruption that would involve surrendering the Party’s political control

Political paralysis is practically unavoidable when those entrenched in power recognize that any significant reforms would upend their unilateral control and expose them to significant political and financial losses.

MUDDLING THROUGH WHILE CONFRONTING THE INEVITABLE

The evidence and analysis presented above, together with the historical information and perspectives discussed earlier, support the conclusion that today’s Party leaders lack not only the economic and political capability but also the political will or intent to move voluntarily in the short term toward a Western style representative democracy. This is irrespective of the publicly acknowledged existential threat that corruption poses to Party survival. Today’s CCP is firmly entrenched, at least at the highest levels, against the embrace of any legal system that would, in actual practice rather than empty rhetoric, subordinate the Party to the constitution and the nation’s judicial decisions.

Nor does the evidence indicate any intent or motivation on the part of the current CCP leadership to embark on a more gradual and prolonged journey toward representative democracy along the lines of Taiwan, notwithstanding the extensive and continued economic and social interaction between these two Chinese neighbors. Instead, Xi appears intent on further consolidating his own power, which seems unlikely to serve as a remedy for high-level corruption. Lord Acton put it well: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”180 Xi’s current maneuvers to consolidate his own power for lifetime rule may eventually bring regrettable consequences for the Chinese people, and perhaps for the world community as well.

Consequently, it seems reasonable to conclude that the CCP’s current intention is to continue to “muddle through” indefinitely in the face of an irreconcilable dilemma. This dilemma was created by the conjunction of pervasive institutional corruption and a political and economic system under airtight

Party control. This arrangement continues to insulate corruption at the highest levels, while Xi and his allies use the mantle of anti-corruption to remove his potential political competitors from the playing field. The arrangement also perpetuates political stagnation, economic inefficiency and inequality throughout Chinese society. Without anti-corruption measures that can operate independent of the Party’s governing hierarchy, corruption’s existential threat to CCP rule will remain, even as Xi seeks singular dominance over Chinese society. And in his private moments, perhaps Xi concurs with those within the Party who acknowledge that if a truly independent anti-corruption authority were created and turned loose on the CCP, then the Party’s days (and his days in power) would indeed be numbered.

This analysis of China’s recent history under CCP rule calls to mind the wisdom of both Confucius and Thomas Jefferson. As noted in Part II, Confucius concluded that if the people have no confidence in their government, it cannot stand. Today, the pervasive corruption that now afflicts Chinese government and business activity has left public confidence in the CCP’s integrity hanging from a very slender thread. President Jefferson added an important corollary to this Confucian wisdom: “The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”181 On this count, our examination of the CCP’s Maoist origins and historical development reveals a Party awash in lies and corruption, afraid of the truth about its own history, fearful of the will of the people and what their exposure to a free exchange of ideas might bring, and, with some limited exceptions, apparently more interested in the accumulation of personal wealth than in the opportunity for selfless service to their fellow citizens.

In conclusion, one may therefore concur with Minxin Pei that the most likely scenario for the CCP, as it muddles through a political swamp of crime and corruption, is its eventual regime collapse or other form of inelegant political departure from monopoly power. The Party is irretrievably compromised, and its governing elites lack the political will voluntarily to support subordinate their unbridled power and personal financial enrichment to the “bourgeois” checks and balances provided by an independent judiciary or equivalent anti-corruption institution. It appears that the present regime under Xi has chosen to ignore the wise counsel provided twenty years ago by Li Rui quoted in Part III, above. Li’s entreaties to the 16th Party Congress that the root cause of political turmoil, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, is autocracy, and that “modernization is possible only through democratization” will perhaps be remembered only after the collapse of the current autocratic regime—a regime living in mortal fear of both its internal corruption and Western democratic principles.

It would be difficult to predict a precise time frame within which the Party’s collapse or departure from power will occur, nor does there appear to be any certainty about what will follow in the immediate aftermath of political upheaval in such a huge country. History will determine whether the coming change of government in this remarkable civilization-state will be tumultuous or peaceful. In the interest of its people, and given China’s immense importance to today’s global society, one may earnestly hope for a peaceful, orderly transition of power, guided by a new generation of Chinese leaders who place the welfare of their people ahead of their own personal interests in accumulating wealth and power—a desirable model for political leaders seeking freedom, peace and prosperity worldwide in the 21st century.

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ENDNOTES

1 Roderic Broadhurst and Peng Wang, “After the Bo Xilai Trial: Does Corruption Threaten China’s Future?” Australian National University, Working Paper, December 17, 2013, 1.

2 “Corruption” in this context may generally be defined as “the improper use of public authority for private gain.” Andrew Wedeman, Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 1. This article will discuss various forms of corruption and their impacts on Chinese governance.

3 Some examples from modern history include Castro’s Cuba, North Korea under the Kims, Spain under Franco, and the Soviet Union until its dissolution.

4 Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 29.

5 Keith B. Richburg, “Hu opens China’s party congress with call to fight corruption,” Washington Post, November 9, 2012.

6 Ibid. (emphasis added).

7 Ibid. (emphasis added).

8 James Kynge, China Shakes the World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), 183.

9 Bruce Gilley, China’s Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 56.

10 Lin Jiang, “Jinian 2019 nian guoji fanfubai ri zhaodaihui zai jing juban [Press Conference to Mark International Anti-Corruption Day 2019 Held in Beijing],” People’s Daily, December 10, 2019, http://politics. people.com.cn/n1/2019/1210/c1001-31497849.html.

11 “Lianghui diaocha: ‘congyan zhidang’ redu bujian fanfu changlian minxinsuoxiang [Two Sessions Survey: ‘Strictly Governing the Party’ Remains Popular, Countering Corruption and Promoting Integrity are the Common Wish of the People],” People.cn, March 1, 2022, http://lianghui.people.com.cn/2022npc/ n1/2022/0301/c441810-32362239.html

12 Amir Guluzade, “How reform has made China’s state-owned enterprises stronger,” World Economic Forum, May 21, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/how-reform-has-made-chinas-stateowned-enterprises-stronger/; Kynge, China Shakes the World, 195.

13 John Lee, “China’s Corporate Leninism,” The American Interest, May/June 2012.

14 Ibid.

15 This army of monitors, known as “internet opinion analysts,” is employed by both the Chinese government and business entities. BBC News, “China employs two million microblog monitors, state media say,” October 4, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-2439657 ; “Quanguo yue 200 wan wangluo yuqing fenxishi: yao zuo de bushi shantie [Around 2 million Online Public Opinion Analysts in the Country: Their Job is Not to Delete Posts], The Beijing News,” October 3, 2013, http://politics.people.com. cn/n/2013/1003/c1001-23100331.html

16 Bruce Dickson, The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 234.

17 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 33.

18 Yuen Yuen Ang, China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 7-11.

19 Ibid., 9-11.

20 Ibid., 10.

21 Ibid., 140.

22 Ibid., 14-18, 145-48, 193. A comparison of China’s rapid industrialization and economic growth in the midst of pervasive corruption with America’s “Gilded Age” of corrupt yet dramatic growth must recognize that the American experience was tempered by a muckraking free press, competing political parties, free speech, and an independent judiciary. None of these institutions exists in China today.

23 Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2010), 267; Minxin Pei, “Corruption Threatens China’s Future,” Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Brief 55, October 2007.

24 Shai Oster, “President Xi’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Biggest Since Mao,” Bloomberg, March 4, 2014, quoting Harvard University Tony Saich.

25 Ibid., quoting William Overholt, senior fellow at Harvard University and president-elect of the Fung Global Institute in Hong Kong.

26 McGregor, The Party, 169 (emphasis added).

27 Oster, “President Xi’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Biggest Since Mao’s.”

28 McGregor, The Party, 237.

29 Ling Li, “The ‘Organisational Weapon’ of the Chinese Communist Party: China's Disciplinary Regime from Mao to Xi Jinping,” Law and the Party in China: Ideology and Organisation, R. Creemers and S. Trevaskes, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 209-210.

30 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 29 (emphasis added).

31 McGregor, The Party, 173. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 29. 35 McGregor, The Party, 273. 36 Ibid., 147.

37 Chris Buckley, “China Takes Aim at Western Ideas,” New York Times, August 19, 2013. 38

As translated, the document states that it is a “notice from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Central Office” and “has been approved by the central leadership.” Ibid.

39 Ibid.; Stanley Lubman, “Document No. 9: The Party Attacks Western Democratic Ideals” Wall Street Journal (August 27, 2013).

40 Jamil Anderlini, “How long can the Communist party survive in China?” Financial Times (Sept. 20, 2013).

41 Buckley, “China Takes Aim at Western Ideas.”

42 “Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation,” ChinaFile, November 8, 2013.

43 Because Document No. 9 was apparently meant to be withheld from public release and intended solely for internal study by CCP cadres, it received no official public acknowledgment after its leak to the foreign media. Nevertheless, Document No. 9’s focus on resisting Western principles involving constitutional democracy manifestly remains central to CCP doctrine and practice today, as exemplified by the Party’s continuing and relentless crackdown on human rights lawyers. “China’s 709 Crackdown Is Still Going On,” The Diplomat, July 9, 2021, https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/chinas-709-crackdown-is-still-going-on/. 44 McGregor, The Party, 265. 45 Ibid. 46 Kynge, China Shakes the World, 201.

47 Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 12.

48 Massoud Hayoun, “Bo Xilai trial may shake China’s economy for years,” Al Jazeera America, August 25, 2013, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/26/as-bo-xilai-trialendsantigraftcampaignwillrearon.html.

49 Ibid.

50 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 41. 51 Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 20.

52 General Secretary Xi Jinping’s daughter, Xi Mingze, reportedly attended Harvard University under a pseudonym. Barbara Demick, “China sees Obama girls, but not Xi’s daughter,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2014.

53 Anderlini, “How long can the Communist party survive in China?” 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid.

56 Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 59. 57 Ibid., 63.

58 Huston Smith, The World’s Religions (New York: HarperOne, 1991), 177. Smith uses the Wade-Giles Romanization spelling, te, while de is the pinyin spelling, consistent with the official Romanization system adopted in China.

59 Ibid., 178. 60 Ibid. 61 Toynbee, A Study of History, 59.

62 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 19. 63 Ibid., 363. 64 Ibid., 378. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid.

67 Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 56. 68 Ibid., 384. 69 Pei, “Corruption Threatens China’s Future.”

70 Broadhurst and Peng Wang, “After the Bo Xilai Trial: Does Corruption Threaten China’s Future?”, 2; Josh Chin, “China Spends More on Domestic Security as Xi's Powers Grow,” The Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-spends-more-on-domestic-security-as-xis-powersgrow-1520358522; Ilaria Mazzocco, “How Inequality Is Undermining China's Prosperity,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 26, 2022, https://www.csis.org/features/how-inequalityundermining-chinas-prosperity.

71 “China crushes mass protest by bank depositors demanding their life savings back,” CNN, July 11, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/10/china-henan-bank-depositors-protest-mic-intl-hnk/index.html.

72 Broadhurst and Peng Wang, “After the Bo Xilai Trial,” 2.

73 One of the most glaring manifestations of the Chinese government’s criminal mindset within the community of nations is its relentless effort to steal intellectual property from private businesses around the world. As FBI Director Christopher Wray told a business group in July 2022, in a joint appearance with the chief of the UK’s security service (MI5): “The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology — whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.” “FBI, U.K. Warn Businesses of Chinese Plot to Steal Tech,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2022, 1.

74 Oster, “President Xi’s Anti-Corruption Campaign,” quoting Andrew Wedeman, of political science, Georgia State University.

75 Chris Anstey, “China’s Government Disciplinarians Target ‘Disorderly’ Capitalism,” Bloomberg, January 29, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-01-29/china-s-disciplinarians-targetdisorderly-capitalism-new-economy-saturday.

76 Oster, “President Xi’s Anti-Corruption Campaign.”

77 Matt. 5:30 (NEB).

78 Broadhurst and Peng Wang, “After the Bo Xilai Trial,” 2.

79 Ibid., xii.

80 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 49.

81 David Schambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 154.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid., 154-55 (emphasis added). This crisis of corruption within a moral void is manifestly not applicable to life in modern Taiwan, where political and economic freedom abound.

84 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 72.

85 Email to the author from Mr. Lonnie Henley, Senior Analyst for China, Defense Intelligence Agency, November 10, 2013.

86 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 29.

87 Henley email, November 10, 2013.

88 Ibid.

89 W.C. Jones, “The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China,” Washington University Law Quarterly, LXIII, 1985, 710.

90 Donald C. Clarke, “Justice and the Legal System in China,” in Robert Benewick & Paul Wingrove, eds., China in the 1990s (London: Macmillan, 1995), 86.

91 Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 70. 92 Ibid., 65.

93“Document 9,” ChinaFile.

94 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 235-37. 95 Ibid., 239.

96 Westad, Restless Empire, 453. 97 Ibid., 242. 98 Ibid., 238. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid.

101 Robert Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (New York: Random House, 2012), 204. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., 207.

104 Susan Lawrence and Michael F. Martin, “Understanding China’s Political System” (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2012), 2. 105 Ibid., 32.

106 This assessment is quoted from a candid and detailed review of multiple yet ineffective anti-corruption campaigns, authored by Zengke He, of the China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics in Beijing, in “Corruption and anti-corruption in reform China,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 33, 243270 (2000).

107 Ibid., 269 (emphasis added).

108 Kynge, China Shakes the World, 202. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid.

111 Randall Peerenboom, China’s Long March Toward Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 14.

112 Ibid.

113 Elizabeth Freund Larus, Politics and Society in Contemporary China (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), 430.

114 Ibid., 435. In contrast to Larus’s view, other scholars see modernization theory as one of the most widely accepted and least controversial findings in political science. Dickson, The Party and the People, 227-230.

115 Larus, Politics and Society in Contemporary China, 437. 116 Ibid., 431-32.

117 Ibid., 433. There have been some gains by the opposition in Singapore’s recent elections, but the ruling People’s Action Party remains in power. “Singapore election: Does the political shake up change anything?” BBC News, July 22, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53471536.

118 Larus, Politics and Society in Contemporary China, 433.

119 “2021 Corruption Perceptions Index,” Transparency.org., https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021/ index/usa.

120 Larus, Politics and Society in Contemporary China, 433.

121 Pei, “Corruption Threatens China’s Future.”

122 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 84.

123 Westad, Restless Empire, 448-49.

124 Ibid., 468.

125 Yun-han Chu, “China and the Taiwan Factor,” in Diamond, Larry, Marc Plattner and Yun-han Chu, eds., Democracy in East Asia: A New Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 90. Larry Diamond, Marc Platter and Yun-han Chu, eds., Democracy in East Asia: A New Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 90.

126 Diamond, Platter and Chu, eds., Democracy in East Asia, xvii.

127 Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography, 218-19.

128 Ibid., 219.

129 Chu, “China and the Taiwan Factor,” in Democracy in East Asia, 91.

130 Ibid., 92.

131 Ibid.

132 Ibid., 99 (emphasis added).

133 Ibid.

134 Ibid., 102.

135 Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (2nd ed.) (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 283, 285.

136 “Xinhua Headlines: From Food Security to Carbon Goals, ‘Two Sessions’ Demonstrate China's Steady Steps toward Modernization,” Xinhua, March 12, 2022, https://english.news.cn/20220312/ ba8784302b8047089ddb9cea7a05537a/c.html.

137 Jacques, When China Rules the World, 199.

138 The notable exceptions are certain rare earth minerals, for which China satisfies upwards of 95 percent of the world’s demand. Ibid.

139 Ibid., 202; Keith Bradsher, “China's Economy Is Slowing, a Worrying Sign for the World,” The New York Times, January 17, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/16/business/economy/china-economy.html.

140 Jacques, When China Rules the World, 195.

141 Yawen Chen, “Xi's Wealth Redistribution Push Starts with Stick,” Reuters, August 18, 2021, https://www. reuters.com/breakingviews/xis-wealth-redistribution-push-starts-with-stick-2021-08-18/.

142 Jacques, When China Rules the World, 195.

143 Ibid., 268-69.

144 Ibid., 285.

145 Ibid., 270.

146 Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 4.

147 Ibid., 7.

148 Ibid. 149 Ibid., 8.

150 Ibid. 151 Ibid., 13. 152 Ibid., 15. 153 Ibid., 15-16. 154 Ibid., 18. 155 Ibid., 44.

156 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 101. 157 Ibid., 100.

158 Ibid.

159 Saich, Governance and Politics of China, 189. 160 Ibid. 161 Ibid., 389-90.

162 Ibid., 385.

163 Ibid., 372-79.

164 “China’s Future: Xi Jinping and the Chinese dream,” Economist, May 4, 2013.

165 Dickson, The Party and the People, 27.

166 Ibid., 25-28; Jack Erickson, “Is Xi Jinping the New Mao Zedong?” The National Interest, November 2, 2020.

167 Dickson, The Party and the People, 27.

168 Ibid.

169 The likelihood of such unanimous support, especially for a turn to democracy, will be addressed later in assessing intent.

170 Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 39.

171 Yang Yao, “The End of the Beijing Consensus,” Foreign Affairs, February 2, 2010.

172 “Households' Income and Consumption Expenditure in 2021,” National Bureau of Statistics of China, January 18, 2022, http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t20220118_1826649.html.

173 Zhong Nan, “Inland Regions' Share of Foreign Trade Grows.” China Daily, August 13, 2021. https:// global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202108/13/WS6115c79ba310efa1bd6688a2.html.

174 Yang Yao, “The End of the Beijing Consensus,” (emphasis added).

175 John Lee, “China’s Corporate Leninism,” The American Interest, May-June 2012 (emphasis in original).

176 George Friedman, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 88.

177 Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower, 69.

178 Ibid., 68.

179 Email to the author from Mr. Lonnie Henley, Senior Analyst for China, Defense Intelligence Agency, November 13, 2013.

180 British historian Lord Acton (1834-1902) included this wisdom in a letter to Anglican Bishop Mandell Creighton about how historians should judge the abuse of power by past rulers.

181 Smith, The World’s Religions, 179.

182 Gilley, China’s Democratic Future, 57.

183 Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 18.

184 Tom Lasseter, “Chinese Communist Party may fear reform more than corruption,” McClatchy Newspapers, November 13, 2012.

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