China watchers are fixated on whether the new leader, XiJinping, will be a reformer in the mode of Deng Xiaoping, the man credited withopening China’s economy to the world three decades ago. Many hope that Xi willbe as aggressive on political liberalisation as Deng was on economicliberalisation.
But this focus on personalities may be misplaced, given thecollective nature of China’s decision-making. More attention needs to be givento whether China’s unique form of regional decentralisation – which triggered aremarkable economic transformation but discouraged political liberalisation –can continue unchanged.
China is unique in its reliance on a regionallydecentralised system to deal with both economic and political objectives.Beijing provides the regions with the flexibility to experiment with economicreforms. Promotion and the rotation of senior provincial officials, who areappointed by Beijing, are linked to the ability to achieve targets set by thecenter. So, unlike a Western-style federalist system, China’s regional leadersare more responsive to Beijing than to their local constituents.
This same approach is applied to political objectives thatare largely designed to maintain stability. Regional officials must deal withconcerns that manifest themselves through local protests in ways thatdiscourage the escalation of tensions. Protests have become the natural form ofpopular expression in China given the absence of direct elections and a strongcivil society.
These arrangements represent a form of “conditionalautonomy” that allows provincial leaders to take whatever measures they feel appropriateto promote growth and maintain political stability as long as the legitimacy ofthe regime is not threatened. But this conditional autonomy is also fraughtwith risks since excessive force can lead to more violent collective actions,and concessions may encourage protesters to extract even more from the system.Thus some form of concession with repression is typically used to resolvedisputes and discourage future incidents. This approach provides incentives forprovincial leaders to perform, but also shields Beijing from blame if somethinggoes wrong locally.
Compared with other authoritarian regimes, the top leadersare generally perceived as having the people’s interests in mind, while thelocal authorities are blamed for what goes wrong in their daily lives.
This regionally decentralised system has provedexceptionally effective in promoting economic liberalisation and for the mostpart has helped maintain social stability even though it discourages politicalliberalisation. But there is a real fear that frustration with governance willcontinue to increase without political reform.
Local authorities are often unable to address broaderconcerns, and attempts to do so might simply encourage more social unrest.While some see Chinese protests as “manageable” outlets for addressingcomplaints that can actually help stabilise rather than undermine the politicalsystem, the increasing frequency of such events and their cost – the budget forinternal security now exceeds military spending – suggest an unsustainablesituation.
Change is needed. The proposition that economicliberalisation will give birth to political liberalisation is an old one – andit has happened elsewhere. But China has been cautious. Can the new generationof senior leaders forge ahead with political liberalisation in a way that isacceptable within the party system and does not jeopardise China’s hard-woneconomic success?
Back in 1998, a law establishing more competitivevillage-level elections gave hope that the roots of change could begin at locallevels. The nature of such elections, however, with their lack of openness andlack of independence from party interventions, was disappointing.
But if these elections were truly representative, they couldput officials in place who would be more responsive to the local populace,reducing the need for public protests, and making it less necessary to appealto Beijing for intervention.
Xi Jinping and China’s other new leaders don’t need torevolutionise the country’s leadership now. Real political change can start bymoving forward with more representative local elections that will createpressures for accountability from the bottom up. This would need to besupported by a more balanced approach in dealing with social unrest that looksat more than just security considerations when handling grievances.
All of this could be done while maintaining the supremacy ofChina’s one-party system – a precondition in today’s China. The hope for apolitical opening in China lies with Xi’s willingness to make local leadersmore accountable to their constituents and not only to Beijing.
Yukon Huang is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowmentfor International Peace and a former World Bank country director for China
