Fascinating story in this morning’s Age about a senior Chinese general, Liu Yazhou, who has publicly called for China to adopt Western-style democracy to safeguard its future. According to John Garnaut, Liu writes in a Hong Kong magazine, Phoenix, that “The secret of US success is … its long-surviving rule of law and the system behind it”, and that “Democracy is the most urgent; without it there is no sustainable rise.”
Confirmation of a serious debate on the issue comes from a BBC report that a group of Chinese scholars have criticised their country’s “unprecedented conceit and arrogance”, and called for greater allegiance to universal values.
Public discussion of such issues in China is tightly restricted: anyone wanting to promote reform has to either be very careful or have powerful patrons within the Communist Party hierarchy (General Liu is political commissar of the National Defence University). Political dissent is a dangerous business.
But what’s our excuse? How can it be that the prospects of democratisation in China receive less discussion in free and democratic Australia than they do in China itself?
This is going to be the biggest story in our part of the world in coming decades, bar none. How will political reform come to China: will it be gradual or sudden, peaceful or violent? How deep will the economic trauma be? Will decolonisation snowball into fragmentation, or will a militaristic backlash engulf China’s neighbors?
General Liu may be unduly optimistic when he says that “in the coming 10 years, a transformation from power politics to democracy will inevitably take place”, but there is no room for doubt that some sort of transition is on the way, and it would be idle to expect that Australia can remain unaffected.
Australia’s media and politicians ceaselessly remind us, with good cause, of how deeply our economic prosperity is tied up with China, but the coverage never scratches the surface of what that means. Instead it gives every impression that China is a normal country like any other, rather than a dictatorship with a precarious future.
Our politicians would offer the excuse that it would be bad for business to offend China’s leaders — ignoring the fact that moral cowardice is not a good way to earn respect. It is also short sighted, since the next generation of Chinese leaders might not appreciate our present attitude: having been on first-name terms with General Suharto, for example, is not much of a ticket to influence in today’s Indonesia.
But just as with the hollowness of our present election campaign, the media are the enablers in this. Instead of offering their own analysis, or at least calling some of the politicians to account, they join them in burying their heads in the sand.
In fact, media and politicians share the same fundamental flaws. They are chronically short-term in their focus, being unable to look beyond (at best) the next election, and rarely beyond the next day’s headlines. They are disinclined, whether through incompetence or lack of interest, to examine deep issues. And they worship power: their focus rarely moves from the people at the top to embrace the outsiders and the proponents of change.
Public dissatisfaction with the election coverage has been given a serious voice in a few places by critics such as Crikey’s Guy Rundle, so maybe pressure will eventually mount for change. But if turmoil in China is just around the corner, the failings of our political and media culture will be even more dramatically revealed.
This is a fairly silly article I’m afraid.
Linking dissatisfaction with election coverage in Australia to speculation on the future of China is a non sequitur.
I would agree that it is important for us to be informed about the current trends in China and what the observable debate is within China.
The thrust of this article, however, seems to be that Australians should be speculating about and even advocating for particular future reforms in China. Surely this verges on pointless arrogant hubris? The Chinese control the future of China – we don’t. The most we can do is stay informed and position Australian policy appropriately. It is neither within our power or our moral authority to directly influence whether China becomes a democracy or how they structure their economy or society…
Creeping political changes and machinations are probably going on in China all the time these days in response to both internal and external social and economic pressures and developments.
Perhaps there will be one or more future seismic socio-political events there, or perhaps not.
Experts should be reading the tea leaves for us, but it seems hard to know what impact our actions and statements are having on China.
In any case, on both domestic and foreign policy fronts, we should be honest in debate and behaviour. Not because of venal calculation of benefit, but because it is the right thing to do in a democracy.
If the standard of debate is deplorable because of media self-interest (in any sense) that is a terrible thing for the country all round, not just for foreign affairs and their consequences. There is more than one way to destroy a society.
Jackol: I don’t think anyone thinks we have much capacity to influence China’s development, but I do think if we’re kept in the dark about what might happen there then there could be all sorts of nasty surprises in the future. And the blindness of our politicians and media strikes me as as very much of a piece with their dismal performance currently on show in domestic politics.