CHINA: Author Buruma Sees ‘Collapse’ of Communist Rule
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON, Dec 2 — Ian Buruma, whose writings on Japanese politics and culture and the European fascination with Asia have captivated readers around the world, has now taken on the vast and complicated subject of China and what he sees as the impending collapse of a half-century of communist rule.
In his new book, 'Bad Elements: Among the Rebels, Dissidents and Democrats of Greater China', Buruma describes the world of the Chinese dissident and political prisoner, from the perspective of political activists based in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore as well as the United States.
Based on interviews conducted over five years, he argues that the Chinese regime in Beijing will inevitably fall due to corruption and the erosion of communism as its ruling ideology.
"Strange things happen from Chinese dynasties near their end," Buruma writes in the opening paragraph of his book. "Dams break, earthquakes hit, clouds appear in the shape of weird beasts, rain falls in odd colors and insects infect the countryside."
It is an ominous picture indeed. Ominous, but justified, Buruma said in Washington. "Nobody believes in the dogma anymore," he told a forum organised by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. "Communism is simply not enough to give the government any legitimacy."
Without an ideological glue to bind its rule to the people, Buruma said the Chinese government has resorted to traditional calls to preserve order and national interests and blatant appeals to materialism — namely, that its market-oriented economic policies can help "everyone get richer".
But that approach could, in the long run, present serious problems because the free flow of goods and open capital markets often produce economic crises, such as the one that gripped most of East Asia just a few short years ago.
"A government without legitimacy is not well-placed to cope with a crisis," he said. "Things could get very ugly indeed." The likelihood of unrest is strongest in rural China and among the urban unemployed, said Buruma, who has spent many years in Asia and studied in Japan.
In analysing the ruling circles in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, Buruma sees striking parallels in the intersection between politics and culture. Throughout greater China, he says, there is an assumption by the ruling parties that their special brand of politics — whether Marxist-Leninist in Beijing or free-market authoritarianism in Singapore — means that government is the guardian of Chinese institutions and tradition.
"The idea that strong authoritarian government is a barrier against chaos" runs strong in both China and Singapore, he said. And in Taiwan, the Kuomintang, the long-time ruling party made up of Chinese exiles that fled the mainland in 1949, "saw themselves as the true guardians of the Chinese traditions smashed by Mao (Zedong)".
"It's a kind of cosmic idea of politics that goes back centuries," Buruma said. Traditional Chinese rulers view themselves as "people who mediate between heaven and earth" and protect Chinese ethics, culture and politics from outside forces. That makes it easy for them to criticise "dissidents as anti-Chinese".
Such thinking has profound implications for dissidents. "To be a rebel means not just being a political rebel but a saviour of Chinese civilisation," he added.
In the long run, Buruma said, "the only guarantee of stability in China" is a "democratic, representative system".
Minxin Pei, a political scientist and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the "real challenge" for Chinese dissidents is to "find practical ways to institutionalise democratic traditions".
Pei argued that, while democratic pluralism is the preferred route to stability, there are dangers ahead as China approaches the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. "The transition itself is fraught with upheaval," he said. "The current regime is poorly equipped to deal with a democratic transition. It hasn't really faced up to its misdeeds and atrocities over the past 50 years."
As a result, Chinese-style 'glasnost' "is likely to unleash a flood of recrimination and anger" that would be "destabilising rather than enhancing stability". Part of the problem, he suggested, is that the Communist Party is in complete control of the Chinese state. "If the party were to collapse, there is a failed state, or there is no state."
Pei cast doubt on whether overseas Chinese dissidents have the political capability to become a force in a post-communist China. Because dissidents are uprooted from their mother country, he said, their "voices are muted" and their ability to sustain themselves as a political force are limited.
At the same time, within the United States dissidents are divided into factions that rarely compromise, further limiting their political effectiveness.
"When a regime changes, they'd have to compete with other groups for power," he said of the overseas groups. When that happened in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, he noted, the "Soviet exiles returned but quickly disappeared".
Dimon Liu, a U.S.-based author who is one of those overseas dissidents, argued that a rapid transition to democracy is possible in China. "Anyone who argues for a slow transition is not a true democrat," she said. "If you' re going to make a transition, make it quickly." (IPS/2001)
