Shopping in Beijing. For a Conservative, validation & vindication.
What is a conservative to make of China? The short, and possibly surprising, answer: A conservative should be delighted with today’s China. That’s because China is a validation and vindication of what conservatives for decades have been saying about how the world works. China today represents a victory for the American conservative worldview. For the moment, at least, let’s savor and celebrate that victory.
Testing our presidents. Of course, China poses a raft of potential and serious security, military and economic problems. How we handle these will determine to a great extent America’s place in the 21st century’s second half. Nothing will test our presidents’ skills and astuteness more than how they manage China’s emergence as (to invoke the grand 19th century term) a great power. In subsequent postings I’ll explore these issues – though here let’s note that despite agonizing failures in other areas the Bush Administration’s China policies were superb, serving America well and wisely continued by Obama.
But first, for today, let’s look at why conservatives should be smug and delighted by China. The reasons hit every visitor to China in the face. On the streets of Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Nanjing, Chongqing and dozens of other cities, in their shopping malls and open-air markets, in talks with curious young and old at the ubiquitous Starbucks, in the TV commercials, billboards, show windows and other barometers of aspiration, it is clear that China validates what we’ve been saying about how economies can grow and spread wealth throughout an even vast population.
It validates the late Julian Simon’s oft repeated assertion that people are an asset (in fact, the most important asset), not a liability, as the prophets of the “limits of growth” school constantly told us in the 1970s and 1980s. Offer people the right incentives, wrote Simon, and they will produce and innovate. That is China today. Its verdict: Socialism doesn’t work and can’t – ever– work; only free markets unleash individual creativity and ambition.
Vindication. Then there is our vindication. China vindicates what we (often embattled and alone) long were saying about the brutality and incompetency of China’s Communist dictators. For many years, long decades, in fact, we were lectured condescendingly by liberals and other leftists who praised Mao and his policies, rationalized and excused his failings, ignored his brutality, papered-over his lies and distortions of history. For those long years we were made to feel dumb and reactionary as professors, experts and journalists told us that we simply were too intellectually dense or ideologically blind to grasp why Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” were not catastrophes but merely speed-bumps on the path to a better China.
Well, where are these experts now, as we wait for them to admit that they were wrong and to apologize for having misled us? The Chinese know what happened and now confront those horrid years, recognizing that Mao not only failed them but that his victims exceeded those of Hitler and Stalin combined. As it turns out, we weren’t wrong about China in those years; the left was wrong.
Validation. Vindication. For a conservative to visit China today is to feel triumphant.
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I agree with you that the economic success in China is from the party’s conservative policy. Mr. Deng and Mr. Jiang not only corrected Chairman Mao’s radical policy but also they cracked down any democratic request from Chinese people. The Chinese government justifies June 4th 1989 with the economic success afterward.
Maybe Mr. Deng in 1989 foresaw that a radical democratic change in China would bring chaos in China and delay the economic development. The change in Russia and East Europe in early 1990’s proved Mr. Deng was right.
However, after 20 years, the government still follows this policy, which, I think, may bring China into chaos. GDP growth covered up all the corruptions and resentment. If the government now will not change the way they govern the country and its people, I am not optimistic of the next 10 years of China.
Regards
I absolutely agree with you.
This post is intended not to analyze China and its internal developments. It is to analyze the view of China held by many American conservatives. Very many conservatives are still very anti-China, still very opposed to China. They see China simply as a Communist country, and thus they reflexively are against it.
I wrote the post to argue that we conservatives actually should be very happy by what is happening in China because, as I write, it “validates” what conservatives say about how an economy should function and it “vindicates” our criticism of Mao.
You in Beijing may not realize that here in the U.S. in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s it was very difficult to criticize Mao. A great number of liberals always supported him and made explanations and excuses for his terrible policies. I personally encountered that often. If someone (such as I) would say that Mao was a tyrant and that his policies were disastrous, we were criticized as being stupid. What has happened in China since 1978 “vindicates” our criticism of Mao.
I thus wrote this post to tell conservatives that they should not automatically be anti-PRC. They are wrong if they are. To be sure, there are many reasons for us to criticize the PRC today. But when we conservatives make the criticisms, they should be based on today’s facts.
From the perspective of China and its internal developments, I think you are very correct. There must be increased liberalization of China’s economy and political process. If there is not, then there can be, as you say, a disaster. Without political liberalization, which encourages individual independence and creativity, economic growth will slow and that will create great political problems.
Part of the problem in China, I suspect,now is generational. Some of the old guard remain in top leadership slots. They are still Communists who believe strongly that the Communist Party must dominate China. For this generation, it is difficult to accept liberalization because that would be, in many ways, for them to admit that they were wrong. It is difficult for any leadership group to admit mistakes.
But, this older generation is dying. Soon there will be few who will be locked-into a reflexive defense of the old ways and resistance to liberalization. Just look what has happened in the past week regarding the Chinese government’s announcement that all new PCs must install a device to block access to some internet sites. There has been a huge huge protest against this inside China. Not only is there protest on Chinese websites and blogs, but also in Chinese newspapers. That is a terrific sign. That protest would not have happened even 5 years ago. As economic growth keeps expanding China’s middle class, that middle class will demand – as middle classes always have throughout history, everywhere – that it be given a bigger political voice. That will happen in China.
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