Rejoinder to David M. Lampton

Abstract

At heart of my profound disagreement with David Lampton is his repeated invocation of phrase This is, he believes, where world should hope China is heading. In his argument, a policy of engagement and logic of change inside China will produce not necessarily liberalization, a free press or a multiparty system, but more governance. This careful wording avoids questions about nature of China's political system: whether there will ever be any organized political opposition or freedom of press. It seems to imply that what matters is not whether China's political system will change in any significant way, but rather whether its leadership will become more benevolent. By putting things in this fashion, Lampton suggests that he takes as a given, or wishes to ignore, current one-party state itself. But that system, with its lack of accountability, lies at very heart of many of China's political problems today. (Will humane solve problem of corruption, for example?) The reader should also note contradiction between, on one hand, this limited goal of and, on other, idea put forward elsewhere in Lampton's review that China needs a period of time to develop political institutions. One can certainly accept latter, as a theoretical proposition, but it raises basic question: is China building new political institutions at all? Granted, process of institutional change may take time, but Chinese regime has been unwilling to start process. Ever since 1980s, whenever idea of political reform has come up in China, its Communist Party leadership has decided against embarking down this road. Lampton argues that we should view prospects for political change in China against backdrop of what has happened elsewhere in world. I think some of his comparisons are, unintentionally, a bit insulting to China: Should we really think of China in same developmental terms as, say, Haiti or Somalia? He admonishes us to recognize that the scale of China, its dramatic internal income and other disparities, and diversity of cultural levels throughout country may affect its political development. Yet this sentence overlooks emerging realities in China today. Internal income disparities may well be not merely an obstacle to changing political system, but one of underlying motivations for preserving current system. Lampton accuses me of giving back of my hand to positive examples of South Korea and Taiwan, which demonstrate, in his words, that middle classes that gain economic security and material assets eventually demand political participation and governance constrained by law. (Please note here again Lampton's curious phraseology: governance, when in fact in both South Korea and Taiwan, issues at hand were authoritarianism, democracy and