What Beijing Leaders Know That Critics Won’t See: Repression Can Be Profitable : China: Democratic political change, far from being necessary for the functioning of its capitalism, would imperil the whole reformist scheme.

China’s communist leaders gathered in Beijing this week to reinforce the status quo. They solidified the Stalinist political regime over which they preside and called for a quick ening of the capitalist restructuring of the Chinese economy from which they profit.

Most foreign commentators applauded their accelerated movement toward a capitalist economy, officially known as a “socialist market economy,” while deploring the absence of any movement toward democratic political change. They detected a grave contradiction between the “deepening” of economic reform and the lack of political reform. Many predicted that economic change would inevitably produce political changes, and that the latter would be necessary for continued economic growth.

The foreigners missed the point. It is only by retaining tight political control that communist bureaucrats can benefit from the capitalist economic system they are creating. As many Chinese citizens can bitterly relate, the officials--and their relatives--have already profited handsomely, along with foreign investors and a small group of private Chinese entrepreneurs, the latter two groups supplying the capital necessary for economic success, in general, and for bureaucratic enrichment, in particular. Democratic political change, far from being necessary for the functioning of Chinese capitalism, would imperil the whole reformist scheme of things and those who benefit from it.

From the beginning of the reform movement 14 years ago, Deng Xiaoping grasped the point his Western admirers still fail to fully comprehend. Shortly after he launched his market-oriented economic reform program, he called for political changes. And he repeatedly said, as foreign observers now so often say, that political reform was an essential precondition for the success of economic reform. But by “political reform,” Deng made clear he meant not democracy, but simply the modernization and professionalization of the bureaucracy.

His main aim, as he enunciated it in 1980, was to make communist bureaucrats “better educated, professionally more competent and younger. This was to be done within the framework of the soon-to-be-sacrosanct “four cardinal principles,” most important of which is “the leading role” of the Chinese Communist Party. With the political monopoly of the party thus preserved, Deng was confident that most of its members would soon learn to appreciate the magic of the market. And so they have.

The recently concluded 14th Party Congress not only canonized Deng’s program for capitalist economic restructuring, but also marked the success of his proposals for “political reform.” The newly selected Central Committee is dominated by middle-aged technocrats, 84% of whom are college graduates, just as the paramount leader advised 12 years ago.

Furthermore, Deng has managed to depoliticize intraparty politics. What is sometimes still reported as fierce clashes between “Marxist hard-liners” and “pragmatic reformers” over the great issues of capitalism and socialism are, in fact, little more than rivalries between different sectors of the bureaucracy over the pace, timing and beneficiaries of the privatization of state property. As a political bonus, Deng has been rechristened by Western commentators as an enlightened free-market reformer--barely three years after he was almost universally condemned as the butcher of Beijing.

With or without Deng, it seems likely that China’s extraordinarily rapid modernization will proceed, at least for the foreseeable future, in combination with a repressive Leninist political dictatorship. China is by no means a historical oddity in this respect. Successful cases of “late modernization” typically have taken place under the auspices of dictatorial states. Meiji Japan and Bismarckian Germany in the late 19th Century are the most notable examples of rapid capitalist industrialization that proceeded under the guidance of highly authoritarian states. Both countries, it might be recalled, eventually turned to fascist political solutions.

More recent historical examples are the much-celebrated “little dragons” of East Asia--especially Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore--where rapid capitalist development has been presided over by repressive one-party dictatorships. Closer to home, it might be remembered that in Chile, in the early 1970s, the democratically elected socialist government of the Marxist Salvador Allende was overthrown in favor of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose fascist-like regime then proceeded to impose a “free market” economy.

While it is comforting for some to believe that a capitalist market economy is likely to yield political democracy, there is, in fact, little modern historical evidence to support this belief. Capitalism in the modern world has proved compatible with a great variety of political regimes, not excluding fascism--and, if the case of present-day China is to be taken into account, apparently not excluding Stalinism, either.

Political democracy in the modern world has resulted from the complex coincidence of various historical, social and cultural factors. An explanation of its presence or absence cannot be reduced to a simple universal economic formula; rather, it must be arrived at through the concrete study of individual historical cases. The common association of capitalism and democracy is derived from the histories of the early capitalist countries of the West. One of the many essential features of those histories was a social class, the bourgeoisie, who found some form of parliamentary government suited to its interests and ideals.

That historical circumstance is not likely to be repeated in the late 20th Century, and especially not in China, where there is no genuine bourgeoisie, and where a capitalist market economy has been ushered in by a Stalinist state.

This by no means precludes democracy in China. The Chinese people--socialists as well as liberals, masses as well as intellectuals--have been struggling for democratic rights as an end in itself for more than a century. If they ultimately succeed, however, it will not be so much because of the development of the capitalist market economy, but more likely because of the political opposition to the communist state and a part of those adversely affected by the development of capitalism. A foretaste of that opposition came when urban workers joined students in the great democracy movement of 1989. That fact, no doubt, weighs heavily on the minds of communist leaders in Beijing, as they prepare the implement the 14th party congress injunctions to speed up the process of capitalist restructuring.