{"id":2468,"date":"2015-04-29T08:57:12","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T12:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacy\/?p=2468"},"modified":"2015-04-29T08:57:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T12:57:12","slug":"china-collapsing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/2015\/04\/china-collapsing\/","title":{"rendered":"China Collapsing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/a>, David Shambaugh, an expert on China working at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, made a poignant prediction about China. It\u2019s beginning to unravel.<\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t believe him, right? There have been others\u00a0before him<\/a>\u00a0that have predicted the collapse of China. Most famous, Gordon Chang\u00a0said it would happen in 2011. It didn\u2019t occur, so then he amended his timeline. He said that he was only off by one year. But he was still wrong.<\/p>\n

Then, another scholar joined the discussion but stopped short of making a prediction. Roderick MacFarquhar, a Harvard professor and China specialist, talks about present day China in a familiar way. While not presaging its collapse, as David Shambaugh has done, he recognizes the crisis of the party. The dangers of a corruption campaign that goes too deep as well as a party that is lost its way. MacFarquhar\u00a0 says, \u201cWe don\u2019t know at what stage of the campaign against corruption, the campaign on closing in of ideas from abroad, which could harm the economy, of course, at what stage someone inside China will say: \u201cThis is not going to work. We\u2019ve got to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even some scholars inside of China, while resistant, are\u00a0unable to provide a good response<\/a>. Xie Tao of Beijing Foreign Studies University, gives a lackluster argument saying that China has survived crises in the past, it can do it again. He even goes as far as to commit the logical fallacy of\u00a0tu quoque<\/em>. He says, \u201cChina is sick \u2014 but so is every other country in the world, though each country is sick with different symptoms, for different reasons, and of different degrees.\u201d These can hardly be strung together to represent a cogent argument against claims from two China specialists Roderick MacFarquhar and David Shambaugh. Moreover, he does not even address some of the more poignant claims by other academics about the shelf life of a one party system.<\/p>\n

The Global Times, the Fox news of China, weighed in with similar poorly constructed arguments. The Global times\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0says that David Shambaugh is well a known China researcher in America but his use of \u201croller coaster\u201d logic (\u8fc7\u5c71\u8f66<\/strong>\u822c\u7684\u903b\u8f91) will make people disappointed in his conclusion. He is no longer a good scholar on China but instead heavily swayed by politics using catchy headlines, much like Gordon Chang, to attract the attention of the public. (\u4ed6\u5bf9\u4e2d\u56fd\u7684\u7814\u7a76\u7f3a\u5c11\u8d85\u8d8a\u6027\u7684\u5b9a\u529b\uff0c\u4ed6\u6700\u7ec8\u6ca1\u80fd\u8df3\u51fa\u897f\u65b9\u4ef7\u503c\u89c2\u6216\u653f\u6cbb\u89c4\u5f8b\u5bf9\u5176\u7814\u7a76\u7684\u5e72\u6270\uff0c\u4ed6\u53d8\u5f97\u50cf\u7ae0\u5bb6\u6566\u4e4b\u6d41\u4e00\u6837\u5eb8\u4fd7\uff0c\u9760\u7ed9\u4e2d\u56fd\u201c\u5360\u535c\u201d\u6765\u535a\u897f\u65b9\u8206\u8bba\u7684\u773c\u7403) Attacking the credibility of someone is not a valid way to retort. If David Shambaugh and Roderick MacFarquhar are incorrect, why has there been no convincing arguments opposing their statements?<\/p>\n

So we have two prominent scholars talking about similar symptoms of the current day Chinese Communist Party and China can\u2019t logically reply except by attacking the author\u2019s credibility or committing logical fallacies.<\/p>\n

To clarify a little, another academic in 2012 also talked about the shelf life of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Minxin Pei is also in partial agreement with Shambaugh. In 2012, at the Aspen Institute, he\u00a0predicted<\/a>\u00a0that China will become democratic, the CPC will collapse, in \u2018no more than 15 years, but no less than ten years.\u2019 His statement comes around the 41-minute mark.\u00a0He also released an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0in 2012\u00a0stating the same. He makes another poignant point that one party states rarely last beyond their seventh decade in power. The Communist party is at the 65-year mark.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know when it will happen, but nothing lasts forever. David Shambaugh, Minxin Pei and Roderick MacFarquhar (and other unnamed academics) are all correct in highlighting the deficiencies in China currently. But the truth is China\u2019s impending collapse could have been predicted in 1949 which is the date of establishment of the People\u2019s Republic of China. Communism does not work. Russia, Somalia, Romania, Mongolia, and many others are all examples of Communist states that have fallen.\u00a0China<\/a>,\u00a0Cuba<\/a>, Laos<\/a>,\u00a0Vietnam<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0North Korea\u00a0<\/a>are present day\u00a0Communist states, but they represent a minority.<\/p>\n

Arguments that point out China\u2019s coming collapse are unnecessary. Even if the current political temperature in China is indicative of a coming unravelling, like Shambaugh predicts, or China will\u00a0democratize in 15 years –\u00a0it will still be China. We need to change the paradigm to think about China as evolving, not collapsing. Chinese people will always exist and the culture will live on whether China is Communist or not. We need to manage the transition peacefully.<\/p>\n

By<\/p>\n

Daniel Connor<\/p>\n

Daniel Connor is an associate editor at the Journal of Diplomacy. He is pursuing a master’s degree in Asian Studies and a master\u2019s degree in\u00a0Diplomacy and International Relations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Featured Image: Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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