The Chinese Communist Party is doomed

Painted portrait of Xi Jinping :: © Thierry Ehrmann :: Flickr :: CC BY 2.0

If you are inclined to go along with the view of one highly influential China scholar based in the US, at least. David Shambaugh, professor of international affairs and director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, dropped a bombshell with his essay titled 'The Coming Chinese Crackup', published as an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on March 6 (online version).

In this outspoken article, the renowned specialist on China's domestic politics presents five major reasons for the coming collapse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): rising numbers of members of the economic elites who emigrate or plan to do so, escalating political repression as a sign of heightened regime insecurity, feigned compliance of regime loyalists, widespread systemic corruption and, finally, a stuttering economy that is stuck in traps.

Shambaugh concludes:

'We cannot predict when Chinese communism will collapse, but it is hard not to conclude that we are witnessing its final phase. The CCP is the world’s second-longest ruling regime (behind only North Korea), and no party can rule forever. 

Looking ahead, China-watchers should keep their eyes on the regime's instruments of control and on those assigned to use those instruments. Large numbers of citizens and party members alike are already voting with their feet and leaving the country or displaying their insincerity by pretending to comply with party dictates. 

We should watch for the day when the regime's propaganda agents and its internal security apparatus start becoming lax in enforcing the party’s writ - or when they begin to identify with dissidents; like the East German Stasi agent in the film "The Lives of Others" who came to sympathize with the targets of his spying. 

When human empathy starts to win out over ossified authority, the endgame of Chinese communism will really have begun.'

I admit to be really baffled by this harsh judgement.

Wasn't that the guy who has argued in his book 'China's Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation' from 2008 (Amazon) so very convincingly that the Chinese Communist Party is indeed a remarkably adaptive organism? Having no idea what brought about this astonishing turnaround, I am surely not the only one expressing serious misgivings about this latest assessment of the purported weaknesses of the CCP.

To name just one example, ChinaFile has asked seven experts from different fields for their comments on Shambaugh's recent thesis; most of them didn't exactly follow his lead (for their respective arguments, see here).

The controversial essay has stirred so much debate that The New York Times decided to do a follow-up interview with David Shambaugh on March 15 to give him an opportunity to clarify his point of view. In the lengthy Q&A on the Sinosphere blog, the American academic reiterates his position and elaborates on crucial matters - sounding a little more defensive than in the original article.

To be honest, I don't find his reasoning very plausible:

The CCP has managed to adapt to comparable crises rather well many times over; why the hell should the party-state implode just now?

Prognoses about the fate of the Chinese Communist Party and the regime it has established have been and will surely continue to be notoriously difficult; time and again, professional China observers have failed to foresee game-changing developments.

One of the participants in ChinaFile's aforementioned conversation, Arthur Kroeber, wisely notes:

'Predictions of Chinese political collapse have a long and futile history. Their persistent failure stems from a basic conceptual fault. Instead of facing the Chinese system on its own terms and understanding why it works - which could create insights into why it might stop working - critics judge the system against what they would like it to be, and find it wanting. This embeds an assumption of fragility that makes every societal problem look like an existential crisis.'

What are your thoughts?