The Return of One-Man Rule: Increasing Risk in China

In my prior post, I talked about the tendency in foreign affairs to assume that things will continue as they have been.  I looked at Russia and the risks that may come from Russia as it declines.

The country, however, that could be an even greater risk is one that seems the very opposite of instability right now: China.  While The Economist saw Russia as a declining power, it said “China is clearly a rising one that has time on its side”.  Such a view fits with President Xi’s reelection last year and his changes to both the Chinese constitution and the party/governmental structure this year.  It certainly seems that President Xi is in control and that China has the time – and stability – to play the long game.  Once again, I wonder,

While some see President Xi’s moves as helping to insure stability, he is reversing changes Deng Xiaoping made forty years ago, after the Cultural Revolution, precisely to insure stability.  Deng separated, to some degree, the Chinese government and the Communist Party, and he instituted procedures for regular transitions of power.  Since then, China has avoided, except for the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the kind of upheavals it had in the three decades before that.

From 1949 to 1976, China was under the one-man rule of Mao Zedong.¹  In 1958, Mao instituted the Great Leap Forward.  From 1966 to 1976, it was the Cultural Revolution.  Mao was able to do these things because he had consolidated all power in himself.  Millions died from unnecessary starvation during the Great Leap Forward.  In many ways, the Cultural Revolution may have been even worse.  And China stagnated economically.

It was Deng Xiaoping’s changes that started China’s economic transformation.  Deng’s approach was perhaps summed up in his saying: “It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.” 

President Xi now says his actions are necessary to overcome the foot-dragging of an entrenched bureaucracy and to redirect China’s slowing economy – as well as making China a global power.  Certainly, people everywhere are tired of bureaucrats and of economies that are not growing fast enough.  Also, it seems hard to believe Xi Jinping would order anything as perverse as the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. 

But the risks of one-man rule are in its name: one man.  Everything depends on the one person in charge.  If he makes the right decisions, everything will be fine.  But can we assume that, unlike Chairman Mao, President Xi will make only correct decisions?  Are we sure the problems under Mao Zedong were the result of his decisions, as opposed to being inherent in the one-man rule he established?

We don’t know what is going to happen in China.  What we do know is that China is moving to a system of one-man rule, without a clear procedure for transfer of power, a system which resulted in massive problems not that long ago.  While President Xi thinks his changes are necessary to ensure stability, might they as likely result in uncertainty and instability?  As with a Russia on the decline, a China under a revived system of one-man control has the potential to be a source of instability and danger. 

The lesson for the United States with respect to both Russia and China is such the same: Instead of assuming that things will continue as they have been, we must be prepared for surprises, and dangers, that we aren’t expecting and couldn’t have guessed.
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¹ Formerly, Mao Tse-tung.
² See, inter alia, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.  The book is banned in China.  However, you do not get in trouble for taking it into China and leaving it there (at least we didn’t in 2015).  Our tour guide was very excited to get a copy.