In the service of making a completely plausible argument that you welcome China's emergence as a big power because it strengthens the "axis of good" in the global system you disingenuously misconstrue the domestic situation in China. I say "disingenuous" because I prefer to extend you the compliment of being a sophist rather than the insult of being a naif. Your sophistry however is not so sophisticated as to be invisible altogether.
1) Many protestors in the PRC especially idled SOE workers in their 40's and 50's, but also some unofficial peasant associations explicitly frame their grievances in terms of the disappearance of socialist entitlements and the loss of an egalitarian ethos. There is thus an implicit demand among an unmeasured segment of ordinary people for some combination of a "return to (a) state socialist past... or progress to a new democratic socialist future." Scholars ranging from Elizabeth Perry (fairly mainstream academic Sinologist) to Robert Weil (reconstructed Maoist) have documented this. This sentiment may not be universal, coherent, or in possession of an independent organizational vehicle, but it is unmistakably there. 2) Suppose your assertion that protestor demands are principally "economistic" is correct. So what? Cannot economistic complaints be radical criticisms if a regime cannot adequately deal with them? (I suppose you acknowledge this when you write about the possible consequences of a downturn in growth). What is your criterion for determining whether or not a significantly large number of people desire structural change? Most of them have to have in their minds a refined revolutionary critique? Name one historical situation, even under the most dire of circumstances, in which this was actually true. Did the rural populace in the 1940's flock to the leadership of the Red Army because they believed in the principles of Maoism, or because in the liberated zones they sought effective refuge from usury, rack-rent, crooked administration, collaboration with the Japanese killing machine, and so on? 3) Some of the demands which you yourself classify as "economistic" are anything but: "social rights"? "less corruption"? Myriad peasant challenges to massive land confiscation is "economistic"? Violent rural resistance to illegal toxic pollution is "economistic"? I suppose that any struggle that does not directly oppose the purported policy orientation of Beijing "harmonious society," "sustainable development," etc. qualifies in your book as "economistic." But at the end of the day, do you think protestors will be quelled by reassurances from the central government that it supports a "harmonious society" and "sustainable development," as long as the local face of the party-state is iredeemably roguish and venal? Now, I'm not about to claim that mass upheaval is right around the corner in China, nor that if it were, it would be an ideal development. I just find your claims to be inconsistent and sloppy and intellectually dishonest. Why not just contend that China's ascent to the status of economic colossus is a net gain because fostering international alliances against US empire is more politically important than moving toward democratic socialism at home? Why all the tendentious assertions about the complacent social consciousness of the PRC's popular classes? John Gulick Akita, Japan Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
China is no longer a socialist power but an emergent capitalist power. What are we to make of this fact? It seems to me that it is no use bemoaning China's capitalist turn, unless and until masses of China's workers and peasants demand the return to its state socialist past (unlikely and undesirable) or progress to a new democratic socialist future. As far as I can see, a great majority of Chinese workers and peasants are doing neither, and what they are doing seems to be to make economistic demands: demanding better wages, better working conditions, labor rights, social rights, less corruption, and so on, while accepting capitalist development itself as a matter of fact. Numerous economistic protests may eventually coalesce into a united national force presenting a viable alternative to what China's current power elite offer, but they have not done so yet, and they are unlikely to do so while China maintains its current high growth rates. When China experiences an economic downturn (as it inevitably will sometime in the future), and if the downturn is very disruptive, China may enter a new chapter in its history, but it is also possible that the downturn to come may be slow and gradual, demobilizing rather than escalating the protests.
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