Is China cracking up?

• Author: Levine, Paul

In March David Shambaugh published an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal under the headline, "The Coming Chinese Crackup." "The endgame of communist rule in China has begun," the article continued, "and Xi Jinping's ruthless measures are only bringing the country closest to a breaking point." With this opening proclamation, Shambaugh certainly got our attention.

Though predicting the Communist Party's collapse might be counterintuitive, David Shambaugh is not the first China watcher to imagine the worst. In 2001 Gordon G. Chang published The Coming Collapse of China. in which he argued that the end of Communist Party rule was inevitable. He wrote, "As time passes, the underlying problems fester. Economic dislocations become social ones, with dark political overtones. At some point there will be no solution. Then the economy, and the government will collapse. We are not far from that time." Over the last decade, Chang has been updating his timetable without altering his prediction. He is still convinced the communist system will collapse in the near future. His most recent article in Forbes is entitled, "China: Did We Just Hear The Death Rattle Of The Economy?"

But this prediction is different. Chang is a lawyer, columnist and television commentator. Professor David Shambaugh is a respected scholar not given to hyperbole. He is one of the heavyweights among China hands: director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University and a non-resident scholar at the Brookings Institution. Over the past thirty years he has published nineteen highly regarded academic books on China. (See my review of China Goes Global: The Partial Power in the February 2014 issue.) In fact, just recently China Foreign Affairs University (CFAU is part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) named Shambaugh as one of the two most influential American experts on China. (Have heads rolled at CFAU since?)

Five "Telling" Indicators

Shambaugh cites five "telling" indicators that point to a coming collapse. The first is the rising number of defections of those who have profited most from the present regime: Party officials and private entrepreneurs. Shambaugh says, "First, China's economic elites have one foot out the door, and they are ready to flee en masse if the system begins to crumble." Many have noted the startling outflow of capital from China and the increasing numbers of affluent Chinese students traveling abroad. Shambaugh cites a survey by the Hurun Research Institute in Shanghai which showed that 64 percent of China's wealthiest individuals were either emigrating or planning to do so. "Wealthy Chinese are also buying property abroad at record levels and prices, and they are parking their financial assets overseas, often in well-shielded tax havens and shell companies."

The amassing of great wealth has become a major pastime among China's political and business elites. "China is the world's fastest-growing source of new billionaires," notes Evan Osnos. "Several of the new plutocrats have been among the world's most dedicated thieves; others have been holders of high public office. Some have been both." Recently the government published with great fanfare a list of one hundred Chinese fugitives who are accused of large-scale corruption. (Forty are reported to be living in the United States, which has no extradition treaty with China.)

Second is the increasing political repression directed toward any form of opposition to the regime. Shambaugh notes, "The targets include the press, social media, film, arts and literature, religious groups, the Internet. intellectuals, Tibetans and Uighers, dissidents, lawyers, NGOs, university students and textbooks." In other words, anyone in China who will not sing in Party harmony and instead marches to a different drummer. Political oppression has risen and ebbed over decades of Party rule. Susan Shirk points to increasing repression in recent years. "Party censorship tightened in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics and never relaxed after that," says Shirk. "Reporters and editors have to tiptoe around taboo topics, including anything regarding high-level national leaders." This has only increased since Xi Jinping came to power. In February 2014 a seventy-nine-year-old Hong Kong book editor named You Mantin was arrested on a trip to the mainland and sentenced to ten years in prison for allegedly smuggling seven cans of paint. His real crime: his publishing house was about to release an unflattering biography of Xi by the exiled writer Yu Jie.

Censorship has also increased in China's troubled universities. Shambaugh points to a recent Central Committee directive, Document 9, which orders educational institutions to ban discussion of Western ideas, including universal values, civil society, rule of law, freedom of the press and constitutional democracy. The education minister, Yuan Guiren, explained the policy as part of an ongoing culture war. "Young teachers and students are key targets of infiltration by enemy forces," Yuan said. "We must, by no means, allow into our classrooms material that propagates Western values." The hypocrisy of this directive was self-evident in the large number of Party functionaries who send their children to study abroad. Even president Xi's daughter recently graduated from Harvard!

Gao Yu, the seventy-one-year-old journalist who reported on this confidential directive, was arrested for "revealing state secrets" and sentenced last month to seven years in prison. She is the latest in a long string of recently jailed journalists. Last December, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported there were forty-four reporters in Chinese jails, more than anywhere else in the world. But repression is not limited to journalists. Evan Osnos reports, "In 2014, the government arrested nearly a thousand members of civil society, more than in any year since the mid-nineteen nineties." That is, more arrests than at any time since the aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre.

Third is the growing disaffection of even party regulars with the regime's uninspiring message. As the Central Committee ratchets up its propaganda machine, its slogans fall increasingly on deaf ears. Shambaugh describes a high-powered academic conference he attended in 2014. Though the subject...