Stein Ringen

The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century by Stein Ringen is an examination of the evolution of the modern Chinese state and current positions. Ringen is a Norwegian sociologist and political scientist. He is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford.

Ringen provides an interesting perspective on China. As a Norwegian, he is in a neutral position to give an unbiased look at China. Typical examinations of China are from expatriates and those with an anti-communist bias. Ringen is not a Chinese apologist, but a reliable source of information. He does like to compare the evolution of China with that of South Korea and nation that moved from authoritarianism to democracy and small job economy to a technological cutting edge. Korea creates. China copies.

The discussion I enjoyed the most was the one on legitimacy. Many in the west associate legitimacy with democracy, but that is not always the case. Totalitarian regimes frequently use elections to prove their legitimacy to the world. The USSR, Iraq, and Iran all had/have elections but the results are never in doubt. Legitimacy here is the internal legitimacy that keeps the local population supporting, or at least not rebelling against, the government. This is where the Chinese government holds the edge.

Many societies crave freedom or a voice in the government. The Chinese population craves stability. China has been embarrassed in the 20th century by foreign interventions from the west and Japan. Upheaval and foreign control were the norms. Now there is internal tranquility. Albeit strict and repressive, the Chinese society is stable.

Much press is given to how many people China has pulled out of poverty. The number is quite impressive, however, the number still living in poverty is enormous. China also has the greatest income inequality in the world. But there is a hope that people will be better off as the economy grows. Corruption is being attacked by the government offering a more fair footing. The government is trapped in a game of maintaining power and keeping the population compliant.

There is plenty of discussion on economy and growth as well as the quality of the growth -- assembly jobs vs innovation. The People's Army is covered as a source of power in the state and its reform into a professional army from a political tool. The intertwining of the party and the state also create a unique power system different from the Soviet or totalitarian regimes. This is the key to the "Perfect Dictatorship." A well researched and refreshing look at Modern China.

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Overestimating China, Underestimating Its Leaders

This monograph of China explains the entire government structure, including naming all the opaque black boxes in the schema. It lays out the rankings, the social services, the offices, the departments, and most importantly, the guiding principles of all of them - The Party. It is comprehensive, realistic, and most of all, revealing. China is not doing nearly as well as it says or we think.

Ringen says the present nihilistic, materialistic, money grubbing state of China is a direct result of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. At that time the Chinese believed they were on an upward curve, but The Party/state informed them in no uncertain terms that freedom was not and never would be available to the Chinese. “The economy is for the state; it is not for the other way around,” Ringen says. As long as the perception is that China is growing at near double digit rates, people and business are pacified, and The Party can flourish. That is why the official statistics are all lies.

Like any garden variety dictatorship, China is paranoid. There are files on literally everyone. There are untold numbers of different police forces, operating thuggishly and plainclothesed. Local officials are promoted on the basis of their intelligence gathering. Local housewives are community spies. Photocopy stores feed directly to intelligence services. Arrest and unlimited detention do not require charges, and when they come, they are often bizarre and clearly not in violation of any law. Nonetheless, people are sometimes held for life, their families evicted, and if they had students, they can be jailed and tortured too. Nothing can interfere with the ethos The Party wants for China. Ringen’s longest most detailed chapter concerns such cases of arrest or censorship. It seems that China’s whole internal focus is to prevent people coming together. Any concerted effort from anywhere is crushed, often before it can act. That is how thorough and subversive the intelligence gathering is. The country can afford over a million people censoring the internet, but it won’t allow people driven from the countryside to the cities the same social rights as city dwellers. Ringen says China has performed remarkably poorly in raising living standards, compared to other countries such as South Korea or even Britain when compared from the same starting point in 1949. The Party, however, has performed miracles for its members. Ringen estimates the state skims more than half and possibly two-thirds of GDP. It clearly does not give that much back. Taxes are oppressive, and daily corruption adds to the burden.

The bulk of the book examines the structures in place: the tax structure, the safety net, the justice system, the hukou residency system, the class system, and of course, The Party, for which everything else has been built. Ringen says China is not there for its people (a welfare state) and it is not there for its vision (ideological state). It is there purely to support, sustain and promote The Party, which he calls a “trivial state” – no greater purpose.

Ringen cautions that we might be at common turning point, one we always miss. The rise of the Nazis, the rise of the USSR – and maybe now China. The parallels are eerily similar. We have long, and continue to pretend, that China is moving towards liberalization and democracy. It isn’t. It is moving to secure the future of The Party, and that does not involve either democracy or liberalization, he says. The leadership makes no bones about it. The sooner we start taking the official words of Chinese leaders literally, the better we will be positioned to deal with the fallout.

David Wineberg… (més)

Politics is an inside affair even in democratic societies. The only persons who really know how decisions and compromises are reached are the ones who make them. But even if politicians may write candidly in their political memoirs, they often lack the perspective to see their actions in a broader context, set apart from the personages and particular interests they happened to work with during their tenure.

In the absence of philosopher-presidents who could explain how democracy really works, the author of this book seems to be a good substitute. He attempts to explain, in general but simple terms, why democratic rulership sometimes works well but often badly. He emphasizes the limitations that prime ministers and presidents face in their jobs and the difficulty of getting other representatives, citizens and civil servants to obey them. This practical approach is refreshingly different from abstract political theorizing which assumes that all power is efficacious.

In addition to being a practical critique of political theory, this book is also a very critical analysis of British and American democracy. Towards the end of the book the author focuses more and more on how these two democracies could be made to work better. The author's viewpoint is reasonably interesting even for a reader like myself, with no personal interest in either of these two countries. But I think the author could have utilized his earlier analysis of obedience a bit more in this latter part of the book. In any case I will surely be reading this book again when I begin to feel saturated with abstract theory.… (més)