Could Pakistan Have Become a Prosperous Democracy Like Asian Tigers By Now?

Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea  experienced a dramatic rise under authoritarian regimes from 1960s through 1990s. The dictators who led these states also showed the way to fellow Asian dictators in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and China who also industrialized and prospered using the same formula that rejected the Washington Consensus of democracy and free markets as the basis for development of all nations.

Per Capita GDP (Constant 2000 US$) Source: World Bank


East and Southeast Asia:

The Asian Tigers have managed their massive growth mainly through export-driven economies that catered to the industrialized West. Each of them has built huge trade surpluses to fund their growth. These countries have invested in  improving education and training to build significant human capital in a couple of decades.

The improved productivity of the workforce, coupled with relatively low wages in Asia's developing economies, have resulted in enormous foreign investments. The large amount of foreign capital has allowed for massive growth. Their export-driven industry has spawned finance and service based industries that we now see, allowing the Tigers to maintain their high GDP. With rapid economic growth and human development, each has built a large middle class, paving the way for democracy to take root. As a result, dictatorships have given way to democracy in recent decades in most of these nations.

South Asia's Performance:

South Asia has been a laggard in economic development when compared with countries in East Asia and South East Asia. No South Asian nation has seen comparable growth in human and economic development. China, a country of 1.4 billion people run by one-party system, is far ahead of India, an equally large country run as a multi-party parliamentary democracy.

Source: Where Are the Poor and Where Are the Poorest?
A billion people were lifted from abject poverty between 1980 and 2010. China accounts for nearly three quarters of these, or 680 million people brought out of misery, by reducing its extreme-poverty rate from 84% in 1980 to 10% now, according to a report in The Economist.  The report adds that with "poorer governance in India and Africa, the next two targets, means that China’s experience is unlikely to be swiftly replicated there".

India: 

As China's share of the world's extreme poor (living below $1.25 per day per person level) has dramatically declined, India's share has significantly increased.  India now contributes 33% (up from 22 % in 1981). While the extreme poor in Sub-Saharan Africa represented only 11 percent of the world’s total in 1981, they now account for 34% of the world’s extreme poor, and China comes next contributing 13 percent (down from 43 percent in 1981), according to the World Bank report titled State of the Poor.

The share of poverty in  South Asia region excluding India has slightly increased from 7% in 1981 to 9% now, according to the report. India now has the world's largest share of the world's poor, hungry, illiterate and sick who still lack access to very basic sanitation.

In a recent book "Street Smarts", a hedge fund Manager Jim Rogers makes some important points to explain how East Asians have succeeded in rapidly developing while others have failed:

 "Many Asians say that the Asian Way is first to open your economy, to bring prosperity to your country, and then, only after that, to open up your political system. They say that the reason the Russians failed is that did it the other way around. Russia opened up its political system in the absence of a sound economy, everybody bitched and complained, and chaos inevitably ensued. As an example of the Asian path to political openness, they point to South Korea and Taiwan, both of which were once vicious dictatorships supported by the United States. Japan was at one time a one-party state supported by the US military. Singapore achieved its current status under one-party, authoritarian rule. All these countries have since become more prosperous and more open. 

Plato, in The Republic, says that the way societies evolve is by going from dictatorship to oligarchy to democracy to chaos and back to dictatorship. It has a certain logic, and Plato was a very smart guy. I do not know if the Asians ever read The Republic, but the Asian way seems to suggest that Plato knew whereof he spoke." Not only is the Asian model different from that of the Soviets, it stands China in marked contrast to those thirty-year dictatorships previously mentioned. Chinese leaders have put a high premium upon changing the country's economy, presumably to seek prosperity for the 1.3 people who live there." 

"And yet,in 1947, when it achieved independence, India was one of the more successful countries in the world, a democratic country. But despite democracy, or maybe because of it, India has never lived up to its potential. China was a shambles as recently as 1980. India was far ahead of it. Bt since then China has left India, literally in the dust....As China rises, India continues to decline relatively. Its debt-to-GDP ratio is now 90 percent, making a strong growth rate virtually impossible."

1960s Pakistan:

Pakistan was on a similar trajectory as the Asian Tigers during 1960s under Gen Ayub Khan's rule. GDP growth in this decade jumped to an average annual rate of 6 percent from 3 percent in the 1950s, according to Pakistani economist Dr. Ishrat Husain. Dr. Husain says: "The manufacturing sector expanded by 9 percent annually and various new industries were set up. Agriculture grew at a respectable rate of 4 percent with the introduction of Green Revolution technology. Governance improved with a major expansion in the government’s capacity for policy analysis, design and implementation, as well as the far-reaching process of institution building.7 The Pakistani polity evolved from what political scientists called a “soft state” to a “developmental” one that had acquired the semblance of political legitimacy. By 1969, Pakistan’s manufactured exports were higher than the exports of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia combined."




Bangladesh:

Some argue that it was Ayub Khan's rule in 1960s that resulted in the loss of Pakistan's eastern wing and the creation of Bangladesh. I strongly disagree with this view. I believe that ill-conceived general elections of 1970 gave the opportunity to Pakistani politicians to lie to mostly poor and illiterate electorate of the time to win their votes. Shaikh Mujib exploited normal regional economic disparities that can be found in any country, including India and US, to argue that Bengalis were unfairly treated. Just look at the income data for various states in US or in India and you'll see huge gaps in incomes and standards of living. Indian Punjab's per capita income of Rs. 88,783 is 1.4 times higher than West Bengal's Rs. 62,831. Bihar's per capita income of Rs. 28,317 is less than a quarter of Haryana's Rs. 122,660. New Jersey's per capita income of  $53,628 is much higher than Mississippi's $33,073. 

In the end, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto refused to sit down and talk with Shaikh Mujib and forced the split. Here's how one of Bhutto's friends late Gov Salman Taseer offered his view in his book "Bhutto: A Political Biography"

"Blame can never be satisfactorily or finally apportioned to the major players in this grisly drama, but that Bhutto, Mujibur Rahman and Yahya Khan share responsibility there can be no doubt. Many, indeed, are inclined to the view that Bhutto, as the most sure-footed politician of the three and thus the best equipped to assess the consequences of his actions, must accept the lion's share of the blame. Argument on this point will remain one of the central themes of Pakistani politics, perhaps for decades."

The fact is that economic gap between former East Pakistan and Pakistan has grown over the last 40 years, and the per capita income in Pakistan now stands at more than twice Bangladesh's in 2012 in nominal dollar terms,  higher than 1.6X in 1971.



 Here are some figures from Economist magazine's EIU 2013:

Bangladesh GDP per head: $695 (PPP: $1,830)

Pakistan GDP per head: $1,410 (PPP: $2,960)

Pakistan-Bangladesh GDP per head Ratio: 2.03 ( PPP: 1.62)

Pakistan's Economic History:

Since 1947, Pakistan has seen three periods of military rule: 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. In each of these decades, Pakistan's economy has performed significantly better than in decades under political governments.



In a 10/12/1988 interview with Professor Anatol Lieven of King's College and quoted in a book "Pakistan-A Hard Country", here is how eminent Pakistani economist Dr. Mabubul Haq explained lower economic growth under "democratic" governments:


"..every time a new political government comes in they have to distribute huge amounts of state money and jobs as rewards to politicians who have supported them, and short term populist measures to try to convince the people that their election promises meant something, which leaves nothing for long-term development. As far as development is concerned, our system has all the worst features of oligarchy and democracy put together.

That is why only technocratic, non-political governments in Pakistan have ever been able to increase revenues. But they can not stay in power for long because they have no political support...For the same reason we have not been able to deregulate the economy as much as I wanted, despite seven years of trying, because the politicians and officials both like the system Bhutto (Late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) put in place. It suits them both very well, because it gave them lots of lucrative state-sponsored jobs in industry and banking to take for themselves or distribute to their relatives and supporters."
Human and Economic Development under Musharraf:

Pakistan saw yet another confirmation of accelerated economic and human development under military rule in years 2000-2007.
Pakistan's HDI grew an average rate of 2.7% per year under President Musharraf from 2000 to 2007, and then its pace slowed to 0.7% per year in 2008 to 2012 under elected politicians, according to the 2013 Human Development Report titled “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”.

Source: Human Development Report 2013-Pakistan



 At 0.515, Pakistan's HDI is lower than the average HDI value of 0.558 for South Asia which is the second lowest among the various regions of the world tracked by UNDP. Between 2000 and 2012, the region registered annual growth of 1.43% in HDI value, which is the highest of the regions. Afghanistan achieved the fastest growth (3.9%), followed by Pakistan (1.7%) and India (1.5%), according to the United Nations Development Program.

Overall, Pakistan's human development score rose by 18.9% during Musharraf years and increased just 3.4% under elected leadership since 2008. The news on the human development front got even worse in the last three years, with HDI growth slowing down as low as 0.59% — a paltry average annual increase of under 0.20 per cent.

 Who's to blame for this dramatic slowdown in the nation's human development?  Who gave it a low priority? Zardari? Peoples' Party? Sharif brothers? PML (N)? PML (Q)? Awami National Party? Muttahida Qaumi Movement?  The answer is: All of them. They were all part of the government. In fact, the biggest share of the blame must be assigned to PML (N).



Sharif brothers weren't part of the ruling coalition at the center. So why should the PML (N) share the blame for falling growth in the nation's HDI? They must accept a large part of the blame because education and health, the biggest contributors to human development, are both provincial subjects and PML(N) was responsible for education and health care of more than half of Pakistan's population.

Pakistan R&D as Percentage of GDP Source: World Bank


Going further back to the  decade of 1990s when the civilian leadership of the country alternated between PML (N) and PPP,  the increase in Pakistan's HDI was 9.3% from 1990 to 2000, less than half of the HDI gain of 18.9% on Musharraf's watch from 2000 to 2007.



Acceleration of HDI growth during Musharraf years was not an accident.  Not only did Musharraf's policies accelerate economic growth, helped create 13 million new jobs, cut poverty in half and halved the country's total debt burden in the period from 2000 to 2007, his government also ensured significant investment and focus on education and health care. In 2011, a Pakistani government commission on education found that public funding for education has been cut from 2.5% of GDP in 2007 to just 1.5% - less than the annual subsidy given to the various PSUs including Pakistan Steel and PIA, both of which  continue to sustain huge losses due to patronage-based hiring.

Source: Pew Surveys in Pakistan

Summary: 

Looking at examples of nations such as the Asian Tigers which have achieved great success in the last few decades, the basic ingredient in each case has been large social sector investments they have made. It will be extremely difficult for Pakistan to catch up unless similar investments are made by Pakistani leaders.



Had Pakistan's development continued on the 1960s trajectory, it is quite conceivable that Pakistan would be a prosperous democracy like the Asian Tigers today.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Challenges of Indian Democracy

Pakistan's Economic History

Comparing Bangladesh with Pakistan

Economic and Human Development in Musharraf Years

India's Share of World;s Poor Up from 22% to 33%

Why is Democracy Failing in Pakistan?

Musharraf Era Higher Education Reforms in Pakistan

Comparing 30-Year Dictatorships in Indonesia and Pakistan

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Here's a Deccan Chronicle Op Ed by Kuldip Nayar:

That India is an economic mess is known all over the world. What is not yet public is that the malaise was because of the wrong decisions which president Pranab Mukherejee took when he was Union finance minister from January 2009 to mid-2012 and also when finance minister P Chidambaram was heading the ministry nearly till the end of 2008 and before.

Mukherjee lives in the luxuries of Rashtrapati Bhavan and Chidambaram shields himself behind tall promises he still makes to mend the economy. Both of them are accountable. They should tell why they took the steps which disturbed the rhythm of progress. Because of lack of transparency in the affairs of government, only a handful of people know about the blunders the two committed.

One of the decisions taken by Mukherjee was to impose the Rs 1200 crore tax with retrospective effect on a foreign mobile company. After having lost the case in the Supreme Court on September 8, 2010, the government promulgated an ordinance before amending the Finance Act 2012. The retrospective clause in the act has scared away foreign investment which India badly needs. A bagful of concessions has not brought the Walmart yet to the Indian soil. Foreign investors have withdrawn a large sum of money which they had invested. In a few weeks, as much $ 200 billion has reportedly gone out. The outflow has not stopped yet.


Prime minister Manmohan Singh did not anticipate the repercussions. In fact, after seeing the mess Chidambaram had created in 2008, the prime minister should have taken over the finance ministry himself because of his expertise in economic matters. Unfortunately, his own record as coal minister does not hold promise but the prime minister would have done better in finance. India should have been exporting coal, as it did, instead of importing it. Manmohan Singh may not be personally responsible for the corruption in the allotment of coal blocks. But the bungling runs into thousands of crores of rupees. The full story may not yet come out because some files are missing. The government has admitted this before the Supreme Court.

According to CBI as many as 157 files are missing. The missing files reportedly have some letters and noting on the allotment of coal blocks. The prime minister cannot absolve himself of the responsibility that he was not the custodian of the files. He was in charge of the coal portfolio. A top CBI official, who is probing into the scandal, has said that there may be a need to ‘examine’ the prime minister, who was in charge of the ministry from 2006 to 2009. Could the prime minister have connived at what the ministry had been doing because his personal integrity is beyond reproach?

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/355537/is-india-story-over.html
Riaz Haq said…
Arvind Subramanian, economic adviser to Narendra #Modi: #India will catch up with #China in 20 or 30 years" https://www.ft.com/content/6aa3ec6a-3013-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a via @FT

One of India’s most important economists on globalisation and how he expects the country to catch up ‘with China in 20 or 30 years’


Arvind Subramanian owes both his job and his plush New Delhi residence to the same man: India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, who hired him as the government’s chief economic adviser in 2014. Subramanian hurriedly departed from his role at a US think-tank and moved back home to work in the finance department, only to find himself lodged temporarily in a humdrum guest house. “The finance minister was very sweet,” he says. “He rang the housing minister, and said, ‘I want him to get a very nice house.’ ”


Subramanian now lives in New Moti Bagh: a leafy estate in the heart of the capital, where grace-and-favour bungalows are granted only to elite civil servants, making it arguably the most powerful neighbourhood in India. “This place has been called the new Forbidden City,” he says, in reference to the walled imperial palace in Beijing, the heart of Chinese government for five centuries. India’s equivalent is less forbidding: a compound of 116 white bungalows and 10 apartment blocks nestled amid pleasant parks, through which the resident officials, judges and military top brass go for their morning walks.

Subramanian is sitting in the spacious living room of his own six-bedroom, two-storey home, dressed in a white linen shirt, black jeans and brown leather loafers. At 57, he looks trim and speaks with rapid, Tigger-ish energy. Outside, the mid-afternoon sunshine is falling on his front garden, whose verges are filled with lush green shrubs.

The house resembles a colonial-era bungalow, with a roof terrace on the second floor and two sets of servants’ quarters at the rear. It is actually newer than it looks, he says: the entire area was rebuilt about a decade ago, hence the “new” in New Moti Bagh. Though spartan when he arrived — “there was maybe a wooden bed, a cabinet, but basically nothing else” — the interior is now pleasantly decorated with furniture he and his wife Parul shipped back from Washington DC, including a series of Impressionist-style paintings by his elderly father, a retired civil servant.

----------------------



Subramanian admits he has learnt to watch his step on delicate topics, in public at least, giving an example of debates about protecting cows, which some conservative Hindus consider sacred. “I was asked for my views on the beef ban in Mumbai and said jokingly that if I speak on this I’ll probably lose my job — and that went on the front page of The Indian Express,” he recalls. “In that case I was told to be a bit more careful.”


-------------------

Modi’s support for globalisation is deeper than most people realise, he adds, a flip side of the fact that India is now a much more open economy than commonly acknowledged. The country’s future growth is not without challenges, however. “We have this whole ambivalence about the private sector which we’ve never really overcome,” he says. Yet he remains bullish, claiming that he expects India to catch up with China “within the next 20 or 30 years or so”.

This will happen even as globalisation is set to slow down somewhat, he argues, albeit only compared with the unusually rapid growth in trade seen during the 2000s. “‘Hyper-globalisation is dead, long live globalisation,’ is how I like to put it,” he says. “If you look crudely at the postwar period, 80 per cent of globalisation is driven by technology, 20 per cent by policy. And that 80 per cent, you can’t stop.”

Riaz Haq said…
Among #SouthKorea’s 44 defense ministers, only 6 (14%) have been civilians, i.e. people who had not served as career #military officers. Since 1961, no civilian has served as defense minister. Current defense minister Han Min-koo is a former #army general. https://thediplomat.com/2017/06/thaad-illuminates-problems-in-south-koreas-civil-military-relations/

Civil-military relations, which refer to the relationship between the civilian political leadership and the military, have been widely studied due to the latent danger of a state’s military usurping control from civilian authorities. As Socrates once said, soldiers protect the state from external threats, but they themselves are also potential threats to society. For this reason, limits must be placed on the military’s role within a society, and civilian control of the military has been accepted as a norm within democratic regimes — political leaders set policy (ends), while the military use their military expertise to devise strategies (means) to implement that policy. This is essential for the democratic system, where civilian political leaders exercise the authority delegated to them by the people to rule. Thus, unelected soldiers must obey decisions made by political leaders. To this end, in most democracies civilians hold top national security posts. In the United States, active-duty military officers are prohibited from assuming key posts, and retired officers must be removed from active duty for a certain period of time — seven years in the case of secretary of defense (although an exception was made by congress for Jim Mattis earlier this year).

South Korea lacks such restrictions on the military. According to Ki-joo Kim, a South Korean researcher, among the country’s 44 defense ministers, only six (14 percent) have been civilians, i.e. people who had not served as career military officers. Since 1961, no civilian has served as defense minister. The incumbent, Han Min-koo, is a former army general who had served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff less than three years prior to taking on his new role. Another important national security post, chief of the National Security Office, was until last month held by Kim Kwan-jin, an army general who also served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly before serving as defense minister.

Some have argued that given South Korea’s unique security circumstances, where it remains technically at war with a nuclear foe, the civilianization of top national security leadership is risky. However, the argument that leaders should be equipped with military expertise is based on ignorance of the role of civilian leadership in national security. Such ignorance is particularly problematic for a country that experienced a brutal military dictatorship from 1960 to 1988. Because the top national security positions, ostensibly charged with civilian control over the military, are in fact monopolized by military officers, there is a higher danger of the military interfering in politics and threatening civilian leadership in the future.

The recent events related to THAAD are indicative of this danger. The missile defense system was initially planned to be deployed by the end of 2017. However, the last administration rushed to complete the deployment before Moon, a critic of THAAD and the leading candidate throughout the presidential campaign, could take office. It is no secret that two former generals, Kim Kwan-jin (chief of the National Security Office) and Han Min-koo (minister of national defense), oversaw this deployment as civilian leadership was incapacitated due to the impeachment and later removal of President Park Geun-hye, Moon’s predecessor. Kim and Han presented the THAAD deployment as a fait accompli to the new president, even though THAAD has wide-ranging consequences in the areas of South Korean politics, diplomacy, and economy. This shows a clear failure of civilian control over the military.
Riaz Haq said…
Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in a Pakistan: Some Lessons from
Turkey


https://www.longdom.org/open-access/rethinking-civilmilitary-relations-in-a-pakistan-some-lessons-fromturkey-2167-0358-1000209.pdf


Volumes of literature exists explaining the reasons of military
intervention in domestic politics, however, the special aspect of
Pakistani military intervention in politics has not been widely debated
in Pakistan, partly because of the reason of military enjoying a status of
“sacred cow” at home and any objective criticism directed towards
military establishment is regarded synonyms with un-patriotism and
may bringing reprisals through formal as well as informal means.
Samuel P Hungten proposed the theory of separation for keeping the
military under the supremacy of civil control on the pattern of Western
democracies. Hungten’s formulations were based on post world war-II
civil-military relations of America. Rebbeca 6chiوٴ has given the theory
of concordance for civil-military relation. Military interventions in
domestic politics occur only where there is discordance between the
three partners. Нe author further elaborates the three partners of
concordance as the military, citizenry and political elite to agree over
four indicators such as military recruitment, political decision making
and military style [2]. Another view of military’s intervention in state
politics is described by Nordlinger with a tripartite clDssificDtion based
on the powers exercised by intervener and the type of goals pursued
[3]. Нe lowest level of interventionists is the “Praetorian Moderates”
who act as pressure groups mostly and avoid indulging in direct
government. Нe\ return power to the civilian rule Dіer “displacement
coups”. Нe second category is of “Praetorian Guardians” who share the
values of moderates but willing to take over the power usually for two
to four years and preserve the system which serves the military
interests. Нe last category is of “Pretorian Rulers” who deeply involve
in governance and extent their rule. Нe\ embark on an ambitious
economic and political agenda and when they handover power, they
maintain the status of praetorian moderates, keeping watchful eye on
the civilian government. In an another discourse on democratizing
Riaz Haq said…
New index says #India is more #corrupt than #Pakistan . Sponsored by Los Angeles-based research organisation Berggruen Institute, the governance index ranked performance on 3 key indices — Quality of #Democracy, Quality of #Government and Quality of #Life.

https://theprint.in/india/overachiever-in-democracy-india-trails-pakistan-in-corruption-on-governance-index/368568/

On the “existence and perception” of corruption in a country, China was considered the most corrupt with a score of 39 points and India came next at 28 points. Pakistan was considered the least corrupt with just 13 points.


India ranked poorly on business regulation, public health and civil justice, according to the recently released Berggruen Governance Index 2019.

The report looked at data over 14 years (2004-2018) from 38 countries and covered 95 per cent of the global GDP and 75 per cent of the global population.

India versus China versus Pakistan
Based on the sub-index Judicial Impartiality, which refers to “a citizen’s treatment in the course of judicial procedures”, India scored the most with 28 data points, Pakistan scored 14 and China 5.

With regard to Quality of Education, China took the lead at 80 points while India and Pakistan scored 30.

On the “existence and perception” of corruption in a country, China was considered the most corrupt with a score of 39 points and India came next at 28 points. Pakistan was considered the least corrupt with just 13 points.

On ‘politicised bureaucracy’, which is the influence of political connections and ideology in the “hiring and firing practices” of bureaucracy, India ranked highest of the three countries with 59 points, China came next with 23 and then Pakistan at 13.

With regards to Shadow Economy — the ability of the government to prevent economic activity from escaping its reach — China scored the highest (91 points), followed by India (57 points) and Pakistan (14 points).

Of the 38 countries, Sweden was the “overachiever” with the highest score in all three indices. UK achieved “more than expected in light of its GDP” overall, while the US performed “just above expectations” on Quality of Democracy, and just below in the remaining two indices.
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If you believe that vibrant democracies guarantee good government or that robust economic output ensures a better quality of life for a nation’s citizens, think again.


China, which scores low on democracy, has undoubtedly been an economic success story, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and helping spur the global economy. But it faces a massive debt problem, and is perhaps approaching a ceiling and may need to allow more public participation in running government if it wants to guarantee a better quality of life for its people in the future.


In contrast, the U.S. hasn’t excelled at translating its high gross domestic product growth rate into increases in the quality of life, which has, in fact, decreased slightly over the past 14 years, the Institute said. This is particularly notable in health and education, where the problem isn’t quality, but affordability.

“Growing economic inequality and wealth disparity could be key factors, particularly after the 2007–2008 financial crisis,” according to the report. “Although the economy rebounded after the crisis, the gains were disproportionately concentrated in the top tier of the U.S. population, with 95% of growth going to the top 1% of the households.”

Even in established democracies, actual government performance can trump other factors in determining quality of life. Italy, for example, has a lively democracy, but the responsiveness of successive governments has been poor, and as a result living standards are stagnant at best.

“Italy ranks surprisingly high with respect to quality of democracy scores,” according to the report. “Yet the availability of feedback mechanisms and other democratic processes seems to have no additional impact on the quality of government.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-quality-of-government-and-life/
Riaz Haq said…
Excerpt from "Has China Won?" by Kishore Mahbubabi:


In Chinese political culture, the biggest fear is of chaos. The Chinese have a word for it: luàn (). Given these many long periods of suffering from chaos—including one as recent as the century of humiliation from the Opium War of 1842 to the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949—when the Chinese people are given a choice between strong central control and the chaos of political competition, they have a reflexive tendency to choose strong central control. This long history and political culture may well explain Xi Jinping’s decision to remove term limits. The conventional Western view is that he did so to reap personal rewards by becoming dictator for life. Yet, his decision may have been motivated by the view that China faced a real danger of slipping back into chaos. Two major challenges emerged that could have undermined the strong central control of the CCP. The first was the emergence of factions in the CCP led by Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, two powerful members of the CCP. The second was the explosion of corruption. The rampant capitalism unleashed by Deng Xiaoping after the Four Modernizations policy in 1978 had led to massive economic growth as well as the accumulation of large personal fortunes. The temptation to use these huge fortunes to influence public policies was perfectly natural. If these twin threats of factionalism and corruption had not been effectively killed, the CCP could well have lost its legitimacy and political control. Against the backdrop of these major political challenges and the longer sweep of Chinese history, it was perfectly natural for Xi to reassert strong central control to keep China together.

Mahbubani, Kishore. Has China Won? (pp. 136-137). PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition.
Riaz Haq said…
Could #China’s model of growth be its biggest global #export ? #Beijing’s reluctance to define its "model" makes it difficult for others to follow. It prefers alternatives such as “Chinese path”, “Chinese experience”, “Chinese wisdom” & “Chinese approach” https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3139351/could-chinas-model-be-its-biggest-export-world



The Chinese model gained favour as Africa wearied of the free-market capitalism and deregulation that characterised Western-style neoliberalism.
The failure of neoliberal economic policies in fostering social and economic development across the continent has caused political reorientations in Africa
Tim Zajontz
Tim Zajontz, a research fellow at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, said China positioned its model as an alternative to Western-style democracy, which became a source of inspiration for other African countries such as Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania.
“The failure of neoliberal economic policies in fostering social and economic development across the continent has caused political reorientations in Africa, with China’s economic trajectory frequently being invoked as a viable alternative development model,” Zajontz said.
Orville Schell, Arthur Ross director of the New York-based Asia Society’s Centre on US-China relations, agreed. “China has provided a successful authoritarian developmental model that has worked at home, and is thus seductive to other developing countries that have had difficulty organising their body politics, catalysing their economies with growth and keeping social order. The ‘China model’ has produced economic progress … if people are willing to live in an authoritarian, even totalitarian political environment. There is a trade-off,” Schell said.

China’s Ethiopian ambitions suffer setback with telecoms decision
29 May 2021
However, as Beijing pulls out all the stops to mark the centenary of the ruling party’s establishment on July 1, there is still no consensus on what the China model actually is.
Just over a decade ago after the global financial crisis in 2008, the Chinese government even refused to acknowledge the existence of such a model, or weigh in on the discussions about whether the China model was reality or just something possible.
Instead, a number of retired officials, including former vice-president of the party’s Central Party School Li Junru, cautioned against using the term, citing its possible negative impacts on China’s relations with the world and its domestic development.
In a commentary on Study Times, the school’s flagship newspaper, in December 2009, Li said the notion of China model was factually incorrect and dangerous because it led to “self-satisfaction and blind optimism” and tended to stereotype the country’s ongoing reform experiment.
The ‘China model’ has produced economic progress … if people are willing to live in an authoritarian, even totalitarian political environment
Orville Schell
In the decade since, a group of Chinese academics and intellectuals have also questioned the validity of the Chinese model. Renowned economists Zhang Weiying and Wu Jinglian warned against promoting it, saying it would undermine reform at home and fuel divide and confrontation with the West. Tsinghua University historian Qin Hui argued in 2010 that unlike the rise of China, the rise of the China model, featuring a low level of human rights and welfare, was by no means good news for the country and the world.
It was not until after President Xi Jinping took office in late 2012 that the “China model” finally won official blessing.
“With the rise of China’s national strength and global standing, discussions and studies on the ‘Beijing consensus’, ‘Chinese model, and ‘Chinese road’ have gathered pace in the world,” Xi told senior party cadres at an internal meeting in January 2013.
Riaz Haq said…
Edward Luce
@EdwardGLuce
"...India, which is jailing its opposition leader on a trumped up defamation charge; Netanyahu, who wants to quash Israel's independent courts; & Mexico, where Obrador aims to end free & fair elections. With pals like these, democracy needs no foes." Me.

https://twitter.com/EdwardGLuce/status/1641043796556238848?s=20

https://www.ft.com/content/8e1b7774-da4d-448d-aa3f-94d269e64c35


President Joe Biden’s second summit for democracy, which is taking place this week, is both virtual and surreal. Among the participants are India, which is in the process of jailing opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on a trumped up defamation ruling; Israel, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants to shut down judicial independence; and Mexico, whose leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is trying to end free and fair elections. With friends such as these, democracy hardly needs enemies.

Biden’s aims are noble, and it is noteworthy that neither Hungary nor Turkey, regarded in Washington and western Europe as illiberal democracies, was invited. But the president’s means are open to doubt. According to V-Dem, a Swedish research institute, almost three quarters of the world’s population now live in autocracies against less than half a decade ago. That vertiginous shift justifies the term “democratic recession”.

It is difficult to believe a liberal democratic Russia would have invaded Ukraine. It is equally hard to imagine the people of an autocratic Ukraine fighting as fiercely for their freedom as they are doing now. It is thus reasonable for the US to think that spreading democracy is in its national interest. The problem is that America is not very good at it.

Nowhere has the US expended more guns and butter than in the Middle East. The democratic returns have been almost uniformly negative. The Arab world’s only recent convert, Tunisia, was recently lost to a coup d’état. Israel’s democracy, meanwhile, hangs in the balance. That is without mentioning the fact that the Jewish nation state is not exactly democratic with the Arab territories it occupies.

Sarah Margon, whom Biden named to lead his administration’s efforts on democracy and human rights, withdrew her name in January after senators objected to her criticisms of Israel. Having a record of arguing for democracy seems like an odd rap against the person whose job that will be.



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As India’s foreign minister, S Jaishankar, put it last year: “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” What Jaishankar really meant, of course, was the west as a whole. But he was careful to exclude the US, just as Biden is careful not to mention India’s democratic backsliding. Each needs the other to counter China.

Here it gets even muddier. India’s treatment of its Muslim minorities is arguably as bad as China’s policies in Xinjiang. The US State Department has labelled the latter “genocide” — the gravest charge possible. Yet barely a peep is heard from Washington about what is going on in Kashmir.

When the west can be bothered to listen, the global south’s consistent refrain is for more dollars to help their shift to clean energy, better infrastructure and modern healthcare. Which of the two great powers, China or the US, helps the most is likeliest to shape their political future and foreign policy alignment. One of the by-products of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that it has brought this pressing question to the fore.

Biden’s White House is trying to come up with a coherent US approach to the global south, but officials admit it is a work in progress. China has pumped more money into the developing world than all the west combined — with both good and bad effects. Whether the Malis, Cambodias and Bolivias of this world become democracies lies in their hands. The best way of nudging them down that path is to lecture less and listen more.

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