Healthy debate helps China weather crises

• Source: Global Times
• [23:17 September 05 2010]
• Comments

Public discussions have become increasingly common in China. Photo: CFP

By Wang Hui

When discussing the China model, many scholars emphasize the stability of China's development and believe that there has not been a major crisis. Actually this statement is not accurate. During 30 years of reform and opening-up, China met its biggest crisis in 1989. And the most profound and continuous crisis for China is the penetration of market relations into its political endeavor and state system.

As with the current fi nancial crisis, the 1989 incident was a part of an international political and social crisis, which can also be regarded as a prelude to the crisis of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

At that time, the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations were socialist countries led by the Communist Party.

But why did China not collapse in the same fashion as they did? What were the factors that maintained China's stability and provided the conditions for its rapid growth? After 30 years of reform, what changes have a ected them?

Unique history

When talking about China's experience, we should fi rst explore the divergence between China and other ex-socialist countries.

The collapse of the Warsaw bloc had complicated and profound historical reasons, such as the opposition of bureaucracy and the public, political dictatorship during the Cold War and the di¥ culties caused by economic shortages. These phenomena also existed in China to a di erent extent.

However, China's independent development made its situation unique.

Under the "Warsaw Pact," Eastern European countries did not have full sovereignty and were subject to the Soviet Union. If any problems occurred in the latter, the whole Warsaw bloc would fall apart.

After World War II, the nation-state sovereignty system was established.

But in fact, if we defi ne sovereignty as including complete independence of foreign policy, there were still very few truly independent and sovereign countries worldwide. Under the Cold War structure, the two camps were national alliance systems, among which if any change or policy transition happened to one hegemonic state, other countries would be seriously a ected.

Independent parties

Just as China went through a unique revolutionary process, it has been exploring an independent path during the period of construction. Since the middle of the 1950s, China actively supported the Non-Aligned Movement and then initiated an open debate with the Soviet Union.

In the process, there were forced elements and also great e orts and sacrifi ces. And it is through this process that China has shaped its independent political character, and achieved a highly independent national economic and industrial system at the same time.

Without this autonomy, it is di¥ cult to imagine China's reform and openingup, or what its fate would have been after 1989.

At the beginning of reform and opening-up, China has already had an independent national economic system, which was a necessary prerequisite of reform. From the 1970s to the 1980s, China's reform had an inherent logic and a high degree of autonomy. It was an active reform rather than a passive one, and so was di erent from the various complex "Color Revolutions" of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The Chinese mainland's development is not similar to the dependent economies of Latin America, nor comparable with the so-called East Asian models represented by Japan and South Korea. From a political perspective, the assumption of China's reforms is autonomy, while the development of above countries can be characterized as dependent on the US-led system.

No matter how many mistakes the Chinese Communist Party committed in theory or in practice in the 20th century, it established the most basic factors of China's sovereignty through "anti-imperialism" and through the subsequent debate with the Soviet Union. Through open debate with the Soviet Union, China fi rst escaped the subordinate relations between the two countries, and established a new model of independence.