The evolution of China's politics and political system has attracted much attention from scholars and policy makers. The key concern is whether this former communist regime is making a transition to political democracy, and, if it is, how rapid this transition will be and what outcomes it will have. China's Changing Political Landscape is a timely contribution to our search for answers to these urgent questions.
The chapters in this volume came out of papers delivered at a conference organized by the Brookings Institute in 2007, anticipating the upcoming 17th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The contributors include an impressive number of currently active experts watching various areas of Chinese politics. Regular contributors to Hoover Institute's China Leadership Monitor, and recent participants to Carnegie Endowment of International Peace's “Debating China's Future” series have contributed to the volume.
Chapter topics include changing leadership dynamics (Alice L. Miller, chapter four, and Jing Huang, chapter five); generational changes within the political elite (Cheng Li, chapter six); changing economic and social policy directions (Barry Naughton, chapter eight); innovation in governance (Joseph Fewsmith, chapter 11); the effort to curb corruption (Minxin Pei, chapter 12); and shifting civil–military relations (James Mulvenon, chapter 14). A number of important socioeconomic sectors give the societal contexts of political changes, including the commercialization of the media (Richard Baum, chapter nine); increased demand for the rule of law (Jacques deLisle, chapter ten); the rise of business elites (Erica S. Downs, chapter seven); and demographic changes (Dorothy J. Solinger, chapter 13).
One chapter from China's prominent political reform thinker, Keping Yu (chapter three) of the Central Translation Bureau, highlights what progress in political development has been made from an insider's point of view, and what the aspirations are for the regime in the years to come in terms of building a “democratic” and effective governing system. Andrew Nathan (chapter two), on the other hand, offers a critical analysis of the Party's political vision, and concludes that the prospects for a self-driven transition toward liberal democracy are dim.
Lastly, two external influences of political change are examined. David Shambaugh (chapter five) systematically shows how the Party learnt from its former Soviet and East European brethren parties in order to reinvent its governance capacity, while Yun-han Chu (chapter 16) convincingly demonstrates that socio-political developments in China clearly mirror what Taiwan underwent from the late 1970s until its transition into a democracy. Chu's chapter hence points to the likelihood of a similar transition taking place on the Mainland.
Overall, no major theoretical breakthroughs are presented in the volume. Rather, chapters serve to take stock on what has happened in recent years and the implications that may be drawn. In this regard, while the range of topics is impressive, the inclusion of a few more (such as civil society or the NGO sector, local elections and intraparty democracy) would have made the book more comprehensive. In fact, the next steps of political changes will likely take place in these arenas: intraparty democracy, the legalization of independent civil society, and the upward expansion of local elections.
Assuming these changes occur in the next three to ten years, the whole political system will become much more democratic than it is today. For this volume, however, while competent analyses are well presented in the individual chapters, the contributors and the editor all carefully avoid committing themselves to any definite prediction of the next steps of political change. Chu's chapter comes closest to giving hints regarding how much longer the one-party regime can remain in power, as it shows how the second-generation KMT leaders in Taiwan managed to hold on to power amidst intensifying demands for democracy (pp. 319–20). Nevertheless, the reader of the volume will be left unsatisfied: he or she will likely be convinced that overall trends in China are pointing to further liberalization and pluralism, but will have few clues as to what kind of political changes are likely to take place next, and when.
Undergraduate as well as graduate students studying politics in China will benefit from this collection of China-watching chapters, while the intellectual challenge of understanding political changes in China will remain for the years to come.
