The Odds for Change

...They "portray China as booming and collapsing at the same time," Nathan tells us, referring to the combination of economic prosperity and increased repression that characterized the post-Tiananmen period...

...That is not to suggest that the United States should stop trading with China, or hesitate to encourage change...

...And he concedes that in China "power is so all-encompassing yet decentralized that the trinity of state, society and economy have become one...

...Reviewed by Mark Hopkins Former Beijing news bureau chief, Voice of America Implicit in American policy toward China, at least since the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, has been the assumption that it will eventually become a democratic society...

...The Clinton Administration, continuing that optimistic stance, has been pressing Beijing on basic human rights issues luce the release of political prisioners, the end of religious repression and cultural autonomy for Tibet...

...Nevertheless, in 1986-7 the Kuomintang allowed several opposition parties to form...

...unfortunately, we aren't told the variances...

...If the findings are to be believed, 72 per cent of the Chinese do not feel the national, local or work-unit govenments effect their lives...

...Nathan answers that it has what could be their precursor— something he calls "civic culture...

...In his collection of 16 essays written since 1990 and previously published separately, veteran Columbia University Sinologist Andrew J. Nathan examines the possibility of such a political transformation actually occuring—among other topics...

...He observes, for example, that Jonathan Spence's description of China's last four centuries is one of "epidemic, famine, forced migrations, wars, riots, strikes, rebellions, and piracy...

...Certainly this will have to be the case, but the time frame is another matter...

...Two related chapters that are interesting, but not convincing, concern "the first scientifically valid national sample survey done in China on political behavior and attitudes...

...and China can find common ground in this area, since successive Chinese constitutions have at least promised standard civil liberties...

...We do not know," Nathan confesses, "what mechanisms are at work to produce this paradox—whether the regime manages to make its subjects overlook its control over their daily lives or whether the citizens contrive to ignore the regime's control as a way of managing the psychological tension that it induces...

...Summarizing Spence'sjudgment, the author adds, China "is doomed by geography to be an inward-looking peasant nation excluded from the mainstream of history...

...It is one of the virtues of the author's approach, however, that he fairly represents the assessments of respected China hands that differ from his and thereby provides a broad spectrum of opinion...

...drum-beating about human rights and democracy...

...Nathan, who has been involved with human rights issues for years, feels the U.S...

...In addition, he notes, there are political similarities between the two fiercely opposed countries: While Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang is of course not Marxist, it was "modeled on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and until recently made claims, similar to those of the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties, to the right to exercise undivided and uncontested rule...

...Nathan admits the island republic's economic development far surpasses China's, but minimizes the disparity by arguing that China's GNP per capita is higher than that of the poorest democracies...

...In earlier years, authoritarianism seemed more likely to solve China's pressing problems—weakness and division...

...Having spent four years in China, my own belief is that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon...

...This may just be the way China works...

...Like almost all collections of essays, Nathan's pieces are too varied in style and even subject to add up to a sustained analysis of China's direction...

...Spence's tragic vision, we further learn, is shared by author Betty Bao Lord (wife of former U. S. Ambassador Winston Lord) and exiled Chinese investigative journalist Liu Binyan, who see the country as destined to remain authoritarian and violent...

...In particular, he thinks Washington should press Beijing to release political prisoners, reform the legal system and end religious repression...

...The survey's 90.5 per cent response rate consisted of 2,986 completed questionnaires (grouped according to rural or urban residence, and weighted to correct for age and sex...

...For one thing, as the author himself comments early in the book, many Chinese democratic intellectuals see democracy as a "search for truth rather than a clash of interests" and so are not oriented toward designing democratic institutions.For another, as I learned in the course of traveling extensively throughout China, outside Beijing democracy, the rule of law and politics in general arouse little interest...

...Undeterred by the poll, Nathan declares: "The attitudinal and sociological structure of the Chinese mass public today provides the context within which future political change will take place...

...The implications go to the heart of the discussion: Any evolution to democracy in China must be spoken of in terms of centuries, of multiple generations...

...This means a "democratic transition is not out of the question," he contends...

...Neither are two other accounts of contemporary China that Nathan discusses, Orville Schell's Mandate of Heaven and China Wakes by former New York Times Beijing correspondents Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn...

...None of this, if true, would seem to augur well for U.S...

...Its attributes include a consensus on fundamental political values—the idea of nationhood, agreement to modernize, a desire for order, and acceptance of a ruling regime, whether loved or not...

...Should China fail to change, says Nathan, an important reason will be its national characteristics: passivity, ignorance of politics, intolerance for other's views, a tendency toward authoritarian rule...

...Today many of them do...

...As evidence he cites Taiwan, which shares China's culture...

...It was conducted by an associate of the author in 1990, in cooperation with the Social Survey Research Center of People's University of China...

...These steps, he says, would not threaten the Chinese ruling elite and would smooth relations with the West...

...Then he cautions, "The historical record is not generous with practical guidance to democrats on how to bring about a transition to democracy or how to make it work once it begins to take shape...

...Here, one imagines, that number is probably something like ± 10 per cent...

...Corresponding American opinion polls usually have a ±3 per cent margin of error...

...But they do offer provocative speculations...

...Most people are more intent on their immediate preoccupations—starting with finding ways to improve the day-to-day quality of their lives...

...But Nathan, rejecting abject pessimism, goes on to paint a more promising picture...

...In the past, few Chinese really wanted democracy," Nathan says...

...Both books were published in 1994, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, and reflect a more sober view of the country than prevailed during the peak Deng Xiaoping years...

...What about China's lacking the rule of law, a representative government, a free press, and free speech...

...shape culture, donotmake an iron box...

...If these are the lessons from China's modern history, they are not very encouraging," deadpans Nathan...

...Today, democracy seems more likely to solve the pressing problems—dictatorship and political stagnation...

...But Nathan not only believes the seeds of democracy are there, he clearly thinks they can be nurtured...

...Nathan follows his sentence about the context for future political change with another that speaks volumes: "As in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and as in Russia and Eastern Europe in the 20th, so in China in the 21 st, the social cleavages of the past are likely to shape the political system of the future...

...My reading of recent Chinese history," he writes, "is that culture, and the instutions that put culture in practice and...

...Yet governmental organizations largely dictate to citizens where they may live, the jobs they will have, the prices they must pay, and how many children they can have...

...They are said to tell us what 800 million Chinese adults think about a broad range of issues...