Quote:
|
When it comes to policy implementation, size matters. Singapore is a country of roughly 4.5 million people. China, in contrast, has 1.3 billion people. There are 45 million officials in China and only 2 per cent belong to the central authorities. No matter how enlightened Beijing's leaders are, they are reliant on around 44 million unsupervised, poorly trained and often corrupt local officials to execute and implement.
|
This is by far the biggest problem. National politics has always been the politics of the possible - if you can't depend on your policies being implemented, then you are nothing more than an arbitrator between competing interests, which is a fast way of getting sidetracked into a stagnant, and often corrupt, system. There is no one in China or the CCP that can command the sort of power that would be necessary to push through much needed reforms. The party, from what I understand, is still wracked by internal disputes over critical policy issues, though these are kept out of public sight.
I know this sounds like an argument for greater centralization, but the truth is, against an entrenched elite protective of their own interests (in this case, the 45 million+ bureaucrats and their social circles), only two solutions are possible: 1) the emergence of a powerful, charismatic leader (like Mao, Lee Kuan Yew, etc.) 2) popular revolution. In fact, the two solutions are frequently the same one: as a popular revolution is often led by such a leader.
There is not enough pressure in China to ferment a revolution; what dissent there exists is under control - and so long as catastrophic problems do not occur, it is likely that China will continue in its present path, much like most of the developing world, which is both corrupt and inefficient. So, without drastic changes, we will have to see whether "great" leaders emerge. The next generation of CCP power brokers do not give me hope, in this respect - they seem too "princeling," and therefore too likely to fall into the current pattern of defending elite interests.