The Link Between Free Trade and Democracy in China

There is a popular belief of among the United States foreign policy elite that trade can be used as a tool to promote democracy...over time...over a very long time. The belief has been around for decades and it makes sense why it's so popular: if the U.S. can help countries that are generally hostile to U.S. interests become friendlier through trade, than the U.S. can avoid to engaging them in more costly ways (ie military force or simply refusing to invite them to the ambassador's residence - ouch!) and get away with making money, all while accomplishing broader foreign policy objectives. If only it were true. I originally became skeptical about the link between trade and democracy after reading James Mann's new book on China, and became more skeptical earlier today after reading an article in the Washington Post on this subject. First, Mann's book:

Mann argues that U.S. policy toward China has been heavily influence by the "soothing" theory that trade/integration with China will eventually lead to political change within that country. "With God's help, we will lift Shanghai up and up until it is just like Kansas city," said Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska in the 1950s during Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist China. To a large extent, Chinese citizens living in big cities today such as Shanghai do resemble Americans in their lifestyles, and in contrast to what some observers argue, they are also anxious for democratic openness.

But...:

"Yes, Chinese people dress differently now than in 1989, yet people can wear tank tops or Armani suits and still not live under a democratic system. Yes, Chinese kids can eat pizza and drink coke, but doing so won't necessarily create a free press or an opposition political party...On the surface, things certainly appear to be better than in 1989, because the People's Liberation Army is no longer opening fire on the streets of Beijing. But why is that? The main reason Tienanmen Square remains so quiet today is that China's security apparatus goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure there will never again be large-scale demonstrations there to challenge the regime. These days, the police don't wait for protests in China's major cities to gather momentum; they stop them much earlier. China remains politically stable in part because the repression is speedier and more thorough now than it was in 1989."

Other arguments that integration and economic change will lead to political change are based on the idea that the Chinese leadership will at some point, no longer be able to control the greater information flows necessary for continued economic liberalization and expansion. The forces toward openness will simply be too strong. Friedman's argument in the Lexus and the Olive Tree was that Chinese leadership would need to provide "unrestricted financial information to maintain public faith in its stock markets and that this would lead to broader press". But this prediction has so far failed to materialize just like Senator Wherry's did over fifty years ago. Instead of being stifled by more rapid information flows, the Communist Party has adapted along with the information technologies that make communication more available to the Chinese people. Again, Mann:

"the Chinese security apparatus has become increasingly sophisticated in its ability to block Web sites on the Internet. Key phrases like "Tienanmen massacre" attract immediate scrutiny...Let's suppose that someone in China wants to organize a political entity...If that person tries to post a notice of a meeting for that new organization on the Web, he or she will quickly find that the posting vanishes and that it has succeeded only in attracting a crowd of security officials."

Here is the real question:

"Even if people in China now have the ability to receive information from the Internet, what can they do with it? Chinese people can keep close track of an election in Taiwan, but they can't have their own. They can't even hold a meeting of fifteen people to sign a petition proposing that China hold elections...The Internet has indeed changed Chinese politics, but in a circumscribed way. It has carried China from an old era of clueless authoritarianism to a new era of aware authoritarianism."

Okay, after all that, I then read an article in today's Washington Post (Page A13), entitled "China's Premier Calls Democracy a Distant Goal":

"The Communist Party cautioned China's increasingly impatient reformers and intellectuals Tuesday that political liberalization and democracy are still a long way off despite the rapid pace of economic change over the past few decades."

In Premier Wen Jiabao's words:

"We are still far away from advancing out of the primary stages of socialism...We must stick with the basic development guidelines of that sage for 100 years."

Bottom-Line: The Communist Party is proving that globalization and censorship are not incompatible. Further, the party has reached out to other undemocratic regimes such as Burma and Zimbabwe, and has reportedly supplied Mugabe with surveillance equipment to crack down on Internet traffic. None of this is meant to imply that the U.S. and China are on military or diplomatic collision course, but it raises questions about whether this idea that "everything will be okay" in China in five, ten, fifteen, or fifty years. We should start thinking about the possibility that China's regime will look much 20 years down the line as it does today.