Muddling Authoritarianism Notes

Muddling Authoritarianism and China's Energy Policy

Beijing's energy policy is state-centric due to distrust of global energy markets.
'Fragmented authoritarianism' affects coherent and effective energy policies.
Energy policy includes environmental issues, especially regarding coal use.
Coal constitutes almost 70% of China’s primary energy demand, accounting for about 90% of China’s carbon emissions.
Modernization and consolidation of the coal industry and cleaner energy sources are urgent.

China's Environmental Predicaments

Environmental problems date back to ancient times with population growth and land scarcity.
Post-1949 era saw increased damage due to accelerated industrialization.
Focus on heavy industry led to resource degradation and pollution.
Reform era brought environmental degradation on three levels:
- Ecological stress and biodiversity loss.
- Industrial pollution.
- Climate change, marine pollution, and toxic waste from globalization.
High environmental costs include soil, air, and water pollution.
Measures are being taken by the party-state and civil society to combat the environmental crisis.

Natural Resource Degradation and Population Issues

Population growth increases demand on natural resources, potentially exceeding carrying capacity.
China’s population fluctuated, expanding during peace and contracting during wars and famines.
Mao period saw population doubling due to absence of warfare, improved diets and healthcare, and lenient population control.
A large population necessitates maintaining good-quality agricultural land for food security.
Factors causing a shrinkage in per capita farmland, deterioration in farmland quality, and decreasing safe drinking water availability.
These factors greatly impact sustainable farming and the environment.

Population Growth and Human Development

Despite rapid population growth during the Mao period, human development indicators improved.
Unchecked population growth worried CCP leadership, necessitating resources for citizens.
In 1979, the one-child policy was introduced.
The policy decreased birth rates but faced resistance.
Unexpected consequences included an unbalanced gender ratio and an aging population.
The two-child policy was introduced in 2015 due to shrinking workforce and rising social welfare costs.
CCP's insistence on family control measures demonstrates its determination to remain central to the Chinese people's sphere, that of conjugal love and procreation.

Tension Between Population Growth and Food Supply

Fear of food scarcity exists due to the need to feed 22% of the world’s population with only 7% of the world’s arable land.
Post-1949 governments successfully addressed the tension between population growth and food supply.
Deng’s agricultural reforms raised per capita grain output and improved diets.
Emerging food safety concerns, such as the 2008 melamine milk scandal, remain a concern.

Economic Inequalities

Emergence of economic inequalities is a critical social change.
Widening gap between haves and have-nots transformed China from an egalitarian society to one of the most unequal.
Inequality of opportunities and urbanization are critical aspects of social change.
Inequality of opportunities occurs when individuals lack equal chances due to predetermined circumstances like gender, ethnicity, or place of birth.
Rural-to-urban migrant workers are visibly affected by structural inequality.
Numbers rose from about 2 million in 1978 to 274 million in 2014.

Rural-Urban Migration and the Hukou System

Rural-urban migration is a defining characteristic of social and economic change.
The hukou system divides Chinese society into urban and rural groups, creating a caste system.
Hukou prevents population movement by assigning benefits based on household registration.
Urban economic reforms in the 1980s attracted rural migrants with higher salaries.
The CCP did not abolish the hukou system, as rural workers became indispensable to China’s economic rise.
Migrant workers face discrimination when seeking urban welfare services.
The rural-urban divide also affects inequalities in education and health.
Gender and ethnicity are predetermined circumstances underlying opportunity inequalities.
Chinese women face discrimination in employment, income, education, and political participation.
Non-Han ethnicity is another disadvantaging factor.

Urbanization and the Middle Class

Urbanization is a significant aspect of social change.
By 2011, over half of Chinese citizens lived in urban areas.
Rapid urbanization is associated with rural-to-urban migration.
Tension exists between the centrality of migrant workers and the decreasing capacity to absorb them due to economic and environmental constraints.
Urbanization's impact on China’s environment and food production.
The urban middle class, with annual incomes between $54,600$ and $544,000$ yuan (about US $8,300$ to $69,300$ ), benefits from economic reforms and supports the CCP.
Unlikely to seek political change.

Social Instability

Rising social unrest is measured in terms of mass protests.
Collective protests increased from $8,700$ in 1993 to $32,000$ in 1999.
Incidents of armed and violent protest numbered $117$ in 2000.
The number of riots surpassed $70,000$ in 2004.
Mass incidents increased from around $10,000$ in 1993 to $60,000$ in 2003 and $180,000$ in 2010.
Public security spending surpassed the defense budget in 2010, reflecting concern about social unrest.
Contributors do not find a causal relationship between social instability and inequality.
Most Chinese accept distribution principles similar to a capitalist welfare state.

Causes of Social Instability

Unrest is related to the CCP’s failures in environmental protection, labor rights, and minority interests.
Pollution has triggered more public protests than any other cause.
Urban campaigns against petrochemical plants and coal power plants involve environmental NGOs and urbanites.
Workers and peasants instigate 75% of all mass protests.
Labour unrest goes well beyond the protest figures.
In 2014, China’s Labour Ministry reported $1.56$ million labor disputes.
The CCP took measures to appease and suppress the workers’ movement, including removing the freedom to strike from the 1982 Constitution.
Migrant workers are the most disadvantaged in China’s labor market.
The CCP strives to improve wages and entitlements for individual workers while preventing independent, cross-industry movements.
Conflicts in ethnic minority areas contribute to social instability.

Conflicts in Ethnic Minority Areas

Factors contributing to violence in Tibet and XUAR include ethnic identity, economic inequalities, religious freedoms, and Han migration.
Terrorist attacks or mass protests in border regions raise questions about the CCP’s capacity to maintain territorial integrity.

Territorial Unity

China’s current territory resulted from Qing dynasty conquests.
The fall of the Qing in 1911 and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912 failed to end territorial disintegration.
Mongolia and Tibet declared independence.
Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and occupied major ports in 1937–8.
By the early 1950s, the CCP had regained most of the lost territories.
Only Outer Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau remained outside the Party’s control.
The return of Hong Kong and Macau made Taiwan the most pressing item on China’s territorial integrity agenda.

Challenges to National Unity

The danger for territorial fragmentation remains in non-Han populated areas.
Tibet and XUAR show the greatest desire for autonomy.
Secessionist movements in Tibet and XUAR continue to challenge China’s territorial integrity.
Hong Kong poses a recent and unexpected challenge to ‘one China’.

Hong Kong's Relations with China

Relations are examined through colonialism, unification, and integration.
The ‘one country, two systems’ formula envisaged a special central–regional relationship but Beijing failed to live up to commitments.
Failure to deliver on promised electoral democracy led to the emergence of the localist, anti-mainlander movement.
This localism could transform into a robust separatist movement.

Implications for Taiwan's Unification

The failure of ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong has direct implications for Taiwan.
The CCP’s strategies to recover Taiwan have shifted from military force to a peaceful offensive.
Beijing has failed to regain Taiwan.
The Taiwanese public has gained a final say on the political future of Taiwan due to democratization.
Taiwanese citizens are unlikely to support any immediate union with the mainland due to the rise of Taiwanese identity.
The 2016 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan, won by the pro-independence DPP, support this assertion.
Beijing has yet to offer Taiwan an attractive unification proposal.

International Dimension of China's Domestic Challenges

Issues on which the CCP finds international influences threatening its domestic agenda.
CCP’s domestic policies and internal changes have consequences for the international community.
Chinese leaders cannot ignore the world, and the world must pay attention to domestic China.
The CCP is anxious about foreign powers undermining national unity, particularly on the Taiwan question.
Similar narratives are presented when explaining conflicts in Tibet and XUAR.
The CCP deploys coercive power to protect territorial integrity, including expanding the internal public security apparatus and modernizing the PLA.

China's Foreign Interests and Global Impact

Key foreign interest is access to overseas oil reserves.
China's energy deals with politically and economically unstable countries raise international criticism.
Debate about China’s ‘irresponsibility’ concerns its stand on global climate regime.
Environmental challenges posed by Chinese overseas investments and foreign trade.
China's transformation into the world’s largest fishery producer and its appetite for luxury products made of endangered species.
Changing diets and food safety concerns fuel China’s rising agricultural imports.
China’s food imports and overseas agricultural land acquisitions affect international food markets and meet opposition from local communities.

Challenges Facing the CCP

The CCP faces a legitimacy deficit due to rejecting popular elections.
Needs to calibrate repression against reforms.
Transition from rule by law to the rule of law.
Pursuit of export-oriented industrialization has produced economic growth but damaged the environment and created dependence on global markets.
Supply-side reforms appear problematic.
The CCP has prevented unequal distribution of wealth from destabilizing its rule but appears indifferent to inequality of opportunities.
Failure in environmental protection, labor rights, and minority issues stimulates mass protests.

The National Question and the CCP

The CCP has styled itself as the exclusive force for China’s territorial unity.
Its nationalistic agenda appears vulnerable.
None of its policies has quelled ethnic unrest or separatist movements in Tibet and XUAR.
Mismanagement of political reforms in Hong Kong has created a nascent secessionist movement.
In Taiwan, Beijing’s unification project has stalled.

Authoritarian Resilience vs. Imminent Collapse

Both theses rely on the Party’s capacity for learning and adaptation, success at solving domestic problems, and evolution in the direction of political liberalization.
Proponents of authoritarian resilience see the Party as successful, while those favoring collapse no longer believe in the Party’s capacity for self-improvement.
Xi Jinping’s centralization of power prevents him from pursuing necessary reforms.
Focus on the multiple crises the Party has created.
Chinese authoritarianism is inherently unstable due to its legitimacy deficit.
The solution to the CCP’s resilience lies in its crisis management skills.

The CCP's Crisis Management

The CCP has hardly ever addressed any critical issue comprehensively, creating new problems in solving old ones.
Energy- and labor-intensive economic ‘model’ produced GDP growth but also environmental catastrophes and over-reliance on global markets.
Environmental degradation and urbanization have made food self-sufficiency difficult and created a food safety crisis.
Environmental failure affects China’s international standing, as does its pursuit of oil and food security.
Repressive population control policy created problems of surplus males and an aging population.
Sisyphean pursuit of territorial integrity has stimulated ethnic tensions and alienated Hong Kongers and Taiwanese.

Conclusion: Muddling Authoritarianism

The CCP's monopoly of power is the likely cause of China’s largely unresolved problems.
Successful oppression and surveillance have allowed the Party to experiment freely but also conceal emerging issues until they become crises.
Crisis management focuses on immediate measures rather than long-term solutions.
The Party cannot risk radical solutions due to their potential to undermine Party unity.
Supporting rural-to-urban migration while preserving the hukou system.
Pursuing market-oriented reforms while strengthening SOEs.
Endorsing fair trials while insisting on the Party’s leadership.
Seeking national unity while antagonizing ethnic minorities, Hong Kongers, and Taiwanese.
The challenges facing contemporary China are becoming ever more complex and urgent.
The politics of muddling through will increasingly frustrate the CCP’s pursuit of unity, stability, and development.