“There is an expression in China: "Kill the chicken before the monkey." Target the weak and vulnerable, it means, to frighten the strong and many,” wrote Peter Beaumont (Mail and Guardian 17 January 2010.
It was an excellent article except for one thing, the Chinese dissents may be few but the one thing they are not is “weak and vulnerable”.
No one should under estimate the importance of economic feel-good factor on the people. The standard of living for the ordinary people in China has improved in giant leaps and bounds in the last fifteen years. On the political front, nothing has changed; the Communist Party is as repressive as ever. And as long as the people feel their lives are getting better they will go along. Any Zimbabwean would testify to that!
The dollarization of Zimbabwe’s monetary systems ended the country’s supersonic hyper inflation and almost overnight the shops filled with food and other commodities. This has been brandished as “proof” that the GNU was working. Even those numbering among the 90% unemployed would not question why the economic recovery has been sluggish let alone the continued lawlessness and political repression by Mugabe and his thugs.
The fact that the Chinese dissents have managed to keep alive the demand for political reform regardless of the economic success is itself a measure of how focused they are on the cause and their iron determination to see it through.
The dissents have their eyes firmly on the ball: the basic human rights of the individual are a basic and fundamental right not to be denied or traded-off for economic privileges or anything! Man and woman like that can never be “bought” to give up their cause by the promise of premiership, a Mercedes Benz, etc. That is what is worrying China’s ruling elite and forcing them to respond is the only way they know – continued and increased repression as shown by increased arrests of dissents and disruptions of human rights websites.
It was the growing demand for political reforms that forced China’s Communist leaders, fifteen years ago, to embrace the economic reforms that have pulled China’s economy from the dark ages into the space age. That only delayed the inevitable political change.
China’s economic boom has had a seismic shift on the country’s demographics. Before, China was a nation of peasants, preoccupied by the daily challenge of eking a living, with a sprinkling of academics and the rich ruling elite. Now, China has a significant affluent and well educated middle class and billions of the peasants are snapping at their heels demanding a share of the national wealth denied them all these years.
The Communist Party is under great pressure to continue to deliver on the economic front; it is doubtful it will. Tyrannical one-party states are inherently corrupt and inefficient. Even if Communist party manage to deliver the high economic growths of the last decade and a half; the party’s monopoly on political power is not assured. The growing middle class, with their economic needs met, will be demanded greater political power and freedoms next!
The stage is set for real democratic change in China; continued and increased repression will only delay the day of reckoning but not stop it coming!
Mugabe may have Tsvangirai in his pocket and economic feel-good of having food in the shops will quickly wear off – Zimbabwe’s economic improvements of the last year is a far cry from the economic boom of China. He will still have to face regime; in Zimbabwe it is coming because Mugabe failed to embrace economic reforms necessary for economic recovery!
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