schlieffen
New Member
Apart from what taxiya has summarized, which I think is excellent, there is some bitter irony here, in that the PRC is by all means the true Party-state that Sun Yat-Sen and Chiang Kai-Shek dreamt of but never successfully built. Despite referring to his state as Dang-Guo (党国) at every possible opportunity, Chiang’s KMT regin was through and through a military junta, maintained by a personal secret police and a loose syndicate of local warlords.
Today the party has long ceased to be a revolutionary pioneering force (they admit it themselves) so the state and party are basically one, both being a façade of the huge bureaucratic machine that rules China. The thing is, in many parts of the world if the ruling elite rules with a degree of benevolence, people are likely to live with the establishment until things start to get terribly wrong. Are things terribly wrong in China at the moment? Definitely not, regardless what you hear from Western media. Will the status quo last for long? I cannot possibly tell.
In addition, the system with all its kleptocrats has yet to became an aristocracy. Its is still sufficiently dynamic that commoners still have a real hope of climbing the echelon of society through determination, diligence, talent and of course some luck. If history is any indication this usually means the regime has yet to reach its terminal stage.
Today the party has long ceased to be a revolutionary pioneering force (they admit it themselves) so the state and party are basically one, both being a façade of the huge bureaucratic machine that rules China. The thing is, in many parts of the world if the ruling elite rules with a degree of benevolence, people are likely to live with the establishment until things start to get terribly wrong. Are things terribly wrong in China at the moment? Definitely not, regardless what you hear from Western media. Will the status quo last for long? I cannot possibly tell.
In addition, the system with all its kleptocrats has yet to became an aristocracy. Its is still sufficiently dynamic that commoners still have a real hope of climbing the echelon of society through determination, diligence, talent and of course some luck. If history is any indication this usually means the regime has yet to reach its terminal stage.
