Neoauthoritarianism (China)
Neoauthoritarianism (Chinese: 新权威主义; pinyin: xīn quánwēi zhǔyì), also known as Chinese Neoconservativism or New Conservatism (Chinese: 新保守主义; pinyin: xīn bǎoshǒu zhǔyì) since the 1990s,[1][2] is a current of political thought within the People's Republic of China (PRC), and to some extent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that advocates a powerful state to facilitate market reforms.[3] It has been described as classically conservative even if elaborated in self-proclaimed "Marxist" theory.[4]
Initially gaining many supporters in China's intellectual world,[5] the failure to develop democracy led to intense debate between democratic advocates and those of Neoauthoritarianism[1] in the late 1980s before the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.[6] Neoauthoritarianism remains relevant to contemporary Chinese politics, and is discussed by both exiled intellectuals and students as an alternative to the immediate implementation of liberal democracy, similar to the strengthened leadership of Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.[4]
It's current was based in reworked ideas of Samuel Huntington, advising the post-Communist East European elite take a gradualist approach to market economics and multiparty reform; hence, "new authoritarianism". A rejection of the prevalent more optimistic modernization theories,[7] but nonetheless offering faster reform than the socialist market economy, policy makers close to Premier Zhao Ziyang would be taken by the idea.[8] The doctrine may be typified as being close to him ideologically as well as organizationally.[7] In early March 1989, Zhao presented Wu's idea of neoauthoritarianism as a foreign idea in the development of a backward country to Deng Xiaoping, who compared it to his own ideology.[9]
Background[edit]
Post-Mao China stressed a "pragmatic approach to rebuilding the country's economy", employing "various strategies of economic growth" following the 1978 Third Plenum that made Deng Xiaoping the top leader of China, beginning the Chinese economic reform.[1] By 1982 the success of China's market experiments had become apparent, making more radical strategies seem possible and desirable. This led to the lifting of price controls and agricultural decollectivization, signaling the abandonment of the New Economic Policy, or economic Leninism, in favour of market socialism.[3]
With economic developments and political changes, China departed from totalitarianism towards what Harry Harding characterizes as a "consultative authoritarian regime." One desire of political reform was to "restore normalcy and unity to elite politics so as to bring to an end the chronic instability of the late Maoist period and create a more orderly process of leadership succession." With cadre reform, individual leaders in China, recruited for their performance and education, became more liberal, with less ideological loyalty.[1]
History[edit]
Emergence[edit]
Having begun in the era of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, decentralization accelerated under Deng Xiaoping. Writing in 1994, in an apparently neoauthoritarian vein, Zheng Yongnian believed that "Deng's early reform decentralized power to the level of local government" with the goal of "decentralizing power to individual enterprises" running "afoul of the growing power of local government, which did not want individual enterprises to retain profit (and) began bargaining with the central government over profit retention, (seizing) decision-making power in the enterprises. This intervention inhibited the more efficient behavior that reforms sought to elicit from industry; decentralization... limited progress."
Though the government took a clear stance against liberalization in December 1986, political discussions centered in Beijing would nonetheless emerge in academic circles in 1988 in the form of democracy and Neoauthoritarianism.[10] Neoauthoritarianism would catch the attention of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in early 1988 when Wu Jiaxiang wrote an article in which he concluded that the British monarchy initiated modernization by "pulling down 100 castles overnight", thus developmentally linking autocracy and freedom as preceding democracy and freedom.[4]
Legacy[edit]
China's measures for successful economic and political stabilization led many scholars and politicians to accept the role of an authoritarian regime in fast and stable economic growth. Although the Chinese state is seen as legitimizing democracy as a modernization goal, economic growth is seen as more important.[1]
In his 1994 article Zheng Yongnian elaborates that, "Administrative power should be strengthened in order to provide favorable conditions, especially stable politics, for market development. Without such a political instrument, both 'reform' and 'open door' are impossible... A precondition of political development is the provision of very favorable conditions for economic progress. Political stability must be given highest priority... without stable politics, domestic construction is impossible, let alone an 'open door' policy. So, if political reform or democracy undermines political stability, it is not worthwhile. In other words, an authoritarian regime is desirable if it can produce stable politics."[1]
Deng Xiaoping explains: "Why have we treated student demonstrations so seriously and so quickly? Because China is not able to bear more disturbance and more disorder." Given the dominance of the Chinese state, Zheng believes that, when it is finally implemented, democracy in China is more likely to be a gift from the elite to the society rather than brought about by internal forces.[1]
A 2018 study of schools of political theory in contemporary China identified neoconservatism, still alternatively named neoauthoritarianism, as a continuing current of thought alongside what are now the academically more prominent Chinese New Left, New Confucianism, and Chinese liberalism.[26]
Criticism and views[edit]
When neoauthoritarianism emerged to scholarly debate, Rong Jian opposed his old idea as regressive, favoring the multiparty faction. He would become famous for a news article on the matter.[9]
Chinese-Canadian sociologist Yuezhi Zhao views the neoauthoritarians as having attempted to avoid an economic reform crisis through dictatorship,[27] and Barry Sautman characterizes them as reflecting the policy of "pre-revolutionary Chinese leaders" as well as "contemporary Third World strongmen", as part of ideological developments of the decade he considers more recognizable to westerners as conservative and liberal. Sautsmans sums its theory with a quote from Su Shaozi (1986): "What China needs today is a strong liberal leader."[4]
Li Cheng and Lynn T. White nonetheless regard the neoauthoritarians as resonating with technocracy emerging in the 1980s as a result of "dramatic" policy shifts in 1978 that promoted such to top posts.[27] Henry He considers the main criticism of neoauthoritarianism to be its continued advocacy of an "old" type of establishment, relying on charismatic leaders. His view is corroborated by Yan Yining and Li Wei, with the addition that for Yan what is needed is law, or Li democracy, administrative efficiency and scientific government. Li points out that previous crisis in China were not due to popular participation, but power struggles and corruption, and that an authoritarian state does not usually separate powers.[12] A criticism by Zhou Wenzhang is that neoauthoritarianism only considers problems of authority from the angle of centralization, similarly considering the main problem of authority to be whether or not it is exercised scientifically.[28]