Summary Of China's Future

In this book, ‘China’s Future’, David Shambaugh argues that there will be only limited progress and reforms in economy if China is not followed by significant political liberalization and releasing of the connection between the society and party-state. He believes that the future of China will be dependent on the communist party who makes choices of domestic political system and without it, the results of the reforms will be only marginal. To illustrate Shambaugh’s words, he shows the analogy of China being a car heading for roundabout. The car can choose one of four exits which are ‘Soft Authoritarianism’, ‘Hard Authoritarianism’, ‘Neo-Totalitarianism’ and ‘Semi-Democracy’. He believes China is currently on the way of ‘Hard Authoritarianism’ and if China stays on this direction, …show more content…
But this does not mean that China is going to collapse soon and there are several reasons. First of all, the ‘Semi-Democratic’ way on the roundabout which he thinks is the possible way to be stable could be difficulty and crisis. Democratic reform is followed by the hardships and in complicated and diverse society like China, it is hard to find proper leader concerning the reform. And the way Shambaugh recommends does not support many explanations for how to apply these reforms by minimizing the risks and the current situation in China.
Secondly, Shambaugh points out that there is unprecedented corruption in China. Shambaugh gets his points about the severity of the corruption problem in China. However, he does not mention about the anti-corruption movement which have been very positive until now. And I believe why this was successful so far was the support of public. I think corrupt officials are aware of this too, and that is the reason why they are unable to fightback against the anti-corruption campaign and the