Marc Blecher, a member of the politics department and the East Asian Studies program at Oberlin College, will address the question, “Will China Democratize - and Should It?” at the next Great Decisions lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.), beginning at 7:30 p.m.
Blecher will consider several scenarios on China’s future, particularly the possible place and meaning of democracy. He will look at various outlooks for the political future, including a smooth transition to parliamentary politics (”democratization”), a virtual collapse as in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, and a continuation of the present market authoritarianism. “The ‘Washington consensus’ is that the present régime is unsustainable - that rapid capitalist development is bound to bring political liberalization in tow,” said Blecher. “In fact, there are good reasons to question that.
“There is a danger of projecting our own political values and experience onto other countries where they don’t fit,” he added. “The ability of China to engineer its transition to stunning capitalist growth was directly dependent on its maintenance of political authoritarianism, including the terrible 1989 crackdown. Most of the leadership, and many ordinary Chinese as well, including some of the Tiananmen protesters, now understand this.”
The present generation of top leadership shows no inclination to democratize from above, according to Blecher, especially after seeing the problems it caused former top leaders in South Korea. “The example of Russia shows many Chinese the virtues of their present course,” said Blecher. “Can they muddle through a while longer, or will this increase crisis tendencies? I used to think the latter, but it’s now been going on for more than 25 years, and except for 1989, no destabilizing political crisis has hit yet. Indeed, perhaps going further, ‘market authoritarianism’ will prove a viable model for China over the medium term.”
Blecher, a graduate of Cornell University, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He specializes in Chinese politics, and has published five books as well as dozens of articles on local politics, popular participation, and political economy. He teaches courses on these subjects as well as Asian politics and political economy, Marxist theory, and comparative politics. His current research focuses on workers’ politics in contemporary China, and the political economy of urban space in a small Chinese city.