Why China Will Democratize - Winter 2012

Behind the political stagnation on the surface, signs abound that a fundamental political transformation is taking place in China. In the fall of 2011, an unusually large group of independent citizens launched very vocal campaigns to compete for seats in various local congresses. Around the same time, groups of ‘‘netizens’’ went to a small village in Shandong province to try to visit Chen Guangcheng, a human right activist under house arrest, despite repeated reports about visitors being beaten. In July 2011, a train crash near the city of Wenzhou caused a storm of criticism against the government on ‘‘weibo,’’ micro-blog sites in China that claim nearly 200 million readers. Although these are just three pieces of evidence, they represent a rising independent civil society and illustrate that China’s political regime is increasingly being challenged. Over the last decade, terms typically used by Western academics to describe Chinese politics have included ‘‘authoritarian resilience,’’ ‘‘illiberal adaption,’’ and ‘‘rightful resistance,’’ indicating a pessimistic view of China’s democratic future. However, reality sometimes changes faster than scholars can reckon. China is moving closer to vindicating classical modernization theory, which states that economic development eventually leads to democratization. We argue that there is good reason to be optimistic that China will become a democracy, and forecast that China will embark on democratization around 2020 or so, although how it will happen, how long the process will take, and even whether it is desirable are issues beyond the scope of this article. Our relative optimism stems from four interlinked mega-trends: economic development, cultural change, political leadership trends, and the global environment.