Former diplomat in China: The Chinese Communist regime is strong on the outside but weak on the inside

Roger Garside, a leading China expert, told a panel on regime change and the potential for democracy in China hosted by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University on Monday that China’s Communist regime is “strong on the outside but weak in the middle.

Garside is a former British diplomat in China and author of China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom and Coming Alive: China After Mao. He calls the Chinese Communist Party “cowardly” and argues that “the regime that rules China today is totalitarian, not authoritarian.

He said that while the CCP has tried to project a strong image, it has some basic weaknesses that characterize totalitarian regimes.

“The common perception is that this regime is strong and stable and will rule China for the foreseeable future. But I believe that this regime is strong on the outside but weak on the inside. This so-called plenipotentiary regime is actually incapable of solving a series of deep-seated problems that have plagued China for years, if not decades. Why? Because these problems are actually the product of a totalitarian system.”

Boys play cards at night in a migrant village on the outskirts of Beijing. Taken on September 7, 2017, (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images)

Among the problems Garside cites is China’s economy and its rapidly accumulating debt. Economic growth has long been seen as key to maintaining the basic stability of Chinese society under Communist Party rule, as Chinese citizens have not been granted basic human rights, including freedom of speech, press and religion.

“First, an economy that had grown spectacularly is now itself plagued by serious problems. in 2008, the transformation of the market economy that had unleashed the energy of the Chinese people was halted by the Communist Party. The high points of the economy, including banking, utilities and transportation, remain in the state-owned sector. Why? Not for economic reasons, but for political ones. The party feared that allowing private companies to occupy the high points of the economy would destroy its political monopoly,” Garside said.

“To compensate for the inefficiencies caused by halting the transition, the state has been pumping massive amounts of credit into the economy to maintain artificially high growth rates because it fears that low growth will lead to unemployment and corporate defaults. The result of this is a mountain of debt. No country with the same level of debt can reduce it without a recession or long-term inflation.”

Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society, argues that the economy may be central to future regime change in China determinants of future regime change in China.

“I would say that I think if there is a change in China, it’s going to come from within China. If I had to make a prediction, it would probably have to do with the economy,” Scheer said, adding that “all economies are cyclical, and when China gets into a bad cycle, it faces a test, like the one in 2008, like the one we’ve been going through recently. We will see how it performs.”

Garside cited the CCP’s policies aimed at maintaining economic growth, which have led to a serious deterioration of China’s natural resources and environment, as well as a “moral crisis” caused by corruption within the CCP.

In addition, Garside cited several factors that frighten the CCP, including truth, democratic aspirations and religion – as evidence of structural weakness – and asserted that the Chinese people live in “a state of political slavery.

“This supposedly powerful regime is cowardly. It is afraid of the truth. Throughout its 70-year history in power, the Chinese Communist Party has covered up the truth about some very important events. It is afraid of democracy. It has suppressed freedom in Hong Kong because it fears that the quest for democracy and the rule of law by 7.5 million Hong Kong people will affect the 1.4 billion residents of the mainland, who have been in political slavery,” Garside said.

“It is afraid of religion. It is alarmed by the explosive growth of all major religions in China since 1979. It is horrified that so many people see God, not the Chinese Communist Party, as the supreme authority in the universe. So it now persecutes religion to a degree not seen since Mao’s death. Its cultural genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet is the most extreme manifestation of this policy.”

Teng Biao, an academic lawyer and human rights activist who was a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law, said the Communist Party fears its “blood money” as a result of the injustices suffered by the Chinese people since the Communist Party came to power in 1949.

“Many people have ignored the Communist Party’s ‘blood debt. Since 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has committed extremely brutal anti-humanitarian crimes, for example, here is a list: from the killing of landowners, the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen massacre, to the ongoing Uighur genocide,” Teng Biao said, adding that “the Communist Party leaders really fear retribution from the people, and they do not believe that the Chinese people will absolve them of their ‘blood debt.'”

Garside noted that the result of the CCP’s fear and denial of human rights and freedoms to the Chinese people is a lack of trust between the CCP and the Chinese people.

“All of these factors combined have created a lack of trust between the people and the regime that rules them. Since 2011, the domestic security budget has exceeded the military budget. The regime is more afraid of internal dissent than its foreign enemies,” Garside said.

“But the lack of trust is not only an internal problem. It has also poisoned China’s international relations. As at home, international distrust of the CCP has grown dramatically as it covers up the origins of COVID-19. This is part of a broader alienation of the United States and its allies from the CCP. Countries that once had a benign partnership with China have now become hostile. International trust will not be restored until there is regime change in China.”