On March 11, 2018, a meeting of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) voted to amend the constitution, including abolishing the term of office of the country’s president, giving current President Xi Jinping a newfound popularity. However, Roger Garside, a two-time British diplomat in China, wrote in The Globe and Mail on April 30 that regime change in China is not only possible, but inevitable!
In the past, criticism of China in the Western mainstream media has focused on specific areas, such as human rights, the environment, military threats, and diplomatic friction, and has not dared to go too far into the systemic level.
The article says there is evidence that the CCP is a totalitarian regime that is strong on the outside and “its most fundamental weakness is its reliance on control, not trust. Over the past decade, the regime has consistently spent more on internal stability than on defense, and it fears internal discontent more than it fears external enemies. And even the most successful Chinese entrepreneurs, those who have amassed vast fortunes and built business empires in fintech or e-commerce, can have record-breaking IPO (initial public offering) plans canceled at the last minute or have their wealth confiscated by political order.
The article mentions that as a diplomat, he lived through the death of Mao Zedong and the beginning of China’s reforms and had expected that economic liberalization and advances in property ownership would lead to political change in the CCP, yet the regime stopped the transition precisely because it feared that further economic liberalization would undermine its political monopoly.
He notes that many in China’s elite are strongly opposed to Xi’s line. They realize that economic reform without political change has caused the country’s problems and endangered their own interests, and that their best hope for preserving their wealth and power lies precisely in radical political change.
Garside believes that China may achieve regime change through a coup d’état that initiates a transition to democracy. Not only is the coup a product of internal political dynamics in China, but the United States has also played a key role in orchestrating the U.S.-China confrontation that led to the crisis in China’s financial markets, which would prompt conspirators to launch a carefully prepared plan to overthrow Xi Jinping.
In addition to a coup, another possibility is that anti-Xi forces will prevent him from being re-elected for a third term at the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress (20th Congress) in November 2022. The 20th Congress will be a key point in reflecting China’s future, as Xi’s re-election would increase the likelihood that he will remain leader for life and make his removal thereafter more difficult.
Garced said many people do not believe that regime change is possible in China, the world’s second-largest economy, an attitude that comes from decades of being fed narratives about how successful China has been, courtesy of the Communist regime itself and all those associated with it in business or other areas. Moreover, people’s view of the future is often determined by inertia: the tendency is to assume that the world will continue to be the way it is. Yet in January 1991, who would have predicted that the Soviet communist regime would disintegrate itself before the year was over?
Having served twice in the British Embassy in Beijing, Gartside has continued to study Chinese politics and economics for many years. He is also a development banker and advisor on capital market development, and the author of the highly acclaimed book “Come Alive: China After Mao”, and knows China inside out, and his views are highly regarded.
Recent Comments