China Boost visionaries

This is not the first time that a closed political system has coexisted with a relatively open economy. But China is the only one to emerge as a leading capitalist power under dictatorship in a context not defined by the Cold War.

During that period, socialist countries that engaged the West economically tacitly served to validate Western freedoms; right-wing capitalist dictatorships also validated them because they embodied the economic success of free markets, while their political atrocities were offset by the horrors of communism.

The case of China poses a much greater dilemma for the West.

If China is going to define this century, the dominant paradigm might well be a system of one-party rule in which a man such as Liu can be sentenced to 11 years in prison for signing Charter 08, a manifesto calling for human rights, multi-party democracy, freedom of expression and an independent judiciary.

What a perfidious turn of events, after the triumph of Western liberal democracy over communism was supposed to have spelled the "end of history".

But awarding Liu the Nobel Peace Prize, among other gestures, could help strengthen the hand of those inside the communist bureaucracy pushing for reform. This is what Beijing's reaction to the prize, including declarations of political war against Norway, the arrest of critics and the harassment of Liu's wife seem to indicate.

This looks very much like a sign that the guardians of the status quo are feeling insecure.

In six decades of Chinese communism, the impossible has sometimes happened. During the Tiananmen crisis in 1989, premier Zhao Ziyang called for democratisation. He was purged and replaced by Jiang Zemin, but the world was given notice that a titanic ideological split had taken place at the very top of the system.

The more China opens its economy, and the larger the middle class grows, the more intense the pressure for a modern political environment from within will become. The Chinese leaders know it well - hence their desperate response to this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

With a little encouragement from outside, today's Chinese visionaries, including the 10,000 people who have already signed Charter 08, will deliver their people from authoritarianism.

(source:theaustralian.com.au)