The Clinton administration's China policy has come under attack from
many quarters for being too conciliatory, too optimistic and too
compromised by a nexus of money and insider politics. But the
President and his aides deflect each jab by contending that, despite
episodic problems and pratfalls, a policy of engaging China on a
broad range of issues has the best chance of maximizing American
influence and impelling China toward positive change. The key dynamic
is assumed to be rapid economic growth, which, it is tenaciously
held, will result ultimately in political liberalization. That, in
turn, would not solve all problems between the United States and
China, but it would conventionalize those problems and, presumably,
make them easier to manage.
In this line of assumptions the administration has many scholarly
allies. Henry Rowen, Minxin Pei and many others have argued that one
of the few hard conclusions of comparative politics--that rising
income levels are conducive to political democratization--applies to
China no less than it has applied to Europe and Latin America. In
this view, increased wealth, information and trade will create and
mobilize a new middle class whose interests and social power will
ultimately undermine the Communist Party's monopoly on political
power, leading in due course to some form of democratic politics.
According to this view, too, elections in rural China, advances
toward the rule of law, the strengthening of the National People's
Congress (NPC) and media liberalization exemplify political change
already afoot in China as a result of economic marketization and
growth.
