China’s Selective Authoritarianism

[Contributory BP]

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, authored an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about China’s selective authoritarianism. Lu starts off by talking about Chinese Internet behavior, and the sometimes awful content Chinese citizens have in their comments. But her point is not the content of the activity but the type of activity, as she says, “What’s noteworthy is that politically sensitive topics are meticulously censored inside China’s so-called Great Firewall… [but] in contrast, when it comes to hate speech that tramples morality and basic human decency, China’s Internet is like the Internet everywhere else.”

Why is this important? China is renowned for its authoritarian anti-free speech government and policy. But Lu highlights an interesting discrepancy in practice compared to other authoritarian countries like Singapore “where the state not only restricts political freedoms but also heavily regulates social practices and moral norms”. The Chinese state “concentrates its power and resources on policing activities and behavior… [viewed] as potentially threatening to the existing political order, but otherwise cares much less about social or moral order.” It will call out, but not enforce social or moral order.

For example in one case:

“… a woman who was stopped by a police officer for running a red light and driving without a license plate sped up instead of getting out of the car as she was told, carrying the officer on the hood for 1.3 kilometers until she was forced to stop by other cars. She was charged with “interfering with public administration” but only received a suspended sentence.”

Further to this, other instances of government or authority interference finds backlash in the Internet as the case is here. Influences once not so much of an issue are now danger zones in a regime’s control on society.

Lu states, “weak enforcement of environmental laws to difficulty in securing food safety, can be attributed at least in part to its system of selective authoritarianism. For the most part, only problems that are perceived as having the potential to threaten “social stability” – and hence the regime’s stability — are dealt with in a determined manner.” Tolerance only goes as far as what suits the regime.

Why is this so? In a population of 1.3 billion, Lu claims, “managing hate speech and other forms of bad behaviour… is a tall and costly order.” To be able to control the population to the extent of enforcing a fixed social and moral order is out of reach of the Chinese government, something that could be put down to resources and manpower. But what also should be included, I believe, is the unique combination of capitalist-like economic order with its nondemocratic political order. Perhaps China cannot lean more heavily with increasing external influences like the Internet and its balanced political/economic structures that would work unfavourably to its international enterprises?

But Lu rightly states that, “in picking and choosing which issues to control, the Communist Party risks making the wrong choices, playing catch-up when things go unexpectedly awry and sowing resentment among people confused about which rules are real.” Whilst Lu notes things may be changing under Xi, China’s current premier, “if he stops short, whether for lack of will or lack of resources, public confusion would continue to grow.” But “if he persists and succeeds in making China’s authoritarian governance less selective, then recent discussions about” the Chinese communist regime’s demise is premature. Either way, too much liberalization jeopardizes the political integrity of China, too much draconian interference, and backlash from the freer sections of society appear, troubling the regime with potential civil unrest.

Original article link here.

For more see the Foreign Affairs article that looks at China’s Authoritarian Adaption here.

For empirical perspectives on China's Adaptive Authoritarianism see here.