Days are numbered for Beijing’s autocracy
By James J. Y. Hsu 許正餘

The friendship visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was greatly appreciated by Taiwanese and government officials alike. It was followed by the visits of hostile warplanes, missiles, drones and submarines from China, which were very much unwelcome by locals.

It seems that China’s ruling elites believe that the intimidation of war, the tyranny of dominance and the threat of destruction can win the hearts and minds of Taiwanese. Their illogical and far-fetched concept is based on, according to Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩), the presence of 38 Shandong dumpling restaurants and 67 Shanxi noodle restaurants in Taiwan, which apparently demonstrate the public’s affection for China.

Sarcastically, former US Department of State spokesperson Morgan Ortagus countered that China, with its thousands of KFC restaurants, “has always been part of Kentucky.”

Meanwhile, China’s ambassadors to Australia and France have advocated the “re-education of Taiwanese” — a tacit admission that Xinjiang’s internment camps are used to re-educate Uighurs and other Muslims — showing that Chinese diplomates are no better than propagandists who lack an understanding of democracy and human rights.

Beyond the incompetence of officials who were neither scrutinized nor chosen by the people, there are more shortcomings in an autocratic government that suppresses freedom and deprives people of creativity. Without media freedoms, it is difficult to identify, report and punish corruption. This makes a nation impossible to govern in the long run. Worse, the purge of corruption has always been a tool to consolidate power during regime change, only to add more chaos to a treacherous transfer of power.

Without institutional integrity and independence, justice and social fairness cannot be guaranteed. The lack of check and balance easily lead to fatalities such as those during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns — crimes such as police cooperating with gangs, secret societies and “Chinese mafia,” bribery of national and local government officials and insecure bank loans to powerful elites.

Without freedom in enterprise, a planned economy by the central government could enable a society to thrive in a relatively underdeveloped economy. However, it lacks the natural selection process through economic evolution to prevent mistakes from piling up. That means non-performing financial assets will grow, efficiency will be jeopardized and productivity will fall, contributing to a loss in competitive edge. These were clearly revealed in the Soviet Union before its collapse, and evidently emerging in China.

What followed the planned economy can be difficult, if not impossible, for a centralized government to tackle, since it intrinsically lacks the innovation to compete in the marketplace. In a free economy of capitalism, the natural selection of strong enterprise and the “creative destruction” of inferior companies constantly improves efficiency, productivity, quality and even labor relations. While capitalism tends to create wealth disparity, a planned economy has a far worse record of wealth creation. Furthermore, capitalism, with the right social agenda, can in principle reduce wealth inequality, although that remains to be worked out.

China is now dominated by the culture of Mao Zedong (毛澤東): a mix of communism, autocracy, party and worse. The burst of its housing bubble, a run on its banks, unprofitable high-speed rail systems, the debt burden its Belt and Road Initiative and high unemployment, especially among the young people, are clear signs that the days of the Chinese Communist Party are numbered.

James J. Y. Hsu is a retired physics professor.
This article was originally published in Taipei Times Editorial:
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2022/08/30/2003784390