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AT: Transition Wars

Transition wars don’t apply to China—they have the pre-requisites for a stable transition


Rowen 7 [Henry S. Rowen, July 2007. Professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, “When Will the Chinese People Be Free?” Journal of Democracy 18.3, Project Muse]
I observed in 1996 that a democratic China in a region with many democracies would be good for peace because democracies do not fight each other (which does not imply that democracies are inherently peaceable). Yet all is not necessarily well. Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder find that countries making the transition from authoritarian to democratic governance are more likely to start foreign broils than are consolidated democracies because internal contests for power can cause a faction to identify, or to conjure up, a foreign enemy as a means of rallying mass support.26 Mansfield and Snyder hold that this is most likely where elections are held in countries with a weak sense of nationhood, a shaky rule of law, feeble bureaucracies, poor civilian control of the military, a winner-take-all attitude among contending parties, and few safeguards for press freedom. This leads them to recommend that, where possible, elections should come on the heels and not ahead of institution-building, with a competent central government and legal system needed most urgently of all. If these premises are correct, China's prospects are not bad. The Chinese today possess a strong sense of nationhood, a legal system that is moving in the right direction, a military that seems firmly under civilian control, increased professionalism in many organizations, and nothing like the shadow of "premature" elections on the horizon. Other positives for peace are China's high trade-to-GDP ratio and membership in several international organizations.


AT: CCP—No Collapse

CCP won’t collapse


Time 8 [December 25 2008, “Will the Financial Crisis Bring Upheaval to China?” www.time.com/time/world/article/0%2C8599%2C1868402%2C00.html]
Just as the political elite is united, the forces that would have to oppose them in any move to change the country's political order are fragmented, says David Zweig, a political science professor at Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology. Though it is miserable for those thrown out of work, millions of peasants going back to their villages are highly unlikely to pose a threat to Beijing. "Remember, Beijing has done this before: between 1998 and 2000, the government put tens of millions of workers at state-owned enterprises out of work. There were plenty of strikes and protests that made the government a little nervous, but overall, they were able to survive pretty well." Currently, the official figure is 4 million unemployed; but other estimates have the number at twice or three times that. (See pictures here of China's dust bowl.) "For regimes to be overthrown you need an overriding ideology like democracy or the mysticism of the Taiping and Boxer rebellions in the mid 1800s and early 20th Century," Says Zweig. "For regimes to collapse now you also need the middle class, and I just can't see that happening. They have been the core of Communist Party support for a decade or more and their future is still very much tied up with the Party's." "You can tell that the senior leaders know political change will come to China eventually and that the Party can't hang on indefinitely," says the diplomat. "That's why 90% of their children are in business, not working their way up the Communist Youth League or whatever. But that change is 15, 20 years down the road. That's not going to happen now, even if it is a very bad downturn. Change will come to China. But not yet. Not now."

AT: CCP Instability Impact

Protests are not a serious threat to the regime.


Taipei Times 12 [September 19, 2012, “China not turning democratic: experts,” http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/09/19/2003543134]
A rising number of cases of civic unrest in China do not necessarily mean China will one day become a Western-style democracy because mass protests there have focused on a great number of issues, but democracy has not been one of them, academics said in Taipei yesterday. While the increasing number of mass protests is an alarming issue for Beijing, “the party-state regime is getting better at containing public anger so it does not threaten the reins of the government,” said Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢), an associate professor at National Chengchi University. Wang was among four China experts who spoke yesterday at a forum called “Facing Chinese society,” the second of four symposiums organized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to increase the party’s understanding of China. Experts said it was imperative for the DPP to better understand Chinese society, but added that the party also needed to be able to accurately ascertain societal differences between Taiwan and China. Social instability in China likely reflects internal power struggles in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) based on differences of opinion on how to respond to specific instances of unrest, such as the riots in Xinjiang in 2009, rather than a real threat to the authoritarian regime, Wang said, adding that in the case of Xianjiang, the CCP was split over how to tame the unrest. Compared with Taiwan, where social movements have shared a close connection with political movements since the late 1970s, social movements in China have rarely been cross-class, cross-agenda or cross-geographical in nature, nor have they attracted large numbers from the middle class, Wang said. Wang also said that academics have underestimated the Chinese government’s technological control over the Internet and its sophisticated control of demonstrations. Academia Sinica political scientist Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) shared this view, saying that China has listed “social management innovation” as one of its top priorities, meaning that China’s leadership understands that social movements in the enormous country can only be “contained,” not stopped. “[The CCP] has learned when to tighten the leash and when to let go. It can even mobilize mass movements for its own agenda,” Hsu said, adding that the CCP has established a social organization network to increase its influence. Recent anti-Japan protests in various cities across China were a good example because “the only organization that could organize anti-Japan protests in 85 cities on the same day is the CCP,” Hsu said. Academia Sinica sociologist Lin Thung-hong (林宗弘) said that social movements in China were very different from those in Taiwan because Chinese protests focused on basic rights, such as housing, wages and other elements related to livelihood, rather than political rights.

Protests actually strengthen the regime—they are focused on specific issues rather than on the regime itself.


Tang 12—Wenfang Tang, Professor and C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Hua Hsia Chair of Chinese Culture and Institutions and Comparative Politics at Iowa [November 26, 2012, “Viewpoint: Are protests moving China backwards?” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20405224]
Every time a protest breaks out in China, the outside world sees it as a sign that the communist regime is weakening, with China moving one step closer to democracy. Yet Chinese opinion polls consistently show strong public support for the central government in Beijing, despite the protests that erupt around the country. In fact, the protests can help the Communist Party gain support, slowing the development of civil society and making democracy an increasingly distant hope. Public protests, or mass incidents, have risen rapidly in recent years. There were 180,000 mass incidents in 2010, compared to only 10,000 in 1994 and 74,000 in 2004, the New York Times reported. The scale of these incidents ranges from a few protesters or petitioners to as many as 100,000 - challenging the government is no longer the business of a few dissidents and public intellectuals. Recent high-profile incidents - such as the land dispute in Wukan, the mining plant dispute in Shifang, the waste water processing plant dispute in Qidong, and protests against a chef's death in Shishou and a young girl's drowning in Wengan - have been reported by Western media. These incidents have generated considerable excitement among Chinese dissidents and some Western media outlets, who tend to describe them as the harbinger of political change, a stepping stone towards democracy, or the beginning of the collapse of the authoritarian regime. If the "collapse" view is true, one should expect declining public support for the Chinese government. But public opinion surveys conducted by Chinese and Western scholars, including a recent survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, show a persistently high level of support for the Beijing government. Obviously, such strong support will not lead to the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) any time soon. Mob mentality Part of the reason is the CCP's successful use of mass incidents to promote and consolidate its own power. The protest in Wukan, where villagers drove out local officials in a widely-publicised stand-off over a land grab, was ultimately calmed when provincial officials intervened and removed the local officials. State media subsequently ran pieces censuring them and promising better ways of addressing such disputes. By shifting public anger to economic organisations, local governments and individual government officials, the central and provincial governments are bypassing normal judicial procedures and local bureaucratic institutions, and establishing direct dialogue with the public. In return, they gain people's trust and support. Such an approach, however, encourages the public to disobey the legal system and even nurtures the development of mob mentality as a way of expressing frustration. China is returning to a populist authoritarian society in which the leaders and the masses are directly linked without the "buffer zone" of a civil society, such as elections, the rule of law and autonomous social organisations like labour unions. In its frantic appeal to public opinion, government leaders frequently disrupt the legal system - for example, by compensating petitioners who refuse to accept court decisions. In the cases of the chef who fell to his death from a hotel building in Shishou and the 17-year-old girl who drowned in Wengan, both families and local residents refused to accept the medical examiners' reports because they did not find evidence of murder. As a result, families and local citizens organised large protests. The higher-level governments responded by appeasing the very public they feared, and so intervened by compensating the families, regardless of the medical examiners' findings. Such interference cooled public anger temporarily, but in the process demonstrated a complete disregard for the rule of law. Going backwards? Outside China, observers often view the internet as the hope for democracy, based on the assumption that it will effectively organise the public, break through news censorship and quickly disseminate information. Certainly the early stages of the Arab Spring seemed to reinforce that view. In China, however, the internet is often used as "human flesh search engine" to recklessly expose people's private information. It may be true that those exposed did unethical or unpopular things. But such vigilantism neglects the legal process and urges people to take justice into their own hands. It is Red Guards in action all over again, showing that in some situations the reflexes of the Cultural Revolution are still intact. Red Guard-like behaviour was also seen in the protest against the waste water processing plant in Qidong. The protesters stripped the mayor and the party secretary, and forced them to put on environmental protection T-shirts. Both officials were later fired by the higher-level government. In Jinan, a female police officer triggered another mass protest when she got into a row with some street vendors. Demonstrators dragged her out of a police car, poured water on her and made her kneel and apologise. As a result, she lost her job. These incidents seem a repeat of rallies during the Cultural Revolution when frenzied mobs criticised government officials and even beat them. In the Wukan and Shishou incidents as well as others, many protesters held banners calling for direct intervention by Beijing, while condemning local officials. The response from the top satisfies those at the bottom and in return, produces political loyalty and support for the CCP. But this process moves China further away from civil society and democracy. For those who mistakenly see these mass incidents as hopeful rays in a democratic pre-dawn, it may be time to consider that the dark side of Chinese mob mentality may ultimately block the sun.

AT: Economy (Global)

Chinese hard landing has minimal impact on the US and Global economy– feedbacks create a bounce back effect that quickly reverses the downturn


Davis 4 [Joseph, Analyst @ Vanguard China's slowing economy, September, https://institutional5.vanguard.com/iip/pdf/chinaslowdown.pdf]
Overall, our simulations indicate that a Chinese hard landing would have a minimal impact on the U.S. economy. There would be the usual temporary effects of dramatic economic news-a few days or weeks of market swings, together with much dire prophesizing in the media. But, as stated above, the true result of a sharp drop in China's GDP should be much like that of past emerging-market hard landings, which have not significantly detracted from U.S.-and hence, global-economic growth. Despite the initial drop-off in local demand, global deflationary pressures would quickly act to stimulate demand worldwide. Indeed, the VAR model demonstrates that the second-round feedback effects of lower commodity and import prices would reduce input costs world-wide sufficiently to create a bounce-back effect: The lower costs eventually would counteract the first-round fall-off in Chinese demand. Conclusion. While recent Chinese policy responses suggest that a soft landing is the most likely outcome for the nation's economy, the risks to this assessment lie overwhelmingly on the downside. Regardless of the path that China's economy takes over the next year, our analysis shows that the potential ramifications for long-term investors are more modest and short-lived than commonly feared. Using quantitative techniques, we find that the implications of a soft landing in China are relatively benign for the global economy. A potential hard landing would have more harmful effects on the Asian economy and emerging markets generally, but relatively minor impact on the U.S. economy.

No impact to Chinese economy


Coonan 8 [October 25, 2010, Clifford, IrishTimes.com, “China's stalling boom has globe worried,” http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1025/1224838827729.html]
All of this downbeat news feeds into a growing suspicion that China has had its cake and eaten for way too long, and that there is simply no precedent for a country growing and growing without some kind of respite. Establishing what that pause will look like and what it means to the rest of the world is the latest challenge facing global analysts. A hangover is considered inevitable and the Olympics, while meaningless economically, are widely considered the psychological trigger for China to face a slowdown. Despite all this gloom, however, writing China off is premature. The Beijing government is well placed to help protect the economy from the worst ravages of a global downturn. It has spent the last two years trying to fight inflation and cool the overheating economy, so it's a lot easier for it to take the foot off the brakes than it is to put them on in the first place. The central bank has lowered its benchmark interest rate twice in the past two months, the first time in six years. The State Council is increasing spending on infrastructure, offering tax rebates for exporters and allowing state-controlled prices for agricultural products to rise. Expect significant measures to kick-start the property market to avoid house prices falling too drastically. China has a lot of plus points to help out. Chinese banks did not issue subprime loans as a rule, and the country's €1.43 trillion in hard-currency reserves is a useful war chest to call on in a downturn. The currency is stable and there are high liquidity levels, all of which give China the most flexibility in the world to fend off the impact of the global financial crisis, says JP Morgan economist Frank Gong. China is now a globalised economy, but its domestic market is still massively underexploited, and it is to this market that the government will most likely turn. While it is a globalised economy committed to the WTO, China is also a centralised economy run by the Communist Party, and it has no real political opposition at home to stop it acting however it sees fit to stop sliding growth. Should the economy start to worsen significantly, public anger will increase, but China has been so successful in keeping a tight leash on the internet and the media that it is difficult for opposition to organise itself in a meaningful way. Recent years of surging growth in China have certainly done a lot to keep global economic data looking rosy, but perhaps China's influence has been somewhat oversold. It is not a big enough economy by itself to keep the global economy ticking over, accounting for 5 per cent of the world economy, compared to the United States with a muscular 28 per cent. And whatever about slowing growth, 9 per cent is still an admirable rate, one that European leaders gathered this weekend in Beijing for the Asian-Europe Meeting would give their eye teeth to be able to present to their constituencies.

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