ON THE RISE OF CHINA, THE RECONFIGURATION OF GLOBAL POWER, AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE MODERN LIBERAL ORDER A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Departmental Honors By Logan Brosius December, 2015. Thesis written by Logan Brosius Approved by _________________________________________________________________, Advisor _______________________________________________, Chair, Department of Political Science Accepted by _____________________________________________________, Dean, Honors College ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 I. History 5 II. Contradictions 31 a. Transition After the 1990s 31 b. Contradictions 42 III. Players 56 a. The Liberals 56 b. The New Left 65 IV. The Establishment 87 a. The Chinese Establishment and Survival 88 b. Corruption and the State 95 V. The Neoliberal Order 113 a. The Context and Limits of China’s Rise 114 b. The Previous Order and Its Major Features 123 c. China, the Modern Order, and the Reconfiguration of Global Power 138 Conclusion 170 Bibliography 175 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper is something of a story and a testament to both my mentors and my experiences since high school graduation. As someone who grew up in a remarkably small rural town, my early intellectual development owes largely to my blissful ignorance of the astonishing labors and successes of my phenomenal parents, James and Denise Brosius. They have provided me their endless support, a place to grow, and, perhaps most importantly, grounded me from becoming hopelessly detached. Were it not for their support, I understand rather strongly what other options awaited me. My primary mentors during the course of this paper ultimately changed over time due to my own problems – something I hope dearly to have addressed. Professors Leslie Heaphy and James Carlton owe substantially to where I am today. They provided me with an enormous amount of personal scrutiny and intellectual guidance as I developed and composed my ideas. They ultimately provided me with patience, which, with this paper, I cannot begin to express enough of my thanks. I owe them a considerable debt. I would be remiss to mention all the others to help me along in all varieties of ways: my parents, James and Denise Brosius; my sister and brother-in-law, Courtney and Andrew Mills; my grandmother, Melanie Mathews; my dear friends and future colleagues, Ryan Webster; Christian and Stephen Poe; Michael Guastella; Evan Logan; Andrew Keiper; my directors while in Washington, Professors Charles Glaser and Richard Robyn, as well as a major bastion of support during my time at Kent State, Professor Joshua Stacher. My deceased grandfather, James Mathews, ultimately, helped me take an interest in the world and how so many people’s lives are connected by its daily events. It is my intention, initially thanks to him, and on behalf of my parents, my sister, my grandparents, my hometown, and people that I will never know, that I follow this path. With considerable luck, this paper will serve as a starting point in a teaching career and a larger involvement in major political issues – though, unfortunately, much remains to be seen, with the world as it is. iv 1 Introduction This paper intends to explore the origins and global effects of China’s capitalist boom, as well as the limits of that boom. Surveys that fail to account for China’s history or the nature of the world it re-entered will provide only partial images of either realm. Without these snapshots, these accounts fail to provide a full panorama of capitalist development in China or its relation with and importance to the reproduction of capitalism worldwide. In success, China’s industrialization since the 1980s spawned an enthusiastic and large base of supporters around the world that suggest China’s development represents both a new model for success in poverty stricken countries. It has also lent to the belief that China represents a major challenge to the liberal political and economic order physically crafted by the United States after the 1940s. Due to past success, China’s continued rise will, these sources suggest, produce a successfully ascendant, high-income China; a state of far greater size, power, and sophistication than the United States that would stand as a contender of far deeper importance than a simple short-term military or economic nuisance to the presiding hegemon. This new challenger would therefore be capable of undermining or recreating the military, economic, political, and scientific order crafted by the United States. With that success – and any possible defeat of the United States and its satellites – the world order would fundamentally change and herald deep changes to not only global production and power, but also the global ruling ideology. A major shift of the global center of power toward China would provide it the opportunity to generate a new cultural hegemony with which it would inform the new economic, military, geopolitical and, ideological arrangements for the Estado Novo, now formally anti- democratic, openly elitist, anti-populist, and perpetually absolutist – in keeping with the best of China’s neo-Confucian thinking. 2 For many reasons, these notions rest upon quicksand. The scope and nature of China’s rise from relative poverty under Mao and the Chinese Communist Party’s continued success since the 1980s both rest largely as a consequence of their long isolation from and sudden integration within reformed global markets. The Party became flush with cash as it managed business illicitly and crafted a fertile cradle for capital injections from investors around the world. As a result, China for much of the last 30 years has not set the rules of the game or been in a position to potentially influence them as they do today. Instead, China has been both the recipient and the exploited; rich countries have grown richer as their industries dumped the traditional (and expensive) labor forces in their own countries to take advantage of China’s poverty. China, as a massive assembly plant, however, receives only a minor cut on the deal. Fundamentally, then, China and the CCP have served as an appendage to the liberal economic order’s circulations and expansions, and it has not provided a new model for development as earlier revolutionary Communist movements sought in the past. As a result, the People’s Republic of China cannot circumstantially alter the arrangement without critically harming itself. China’s particular circumstances differ from the region’s, but it has broadly followed much of East Asia’s recent path to wealth by export – a path admittedly pursued by many other states around the world, though with none of the substantial privileges bestowed upon East Asia by the United States. Global capital, disciplined primarily by the United States, thus reproduces itself and expands, adapting crucially to each region and circumstance as it arises. Alongside various strains of realist theory describing the relatively medium-term balance of power and its immediate implications for world governments, the fifty-year-old school of thought known as world-systems theory, advanced primarily by the American scholar Immanuel Wallerstein, will help to inform much of the latter segment of the paper, as well as the bulk of my estimations for the world’s possible trajectories. 3 For the United States, Western Europe, and East Asia, global capitalism, like the Chinese imperial system of old, is a historical phenomenon that represents the present relationships between human society, wealth, and power. Capitalism’s modern dynamics and structural contradictions arise from the gradual reconfiguration of power and wealth since the end of World War II. The eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with the concentration and relocation of money and production, created a situation in which China was enticed to join hands with longtime enemies in the Western world for survival and prosperity. This change, however, did not arrive at the expense of independence. The consequences of China’s longstanding political independence from the primary drivers of the liberal order – particularly if China is to seek parity with the United States – conflict with the increasingly erratic and unpredictable role played by the order’s major actor, the United States, and rest beside the morbidity and nearness of global climate change. Together, they will define the next century of global events and, likely as not, the future of human civilization. The following pages seek to provide an exposition of China’s development since its exit from the global economy during the 1950s as well as a survey of China’s modern politics – including its major political factions, their bases of support, and their potential influence in the future. To countenance for China’s future and the world’s, further pages detail not only the CCP’s plans for adaptations but also the larger global picture. Regardless of developments beyond the 2008 financial crash, the world – especially the rich countries – must confront the titanic roots and consequences of issues such as global climate change, global inequality, resurgent, organized nationalism, the attendant specter of large-scale war, and the growing possibility of human extinction. Should China successfully become a high-income society, these global issues will be amplified and reflect China’s massive size, output, and population – and the global stresses that accompany them. Without full consideration for many of the world’s major moving parts, China’s issues – along 4 with the present form of economic exchange globally – will not receive proper context or serious and realistic contemplation. Without proper context, the longevity and vitality of either China or global capitalism remain prone to severe overestimations. This is a contribution toward correction. 5 Chapter 1: History In the context of world history, China’s 1949 Communist revolution represented a variety of accomplishments and aspirations both global and national scale.