What Germany's Iron Chancellor Can Show Red China

Click here to read this informative article by Pankaj Mishra at Bloomberg. The only problem with it is that it lacks historic depth. What Mishra doesn't mention is that the Chinese Revolution is deeply rooted in the progressivism of the Hundred Day's Reform Movement, a failed 104-day national cultural, political and educational reform movement from 11 June to 21 September 1898 in the late Qing Dynasty. It was undertaken by the young Guangxu Emperor and his reform-minded supporters. The movement proved to be short-lived, ending in a coup d'etat by powerful conservative opponents led by Empress Dowager Cixi. The reforms advocated during the movement read like they were written for presentation to the 15th Party Congress. They included:

• Reforming the examination system for civil service.
• Opposing corruption and nepotism through the elimination of sinecures (positions that provide little or no work but give a salary).
• Creation of a modern education system (studying math and science instead of focusing mainly on Confucian texts, etc.).
• Changing the government from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy (a republic with an appointed legislature).
• Applying the principles of the market to strengthen the economy.
• Modernizing and strengthening the military.
• Rapidly industrializing all of China through manufacturing, commerce, and state sponsored capitalism.

This was also the program of Sun Yatsen and the KMT (i.e. the Three Peoples Principles). As China descended into chaos during the 1920s and 30s the communists saw Marxism-Leninism as the inheritor of these previous attempts to revitalize and save China. Mao however was deeply imbued with the authoritarian model of Chinese peasant insurrectionists who gained State power and established new dynasties. They historically revitalized and reconstructed the country through labour conscription and large scale infrastructure projects. Deng Xiaoping, who was educated in France in the 1920s, opposed Mao's excesses and advocated for the reform tradition with his policies of Opening Up and Socialist Modernization. So China has a long history of applying progressive ideology to its developmental model.

The 15th Party Congress and 16th National People's Congress have both  put forth a program of social and economic reforms modelled on progressive legislation in the West. It could be called a Chinese New Deal, including an enhanced Social Security retirement program, the expansion and extension of a Medicare system into rural China, increases in the minimum wage, subsidized low-income housing, enhanced environmental protections and food and drug safety regulatory bodies modelled after the US EPA and FDA. This is all part of the push to increase urbanization and promote domestic consumption as the economic engine driving China's continued growth and development.

None of this is new to Chinese thinkers and policy makers.