It's not often that I pick up The National Interest, but the cover of the latest issue did well to spark my interest. Next to Andy Warhol's now infamous portrait of Mao is the question: "Are China's Fifteen Minutes Up?" My initial thought was: Are they kidding? My second: Maybe they know something I don't.
The piece is an interesting back and forth between Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Jonathan Anderson, a senior global emerging economist at UBS. Where Pei argues that China's rapid rise is in the long-term threatened by structural and institutional policy flaws, namely environmental degradation, high socioeconomic inequality and corruption, Anderson discounts the gravity of these factors and instead relies on China's unprecedented growth rate (especially as compared to other Asian "tigers") as an indictor of its future success.
Both Pei and Anderson make some dubious claims (Anderson, for instance, asserts that "there's not much 'state' left in China's state-owned enterprises." Unfortunately, he fails to support this assertion with any hard evidence; likely for good reason), rendering it somewhat difficult to take sides, if that is indeed one's objective (it's a fun little game I like to play with myself when reading through such academic articles...).
If the objective of the piece is to argue for a serious Chinese economic crisis (or to make the claim that China's leaders are "sitting on a ticking time bomb," as Pei does), however, then Pei's argument seemingly falls short. Without discounting their importance, the factors he cites - environmental degradation, shifting demographics (an aging populace, etc.), and corruption - have characterized China throughout its rise. The nature of their recent escalation also does not appear to lead directly to an economic crisis. In the case of the rising wave of social unrest that Pei claims will ultimately lead to crisis, it is important to note (as Anderson does) that this unrest is not a middle class 'rising up' against authoritarian rule, but mostly rural migrants chafing against their plight. This is not to say that such unrest is insignificant, but rather that its consequences are unlikely to lead to the end result Pei imagines. Similar arguments can be made with respect to environmental factors. And government corruption - an old and very broken record, to be sure.
::Sigh:: I could go on with this forever. But I won't. I may just write an article. Now there's an idea! In any event, the piece is quite interesting and certainly worth a read. I'm not really sure that it answers the question of whether China's fifteen minutes of fame are up (I would personally argue that they are not), but it does provide interesting food for thought. Go read.