How long can China remain a communist state with a market economy?
China has to move to a more democratic form of government. One model is Taiwan and Korea, Mr. Kwan answered. They were basically under military dictatorship 20 years ago, but are now democracies. Another is Japan’s single-party-dominant model, and China may move in that direction, with internal democracy growing within the Communist Party. Although all these are unlikely to happen under the leaders in power now–the fourth generation since Mao Zedong–the chance should improve under the fifth generation leaders, who went to university after the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Kwan added. Many of them have experience studying overseas, bringing home with them Western values. Mr. Koo observed that those he speaks to in China’s government “all mention that the process of democratization is the most unstable of all worlds, because people can use, as Mr. Armitage mentioned, nationalism for whatever purposes that will suit them, so that they get the necessary votes to get there or shut the other gu
