784 { China’s Quest
quite effectively the pressing needs of the Chinese people—greatly increased
wealth, expanded opportunities, stability combined with expanding personal
freedoms, rapid scientific and technological advance, national power. True,
the CCP’s Leninist authoritarian state is neither liberal nor democratic, but
neither were China’s traditional political arrangements. Benevolent authori-
tarianism characterized China’s long Confucian tradition, and today’s CCP
regime approximates those traditional arrangements, at least according to
this line of argument. Moreover, as noted at the outset of this book, mul-
tiple surveys of public opinion in China indicate very high levels of public ac-
ceptance of CCP rule and the CCP-led state—levels of satisfaction far higher
than found in leading liberal democratic states, in fact. Grievances among
ordinary Chinese are many, but those are typically not directed against the
fundamental structures of the regime. If this line of argument is correct, the
world may witness a long period of coexistence between an extremely pow-
erful authoritarian China and a coalition of democracies each of which may
be individually less powerful that the Chinese superpower.
One approach to peaceful coexistence in such a situation might be for the
United States and other democratic powers to deliberately set aside their own
normative expectations and deal with China on its own terms. Leninist PRC
would thus be treated as an exception to the otherwise universal expectations
and normative affirmation of liberal democratic values. After all, dealing with
antidemocratic regimes in the Middle East or Africa is, in reality, quite dif-
ferent than dealing with an antidemocratic power that is the world’s strongest
state built on a two-millennia heritage of relatively successful authoritarian
government. It thus might make sense for democratic powers to suspend
efforts to nudge China toward liberalization and democratization.
Such an approach would encounter a number of difficulties. Would it not
encourage and facilitate a Chinese effort to establish new global norms based
on benevolent authoritarianism? With “the West” stepping back from China’s
great power, why should China retreat? Would not the result, then, be a pro-
tracted and probably worldwide ideological struggle, a new Cold War? But
that might be the best we can realistically hope for. Acceptance of Chinese
exceptionalism would also require a significant change in the US sense of
a God-given mission to uphold liberty and democracy. Other proud demo-
cratic powers similarly convinced of the principles of human liberty—France,
Britain, Germany—would also need to greatly qualify their embrace of uni-
versal norms of human rights, at the very time in history when those values
are under challenge by an authoritarian Chinese superpower. This is difficult
to imagine.
This American author believes, perhaps as an act of faith, that the Chinese
people will eventually secure for themselves and their posterity the blessings
of individual liberty and collective self-government protected by law. These
are the common inheritance of all humanity, and the Chinese people are