Politics in China

From a Washington Post account of possibly rising Chinese politician Bo Xilai:

Like other “princelings” — descendants of high-ranking party officials — Bo grew up mostly in China’s wealthier coastal regions, came of age during the Cultural Revolution, is fluent in English, has a graduate degree, and began his career in the government after it began market-based economic reforms in the late 1970s.

In contrast, many of China’s current leaders were raised mostly in the inland by ordinary working-class families and they worked their way up the ranks of the government bureaucracy through postings in far-flung provinces. Known as “tuanpai” — a reference to the China Communist Youth League that they were members of and that was once considered the place to groom future leaders — these men are considered technocrats who have helped China carry out the goals set forth by previous generations but stopped short of reinventing them.

In policy decisions, the princelings tend to believe the future lies with advancing the interests of the middle class; the tuanpai tend to pay more attention than the princelings to vulnerable groups such as farmers, migrant workers and the urban poor.

If the future really does belong to the Princelings after the 2012 Communist Party Congress, then I think this tends to cast doubt on the notion that China’s rising middle class is going to be pushing for democracy. The thing about being a nation of 1 billion is that you can have a large middle class even while “vulnerable groups such as farmers, migrant workers and the urban poor” still constitute a clear majority. And if the oligarchs are attuned to the interests of the middle class minority, then what’s to like about democracy? And in my experience, when faced with one political faction that contains many fluent English-speakers and another political faction that doesn’t, US policymakers and the broader elite seem to invariably find themselves persuaded by the arguments of the people who speak English.