Strategic Paradigms by Ehsan Ahrari

The Arab awakening is about the yearning of people to be free, to be able to enjoy a decent standard of living, and, above all, to be governed effectively by responsive leaders.  Of these, the Chinese people are deprived of two requirements.  Even regarding a decent standard of living, the evidence in China is mixed, at best.  If there is one lesson that the autocratic leader of the PRC should learn from the Arab awakening is to be highly proactive in fulfilling these requirements before they are expressed through another bloody uprising in Tiananmen Square.  But dictatorships are never known to be proactive or adaptable.  That is why their fall is so chaotic and bloody.

President Hu Jintao and his cohorts inside the governing galleries of China may have shuddered when Muammar Qaddafi, the falling dictator of Libya, mentioned in his rambling speech on February 22^nd that the Chinese uprising of the Tiananmen Square of 1989 was brutally crushed by the Chinese leaders.  He was using that example to justify killing the protestors in Libya.  It is not a good omen when a falling dictator, in his desperation to save his regime, mentions China as an example to justify the massacring of his people.

That example came at a time when Chinese leaders were already highly jittery about the mere mention of the phrase “Jasmine Revolution” on a U.S.-sponsored website.  What makes them even more edgy is that the Chinese people are getting a huge doze – despite China’s censorship of mass media – of how to overthrow a tyrannical regime.  They may not be able to implement those lessons in their own country right now.  However, the enormous zeal for freedom must be fueling new hopes among the masses that yearn for regime change in their own countries.

The Chinese leaders’ crucial fear has to be the fact that regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt were leaderless.  They were carried out by the brave rioting masses of people, who seemed fearless of being crushed by the powerful security apparatus of the tyrants.  In both Tunisia and Egypt, the violence perpetrated by the regimes was minimal, considering the fact that people were demanding the ousting of the dictators.  That makes the Chinese leaders’ task of arresting or crushing movements of regime change in the future very difficult.  In the Arab awakening, the entire protesting populace was acting like a collective mass of leadership.  Applying that notion in China, when the “Chinese awakening” becomes a reality, it will be hard to put down.  Alternatively, it could be put down, but with a bloody outcome a la Libya, which, in this 21^st Century, will bring nothing but enormous shame to the Chinese leadership.  In this sense, Libya, not Egypt or Tunisia, is emerging as Chinese leaders’ worst nightmare. 

One has to watch the U.N. Security Council’s (UNSC) handling of the Libyan crisis to see what sort of position the Chinese representation is taking.  The UNSC condemned Libya’s killing of its citizens, but decided, at least for now, not to take specific action.  That was a shocking development.  Someone inside that body is still hung up on the fact that Libya is a sovereign state.  And one does not have to think hard to identify which nation in the past has shown a very high regard for sovereignty, even while the government of Serbia was killing its own citizens in 1999.  If the name China entered your mind, you are right!

If the Arab awakening results in making the Arab world democratic, that should definitely worry China.  Is that the only way for dictatorships to become democratic?  Can the Chinese regime proactively become democratic and still remain intact?  That did not happen to the Soviet Union.  Why should that happen in the case of China?  These are disconcerting questions.

One reason for taking positive measures to reform China is that history does not repeat itself in the same manner in all countries.  For instance, Eastern Europe became democratic in the 1990s, but the Middle East remained under the suffocating darkness of dictatorship.  The democratization of Eastern Europe was brought about because of the implosion of the Soviet Union.  However, no similar cataclysmic event brought about the Arab awakening. 

So, China could take a calculated risk and start reforming its closed system before the tsunami of popular demand for a democratic change forces it to do so.  Besides, as the popular uprising in Egypt has shown, once people start revolting, they are least impressed by a dictator’s concessions.  At that time, they want him out, nothing less.  China has not yet reached that moment, and a managed change can be ordered from the top without such transformation leading to a cataclysmic regime change.  That should be one lesson that Hu and his ilk ought to be considering regarding the Arab awakening.  Stay tuned…