“The idea of national rejuvenation, of restoring China to its rightful place. People often talk about the rise of China. It's really the return of China. It's China coming back to a position of prominence where it had dominated world GDP, where it had dominated its subregion,” Vina Nadjibulla.
China’s return to power is the focus of today’s conversation between Sandy Garassino and Vina Nadjibulla.
When China experienced its “economic miracle” in the latter part of the 20th century, many in the West expected it would be followed by more political freedom.
For China’s leaders, however, that was not part of the plan.
“The Communist Party in China — and particularly under Xi Jinping's leadership — did a really thorough study of what went wrong in the Soviet Union,” says Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of Research and Strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
The Soviet Union’s demise came just after a period of unwinding social and political control embodied in the Glasnost and Perestroika policies of the 1980s. China took note.
“They were determined to avoid that. They were determined to ensure that the economic growth and economic opening-up did not result in political reform.”
Western observers saw the “end of history” on the horizon — a time when the big political questions of the past would be settled in favour of capitalism and liberal democracy.
“Because of the fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of communism there, a lot of us were hopeful that the same thing was going to happen — or sort of was already happening — in China, that none of these people were really communist,” Nadjibulla said. “I mean, they still had the Communist Party. They still said they were Marxist. They still had their five-year plans. But clearly, we thought they were not actually going to believe in that because nobody was going to believe in communism in the 21st century.”
As the new century dawned, and political and economic turmoil hit the West, China’s leaders were reassured of their course.
“The democratic agenda and the narrative of democracies took a big hit in the eyes of the Chinese elite from 2008 onward. The financial crisis did big damage to the West's image and reputation. The financial crisis was a moment where it was like, wow, maybe liberal democracies and capitalism is not the only way. The way to actually try to challenge that narrative is for us to restore faith in democracies at home and abroad, to really show that democracies actually can deliver.” Nadjibulla said.
LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION HERE – EPISODE 4, EMPEROR XI
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