Question: China is an oligarchy running successfully, for the moment anyway, a state driven and directed form of capitalism - how can such a thing ever become a democracy? Obviously, one assumes, it can, but if it does how problematic would the change be? What I'm thinking here is that a state controlled capitalism must have significant vulnerabilities in comparison to the open market, free enterprise driven form of entrepreneurial based capitalism found in Western democracies - one doesn't notice the vulnerabilities hidden in China's approach to capitalism because their economy is just too robust right now - it's hard to hear the violin section is out of tune when the horn section is blaring so loudly - but you're gonna hear it eventually - my point being, should that state driven economy ever have to answer to the vagaries of voters, won't those vulnerabilities become a significant problem - won't their bastardized version of capitalism be rendered dysfunctional by inefficiency and waste and lack of innovation once the state has to answer to the whims and needs and wants of voters? Right now, the state sort of acts as an omnipresent CEO - bring voters into the system and that arrangement will struggle to perform [although with so much untapped or unexploited if you will capacity it's hard to know just how much inefficiency the Chinese economy could absorb before it starts to fall apart].
So, the way I see it then, the only way China moves towards democracy is if it first moves slowly towards a free market, private enterprise, an empowered-individual-is-king Western styled economy - but what if it won't or, possibly more telling, can't do that? How or why would the state seek to replace its current economic model that has proved so successful? Why invite that complication for the sake of becoming a democracy? The simple answer is it wouldn't and won't - therefore the only way China becomes a democracy is if something bad happens that upends the status quo and empowers liberalizing forces - and, as with Iran, this prosepctive upheaval could potentially lead to less freedom, not more. As things stand now it seems highly unlikely that China will voluntarily move towards democracy.
Allowing for that then, competing great powers with differing views of society, the individual's place in it and of the means and ways of economic production underpinning it all will dramatically alter, redefine, disturb the current international order over the next 25 years - these competing powers, because of needs and aspirations that will sometimes be complimentary, will seek to find a mutually beneficial equilibrium amongst themselves - history seems to suggest they won't easily find it.
Now, certainly one can argue that just because China can't or won't evolve into a democracy doesn't mean they are destined to become a foe of the West - but of course that's just a guess, there's no way to demonstrate the legitimacy of such a claim - and so me saying we are destined to come to blows at some point in the not so very distant future is an equally valid claim [unless of course Obama wins a second term, in which case American might will become so hollowed out and emasculated that a significant confrontation between us and them won't even be possible - they'll have to settle on getting into it with India. Brave new fucking world indeed].
This post has been somewhat wandering and incoherent [and poorly written, don't forget that - and now of course the blemish of redundancy] - but the main point I think is fairly clear and not beyond being considered valid [despite me offering no evidence whatsoever in support of it*] - given the facts governing China's economy and its ongoing rise to great power status it's very hard to see why it would choose to embrace democratic reforms - of course one can argue China may be forced, because of various dynamics percolating through the society, to adopt democratic reforms regardless of what its leaders may want or wish - but still it's impossible to predict what those reforms may look like, how successful they may prove or if in the end they don't result in an even more entrenched absolutism among the ruling classes. Assuming then a powerful yet undemocratic China jostling for room and resources with a still powerful US, a rising India, an ineffectual but still important EU etc etc we see that this coming new international order - a mere 10, 20 at most 50 years away - will have to endure, tolerate if you will, some uncomfortable and ungainly arrangements and relations between its competing powers and competing blocs of powers. Finding comity amongst these arrayed powers and their influences will not be easy. It seems reasonable therefore to remain a China sceptic - assuming of course certain liberal elites do not succeed in turning America into Europe's coarse cousin [this is the hidden goal of the liberal agenda, no? To weaken America so it can't disturb this coming new order?].
* an article in FP talks about how China walked away from Copenhagen climate talks because of Clinton insistence on transparency - the writer's point being that China as a matter of state policy lies, distorts, fudges numbers related to its economy - last thing in the world it wants then are teams of climate control inspectors wandering the country opening doors and shining lights.
