The Coming Collapse: Authoritarians in China and Russia Face an Endgame

[Valin]

World Affairs:

 

Jackson Diehl

Sept./Oct 2012

 

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China and Russia have been constants in the world. They have been autocratic, resistant to the spread of freedom, occasionally belligerent toward their neighbors, and increasingly prosperous. They have consistently joined together in order to block Western initiatives in the UN Security Council and to defend dictatorships like Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

 

 

 

The two countries have created the illusion of durability. Vladimir Putin has just begun a six-year presidential term, with an option for another. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are planning to hand over power in October to a new tandem, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, who are expected to serve for ten years. Yet the evidence is growing that the apparent stability in Russia and China is untenable. For similar reasons, the two states have exhausted their current political and economic systems. Their rulers have grown rigid and are mired in corruption. Both their political elites and their average citizens are growing visibly restless. In the next decade, it is likely that one or both of these global powers will undergo an economic crisis and a dramatic political transformation. When and how it will happen is the most important “known unknown” that Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will face during the next US presidential term.

 

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Upon closer examination, however, both governments are saddled with economies that have lost their most dynamic means of growth. They are facing the imperative of far-reaching restructuring in order to avoid stagnation or recession in the coming years; but it’s questionable whether either regime has the strength to push through the changes necessary to hold off crisis. Meanwhile, by the summer of 2012 each faced the possibility that a recession in Europe would spread eastward, inducing a “hard landing” for their economies at a sensitive political moment.

 

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