Feature Article

China’s fragile future

With the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics less than a week away, much rides on how the world will come to view the economically booming nation following the fortnight's festival. For China more than for any other previous host, the Olympiad is about so much more than sport

Repression in Tibet and the rounding-up of dissidents before the opening of the Olympic Games suggest that China's authoritarian system remains basically unchanged. No country, however, could undergo the kind of capitalist revolution initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s without a significant loosening of control from the centre. In the space of a generation, China has moved away from exclusive state ownership of industry and collectivised agriculture to become one of the brashest of entrepreneurial societies. With average GDP increases of more than 10 per cent a year, it has for long been the fastest-growing major economy in the world.

One example of its transformation will suffice. In his book, China Shakes the World, James Kynge, the former Financial Times correspondent in Beijing, compares the development of Chongqing, 1,250 miles up the Yangtze River, with that of Chicago in the nineteenth century. The Midwestern city, then the fastest-growing metropolis on Earth, took 50 years to raise its population to 1.7 million. Chongqing acquired that number of new inhabitants between 1998 and 2004 alone. Although China is following a trail blazed by the United States, Japan and others, Kynge writes, "the sheer scale and speed of its renaissance puts it in a class of its own".

So what has filled the vacuum created by the dismantling of Maoist totalitarianism? The first answer must be the pursuit of personal wealth, sanctioned by Deng's aphorism that "to get rich is glorious". A better home, a richer diet, the chance to travel and the boom in car sales are all evidence of the desire of Chinese to put the poverty of the revolutionary years behind them, a desire which has benefited Western retailers such as B&Q and

Carrefour. With typical lack of moderation, China has moved from a most dogmatic form of Communism to the wholehearted embrace of cowboy capitalism, from dialectical materialism to feverish consumerism.

This opportunity to make money has given hundreds of millions of people a style of life which, a generation ago, would have seemed impossible. But in any social upheaval there are those who lose out. The glitz of Shanghai is a world away from the rural misery found in, say, the upper reaches of the Yellow River. And this rising disparity in incomes rightly worries the Communist Party, which sees it as a source of social unrest.

The old "iron rice bowl", with its guarantee of job security, has sunk in what one commentator called a "cruel sea of commercialism". Hundreds of millions of people have moved from the countryside to the ballooning cities in search of jobs. The economic transformation of China is proving both disorientating and incapable of satisfying desires that go beyond the mere accumulation of wealth.

These circumstances have led to a revival of interest in the supernatural, whether expressed through Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam or folk religions. What forms has it taken? Fieldwork carried out between 2004 and 2006 by the University of Wales, Lampeter, in conjunction with Chinese scholars, identifies two main characteristics. The first is syncretic, the second utilitarian. In a country where Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism have intertwined since the Tang dynasty, syncretism has deep roots (the same pick-and-mix attitude can be found in Japan). The utilitarianism stems from the man-centred nature of Chinese religious belief. There is less concern with abstract principles than with concrete results, whether good health, prosperity or success in exams.

The sinifying power of this ancient civilisation has affected one of China's imported religions, Christianity. The University of Wales survey found followers of Christ who prayed to Buddha, Lord Guan (a Taoist deity), the God of Fortune, Allah, Laozi, Confucius and various other figures. In general, however, Christians keep more of a distance between themselves and other religions than do Confucianists, Buddhists or Taoists.

Today, it is estimated that there are 70 million Christians in China, or 5 per cent of the population. Most belong to unofficial churches, that is, those which have not accepted oversight by the state. The great majority are Protestants, the devolved nature of the Reformed Church better surviving the 1949 revolution than the centralised Catholic Church.

Since the opening of China to the outside world, the Communist Party has blown hot and cold over religious belief. From seeking to root it out, it has come to accept that it is there to stay and therefore needs to be channelled. Thus the new emphasis on Confucius - a figure of violent opprobrium during the Cultural Revolution - with his teaching about family values, respect for hierarchy and moral uprightness. Hu Jintao sees the sage's legacy as a means of creating a "harmonious society", the chief goal of his presidency.

While hoping to co-opt religious believers in the task of nation-building, the Party remains ruthless with what it perceives as challenges to its rule. The crushing in March of demonstrations by followers of the Dalai Lama in Tibet and adjoining provinces left no doubt about that. And in the far west of China, Beijing is determined to block attempts by Muslims in Xinjiang to join forces with the worldwide jihadist movement.

The most egregious illustration of the limits of state tolerance is the treatment of Falun Gong. Founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, it prescribes breathing and movement exercises (qigong) aimed at deepening truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. No doubt viewing qigong as politically innocuous and a worthy expression of Chinese culture, the Government gave money to Li to promote the practice. But, in that it responded to the despair after the crushing of the democracy movement in 1989, Falun Gong carried an implicit threat to government policy.

This became dramatically explicit in 1999, when an estimated 10,000 practitioners and sympathisers gathered outside the Zhongnanhai, the compound of Party leaders in Beijing, in protest at police ill-treatment of members during the previous months. Falun Gong was banned for having "engaged in illegal activities, advocating and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting disturbances, and jeopardising social stability". Thousands were arrested and many tortured, Falun Gong materials were publicly burned, the movement was branded as a "cult" and Li went into exile in New York.

Why such draconian measures against seemingly harmless spiritual practice? First, of course, Falun Gong challenged the authorities by a mass demonstration that took them completely by surprise. Secondly, it is an indigenous movement, incorporating aspects of Buddhism and Taoism, and therefore not vulnerable to criticism, like Christianity or Islam, that it is being manipulated from abroad. Thirdly, there was the sheer size of the movement. The Government estimated in 1998 that it had 70 million members. Many of them were Communist Party cadres. Beijing saw the Falun Gong as a canker seeking to undermine its hegemony from within.

With breakneck economic development pulling it in one direction and the revival of religious observance in another, what then holds China together? First, despite considerable loosening of the Maoist grip, the Party can still see off any serious challenges to its rule. This it does through the cadre system, to which it makes all the key appointments.

Then there is the sense of ethnic homogeneity and of belonging to a unique and ancient civilisation. Around 90 per cent of the population is Han, the remainder (Tibetans, Uighurs, Hui, and so on) being different from each other and geographically scattered, thereby negating the chance of combined opposition to majority rule. That majority has inherited a distinctive culture, with its own written language, and an absorptive capacity which has successively sinified Buddhism, Christianity, Communism and now capitalism.

Thirdly, Chinese history provides warnings of what happens when things get out of hand. Recent examples are warlord ascendancy after the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916 and the rampages of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. The Party would also cite the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989.

Finally, the post-Maoist state has created opportunities for millions of people to better their material lot. Having lost its ideological raison d'être, the Party has not been averse to beating the nationalist drum, whether over the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 or the collision between Chinese and American military aircraft near Hainan Island in 2001. However, nationalism is a two-edged sword that could be turned against the Party for failing, to take the most obvious example, to reunite Taiwan with the motherland. The anti-Japanese riots of 2005 were a warning of the venomous and volatile nature of Chinese chauvinism, which is particularly prevalent among urban youth.

Which brings us back to the Olympic Games. To the Chinese they are what one commentator described as a "quasi-religious episode", which should enhance the nation's international standing and sense of identity. Success could make the leaders in Beijing more comfortable about China's place in the world. The opposite could leave them feeling betrayed and resentful. The stakes are very high.