Can China Lead?: Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth

In the book “Can China Lead?: Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth,” William C. Kirby and F. Warren McFarlan of Harvard Business School and Regina M. Abrami of the Wharton School explore whether China will become the world’s leading power.

Their conclusion: Not necessarily. While there’s much to admire, an absence of political reform could ultimately hobble the nation, they write, taking issue with the believers in the “China model” that it is the absence of political reform that has enabled China to power ahead by mixing authoritarian rule with capitalist practices. During a recent trip to China, Professor Kirby discussed how the Chinese used to be among the richest people in the world, how they may attain that again and why he and his co-authors are skeptical that the country’s ascent is inevitable:

Q.

Can China lead?

A.

Yes, of course. China has led. China is home to the longest continuous civilization in world history. Chinese moral and political models defined what it meant to be civilized. Little more than 200 years ago, the Qing empire presided over the strongest, richest and most sophisticated civilization on the planet. Its economy was the largest and one of the freest in the world. The richest men on earth lived in China.

China survived — better than most parts of the world — the era of imperialism. China’s current “rise,” as its recent growth is often described, is not simply the result of the past 35 years. It has been a century and more in the making.

As China returns to a historical position of strength and centrality, however, the question is: Are China’s current political and economic structures models for others? Can China once again set global standards in values and education that are emulated elsewhere? In the absence of political reform in China, we have our doubts. There are many books that assume an inevitable ascent to global leadership for China. Ours is not one of them.

Q.

Can you explain what you mean by “lead”? Where is it important to lead, and why?

A.

Global leadership has taken many forms in recent centuries. We do not mean — nor do we expect for China — leadership in the form of military expansionism or political dominion. Rather, we mean a broadly compelling influence in global politics, economics and culture that made the 20th century, by some measures, the “American Century.”

Q.

You say in the book that China is making huge strides in infrastructure, entrepreneurship and education, but its fundamental identity as a militarized, one-party state weakens it. Yet some Chinese see this as a strength. How would you answer those who say that your view is essentially a view from the United States, that Chinese “see things differently”?

A.

It is surely true that China’s one-party system, which dates back to the Nationalist era, has the capacity to do some big things better than other systems. The dreams of Sun Yat-sen for a nation connected by rail and road, with its rivers tamed by enormous dams — these have been realized by the modern engineering state that is unchecked in its ambition. China’s new transportation infrastructure is the envy of the world.

Yet that same system leaves much too much of the economy in government monopolies, and it presides over legal and judicial structures in which there is little popular confidence. Why are “civil society” and “constitutional government” among the “seven things not to talk about”?

Q.

You write that China is at an “inflection point” that cannot be ignored and that threatens its future success. Can you discuss the substance of that inflection point?

A.

China has enjoyed enormous success — again, not just in the past three decades, but in its century of recovery. It “stood up,” not just in 1949 but already in 1945, when with Japan’s defeat, it became once again a great power. In economic as in military matters, China’s strength has been a century in the making. The successes of recent decades have been the result of reforms in the economy and society that undid the excesses of the Maoist period. Hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted themselves out of poverty once they were given the chance.

Yet in an era of reform and opening everywhere else, there has been no sustained, systemic political reform. This is not a matter of Chinese versus “Western” political systems. China has a political system rooted in the West — Marx and Lenin, it should be recalled, were not Chinese. A system modeled on that of the Soviet Union presides over a dynamic economy and society.

Why does this matter now? China appears strong and stable. Its borders are secure. It has prospered during the longest period of peace in East Asia since the Opium War. China today is home to many of the world’s most dynamic entrepreneurs. But its ruling party shows signs of insecurity. Why else lock up citizens who simply ask for transparency in government on the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”? China has very able leaders, but they too must work within a political culture of deep constraint, where even the most basic facts of the country’s history cannot be discussed.

The great worry for those who care deeply about China, as we do, is not about its capacity for growth and creativity, which is boundless, but that the world of politics is so tightly bounded that alternative visions of China’s future cannot be discussed openly. Now, we hope, is the time to open what late 19th-century reformers interested in China’s “self-strengthening” called the yan lu, literally a “path of words” to the throne.

Q.

Some people question the idea that education has been greatly strengthened over the last decades, pointing to two trends in recent years: the children of the elite going abroad for university or earlier, and universities recruiting students directly from secondary schools, bypassing the gaokao, or university entrance exams. They argue this is increasing educational inequality. How do you see this?

A.

No country values learning more than China. Because of educational reforms over the course of the 20th century, China has a highly literate population. Today, China has the fastest-growing system — in quality as well as quantity — of higher education in the world. This is why so many of the world’s leading universities (Harvard, Duke, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, New York University and a host of Asian and European institutions) have established research and teaching centers — and, in the cases of Duke and N.Y.U., campuses — in China.

Elite families increasingly send their children abroad, for a host of reasons, but Chinese universities are again part of the global world of scholarship, and they too attract extraordinary students from around the world. Tsinghua University and Peking University are now regularly ranked among the world’s top 50 institutions. If they are allowed to develop, or return to, the traditions of freedom of inquiry and teaching that distinguished them well before 1949, there is no limit to their future. One extraordinarily positive development is the establishment of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University — an institution poised to bring the world’s most promising talent to China.

It is true that, even with the enormous growth in enrollments in Chinese universities, the percentage of poor and rural students in leading universities declines every year. NGOs such as Teach for China, modeled on Teach for America, seek to address this problem. For the moment, in China, as in the United States, the major beneficiaries of elite higher education remain the — already — well educated and well connected.

Q.

If you were a betting person, how would you bet the future will go for China? Will it overtake the West in some years?

A.

I am very optimistic about China. I am not so sure about the “West.” Just as we in this country often view China too simply, Chinese may see the diverse politics and societies of the “West” as a single entity. I do not.

In our book, we predict that in 2034, China will be richer economically and culturally, its military more powerful, its polity less centralized. And if it can get to that stage without a political explosion, China and the rest of East Asia will thrive.

Leadership is a comparative thing. At present, the United States has huge challenges abroad and at home. China, too, as we suggest, faces enormous challenges, mostly at home. If these two countries are to help steer the world in the 21st century, which they must, there is much work to be done. But if the 21st century is to be the “Chinese Century,” it won’t have been the first, and it won’t be the last.