CFR: Communist China's "Peaceful Rise".

The September-October issue of Foreign Affairs, the flagship journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, devotes a special section to examining China's economic and strategic posture. The overview offers "Asian perspectives" on China from five authors: two from "mainland" (Communist) China, two from Hong Kong (a "special administrative region" under Beijing's control), and one from Singapore. Significantly, and predictably, no contribution was solicited from a representative of the free Chinese on Taiwan.

Lead author Zheng Bijan is the chair of the China Reform Forum, described as a "non-governmental and non-profit academic organization." The group's claim to independence is tainted by the fact that Zheng, according to his bio, wrote "key reports for five Chinese national [Communist] Party congresses and held senior posts in ... Party organizations in China."

"For the next few decades," writes Zheng, "the Chinese nation will be preoccupied with securing a more comfortable and decent life for its people." Welcome as that prospect would be, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)--like Communist ruling elites throughout history--has never been unduly concerned with the comforts and decencies enjoyed by its population.

"China has blazed a new strategic path that suits its national conditions while conforming to the tides of history," continues Zheng, offering a splendid example of boilerplate Marxist rhetoric. The "tides of history," according to Marx and his disciples, lead ineluctably in the direction of world socialism. Beginning in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping, the CCP has described its ruling ideology as "socialism with Chinese characteristics." In practice this means allowing Western (primarily U.S.) corporate leaders, backstopped by tax subsidies, to build China's manufacturing sector, while leaving the Party firmly in control of the military and the nation's political system.

Rather than a Soviet-style five-year-plan, the Chinese regime "has set up targets for development for the next fifty years" inspired by a vision Zheng calls "the development path to peaceful rise." "China will continue to advance until it becomes a prosperous, democratic, and civilized socialist country," he predicts. As long as China remains under the rule of Mao's heirs, it will remain socialist, but neither free nor truly civilized--and peaceful only when it suits the interests of its ruling Party.