Evidence of meeting #8 for Canada-China Relations in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was countries.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to give our guests the floor and to follow up on what my colleague asked about, the resilience and the strength of the Chinese Communist Party and whether it is a system that is as strong as it appears to be, or if, in fact, there are weaknesses that perhaps we don't see.
I'll turn it over to the three of you. You can police yourselves to have about 90 seconds each. Why don't we start with Ms. Sun, please?
12:55 p.m.
Director, China Program, The Stimson Center, As an Individual
We get these questions a lot. Is there going to be a military coup in China? Is Xi Jinping going to be overthrown if his policy has been so unpopular in and outside of China?
My answer is no. I think the resilience and the ability of China to adapt and of the Chinese government to adapt to different emerging challenges is quite significant. Professor Shambaugh wrote a book about this—the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to adapt. I think the Chinese Communist Party has not exhausted what the Chinese society can offer them in terms of the adaptation and evolution of the party's struggle to build and strengthen its legitimacy.
This is an evolution of the Communist Party strategy. We're not seeing the end of it yet.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
All right. If you would like to split the time, please go ahead. If you finish up, I'll come up with another question.
12:55 p.m.
Senior Adviser for Asia and Director, China Power Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies, As an Individual
I'll be brief.
I would say that the Chinese Communist Party shows signs of both fragility and resilience. It is very difficult to predict going forward whether it will continue to strengthen itself. I think Xi Jinping has put so many resources and so much energy into strengthening the rule of the party and the role of the party in China that I don't think we are going to see it collapse any time soon.
But it is noteworthy that, if you take the case of COVID-19 and the reaction of the people, there's a lot of concern and opposition and a sense of frustration in China about the party's inability to deliver good governance. When Dr. Li Wenliang died early on.... Basically, he had been muzzled when he tried to make public the nature of the threat. That's just one example of where people are very frustrated. Could this boil over in ways we don't predict? That's possible, but I don't see collapse of the party any time soon.
12:55 p.m.
Professor and Director, China Policy Program, The George Washington University, As an Individual
Neither do I, despite the unfortunate headline that The Wall Street Journal chose for my article back in 2015.
The Chinese have many phrases that capture complex situations. They have one, “waiying, neiruan” or “hard on the outside, soft on the inside”, and that is a good metaphor, I think, for the Chinese Communist Party today. They are definitely hard on the outside. Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he has definitely strengthened the party. I would even date the hardening to 2009, which predates his arrival at the top. There's no doubt about it. Why? As I started to say earlier, he's absolutely possessed by the Soviet collapse, and he saw that on China's horizon.
My article was about the same thing. He and I probably didn't disagree about the state of the party in 2010, 2011 or 2012. He has taken certain steps in the last seven years to strengthen the party. It is definitely stronger today organizationally as a Leninist instrument than it was seven years ago, but I would argue that as a normative instrument and in terms of legitimacy it is weaker. The COVID-19 issue shows part of that weakness in terms of monopoly of media.
This is not a party that's about to collapse. I never thought it was. The best word for it is “atrophy”. All Leninist parties and, I would submit, authoritarian parties atrophy over time. They age like people do and eventually die, unless they're constantly reinventing themselves. There are different ways to reinvent themselves. Xi Jinping has chosen a certain number of lessons from the Soviet collapse, what we would call hardline lessons. There are other, softer lessons that could have been chosen and that his predecessors did. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao practised what I call “soft Leninism”. Xi Jinping is hard Leninism, and I think he's actually making the system more brittle and more fragile as a result.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Geoff Regan
Thank you very much.
We've had two excellent panels today. I want to thank the three witnesses who are before us at the moment for their testimony.
We are very grateful to you for taking the time to be with us.
Colleagues, this meeting is adjourned.