Is China Moving Towards “Enlightened” But Plutocratic Authoritarianism?

Since the launch of the reforms in 1979, most striking has been China’s tremendous ability to adapt to—and therefore to resist—the Communist Party, its leadership and its nomenklatura, as an institution exercising political power in a monopolistic fashion and seeking to preserve this monopoly while maintaining an increasingly plutocratic grip on the most strategic segments of the economy. Moreover the numerous social and economic as well as international constraints—such as maintaining its position vis-à-vis the United States—which China must overcome, as well as the “class” interests of the political and economic elites that lead the country, militate against any quick escape from authoritarianism. That changes introduced within the system might eventually favour a change of system cannot be ruled out. However, does a move to another system necessarily translate into a transition to democracy? Is it not possible that China might once again innovate and succeed in emerging from communism by means of an evolution towards a more flexible but stabilised authoritarianism, consultative yet elitist and corporatist, endowed with a certain legal modernity but not with the rule of law and still only partially institutionalised? In short, might not China be evolving towards what I would be tempted to call “enlightened” but plutocratic authoritarianism