End of China's Reform Era

"End of China's Reform Era", by Carl Minzner

Discussant: Perry Keller

Abstract

China's reform era is ending. Core factors that characterized it-political stability, ideological openness, and rapid economic growth-are unraveling. 

Since the 1990s, Beijing's leaders have firmly rejected any fundamental reform of their authoritarian one-party political system, even as a decades-long boom has reshaped China's economy and society. On the surface, their efforts have been a success. Political turmoil has toppled former Communist East bloc regimes, internal unrest overtaken Middle East nations, and populist movements risen to challenge established Western democracies. China, in contrast, has appeared a relative haven of stability and growth. 

But a closer look at China's reform era reveals a different truth. Over the past three decades, a frozen political system has fueled both the rise of entrenched interests within the Communist Party itself, and the systematic underdevelopment of institutions of governance among state and society at large. Economic cleavages have widened. Social unrest has worsened. Ideological polarization has deepened. 

Now, to address these looming problems, China's leaders are progressively cannibalizing institutional norms and practices that have formed the bedrock of the regime's stability in the reform era. Technocratic rule is giving way to black-box purges; collective governance sliding back towards single-man rule. The post-1978 era of "reform and opening up" is ending. China is closing down. Uncertainty hangs in the air as a new future slouches towards Beijing to be born."

Speaker Bio

Carl Minzner is an expert in Chinese law and governance. He has written extensively on these topics in both academic journals and the popular press, including op-eds appearing in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. He is the author of End of an Era: How China's Authoritarian Revival is Undermining its Rise(Oxford University Press, 2018).

Prior to joining Fordham, he was an Associate Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition, he has served as Senior Counsel for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, International Affairs Fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations, and Yale-China Legal Education Fellow at the Xibei Institute of Politics and Law in Xi'an, China."

Discussant Bio

Perry Keller is Reader in Media and Information Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, where he teaches and researches issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy and data protection. He is the author of European and International Media Law. Mr Keller also has longstanding connections with China, having previously studied or worked in Beijing, Nanjing, Taipei and Hong Kong. His current research interests regarding law and regulation in China concern the development of a divergent Chinese model for securing data privacy and security.