The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism

Pei adds to his distinguished body of writing about China with an investigation of why the country shifted away from decades of reform and neo-authoritarianism (capitalist development under one-party rule) toward a new form of totalitarianism, and how engagement with the United States devolved into a new Cold War. He describes how, from the early 1980s to the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Chinese Communist Party increasingly found itself stuck in what he terms a “partial reform equilibrium” in which it pursued economic liberalization but also nationalism, soft repression of Chinese society, co-optation of rising elites, a weakly institutionalized collective leadership, and a cautious foreign policy. When Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he responded to a slowing economy and challenges to the party’s legitimacy by reactivating the foundational institutions of totalitarianism—state dominance over society, control of information, the systematic use of terror, and greater party influence in the economy—that had remained intact. Xi also sought to exploit perceived U.S. weakness by advancing a bolder foreign policy. Pei concludes pessimistically that Xi’s neo-totalitarian turn will delay the emergence of a prosperous, politically liberal China for at least another generation.