Chinese economic growth creates social foundations for political pluralism

Evidence

China’s Confucian heritage, with its emphasis on authority, order, hierarchy, and the supremacy of the collectivity over the individual, creates obstacles to democratization. Yet economic growth is creating in south China increasingly high levels of wealth, a dynamic bourgeoisie, accumulations of economic power outside governmental control, and a rapidly expanding middle class. In addition, Chinese people are deeply involved in the outside world in terms of trade, investment, and education. All this creates a social basis for movement toward political pluralism. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 651

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to modernization theory from Lipset and Inglehart, and to the later empirical reality that China’s economic growth did NOT produce democratization, partially overturning this prediction. — connects to: China’s social credit system is a political rather than market instrument — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1256