Forget Client No. 9. If you want to understand the future of world politics, it's Document No. 9 you need to know. This semisecret directive from the senior members of the Chinese Communist Party tells you how President Xi Jinping plans to manage pro-democracy voices in China: by shutting them down. The sharp repudiation of constitutional government, human rights, civic participation and free speech — not to mention truly free markets — guarantees that the ideological struggle between China and the West will continue well into the future.
If this sounds obvious to you — duh, communists being communists — you haven't been watching closely in recent years. Alongside China's economic miracle have come cautious local experiments with what was sometimes called "intraparty democracy" — the permission of a range of opinions and even elections within the Chinese Communist Party. At leading universities, if not beyond, academics have enjoyed substantial free speech. Among China's intellectual and political elites, there is a discernible right wing, usually defined as including pro-market, cautiously liberal thinkers, and a left wing, made up of those loyal to the more traditional communist ideals of state ownership, equality of wealth and rigid party control.
Observing these trends, some liberal optimists — including many in China's elite — hoped that Xi's rise to power would see a gradual expansion of rights and movement in the direction of constitutional governance and the rule of law. When I was in Beijing and Shanghai in March, the excitement among reformers was palpable.
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