Blowing Down The CPC’s House of Cards
Global Voices
By Minxin Pei, Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College: Deng Xiaoping understood that a rules-based system was essential to avoid a repeat of the fanatical terror unleashed under Mao Zedong.
There is nothing shocking about China’s struggles to uphold rules and norms. Even mature democracies like the United States face such challenges, as Donald Trump’s presidency clearly showed. But should formal constitutional checks and balances fail, democracies can at least count on a free press, civil society, and opposition parties to push back, as they did against Trump. In dictatorships, rules and norms are far more fragile, as there are no credible constitutional or political enforcement mechanisms, and autocrats can easily politicize institutions, such as constitutional courts, turning such bodies into rubber stamps. And there are no secondary enforcement mechanisms. China has no free press or organized opposition. If a rule becomes inconvenient – as the constitutional limit on presidential terms did for Xi – it can easily be changed.
Blowing Down The CPC’s House of Cards
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