Why China Won't Fall Apart?

David P. “Spengler” Goldman, who qualifies as a China Hand, says the Chinese government is not about to fall apart. He gives two reasons:

1. China is in the middle of a golden age, and
2. China has no tradition of democracy to look back on. 

These are differences between China and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. But his focus is far too narrow. It does not follow that China's government is secure.

It is not economic decline that causes revolutions or dissatisfaction with government. In a really good stiff decline, everyone is too busy just trying to survive. Governments collapse more often when a period of generally rising expectations rather suddenly hits a disappointment. For example, Russia in 1911 was roughly where China is today: growing at a faster rate than anyone else, and on the verge of taking its position as a world leader. Germany pushed the world into the Great War primarily because it feared Russia and calculated that if it waited only a few years more, Russia would be too strong and would begin to dominate.

The collapse of the Russian government came six years later.

England was in a similar position in the middle of the nineteenth century. She was economically dominant, and the Industrial Revolution was causing a general rise in prosperity. Yet it was right in the middle of this that she faced the Chartist revolt, which came close at least to bringing down the government.

The French Revolution, the American Revolution: these were not economic backwaters, but strong and wealthy states at the time of their revolutions. The French Revolution was preceded by the Sun King and followed by Napoleon—surely the Golden Age for France.

Second point: since democracy is not the only alternative here, not having a tradition of democracy is also not very relevant. It was not a general hankering for democracy that caused the fall of the Qing Dynasty either. Or the Ming Dynasty, or the Yuan Dynasty, or the Tang Dynasty, or the Sung Dynasty, or the Xin Dynasty, or the Qin Dynasty, or the Shang Dynasty ... perhaps you begin to see a pattern here.