One big domino ready to topple

For the past decade, Americans have grown increasingly alarmed by what many see as China's inevitable rise as a superpower - one both willing and able to threaten the United States.

Recent tensions over Beijing's detention of a US Navy plane crew, its jailing of US citizens, and its theft of US nuclear secrets have hardened perceptions of China as potentially America's most daunting future foe.

In such a highly charged atmosphere, American lawyer and longtime China resident Gordon Chang offers a refreshingly different perspective in his first book, "The Coming Collapse of China."

Contrary to the "China threat" school that warns of Beijing's outward projection of military and trading might, Chang focuses inward, on China's homegrown political and economic weaknesses. Here, he finds ample grounds to predict, not a meteoric rise, but rather a meltdown of the Chinese Communist regime.

Corrupt, repressive, and backward, the People's Republic is destined to fall soon, possibly within five years, Chang asserts. The end, he says, will not be slow and peaceful, but quick and violent. "One day - and that day is not far off - the [Communist] Party will not be able to control all the people as they make their dash toward tomorrow," writes Chang. A popular uprising will overthrow one-party rule in favor of self-government, he says.

How does Chang arrive at such bold conclusions? His central argument is that China's cautious, Communist leadership is running out of time. As the world advances at Internet speed and China faces the economic "shock therapy" of entering the World Trade Organization, he says, the leadership is afraid to abandon outdated doctrines of socialism and party supremacy.

Economically, the tinkering reforms of party chief Jiang Zemin have failed to address the major economic dislocations arising since China began freeing market forces in its state-planned system in 1978, Chang argues. Faced with growing unemployment, chronic losses by state firms, and an ailing state banking system, Jiang is unwilling to fully privatize the economy. Instead, the party maintains a plodding, Soviet-inspired planning regime that continues to constrain economic efficiency.

Politically, Jiang has stalled moves toward democracy, Chang says. On the contrary, he has intensified repression of a wide spectrum of groups - from the Falun Gong spiritual movement, to democracy activists, to ethnic minorities - that openly protest for their rights. As a result, resentment is growing, both among persecuted groups and among a general public angry over rampant corruption and other official abuses.

Ultimately, China's modernization depends, as it always has, on its people, Chang writes, who are "unstoppable" and the true engines of change in the country.

While such ideas are not terribly new, Chang illustrates his points with vivid stories of people from many walks of life in China - from a hustling minibus conductor in rural Jiangsu, to a high-flying female dotcom executive, to famous personalities at a posh Shanghai roof-top party.

As a first-time author, Chang's writing is disjointed in places, as he jumps abruptly from one vignette to another. The book is also at times repetitive.

Still, Chang's fly-on-the-wall, almost gossipy descriptions of business negotiations in the core chapters offer some of the book's most fresh and interesting insights into China's economic troubles.

"The Coming Collapse of China" is a persuasive rebuttal to authors who present China's ascent as inevitable. Nevertheless, on finishing the book, one is left with the feeling that Chang makes too big a leap in foretelling the Communist regime's rapid demise.

He is also inconsistent, alternately describing the party as weak and powerful, and China's public as rebellious and cowed.

In a final chapter, entitled "Roads to Ruin," his arguments verge on hype as he presents a dramatic scenario in which China's economy falters, and the leadership, in a last-ditch bid for power, launches a nationalistic war on Taiwan. Beijing will lose, students and citizens will rise in protest, and the regime will topple as leaders flee, he predicts.

"It happened in Berlin and Bucharest and will soon occur in Beijing: The people will take back their government," Chang asserts. Perhaps. But for many a seasoned China-watcher, only time will tell.

Ann Scott Tyson writes about Asia for the Monitor.

'The cadres still suppress, but that won't work in the long run. The Chinese people are in motion now, and it's just a matter of time before they get what they want.'

- From 'The Coming Collapse of China'

By Gordon Chang

Random House

344 pp., $26.95