China and the WTO
privatization will put economic power into the hands of the people.
The East Asian experience in South Korea and Taiwan seems to indicate that economic power will translate to democratic reform. Singapore and Malaysia may offer a counterpoint to this contention, but the Chinese case is distinguishable. Singapore is democratic enough to accept its political and individual rights restrictions as a condition of economic development, which is liberating enough. Malaysia is not yet economically developed enough, and wealth is not dispersed enough, to dismantle the autocratic state.
But China promises, idealistically, to be more like South Korea, or its enemy-brother, Taiwan. The WTO rules will force China to sell a great deal of its state assets relatively quickly. A slow marketing of these businesses would make them ripe for a few concentrated business owners, likely connected to the government through personal connections, to purchase them all, making the resulting business ownership concentrated as in the Malaysian (or Indonesian) example. But if there is a quick sell-off, the gains may be more dispersed, which will result in a further disbursement of the employment that such new enterprises will promise.
A wider spread of assets and jobs will hold the greatest challenge to Chinese state power. After all, no government can withstand the pressure of a billion people, or even a tenth that figure. Given the resources for organization and communication, it would not be surprising to see other political parties spring up to challenge the Communist party, especially if those political parties are supported by businesses indispensable to the economy, and thus "untouchable" in the way that China would normally handle such threats.
This view may be Pollyanna-ish, and even if true, will take decades. But it will be the safest, most stable route to a democratic China, and will result in a country that looks more like South Korea -- educated, industrialized, democratic, friendly, and rule-abiding. A sudden shock inducing democracy will probably create a country that looks more like the group of former Soviet satellites. It is distinctly possible that these two scenarios were exactly what pressured the agreement, however thorny it may still be, between the United States and China.
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