China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest?

Randall Peerenboom analyses China's performance according to “four main pillars of modernity”: economic development; human rights; rule of law; and democracy.

He presents four principal goals of his analysis: setting China in comparative contexts; putting China's experience within general debates about modernisation and globalisation; addressing the threat or model question in the book's subtitle; and considering what China can learn from, and what lessons it can provide to, others about development, democratisation and modernisation.

Peerenboom is largely successful in realising these ambitious goals. The necessarily high levels of abstraction and generality inevitably open up spaces for criticisms of his interpretations on particular themes. To take a main example, Peerenboom cannot fully take into account controversies over interpretation of the East Asian Model, which he uses as a principal comparative frame for China. He clearly cannot cover comprehensively the huge literatures in rights, democracy, development, globalisation, and so on, and any critic can complain that her favoured literature is neglected. But he skilfully presents effective overviews of themes and contending interpretations of contested concepts, and shows how they are usefully mobilised in his study of China. Similarly, he adopts a sound approach in the application of comparative empirical data to China. He relies mainly on UN and World Bank tables, the utility of which might be criticised (such as the World Bank Governance Indicators). While he recognises issues on the use of such data, and that more detailed empirical study of particular cases is required, he makes a valid point that they can provide a “general sense” of comparison. Nevertheless, it would be useful to have some more discussion of national income figures, since he emphasises throughout that China's performance should be assessed primarily in terms of comparison with countries within its income group.

Peerenboom's account is so successful because he effectively conveys conceptual and normative complexity in assessments of China's record. He thereby provides an important corrective to predominant trends in, and will antagonise, much of the human rights and democracy industries. For example, he suggests: “China outperforms the average country in its income class on most major indicators of human rights and well‐being, with the notable exception of civil and political rights” (p. 20). Unfortunately, many critics of China cannot take such a statement seriously, or even accept that it makes sense, refusing to look beyond the civil and political as “human rights”. Peerenboom also rejects the unconditional desirability of “democracy”, as he takes seriously arguments concerning perils of instability and failures in development because of “premature” democratisation. And he considers prefixes such as “elitist” and “illiberal” which many “democracy” proponents would reject. The general tenor of Peerenboom's analysis is to challenge a range of liberal orthodoxies. Again he is able to focus controversies in the scholarly literature and to contribute substantially by concrete reference to the Chinese case.

Peerenboom also apparently intends to contribute to better‐informed public debate, suggesting that some controversial issues have been characterised by “grand statements, posturing polemics, and inflamed rhetoric” (p. viii). His argument that “double standards” have applied in criticisms of China largely refers to evidence from US media, political activists and US Government sources. But an effort to influence public debate will surely face severe difficulties. The notion of measured, comparative assessment challenges prevailing emphasis on condemnations of civil and political rights abuses which, while certainly egregious, are limited to a small portion of the Chinese population; according to which, for example, assessment of rights to education or health care for a billion people are insignificant in comparison to, say, suppression of a few dissident Christians. The smug, often hypocritical condemnation of Chinese performance in rule of law, governance, rights, democracy is unlikely to be moderated by Peerenboom's attention to context and circumstance. He makes clear China's many failings, including “still many people living in relative and absolute poverty; justified concerns about the rights of laborers, migrant workers, women, and minorities; serious shortcomings in criminal justice; major weaknesses in certain aspects of the legal system; widespread corruption; frequent abuse of state power, and a host of other good governance issues”. But that is unlikely to be enough to protect him from the “bogeyman of being accused of being an apologist for a repressive regime” (p. 23).

In fact, Peerenboom's work is very far from apology. It is often provocative and consistently useful in urging interpretations on the basis of careful treatment of evidence and opening up, rather than seeking to close off, the avenues for argument. It is an impressive work, the wide scope of which is supported by broad scholarship.