Canada – Article, The Globe & Mail: Regime change in China is not only possible, it is imperative

Roger Garside twice served in the British embassy in Beijing. He is the author of Coming Alive: China After Mao and a new book China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom.

As a young British diplomat in Beijing, I witnessed the death of Mao and the birth of the Reform Era. Over the next 30 years, as China’s Communist Party pursued a strategy of transition to a market economy, with spectacular results, I thought it reasonable to suppose that in China, as in many countries, economic liberalization and the growth of property ownership would bring political change.

When I noticed that the regime had stopped the transition, I concluded that it had done so precisely because it feared that further economic liberalization would bring political change, by undermining its political monopoly.

Recently, I watched with mounting alarm as the United States and its allies clung to the illusion that the regime led by Xi Jinping was simply an authoritarian competitor, as if we were engaged in a well-mannered game being played under rules accepted by both sides. Efforts to rouse democratic countries from their complacency went unheeded. I determined that my best contribution would be to write a book that would expose the true nature of the regime, and what is at stake in our contest with it.

As I did so, I saw increasing evidence that the Communist regime is not authoritarian, but totalitarian. Historian Robert Conquest defined a totalitarian state as one that recognizes no limits to its authority in any sphere of public or private life, and extends that authority to whatever length feasible.

China’s constitution puts the Communist Party above the law, and recognizes no limits to its authority. And, by disregarding international law in the South China Sea, tearing up an international treaty in order to extinguish political freedom in Hong Kong and committing genocide in Xinjiang, the regime has demonstrated beyond a shred of doubt that it extends its authority to whatever length feasible. In January, 2013, Mr. Xi defined his party’s goal as “a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position.”

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-us-and-its-allies-must-pursue-regime-change-in-china/