CCP Democracy Turn - HSS 2016

Neg
1NC
1NC Democratization
CCP instability causes transition structure and movements
GFS 12 A Service of the Economists Intelligence Unit (Global Forecasting Service, Social
and political disorder undermine stability in China http://www.gfs.eiu.com/Article.aspx?
articleType=gr&articleid=846) RMT
In theory, the CCP structure is designed to allow the leadership to be guided by the masses,
whose opinion is channelled up through the party structures. For this reason, the five-yearly
party congresses are in principle the CCP's supreme agency, outranking even the PSC. In
practice, the country imposes a Leninist top-down management style. So although the new
leadership is theoretically meant to be chosen by the central committee, with input from lower
party cells, in practice it is the current PSC members who tend to choose their successors, with
input from powerful party elders and various CCP factions. Once the new party leadership is in
place, the associated changes in the state government will take place around March 2013 at the
annual session of the National People's Congress.
As a result, political uncertainty will continue well after the changeover. It is as yet impossible to
say whether one faction will be able to use Mr Bo's fall to secure a dominant position, but it
seems unlikely: the structure of China's political system suggests that the next leadership will
again reflect the fine balance of power between conservatives and (relatively) liberal reformers
within the CCP. As expected, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will take over as president and premier
respectively in early 2013, following their elevation to the number one and three positions in the
CCP at the party congress in late 2012. Nevertheless, the new government's anti-corruption
drive could well prove destabilising, with, for example, the deputy party secretary of Sichuan
province, Li Chuncheng, the highest-profile individual so far to be caught up in the campaign.
He is unlikely to be the last, however,
In his departing speech in early November, Hi Jintao, the CCP's leader since 2002, warned that
China's development is "unbalanced, unco-ordinated and unsustainable". In reality, China's
leaders have little choice but to reform if they are to sustain China's economic growth and boost
the flagging legitimacy of the CCP. But there is a risk that internal party manoeuvres will
produce a less than effective set of leaders.
Conclusion
Should the Communist Party become distracted as the new set of leaders seek to establish
themselves, opponents of the present order - ranging from aggrieved minorities (including
Tibetans and Muslim Uyghurs), to on-line democracy campaigners - may take the opportunity
to step up their activism. This may only be further encouraged by the leadership's unwillingness
to permit any easing of its grip over the affairs of state: in his outgoing speech, Mr Hu was
steadfast in his defence of the one-party system, and his probable successor has shown little
predilection for political reform. Given that China has in effect been the engine of global
economic growth over the past few years, any signs of instability would damage global economic
confidence, as well as having substantial potential knock-on effects on those countries that have
directly benefited from China's economic boom (including, in particular, commodity exporters).
Democratization solves Chinese aggression cmr, checks and

balances, scrutiny and transparency
Pei 11 - Minxin, Minxin Pei is an expert on governance in the People's Republic of China, U.S.Asia relations, and democratization in developing nations, Shanghai International Studies
University, Harvard University, University of Pittsburgh(MINXIN PEI, June 22, 2011
http://carnegieendowment.org/2011/06/22/peace-democracy-and-nightmares-in-china) RMT
One of the most important changes democratization would bring to China is a new civilmilitary relationship . This issue has not received adequate attention in discussions about
how civilian control of the military influences a countrys external behavior. In the case of China,
it is a critical factor. As we all know, at the moment, the Chinese military is under the control of
the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is not a national army, which would be politically
neutral and loyal to the Chinese state not to a particular political party. The mission statement of
the Peoples Liberation Army is revealing: its top priority is to defend the political monopoly of
the CCP. Understandably, the CCP has made it abundantly clear that it will not allow the
military to become a national army. If China became democratic, the Chinese armed forces
would be much less subject to political manipulation and more loyal to national interests. This
fundamental change alone would reduce the likelihood of conflict between China and its
neighbors.
A democratic China would also have real political checks and balances . Opposition parties
and civil society in a liberal democracy play an important part in constraining the freedom of
action of the ruling party in national-security policy. At the moment, the CCPs national-security
policy is completely unchallenged. But that would change if China had well-organized
opposition parties and strong nongovernmental organizations that could force the leadership to
justify and seek public support for its agenda.
The military establishment itself would be placed under greater scrutiny in a competitive
political system as well. Opposition parties and NGOs would raise questions about defense
expenditures and force the military to be more transparent regarding its doctrine and
capabilities.
Democratic institutions would also make the national-security-policy-making process more
open and accessible to different interest groups. As a result, advocates for peace and cooperation
would have the ability to rally public opinion and influence policy . Taken together, these
institutional checks and balances would make the ruling party and the military more
accountable.
No doubt, democratization in China would bring an enormous expansion of press freedoms and
would fundamentally change the political dynamics of public discourse on national-security
issues. At the moment, the lack of freedom of the press makes it very difficult for the Chinese
public to gain a well-informed view of issues critical to the countrys national security. Take the
Taiwan question, for example. The mainlands official press coverage of Taiwan is so distorted
that it is impossible for ordinary Chinese people to have a decent understanding of the history of
the matter, its complexity and the risks of a military conflict. If China were a liberal democracy,
press freedom would allow far more open and objective discussion of foreign-policy issues.
Hawkish views would be countered by more moderate voices. Nationalist sentiments would be
constrained by more cosmopolitan perspectives. And dangers of an aggressive foreign policy

would be readily apparent.
Impact
2NC Democracy Good

Chinese democracy causes global democratic peace
Gilley 05 -- Bruce Gilley (Ph.D. 2008, Princeton University) is an Associate Professor of
Political Science. His research centers on democracy, legitimacy, climate change, and global
politics, and he is a specialist on the comparative politics of China and Asia, (Chinas
Democratic Future, pg. 246-248, Accessed 7/7/16, HDA)
If it has not already been brought into serious question by the continued spread of democracy to every corner of the world, Samuel
Huntingtons thesis of a world dominated by a clash of civilizations rent between a liberal and progressive West and a conservative
and benighted other should be given a final burial by Chinas embrace of democracy. It will confirm that the real clash in our world
remains a clash of just versus unjust political conceptions, between dictatorship and democracy or minimal democracy and full
democracy, not between some imagined, essentialized, and monoistic cultures. The very terms East and West will finally be
exposed as so bereft of any cultural or social meaning as to be virtually useless in our modern world except as geographic shorthand.
Still, if democracy is merely the most efficient and fair mechanism for organizing a polityany politythen its meaning will
continue to change as each finds new ways to improve that mechanism. While history as defined by the monumental struggle
between the notion of the political equality of individuals and rival conceptions appears to have ended, it will go on being spun out in
competing conceptions of democracy. Debates about issues like compulsory voting, fair electoral systems, money in politics, judicial
review, and the like will be the dominant historical issues of our time. As an ongoing experiment in best-practice politic s,
democracy is sure to be influenced by its practice in China, which will come to the game with a
rich tradition of indigenous innovation and, arguably, deeper cultural roots in the essential
principles of democracy such as tolerance, compromise, and egalitarianism . How will democracy change
as a result? There has been much recent discussion in the West of a democratic malaise where the associational and normsoriented life of a democracy is breaking down. Many scholars see the democratic waves of the past as having ended and the old
democracies in a state of slow regression. Some countries are thought to be stuck in minimal democracies of dispersed power but not
true equality. To some, the value of political power is unequal, some freedoms more cared for than others, and economic justice
unachieved. If modern-day social contractarians are right, a failure to achieve these things make a democracys claim to goodness
very thin indeed.
It is here that Chinas democratization may play a vital role. Most Chinese scholars
harbor the hope that China will surpass traditional forms of democracy as practiced in the rest
of the worldespecially the imagined Western modeland introduce to the world a new
system that will be even better.2 This is the so-called surpass sentiment (chaoyue qingxu) mentioned earlier. Of
course, there is not a little bit of cultural chauvinism at work here , the desire for China to retake its rightful place
as the dispenser of civilization to the worlds benighted peoples, especially the stubbornly
dynamic West. Even so, we should not rule out, nor rue, the possibility that China will pioneer a
unique version of democracy. As one Western scholar notes: It remains possible that some day
the Asian, perhaps even the Chinese, vision of the best form of government will become the
dominant vision.3 If so, it would be a cause for celebration because everyone benefits when a
more just system is available. Many Chinese scholars conjure up a new form of political order that is both strongly
democratic and strongly social-oriented. One talks of the emergence of a creative ambiguity, in China which defies easy labels, in
which a mixed economy with a state sector will exist alongside mixed politics with elements of both liberal democracy and social
democracy.4 Others seem to echo classical republican political theorists of the West with dreams of deliberative democracy
(shangyi minzhu)5 or policy democracy (zhengce minzhu) in which peoples considered views on issues actually translate into
outcomes.6 Here, elections lose their pride of place as the hallmark of democracy, being replaced by other mechanisms for
contesting state power and proposing interests and views of the good. One Chinese scholar anticipates a vast laboratory of
democratic experimentation which, given the sheer size of the country, would create a whole new lexicon of democratic forms and
theories: There are actual opportunities for transcending historically known systems and they might be seized by a conscious
people.7 There is much here that meshes with recent thinking on democracy in the West, which stresses issues like social capital,
popular deliberation, equality of political opportunity, and more. In other words ,
the ongoing struggle to move from

mere formal democracy to a substantive democracy of equal citizens will be helped by China.
Its efforts at real democracy may inspire and push established democracies to
deepen their own democratic experiences . One Indian author has said that the future of Western
political theory will be decided outside the West, noting, rightly, that India would loom large in.
China is key to global democracysize and model

Diamond 0 --- Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University,
and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. At Stanford University, he is professor by
courtesy of political science and sociology, 2000 (Forward of China and Democracy, edited by
Suisheng Zhao, p. ix-x, Accessed on 07-11-2016, Accessed at https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=gUzJAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=china+communist+party+regime+stabil
ity+democratization&ots=Bw1TEon4LZ&sig=gTqZFOry0q_XGgrkFJpvOhN2yRw#v=onepage&
q=china%20communist%20party%20regime%20stability%20democratization&f=false, ES)
**note: OCR used
For the long-term future of democracy there is no more important country than China. This is
true simply by virtue of China's size. It is a nearly continental country, and its population is
one-fifth of all humanity . It is the cultural, if no longer national, homeland of millions of
Chinese immigrants to other countries. If its economic development continues without a
catastrophic interruption, its commercial, scientific, intellectual, cultural, and (potentially less
benign) military dynamism is bound to be felt increasingly throughout Asia and the rest of the
world. Barring an economic and ecological implosion, China is the emerging superpower of the
twenty-first century. If, on the other hand, there is an implosion, the conscquenccs will be
destabilizing for all of Asia, and indeed the world.
One need not subscribe simplistically to the theorysome call it "doctrine"of a democratic
peace to appreciate how the democratization of China could contribute to regional and
international peace and security. A China governed by open and transparent politics,
constitutionalism, a rule of law, and the deliberative procedures of democracy would be a China
more likely to resolve its conflict with Taiwan through peaceful accommodation. Indeed, the
Republic of China on Taiwan has declared a democratic constitutional system on the mainland
to be a precondition for unification. Practically, it is difficult to imagine a political formula for
unification that would not heavily rely on a federal or confederal constitutional framework, and
this could only be credible and meaningful politically within the larger context of democracy,
buttressed by an independent judiciary.
Beyond the Taiwan problem, a China governed by the more comprehensive architecture of
democracynot just competitive, free, and fair elections at all levels of power, but a pluralistic
civil society, a free press and intellectual life, institutions of horizontal accountability, and a
rigorous, independent judicial systemwould be a more responsible regional neighbor and
global actor. It would be better able to control the corruption and organized crime that otherwise threaten to undermine the security and legal orders of many countries. By controlling
corruption, redressing social grievances, removing unpopular rulers, managing political conflict,
negotiating new political bargains with regional and ethnic minorities, and compelling the state
to respond to severe and growing ecological problems, a genuinely democratic system would
refurbish political legitimacy and thus enhance the long-run political stability of China. Even
within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) there is growing recognition that China must evolve
more open, responsive, accountable, and participatory political structures, or else risk rising
political instability, even turmoil.
Democracy is key to the effectiveness of institutions the UN, The IMF, and the
WTO
Kendall 16 - Andrea Kendall-Taylor is a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and
Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council and a nonresident senior associate in the Human
Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.. July
15th (How Democracys Decline Would Undermine the International Order, Center for
Strategic and International studies, available online at https://www.csis.org/analysis/howdemocracy%E2%80%99s-decline-would-undermine-international-order, accessed 7/25/16,
HDA)
Democratic decline would weaken U.S. partnerships and erode an important
foundation for U.S. cooperation abroad . Research demonstrates that domestic politics are a key
determinant of the international behavior of states. In particular, democracies are more likely to
form alliances and cooperate more fully with other democracies than with autocracies . Similarly,
authoritarian countries have established mechanisms for cooperation and sharing of worst
practices. An increase in authoritarian countries, then, would provide a broader platform for
coordination that could enable these countries to overcome their divergent histories, values, and
interestsfactors that are frequently cited as obstacles to the formation of a cohesive challenge
to the U.S.-led international system. Recent examples support the empirical data. Democratic backsliding in
Hungary and the hardening of Egypts autocracy under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi have led to
enhanced relations between these countries and Russia. Likewise, democratic decline in
Bangladesh has led Sheikh Hasina Wazed and her ruling Awami League to seek closer relations
with China and Russia, in part to mitigate Western pressure and bolster the regimes domestic
standing. Although none of these burgeoning relationships has developed into a highly unified
partnership, democratic backsliding in these countries has provided a basis for cooperation
where it did not previously exist. And while the United States certainly finds common cause with authoritarian partners
on specific issues, the depth and reliability of such cooperation is limited. Consequently , further democratic
decline could seriously compromise the United States ability to form the kinds of
deep partnerships that will be required to confront todays increasingly complex
challenges. Global issues such as climate change, migration, and violent
extremism demand the coordination and cooperation that democratic backsliding
would put in peril. Put simply, the United States is a less effective and influential
actor if it loses its ability to rely on its partnerships with other democratic nations .
A slide toward authoritarianism could also challenge the current global order by diluting U.S.
influence in critical international institutions, including the United Nations , the World Bank,
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Democratic decline would weaken Western efforts
within these institutions to advance issues such as Internet freedom and the responsibility to
protect. In the case of Internet governance, for example, Western democracies support an open, largely private, global Internet.
Autocracies, in contrast, promote state control over the Internet, including laws and other mechanisms that facilitate their ability to
censor and persecute dissidents. Already many autocracies, including Belarus, China, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have coalesced in the
Likeminded Group of Developing Countries within the United Nations to advocate their interests. Within the IMF and World
Bank,
autocraciesalong with other developing nationsseek to water down conditionality or the

reforms that lenders require in exchange for financial support. If successful, diminished
conditionality would enfeeble an important incentive for governance reforms. In a more extreme
scenario, the rising influence of autocracies could enable these countries to bypass the IMF and
World Bank all together. For example, the Chinese-created Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank and the BRICS Bank
which includes Russia, China, and an increasingly authoritarian South Africaprovide countries with the potential to bypass
existing global financial institutions when it suits their interests. Authoritarian-led alternatives pose the risk that global economic
governance will become fragmented and less effective.
2NC Democracy key to Chinese Econ

Democracy would help Chinese economy in the long run
Democratic Future, pg. 35, Accessed 7/7/16, HDA)
None of this is to diminish the modest achievements of the CCP since it began undoing the
damage it wrought in the first 30 years of its rule. Since 1978, and as part of its bid to remain in
power, the Party has affected a successful transition to a market economy and a more free
society. It has opened China to the world and integrated it with the rest of the Asian region. The
CCP-led government picks up the trash, catches robbers, issues passports, and manages a stable
currency. The trains even run on time. It is better than the state of anarchy into which some
nations have fallen. But is this the standard against which we should hold China? Given its
cultural endowment, there is no reason why China is not the Germany or Japan of Asia. Instead,
it is a relative backwater by every measure except that of brute size, hardly a mark of success.
Democracy would not make China perfect, but it would make it far less imperfect than
dictatorship does. There is virtually no issuebe it the enforcement of business contracts, the
response to health crises, the making of policy through public input, or the conduct of an
effective diplomacythat would not be improved by a successful democratic transition in China.
Many if not most of the problems of Chinalike casino stock markets, financial crisis,
environmental degradation, AIDS crisis, high suicide rates, misgovernance, and international
credibility problemsare to a large extent a direct result of CCP rule. CCP rule is the biggest
generator of political instability in China. As mentioned, global experience shows that whatever
a countrys problems and whatever its inherited legacies, democracy almost always makes things
better than they were under dictatorship. To take Asia, democracy does not turn Thailand into
Singapore but it prevents it from becoming Burma. Democracy does not turn Taiwan into Japan
but it prevents it from becoming North Korea. The Philippines and India, two cases of large poor
countries that are whipping-boys for antidemocratic advocates, would probably have broken up
long ago into failed states were it not for democracy.
China must transition to democracy to maintain long term economic

stability
Twinning 12 - Daniel Twining is director and senior fellow for Asia at the German Marshall
Fund of the United States, where he leads a 15-member team working on the rise of Asia and its
implications for the West through a program of convening and research spanning East,
Southeast, and South Asia. He previously served as a member of the U.S. Secretary of States
Policy Planning Staff responsible for South Asia and regional issues in East Asia (2007-9); as the
foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator John McCain (2001-4); and as a staff member of the U.S.
Trade Representative (1997). October 28th (Democracy can make China a great power,
Financial Times, available online at https://next.ft.com/content/b9b742d4-1f60-11e2-b27300144feabdc0, accessed 7/12/16, HDA)
As China undergoes its once-a-decade political transition, Chinese and westerners alike wonder
whether its new leaders will put the country on a path to openness and transparency. This is
morally desirable. More to the point, political liberalisation is a strategic imperative if China is
to sustain its rise toward world power status. The new leaders have their work cut out from the
bursting of Chinas demographic bubble and the limits of state-led growth to the suspicion of
well-armed neighbours. Yet these problems are intensified by and inherent to the nature of
the countrys political regime. Its system of bureaucratic authoritarianism creates incentives for
corruption and repression, as the Bo Xilai drama revealed. Western media investigations into
the family fortunes of incoming president Xi Jinping and outgoing premier Wen Jiabao have
suggested that members amassed extraordinary wealth in ways that correlate with the political
success of their patriarchs. This is not a peoples republic. Chinas state-directed economy has
generated rapid growth for three decades. But it has also produced imbalances. China has
overinvested in real estate and heavy manufacturing; state-owned enterprises are often run by
politicians rather than businessmen; banks dispense loans at non-market rates on the basis of
non-market principles; currency manipulation and intellectual piracy generate retaliation by
trading partners. Meanwhile, labour costs (and labour unrest) have increased. Government
suppression of information has stymied indigenous technological breakthroughs. This has
echoes of how political choices in the 15th century privileging government mandarins over
entrepreneurs closed China off to early industrial development and imperial expansion,
ceding a 500-year advantage to the west.
2NC Expansionism
Democracy solves Chinese aggression and preserves global stability
Friedman and McCormick 0 - Edward Friedman graduated from Harvard in 1968 and
is Currently a Professor at UM-Wisconsin, He received the Guggenheim Fellowship for Social
Sciences in the US and Canada, Barrett L. McCormick, Barrett L. McCormick. Professor of
Political Science, Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Major in International Affairs. Ph.D.,
University of Wisconsin, 1985 (What If China Doesn't Democratize?: Implications for War and
Peace Jun 11, 2015, Google Books) RMT
To be sure, China's military might should not be exaggerated. But, ignoring the regional facts,
places where China already is bullying neighbors is also a mistake. Illusions protect war-prone
forces. Were China a democracy , there could be voices in a debate calling attention to
millen- nia of Chinese wars of incorporation and expansion. A democratic debate in China might
somewhat puncture virtually genetic notions of Japanese evil, Chinese purity, and an aggrieved
China as the eternal victim. In a democracy, supporters of China-Japan reconciliation as more
important than demands for endless Japanese apologies could ask, "Should Vietnam demand
that China apologize and face history for the Ming [dynasty] invasion of Dai Viet in the fifteenth
century, when Chi- nese commanders claimed 7 million killed and that the plains were turned
red?" And should China apologize for any of the subsequent Chinese attacks on the Vietnamese
state over the next four centuries. What should reparations be?" It might be possible in a
Chinese democracy to get the viewpoints of chinas anxious neighbors into Chinas policy debate .
As in its 1999 view of war in Yugoslavia which brackets Kosovo victims of Serbian policy,
Beijing sees no neighbors or minorities as victims of China.
China's expansionist chauvinism is not new ." Its invasion of Korea in 1950 was not a
matter of simple defense; Mao very much wanted into that war." Also, the Chinese side
provoked the 1969 conflict with Soviet Russia. In addition, China invaded Vietnam in 1979 and
then kept harassing Vietnam while putting out stories that Vietnam was provok- ing China with
border incidents. Beijing was also the backer of the genocidal Pol Pot; Beijing was the major
arms supplier of the murderous Khmer Rouge. It arms the murderous tyrants in Myanmar
(Burma). It armed the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda. Dictatorship precludes these
huge facts from entering the political discourse in China.
2NC Japan War

Authoritarian Chinese Regime causes war with Japan
Friedman 0 --- Edward Friedman, Poli Sci Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin,
2000 (Preventing War Between China and Japan, in the book What If China Doesnt
Democratize? edited by Edward Friedman and Barrett L. McCormick, publisher: M. E. Sharpe,
not available online, p. 99, ES)
If China does not democratize, Beijings hostility to Tokyo could facilitate a war in the twentyfirst century. In this section on Sino-Japanese Relations in his 1997 study of Asias Deadly
Triangle, Kent Calder, a senior adviser to the U.S. State Department for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs, foresees arms races, tensions, and flashpoints for war. The dynamics of these dangerous
forces lie deep inside Chinas authoritarian regime.
Democratization solveshistorical examples prove

Friedman 00 --- Edward Friedman, Poli Sci Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin,
2000 (Preventing War Between China and Japan, in the book What If China Doesnt
Democratize? edited by Edward Friedman and Barrett L. McCormick, publisher: M. E. Sharpe,
not available online, p. 105, ES)
Consequently, peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region in the twenty-first century require
a major change in Beijing-Tokyo relations, a move toward genuine consultation. This large
change may be impossible unless China democratizes. Analogous transitions which illuminate
what is at stake include initial efforts at democratization in Russia allowing, at least
momentarily, an end to Cold War tensions, and, more clearly, post-World War II GermanyFrench reconciliation after Germany democratized. Prior to Germanys democratization, from
Napoleons invasion of Germany to Hitlers invasion of France, France and Germany were
regularly at war with each other. Mistrust, hate, and desires for vengeance suffused the
relationship. Only the trust, transparency, and cooperation facilitated by democratization could,
over time, reduce the hates and angers that provided the tinder that could be ignited into war by
unfortunate incidents and domestically needed maneuvers. So I believe it is with China and
Japan. Democratization, and getting past the passions of early democratization, are required for
genuine China-Japan reconciliation. As French and Poles both decided to treat the post-Nazi
German democracy as not responsible for Nazi crimes, so Chinese will have to change their view
of democratic Japan if peace is to prevail.
2NC Democratic backsliding bad

Democratic backsliding collapses the international order
HDA)
It is rare that policymakers, analysts, and academics agree. But there is an emerging
consensus in the world of foreign policy: threats to the stability of the current
international order are rising . The norms, values, laws, and institutions that have
undergirded the international system and governed relationships between nations are being
gradually dismantled. The most discussed sources of this pressure are the ascent of China and
other non-Western countries, Russias assertive foreign policy, and the diffusion of power from
traditional nation-states to nonstate actors, such as nongovernmental organizations,
multinational corporations, and technology-empowered individuals. Largely missing from these
discussions, however, is the specter of widespread democratic decline . Rising challenges to
democratic governance across the globe are a major strain on the international
system, but they receive far less attention in discussions of the shifting world
order. In the 70 years since the end of World War II, the United States has fostered a global
order dominated by states that are liberal, capitalist, and democratic. The United States has
promoted the spread of democracy to strengthen global norms and rules that constitute the
foundation of our current international system. However, despite the steady rise of democracy
since the end of the Cold War, over the last 10 years we have seen dramatic reversals in respect
for democratic principles across the globe. A 2015 Freedom House report stated that the
acceptance of democracy as the worlds dominant form of governmentand of an international
system built on democratic idealsis under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years.
Although the number of democracies in the world is at an all-time high, there are a number of
key trends that are working to undermine democracy. The rollback of democracy in a few
influential states or even in a number of less consequential ones would almost certainly
accelerate meaningful changes in todays global order.
Backsliding would create greater instability and would

HDA)
Violence and instability would also likely increase if more democracies give way to
autocracy. International relations literature tells us that democracies are less likely to fight wars against other democracies,
suggesting that interstate wars would rise as the number of democracies declines. Moreover, within countries that are
already autocratic, additional movement away from democracy, or an authoritarian
hardening, would increase global instability. Highly repressive autocracies are the most likely
to experience state failure, as was the case in the Central African Republic, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. In this way ,
democratic decline would significantly strain the international order because rising levels of
instability would exceed the Wests ability to respond to the tremendous costs of peacekeeping,
humanitarian assistance, and refugee flows. Finally, widespread democratic decline would
contribute to rising anti-U.S. sentiment that could fuel a global order that is increasingly
antagonistic to the United States and its values. Most autocracies are highly suspicious of U.S.
intentions and view the creation of an external enemy as an effective means for boosting their
own public support. Russian president Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and Bolivian president Evo
Morales regularly accuse the United States of fomenting instability and supporting regime change. This vilification of the
United States is a convenient way of distracting their publics from regime shortcomings and
fostering public support for strongman tactics. Since 9/11, and particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring,
Western enthusiasm for democracy support has waned. Rising levels of instability, including in
Ukraine and the Middle East, fragile governance in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sustained threats
from terrorist groups such as ISIL have increased Western focus on security and stability. U.S.
preoccupation with intelligence sharing, basing and overflight rights, along with the perception that autocracy equates with stability,
are trumping democracy and human rights considerations. While rising levels of global instability explain part of Washingtons shift
from an historical commitment to democracy, the nature of the policy process itself is a less appreciated factor. Policy discussions
tend to occur on a country-by-country basisleading to choices that weigh the costs and benefits of democracy support within the
confines of a single country. From this perspective, the benefits of counterterrorism cooperation or access to natural resources are
regularly judged to outweigh the perceived costs of supporting human rights. A serious problem arises, however, when this process
is replicated across countries. The bilateral focus rarely incorporates the risks to the U.S.-led global order that arise from widespread
democratic decline across multiple countries.
Many of the threats to the current global order, such as

Chinas rise or the diffusion of power, are driven by factors that the United States and West
more generally have little leverage to influence or control. Democracy, however, is an area where
Western actions can affect outcomes. Factoring in the risks that arise from a global democratic
decline into policy discussions is a vital step to building a comprehensive approach to
democracy support. Bringing this perspective to the table may not lead to dramatic shifts in foreign policy, but it would
ensure that we are having the right conversation.
Yes Transition
2NC Yes Transition: Empirics

Empirics prove transition is possible
Pei 13 - Margot Pritzker 72 professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a
non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.(Minxin Pei
February 13, 2013 5 Ways China Could Become a Democracy
http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/5-ways-china-could-become-a-democracy/?allpages=yes)
RMT
First, there is the logic of authoritarian decay. One-party regimes, however sophisticated, suffer
from organizational ageing and decay. Leaders get progressively weaker (in terms of capabilities
and ideological commitment); such regimes tend to attract careerists and opportunists who view
their role in the regime from the perspective of an investor: they want to maximize their returns
from their contribution to the regimes maintenance and survival. The result is escalating
corruption, deteriorating governance, and growing alienation of the masses. Empirically, the
organizational decay of one-party regime can be measured by the limited longevity of such
regimes. To date, the record longevity of a one-party regime is 74 years (held by the former
Communist Party of the Soviet Union). One-party regimes in Mexico and Taiwan remained in
power for 71 and 73 years respectively (although in the case of Taiwan, the accounting is
complicated by the Kuomintangs military defeat on the mainland). Moreover, all of the three
longest-ruling one-party regimes began to experience system-threatening crisis roughly a
decade before they exited political power. If the same historical experience should be repeated
in China, where the Communist Party has ruled for 63 years, we may reasonably speculate that
the probability of a regime transition is both real and high in the coming 10-15 years, when
the CCP will reach the upper-limit of the longevity of one-party regimes.
Taiwan proves democratic transition is possible

Diamond 0 --- Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University,
and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. At Stanford University, he is professor by
courtesy of political science and sociology, 2000 (Forward of China and Democracy, edited by
Suisheng Zhao, p. x-xi, Accessed on 07-11-2016, Accessed at https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=gUzJAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=china+communist+party+regime+stabil
ity+democratization&ots=Bw1TEon4LZ&sig=gTqZFOry0q_XGgrkFJpvOhN2yRw#v=onepage&
q=china%20communist%20party%20regime%20stability%20democratization&f=false, ES)
**note: OCR used
If Chinese communist leaders decide to look around for a model of con- trolled, gradual, phased
democratization led from above, they need look no further than to the island across the strait
that they claim as a part of China: Taiwan. There, a decadent Kuomintang (KMT), which had
suffered the trau- matic loss of political control over the mainland in 1949, began to defend and
reconstruct its rule on the foundation of more limited government (what Thomas Mctzger has
called an "inhibited center"), with local electoral competition taking place under the overall
control of the single, ruling party. There, elections gradually became more competitive over
time, as the ruling party slowly gained in self-confidence and political capacity, and as a diverse
assort- ment of independent candidates gradually cohered into an opposition network, the
dangwai, and then, in 1987, into an opposition party, the Democratic Party. Gradually, the
Republic of China evolved from a failed state that had to flee the mainland, to an inhibited and
increasingly pluralisticalbeit still autocratic and repressivepolitical center, eventually to
what Mctzgcr calls a "sub- ordinated" political center, giving extensive freedom and autonomy to
its citizens and allowing for many arenas of decision making.1 In somewhat different language,
one could say that Taiwan gradually shifted (and South Korea more rapidly) to democracy from
what Robert Scalapino calls an "authoritarian pluralist" system "wherein political life remains
under the unchallenged control of a dominant-party or single-party regime; strict limits are
placed on liberty ...; and military or national security organs keep a close eye on things," but
there exists a civil society with some autonomy from the state and some capacity to express
diverse interests, as well as a mixed or increasingly market- oriented economy.2
2NC Yes Transition: Internet

The internet makes democratization possible
Liu and Chen 12 - Yu Liu is an associate professor of political science at Qinghua
University, China, and can be reached at lytsinghua@tsinghua.edu.cn. She is also the author of
Details of Democracy: An Observation of Contemporary American Politics. Dingding Chen is an
assistant professor of government and public administration at the University of Macau, China,
and can be reached at ddchen@umac.mo.(Why China Will Democratize Copyright # 2012
Center for Strategic and International Studies The Washington Quarterly 35:1 pp. 4163
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2012.641918) RMT
Finally, the transformation of traditional media is contributing to democratization. In the 1990s,
the weekly newspaper Southern Weekend was the symbol of liberal journalism. Today, it is only
one of many such papers. Despite increasing censorship, more and more newspapers and
magazines are exhibiting liberal inclinations including the Southern Metropolis, Window for the
Southern Wind, Liao Wang, Cai Jing, New Century, and Xiaoxiang Morning. The most
revolutionary changes, however, have come through the internet. The estimated number of
netizens in China reached a phenomenal 485 million by June 2011.38 Of course, cultural change
takes time, but more and more netizens are detaching themselves from the authoritarian
regime. One indicator of such detachment is the growing political cynicism: eight glories and
eight shames, the moral principles advocated by the HuWen leadership, have inspired more
jokes than respect. Words like democrazy, freedamn, fewman rights, or harmoney have
been coined to ridicule political conditions. Although it is true that the Chinese government has
succeeded in repressing free speech online through its multilayered censorship mechanisms, it
has so far failed to control online activity in at least four areas.
First, the government cannot completely block the flow of information, because many people
have learned how to climb over the Great Fire Wall with special software. An interesting story
is that of Feng Zhenghu. Seen as a political troublemaker by the Shanghai government, Feng was
forbidden to return to China from Japan. From November 2009 to February 2010, he lived in
Narita International Airport in Japan, protesting his treatment. In the pre-internet era, his
struggle would have caught little attention, but Feng used Twitter to update his daily activities.
Although the Chinese Twitter community is a small one due to government restrictions, it was
big enough to keep the story alive. Eventually, the Shanghai government was embarrassed into
allowing Feng to return.
Second, there is much information available online in politically gray areas. In the past five
years, the internet in China has become a political theater full of sensational dramas . The plight
of Deng Yujiao, a Hubei girl who stabbed a local official to death when facing a rape threat in
May 2009, generated enormous outrage when her story was published online, as did the 2009
hide-and-seek story in which a Yunnan police station attributed the mysterious death of a
detainee to a hide-and-seek game, but many people found the story too ridiculous to believe. In
2010, when a Jiangxi family burned themselves to protest the demolishment of their home, their
relatives updated their sufferings online. Such stories are gray because local governments
usually do not like them to be reported but have no discretion to control the information online.
In addition, Chinese netizens have learned to invent gray language, or euphemisms, to deliver
their messages about politically sensitive issues. For example, eight square signals a
discussion of the June 4th movement, being invited for a cup of tea means being recently
warned by the security police, and being harmonized, unsurprisingly, means being repressed.
The top leaders sometimes get nicknames for the convenience of discussion. Such are the
guerilla war skills to bypass online censorship.
Thirdly, the internet is becoming a tool for organizing political action. The Xiamen walk in
2006 and Guangzhou walk in 2009 for environmental causes were both partially organized
through online communities. The Qian Yunhui case of 2010, in which the government and many
netizens argued over the reason for a peasants death (the government said it resulted from a car
accident while netizens attributed it to political retaliation since the peasant had been
organizing fellow villagers for land rights), generated so much publicity that some netizens
conducted independent investigations. It is true that such activists are still very few because of
information control and political risk, but the phenomenon of coordinating action through the
internet not only helps to maintain solidarity among activists but also provides a channel for
political dissidents to connect with the grassroots, a dangerous coalition in the eyes of the CCP.
Fourth, the internet is fostering a general social capital, which may not have immediate
political implications but can cultivate a democratic attitude in the long run. Despite
government control, many reading, traveling, discussion, charity, and sports groups, among
others, are thriving online. If Harvard professor Robert Putnams thesis39 that pro-social
networks are pro-democratic has an element of truth, the explosion of social interaction and
associations online can help to facilitate Chinas transition toward democracy
In summary, we contend that Chinese culture is not obstructing democratization to
the extent that some suggest . Cultural traits themselves are mixed. Many conservative
tendencies are superficial, and the political culture is in flux. Intellectual leadership is moving
toward liberalism, the traditional media are opening up, and the internet is becoming a cultural
arena which the state is too clumsy to effectively conquer.
2NC Yes transition: protests

Party stability/legitimacy key to stop protestors
Scott 7 Murray, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Communist Party
Strategies For Containing Social Protest http://www.swpberlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/projekt_papiere/Tanner_ks.pdf) RMT
The fundamental aim of the partys internal security is to buy the party time and space to
address these problems, while taking away from citizens the option of large-sale organized
political activism or opposition to the party. Under Hu Jintao, the Partys security specialists
have continued an important trend begun under Jiang Zemin trying to develop more
sophisticated, lower violence politicng methods that would contain protest while avoiding any
popular backlash that could spin out of control. Even more than under Jiang, Hus leadership
emphasizes bottling-up petitioners and protestors in local areas and forcing local officials either
to find ways of resolving fundamental problems or repressing unrest.
The twin elements of Beijings social stability strategy create a structure of incentives and
risks from citizens. Through the economic and political half of this approach, the Hu
government appears aimed at encouraging citizens to keep faith that the Central government
really cares about their concerns, and persuade them that the CCP regime is still their best hope
for the future. An important aspect of this involves the scape-goatting local officials. Citizens are
encouraged to believe that the real blame for their problems lies not with the CCPs
authoritarian system itself, but with the small number of venal officials who wont obey the law.
The internal security strategy aims at getting disgruntled citizens to believe that they have no
option but to accept and work with the current CCP system and that they would still be taking a
very dangerous risk to seek such options. The strategy threatens those who try to organize
dissent even formally legal dissent with serious repression. Rank and file protestors also
certainly risk detention and punishment. But internal security officials are officially urged to try
to avoid alienating majority of citizens by publicly recognizing the legitimacy off their
complaints and avoiding the use of ham-handed, indiscriminate violence that risks turning
small-scale non-violent protests into mass riots.
K2 democracy
Sudworth 15 John, British Broadcasting Company (Hong Kong pro-democracy
protesters return to streets 1 February 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china31079840) RMT
Those who took to the streets in Hong Kong said they needed to stand up and be counted, if only
to protect existing freedoms. That means exercising the freedom to march even if no-one in
power is listening.
Some of the younger marchers put the low turnout down to fatigue, saying large numbers
would pour back on to the streets when the moment was right . But one 60-year-old
cautioned against youthful optimism, warning that Hong Kong would have to wait for the
downfall of the Chinese Communist Party before seeing genuine democracy.
That party has comfortably outlived many predictions of its demise. It is watching events in
Hong Kong closely and will see a low turnout as vindication of its strategy to avoid force and
overt direction of events while making no compromises on political reform.
At this point, Beijing will feel it has won the battle - if not yet the war - and is likely to carry on
shaping Hong Kong's political destiny according to its own design.
China has promised the semi-autonomous territory direct elections in 2017, but ruled that
candidates had to be vetted by Beijing.
Pro-democracy legislators - who hold about 40% of the seats in the Legislative Council - strongly
oppose the move.
Protester Julia Choi told the AP news agency that pro-democracy candidates "would not even be
nominated, so this is pseudo-universal suffrage, we do not have the rights to elect who we want".
Many demonstrators carried yellow umbrellas - the symbol of the political campaign . A large
banner caricaturing Hong Kong's Chief Executive CY Leung read: "Reject fake democracy, we
want real universal suffrage."
But speaking on local radio on Sunday, Lam Woon-kwong of the Executive Council, Hong
Kong's top policy-making body, warned protesters: "You can't threaten the central authorities."
2NC Yes Transition: Globalization

Yes Transition Globalization
Most of the extant works on democratization in China tend to focus exclusively on internal
factors, treating external factors as secondary or even marginal in shaping Chinas political
transitions. This view might seem self-evident given the strong ability of the Chinese
government to resist external interference in Chinas internal affairs. However, the role of
international factors cannot be excluded altogether as ample evidence demonstrates that they do
influence a nations prospects for democracy.
In the field of international relations, a number of scholars have identified various causal
mechanisms to explain why and how non-democratic countries have embraced democratic
norms and human rights values. External actors usually influence a countrys democratization
process through pressure and persuasion. For example, one recent study examined the way in
which the European Union played a significant role in the diffusion of democratic norms and
institutions in Europe.55 In the case of China, three external forces may affect democratization:
the contagion effect, the spread of liberal norms, and practical benefits.
The contagion effect is vividly demonstrated by the recent democratic uprisings in Northern
Africa and the Middle East. Globally, democracy has become the dominant form of government,
with 116 countries in 2009 qualifying as electoral democracies. Among all 194 countries, 89 are
free and 58 are partly free, according to the Freedom of the World 2010 report.56 Regionally,
many Asian states have completed democratization in recent decades, including Indonesia,
Taiwan, and South Korea, while countries such as Thailand and Vietnam are also moving toward
constitutional democracy. India has often been criticized for lacking economic efficiency as a
result of its democratic system, but in recent years, Indias economy has been growing at a fast
pace, thereby seriously weakening the argument that democracy will slow the rate of Chinas
economic growth. Among the remaining non-democratic regimes in Asia, Myanmar held the
countrys first elections in two decades on November 7, 2010; a week later, Aung San Suu Kyi,
the long-time promoter of democracy in Myanmar, was freed from house arrest. Other liberal
moves since then by the government seem to suggest that Myanmar is finally moving, though
slowly, toward a more democratic regime.57
Research shows that autocracies are more likely to become democracies when neighboring
states make the transition to democracy.58 Although it is unlikely that China will follow the
model of the abovementioned Asian nations, their example will increase Chinas confidence in
democratization, in part because they all share a traditional Asian or Chinese culture to varying
degrees. Moreover, democratization has not halted economic growth in countries such as South
Korea and Indonesia.
In addition, globalization facilitates the spread of liberal norms, either through structural factors
(e.g., trade and investment, information technology) or the deliberate efforts of global actors
(e.g., multinational corporations, nongovernmental and international organizations,

individuals). Trade and investment promote democratization for various reasons. Trade
liberalization, for example, tends to initially increase income inequality, which in turn facilitates
democratization by intensifying social discontent.59 Elites also have incentives to pursue
democratization. Authoritarian rulers interested in gaining access to international funds have a
strong incentive to hold multiparty elections because donors generously reward dictators who
hold elections.60 Although China is not in desperate need of international funds, it does face a
more hostile global business environment if it maintains its authoritarian system, as the
increasing criticism China has encountered for its role in Africa reveals. For the sake of doing
business, many countries would like to see a more liberal and transparent decisionmaking
process in China. Capital mobility also means that Chinas wealthy can easily transfer mobile
assets to foreign countries, thus reducing the need to worry about redistributive policies
resulting from democratization.61
Scholars have found that a peaceful regional environment also contributes positively to
democratic transitions.64 Although much has been said and written about how such an
environment has contributed to Chinas economic rise, little attention has been paid to how it
can influence democratization in China. It can increase the level of economic, social, political,
and cultural exchange between China and the outside world, which will facilitate the spread of
democratic norms and values. Democratization in Chinas immediate neighborhood will also
mitigate fears of chaos and instability in China, because democratization will be less likely to be
seen as a conspiracy engineered by hostile Western forces.
2NC Yes Transition AT: Party Structure

Party structure makes transition more likely
It should be noted that Chinas ruling elites and the CCP do not comprise a monolithic
entity . Under certain circumstances, it is possible for the ruling elites to split into multiple
factions or camps. Such divisions can contribute to democratization. Political scientists
Guillermo ODonnell and Philippe C. Schmitter have argued that the struggle between hardliners and soft-liners has both a direct and an indirect influence on democratic transitions.50
According to this logic, authoritarian elites will form factions to compete for power and
legitimacy when it is very hard to reach consensus on critical social and economic issues. Certain
political liberalization measures will be taken, and the more liberal leaders will seek support
from civil society to balance the more conservative leaders. Although democracy might not be the ultimate
goal of either coalition, the process can be a slippery slope that eventually leads to an unintended outcome.
In the case of China, the power of factions was manifested in the politics of the 1980s: the
Tiananmen movement of 1989 was in a way the showdown between conservatives and liberals
within the Party, although the conservatives led by Deng Xiaoping eventually defeated the
liberals led by Hu Yaobang and Zhao Zhiyang, who were advocating more political reforms. The
results were tragic, but show how political factions served to spur political and social reform in
China. The key question is: will the CCP split into opposing factions again? To answer this
question, one must examine the interplay of the next generation of leaders.
China is no longer ruled by strongman politics. No Chinese leader enjoys the kind of authority
and legitimacy once enjoyed by Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping.51 The new leaders, Xi Jinping
and Li Keqiang, will face tremendous challenges to their authority for two reasons. First, over
the last two decades, the trend has been to prevent individual leaders from accumulating too
much power. This means that Xi and Li will have less authority than previous leaders have had.
Second, the increasingly stagnant nature of the Party will weaken the authority of Chinas new
leaders even further.
Since the HuWen administration took over in 2002, the main social and economic policies
have taken a more or less left turn.52 The slogan harmonious society arguably represents a
major shift from the growth at all costs theme of Jiang Zemins era. The point here is that each
new administration must develop distinctive policies and slogans. The upcoming XiLi
administration is no exception. What kind of catchphrases can they create to build upon Hus
harmonious society? It is increasingly difficult for Chinas top leadership to be innovative
without addressing issues of political reform.
We already have clear evidence that other ambitious leaders are challenging the future authority
of Xi and Li. Many of Chinas new leaders have comparable CVs, without either undisputed
authority or unchallengeable support. Pushing political reform might become a way for certain
leaders to expand their support base. The party secretary of Chongqing city, Bo Xilai, as
mentioned earlier, has revived elements of Maoism, and when he comes to Beijing after the 18th
Party Congress next year, he might promote this model to all of China. As a response, other top
leaders of the next generation will have to either come up with their own version of political
innovations or fall behind Bo in terms of influence and reputation.
There are signs that other top leaders of the next generation are taking action as well. Wang
Yang, the party secretary of Guangdong province, has also publicly made remarks about a
different kind of campaign: liberating thought and other political reforms. Rumors have been
circulating that he wants to ease censorship in Guangdong. Many observers believe that Bo and
Wang are seriously competing for one of the slots in the next Standing Committee of the
Politburo at the 18th Party Congress to be held in 2012. It is hard to say with confidence that this
is the case, but one thing is clear: increasingly fierce competition for power and influence will
take place among ambitious leaders in the coming years, and rivals might try different political
experiments to achieve their goals.
Although it is impossible to predict the outcome of future power struggles, several general
trends can be identified: there will be greater competition for power within the Party, mainly
because no single individual leader has ultimate authority. The top leadership will thus become
less stable, particularly as the competition for power becomes public. Such competition will
inevitably push ambitious politicians to rely more on public opinion to gain political support, as
evidenced by Bos recent efforts in Chongqing. That competition will likely open up space for
new political experiments.
2NC Yes Transition Popular Sentiment

CCP collapse leads to democracy, People are ready to take control
Ping 7 Xin Ping is a writer for the epoch times (Chinese Pro-democracy Forces Ready for
CCP's Collapse, The Epoch Times, available online at http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-1023/61127.html, accessed 7/11/16, HDA)
Recently I found that Chinese pro-democracy activists and many other forces are making active
preparations for running the government after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) collapses. I
used to be acquainted with many pro-democracy activists in the past and was considered one of them. But I gradually lost touch with
them. Our acquaintance resumed only recently when I ran into some of them, with whom I had a long talk. I was impressed with
their changes. What shocked me most is that they
have no more fear of the CCP. Instead they are confident

and have no doubt in the eventual victory over the CCP. As they said, since they have seen every
trick of the CCP, nothing can scare them away now. I told them about Falun Dafa practitioners peaceful and
rational experiences in opposing persecution, which inspired them a lot. Indeed, Falun Dafa practitioners have set a great example
for all Chinese people and have encouraged the world to stand up against persecution and tyranny. My pro-democracy friends told
me that the
CCPs secret police, who used to be ferocious, are now treating them with courtesy, as
if dealing with future political leaders. This is not as weird as it seems, my friends say, because
the secret police, who have kept the top secrets of the country, know better than anyone else that
the CCP will collapse soon. Trying to leave a way out for themselves, the secret police take care not to offend those who
may become future leaders of China. The pro-democracy activists share the belief that the CCP is on the
brink of its demise. This belief is in part built on the information they acquired from high-level
Party officials. Some high officials are quite open-minded, and have a clear understanding of the evil nature of the CCP and its
demise, so they have long been sympathizers and supporters of democratic movements. Other officials also have sensed the
imminent collapse of the CCP, so they have wasted no time in connecting with democrats through various channels so as to leave a
chance for their own future. The activists are concerned with the harm that the CCP has done, and continues to do, to China. As one
if the CCP doesnt die out within 10 years, the Chinese nation will perish. Another
activist described the Chinese economy as an empty shell, pointing out that with a 50 percent
non-performing assets rate of the national banks, a serious stock market bubble that has raised
stock prices far past their value, and an astronomical deficit, China is now running mainly on
foreign investments and will collapse immediately if such investments are no longer available.
of the activists said,
They also mentioned that according to a high-ranking army officer, if China goes to war with Taiwan in the next ten years, China will
not be able to survive for a single week due to oil shortages. Therefore, the activists fear that the CCP will drag China into the abyss
along with it. I was also impressed by their active preparations for the coming new China free of the CCP. What a friend said may be
typical of their attitude: The CCP has millions of troops, but so what? They have no chance to win. According to the democrats,
various forces in China are planning how to maintain social stability and keep the country running smoothly after the CCPs
disintegration. The activists told me that they have supporters everywhere in China, including senior Party officials. They are in the
process of establishing a new party. The political bureau of the CCP knows their plan, and has been trying to deal with it. However
the CCP doesnt have enough power to stop this. Several years ago, the activists would have been in big trouble for doing this, but
Things are really changing fast. Various forces

within the CCP are also formulating what to do after the Party is gone. Some are looking for
ways to escape the fate of a scapegoat, some have given up hope and are just counting the days,
and the really smart ones are reaching out to the foes of the Party to seek a peaceful transition into a society without the CCP. Such people come from within the Party, the army, the police, and the common
people. They share a sense of urgency and are eager to take action. The activists are sensi- ble . When I told them of the
importance of quitting the CCP and its related organizations, almost all of them agreed to
announce their withdrawal from the CCP. After talking to these friends, I felt that the most pitiable people are the
Chinese who still dont know whats going on . They dont know the CCP has little time left, nor have they
realized they have been cheated by the CCP for so long, and they have not found a way to the
truth. Hope or perish? Thats the choice every Chinese has to make.
now, ironically, many Party officials are eager to please them.
2NC Yes Transition Authoritarian Aging

The CCP will collapse in the next 10 years, authoritarian aging and
rising income
Democracy Digest 13 The Digest is edited by Michael Allen, Special Assistant for
Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for Democracy. February
13th (5 ways China could democratize, available online at http://www.demdigest.org/5-wayschina-could-democratize/, accessed 7/11/16, HDA)
The conventional wisdom about Chinas possible political futures is that the entrenched Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), so determined to defend and perpetuate its political monopoly, has the
means to survive for an extended period, says a leading China expert. A minority view,
however, holds that the CCPs days are numbered [and that] a transition to democracy in China
in the next 10 to 15 years is a high probability event, writes Minxin Pei. Two principal causes of
authoritarian decline emerge from decades of research and the accumulated experience of
democratic transitions in roughly 80 countries over the past 40 years: First, there is the logic of
authoritarian decay. One-party regimes, however sophisticated, suffer from organizational
ageing and decay. Leaders get progressively weaker (in terms of capabilities and ideological
commitment).. The result is escalating corruption, deteriorating governance, and growing
alienation of the masses. Empirically, the organizational decay of one-party regime can be
measured by the limited longevity of such regimes.
2NC Yes Transition AT: Inevitable

Gradual transition failsdoesnt result in direct democracy
Wang 14 --- Tiancheng Wang, CEO of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of
China, law lecturer at Peking University, spent five years in prison because of dissident
activities, January 2014 (China at the Tipping Point? Goodbye to Gradualism, Journal of
Democracy Vol. 24(1), p. 52-53, Accessed Online at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/495752/pdf,
Accessed on 07-14-2016, ES)
Two proposals that have received wide notice within China help to illustrate the gradualism of
which Chinese intellectuals are so enamored. Back in the late 1990s, prominent law professor Ji
Weidong came up with what he called the rule of law first approach. It is unlikely that a
multiparty contest will occur in the near future, he wrote, and [anyway] it will cause an
extremely huge [amount of] chaos if direct election of members of the National Peoples
Congress is granted.6 Instead he recommended a focus on building respect for the rule of law
by 1) encouraging the institutionalization of judicial independence, and 2) persuading the CCP
to start abiding by the constitution. But what chance is there, absent democratization, that those
in power will respect the constitution and guarantee the independence of the judiciary? As if
oblivious to this problem, Ji added that he not only found a democratic transition an unlikely
prospect for the near term, but would advocate postponing one in any case for fear that it would
not go well.
A second influential proposal calls for making the internal procedures of the CCP itself more
democratic. This idea, too, is based on the assumption that multiparty competition will not
happen anytime soon and would be overly risky if it did. The most commonly recommended
device for cultivating democratic methods within the CCP is to ensure that the number of
candidates for various posts exceeds the number of those posts. One suggestion is to expand the
number of those running for seats on the CCP Central Committee by 5 or 10 percent every five
years.7 Some scholars regard intra-CCP democracy as the best path to popular democracy.8 Yet
they do not explain how intra-Party democracy is possible without the existence of popular
democracy. Why would a party running a single-party, nondemocratic system want to adopt
free, regular, and open competition for its key offices as part of its way of doing business?
In short, the gradualism favored by Chinese academics puts the cart before the horse.
Deliberately failing to voice crucial demandsfor direct national elections to be held after
ending the ban on independent parties, for instancewill not serve the cause of kick-starting
political reform. On the contrary, it will more likely allow the ruling CCP elite to avoid making
meaningful changes as it carries on instead with its decades-old effort to postpone indefinitely
Chinas transition away from authoritarianism. Keeping quiet will only take pressure off the CCP
and bolster the legitimacy of its single-party dictatorship. How, one wonders, can significant
reforms occur if no one demands them?
Moreover, is slow and piecemeal reform really the least risky approach? The intention is clearly
to keep the ruling elite feeling reassured that it can safely start a reform process. But what is the
inducement for this elite to accept any of the risk that might come from making the political
system more open? The elites inclinationand surely it is not totally unreasonableis to worry
that any meaningful opening, even a minor one, may produce an avalanche effect that could
leave the CCP stripped of its ability to control events.
Quick transition is keyprevents regionalism and breakup

Wang 14 --- Tiancheng Wang, CEO of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of
China, law lecturer at Peking University, spent five years in prison because of dissident
activities, January 2014 (China at the Tipping Point? Goodbye to Gradualism, Journal of
Democracy Vol. 24(1), p. 53-54, Accessed Online at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/495752/pdf,
To me, the case for a quick transition seems much stronger. It can be argued that once a political
opening begins, the longer the span of time that elapses between liberalization and
democratizationI call it the L-D spanthe more risks and variables will come into play. This
is especially so for a large country such as China, which has what Linz and Stepan call a
stateness problem.9
Most of the worlds successful democratic transitions during recent decades have featured short
L-D spans. Taiwan had a long transition to democracy (it lasted from 1986 to 1996), but almost
all street protests took place after the key event, which was the ruling Nationalist Partys
surprising decision to tolerate the creation of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party in
1986. In a classic case of nonviolent resistance, Chile saw peaceful mass protests against the
military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (197390) that stretched from 1980 all the
way to 1989. Such protests are fine, but we should also bear in mind what is likely to happen
over the course of a long transition. Based on his study of the transitions in Hungary, the
Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, and Spain, Giuseppe Di Palma thinks that quick
elections can curb chaos.10 And Yossi Shain and Juan Linz note in discussing Brazil that the
gubernatorial elections which gave to the opposition control of eleven governorships in the most
populated states did not lead to the collapse of the regime.11 If elections in China go forward
first at the provincial level, however, I predict a less happy result: The country will disintegrate
much as did the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia two decades ago.
There is a great danger, in other words, lurking in the bottom-to-top sequencing of elections that
Chinese gradualists favor. They want to start with township voting, then see elections held in the
counties and cities, then the provinces, and only then at the national level. But given Chinas
stateness issuestypified most starkly by the restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang that Louisa
Greve discusses in her contribution to this symposiumsuch an order of elections will confound
the transition and could even lead to secession attempts by the northwestern and southwestern
peripheries. Linz and Stepans observations regarding the effects of different election
sequences in Spain, the USSR, and Yugoslavia are instructive.12
In view of these concerns, my suggestion is that the founding election be a national one. Let
China as a whole vote freely first, and only then hold open contests at the provincial level (which
is the true problem level; purely local races might be held without as much danger to national
unity). Holding the founding election at the level of the provinces would invite a focus on
emotional stay or go issues, and could undercut the national governments legitimacy and
authority as well as wreck prospects for arriving at a federalist accommodation of the ethnic
(non-Han) peripheries. Holding the first democratic election as a single event across all of China
would, by contrast, offer a better chance to make citizens in every province feel that they have a
stake in the countrys future, foster the rise of nationwide parties, and enhance the legitimacy
and authority of the new democratically constituted central government.
2NC Yes Transition AT: Wont be a Democracy

Transition results in a democracy
Democratic Future, pg. 137, Accessed 7/7/16, HDA)
In every transition from authoritarian rule, there is always a democratic moment when the
people inherit the burden of rule from the regime. The crowds of Lisbon who adorned the rifles
of rebellious young officers with carnations in 1974 followed this with feverish spontaneous
assemblies to make grand plans for the future. It is this sense of victory, the sense of having
taken history into their own hands, that is really the democratic moment. In China, while the
CCP may remain in charge of the state, responsibility for the future will now lie with the
common man. Despite the elite-led nature of the pact and the strong elements of continuity, this
will be a revolution indeed. The sudden end of CCPs unchallenged monopoly on political power ,
coupled with the broader breakdown of state identity and ideology that will result, will fit any
commonsense definition of revolution, even if there is no guillotine or Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizen. That was the retrospective lesson of the silk revolutions, in some
Eastern European nations, and it will likely be the case in China as well.40 This may be
symbolized by a formal political act that ushers in the demise of the PRC. Constitutional changes
require the approval of two-thirds of the NPC, so any new regime that wanted to remove the
CCPs monopoly on power and embrace new rights would have to make this an early priority.
Again, assuming the state crisis is serious and the democratic response enjoys general support,
the NPC, although stuffed with CCP loyalists, could be expected to support the change. The
actual sequence of eventsfrom coup to carnations to assemblies will be a mixture of necessity
and choice. Clearly, the ideal sequence would involve a relatively short period from crisis and
mobilization through to breakthrough and pact. Reality may not be as simple. Hard-liners may
hold up agreement as they bargain for concessions. Reformers may hesitate if protests escalate.
Eventually though, the deed is done. The PRC comes to an end, in fact if not in name.
Transition to democracy will last and be stable

Democratic Future, pg. 151-2, Accessed 7/7/16, HDA)
History suggests that rapid and trouble-free democratic consolidations are the exceptions. In
China itself, democracy failed in the Republican era, providing the conditions for a return to
dictatorship. History is also littered with famous democratic failures. It took nearly a century for
the French Revolution to lead to the foundation of a genuine democracy despite the democratic
ideals of the revolution. Failures also grew out of Weimar Germany, Russias democratic
revolution of February 1917, Japan in the 1920s, South Korea in 1961, Budapest and Prague in
the early communist era, and many postcolonial transitions in Africa and Latin America. If we
narrow our focus to the post-1970s democratizations, however, there are grounds for optimism.
Most of the Third Wave transitions gave way to successful democracies, a reflection both of the
stronger supporting conditions as well as the greater normative appeal of democracy by then. Of
the 28 new democratic states created out of the collapse of Eastern European and Central Asian
communist regimes in 198991, for example, 25 were considered either consolidated or moving
in that direction a decade later.1 Most of the modernday democratic failures have been in Africa,
where a nonexistent civil society, economic distress, and ethnic conflict have savaged the
foundations of political order. On that basis, there is reason to believe that China too will break
the cycle of failure and achieve a stable democracy. It will begin its democratic age with a strong
dose of normative support for democracy alongside the usual pragmatic supports related to the
crisis of dictatorship. The belief within society that democracy will eventually bring about a
superior point in terms of stable governance, a fair and just society, prosperous economy, and
a settled international role will ensure that the difficulties of consolidation will not overwhelm
the system.
Confucianism creates the cultural conditions to push for democracy

Khoo 2014 - Serene Khoo is a Major in Republic of Singapore Air Force and has a B.S. from
the National University of Singapore, March (CHINAS DEMOCRATIZATION PROSPECTS: A
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, Naval PostGraduate School, available online at
http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/41402/14Mar_Khoo_Serene.pdf?
sequence=1, accessed 7/15/16, HDA)
Confucianism in particular has often been cited as an impediment to democracy. However, Fukuyama contends that
Confucianism stresses the importance of education, which is the basic foundation

of building a democracy . High literacy enables people to break out of the poverty trap. With a higher
standard of living, people will also look to other non-material aspects to enhance
quality of life including self-actualization needs such as political participation.
High levels of education also allow the population to be engaged in building
democratic institutions . He further argues that though Confucianism emphasizes respect
for authority, commitment to family relationships supersedes political authority.
Moreover, Chinese society is inherently distrustful of authority and individuals interests takes precedence. Therefore, it is
rationalized that in such Confucian societies, it will be difficult to rally the people against a common cause.
Democracy is a process and is possible in china

Khoo 2014 - Serene Khoo is a Major in Republic of Singapore Air Force and has a B.S. from
the National University of Singapore, March (CHINAS DEMOCRATIZATION PROSPECTS: A
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, Naval PostGraduate School, available online at
http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/41402/14Mar_Khoo_Serene.pdf?
sequence=1, accessed 7/15/16, HDA)
China has transformed tremendously since Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms and his policy of opening
up to the world in 1978. However, many scholars observe that the pace of political reforms
continued to lag behind economic reforms. Nonetheless, even though China continues to
operate as an authoritarian state, significant political reforms have been instituted since 1978.
However, these political liberalizations have not led to democratization. Instead, China managed to achieve rapid economic growth
without embracing democracy, akin to the many developmental states in Asia such as Taiwan and South Korea before their
transition to a liberal democracy. It is not exactly true that China reject the idea of democracy. Many Chinese
scholars have brought up democracy in their written works and widely discussed the merits of democracy such as Yu Kepings
democracy is a good thing. 103 Similarly,
Chinese political elites have highlighted democracy in their

speeches, interviews and white papers. However, democracy is a concept that is defined differently in different
contexts. The notion of democracy in China could differ from person to person, just as the Chinese concept of democracy differs
from the West. Therefore, it is important to set the record straight when examining the prospects of China democratizing. The
benchmark used is critical to assess the gap between the current situation and Beijings likelihood of becoming a democratic state.
Moreover,
democracy is a process that requires continuous enhancements and conscientious

consolidation to build upon the democratic practices and institutions.
AT: Transition War
2NC AT: Transition War

Chinese collapse inevitable and causes them to turn inward
Friedman 13 -- George Friedman, founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer,
and CEO of the private intelligence corporation STRATFOR, Geopolitical Weekly, July 23 rd
( Recognizing the End of the Chinese Economic Miracle, Stratfor , available online at
https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/recognizing-end-chinese-economic-miracle, accessed 7/7/16,
HDA)
Major shifts underway in the Chinese economy that Stratfor has forecast and discussed for years have now drawn the attention of
the mainstream media. Many have asked when China would find itself in an economic crisis, to which we have answered that China
has been there for awhile -- something not widely recognized outside China, and particularly not in the United States. A crisis can
exist before it is recognized. The admission that a crisis exists is a critical moment, because this is when most others start to change
their behavior in reaction to the crisis. The question we had been asking was when
the Chinese economic crisis would

finally become an accepted fact , thus changing the global dynamic. Last week, the crisis was
announced with a flourish. First, The New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-recipient Paul
Krugman penned a piece titled "Hitting China's Wall." He wrote, "The signs are now
unmistakable : China is in big trouble. We're not talking about some minor setback along the
way, but something more fundamental . The country's whole way of doing business , the
economic system that has driven three decades of incredible growth, has reached its limits. You
could say that the Chinese model is about to hit its Great Wall, and the only question now is
just how bad the crash will be." Later in the week, Ben Levisohn authored a column in Barron's called "Smoke Signals
from China." He wrote, "In the classic disaster flick 'The Towering Inferno' partygoers ignored a fire in a storage room because they
assumed it has been contained. Are investors making the same mistake with China?" He goes on to answer his question, saying,
"Unlike three months ago, when investors were placing big bets that China's policymakers would pump cash into the economy to
spur growth, the
markets seem to have accepted the fact that sluggish growth for the world's
second largest economy is its new normal." Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs -- where in November 2001 Jim
O'Neil coined the term BRICs and forecast that China might surpass the United States economically by 2028 -- cut its forecast
of Chinese growth to 7.4 percent. The New York Times, Barron's and Goldman Sachs are all both
a seismograph of the conventional wisdom and the creators of the conventional wisdom. Therefore,
when all three announce within a few weeks that China's economic condition ranges from
disappointing to verging on a crash , it transforms the way people think of China. Now the
conversation is moving from forecasts of how quickly China will overtake the United States to
considerations of what the consequences of a Chinese crash would be. Doubting China Suddenly finding
Stratfor amid the conventional wisdom regarding China does feel odd, I must admit. Having first noted the underlying
contradictions in China's economic growth years ago, when most viewed China as the miracle Japan wasn't, and having been
Over the past

couple of years, the ranks of the China doubters had grown. But the past few months have
seen a sea change. We have gone from China the omnipotent, the belief that there was
nothing the Chinese couldn't work out, to the realization that China no longer works. It has not
been working for some time. One of the things masking China's weakening has been
Chinese statistics , which Krugman referred to as "even more fictional than most." China is a
vast country in territory and population. Gathering information on how it is doing would be a
daunting task, even were China inclined to do so. Instead, China understands that in the West,
there is an assumption that government statistics bear at least a limited relationship to truth.
Beijing accordingly uses its numbers to shape perceptions inside and outside China of how it is
doing. The Chinese release their annual gross domestic product numbers in the third week of January (and only revise them the
following year). They can't possibly know how they did that fast, and they don't. But they do know
scorned for not understanding the shift in global power underway, it is gratifying to now have a lot of company.
what they want the world to believe about their growth, and the world has believed them -hence, the fantastic tales of economic growth. China in fact has had an extraordinary period of growth. The last 30
years have been remarkable, marred only by the fact that the Chinese started at such a low point due to the policies of the Maoist
period. Growth at first was relatively easy; it was hard for China to do worse. But make no mistake: China surged. Still, basing
economic performance on consumption, Krugman notes that China is barely larger economically than Japan. Given the
compounding effects of China's guesses at GDP, we would guess it remains behind Japan, but how can you tell? We can say without
a doubt that China's economy has grown dramatically in the past 30 years but that it is no longer growing nearly as quickly as it once
did. China's growth surge was built on a very unglamorous fact: Chinese wages were far below Western wages, and therefore the
Chinese were able to produce a certain class of products at lower cost than possible in the West. The Chinese built businesses around
this, and Western companies built factories in China to take advantage of the differential. Since Chinese workers were unable to
purchase many of the products they produced given their wages, China built its growth on exports. For this to continue, China had to
maintain its wage differential indefinitely. But China had another essential policy: Beijing was terrified of unemployment and the
social consequences that flow from it. This was a rational fear, but one that contradicted China's main strength, its wage advantage.
Because the Chinese feared unemployment, Chinese policy, manifested in bank lending policies, stressed preventing unemployment
by keeping businesses going even when they were inefficient. China also used bank lending to build massive infrastructure and
commercial and residential property. Over time, this policy created huge inefficiencies in the Chinese economy. Without recessions,
inefficiencies develop. Growing the economy is possible, but not growing profitability. Eventually, the economy will be dragged down
by its inefficiency. Inflation vs. Unemployment As businesses become inefficient, production costs rise. And that leads to inflation.
As money is lent to keep inefficient businesses going, inflation increases even more markedly. The increase in inefficiency is
compounded by the growth of the money supply prompted by aggressive lending to keep the economy going. As this persisted over
many years, the inefficiencies built into the Chinese economy have become staggering. The second thing to bear in mind is the
overwhelming poverty of China, where 900 million people have an annual per capita income around the same level as Guatemala,
Georgia, Indonesia or Mongolia ($3,000-$3,500 a year), while around 500 million of those have an annual per capita income
around the same level as India, Nicaragua, Ghana, Uzbekistan or Nigeria ($1,500-$1,700). China's overall per capita GDP is around
the same level as the Dominican Republic, Serbia, Thailand or Jamaica. Stimulating an economy where more than a billion people
live in deep poverty is impossible. Economic stimulus makes sense when products can be sold to the public. But the vast majority of
Chinese cannot afford the products produced in China, and therefore, stimulus will not increase consumption of those products. As
important, stimulating demand so that inefficient factories can sell products is not only inflationary, it is suicidal. The task is to
increase consumption, not to subsidize inefficiency. The Chinese are thus in a trap. If they continue aggressive lending to failing
businesses, they get inflation. That increases costs and makes the Chinese less competitive in exports, which are also falling due to
the recession in Europe and weakness in the United States. Allowing businesses to fail brings unemployment, a massive social and
political problem. The Chinese have zigzagged from cracking down on lending by regulating informal lending and raising interbank
rates to loosening restrictions on lending by removing the floor on the benchmark lending rate and by increasing lending to smalland medium-sized businesses. Both policies are problematic. The Chinese have maintained a strategy of depending on exports
without taking into account the operation of the business cycle in the West, which means that periodic and substantial contractions
of demand will occur. China's industrial plant is geared to Western demand. When Western demand contracted, the result was the
mess you see now. The Chinese economy could perhaps be growing at 7.4 percent, but I doubt the number is anywhere near that.
Some estimates place growth at closer to 5 percent. Regardless of growth, the ability to maintain profit margins is rarely considered.
Producing and selling at or even below cost will boost GDP numbers but undermines the financial system. This happened to Japan
in the early 1990s. And it is happening in China now. The Chinese can prevent the kind of crash that struck East Asia in 1997. Their
currency isn't convertible, so there can't be a run on it. They continue to have a command economy; they are still communist, after
all. But
they cannot avoid the consequences of their economic reality, and the longer they put
off the day of reckoning, the harder it will become to recover from it. They have
already postponed the reckoning far longer than they should have. They would postpone it
further if they could by continuing to support failing businesses with loans. They can do that for a very long time -provided they are prepared to emulate the Soviet model's demise . The Chinese don't want
that, but what they do want is a miraculous resolution to their problem. There are no solutions
that don't involve agony, so they put off the day of reckoning and slowly decline. China's
Transformation The Chinese are not going to completely collapse economically any more than the Japanese or South Koreans did.
the Chinese
will focus on containing the social and political fallout , both by trying to target benefits
to politically sensitive groups and by using their excellent security apparatus to suppress and
deter unrest. The Chinese economic performance will degrade, but crisis will be avoided and
political interests protected. Since much of China never benefited from the boom, there is a
massive force that has felt marginalized and victimized by coastal elites. That is not a bad
foundation for the Communist Party to rely on. The key is understanding that if China cannot
solve its problems without unacceptable political consequences, it will try to stretch out the
decline. Japan had a lost decade only in the minds of Western investors, who implicitly value aggregate GDP growth over other
What will happen is that China will behave differently than before. With no choices that don't frighten them,
measures of success such as per capita GDP growth or full employment. China
could very well face an extended

period of intense inwardness and low economic performance. The past 30 years is a tough act to
follow. The obvious economic impact on the rest of the world will fall on the producers of
industrial commodities such as iron ore. The extravagant expectations for Chinese growth will not be met, and
therefore expectations for commodity prices won't be met. Since the Chinese economic failure has been underway for quite awhile,
the degradation in prices has already happened. Australia in particular has been badly hit by the Chinese situation, just as it was by
the Japanese situation a generation ago. The
Chinese are, of course, keeping a great deal of money in U.S.

government instruments and other markets. Contrary to fears, that money will not be
withdrawn . The Chinese problem isn't a lack of capital, and repatriating that money
would simply increase inflation. Had the Chinese been able to put that money to good use,
it would have never been invested in the United States in the first place . The outflow of money
from China was a symptom of the disease: Lacking the structure to invest in China, the
government and private funds went overseas. In so doing, Beijing sought to limit destabilization in China, while
private Chinese funds looked for a haven against the storm that was already blowing. Rather than the feared
repatriation of funds, the United States will continue to be the target of major Chinese cash
inflows. In a world where Europe is still reeling, only the United States is both secure and large
enough to contain Chinese appetites for safety. Just as Japanese investment in the 1990s represented capital flight
rather than a healthy investment appetite, so the behavior we have seen from Chinese investors in recent
years is capital flight: money searching for secure havens regardless of return. This money
has underpinned American markets; it is not going away, and in fact more is on
the way. The major shift in the international order will be the decline of China's role in the
region. China's ability to project military power in Asia has been substantially
overestimated . Its geography limits its ability to project power in Eurasia, an endeavor that would require logistics far
beyond China's capacity. Its naval capacity is still limited compared with the United States. The idea
that it will compensate for internal economic problems by genuine (as opposed to rhetorical)
military action is therefore unlikely . China has a genuine internal security problem that
will suck the military , which remains a domestic security force, into actions of little
value . In our view, the most important shift will be the re-emergence of Japan as the dominant
economic and political power in East Asia in a slow process neither will really want . China will
continue to be a major power, and it will continue to matter a great deal economically. Being troubled is not the same as ceasing to
exist. China will always exist. It will, however, no longer be the low-wage, high-growth center of the world. Like Japan before it, it
will play a different role. In the global system, there are always low-wage, high-growth countries because the advanced industrial
powers' consumers want to absorb goods at low wages. Becoming a supplier of those goods is a major opportunity for, and disruptor
to, those countries. No one country
process is identifying China's successors.
can replace China, but China will be replaced.
The next step in this
Peaceful Chinese democratization is possible

Liu and Chen 12 --- Yu Liu, associate professor of political science at Qinghua University
and author of Details of Democracy: An Observation of Contemporary American Politics, and
Dingding Chen, assistant professor of government and public administration at the University of
Macau, 2012 (Why China Will Democratize, Washington Quarterly, Vol 35(1), p. 51-56,
Accessed Online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0163660X.2012.641918,
Any discussion of Chinas future democratization must involve how Chinas ruling elites
understand and implement democracy, and what incentives would push them to accept or adopt
democratic institutions. Although structural and cultural factors shape political trends, the
leadership often plays a crucial role in deciding the timing of democratization, as demonstrated
by the Gorbachev factor in the democratization of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe or the
role of Chiang Ching-kuo in Taiwan. If Konstantin Chernenko had lived 20 more years, or if
Deng Xiaoping had lived 10 fewer, the process and outcome of democratization in those
countries might have been very different.
Three questions need to be addressed: First, do Chinese leaders embrace democracy in their
discourse? Second, to what degree do they implement democratic practices or reforms with
democratic characteristics? Third, how do faction politics affect the prospects of
democratization, particularly how will the upcoming 18th Party Congress influence political
reforms in the decades ahead? We also want to emphasize that political elites do not live in a
political vacuum. The rise of an increasingly independent civil society will change both elites
incentives and values in China.
Democracy Discourse
Despite Chinas stellar record of growth over the last 30 years, Chinese citizens are increasingly
dissatisfied with the growth first model and are demanding more social justice and equality.40
The CCP realizes this and its discourse on democracy has changed subtly in recent years.
Premier Wen Jiabao is perhaps the leader who has raised the most hope about Chinas political
reform in recent times. In 2006, for example, he told a delegation from the Brookings Institute
in the United States, We have to move to democracy. . .we know the direction in which we are
going. Wen mentioned three aspects of democracy: elections, judicial independence, and
supervision based on checks and balances.41 Although he did not offer specifics about how to
implement democracy, his remarks do represent a gradual shift from the old discourse of
socialist democracy. Since July 2010, Wen has promoted democracy on more than seven
occasions, including a special interview with CNN on many sensitive issues related to Chinas
political reforms.42 Most recently, in a meeting with entrepreneurs at the September 2011
World Economic Forum in Dalian, Wen again emphasized the importance of the rule of law,
social equality, judicial independence, peoples democratic rights, and anti-corruption
initiatives.43
Although different interpretations can be made of Wens recent remarks, there are other voices
both within and outside the CCP also calling for faster and deeper political reform. The most
notable Party theorist is Yu Keping, the deputy director of the Central Committees Compilation
and Translation Bureau, who has put forward a theory of incremental democracy, which
emphasizes the orderly expansion of citizen participation in politics. His article, Democracy is a
good thing, published in 2006, created a huge debate within the Party about the merits of
democracy.44
Despite such positive trends, one might wonder if all the talk about democracy has any real
impact on political development in China. We say it does, for several reasons. First, even if the
democratic discourse is just speechifying, it can provide a weapon for civil society to mobilize
and hold the Party accountable. It is interesting that, when protesting the persecution of three
netizens attacked because of their speech online, demonstrators held a banner quoting Premier
Wen, Justice Is More Brilliant than the Sun, in front of a local court in Fujian. Second, there is
good reason to believe that some Party members are genuinely interested in promoting
democracy in China. This is because they understand that the Partys legitimacy cannot stem
from economic performance alone but must be based upon multiple sources, including political
legitimacy.45 Moreover, they probably understand that the Party will be able to hold on to
power or protect its interests if it initiates the political reform and shapes the constitutional
design rather than if it is driven out of power by others in a time of crisis. Of course, it is
unrealistic to place hopes for democratization on mentions of democracy by Chinese political
leaders, even if some are genuinely interested in promoting political reforms, as there is
certainly strong opposition against democracy within the Party. Hence, even the much promoted
proposal for intra-party democracy should be viewed with caution.
Whats equally important, if not more important, than the rhetorical incorporation of democracy
into the Partys discourse is, ironically, the CCPs inability to come up with a coherent theoretical
alternative to liberal democracy. President Hu Jintaos attempt seems to be the concept of
Scientific Development, 46 but the concept means so much that it actually means very little.
The installment of a statue of Confucius in Tiananmen Square in January 2011 raised suspicions
that the CCP wanted to revive Confucianism as its official discourse, but the quiet and
mysterious removal of it in April 2011 suggests that the Party knows that it would be too much of
a stretch to go from Communism to Confucianism. The general secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai,
has attracted attention with his campaign of Singing the Red and Cracking down on the Black
(singing the revolutionary songs and eliminating crimes), but the blend of this semi-Maoist
campaign and the market economy does not amount to any coherent ideology. The current
ideological disarray might force some political elites to gradually turn to liberal democracy at
some point.
Actual Reforms?
There is no convincing evidence that the Party is now engaging in meaningful reforms, although
in some areas positive improvements have been made. One of the key themes of the ongoing
discourse is that mechanisms must be developed to ensure intra-party democracy, with a system
for the election, supervision, evaluation, and promotion of officials.
For example, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th Party Congress in September 2009 stressed
the reform of the party electoral system. Public recommendation, direct election is being
quietly promoted in several areas. Interestingly in 2009, for the first time in the history of the
CCP, some district offices in Nanjing elected the secretary and deputy secretary of the Party
Committee. In June 2010, Nanjing became the first city to complete the city-wide public
recommendation, direct election of grassroots party officials.47 Similar experiments have been
conducted in other cities including Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Chengdu.
How are these elections conducted? First, candidates recommend themselves to ordinary party
members; second, candidates give presentations before the final vote; and third, candidates
answer questions put forward by other party members. Some party theorists believe that such a
trend toward the direct election of party officials is an irreversible process, as more cities and
regions are adopting this system. Although there is no sign that the CCPs top officials will be
subjected to direct election anytime soon, it does show that the Party is gradually moving toward
that ultimate goal.
In many other areas, however, political reform not only has not progressed, it has in fact
backslid. Journalists complain that censorship has intensified rather than loosened in recent
years. Many human rights activists and dissidents are frequently harassed, if not arrested.48 As
for the independents running for seats in local congresses in 2011, the Party has used all sorts of
measures to prevent them from being elected.49 However, we argue that the increasing
paranoia of the Party and its frequent resort to naked power is a sign of desperation rather
than confidence. It shows that the state has less and less capacity to persuade and co-opt. The
intensification of censorship and repression can alienate the society further, which will in turn
add more pressure on the state to reform.
Factional Politics: Democracys Friend
It should be noted that Chinas ruling elites and the CCP do not comprise a monolithic entity.
Under certain circumstances, it is possible for the ruling elites to split into multiple factions or
camps. Such divisions can contribute to democratization. Political scientists Guillermo
ODonnell and Philippe C. Schmitter have argued that the struggle between hard-liners and softliners has both a direct and an indirect influence on democratic transitions.50 According to this
logic, authoritarian elites will form factions to compete for power and legitimacy when it is very
hard to reach consensus on critical social and economic issues. Certain political liberalization
measures will be taken, and the more liberal leaders will seek support from civil society to
balance the more conservative leaders. Although democracy might not be the ultimate goal of
either coalition, the process can be a slippery slope that eventually leads to an unintended
outcome.
In the case of China, the power of factions was manifested in the politics of the 1980s: the
Tiananmen movement of 1989 was in a way the showdown between conservatives and liberals
within the Party, although the conservatives led by Deng Xiaoping eventually defeated the
liberals led by Hu Yaobang and Zhao Zhiyang, who were advocating more political reforms. The
results were tragic, but show how political factions served to spur political and social reform in
China. The key question is: will the CCP split into opposing factions again? To answer this
question, one must examine the interplay of the next generation of leaders.
China is no longer ruled by strongman politics. No Chinese leader enjoys the kind of authority
and legitimacy once enjoyed by Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping.51 The new leaders, Xi Jinping
and Li Keqiang, will face tremendous challenges to their authority for two reasons. First, over
the last two decades, the trend has been to prevent individual leaders from accumulating too
much power. This means that Xi and Li will have less authority than previous leaders have had.
Second, the increasingly stagnant nature of the Party will weaken the authority of Chinas new
leaders even further.
Since the HuWen administration took over in 2002, the main social and economic policies
have taken a more or less left turn.52 The slogan harmonious society arguably represents a
major shift from the growth at all costs theme of Jiang Zemins era. The point here is that each
new administration must develop distinctive policies and slogans. The upcoming XiLi
administration is no exception. What kind of catchphrases can they create to build upon Hus
harmonious society? It is increasingly difficult for Chinas top leadership to be innovative
without addressing issues of political reform.
We already have clear evidence that other ambitious leaders are challenging the future authority
of Xi and Li. Many of Chinas new leaders have comparable CVs, without either undisputed
authority or unchallengeable support. Pushing political reform might become a way for certain
leaders to expand their support base. The party secretary of Chongqing city, Bo Xilai, as
mentioned earlier, has revived elements of Maoism, and when he comes to Beijing after the 18th
Party Congress next year, he might promote this model to all of China. As a response, other top
leaders of the next generation will have to either come up with their own version of political
innovations or fall behind Bo in terms of influence and reputation.
There are signs that other top leaders of the next generation are taking action as well. Wang
Yang, the party secretary of Guangdong province, has also publicly made remarks about a
different kind of campaign: liberating thought and other political reforms. Rumors have been
circulating that he wants to ease censorship in Guangdong. Many observers believe that Bo and
Wang are seriously competing for one of the slots in the next Standing Committee of the
Politburo at the 18th Party Congress to be held in 2012. It is hard to say with confidence that this
is the case, but one thing is clear: increasingly fierce competition for power and influence will
take place among ambitious leaders in the coming years, and rivals might try different political
experiments to achieve their goals.
Although it is impossible to predict the outcome of future power struggles, several general
trends can be identified: there will be greater competition for power within the Party, mainly
because no single individual leader has ultimate authority. The top leadership will thus become
less stable, particularly as the competition for power becomes public. Such competition will
inevitably push ambitious politicians to rely more on public opinion to gain political support, as
evidenced by Bos recent efforts in Chongqing. That competition will likely open up space for
new political experiments.
Last but not least, we want to emphasize that the pressure coming from the emerging civil
society, which we discussed in the first two sections, will have its impact on elites. The CCP does
not live in a vacuum. The rise of a contentious society will increase the cost of repression for
Chinas authoritarian rulers, and when the cost of repression is too high, as MIT Professor
Daron Acemoglu has argued, democratic reform probably becomes a rational choice for the
elites to avoid a revolution.53
Also, the change of values in society might trickle up. University of Michigan Professor Ronald
Inglehart argues that elites tend to be better educated, and education is positively correlated
with liberal political views, which means elites are also affected by liberal views.54 Their
interests might point them in a conservative direction, but cognitive dissonance between selfinterests and values can reach a breaking point. Right now, the social pressure in China is
probably not big enough to change the incentives of political elites, and the cultural shift of
Chinese society has yet to reach a tipping point. But as argued earlier, there are reasons to
believe the momentum of change is building, and even if they do not want to be, the elites might
be forced into reform.
In sum, although there are few signs that the CCP is actively seeking political reform right now,
political elites can be forced to take a role in Chinas democratization. The inability to
ideologically innovate leaves liberal democracy as a more and more prominent option. The likely
factional struggle among the next generation of leaders might make adopting liberal reform a
strategy for some contenders who are competing for power. Even as the political elites are slow
to change their minds, the rise of civil society will put more and more pressure on the state,
forcing the regime to face peoples demands for rights of participation.
AT: Link Turns
2NC AT: Growth Turn

Economic decline leads to CCP democratization
Ranasinghe 15 - Dhara Ranasinghe is an Associate Producer with CNBC.com, covering a
range of topics including the global economy, financial markets and corporate news. Before
joining CNBC, Dhara was a correspondent and sub editor with Reuters news agency in London
and Singapore. She has reported on European Treasury markets, Asian economies and currency
markets and edited company news stories. Dhara holds a Bachelor's degree in History from the
London School of Economics. July 9th ( Stocks rout could end with democracy in China, CNBC,
available online at http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/09/stocks-rout-could-end-with-democracyin-china.html, accessed 7/11/16, HDA)
A rout in Chinese stocks that Beijing is desperately trying to stem has deep political ramifications for the
country's Communist party, analysts say. Tumbling stocks add one more thing to the list of
grievances among China's growing middle class that threatens to undermine the ruling
Communist party, Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe."
The benchmark Shanghai Composite stock index has tumbled almost 30 percent in the past month, triggering a slew of measures to
"All non-oil exporting countries

become democracies as they get richer and China is at that stage where I think it could be a
democracy on a 5-10 year view," Robertson said. "The Chinese people are unhappy with
corruption, unhappy with pollution all the sorts of issues that led Taiwan to become a
democracy in the 1980s and early 90s. I think the Chinese authorities don't want another
reason, even for a few million Chinese, to be disgruntled with the Communist party and out on
the streets," he said, referring to the selloff. The Chinese Securities regulator on Thursday banned shareholders from selling
large stakes in listed firms, boosting the Shanghai Composite almost 6 percent and stemming the correction for now . China,
which has been ruled by the Communist party for more than 60 years, is at a crucial period of
change, with the government trying to put the economy on a more secure long-term footing by
shifting its main drivers to consumption from investment and exports. Renaissance Capital's Robertson
added: "Growth is a factor in that democratisation process. If you see negative GDP it makes a
political change from autocracy to democracy more likely." Analysts said that either way, the political
implications from the slide in Chinese stocks and Beijing's reaction should not be
underestimated. "While there are signs this morning that the rout may be abating, the reputational damage incurred by the
prop up a market where the vast majority of investors are from China's middle classes.
turmoil throws into question both the authorities' commitment to liberalizing the financial sector and, more importantly, their
ability to manage China's economic downturn," Nicholas Spiro, managing director at Spiro Sovereign Strategy, told CNBC. "The big
risk is that the selloff, if not quickly stemmed, could undermine the entire reform process in China if the Communist party feels it's
too much of a political risk." China's economy grew 7 percent in the first quarter of the year its slowest pace since 2009. The
extreme volatility of the stock market threatens that goal as well as raising the risk of a protracted slowdown in the world's secondlargest economy, analysts said. "The reason I think there is a paranoia on stocks in Beijing is that anything that threatens below-6percent growth threatens everything," Patrick Coveney, CEO of food firm Greencore, told CNBC. As a result, China had reacted "with
massive force" and repeatedly intervened in the stock market.
Poverty/Inequality causes transition

The level of inequality in China also affects its prospects for democratization. The nations Gini
coefficientthe standard measure of inequality, where 0 means everyone has exactly the same
amount of wealth and 1 means one person has all the wealthreached 0.48 in 2010, one of the
highest in the world.15 Even that value, according to Chinese scholar Wang Xiaolu, is a great
underestimation, because gray incomeunreported income often associated with corruptionis
not included in the official data.16
In the early stage of Chinas reform, increasing levels of inequality did not cause the CCP much
trouble politically for two reasons. The first is the nature of Chinas inequality. Due to various
factors, the main source of inequality in China has traditionally been the urbanrural income
gap; the intra-urban and intra-rural income gaps are not as great. In 2002, when the overall
Gini coefficient reached 0.47, within both the city and the countryside the coefficient was still
0.37.17 Therefore, the wealth gap has not been as visible in China as it is in many other
developing countries, where slums are located alongside gated communities. Such conditions
have political consequences, because more visible inequality understandably fuels political
discontent.In the early stage of Chinas reform, increasing levels of inequality did not cause the
CCP much trouble politically for two reasons. The first is the nature of Chinas inequality. Due to
various factors, the main source of inequality in China has traditionally been the urbanrural
income gap; the intra-urban and intra-rural income gaps are not as great. In 2002, when the
overall Gini coefficient reached 0.47, within both the city and the countryside the coefficient was
still 0.37.17 Therefore, the wealth gap has not been as visible in China as it is in many other
developing countries, where slums are located alongside gated communities. Such conditions
have political consequences, because more visible inequality understandably fuels political
discontent.
However, inequality has now become a major political issue. Abstract inequality is becoming
more real, with increasing numbers of people from rural areas moving into cities where luxury
shopping malls, apartment buildings, and restaurants are springing up, reminding the urban
poor of what is beyond their reach. In a survey conducted in March 2010 by the Statistics
Bureau of Shanxi, 11,510 randomly selected Shanxi residents were asked to express their
greatest wish for the New Year.18 Narrowing the income gap ranked first, with 38.59
percent of votes. Trailing behind at a distant second and third were, respectively, stabilizing
housing prices (10.27 percent) and creating employment opportunities (10.19 percent).
Growth helps the party

Chin 16 - John J. Chin, Ph.D. Candidate Politics Department Princeton University (The
Longest March: Why Chinas Democratization Is Not Imminent January 15,
2016https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/jchin/files/john_j_chin_the_longest_ma
rch_2016.01.15.pdf) RMT
(3) Chinas economic growth bolsters performance legitimacy. Previous research has shown that
democratic transitions are often preceded by acute economic crises that delegitimize the regime
and generate discontent (e.g. Haggard and Kaufman 1995). Although Chinas growth will
inevitably slow down, a soft landing is still possible. Many respected economists remain
confident in Chinas long-term growth potential (e.g. Fogel 2010; Subramanian 2011). Though
short marchers often point to problems of over-investment and ghost cities (e.g. Cheng 2013),
Chinese rural migrants unstoppable desire to move to cities mean an imminent property bubble
may be premature also (Miller 2012b, Ch. 5). With the Renminbi recently becoming a global
reserve currency at the IMF and with the Peoples Bank of China sitting on trillions in reserves,
it seems highly unlikely that China will be soon crippled by a Latin American-style debt crisis .
On the whole, gloom on the economic front is not shared in the most recent forecasts of Chinas
economy by the OECD, World Bank, and IMF, which forecast a gradual decline in economic
growth to over 6% growth by 2017. 22 To the extent China is poised for long-run economic
growth (albeit at a lower level than in the past), this should bolster the CCP regimes survival.
But, to model the effects of economic crisis on democratization, I include a measure of the
change in GDP per capita between five years and two years before the current year.
Aff
Democracy Impact Stuff
2AC AT: Global Democracy

China doesnt create authoritarianism abroad
Nathan 15 --- Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia
University and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Democracy, 2015 (Chinas
Challenge, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 26(1), Accessed on 07-11-2016, Accessed at
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/565646, ES)
Chinese propaganda does not, however, cross the boundary of suggesting that democratic
countries should adopt authoritarian institutions. That argument would contradict the themes
of respect for sovereignty and cultural pluralism that dominate Chinese diplomacy. Indeed,
Chinese propaganda does not explicitly characterize Chinas system as undemocratic, instead
describing it as socialist democracy, Chinese-style democracy, and peoples democratic
dictatorship, among other locutions. Nor is the idea of Asian values, floated by officials in
Singapore and Malaysia and endorsed by Chinese officials, meant to imply that there is any
single political model suitable for all of Asia, but only that liberal democracy is not suited to all
Asians. It is rare to find an argument, even by proregime independent intellectuals, that portrays
the Chinese experience as a universal model that should be adopted everywhere. Yet despite
these self-imposed limits, Beijings polemics, transmitted over its growing international media
network, contribute to the weakening of democracys international prestige. And since everyone
knows that the Chinese system is authoritarian (even if Chinese propaganda does not label it as
such), the polemics enhance the prestige of nondemocratic rule.
2AC Democracy Bad

Chinese democracy causes global war
Keck 14 - managing Editor of The Diplomat where he authored The Pacific Realist blog.
Previously, he worked as Deputy Editor of e-International Relations and has interned at the
Center for a New American Security and in the U.S. Congress, where he worked on defense
issues. (Chinese Democracy: A Nightmare Scenario for US Zachary Keck October 22, 2014
http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/chinese-democracy-a-nightmare-scenario-for-us/) RMT
A democratic China would be a nightmare for the West, according to a leading former Southeast
Asian former diplomat.
One of the paradoxes for the West is that it is better off with the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) in power in China, Kishore Mahbubani, the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public
Policy of the National University of Singapore and that countrys former UN ambassador, told a
D.C. audience on Tuesday.
Noting that the general consensus in the United States has long been that a liberal democratic
China would be a more responsible global power, Mahbubani warned Americans to be careful
what they wish for.
There is a strong nationalist sentiment in China that derives from the view that China
suffered a century of humiliation at the hands of Western and other foreign powers, Mahbubani
pointed out. This sentiment is not relegated to the fringe of society; in fact, this conviction is
often strongest among highly educated Chinese elites, especially those who have studied abroad
in places like the United States and Europe.
The CCP currently keeps this nationalist sentiment in check, Mahbubani said. These forces
would be unleashed, however, if China became a liberal democracy, which would be a
nightmare for the Western world.
I have no doubt that doubt China as a liberal democracy would be a much more nationalist,
much more dangerous country because 200 years of pent up anger would explode,
Mahbubani predicted.
By contrast, the CCP is more interested in domestic issues, which are the key to its survival,
Mahbubani argued. He also said that CCP leaders believe that time is on Chinas side and thus
see little reason to aggressively challenge the established global order. The paradox, then,
according to Mahbubani, is that China is most likely to play the role of a responsible stakeholder
in the global order if it remains under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
If you are interested in global peace and security you may want to see the Chinese Communist
Party remain in power, Mahbubani told the largely American audience.
Indeed, Mahbubani added that China has no interest in disrupting the global order and on
most global issues it is likely to continue deferring to the leadership of other countries for the
foreseeable future. He did concede that this is not necessarily the case for important regional
issues like North Korea and the South China Sea, where China is already more actively asserting
itself.
Democracy doesnt solve Chinese aggression or hypocrisy and hurts

US leadership
Hornat 12 - researcher in the Department of American Studies in Charles University in
Prague. (Jan Hornat November 23, 2012, Chinese Democracy Is No Goal
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/chinese-democracy-no-goal-7761) RMT
But unfortunately , democracy is not a panacea . In fact, a democratic China may not be
much different from todays China.
Democracies are not always exemplary international actorstake for example the United States.
It failed to ratify international agreements such as the Statute of the International Criminal
Court or the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. In fact, Washington has also
manipulated with the value of the dollar, though in a more opaque manner than China: the 1985
Plaza Accord was arguably intended to limit growing Japanese imports to the United States.
Furthermore, as an assertive actor in world affairs, the United States often circumvents
international organizations such as the United Nations when in pursuit of national interests.
Before accepting a democratic China into the international system, it would behoove
Washington to soften its superpower mindset toward Beijing. A democratically governed China
would likely still have great power ambitions and Beijing could legitimately claim the role of the
second superpower in the next decade.
Democratization would upgrade Chinas political power and credibility in the international
community. The United States and the European Union would forego the leverage of
confronting China about its policies, as Chinas laws would be the result of a popularly elected
government.
New problems, which could destabilize democracy, might appear. For example, would Tibet and
Xinjiang attempt to breakaway? How would privatization of state firms and redistribution of
land proceed? What would North Korea do in the midst of losing its only ally? If Chinese
democracy could not meet growth rates of authoritarian China, how would the Chinese public
react?
Like Western-style democracies, a democratic China may repudiate its non-interventionist
doctrine and be more assertive in pursuit of its interests. How would the United States react to a
Chinese coalition of the willing? Democratic or not, China would still depend on a growing
amount of natural resources and territorial disputes in the South China Sea would continue to
disrupt regional security.
A democratic Chinese government would face significant obstacles, some unforeseen, that have
toppled regimes or caused civil wars in the past. Indeed, Chinas Communist Party claims that
political liberalization would lead to chaos. At the same time, the party feels compelled to
imitate democracy, creating a liberal faade to justify its rule. Whether real or imagined, Chinese
democracy may not bring the effects everyone hopes for.
Link Turns
2AC Growth Causes Democracy

Growth causes CCP democracy
Thomas 16 - Chase, Western Kentucky University ("The Prospect of Democracy: Chinas
Possibility of Political Reform" (2016). Honors College Capstone Experience/ Thesis Projects.
Paper 596. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses/596) RMT
A third and final scenario could be that as Chinas economy grows, so does education levels due
to increasing wages. As wages increase, the more likely parents can afford educations for their
children and as urbanization is also rapidly increasing due to industrialization and a turn from
the sleepy agrarian society, children are more likely to have access to education. Lipsets
argument that education and wealth correlate with democratic states , as well as with
Nathan and Shis findings that the more educated a citizen is the more likely they are politically
active. This could mean a democratic transition in China if more of the population becomes
educated and wealthy, creating a large middle class and pressure domestically on the Chinese
government to cater to economic and personal rights of Chinese citizens that could mean
democratic style reforms. As more Chinese become wealthy, the more influence they have on the
economic and political landscape of China. China, given these possible factors could democratize
due to the economic growth in wealth of their own people.
Helping poor people causes CCP collapse

RMT
Second, the effects of socioeconomic change rising literacy, income, and urbanization rates,
along with the improvement of communications technologies greatly reduce the costs of
collective action, de-legitimize autocratic rule, and foster demands for greater democracy. As a
result, authoritarian regimes, which have a relatively easy time ruling poor and agrarian
societies, find it increasingly difficult and ultimately impossible to maintain their rule once
socioeconomic development reaches a certain level. Statistical analysis shows that authoritarian
regimes become progressively more unstable (and democratic transitions more likely) once
income rises above $1,000 (PPP) per capita. When per capita income goes above $4,000 (PPP),
the likelihood of democratic transitions increases more dramatically. Few authoritarian
regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per capita income hits
more than $6,000 (PPP). If we apply this observation and take into account the probable effect
of inflation (although the above PPP figures were calculated in constant terms), we will find that
China is well into this zone of democratic transition because its per capita income is around
$9,100 (PPP) today, comparable to the income level of South Korea and Taiwan in the mid1980s on the eve of their democratic transitions. In another 10-15 years, its per capita income
could exceed $15,000 and its urbanization rate will have risen to 60-65 percent. If the CCP has
such a tough time today (in terms of deploying its manpower and financial resources) to
maintain its rule, just imagine how impossible the task will become in 10-15 years time.
Growth empirically causes democratic transition

First, international experience refutes performance legitimacy. Democratization has taken place
in many economically successful countries including Brazil, Chile, Greece, South Korea, Spain,
and Taiwan. Nations experiencing mid-level economic development seem particularly
susceptible to democracy. In the late 20th century, in the so-called third wave of
democratization, twenty-seven out of thirty-one countries that liberalized or democratized were
in the middle-income range.4 The cases most comparable to China, the states which
share a similar cultural or historical heritage, illustrate this point. In 1988, South
Korea and Taiwan, both of which had embarked on democratization , had a PPP
(purchasing power parity) per capita GDP (gross domestic product) of $6,631 and $7,913
($12,221 and $14,584 in 2010 dollars), respectively. In 1989, the PPP per capita GDP of the
Soviet Union (later Russia) and Hungary, also both on the journey toward democratization, was
$9,211 and $6,108 ($16,976 and $11,257 in 2010 dollars), respectively.5 Chinas PPP per capita
GDP in 2010 was $7,544.6.
Growth doesnt make the party look good

The second challenge to the performance legitimacy view is the increasing gap between peoples
expectations and the means of government to co-opt society. It is true that the Chinese state is
still very strong, with enormous fiscal, repressive, and even normative strength. But growing
faster yet are the expectations of ordinary Chinese. With the memory of the Cultural Revolution
fading, the benchmark of good performance is shifting. Younger Chinese are increasingly
unlikely to compare their living standards with those of the revolutionary years. The opening up
of China and the rapid rate of urbanization have created a new set of reference points, and
people increasingly take a secure lifestyle for granted, seeing education, medical care, and
decent housing as welfare entitlements.
Increased income solves

Democracy Digest 13 The Digest is edited by Michael Allen, Special Assistant for
Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for Democracy. February
13th (5 ways China could democratize, available online at http://www.demdigest.org/5-wayschina-could-democratize/, accessed 7/11/16, HDA)
Second, the effects of socioeconomic change rising literacy, income, and urbanization rates,
along with the improvement of communications technologies greatly reduce the costs of
collective action, de-legitimize autocratic rule, and foster demands for greater democracy . ..
Few authoritarian regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per
capita income hits more than $6,000 (PPP)..China is well into this zone of democratic
transition Chinas is a robust regime surrounded by meta instability, said Columbia
Universitys Andrew Nathan, outlining three possible scenarios at a recent National Endowment
for Democracy meeting (above): collapse, resilience or democratization.
s
Transition
2AC - Speed
Transition is inevitable the squos fast collapse causes a war.
RMT
Happy ending would be the most preferable mode of democratic transition for China.
Typically, a peaceful exit from power managed by the ruling elites of the old regime goes
through several stages. It starts with the emergence of a legitimacy crisis, which may be caused
by many factors (such as poor economic performance, military defeat, rising popular resistance,
unbearable costs of repression, and endemic corruption). Recognition of such a crisis convinces
some leaders of the regime that the days of authoritarian rule are numbered and they should
start managing a graceful withdrawal from power. If such leaders gain political dominance
inside the regime, they start a process of liberalization by freeing the media and loosening
control over civil society. Then they negotiate with opposition leaders to set the rules of the
post-transition political system. Most critically, such negotiations center on the protection of
the ruling elites of the old regime who have committed human rights abuses and the
preservation of the privileges of the state institutions that have supported the old regime (such
as the military and the secret police). Once such negotiations are concluded, elections are held.
In most cases (Taiwan and Spain being the exceptions), parties representing the old regime lose
such elections, thus ushering in a new democratic era. At the moment, the transition in Burma is
unfolding according to this script.
But for China, the probability of such a happy ending hinges on, among other things, whether
the ruling elites start reform before the old regime suffers irreparable loss of legitimacy. The
historical record of peaceful transition from post-totalitarian regimes is abysmal mainly because
such regimes resist reform until it is too late. Successful cases of happy ending transitions,
such as those in Taiwan, Mexico, and Brazil, took place because the old regime still maintained
sufficient political strength and some degree of support from key social groups . So the sooner
the ruling elites start this process, the greater their chances of success. The paradox, however, is
that regimes that are strong enough are unwilling to reform and regimes that are weak cannot
reform. In the Chinese case, the odds of a soft landing are likely to be determined by what
Chinas new leadership does in the coming five years because the window of opportunity for a
political soft landing will not remain open forever. Gorby comes to China is a variation of the
happy ending scenario with a nasty twist. In such a scenario, Chinas leadership misses the
historic opportunity to start the reform now. But in the coming decade, a convergence of
unfavorable economic, social, and political trends (such as falling economic growth due to
demographic ageing, environmental decay, crony-capitalism, inequality, corruption and rising
social unrest) finally forces the regime to face reality. Hardliners are discredited and replaced by
reformers who, like Gorbachev, start a Chinese version of glasnost and perestroika. But the
regime by that time has lost total credibility and political support from key social groups.
Liberalization triggers mass political mobilization and radicalism. Members of the old regime
start to defect either to the opposition or their safe havens in Southern California or
Switzerland. Amid political chaos, the regime suffers another internal split, similar to that
between Boris Yeltsin and Gorbachev, with the rise of a radical democratizer replacing a
moderate reformer. With their enormous popular support, the dominant political opposition,
including many defectors from the old regime, refuses to offer concessions to the Communist
Party since it is now literally in no position to negotiate. The partys rule collapses, either as a
result of elections that boot its loyalists out of power or spontaneous seizure of power by the
opposition. Should such a scenario occur in China, it would be the most ironic. For the last
twenty years, the Communist Party has tried everything to avert a Soviet-style collapse. If the
Gorby scenario is the one that brings democracy to China, it means the party has obviously
learned the wrong lesson from the Soviet collapse.
2AC Transition War

Perception of democratization causes war
Pei 11 - Minxin, Minxin Pei is an expert on governance in the People's Republic of China, U.S.Asia relations, and democratization in developing nations, Shanghai International Studies
University, Harvard University, University of Pittsburgh(MINXIN PEI, June 22, 2011
http://carnegieendowment.org/2011/06/22/peace-democracy-and-nightmares-in-china) RMT
The only caveat about the prospect of a more peaceful democratic China is that the process of
democratization within the country could be violent . The research on the connection between
democratization and war shows that transitions to democracy are likely to lead to conflict. In the
Chinese case, such risks are highest in two ethnic-minority areas, Tibet and Xinjiang. Depending
on the transition scenario, a collapse of CCP rule inside China could very likely inspire the hardcore secessionists in these two restive regions to declare independence. Under this scenario,
Taiwan could follow suit. Such developments are almost certain to elicit a military response
from Beijing, regardless of whether the democrats or the autocrats are in power.
Yes transition warBeijings attitude

Diamond 12 --- Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman
Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, director of Stanfords Center on
Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, 2012
(China and East Asian Democracy: The Coming Wave, Journal of Democracy Vol. 23(1), p. 11,
Accessed Online at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/464202/pdf, Accessed on 07-12-2016, ES)
**modified for ableist language**
Rowens projections were a bit mechanical in assuming that economic growth would necessarily
drive gradual political change toward democracy in China. Instead, it seems increasingly likely
that political change in China will be sudden and disruptive . The Communist Party
leadership still shows no sign of embarking on a path of serious political liberalization that
might gradually lead to electoral democracy, as their counterparts in Taiwans then-dominant
Nationalist Party did several decades ago. Instead, the rulers in Beijing are gripped by a fear of
ending up like the USSRs Mikhail Gorbachev , who launched a process of political opening in
hopes of improving and refurbishing Soviet Communist rule only to see [managed] it crumble
and the Soviet Union itself fall onto the ash heap of history. Torn by intense divisions within
their own ranks and weakened by the draining away of power and energy from the center to the
provinces and a congeries of increasingly divergent lower-level authorities, Chinas political
leaders seem as [frozen] stuck and feckless on the grand question of long-term political reform
as they are brisk and decisive in making daily decisions on spending and investments.
The PLA attacks Taiwan when stability begins to fadeeven if we

dont win collapse we just need to win China perceives self weakness
Chang 1 --- Gordon G. Chang, trustee of Cornell University and popular China expert, 2001
(The Coming Collapse of China, Random House New York, not available online, pp. 263-4, ES)
**note: OCR used
But Kinmen and Matsu would just be appetizers tor the PLA. Like a wolf, the Chinese
Communist Party will only be satisfied when it has the sheep in its stomach," said exile Wei
Jingsheng, referring to Taiwan. The famous dissident knows that conquering outlying islands
will not be enough, especially for military leaders who think they can swallow the entire
enchilada. Senior Mainland generals have boasted that they can take the main island of Taiwan
in one day. That statement is nonsense, so we assume they don't actually believe what they say.
Yet grave miscalcu- lations and undiluted sentiments launch armies. When military leaders lose
their sense of reality and political masters have their own selfish agendas, a nation can choose
the wrong path. That's true especially if the survival of the Party is at stake. In the spring of
2000, Jiang Zemin commissioned briefings on the collapse of Communist and authoritarian
regimes around the world. He undoubtedly learned the theory that the Second World War
deferred the demise of the Soviet Union by dampening corruption and reinforcing the notion of
self-sacrifice. Perhaps Beijing talks war these days because China's leaders share the notion that
minor hostilities, even a minor excursion such as China's forray into Vietnam in 1979. are
generally beneficial for the Peoples Republic. Or perhaps we are hearing those bellicose words
because Beijing thinks that it is now or never. Taiwan is drifting away, and someday it will be too
late to bring it back into the fold. Some think that if China has to fight, it should do so while
there are still serving generals who have seen combat. In a few years' time all experienced
officers will have retired, including Defense Minister Chi Haotian and Central Military
Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Wannian, both of whom are scheduled to leave their posts in
2002. And the PLA argues that the time for an invasion is now, before Taiwan can rearm with
the next generation of American weapons. So the stars are aligned toward war. Twice
Jiang Zemin has threat- ened conflict, and twice he has backed down. No government, especially
one in a country' where "face" is critical, can afford to do that a third time. Beijing's leaders think
that war will be popular, so it won't take much to start the next crisis. Maybe it will be a mistake
or perhaps a deliberate act, but the next crisis looks as if it will be the one that leads to conflict.
And if there are hostilities, they will be the last for the People's Republic. We need a war, which
we will lose," said a Chinese journalist in May 2000. "That will destroy faith in the present
dynasty." If there is war, the Mainland will lose. And the losses will be high. For the Communist
leaders, losing ten thousand or one hundred thousand soldiers is nothing," said one Taipei
resident recently. "They consider the life of a Chi- nese worthless." The Party didn't even blink at
its horrendous Korean War casualties and probably will not care about those in the future even
if they are high. Beijing's leaders will just talk about glory and say that the human sacrifice was
worth it. But that's not how our Wang Chuanning will see it if his Jason is needlessly lost in a
misconceived military adven- ture. Wang and grieving relatives may not immediately take to the
streets, but the populace will lose its faith that the Communist Party can lead. It will be then that
the Chinese demand the right to govern themselves.
c
2AC - No transition
Military and police prevent democratization other factors dont
apply
rch_2016.01.15.pdf) RMT
Conditional Modernization: Why Chinas Democratization Is Not Imminent
The previous section showed that in large-N forecasting models intentionally constructed to
replicate the short march predictions of Henry Rowen and others, China is actually unlikely to
democratize in the short term, and is only likely to do so by 2025 at the earliest . In this
section, I show that the previous short march models may neglect key variables which bode for
an even longer march to democracy. I highlight four factors here: (1) Chinas military power, (2)
Chinas institutionalized processes for party leadership transitions and party control of the
military (which make coups unlikely), (3) Chinas economic growth, and (4) Chinas trade
openness. (1) China is a great power with tremendous military and repressive capacity. Recent
work by Carles Boix (2011) and Kevin Narizny (2012) indicates that the hierarchy of power in
the international system conditions the causal effect of development on democracy. Clients or
former colonies of democratic hegemons (the United States and United Kingdom) are the states
most likely to democratize. But as a great power or pole that sees itself as the center of East
Asia (Friedman 2009), armed with a nuclear deterrent, and which is a net creditor rather than
debtor nation, international pressure and spillover effects from democratic diffusion are less
effective on China (Chin 2014, 112; Diamond 2008). Thus, even if there is a coming wave of
democracy in Asia, China may well be the last to catch it, if it catches it at all. In the twentieth
century, it took two catastrophic world wars to democratize the illiberal but capitalist Germany
and Japan (Gat 2010). But a major power war to democratize a nuclear China is unthinkable.
Conflict in Asia also bolsters Chinese leaders nationalist narrative that a strong state led by the
CCP is necessary to protect Chinas interests in the South China Sea, to reunify Taiwan, and
restore China to national greatness. Whereas international and territorial peace fosters
conditions favorable to democracy (e.g. Thompson 1996; Gibler 2012), China has one of the
highest probabilities of being involved in a fatal militarized interstate dispute in the world
(Nordhaus et al. 2012); accordingly, China has made massive investments in the military
(Peoples Liberation Army, PLA) and its coercive apparatus (e.g. Peoples Armed Police) which
enhance its capacity to repress democratic opponents (Albertus and Menaldo 2012). I capture
the theorized negative effects of coercive investments on democratization by including a
measure of a countrys military power, the M Score. Developed by Phil Arena (2012), M scores
improve on the traditional measure of power in international relationsthe Composite Index of
National Capabilities (CIN). M scores vary from 0 to 1, where high values indicate more military
power than the global average (see data appendix for more details). Chinas M score doubled to
0.5 from 2000 to 2012, and in my benchmark forecast I assume a more modest upward trend,
with growth of 1-3% a year until China reaches Americas current M score of about 0.9 after
2040
Party institutionalization solves CCP collapse

rch_2016.01.15.pdf) RMT
(2) The CCPs institutionalization bolsters internal party discipline. Recent work by Michael
Miller (2012a) shows that autocratic regime strength conditions the relationship between
economic development and democratization. In particular, he finds that development actually
reduces likelihood of violent leader removal. At the same time, greater development predicts
democratization, but typically only in the wake of a rebellion, mass protest, or military coup.
Svolik (2012) also presents data that shows most autocrats since 1946 have been overthrown in
coups (not popular uprisings). However, a coup in China is highly unlikely in the foreseeable
future.21 The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) remains a party (not state) army, and the CCP is
vigilant against statification (guojiahua) and depoliticization (feizhengzhihua) of the PLA. Jay
Ulfelders (2012) model of political instability ranks China only 94th out of 150 countries in the
world. This is in no small part due to the fact that CCP succession politics are increasingly normbound (Nathan 2003). If Xi Jinping serves his full term, the next leadership transition (and
potential succession crisis) will not take place until 2022, after many optimists expect change.
Prior research shows that one-party states like Chinas are one of the most resilient forms of
authoritarian rule (Magaloni and Kricheli 2010), whereas military regimes are very fragile
(Geddes 1999). To partially capture the stability of (institutionalized) party regimes, I control for
whether an autocracy has a party regime or military regime (Geddes et al. 2014).
Transition is politically infeasible and would cause a war

West 14 -John West is the executive Director at the Asian Century Institute which conducts
research and analysis, and participates in policy dialogues to foster a better understanding of the
opportunities and challenges of the Asian Century. March 22nd (CHINA'S DEMOCRATIC
FUTURE??, Asian Century Institute, available online at
http://www.asiancenturyinstitute.com/politics/242-china-s-democratic-future, accessed
7/14/16, HDA)
But China's future may not necessarily be democratic. It is also possible to envisage even more complex
scenarios. Here are two that spring to mind. In response to political and social chaos, the military could take
over, taking China backwards in terms of economic and social freedoms, and economic
development. China's left-wing, with its fond memories of Mao, has very strong support. A
military takeover could be facilitated by a quick exodus of many members of the elite to safe
havens, especially Western countries like the US, Canada and Australia, where they may already have permanent
residence status or family members. Another scenario could even be the break away of some
provinces like Guangdong, which are very distant and economically independent from Beijing.
The leaders of China's richest province could be very happy to become independent. What ever happens -- and something is bound
-- social and political instability in China could have massive spillover effects
on the rest of the world. As Minxin Pei argues, China's new leadership has a window of
opportunity for a political soft landing. But the risk is that it will resist reform until it is too late .
to happen sooner or later
A recent document from the Communist Party's Central Committee General Office reportedly warned of the need to strengthen
internet management against the dangers of western ideas and "erroneous currents of thought". And the new government, in power
for only a few months, appears to have launched a new offensive, closing the social media accounts of some influential opponents. At
this stage, continued social and political repression, rather than opening up, seems to be the policy.
They wont transition to a democracy

Bell 15 -- Daniel A. Bell is a chair professor of the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua
University in Beijing and the director of the Berggruen Institute of Philosophy and Culture, may
29th (Chinese Democracy Isn't Inevitable, available online at
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/chinese-democracy-isntinevitable/394325/, accessed 7/5/16, HDA)
The flaws in Chinas political system are obvious. The government doesnt even make a pretense of holding
national elections and punishes those who openly call for multiparty rule. The press is heavily censored and the Internet is blocked.
repression has been ramped up since Xi

Jinping took power in 2012, suggesting that the regime is increasingly worried about its
legitimacy. Some China expertsmost recently David Shambaugh of George Washington
Universityinterpret these ominous signs as evidence that the Chinese political system is on the
verge of collapse. But such an outcome is highly unlikely in the near future. The Communist
Party is firmly in power, its top leader is popular, and no political alternative currently claims
widespread support. And what would happen if the Partys power did indeed crumble? The most
likely result, in my view, would be rule by a populist strongman backed by elements of the
countrys security and military forces. The new ruler might seek to buttress his legitimacy by
launching military adventures abroad. President Xi would look tame by comparison. A more
realistic and, arguably, desirable outcome would involve political change that builds on the
advantages of the current system. But what exactly are the good parts of the Chinese political model? And how can they
be advanced without repression? I believe the model can be improved in a more open political
environment and, eventually, put before the people in a popular referendum. Chinese
authorities have thus far shown no interest in instituting electoral democracy for top leaders. But
thats not the only shape political reform can take . In China, such change over the past three decades has been
informed by three principles: the lower the level of government, the more democratic the
political system; the optimal space for experimentation with new practices and institutions is in
between the lowest and highest levels of government; and the higher the level of government, the more
meritocratic the political system. The Chinese government introduced village elections in the late 1980s
to maintain social order and combat corruption among local leaders; by 2008, more than 900
million Chinese villagers had exercised the right to vote. Voters dont choose among political parties; instead,
Top leaders are unconstrained by the rule of law. Even more worrisome,
they directly nominate candidates and vote by secret ballot for a committee of candidates who serve three-year terms. Turnout has
The Chinese government has good reason

to favor democratic elections at the local level. In small communities, people are more
knowledgeable about the ability and virtue of the leaders they choose. At the local level relative to the
generally been high, and the conduct of elections has improved over time.
national level, policy issues are more straightforward, generating a sense of community is easier, and mistakes are less costly. In
cities and provinces, the Chinese government tinkers with economic and social reform and then applies successes to the rest of the
country, while detecting problems and making adjustments to policies before they spread elsewhere. This experimentation takes
several forms, the most high-profile of which is the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which tested controversial market-oriented
policies that were then extended across China. More recently, the government has tested initiatives that defy common assumptions
about authoritarian rule, including recruiting non-state groups to provide healthcare for the elderly and protect the rights of
workers. Acutely aware of the costs of its economic growth above all development model, the government encourages
municipalities to experiment with more diverse indices for assessing the performance of government officials: Hangzhou, for
example, prioritizes environmental sustainability, and Chengdu narrowing the income gap between rural and urban residents. Its a
form of experimentation that is made easier by Chinas flexible constitutional system, which doesnt enshrine a strict division of
powers between different levels of government. Political stability at the national level ensures that successful trials can be replicated
elsewhere in China. In
a democratic system with parties that alternate in power, there is no assurance

that promising new ventures will be maintained or expanded, which in turn means less incentive
to experiment and innovate in the policy arena. The top of the China model is characterized by
political meritocracythe idea that high-level officials should be selected and promoted on the
basis of ability and virtue. The ideal was institutionalized in imperial China by means of an elaborate examination system
that dates to the Sui dynasty in the sixth and seventh centuries. These examinations were abolished in 1905precipitating the end of
the imperial system as a wholebut they have been reestablished over the last three decades. Aspiring government officials normally
must pass public-service examinationsIQ-like tests with some ideological contentwith thousands of applicants competing for
each entry-level spot. They must perform well at lower levels of government, with more rigorous evaluations at every step, to move
further up the chain of political command. Top leaders must also accumulate decades of diverse administrative experience, with only
a tiny proportion reaching the commanding heights of government. For example, Xis four-decade-long ascent to the presidency
involved 16 major promotions through county, city, and province levels, and then the Central Committee, the Politburo, and the top
spot in the Standing Committee of the Politburo, with reviews at each stage to assess his leadership abilities. Arguably, the Chinese
political system is the most competitive in the world today.
Chinese culture precludes democracy

Chan 13 Phil C.W. Chan is a senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative
Public Law and International Law (Human Rights and Democracy with Chinese
Characteristics?, available online at http://hrlr.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/4/645.full,
accessed 7/5/16, HDA)
It must also be noted that in China communism originated from within, unlike in Eastern
Europe where it was imposed by the Soviet Union. Many predicted that the demise of
communism in the Soviet Union would be followed with a collapse of the communist Party-State
in China. Chinas astonishing economic development in the past two decades, as opposed to
almost complete economic breakdown that directly brought about the Soviet Unions end,
showed that its communist Party-State is unlikely to be torn down in the near future.
Furthermore, as Schwartz suggests, one of the reasons MarxismLeninism had its appeal to
young Chinese was its theory of nationalism, which provided a plausible explanation for Chinas
failure to achieve its rightful place in the world of nations.19 In a survey of 700 Beijing residents
in December 1995, more than 95 per cent of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed
with the statement that they would rather live in an orderly society than in a freer society which
is prone to disruptions.20 Nathan and Shi found the Chinese to be generally disengaged from
their government. In their survey conducted in 1990, 71.6 per cent of the 2,896 respondents
considered their local government to have no effect on their daily life, while 71.8 per cent held
the same view in respect of their national government.21 The authors suggested that the
respondents had such apathy towards their local and national governments not so much because
they thought that government policy would have little impact on their lives but out of a belief
that government officials would not treat them equally given the hierarchical nature of Chinese
society.22 Together with the enculturation in Confucianism which regards rights as not inherent
in being a human but [flowing] from the state in the form of a gratuitous grant that can be
subjected to conditions or abrogation by the unilateral decision of the State,23 the economic
progress and benefits brought to the Chinese people as a whole (albeit not all of them
individually) by Chinas increased trade with other States have augmented the general
contentment of the Chinese people with the Chinese leadership. External pressures may be
stymied by countervailing national norms and value structures that emphasized sovereignty
and domestic cohesion more than human rights principles.24 Thus, when seeking to foster the
development and protection of human rights in China, one should heed Kents caution that [i]n
pitting the sovereignty and national prestige of one State against another they may have the
counter-productive effect of mobilizing the very citizenry whose human rights are being abused
in support of the abusing state.25 When China and other like-minded States argue for national
self-determination as derivative of the principle of State sovereignty and as a basis on which
Western discourses of human rights and democracy may not be imposed or transplanted, they
are engaging in the same discourses about human rights and democracy as Western States for
the normative legitimacy of the discourses and their own preferred modes of governance. In
automatically dismissing communitarian notions of rights (and duties) as incompatible with

individualism and attendant notions of rights and freedoms, Western States and scholars are
denying the right of other States and their peoples to decide the forms of society in and
governance under which they wish to live.26 Democracy is not necessarily identical to popular
sovereignty, and if a people decide that they desire a non-democratic form of governance for
their State, it is not merely that non-democratic governance is part of their culture but also that
it is accepted by the people as part of their culture, and an appeal to a traditional culture against
democracy is still an appeal to a form of populism.27 Individualism demands that We should
respect their form of government because it is the form that they endorse, even though they do
not themselves believe that the legitimacy of their form of government depends upon their own
endorsement.28 As Roth explains, in States where communism is subscribed to (by both the
state and its people), Western notions of democracy qua elections undermine true and
meaningful participation in the political process: In the Marxist-Leninist view, multi-party
competition masks the inalterable structure of power rooted in the concentrated ownership and
control of the major means of production, distribution and exchange. In conditions of social
stratification, dissent and opposition party activity aimed at challenging the structure of social
decisionmaking are effectively marginalized, as a particular social stratum holds de facto control
over the major parties, the mass media, the sources of campaign financing, and other channels
of influence. Even where politicians espousing change are elected to office, the private sectors
stranglehold over the economy forces efforts at social transformation to yield in the name of
preserving the investment climate. Voters are thus left merely to choose which representatives
of private sector interests will administer a public sector of limited scope and autonomy.29
Furthermore, popular will may dissipate in the face of a democratically elected government
failing its promises and duties to its citizens, while an authoritarian or totalitarian government
may continue to be held by its people in esteem. Thus, it cannot be said a priori that coups
dtat, emergency rule, or even substantial periods of one-party or coalitional dictatorship
violate popular sovereignty.30
2AC - Inevitable
CCP stability causes democratization
Wong 15 - Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global
Affairs at the University of Toronto. He is also a Professor in the department of Political Science,
where he holds a Canada Research Chair. (Joseph Wong March 27, 2015When will China
collapse? is the wrong question http://policyoptions.irpp.org/2015/03/27/asking-when-chinawill-collapse-is-the-wrong-question-to-ask/) RMT
But why do we presume that China and the CCP will only choose democracy when it is about
to collapse? Is it not possible that an authoritarian regime may choose to concede democracy
when it is still relatively strong? Dan Slater (of the University of Chicago) and I are currently
writing a book in which we show that contrary to the received wisdom about why autocrats
concede democracy hello Mubarak the modal pathway of democratic transition in Asia has
been led by regimes that are not weak but instead very strong.
The Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan, a brutal dictatorial regime in the 1960s and 1970s, allowed
the formation of an opposition party in 1986, lifted martial law in 1987 and conceded full
democratic elections in 1992. And it made these concessions not when the ruling party was
weak, but rather when the party was very strong. Indeed, the KMT conceded democracy not to
concede defeat, but rather to remain dominant. And it has. Meanwhile, Taiwan has become a
full-fledged democracy, in many ways the model democracy in East Asia.
Democracy came to Taiwan not because of collapse but, rather the opposite. This same logic
conceding from strength explains the transitions in Korea, Indonesia, Japan, and it helps
explains what we are currently seeing in Burma, and what we might see in Singapore.
Why not in China? It would seem to me that at the present moment the CCP has nothing to
fear with democratization. Into the future, once the regime begins to crackup, however, the
CCP will have everything to fear about democratization. It has always struck me that if I was a
dictator Id prefer to end up like the KMT in Taiwan and not Mubarak in Egypt.
Economic growth means that CCP transition is inevitable.

Pei 15 - Minxin Pei is an expert on governance in the People's Republic of China, U.S.-Asia
relations, and democratization in developing nations. He currently serves as the director of the
Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College, November
11 (The Twilight of Communist Party Rule in China, available online http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/11/12/the-twilight-of-communist-party-rule-in-china/, accessed
7/1/16, HDA)
If long-term economic stagnation were to set in, the Chinese middle classs support for the
status quo will erode. Co-optation of the fast-growing middle-classanother key pillar of the
CPCs post-Tiananmen survival strategyhas been enabled by the past quarter centurys
economic boom. Chinas secular economic slowdown will undoubtedly reduce opportunities,
curtail expectations, and limit upward mobility for members of this critical social group, whose
acquiescence to the CPCs rule has been contingent upon its ability to deliver satisfactory and
continuous economic performance. With the evaporation of elite unity, looming economic
stagnation, and likely alienation of the middle-class, the post-Tiananmen model is left with only
two pillars: repression and nationalism. Contemporary authoritarian regimes, lacking popular
legitimacy endowed by a competitive political process, have essentially three means to hold on
their power. One is bribing their populations with material benefits, a second one is to repress
them with violence and fear, and the third is to appeal to their nationalist sentiments. In more
sophisticated and successful autocracies, rulers rely more on performance-based legitimacy
(bribing) than on fear or jingoism mainly because repression is costly while nationalism can be
dangerous. In the post-Tiananmen era, to be sure, the CPC has employed all three instruments,
but it has depended mainly on economic performance and has resorted to (selective) repression
and nationalism only as a secondary means of rule. However, trends since Xi Jinping came to
power in late 2012 suggest that repression and nationalism are assuming an increasingly
prominent role in the CPCs survival strategy. An obvious explanation is that Chinas faltering
economic growth is creating social tensions and eroding public support for the CPC, thus forcing
the regime to deter potential societal challenge with force and divert public attention with
nationalism. There is, however, an equally valid explanation that many observers have
overlooked. A survival strategy that depends on delivering economic growth to maintain
legitimacy is inherently unsustainable not only because economic growth cannot be guaranteed
and ever-rising popular expectations will be impossible to meet, but also because sustained
economic growth produces structural socioeconomic changes that, as demonstrated by social
science research and histories of democratic transitions, fatally threaten the durability of
autocratic rule. Autocracies forced to strike a Faustian bargain with performance-based
legitimacy are destined to lose the wager because the socioeconomic changes resulting from
economic growth strengthen the autonomous capabilities of urban-based social forces, such as
private entrepreneurs, intellectuals, professionals, religious believers, and ordinary workers
through higher levels of literacy, greater access to information, accumulation of private wealth,
and improved capacity to organize collective action. Academic research has established a strong
correlation between the level of economic development and the existence of democracy and also
between rising income and probabilities of the fall of autocracies.8 In the contemporary world,
the positive relationship between wealth (measured in per capita income) and democracy can be
seen in the chart below, which shows that the percentage of democracies (classified as free by
Freedom House) rises steadily as income level increases. Partly free countries decline as income
rises as well. The distribution of non-democracies, or authoritarian regimes, resembles a Ushape. While more dictatorships can survive in poorer countries (the bottom two-fifths of the
countries in terms of per capita income), their presence in the top two-fifths of the countries
seems to reject the notion that wealth is positively correlated with democracy. A closer look at
the data, however, shows that nearly all the wealthy countries ruled by dictatorships are oilproducing states, where the ruling elites have the financial capacity to bribe their people into
accepting autocratic rule.9 Chinese rulers, if they take a look at the chart, should worry about
their medium-to long-term prospects. There are 87 countries with a higher capita income,
measured in PPP, than China. Fifty-eight of them are democracies, 11 are classified by Freedom
House as partly free, and 18 are dictatorships (not free, according to Freedom House). But of
the 18 not free countries with higher per capita income than China, 16 are petro-states
(Belarus is included in this group because Russia provides it with significant subsidized energy).
The two non-oil states are Thailand (a military dictatorship that overthrew a semi-democracy in
2014) and Cuba (also a Leninist one-party dictatorship). Of the 11 partly free countries, Mexico
and Malaysia are significant energy producers while Kuwait and Venezuela are classical petrostates. What should give the CPC leaders even more cause to worry is that Chinese per capita
income of $13,216 (PPP) in 2014 is comparable to that of Taiwan and South Korea in the late
1980s, when both began to democratize.10 If the experience of regime transitions in upper
middle-income countries, including Taiwan and Korea, were applicable, the CPC should expect
rising societal demand and mobilization for political change in the coming decade (some signs of
such mobilization can already be detected).
Collapse inevitableaging crisis

(China and East Asian Democracy: The Coming Wave, Journal of Democracy Vol. 23(1), p. 12,
Accessed Online at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/464202/pdf, Accessed on 07-12-2016, ES)
Beyond the ongoing frustrations with censorship, insider dealing, abuse of power,
environmental degradation, and other outrages that can only be protested by antisystem activity
of one sort or another, there are, as Fukuyama notes, the big looming social and economic
challenges that China faces as the consequences of its one-child policy make themselves felt in a
rapidly aging (and disproportionately male) population. Jack Goldstone reports that Chinas
labor force stopped growing in 2010 and has begun shrinking half a percent a year, which will,
by itself, knock 2.2 percentage points off Chinas annual economic growth potential.
Urbanization, a key driver of productivity increases, is also slowing dramatically, and the growth
of education has clearly reached a limit, as the number of college graduates has expanded
faster than the ability of the economyeven as it faces labor shortages in blue-collar industries
to generate good white-collar jobs.10
The Chinese economy will have to pay for rapidly rising wages and cope with industrial labor
shortages even as it comes under pressure to finance pension, welfare, and healthcare benefits
for the massive slice of the populace that is now moving toward retirement. Moreover, as it
manages all this, China will need to address growing frustration among college graduates who
cannot find jobs to match their expectations. If the suspected bubbles in the real-estate and
financial markets burst as these twin generational challenges are gathering force, political
stability in the worlds most populous country may well become no more than a memory.
Economics not keya transition is inevitable either wayif Chinas

economy grows it happens later, if growth slows it happens sooner
(China and East Asian Democracy: The Coming Wave, Journal of Democracy Vol. 23(1), p. 1213, Accessed Online at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/464202/pdf, Accessed on 07-12-2016, ES)
Increasingly, the CCP faces the classic contradiction that troubles all modernizing authoritarian
regimes. The Party cannot rule without continuing to deliver rapid economic development and
rising living standards to fail at this would invite not gradual loss of power but a sudden and
probably lethal crisis. To the extent that the CCP succeeds, however, it generates the very forces
an educated, demanding middle class and a stubbornly independent civil societythat will
one day decisively mobilize to raise up a democracy and end CCP rule for good. The CCP, in
other words, is damned if it does not, and damned if it does. The only basis for its political
legitimacy and popular acceptance is its ability to generate steadily improving standards of
living, but these will be its undoing.
For some time, I suspected that Henry Rowens projections were a bit optimistic and that
Chinas democratic moment, while foreseeable, was still 25 to 30 years away. Now, as the need
for a more open, accountable, and law-based regime becomes as obvious as the current leaders
inability to bring one about, I suspect that the end of CCP rule will come much sooner, quite
possibly within the next ten years. Unfortunately, a sudden collapse of the communist system
could give rise, at least for a while, to a much more dangerous form of authoritarian rule,
perhaps led by a nationalistic military looking for trouble abroad in order to unify the nation at
home. But this would likely represent only a temporary solution, for the military is incapable of
governing a rapidly modernizing, deeply networked, middle-class country facing complex
economic and social challenges.
Whatever the specific scenario of change, this much is clear: China cannot keep moving forward
to the per capita income, educational, and informational levels of a middle-income country
without experiencing the pressures for democratic change that Korea and Taiwan did more than
two decades ago. Those pressures are rising palpably now in Singapore and Malaysia. They will
gather momentum in Vietnam as it follows in Chinas path of transformational (even if not quite
as rapid) economic development. In Thailand, continuing modernization over the next decade
will change society in ways that will make democracy easier to sustain. In short, within a
generation or so, I think it is reasonable to expect that most of East Asia will be democratic. And
no regional transformation will have more profound consequences for democratic prospects
globally.
An incremental transition is keycollapse causes a transition war

Diamond 14 --- Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University, and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. At Stanford University, he is
professor by courtesy of political science and sociology, 2014 (part of Reconsidering the
Transition Paradigm and interview with other Democracy analysts, Accessed on 07-11-2016,
Accessed at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/535538, ES) **note: OCR used
Despite all China's innovations in using nondemocratic methods to get accountability and better
governance, its system is in a very advanced state of decay. I think they are one financial
crisis away from the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party because the hatred of the
party and of its [End Page 96] corruption is now gathering so much steam. I wish that Xi
Jinping would launch an incremental process of transition of the kind that took place across the
strait in Taiwan; otherwise, I think there is a real danger. The PRC [People's Republic of China]
looks strong, confident, and dynamic, but there is a lot of rot in the foundations and in public
attitudes, and if they don't get going with incremental reform, things could unfold in a lot of
interesting ways, including a sudden Soviet-style collapse. I don't think we should wish for this
because there'd be a vacuum. There are no institutions, no opposition, no national parties, nor
even any effective civic networks yet. The outcome could fall into the category of "Be careful
what you wish for"not a breakthrough to democracy but military rule or some kind of ugly,
nationalistic, noncommunist, Putin-style leadership, which might make military moves on the
disputed offshore islands to divert public attention from all its domestic frustrations. China will
be a place to watch in the next ten to fifteen years.
2AC - Predictions fail

Cant predict democratization
Gilley 11 - Ph.D. 2008, Princeton University, Associate Professor of Political Science at
Portland State University (Bruce Gilley, Should We Try to Predict Transitions to Democracy?
Lessons for China Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relation,
http://www.web.pdx.edu/~gilleyb/ShouldWeTryToPredictTransitionsToDemocracy.pdf) RMT
Another group of reasons concerns meaning. If social terms could only be understood through
interpretation of their local meaning, then prediction using cross-cultural terms like
democracy is too blunt to be of any use. We cannot achieve the degree of fine exactitude of a
science based on brute data, wrote one philosopher of meaning.9
Indeed, even if by sheer coincidence, a given term has the same meaning across all cultures
today, its meaning will alter in the future in ways that we cannot predict. Predicting
democracy in the future is useless since the meaning of democracy is sure to
alter significantl y.10 Human science is largely ex post understandingHard prediction
before just makes one a laughingstock.11 We can accept the cautions of these insights without
necessarily accepting their injunctions against the prediction of large-scale political change. An
awareness of the difficulties of accurate prediction is certainly important, especially when
wrongful policy decisions have fatal consequences. In Chinas Democratic Future, I was explicit
about these uncertainty levels.12 However, it is the comparison of the moral costs of inaccurate
prediction with the moral and other costs of failing to predict at all that should decide whether
prediction is worthwhile in spite of uncertainty. In almost every case, the latter are far heavier
than the former. Indeed, the whole risk industry of consultants, insurance companies, and
forward markets exists precisely because it is almost always better to predict something than to
predict nothing at all.1
As to meanings, it is also true that the word democracy today implies a different (higher)
standard than it did in the past. As Larry Diamond has noted, the higher standards, as well as
the greater information available about abuses in the most distant lands, means that many
regimes once called democraciesPRI-ruled Mexico, apartheid South Africa, and todays
Singaporeno longer qualify as even minimal democracies.14 Yet the relevant question is
whether meanings continue to hold enough similarity to be useful for the purposes of policymaking. In this respect, the answer is certainly, yes. Democracys core facetthe equality of
persons in choosing leaders through free and fair electionshas not changed. The new meaning
is just more robust than before. Some databases have been created that capture the changing
meanings of democracy over time.15 Yet even taking into account those changed meanings,
predictions in the past of more democracy would have been accurate, even if their magnitude
was overstated. As long as meanings change in accordance with the principles at stakein this
case the fair selection of executives to government prediction remains possible . It is only
when concepts become totally reconstructed that prediction is futile. Yet on most topics that
people spend time predicting in political science, this is not the case.

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Neg

Democratization solves Chinese aggression cmr, checks and

constrained by more cosmopolitan perspectives. And dangers of an aggressive foreign policy

2NC Democracy Good

the ongoing struggle to move from

China is key to global democracysize and model

autocraciesalong with other developing nationsseek to water down conditionality or the

2NC Democracy key to Chinese Econ

China must transition to democracy to maintain long term economic

2NC Japan War

Democratization solveshistorical examples prove

2NC Democratic backsliding bad

Backsliding would create greater instability and would

Many of the threats to the current global order, such as

2NC Yes Transition: Empirics

Taiwan proves democratic transition is possible

2NC Yes Transition: Internet

2NC Yes transition: protests

2NC Yes Transition: Globalization

(e.g., multinational corporations, nongovernmental and international organizations,

2NC Yes Transition AT: Party Structure

2NC Yes Transition Popular Sentiment

have no more fear of the CCP. Instead they are confident

Things are really changing fast. Various forces

2NC Yes Transition Authoritarian Aging

2NC Yes Transition AT: Inevitable

Quick transition is keyprevents regionalism and breakup

2NC Yes Transition AT: Wont be a Democracy

Transition to democracy will last and be stable

Confucianism creates the cultural conditions to push for democracy

Confucianism stresses the importance of education, which is the basic foundation

Democracy is a process and is possible in china

democracy is a good thing. 103 Similarly,

Chinese political elites have highlighted democracy in their

democracy is a process that requires continuous enhancements and conscientious

AT: Transition War

2NC AT: Transition War

the Chinese economic crisis would

Over the past

could very well face an extended

Chinese are, of course, keeping a great deal of money in U.S.

can replace China, but China will be replaced.

The next step in this

Peaceful Chinese democratization is possible

AT: Link Turns

2NC AT: Growth Turn

"All non-oil exporting countries

Poverty/Inequality causes transition

Growth helps the party

Democracy Impact Stuff

2AC AT: Global Democracy

2AC Democracy Bad

Democracy doesnt solve Chinese aggression or hypocrisy and hurts

2AC Growth Causes Democracy

Helping poor people causes CCP collapse

Growth empirically causes democratic transition

Growth doesnt make the party look good

Increased income solves

2AC Transition War

Yes transition warBeijings attitude

The PLA attacks Taiwan when stability begins to fadeeven if we

Party institutionalization solves CCP collapse

Transition is politically infeasible and would cause a war

They wont transition to a democracy