Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, September 07, 2012

Journalism's comparative politics

William Wan and Liu Liu venture into comparative politics and political culture while discussing the upcoming leadership transition in China in the Washington Post.

Can your students identify the evidence used by the reporters for their assumptions and comparisons? Are the comparisons persuasive? What standards did they use in making those evaluations? (There are more comparisons made in the complete article.)

China’s coming leadership change met with a shrug

With China facing a worsening economy, its biggest political crisis in two decades, and growing public anger and domestic unrest, what do people here say about the seismic change about to take place in the country’s top leadership?

“Wu suo wei.” It doesn’t matter.

Exercises in the park

You hear this from old men exercising in the park, from young professionals heading home from work and even, in hushed tones, from lower-ranking members of the Communist Party.

On one level, they’re probably right. The leadership change is unlikely to have an immediate effect on the majority of China’s 1.3 billion people. Neither will the masses have any say in the Communist Party’s mysterious selection of the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee that rules China.

The process is so cloaked in secrecy that no one knows for sure who’s in the running besides the top two officials set to replace President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao…

But on another level, the leadership change will affect everything and everyone, and in many ways already has. Preparations for the 18th Party Congress have forced most of the government into gridlock for the past year, as though the entire system were holding its breath in anticipation. Major reforms and new laws have been stymied. No real solutions have been prescribed for the economy’s systemic problems even amid a worrying slowdown…

The indifference is something the government has at times nurtured. For years, the party — looking to preserve its lock on power — has pushed the idea that an uneventful, smooth transition was not only expected, but inevitable.

And while American children are taught basic civics and the importance of elections from grade school, the real method by which China’s top leaders are chosen is unknown to anyone but the leaders themselves. Many experts, in fact, think the new lineup was decided at a meeting of party elites at a luxury costal resort early last month.

Similarly, while nearly all aspects of the American candidates’ lives have been thoroughly explored in the course of the U.S. presidential campaign, most Chinese know little about China’s leading contenders beyond their official hagiographies…

“We are walking down a road filled with serious problems,” said one 82-year-old retired party member exercising on a recent day at a downtown park. “So, of course, the direction of the country is important and depends on the upcoming meeting. But these are not things for ordinary citizens to know, so what’s there to talk about?”