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China's Bumpy Road Ahead

Unrest, inflation and an aging populace stand in the way of the Middle Kingdom's touted domination

By IAN BREMMER

When exactly will China take over the world?

The moment of truth seems to be coming closer by the minute. China will become the world's largest economy by 2050, according to HSBC. No, it's 2040, say analysts at Deutsche Bank. Try 2030, the World Bank tells us. Goldman Sachs points to 2020 as the year of reckoning, and the IMF declared several weeks ago that China's economy will push past America's in 2016. There's probably someone out there who thinks China became the world's largest economy five years ago.

 

In an interview with WSJ's John Bussey, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer insists that for China to become the economic powerhouse it is predicted to become in this century, the Chinese must fundamentally restructure their economy.

But let's not get carried away. There's a good deal of turmoil simmering beneath the surface of China's miracle. Consider these recent snapshots:

• In Hunan, farmers pushed off their land by aggressive property developers discover that local authorities are not on their side. A farmer sets himself on fire, and protests spread quickly from town to town.

• A chemical spill into a Chinese river cuts off water supplies to Harbin, a city of four million people, sparking public fury.

• In Inner Mongolia, a Han Chinese truck driver kills a local herdsman in a hit-and-run accident, and ethnic unrest flares for days.

• Rioting in Xinjiang province spins out of control, forcing a state Internet shutdown across an area three times the size of California.

• In the coastal city of Xintang, security guards sent to break up a protest by migrant workers push a pregnant woman to the ground, igniting a firestorm that only paramilitary forces in armored personnel carriers can handle.

Reuters

A boy rides a cart carrying his grandparents outside Beijing. As more Chinese reach retirement age, the need to provide pensions and health care will lead to unprecedented costs.

China's security services are the world's best at containing large-scale riots, and these protests do not represent any form of coherent opposition to Communist Party control. Most of the protests are directed at local officials and are fueled by local grievances, and three decades of double-digit growth has earned the Chinese leadership deep reserves of public patience.

But this is a country that measures its annual supply of large-scale protests in the tens of thousands. For 2006, China's Academy of Social Sciences reported the eruption of about 60,000 "mass group incidents," an official euphemism for demonstrations of public anger involving at least 50 people. In 2007, the number jumped to 80,000. Though such figures are no longer published, a leak put the number for 2008 at 127,000. Today, it is almost certainly higher. MORE>>>