Accelerating Change: Bold Leaders, Chinese Pragmatism

The name calling between Paris and London (“autistic”?) this past week is symptomatic of a bigger problem. People are scared about social change, and some are running to the right of politics as the solution.
The world is facing massive and growing threats, even as it is changing rapidly, with the new conditions dislocating time-honored practices and privilege. Some of the causes, like those relating to the global financial crisis, social breakdown or the rise of violent extremism, are either not accepted by some or exaggerated by others. Insecurity and anxiety is widespread.
The old political parties, like Britain’s Tories, are struggling to cope with the world as it is becoming because they are out of touch even with the world as it is. It is no coincidence that the most dynamic political parties now are those that have remade themselves or been established only in recent decades in response to crisis or new threats.
We do see some strong sense of direction here as a result. Individual leaders who have personally walked the rocky road of social and political change, such as Angela Merkel or Nicolas Sarkozy, can be recognized for this. We do not have to be political devotees of such leaders to see the strength of vision and steely determination in proposals such as that of the Mediterranean Union from Sarkozy or the politically difficult stimulus package of Merkel in response to the financial crisis.
The good news is that political change no longer belongs only to the politicians and the political parties. The author is devotee of neither class. Equally, we can now be pleased that international security is not just the preserve of diplomats and generals. We can see an army of social change agents out there in “civil society” determined to recreate world order in an internationalist image that actually is beyond the vision of most politicians and has not traditionally been in the mission statement of generals and diplomats.
In this transition, China occupies an unusual place. In common understanding, China is not on the forefront of progressive social change either in domestic politics or in international society. On almost every front apart from economic performance, China has been widely criticized. The examples are legion: human rights, corporate social responsibility, poisoned food exports, and military build up to name a few. But things have definitely changed for the better on all fronts.
China however has demonstrated in international affairs in the past decade a leadership quality that few have recognized – that of pragmatism and discipline. We all know what pragmatism is, but it has been a quality sadly lacking in international security affairs since we were liberated from the Cold War. The politics of the twenty-year transition from Communism in Europe have been marked by an uncritical triumphalism, built around the doctrine of the exceptionalism of liberal democracy.
As for discipline in the execution of recent Chinese diplomacy, the roots of this may lie in part in the fear engendered by the state security system. But there are other roots to the disciplined delivery of Chinese diplomacy in the past decade. These include an emerging apolitical class of well trained and determined people who have risen to the top of their (very large) bureaucratic system largely by merit.
China’s positive positioning on global emissions prior to Copenhagen has surprised many. But this is a sign of things to some. China is about to break out as a force for progressive change in global affairs on a scale not imagined by most. It will do this in part because that will be the only way it can address its massive domestic dilemmas (urban growth, pollution, water shortages). But the bigger explanation of China’s emergence as a force for positive good will be its foreign policy pragmatism — the unshakable conviction of its leaders that in order to govern well at home China needs a progressive internationalist world order in which major changes can all be carefully and prudently negotiated without resort to ideology.