Skip to content

Chengming: The Bo Xilai Incident Embarrasses Western Chinese Scholars

Chengming, a magazine of political commentary based in Hong Kong, published an article by Hu Xiaojiang, a popular Internet blogger, on the subject of the Bo Xilai incident. In the article, Hu laid out the weaknesses that Western scholars who are close to the Chinese Communist regime have in their ability to understand the direction of China’s politics and economy.

The article explained that the Bo incident indicates the following: 1) The power transition within the Chinese Communist Party is still not an orderly change, unlike the perception of many that China has established a stable and smooth system for the transfer of power. 2) China needs a bipartisan or multi-party system. 3) It proves again that the authoritarian system is a reverse elimination system in which the ruling party does not allow the existence of independent political thoughts to challenge the top authorities.   

The article offered a sharp explanation as to why these Western scholars fail to understand China correctly. On the one hand, studying China is their job security, so they often cannot help but prove their own value by beautifying the study targets. On the other hand, China’s corruption is so deep and so pervasive that many Western Chinese experts get paid for praising China’s totalitarian system.

Source: Chengming Magazine (Hong Kong), April 19, 2012 http://www.chengmingmag.com/t320/select/320sel07.html