Jottings from the Granite Studio

This past May, Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace released their second annual “Failed States Rankings.” The ‘top’ of the list should not be surprising to anyone: Sudan, Congo, Ivory Coast, Iraq (There’s $315 billion well spent), with Zimbabwe rounding out a fab five of failure.

The rankings are based on a number of criteria including the number of displaced persons, uneven development, social fractures, economic performance, and human rights. Corruption indirectly plays a role as well. On a separate graph, the study shows how the ‘health’ of a state tracks closely with its rankings in terms of transparency and corruption.

Perhaps most surprising was the performance of China. Now, I am no starry-eyed lover of the Beijing government, but I was surprised to see the PRC at number 54, wedged below Moldova, Nicaragua and Georgia (presumably the one with Tbilisi as its capital, not Atlanta) and just ahead of Bolivia.

China’s performance was unexpected for the authors of the study as well.

“More surprising is China’s slide in the index. With its economy booming, few analysts would classify China as a vulnerable state, and yet its index score dropped 10 points from last year. Why? China witnessed more than 87,000 peasant strikes and protests over land seizures last year, as well as mounting corruption and unemployment. China’s cities have mushroomed in size, and those left behind have suffered as government services dry up and hungry developers grab land. Party officials must find new ways to mollify the masses while keeping the country’s economic engine in high gear.”

The main reason for China’s low ranking was its poor showing in the category of “unequal development” with a score of 9.2 out of 10 (10 being the worst) just below Guinea-Bissau for the title of ‘least equal society’ in the world. Mao is not only breakdancing in his grave, he’s thinking of rising from the dead and touring with Kevin Federline this fall.

Ranking a country’s performance using rankings and ‘points’ does have its inherent problems. Economic and political development is not fantasy football. (I need to make up ground in “factionalized elites” in my Global Development Rotisserie League, so I think I’m starting Burkina Faso next week and benching Nigeria…)

That said, the study highlights the number and severity of China’s problems despite (because of?) its incredible economic growth over the past quarter century. There is sufficient evidence of considerable social rifts to suggest that the next few years will see even more incidents of collective action and collective violence, especially in rural areas. Rampant GNPism pervades the Chinese bureaucracy at all levels but is an especially virulent affliction of local officials who either twist or outright ignore central directives designed to, in theory, protect the environment and the health, homes, and livelihoods of China’s people.

Recent events, such as the much publicized riots in Rui’an, show that China’s opaque judicial system may be a recurring target of collective action in the near future. Without even the pretense of an independent judiciary, China’s citizens have no way to seek redress under the few legal protections that Chinese law does provide. Faced with no other alternative, China’s citizens take to the streets. So far such events have been, relatively speaking, small and uncoordinated.

History suggests they will not stay that way. Before the end of this decade, we will see a large scale example of collective action on the mainland comparable to the Tiαnαnmen Square demonstrations of 1976 and 1989. How China’s new leadership reacts to this turn of events will determine the true success or failure of the Chinese state.