The temptation to make predictions about China is probably irresistible, because it is arguably the most important contemporary case in international relations. Thus, a few Western observers have risked their professional reputations by acting as prophets. Perhaps the most (in)famous is Gordon Chang, who published The Coming Collapse of China in 2001. “The end of the modern Chinese state is near,” he asserted. “The People’s Republic has five years, perhaps ten, before it falls,”
China didn’t collapse, as we all know. “So, yes, my prediction was wrong,” he admitted in an article (“The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition”). But he remained convinced about the imminence of a Chinese apocalypse and offered a new timeline: “Instead of 2011, the mighty Communist Party of China will fall in 2012. Bet on it.”
Gordon Chang may be dismissed as an opportunist who tries to make a fortune — political and/or economic — out of sensational rhetoric about China. But not so with David Shambaugh, a well-respected China scholar at George Washington University who heretofore has been rather cautious in his assessment of China. In a March 6 Wall Street Journal article, he portrayed the Chinese party-state as struggling for its last breath. “The endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun, I believe, and it has progressed further than many think,” he wrote. “We cannot predict when Chinese communism will collapse, but it is hard not to conclude that we are witnessing its final phase.”
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