China has mirrored Russia’s historical trajectory for most of the past 100 years. In the early twentieth century, both were large empires with outdated institutions that could not protect their people from foreign wars, corruption, inequality, and poverty. While the per capita income of Russia in 1900 was approx one third that of the United States, Chinese incomes were Half those of Russia.
In 1949, the new People’s Republic was modeledpolitically and economically for the Soviet system. In both China and the Soviet Union, a command economy replaced markets, and the central government affected every aspect of people’s lives—what they produced and ate, where they worked and lived, and what they could say, read, and write.
But Beijing and Moscow fought to keep production going because workers enjoyed it very little reward for their work. Among other strategies to force people to work harder, the Soviet and Chinese governments instituted systems which threatened farmers with starvation if their production did not meet the quotas set by the state. This approach led to more than seven million deaths from famine in the Soviet Union (with the highest death rates in the Ukraine) in 1932-33 and to 16.5-45 million famine deaths in China in 1959-61.
Not surprisingly, these massive economic disasters posed a serious political threat to the regimes. After all, the Soviet and Chinese communists were supposed to be modernizers who would empower the people and provide economic prosperity after centuries of oppression, corruption and abject poverty.
To survive, every regime advertises its role as the defender of the people against foreign invaders. The Soviet Union and China suffered more losses than any other country in World War II—with death tolls as high as 20–27 million and 15–20 million, respectively. And in the decades that followed, the Cold War kept alive the fear of foreign invasion and the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia became a model of what not to do. Its per capita income plummeted 50 percent between 1989 and 1996, and did not recover to 1989 levels for another decade. Corruption and crime they were rampant. Unemployment soared from 5 percent in 1991 to 13 percent in 1998, and social problems such as alcoholism rose alongside. In 1993, per capita alcohol Consumption had reached 14.4 liters (of 100 percent alcohol), up from 11.7 liters in 1989. In 1994, 47 people per 100,000 died from alcohol-related causes—three times higher than US interest rate.
The Chinese Communist Party learned from the Russian experience and proceeded with its liberation with more caution. Recognizing that rapid political liberalization in Russia had ended up sweeping the Communist Party from power, and that in an auction state assets had created billionaire “oligarchs”, the CCP took pains to avoid the same fate. By carefully controlling privatizations and political reforms such as local electionsrestructured the economy graduallymaking progress trial and errorand avoided sudden and destabilizing changes in the distribution of wealth.
Liberalization transformed China and Russia from relatively equal economies to those where the top 1 percent own a third of the wealth. In 2015 the bottom 25 proportion of Chinese households owned only 1 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom Half of Russian households owned just 15%.
Like Russian oligarchs, the new Chinese elites are usually perceived as selfish, corrupt threats to state power. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin gained popularity by “beating” them oligarchs and restoring law and order. In China, Xi’s aggressive campaigns to reduce corruption and limit his power new billionaires— like Alibaba founder Jack Ma — have been just as popular.
The renewed rivalry with the West has also boosted the popularity of both leaders. Many Russians and Chinese are convinced that the West—through NATO after 1991 zoom in and US support Taiwan— is a threat to their dominance. Polls show that up to three quarters of the Russians and most Chinese supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While times have changed, the playbook on popularity has not. The powerful still appeal to the people by presenting themselves as defenders of equality against poverty, corruption and foreign invaders. The more controversial their tenure, the more they need success in these struggles. The less successful they are in economic battles, the greater their need for an external enemy.
It is no coincidence that the Russian invasions of Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine in 2022 followed Putin’s controversial return for an unprecedented third period in 2012 and coincided with a decline incomes (and oil prices) since 2014 and rising corruption. No explicit political resistance to Xi’s principle is expected third term this October. But it still faces popular demands for economic improvement. Since 2012, when Xi took power, corruption has increased while inequality is undiminished. The prolonged zero-covid Lockdowns have reduced economic growth forecasts for 2022 to 3.3 per cent, the lower since 1976 (except 2020).
The strongman’s popularity game strategy dictates that he divert attention from China’s economic woes and try to take over Taiwan by force. But history shows that China will move carefully and base his actions on about Russia’s experience. The more successful Ukrainian resistance is, and the more costly the war to Russia, the more likely peace will be in the Taiwan Straits.
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This article originally appeared on Project Syndicate.
