Ruling, Resources and Religion

Abstract

Suicide plane bombers and shop burnings are illustrative of some of the questions involved in the art of ruling the Chinese multiethnic state in the twenty-first century. China, throughout the present century, has handled these questions in a manner that makes neighboring Asian states look to China as a possible model. The original East Asian model assumed initial economic growth under a single-party system—military or otherwise—and then the emergence of a multiparty system after the society reached a level of prosperity through targeted exports. The original East Asia model was based on what did happen in South Korea and Taiwan, and to a differing extent in Japan, at the end of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, a new Asian model emerged that remained quasi-single party, but still reflected high economic growth across wide sectors of society, of which China has had the largest economic success.