China has been called a resilient authoritarian regime due to its ability to adapt to changing conditions.Footnote 1 This could only have been accomplished with some form of learning having taken place. Across the 20th century, Chinese government officials have attempted to learn from other countries, with the aim of improving the country's governance. During the era of Mao Zedong 毛泽东, the Chinese had mainly sought to adopt lessons from the Soviet Union under Stalin, even though interest in the Soviet system waned following the Sino-Soviet split in 1960 when Soviet advisers, who by now were viewed as revisionists, left China.Footnote 2 The failures of Mao's regime eventually led to a major reassessment following his death in 1976. With Deng Xiaoping's 邓小平 rise to power, learning from other countries became a major part of the government's strategy. As the country's economy was opened to the world, a growing number of Chinese left to study abroad, and many eventually returned with new-found knowledge. In 1977, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) was founded, followed by the establishment of many international studies departments in universities which by 1999 employed about ten thousand researchers.Footnote 3 Moreover, from 1985 onwards, Chinese officials invited foreign experts to give development advice to the Chinese government.Footnote 4 The first expert was Singapore's former Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee 吴庆瑞, who had played a key role in Singapore's economic development.Footnote 5 At the same time, Chinese officials were sent abroad to actively study foreign countries. To this day, thousands of Chinese officials go abroad yearly to participate in study courses and master programmes. Even if the effects of this active learning are not easy to measure, it is at least clear that there is a great demand for making use of foreign ideas.
The article focuses on a comparison of Chinese interest in learning from the Swedish and Singapore models, both of which have attracted great interest among academics and policymakers. Interest in foreign models has been mainly driven by different ideological schools, which have used foreign models to justify their reform proposals. Scholars within the democratic socialist camp such as Xie Tao, He Bingmeng, Xu Chongwen and Yang Qixian have favoured Sweden's social democracy, with its emphasis on a welfare state, while neo-authoritarian as well as neo-conservative intellectuals, including Xiao Gongqin, Zheng Yongnian and Cao Yunhua, have favoured Singapore's state-capitalist alternative, which promotes neo-liberal market principles albeit with the government taking a strong role. In recent years, especially since the rise of Xi Jinping 习近平, the “Singapore model” has grown in prominence, while interest in the “Swedish model” has declined.
China as a “Learning State”
Perhaps surprisingly, Chinese reformers and intellectuals have turned to studying smaller countries such as Sweden and Singapore in order to find lessons to emulate. In order to understand how Chinese policymakers chose particular states as models, we need to determine the criteria for selecting successful “models” (moshi 模式, dianfan 典范) or “good examples” (hao bangyang 好榜样). The selection is primarily based on models that scholars frequently describe as “outstanding achievements” (jiechu chengjiu 杰出成就) or “successes” (chenggong 成功), and mainly on a perception of sound economic growth, social harmony, and stable one-party rule. In the following, we seek to demonstrate that the selection of foreign models is driven by the belief that the country's former greatness needs to be restored,Footnote 6 which is accompanied by an interest in developing a third way of socialism as an ideological alternative between capitalism and communism. At the same time, the learning should maintain one-party control, regarded as the only viable form of governance for China. This last reason also presents the greatest limitation to the learning as lessons that threaten the control of the Communist Party are either ignored or dismissed entirely. While the Chinese learning is driven mainly by the desire to return the country to international prominence through economic growth, it seeks to avoid changing the underlying fundamental aspects of the regime that are the claim to socialism and one-party rule, or in Shambaugh's terms, the ideological and organizational dimensions of the Communist Party.Footnote 7
Nationalist aspiration for greatness
Perhaps the most important reason for the Chinese effort to learn from other countries stems from its desire to return to greatness. This rests on the belief that China was deprived of this role when Western powers defeated a weakened Chinese empire and forced it to sign “unequal treaties” in the late nineteenth century, such as the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 following the country's defeat in the First Opium War. This created pressure on the Chinese government to “open their eyes to the outside world” (kaiyan kan shijie 开眼看世界).Footnote 8 However, the weak imperial Manchu government was reluctant to accept foreign ideas that contradicted Chinese traditions. This unwillingness to fundamentally challenge the existing norms contributed to the rise of a nationalist movement, which viewed the empire as tyrannical, corrupt and backward-oriented. Its leader, Sun Yat-sen 孙中山, argued for adopting Western ideas, such as the nation-state to counter the traditional family-based society and, following a period of tutelage, a republican government.Footnote 9
Much of what happened in China was influenced by Japan, which had also experienced the exertion by Western powers of overwhelming force when American warships appeared in the middle of the 19th century and forced the country out of a long period of isolation. Japan similarly had to sign unequal treaties such as the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1858. The humiliation of the Tokugawa shogunate triggered the Meiji Restoration, during which many Japanese went abroad to learn about why Western forces had become so powerful. They quickly adopted many different ideas, even deciding that colonialism was necessary for a strong nation.Footnote 10
Japanese modernization eventually led to the decision to take over parts of China. In 1931–32, Japan sought to establish a pan-Asian region, labeled the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940, which was an attempt to repel the invading Western powers and thus restore the Asian region to greatness with Japan at the helm.Footnote 11 However, Japan's attempt to control and unify Asia led to significant resistance, not least because of the attempt to subjugate many of the local people. In China, its invasion by Japan was regarded as a second humiliation, overshadowing that of the Western invasion, in part because the Chinese empire had long regarded itself as the centre of East Asian culture. Despite the animosity, however, many Chinese became interested in learning from Japan, with the purpose of reversing the fate of the nation.Footnote 12 These included Sun Yat-sen, who was not only an admirer of the Japanese experience but also had close ties to Japanese politicians.Footnote 13
The legitimizing slogan for seeking foreign lessons from enemies was “learning the merits from foreign powers to conquer them” (shiyi changji yi zhiyi 师夷长技以制夷).Footnote 14 The learning exercise thus was not merely to help China develop economically but more importantly to triumph over countries that had been chosen as role models.Footnote 15 This mindset was behind the Communist Revolution in 1949 and Mao Zedong's rise to power. The Communist Party promoted the idea of borrowing lessons from “successful” socialist countries to construct China's own unique form of communism or socialism, which during the Cold War was limited to countries within the Communist bloc.
With the end of the Cultural Revolution, a more pragmatic Chinese leadership emerged that did not consider it necessary to limit the learning to a particular region based on ideological grounds. This was exemplified by Deng Xiaoping's famous saying: “It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it can catch mice,” which expressed the desire to absorb all useful elements from successful countries and adapt them to the Chinese context. This is based on the assumption that it is impossible to copy models as a whole because each country has developed under different conditions.Footnote 16
Even when Chinese observers study successful countries, their goal is not simply to understand why these countries have succeeded or how China could become similarly successful. Instead, these countries become goal lines that need to be crossed. The end point must be to surpass these countries, which is reflected in Deng Xiaoping's statement “Singapore has good social order and they govern the place with discipline. We should tap their experience and learn how to manage better than them.”Footnote 17 This of course means that foreign models would eventually lose their significance as China takes its rightful place in the world order.
Searching for a “third way”
Aside from economic growth, Chinese intellectuals and officials emphasize the need to find a new form of socialism, which is considered necessary for achieving social harmony and maintaining the legitimacy of the Communist Party. After the Cultural Revolution, China's period of reform and opening up created an intense but short-lived fascination with the American market economy and its democracy among intellectuals, which, however, was discredited in the aftermath of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in 1989. After that, the ruling CCP became more politically conservative and decided to search for a “third” or “middle way” towards modernity.Footnote 18 This search involved changes to the meaning and interpretation of socialism. It also entailed that the selection of role models for Chinese reformers had to show some semblance to the ideological discourse.
From an ideological perspective, a foreign role model needs to be able to provide a useful reference for the development of an alternative understanding in order to overcome the apparent contradictions between the traditional leftist and rightist conceptions of socialism. Although the conflict between the leftists and rightists is still a major feature of ideological debate, there is growing agreement that a middle road between the two must be found, which has been called “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”Footnote 19 The debate has thus focused on which kind of alternative should be found.
Maintaining the one-party state
Finally, the selection of a foreign country as a role model hinges on whether it can provide solutions for strengthening one-party rule.Footnote 20 Regimes that are governed by a single dominant party have generally been preferred over countries with multiparty systems.Footnote 21 As our analysis shows, this has influenced the decision to focus on Sweden and Singapore, which have been ruled by dominant parties over long periods. There is a belief that the successful experience of these ruling parties can provide important lessons for the Communist Party in maintaining power while introducing major economic and political reforms.Footnote 22
This requirement, however, also represents a major obstacle for effective learning. Rather than pragmatically selecting foreign models, the need to maintain the power of the Communist Party precludes any lessons that deviate from the current regime. For this reason, in-depth discussions of the intricacies of the two political systems are limited. The political learning is thus only superficial, with the primary aim to confirm that single-party rule can be effective in achieving socio-economic development, while in-depth information of multiparty systems is discouraged or sometimes even disallowed because it could lead to discussions about the effectiveness of multiparty systems. For example, Sun Jingfeng, a leading Chinese scholar on Singapore politics, noted in 2002 that Chinese publications dealing with Singapore predominantly discussed the economic transformation and rarely dealt with the underlying political processes. Although the interest gradually shifted from economic to socio-political aspects during the late 1990s, in-depth studies continued to lag behind.Footnote 23 Furthermore, Chinese academia lacks a strong critical tradition, which means that mainstream voices generally overshadow opposing views. For example, most of the Chinese publications come with the preconceived notion that the Singapore experience is useful for China instead of any discussion of fundamental differences. Only a few Chinese scholars, such as Cai Dingjian and Cao Yunhua, have expressed concern about this problem, however their voices have received little attention.Footnote 24
Chinese Discourse on the Swedish and Singapore model
With the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the government under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) became fixated on the Stalinist version of the “Soviet model” in order to bring about its rapid transition from an agricultural society to an industrialized Communist society.Footnote 25 In the 1960s and ’70s, the Chinese leadership resisted reforms similar to those under Khrushchev and, as a consequence, Chinese leaders “could neither offer a satisfactory substitute for the Soviet model nor accept its unacknowledged persistence in their own society.”Footnote 26 With the onset of the Reform and Opening-up policy, the dominance of traditional socialism, however, declined and a plurality of different schools emerged which included liberalism, neo-authoritarianism, the New Left, democratic socialism and new Confucianism.Footnote 27 Each of these schools searched for different foreign models to justify its own ideas and find an ideal developmental path for the country. Li He, a prominent scholar on China's political thought, argues:
In the post-Mao China, the Chinese intellectuals are confronted with a variety of models. The liberals favor the American model and share the view that the Soviet model has become archaic and should be totally abandoned. Meanwhile, democratic socialism in Sweden provided an alternative model. Its sustained economic development and extensive welfare programs fascinated many. Numerous scholars within the democratic camp argue China should model itself politically and economically on Sweden, which is viewed as more genuinely socialist than China.Footnote 28
In addition, neo-authoritarians have been particularly interested in an Asian alternative model of political development that can be found in places such as Singapore. The small city-state has also triggered renewed interest in Confucianism due to the Singaporean government's claim in the 1990s that “Asian values” had contributed to its success. This occurred because, as Michael Barr states, “The cultural source of ‘Asian values’ is most commonly Confucianism,” which here constituted “the state-centred form adopted by successive Chinese emperors from the second century BC onwards.”Footnote 29 For this reason, although “Asian values” were meant to be pan-Asian, they resonated greatly with Chinese officials.
Comparing the discourse of the “Swedish model” and “Singapore model” allows us to focus on the different economic, political and ideological debates in China. This demonstrates how different schools of thought have made use of a foreign model and adapted it to the Chinese context. The discourses also show us the waxing and waning of different ideologies. While social welfare dominated the first period of learning, there has been an increase in interest in state capitalism that combines neoliberal economic ideas within an authoritarian political system.
Although both Singapore and Sweden have been considered as “third ways of socialism,” they are different in regard to their welfare state and the associated political system as shown in Table 1. Sweden represents left-leaning social democratic ideas, while right-leaning intellectuals have looked towards Singapore's developmental state for inspiration.Footnote 30 While the “Swedish model” balances a social welfare state in a mixed economyFootnote 31 with liberal democracy, albeit with a dominant party,Footnote 32 the “Singapore model” seeks compatibility between a free market economy and single-party competitive authoritarianism. The latter is in fact officially opposed to the idea of a welfare stateFootnote 33 and instead promotes developmentalism as the primary objective of the state.Footnote 34 Lee Kuan Yew 李光耀 has argued that “watching the ever increasing costs of the welfare state in Britain and Sweden, we decided to avoid this debilitating system.”Footnote 35 According to Holliday, this places Singapore in the category of “productivist welfare capitalism,” which involves “a growth-oriented state and subordination of all aspects of state policy, including social policy, to economic/industrial objectives.”Footnote 36
Table 1: Comparison of the Swedish and Singapore Models
Source: Compiled by the authors.
The Swedish model
The negative consequences of the economic liberalization in the reform and opening-up period, including growing unemployment with the end of the “iron rice bowl” (tie fanwan 铁饭碗), which had provided job security, as well as developing inequality, raised concerns within the Communist Party about its legitimacy due to its claim to socialism. The left-leaning camp did not only include those who had a positive view of the Maoist era, but also those who felt it was possible to find an approach that could combine social policies with the market orientation in order to achieve a more equitable development. This made studying Sweden's situation particularly appealing. The term “Swedish model” was coined by Rudolf Meidner to define a regime that aims to achieve complete employment and equality.Footnote 37 The Chinese supporters were particularly interested in an approach to social welfare that did not hinder economic development. This was based on their observation that from 1870 to 1970, the country had evolved from a poor agricultural nation to an economically advanced state, while its economic growth was the fastest among all industrial countries. At the same time, the country had been able to maintain the most comprehensive social welfare system in the capitalist world,Footnote 38 which was viewed as extraordinarily successful in eliminating poverty.Footnote 39 It is thus not surprising that the country is regarded as a symbol of “efficiency, advancement, and equality.”Footnote 40
The Chinese understanding of the “Swedish model” primarily focuses on the various elements of the social system that was established under the rule of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti or SAP).Footnote 41 The main aspect of the model is its social welfare policy.Footnote 42 There are basically two different perspectives from which to interpret the Swedish experience. First, a number of prominent scholars like He BingmengFootnote 43 and Liu JiansheFootnote 44 argued that the Swedish model constituted the combination of cooperative rather than contentious politics, market economy with state intervention, and a comprehensive social welfare system that provided comprehensive social assistance from cradle to grave.Footnote 45 Other leading scholars, such as Xu ChongwenFootnote 46 and Zhang ShuangshuangFootnote 47, interpreted the Swedish model from a historical perspective, which they divided into three consecutive stages that were called, respectively, welfare socialism (fuli shehui zhuyi 福利社会主义, early 1930s–late 1960s), functional socialism (gongneng shehui zhuyi 功能社会主义, late 1960s–1982), and fund socialism (jijin shehui zhuyi 基金社会主义, 1983–), which focused on reforms of the welfare system. The first stage was the attempt to attain wealth redistribution through taxation and redistribution, the second gave some managerial power over companies to employees and the government, while the last stage allowed employees to share the ownership of collective enterprises. By reviewing academic publications, official government papers and mainland Chinese media reports, we find that the majority of publications focus mainly on welfare socialism as a model for achieving wealth equality and only briefly touch on elements related to democratic socialism or the details of the socio-political system.Footnote 48
As previously mentioned, for Chinese observers it is very important that the country has long been governed by a single party, and in comparison to other long-lasting single-party dominant regimes, including the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico, the Kuomintang (KMT) 国民党 in Taiwan, and even the People's Action Party (PAP) in Singapore, none has ruled as long as Sweden's SAP.Footnote 49 Although from the mid-1970s onwards the Swedish economy encountered many problems like rising income disparity (mid-1980s), unemployment (1990s) and economic insecurity,Footnote 50 it still maintained low unemployment (below 3 per cent), low inflation (below 3 per cent), and solid economic growth (near 3 per cent) through effective reforms, which earned it the title of “model of adjustment and development.”Footnote 51 Finally, the promotion of human welfare inherent in the social welfare state is appealing both to the Chinese public and the leadership in their assertion for the need to “rule for the people” (zhizheng weimin 执政为民).
The Singapore model
Chinese academics have become increasingly fascinated with Singapore's development experience. Following the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China showed increasing interest in Singapore. This desire to learn from the successful “Asian Tiger” state grew significantly in the 1990s when the country was increasingly viewed as a model.Footnote 52 Since then, the “Singapore model” has become synonymous with the country's successful development path under the leadership of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). It refers to the combination of one-party authoritarian rule with advanced economic development,Footnote 53 which is particularly appealing to the CCP. In 1992, then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping explicitly singled the country out as a reference point for China during his famed “Southern Tour.”Footnote 54 Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's “founding father,” also spoke of how China viewed Singapore as a model for its own development.Footnote 55 In Chinese academic and official texts, the term is often referred to as the “Singapore experience” (Xinjiapo jingyan 新加坡经验), and the obsession with this experience is called “Singapore fever” (Xinjiapo re 新加坡热).Footnote 56 Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, the discourse of the “Singapore model” has become prominent and stirred heated discussions among many Chinese officials and academics. The use of the term “Singapore model” also gradually replaced “Singapore fever” and became widely used by both Chinese and foreign observers.Footnote 57
In many ways, the reason for China's interest in Singapore's experience is similar to that of the Swedish model. It mainly began with Deng Xiaoping's observation that the small Southeast Asian island nation had experienced a dramatic economic transformation within merely two decades of gaining independence in 1965, thus becoming one of the four so-called “Asian Tigers,” which also includes Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. The economic development was accompanied by a successful public housing programme and other social measures that have contributed to the lack of major social contention. At the same time, the ruling party has remained in firm control of the government and has always received an overwhelming majority of the popular vote at the polls. The Chinese interest in Singapore, as Benjamin Ho points out, is the strength of Singapore's political leadership, its ability to ensure domestic stability and its economic prosperity.Footnote 58 These three factors formed the “attractive ‘Singapore model’ for Beijing to emulate – at least in part – in improving domestic well-being, which is the key to justifying and legitimizing the rule of the CPC.”Footnote 59 This image of Singapore is “more caricature than reality”Footnote 60 because it exaggerates the achievements and ignores the growing challenges. The specific lessons the Chinese observers have shown particular interest in are the Central Provident Fund (CPF), the public housing programme, the anti-corruption institutions, the operation of the ruling party, as well as the role of government-linked corporations. Moreover, Singapore's success was seen as particularly relevant because of its majority Chinese population, which suggested a unique Asian path of development and allowed culturalists to promote conservative values rooted within Confucianism to counter the growing calls for universal values linked to the human rights discourse.
The Changing Relevance of Models
The rise and fall of Chinese interest in different countries as potential role models can be linked to the strength of the different schools of thoughts. The Swedish and Singapore models have found support from ideologically very different groups of people. The former reflects the ideas of social justice within a capitalist system as well as a commitment to representative democracy, while the latter represents a state-led market economy within a soft-authoritarian regime.
Interest in a liberal model of economic development, which had been influenced by admiration for the economic success of the US,Footnote 61 waned following the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 because it had also brought demands for greater democracy and threatened the absolute control of the Communist Party. The crackdown strengthened authoritarian ideas but also shifted interest to democratic socialism represented by the Swedish model as well as state capitalism linked to the Singaporean experience. This can be demonstrated in the number of academic publications on the two countries. Following 1978, interest in Sweden surged first, while interest in Singapore also steadily increased. Following 1989, interest in Singapore grew more rapidly, overtaking the Swedish model in 1992 (see Figure 1). This indicated the growing ideological dominance of the authoritarian approach of state capitalism over democratic socialism. With Xi Jinping assuming leadership in 2012, this became even more evident as the number of Chinese publications on Singapore soared while those on Sweden declined significantly from 2014 (see Figure 2). This suggests that democratic socialism has been abandoned because Xi Jinping has almost exclusively shown interest in the “Singapore model.”
Figure 1: Total Chinese Publications on Sweden and Singapore
Figure 2: Annual Chinese Publications on Sweden and Singapore
Left-leaning Chinese intellectuals have shown great interest in the concept of social democracy and view Sweden as “more genuinely socialist than China”Footnote 62 under a dominant socialist party. It has an even longer history than Marxist-Leninism, but reference to the model was repressed during Mao Zedong's rule. The concept is appealing because it combines the positive aspects related to the idea of socialism and liberalism which are often seen to be in conflict with each other: equality, liberty and authority. The contemporary Chinese discourse on democratic socialism is dominated by the following: constitutional government, democratic socialism as the orthodox Marxism, reassessing capitalism, deep but incremental political reforms, and the Swedish model of social democracy.Footnote 63 Sweden's welfare state system was viewed as similar to Confucian concepts, such as “paternalistic government” (jiazhangshi zhengfu 家长式政府),Footnote 64 “rule by virtue” (dezhi 徳治) and “service-oriented government” (fuwuxing zhengfu 服务型政府),Footnote 65 as promoted by the CCP government.Footnote 66
Chinese perceptions of the “Swedish model” have changed significantly over the years. According to Yang Xiaming, a Chinese-party school professor, from the 1950s to the 1970s, there was almost no interest in the “Swedish model” even though this was the golden era of international interest in Sweden.Footnote 67 With the reform and opening-up policy in the 1970s and the “liberation of minds” (jiefang sixiang 解放思想), the “Swedish model” was gradually recognized ideologically and politically as another path towards socialism,Footnote 68 and socio-economically as a “paragon of equality and wealth.”Footnote 69 Starting in the 1990s, a growing number of scholars and reformers promoted the “Swedish model” to the Chinese governmentFootnote 70 even though Sweden's achievements were already in relative decline, especially due to the reforms of the welfare system.Footnote 71 Generally speaking, the depictions of the Swedish model at this stage were predominantly positive. However, this changed in the early 2000s when scepticism about the “Swedish model” grew. This constituted a major re-evalution of the meaning of socialism and its viability. Many in the Chinese academia and media began to pay more attention to problems that had emerged in Sweden from the 1980s to the 1990s, which were referred to as the “Swedish disease” (Ruidian bing 瑞典病).Footnote 72 Attention was paid especially to the failed welfare reform experiments. In addition, there was a strong trend towards free market ideology, which created scepticism about the “Swedish model” as a viable “third way,” and even scepticism about the welfare state as well.Footnote 73
Though the “Swedish model” drew criticism from the liberal and New Left camps, it served as a compromise because some of its core values, such as “scientific development” (kexue fazhan 科学发展) and the “principle of people-orientation” (yiren weiben 以人为本), have been attractive to the Chinese leadership, especially during the rule of Hu Jintao, who promoted the idea of a ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui 和谐社会). Particularly, there is increasing consensus that the Swedish model has been extraordinary successful in eliminating poverty and realizing social justice.Footnote 74 However, Chinese leaders have been worried about the possibility that supporters of the Swedish model might use the country's multiparty system to subvert the one-party state, especially since the SAP lost elections in 1976, 1991 and 2006.Footnote 75 As a consequence, the social democrats in China have tried to modify their claims in order to reconcile their ideas with the official ideology.
Nowadays, both the opponents and proponents of Swedish lessons have, however, become marginalized. A growing consensus among academics sees only very limited use in the Swedish model because of its costly welfare state, while key defining features such as “universal values” and “constitutionalism” have become taboo. As such “they appreciate its extraordinary achievements but they also caution about the emerging problems and challenges; while they call for reference to the ruling experience of the SAP, they also object to the complete imitation.”Footnote 76
While democratic socialism has been reluctantly tolerated by the Chinese leadership, neo-authoritarianism as well as neo-conservativism have often received great support. Neo-authoritarianism began to surface in China in 1986 and although it was discredited because of organizational and ideological ties to disgraced reformer Zhao Ziyang 赵紫阳Footnote 77 due to his support for the student movement in 1989, it was able to survive by reinventing itself as neo-conservativism. No matter which moniker is used, nevertheless the ideas underpinning this school of thought have been frequently embraced by Chinese leaders seeking to legitimize the authoritarian regime. Most recently, it has become prominent with the ascendancy of Xi Jinping, who assumed the leadership of the CCP in 2012.Footnote 78 The neo-authoritarian school is closely linked to the discourse of the “Singapore model,” which has seen rising interest since 2012. This school of thought favours an enlightened autocracy that includes a strong leader who adopts undemocratic measures to enforce economic development that is in the interest of the majority. The regime maintains top-down law and order as crucial conditions for modernization.Footnote 79 At the very beginning, Chinese neo-authoritarians justified their ideas with reference to Western political development studies, especially Samuel Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies,Footnote 80 which argued that authoritarianism may be a necessary or inevitable stage on the road to capitalism and thus democracy. The “Four Asian Tigers” provided empirical evidence for this thesisFootnote 81 and legitimized a reform path that combined market economy with an authoritarian regime by claiming the need for “developmentalism” in which the state steers the economic development.Footnote 82
Since the late 1970s, China has increasingly regarded Singapore's experience as useful for China's reforms. Despite temporary downturns following the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global economic crisis, the fascination with the tiny Southeast Asian city-state has steadily grown (see Figure 2). Both the depth and scope of the learning process has increased over the years. Increasingly, many of Singapore's socio-political aspects have received greater attention, which followed predominant interest in economic lessons at an earlier stage.Footnote 83 Also, the type of learning activities became more multifaceted. Besides a growing number of academic studies, there were now many media reports, cadre trainings, tourists, business travelers, and migrants.Footnote 84 Although some scholars, such as Cao Yunhua,Footnote 85 Cai DingjianFootnote 86 and Xiao Gongqin,Footnote 87 have raised concerns about the obsession with Singapore, their appeals have been overwhelmed by the sweeping optimism about the Southeast Asian city-state and what it represents within academia and among officials.
Today, Singapore has become the only country that demonstrates the compatibility of sound socio-economic management with one-party rule. Following Samuel Huntington's assertion in a “Third Wave of Democracy” in 1991Footnote 88 and Francis Fukuyama's “End of History” in 1992,Footnote 89 in which he argued that liberal democracy had become the only remaining ideological alternative, in addition to the Chinese democracy movement that led to the crackdown in 1989, the hardened party leadership sought to counter the ideas of liberal democracy and became more politically conservative.Footnote 90 Therefore, during his Southern Tour in 1992, Deng Xiaoping reinvigorated the reformist intellectual movement, but only in regard to economic reform and improvements in governance and not in regard to political liberalization.Footnote 91
In this context, Singapore became instrumentalized by the Chinese leadership as an important model because it combines an idealized image of highly efficient and effective government under one-party rule.Footnote 92 Supporters of this school have argued for an emphasis on moral leadership over political competition to protect the nation's welfare.Footnote 93 The perceived advantages of this model suggest that authoritarian one-party rule may be superior to the plural multiparty representative democracy. The Chinese discourse thus represents an attempt to counter Fukuyama's claim that democracy has become the only feasible regime form.
Conclusion: The Future of Chinese Learning
The perception of success defined as economic modernization, an alternative form of socialism between capitalism and liberalism, and the ability to maintain one-party rule are the key reasons why Chinese reformers have shown an interest in learning from particular countries. Moreover, the waxing and waning of schools of thought such as leftism and neo-authoritarianism determine to some extent which country is chosen as a model and why interest eventually fades. It is for this reason that the “Singapore model” has become the dominant model today even though some of its elements, such as the multiparty system, are still viewed with suspicion. The Swedish model, however, has raised much more concern among Chinese observers. Due to the relatively slow economic growth in recent years and the risks of the multiparty system, a number of critics have highlighted the downsides of the welfare system, which has been derisively labeled as the “Swedish disease.” The criticism of the “Swedish model” highlighted a relative decline of the social democratic school, with a growing number of authors rejecting this alternative to socialism as ineffectual and thus implicitly problematic for maintaining one-party dominance.Footnote 94 The current official discourse redefining “socialism with Chinese characteristics” has relegated the idea of a welfare state and instead, perhaps paradoxically, prefers neo-liberal notions that economic growth will eventually benefit the majority of the population, the so-called trickle-down effect.Footnote 95 The economic transformation necessary for this should be accomplished through government control over key industries that leads the country from an export-based industrial economy to a service and knowledge-based economy.
Since gaining power, Xi Jinping has pursued a ruthless crackdown on free speech, banning the use of concepts such as “universal values,” “constitutional government,” and “civil society” in the media and the classroom. The Chinese government seems determined to root out Western values and to assert ideological control over the nation.Footnote 96 Probably as a consequence there has been a sudden decline in discussions on the Swedish model. Instead, Singapore's authoritarian state capitalist model has become the dominant form of reference, both in speeches by Chinese officials and in academic publications, because it provides strong legitimacy for countering negative Western influences. Many of the policies of the new Xi administration echo Singapore's governance model, including the need for a strong leadership and centralizing power, the emphasis on corruption, professionalizing the party-state, and increasing its responsiveness.Footnote 97
The increasing interest in the “Singapore model” may give the impression that Singapore's past could be China's future,Footnote 98 but there are many challenges.Footnote 99 The learning from the “Singapore model” lacks a critical reflection of the actual political situation and largely centres on the quest for ideological legitimacy of single-party rule. Moreover, the obsession with Singapore as the exclusive reference may not be sufficient to provide the kind of lessons China would need in order to deal with the mounting social problems that the country is facing. The growing socio-political divisions will mean that the regime will have to pay an ever higher price for repressive governance, which may not prove sustainable even though the CCP's repressive capability is still increasing.Footnote 100 However, the importance of one-party rule and the perception of success suggests that, at least rhetorically, Singapore will remain the focal point of the neo-authoritarian reformers.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank the two anonymous peer-reviewers for their very helpful comments on the article.
Biographical notes
Yang Kai is research postgraduate student at the Centre for China Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He previously worked as research assistant at City University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interest lies in interstate political learning with particular focus on China and Singapore.
Stephan Ortmann is assistant professor of comparative politics in the Department of Asian and International Studies at City University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie in Southeast and East Asian politics, especially Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Vietnam.
