In China, Change Could Be Coming

Many Chinese Are Losing Interest In Their Communist Party

(CBS)  THE INTERIOR: Inside China, there are, among others, 900 million peasants. There are tiny villages where a farm family earning $1,000 a year is doing very well. And it is here, oddly enough, that the Communist Party may be in real trouble. Here, indifference has given way to outright antagonism.

We recently visited with activist Yang Maodong. He is involved in a peasant protest at a small village where farmers gave up their land, but allegedly corrupt local officials kept the compensation that farmers were promised for the land. It’s a battle -- riots, hunger strikes and all -- against what farmers see as official corruption.

“The Party,” Yang told me, “has lost the ability to mobilize people in the basic legal system of society.” The farmers and peasants revolted AGAINST the local leaders (who are the local face of the Party) for being corrupt.

A few years ago a peasant protest would be put down, no questions asked, no information available. But through the Internet, Mr. Yang has spread the word. And there are other protests out there daily. How ironic -- the Party that came to power as a peasant revolt could end up losing power because the peasants are turning against its corruption and distance from ordinary people.

We asked Dr. Kenneth Lieberthal, former advisor to Pres. Bill Clinton on Asian issues, and a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, if the Party is over. He is one of America’s foremost experts on China and its inner workings.

Lieberthal points out that the Party still controls the bureaucracy, which means jobs, right down to who will run the local village library. “That still gives the party enormous clout.” But he adds:

“The issue is whether the Party will develop ways to reduce the alienation that so many feel -- over corruption, illegal land takings, environmental insults, social and economic inequality -- or whether social unrest will grow to the point that the Party can no longer monopolize power.”

Can such a change happen in so vast a country as China? For this, we remember the former Soviet Union, once dominated by the Communist Party. When change came, it happened quickly and decisively. The Communist Party vanished so completely it was actually outlawed.

The Party in China is a creaking structure, pockmarked with corruption, increasingly irrelevant, and, in some cases, actually counter-productive to most daily lives. It is dogged by a loss of faith and growing lack of faithful.

Is the Party over? The proper answer may well be, not if –- but when.