ABSTRACT
Many claim that ‘politics with Chinese characteristics’ is run by strong authoritarians, and they are generally right about that – but they neglect that such dictators are common in strongly led local and medial units, not just in Beijing. Confucius placed responsibility on kings; Mencius refined this notion in a reservedly populist way: “Heaven sees as my people see; heaven hears as my people hear.” Chinese traditions are not mainly democratic, but they call for leaders who use their brains in the public interest. Ideas are always important in shaping political action, but information about unintended facts (inflations, geographies, unexpected technologies) shows that China’s reforms for prosperity were also affected by factors beyond intentions. Concrete accidents and understood ideas together determine what happens. Mid-level wealth, which reforms brought to China, created modern problems and potential solutions. President Xi Jinping has led centralist, anti-localist campaigns whose intensity reflects the strength of the 1970–1990 reforms they were designed to weaken. Reactionary conservatism is currently dominant but is contested in China. The Party is not all of China, and its elite will continue to need both conservative lions for internal coordination and reformist foxes for external adaptation. Future discourse about politics, in China as in other countries, will become more accurate if writers avoid limiting their concept of leadership to large collectivities only, and if they admit that both intentions and unintended circumstances actually shape what people do.
