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The Dartmouth
July 18, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

China suffers from lack of legitimacy, prof. says

Brandeis University professor Ralph Thaxton addresses the audience during his lecture,
Brandeis University professor Ralph Thaxton addresses the audience during his lecture,

The Chinese government faces a crisis of legitimacy in rural areas because of corrupt and repressive practices, Thaxton said. China has nonetheless made progress in curtailing discontent, he said.

"China has evolved into a stable authoritarian regime with a situation that has improved enormously over the years and with little likelihood of rebellion and revolution in the future," Thaxton said. "What that interpretation often leaves out is that China also has an enduring rural legitimacy crisis."

Rural distrust of the government stems from the famines of Mao Tse-Tung's "Great Leap Forward" economic development program in the 1960s.

Drawing from his field research in rural Chinese villages, Thaxton said the famines resulting from this program lasted into the mid-1980s, causing dissent among villagers.

The Chinese government's continued approach to policy, reminiscent of Mao's rule, includes brutality, corruption, deception and entitlement, Thaxton said, which contributes to the government's lack of legitimacy.

"It's a work style that rural people associate with the party's abandonment of the Mandate of Heaven and with its violations of their most basic social rights," Thaxton said, referring to the traditional religious concept used by Chinese rulers to legitimize their reign.

The Chinese government's efforts to cover up the extent of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic beginning in 2002, along with the recent production of melamine-tainted baby formula, are both examples of party deception, Thaxton said.

Government officials are now feasting in their private dining halls, subsidized by the government, Thaxton said, while the public starves in the government's collective dining facilities, a practice which he said began under Mao and was recently revived.

"This pattern of plunder continued into the reform period and in fact it became the order of the day," Thaxton said. "Corruption is a tool of power, and even necessary to sustain power and governance in China."

Democratic solutions are unlikely in China as the government has actively undermined attempts at democracy, Thaxton said.

"The party has all but usurped and defeated the democratic prospect in rural china," Thaxton said. "That's not to say the prospect is dead."

Thaxton also cited the petition system, which he said has been corrupted and curtailed by the Chinese government, as another failed attempt at democracy. The system was initially designed to allow people to submit grievances to the central government, allowing the government to address sources of unrest before they became widespread.

Local officials, however, are now forcing people to pay a bribe before they can submit a petition to the central government, he said, preventing those who cannot afford the payment from voicing their grievances.

"The [government] cannot process and address all of these demands [that it never sees]," Thaxton said. "Hence, more people will stop believing in its propaganda line, which is 'Beijing is their benefactor.'"

Recent reforms have given rural workers the ability to migrate to the city, Thaxton said, but repression and exploitation have left these workers with few resources to succeed in urban areas.

"At the dawn of reform, these people have nothing," Thaxton said. "You will not find anyone talking about this, but it's there in spades."

Exploited in the cities, particularly by the construction sector, these rural migrants have been forced to return to farming, he said, adding that this is the primary cause of recent unrest.

In the future, discontented rural groups could potentially align with college graduates in China, Thaxton said.

While this kind of collective action will pose difficulties for the central party, he said, there is little potential for armed rebellion is low.

"It's a simplicity that economists seem determined not to get," Thaxton said. "The population is disarmed. There is no Second Amendment right in this country"

The lecture, held on Wednesday afternoon in the Haldeman Center, was the fourth event in a year-long series about the rise of China held by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.