Change in China Must Come from Within

In his Nov. 22 Times Op-Ed article, “Understanding China,” Martin Jacques writes that we in the U.S. should not expect modern China to Westernize despite recent overtures of friendship and cooperation. He cites a long tradition in China of people seeing the state "as the guardian, custodian and embodiment of their civilization." Jacques writes that because the government is nearly synonymous with Chinese civilization, the people do not feel a natural antagonism to the state, as we do in the West.

Our Western system of checks and balances has a built-in suspicion of government. The Chinese, on the other hand, presumably accept the legitimate authority of the state as one would an ancestral father or family.

I think, however, that modern China will adapt this Western "antagonistic" model to reform its own system. The Chinese state will have to face more antagonisms as the whole country opens up to the world and people see that the authority of the state can be illegitimate too.