This week the most important nation on earth chooses its new leadership – and it’s not America

This week the most important nation on earth chooses its new leadership, and sets the social and economic direction for hundreds of millions of its own people, and the rest of the world. Not America, who also have some kind of election going on, but the People’s Republic of China. On Thursday, the 18^th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opens in Beijing. Two hundred members of the Politburo will select 25 members of the Politburo Standing Committee.

Some suggest a degree of democracy will be used where there are more candidates than places, rather than the democratic centralism which has prevailed since 1949. There is a split between modernisers and traditionalists – those who want to accelerate China’s market economy, and those who want to hold on to state control. A new generation of leaders will emerge from the congress, ready to preside over the next stage of China’s remarkable economic growth.

Miracle is the only word to describe what’s happening. Look around the room you’re sitting in. Take a look at the clothes you have on, the things in the room, and whatever electronic device you’re reading this on. I bet you most of it is manufactured in China. Since 1978, when Deng Xiaoping introduced market reforms into the collectivised farms and some state-run industries, China has become the world’s fastest growing economy.  It is the world’s largest exporter, and second-largest importer of goods. China has the second largest defence budget, and the world’s biggest army. Oh, and nuclear weapons.

I spent a couple of weeks in London last year with twenty journalists from Hunan province. They were conducting a ‘study tour’ of the British media scene. They took out their state-of-the-art tablets, and complained about the broadband speed. I suspect they found us unimaginably quaint, old-fashioned and above all small. When the circulation figures of a British newspaper were mentioned (say the 2.2 million people who read the Financial Times) they tended to check the translator had got it right. Sixty-four million people live in Hunan.

In July, China released its next five-year plan for economic growth. It includes investment in environmental technology, information technology, pharmaceuticals, aviation, and robots. China already has a manned space programme. Over the next five years it will build hundreds of new cities, airports, highways and ports. I joke with my children that one day they will work for the Chinese, except it’s probably not even a joke. China is the largest holder of the United States’ public debt. Across Africa, China is building new roads and towns. China is investing more into the African nations than the World Bank. I’ll be in Tanzania this time next week. I will see for myself the Chinese-led transformation of East Africa.

I imagine you can spend a lifetime trying to understand China, and end your days knowing only what you don’t know. The pace of change means that today’s orthodoxies are soon swept aside. A new book on China runs the risk of being outdated before it hits the shelves of Waterstone’s. What is beyond doubt is that the next stage of China’s dizzying development must be based on democratic reforms and political liberties. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo served to highlight a little China’s atrocious human rights record. But it is clear that western leaders and companies are prepared to overlook China’s record of torture, execution, abduction and imprisonment without trial, in return for the slice of the economic miracle.

Amnesty International says of the forthcoming party congress:

‘As a new generation of leaders prepares to take power in China, we are witnessing the same old patterns of repression against those that are courageous enough to peacefully challenge the regime on human rights. Hope lies with the growing number of people within China engaging in activism and demanding change. Over the coming decade the new leaders ignore such calls at their peril. Respecting human rights would be a genuine show of strength by the incoming leadership.’

Since September, Amnesty says 130 human rights activists have been detained. China retains the some of the apparatus associated with the Cultural Revolution – ‘Black jails’ which don’t appear in official documents, psychiatric institutions for dissenters, and ‘re-education camps’. Last year, more people were executed in China than the rest of the world put together.

Between 1917 and 1956, a generation of left-wing intellectuals and activists were beguiled by the Soviet Union. Beatrice and Sidney Webb famously called Stalin’s Russia a ‘new civilisation’. A generation was duped into everything from turning a blind eye to show trials and gulags, to outright treason and betrayal. Then, people were seduced by the idea of a workers’ paradise – ‘actually existing socialism.’ Today, the political class and business elite are equally seduced by glittering towers, high-speed trains and growth rates to die for. Except people are actually dying for them. The environment is dying. These are the challenges for the new Chinese leadership as it meets this week.

The challenge for the rest of us is to temper our wonder at their economy with demands for liberty and democratic reform.