---

Jennifer Lind’s new book Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny tackles the question of how China has become a major technological power, confounding expectations in much of the West that its authoritarian system would stifle innovation. Using the concept of ‘smart authoritarianism’, she analyzes how the Chinese Communist Party has been able to retain its grip on power even while fostering world-class innovation, in turn allowing China to become a peer competitor to the United States. Lind is an associate professor of government at Dartmouth, where she specializes in the international relations of East Asia and U.S. foreign policy towards the region. We spoke recently in London; the following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Q: You write in the book about how in the West we’ve tended to see democracy as the best political system to foster innovation and economic growth; and we’ve looked at autocracies like China and said they can copy us and maybe catch up, but they won’t be able to innovate as well as democratic countries. 

Why do you think it’s actually a misconception that democracies are inherently better at innovation? 

A: There has been a strong view that autocracies, by virtue of their institutions and the policies they pursue, are profoundly anti-growth. For example, there is the notion that a dictator has to keep a selectorate — a narrow group of supporters — happy, and so concentrates on providing them with private goods, basically rents. By contrast in a democracy, you have an electorate that you have to please, and so you provide them with public goods, which are key for growth and innovation: things like education, infrastructure, public transport and so on. Democracies also have civil societies, which are useful for flows of information and people, providing different non-government bases of knowledge. Such mechanisms made many people confident that democracies would do a better job of creating the conditions for growth. 

The rise of the East Asian “tiger” nations [such as South Korea and Taiwan] during the 1960s and 1970s first confronted us with the reality that authoritarian countries were able to preside over rapid economic development. We were forced to say: wait a minute, look at them investing so heavily in human capital and infrastructure, creating merit-based bureaucracies instead of ones filled with their supporters or relatives. Contrary to what we’d thought, it seemed that autocracies could actually preside over economic growth — at least during that initial stage of industrialization. 

As China began to rise economically many thought maybe it would be able to imitate its East Asian neighbours; but the one thing we thought we knew is that there would be a ceiling to that growth. Perhaps, we thought, dictators can provide early-stage industrialization, but when countries reach the middle income level, their future growth has to come from innovation. They can’t just keep copying and producing things more cheaply than others produce them. 

And so we came to believe there would be an expiry date for China’s economic growth. We thought about the drivers of innovation — information flows, the ability of people to move in and out of sectors and to set up companies, the ability to go overseas if they want — and concluded authoritarians would not provide such things, because of the risk that it would lead to them losing power. And so we were deeply pessimistic about China. 

But my argument is that Chinese leaders didn’t govern the way we thought they would, and the country has proved much more able to innovate than expected. Even when you use conservative measures, China is now one of the world’s most innovative countries. Of course, on any given day, it’s hard to figure out who’s ahead. But asking whether China has caught up and will overtake the United States is not the way to frame this. I’m interested in great power competition and China’s ability to compete, particularly with the United States, economically, militarily and technologically. 

So the question becomes: is China able to operate at the technological cutting edge? Other technologically advanced countries lack certain dimensions of being a great power. South Korea, for example, lacks the population size; Germany lacks a strong military. China now basically ticks all the boxes. It’s got the population. It’s got the economic size. It’s increasingly got the military power. What we had all thought was the missing piece in the puzzle was technological leadership. Now it’s got that as well. 

Technologies of repression have really advanced… When we look at the CCP’s strategies, the advent of AI and facial recognition has been huge in terms of permitting low-intensity repression. We’re also seeing a movement toward the use of biometrics, which is really scary.

And the broader point is that the assumption that they couldn’t ever tick that box because of their system has proven to have been misplaced. 

‘Smart authoritarianism’ is the phrase you use to refer to how China and other countries with autocratic systems have been able to foster innovation. Can you explain that for us?

There are various conditions or drivers you need to have present in your society in order to encourage innovation — things like property rights, capital investment for research, a high-skilled workforce, networks, the ability to reform. In the book I spell out what I call the ‘democratic advantage’ argument that’s based on a very influential body of economics literature: the idea that the biggest driver of economic growth is the nature of your domestic institutions, which can either be more inclusive, or more extractive. 

The argument many have made is that inclusive institutions are essential for promoting growth: democracies have inclusive political institutions, which will lead to inclusive economic institutions, which thereby will create more growth and innovation. The ‘democratic advantage’ argument would essentially say that autocracies won’t be able to create those conditions and democracies will do a much better job, so in the end autocracies just can’t compete. 

Smart authoritarianism in itself is a kind of innovation, a political innovation among autocrats, with which they essentially figured out a way to provide these pro-innovation conditions, or at least enough of them to create growth. According to the ‘democratic advantage’ story, there’s an inexorable trade-off between control and innovation. Namely: a regime can pursue policies that give it a tight grip on power; but then it won’t be able to innovate because it’s stamping out the conditions that encourage innovation. Because the regime wants to stay in power, it provides private goods to the selectorate; which means it’s not providing public goods; which will hinder innovation. In the mind of the institutionalists, there is a dilemma. If you want growth, you’ll have to loosen your control, but then you risk losing power. 

My argument is that we’ve seen a tremendous change among authoritarian leaders in how they govern. There’s a rich literature on authoritarian politics, but much of it is focused on political outcomes: Academics have identified a variety of policies that authoritarian leaders have pursued and scholars have examined whether these policies help them stay in power for longer. I focus, instead, on innovation. And what I show is that the same policies that ‘smart’ authoritarians have been pursuing have not just been good for their political fortunes, they turned out to be good for the economy. Specifically, I show they have helped to create the conditions for innovation. 

It’s important to note that these are not growth maximising strategies. These ‘smart’ authoritarians are trying to do two things: They’re trying to generate innovation while hanging onto power. They understand, I’m guessing, that they’re going to sacrifice some economic growth [because of things like the limitations they place on personal freedoms]. But the key insight is that authoritarians can still generate innovation when we thought they wouldn’t be able to do so. 

Another important dimension of this is that there’s a lot of adaptation. There is constant change, constant movement in response to what’s going on in the populace, what’s going on technologically. 

A great example is Xi Jinping’s crackdown in the technology sector [during the early 2020s]. People said, Why is he doing that? Doesn’t he understand that’s bad for the economy? I’m guessing he did, and that he was aware that he would sacrifice some growth and innovation. 

But over time the direction of policy has changed again, so that people like Alibaba’s Jack Ma are now back in favor. I compare it to sailing: depending on the direction you want to go in, depending on the wind, you have to constantly adjust, pulling in the sail or loosening it out. If you’re a sailor, you know that you’re never still. There is this constant shifting and adjusting and moving and turning — and that’s the kind of dynamism that is essential for a government that’s trying to do this. 

So essentially, you don’t have to choose between control and innovation: You can constantly oscillate between the two, and that’s key to staying in power and being able to operate this system? 

Yes. We didn’t think that authoritarians could square that circle. We saw with the Soviet Union that when they introduced glasnost, the regime fell. So our assumption became that this was going to be extraordinarily difficult, even impossible; and we had some good reason to believe that. It is difficult. 

An important thing to point out is that the jury is still out on how long this ‘smart authoritarianism’ will last. But Singapore’s government has survived with it since 1960. In the Chinese case, they’ve been able to do this long enough that they lifted their country from poverty into the ranks of a superpower. Even if this falls apart tomorrow, they have absolutely transformed their country and politics. 

What are the risks, though, for smart authoritarians? Where can things go wrong for them? 

They’re trying to do something that is extraordinarily difficult, and the stakes are extremely high. Sometimes an authoritarian regime can transition into a competitive system, like [the KMT] in Taiwan, and they do pretty well; sometimes they’re in power, sometimes they’re not. But there’s also the South Korean situation, where if you shift into a more competitive system, the opposition might get into power and start putting you on trial. Then there’s the Gaddafi situation in Libya, which is every authoritarian’s nightmare. There are pretty ugly ways to leave office if you’re an authoritarian. That’s going to be constantly on their minds. 

…‘smart authoritarianism’ sounds like approbation… But what we’re talking about is still authoritarianism — still enormous brutality. It’s wonderful that the Chinese people have had, over time, an expansion in civil society. But there is tremendous tragedy associated with the lack of freedoms that they do still have.

One thing that is important to remember is the smart authoritarian model requires good information — about what’s going on in the world, about technology, about strategies of control. The Achilles heel of authoritarian regimes has long been information — that they lack good information because of the nature of their institutions. For example, civil society provides a wealth of information. Here in Britain, there’s the media, there’s universities, there’s transnational linkages. There’s all sorts of different aspects of civil society. And historically authoritarians have had much less access to information. 

China, like many of the more competitive authoritarian regimes, has started allowing civil society. They have universities where of course there’s still a lot of control, but from which the regime can still glean some information. There’s a vast media in China. And there is an internal media available to the party, which has often been very blunt and very straightforward about what’s going on. That is essential for this model to work. Recently we hear tales of that internal media starting to become more toady-ish, trying to tell the top leaders exactly what they want to hear. The Party shouldn’t want that to happen because that would really hinder their ability to be as nimble as they need to be. 

What indicators do you look at to assess whether the Communist Party can continue to operate a ‘smart authoritarian’ system? 

Technologies of repression have really advanced. That’s one thing that authoritarians really have going for them. Technological change has allowed a movement toward low-intensity repression, because a regime has more options for repression that are less visible — more targeted, as opposed to brute violence such as mowing down protesters. The kind of very visible killings and beatings that we saw under Mao, which we would call high-intensity repression, is obviously quite bad for economic growth and innovation. When we look at the CCP’s strategies, the advent of AI and facial recognition has been huge in terms of permitting low-intensity repression. We’re also seeing a movement toward the use of biometrics, which is really scary. 

This has also become a kind of global project. Authoritarian countries are sharing strategies and information, so the CCP has not had to do this alone. And China specifically is communicating their methods of control to other regimes, as well as selling the technologies of repression. 

How has the Communist leadership managed to keep a lid on alternative power bases, at least to date? 

What you’re pointing to — and the institutional hypothesis would argue exactly this — is that if you allow for the growth of civil society, you will see the emergence of alternative sources of power. Historically, that’s why we’ve seen a lot of authoritarians try to clamp down on civil society, so as not to allow those alternative centres of power to emerge. It’s a big threat. 

That’s what China’s government is tasked with keeping a lid on, and that’s why, from its point of view, you can’t just allow civil society to do what it wants. You can’t just allow business people to turn into rock stars: You have to make sure they don’t get too much power. That was part of the Alibaba crackdown: It’s kind of training these high profile individuals as to what they can do and what they are not allowed to do. 

We always have to take a step back to remind ourselves that we’re not talking about machines. We’re talking about people’s lives, we’re talking about liberty. The term ‘smart authoritarianism’ sounds like approbation, it sounds like they’ve got this all figured out. But what we’re talking about is still authoritarianism — still enormous brutality. It’s wonderful that the Chinese people have had, over time, an expansion in civil society. But there is tremendous tragedy associated with the lack of freedoms that they do still have. We do see personal tragedies occurring, with detentions, with people not being allowed to continue in the fields that they were working in and of course what is happening in Xinjiang, or Tibet. 

Left: Police officers monitor a screen displaying surveillance footage of a park in Beijing. Right: Surveillance cameras lined up on a beam over a road in Chenzhou, Hunan. Credit: ChinaImages via Depositphotos

So when we talk about this, saying ‘isn’t this a clever model,’ we have to remember that at the end of the day, we’re talking about something that is often extremely tragic for the people who live under it. 

There’s a quote you have from Aristotle that sums this up well…

I thought that it was the perfect quote for summing up my argument, where Aristotle is telling authoritarian leaders to “Be not vicious, but half vicious.” Again, it’s this notion that authoritarian leaders could go too far toward being tyrants and despots, and engaging in predatory behavior against the people, the economy, and their rivals. Aristotle was recognising that there’s a better way. My work is underscoring that if you are half vicious, in this sense, then you can actually achieve a tremendous amount of innovation, and play a major role in the 21st century economy and 21st century great power competition. 

But half vicious is still vicious. And we can never forget that. 

How do democracies come back with a counter narrative to smart authoritarianism? 

I think we have been very complacent. One thing I appreciated about the innovation literature is that its scholars are very open about the fact that there’s no one way to encourage innovation. There’s no one way to innovate: there’s many different ways. We assumed that our way was best, and that if you weren’t doing it our way, you wouldn’t succeed. And we got this very wrong. 

When you hear people comparing the U.S. system in particular, or liberal economies to China’s economy, what they often do is compare the strengths of our system against the weaknesses of theirs. We didn’t look at the other side of the coin for either country. And so we didn’t ask ourselves, what’s not so great about our system, and on what dimensions might their system be actually pretty good (or even better)? That’s the full comparison that we really should have engaged in, and we didn’t. We compared our strengths against their weaknesses. 

China has an interest in helping other autocracies succeed and stay in power. They now have some of the most formidable technological tools of authoritarian control that they can sell and transfer. So this is really quite bad news for the spread of democracy. 

So first of all, we should just accept that we misdiagnosed this. You still don’t quite see the recognition that China has started to compete. You still see people explaining it away: saying, oh but China doesn’t really innovate, and so on. To be sure, this subject is really noisy — measuring innovation is really tricky, and with China there are also data problems. 

But at what point are we going to say, wow, they’re very innovative. A powerful strand of that has emerged in the last couple of years — the media are watching it, tech sectors are observing it — but there is still a lot of denial. 

I’m certainly not arguing in the book that their method is superior. I would never say let’s do it their way: I’m certainly not advocating for a system that violates human rights. But even just on a purely economic level, it’s really important now that we study the strengths and weaknesses of smart authoritarian systems. Before we were just looking at their weaknesses.

Do you think that China’s smart authoritarian system is the greatest threat that we’ve seen so far to the Western system and values, and Western views of how economies and politics should be run?

I would say the presence of a rich technologically advanced superpower is a profound threat, first of all to the spread of democracy around the world. China is already teaching many other authoritarian countries, both by example and by literally teaching and advising (just like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew did for China!). China has an interest in helping other autocracies succeed and stay in power. They now have some of the most formidable technological tools of authoritarian control that they can sell and transfer. So this is really quite bad news for the spread of democracy. 

As for economic systems, I guess it’s sort of a glass half full, half empty situation. One way you might look at it is that China had to become more market oriented. The authoritarian regimes that remained committed to central planning, personalistic bureaucracies, underproviding public goods, and so on, cannot compete. 

So, in one sense, it’s a victory for more liberal economic principles. But the key, the phrase there is ‘more’, not necessarily liberal. It didn’t have to be a liberal market economy, but it had to go more in that direction.

---