Can China and Cuba be compared? Not a single scholarly monograph engages in a systematic reflection on the parallels and differences between these two regimes. Sinologists believe in the uniqueness of China and Cubanists similarly stress the specificities of the Cuban experience. And yet, China and Cuba are two communist regimes that were born through revolution and that have survived for quarter of a century past the fall of the Berlin Wall. What is unique about the respective Chinese and Cuban reform paths? And what are the most important commonalities? Are there insights generated by examining China and Cuba that could be used to study governance in a larger group of non-democracies?
These questions presented the rationale for convening an international conference at Tulane University in New Orleans in April 17-18, 2015, which brought together 22 American Sinologists and Cubanists, as well as scholars from China and Cuba. The guests included gramminent scholars from institutions like Harvard, Stanford, the University of California at Irvine, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Havana, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. A dozen Tulane experts joined the external guests for two days of lively discussion. The Cubanists in the program were: Ana López, Elaine Diaz, Rafael Hernández, Richard Feinberg, Arachu Castro, and Ted Henken.
The specific focus of the conference was on the trajectories of post-revolutionary governance in China and Cuba. The panels disaggregated governance into its component parts: political, economic, ideological/cultural, management of civil society and the media, and civil-military relations. The panelists argued that on some of these dimensions, China is significantly ahead of Cuba. For example, until a few years ago Cuba seemed bent on avoiding Chinese-style economic and legal reforms. However, as revealed in papers by Paolo Spadoni (Georgia Regents University) and Carmelo Mesa Lago (University of Pittsburgh), the recent measures aimed at actualización del modelo económico and decisions to encourage foreign direct investment and to create special economic zones bear a striking resemblance to China’s initial reform trajectory in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the same time, Cuba has forged ahead of China in terms of political reform (for example, China does not allow for direct election of deputies to the national legislature) and in terms of its tolerance of civil society (China permits social organizations when they provide public goods at the local level but typically shuts down political NGOs and imprisons individuals who criticize the state, whereas Yoani Sánchez and other members of the critical realm are allowed to operate with limited interference in Cuba).
Despite this divergence, numerous participants in the conference pointed out that the two countries share an important similarity: though differently inflected due to historical specificities, nationalism is of paramount importance for regime preservation in both China and Cuba.
These parallels as well as differences were fruitfully explored in this academic conference that assembled prominent experts working on the two countries. By transcending both blanket rejections of the utility of comparison and resisting facile generalizations, these experts generated insights about the unity and diversity between these two post-revolutionary communist regimes.
The conference focused around identifying parallels and differences in specific areas of post-revolutionary governance in the two countries. The findings generated by the conference allow us to address a major question that has assumed a new level of urgency following the December 2014 announcement regarding the normalization of US-Cuban diplomatic relations: will Cuba eventually follow the Chinese path of economic reform and, if it does, how will this impact the prospects for the survival of the Cuban Communist Party? The tenor of the conference discussion led to one clear conclusion: Cuba has to keep implementing economic reforms, although copying the Chinese reform model may be neither possible nor desirable: that model was suitable for China given its levels of development, the structure of its economy, its level of urbanization, and the realities of the world economy during the waning years of the Cold War. The conference participants agreed that Cuba exists in a very different environment today, yet it needs to marketize and to adopt some features of the Chinese reform experience. At the same time, reform can endanger the survival of the communist party, especially if it is mismanaged. As Cuba continues further on the uncharted path of economic reform, the Chinese experience can offer useful lessons and warnings of mistakes to be avoided.
At the conclusion of the conference, the participants agreed that the most fruitful question is not whether China and Cuba are comparable but how they are comparable. Producing an answer to this question requires systematic exploration of the commonalities and differences between the two countries. The conference focused on political reform, civil-military relations, economic reform, and the evolution of civil society and media as windows onto understanding the evolving trajectories of governance of these two post-revolutionary regimes. These are the building blocks for a planned edited volume, which will further synthesize the logic of comparison that can be used to understand the similarities and the differences of the Chinese and the Cuban post-revolutionary experience.