REVOLUTION OF RISING EXPECTATIONS: U.S.; ARAB WORLD; CHINA

In the period from the l950s into the 70s, the phrase "revolution of rising expectations" (RRE) was popularized to explain the outlook of people in colonial and post-colonial countries as the people looked to a brighter future. RRE was also applied more generally to underdeveloped nations of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. While part of RRE was attributed to expectations for a better future after shedding the colonial rulers, those expectations were also significantly fueled by a growing awareness of what was looked at as "the good life" in the developed world -- a world of cars, good housing, educational opportunities, abundant food, and proper health care. The problem was that the reality in the underdeveloped world did not rise to the expectations, thus fostering political unrest and rebellion. RRE may help explain an episode of unrest in this country, current unrest in the Arab world, and the possibility of future unrest in China.

In a sense the U.S. had its own RRE and rebellious fallout in the l960s with the urban riots of African-Americans in northern cities. The civil rights movement in the l950s and early 60s led to national legislation that banned various forms of legal and social discrimination in the south. However, the new legal and political empowerment of African-Americans in the south did nothing for their counterparts in the north where many forms of economic and social discrimination existed. These involved the day-to-day world of lack of employment opportunities, poor housing, and other forms of racially based deprivation. A "we're not going to take any more" outlook led to violent riots, triggered by events such as a court verdict, in northern cities beginning in l964, reaching their zenith with the assassination of Martin Luther King in the spring of l968.

RRE may have some value in understanding what is currently going on in the Arab world. Within the context of post-colonialism it would seem that ending exploitive and repressive colonial rule would create expectations of better things to come both politically and economically. But what resulted in many of the Arab countries was decades of autocratic rule which banned or limited political dissent and which separated the population into a small population of politically well connected "haves" and a large mass of "have nots". What evolved was the politically oppressed and economic "have nots" merging into movements to overthrow the autocrats as has occurred in Tunisia and Egypt but has yet to be fully played out in countries like Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and perhaps Jordan.

Now to China which has come a long way since the very oppressive years of Mao Tse- tung. There has been a remarkable opening up of the Chinese economy to foreign investment and a market economy, although still controlled by the ruling communist regime. The opening up of the economy has not been matched by a loosening of political control which seeks to shut off any dissent whether in the form of street demonstrations or the linking of dissenters through the internet or social networks such as Facebook.

The big concern among Chinese leaders these days is that the opening up of the economy which has led to the economic improvement for tens of millions can also lead to frustration and dissent if the economy falls on hard times. Right now the Chinese economy is in the stage of continual robust growth with the benefits spilling over to the workers and motivating the rural poor to migrate to the cities in search of jobs and a better life. But some trouble signs are appearing. A nagging problem of the robust growth is the accompanying need to slow overheating and prevent hyperinflation. The government has taken steps to slow inflation through such things as higher interest rates and requiring banks to hold more cash reserves to slow lending.

The fear, however, is that further inflation will push prices up to the point where the higher prices eat into the welfare of the workers. Further, the higher prices will extend to China's export market, the engine of its growth, to the point of cuttings its sales abroad which in turn will lead to worker layoffs and have a chilling effect on the millions of rural poor hoping to improve their lives by becoming urban workers.

For the near-term future, China does not appear to be threatened by RRE-based rebellion but the Chinese government is hypersensitive to any real or perceived future dissent. So any political ripple effects flowing from economic difficulties, real or perceived, are likely to be met with very harsh repression. The Tunisian and Egyptian models are clearly not the wave of the future in China.