Workers fasten electric wires in a rural area in Chuzhou, Anhui province. [SONG WEIXING/FOR CHINA DAILY]

Predicting the end of China has now become a fad. In the past quarter century or so, at least three rounds of "death notifications" on China have been issued: first at the turn of the 1990s and then in the early 2000s, most famously epitomized by Gordan Chang's eye-catching book, The Coming Collapse of China. Last year, veteran China watcher David Shambaugh joined the rank with his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, warning about "the coming Chinese crackup" and claiming the "endgame of communist rule in China has now begun".

Unsurprisingly, a sudden U-turn by the prominent Sinologist known for his moderate views sparked an international debate on "China's future", which is exactly the title of his new book. This time extended arguments are supplied, many of which are more nuanced than the shorter commentary. Nonetheless, the key theme remains: China is on the verge of demise.

To be fair, unlike Chang's much more blunt forecast which proved utterly wrong not once but twice, Shambaugh has been making his case in a smarter way. He avoids to a large extent the embarrassment of being proved wrong. Yet he falls prey to what can be called the trap of "collapsism", which suffers from two symptoms.

First, the central tenet of Shambaugh's case for China's fall focuses on the political, by which he means the one-party rule. For example, in China's Future he argues that innovation — which he considers the key to China's economic future — can only take off when "substantive political liberalization" takes place. The book underestimates, if not dismisses, China's political system's responsiveness to societal changes. In this sense, Shambaugh's "collapsism" places inadequate confidence in both the Chinese people and State.

Facts speak otherwise. For instance, the contracting-out system of rural land in China was famously initiated by a group of farmers in a remote village in Anhui province, which turned out to be one of the most successful policy innovations in the 20th century. It started bottom-up illegally but the State was quick to give it consent at first, then approval and finally assurance and support.

Since the 1990s the contract period has been extended twice, from 15 years to 30 years to unspecified long term, and a specific law passed for the system. This is but one example of social dynamism and State responsiveness in the 30-odd years of China's reform. Nevertheless, it is enough to show Shambaugh is absolutely correct in directing our attention to the Chinese political system when it comes to pondering the country's future — it is just that in overdoing so, he turns to be a victim of his own success.

The second symptom of Chinese "collapsism", Shambaughian or otherwise, is that it relies on an over-simplified yet long-entrenched dichotomy between authoritarianism and democracy. The associated verdict is simple: democracy lives while authoritarianism dies. There are two problems with this dichotomy.

Shambaugh's analysis is particularly weak and confused at this point. In his new book, he suggests China is approaching a roundabout with four choices ahead: hard authoritarianism (which in his view is the current path), soft authoritarianism, neo-totalitarianism and semi-democracy. With the first two paths, Shambaugh predicts decline, atrophy and collapse. For the latter two, successful reform transition. While he is right in conceptualizing regime types more or less along a spectrum, his analytical framework is still too schematic. The analogy he uses is much telling: a roundabout.

You either turn this way or that. And you turn quickly. This is in direct contrast with the analogy of gray zones. Shambaugh has thereby downgraded a complex process of exploration and experiments into a seemingly straightforward multiple-choice question. Along the way, a false sense of clarity and simplicity is gained at the expense of a sound grasp of the necessarily convoluted reality, which is exactly what China and the world need today. Therefore, instead of treating now or indeed any moment as the breaking point for either-or choices, as Shambaugh has done, we should better keep muddling through. It may not look elegant. But it works.

The second problem of the authoritarianism versus democracy paradigm, on which Chinese "collapsism" is based, is that it masks more than it reveals under each of these labels. It is interesting to note that when international media cover the multi-faceted crises that Europe face, words such as stagnation, decline or even decay are frequently used, but rarely the word "collapse". When it comes to China, however, even if very similar problems are under discussion — be it economic slowdown or social disparity — regime crackdown/crackup seems to be the natural choice of term. Such "discriminatory" treatment is not conducive to understanding either China or the West.

By using the authoritarian tag, China watchers neglect the contrary trends, or at best underestimate their significance and implications. For instance, over the years, China has been ranking bottom in all sorts of international indices in terms of transparency. Yet anyone living in China can tell that government openness is on the rise with more and more information being put online. Government responsiveness is increasing, too. The ill-designed stock market circuit breaker mechanism was removed just days after being put in place, accompanied by the stepping down of the securities authority chief and a public apology from a deputy chairman.

The National People's Congress is more minutely scrutinizing the government, as evidenced by the annual query on the budgeting of the all-powerful National Development and Reform Commission by the Fiscal and Economics Committee at the NPC session. All this is the reverse of authoritarianism, which foreign observers refuse to acknowledge. In contrast, under the label of "democracy", deep-level structural pitfalls in many countries tend to be brushed aside hastily as epiphenomenal, wasting valuable opportunities of systematic overhaul again and again. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no one shouting out "the coming collapse of Europe" or predicting the United States' demise is likely to be "protracted, messy and violent".

Let's be clear: no one is trying to boast the China miracle or trumpet the China model. There is no established model since China is still in the process of reform and transformation. For every little progress, there awaits a bigger challenge. Complacency has no room here. Nor has "collapsism". Because "collapsism" unduly rejects the resolution, confidence and dynamism in both the Chinese nation and State to face up to the mounting challenges that have been nicely listed out in Shambaugh's book. But be alerted: his diagnosis is inaccurate and his prescription unhelpful.

The author is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Law, Peking University.