The Useless Tree

Why Put Off Democracy?

      Premier Wen Jiabao wrote an article that has attracted some attention:

The Communist Party cautioned China’s
increasingly impatient reformers and intellectuals Tuesday that
political liberalization and democracy are still a long way off despite
the rapid pace of economic change over the past two decades.

The
warning, in an article attributed to Premier Wen Jiabao in the official
People’s Daily newspaper, constituted the party’s first known response
to a bubbling up of political debate as China prepares for an annual
session of its legislature and an important Communist Party congress
that is scheduled for this fall.

      This is pretty standard stuff: the Party asserts that China is not ready for democracy because it is only in the "primary stage of socialism" – an ideological innovation from the 1980s – and must develop further.  It is a variation on the you-must-be-rich-to-be-democratic argument.   Ignore democratic India, this argument would say, or the fact that China has grown tremendously since the 1980s.  Ignore any counter-evidence because, ultimately, it is simply a matter of power-holders who do not want to relinquish power.

     But let me ask one of my usual questions: what would Confucius say?  It is true that Confucianism was used for centuries to rationalize authoritarian power.  When you read the Analects, however, as I am doing this week with my tutorial, you notice glimmers of a more democratic possibility.  I am not suggesting that imperial China could have somehow been more democratic.  It wasn’t: end of story.  Rather, I believe that Confucianism holds within it elements that can encourage democratization in the here and now.  Consider the first two passages in chapter 13:

Adept Lu asked about governing, and the Master said: "Put the people first, and reward their efforts well.
When Lu asked further, he said: "Never tire."
(13.1)

When he was a regent for the House of Chi, Jan Yung asked about governing, and the Master said: "Depend on the lesser officials.  Forgive their minor offenses and raise up worthy talents."
"How will I recognize worthy talents and raise them up?"
"If you raise up those you recognize," replied the Master, "do you think people will let your ignore those you don’t recognize."
(13.2)

     I especially like the second passage, which is more overtly political.  It suggests that in the recruitment and selection of political officers, the highest authority may not recognize all of the most talented and, thus, he should listen to the people and their recommendations.

     In a sense, democracy is a manner of listening to the people; it is an institutional arrangement that gives the people political voice.  It has been obvious since 1949 that the over-centralization of power in the PRC system routinely ignores the voice of the people.  And that is one of the primary reasons for the extensive corruption internal to Chinese politics.  The Party regularly fails to "recognize worthy talents."

    I would never say that democracy is perfect.  We all know that it can be systemically abused.  It can bring forth bad leaders.  But it also provides a mechanism for getting rid of bad leaders and, thus, offers greater promise for "putting the people first."  It is, then, closer to the Confucian ideal than the decrepit authoritarianism of a one-party dictatorship that demands that genuine democracy be postponed long into the future.

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3 responses to “Why Put Off Democracy?”

  1. Rui Avatar
    Rui

    Oh please. India is a beacon of democracy? It is quite interesting to see that the Western media always bring up India whenever they are forced to recognise China’s progress without democracy. India is no match to China: messy cities, slums, mass illiteracy. There might be a vibrant middle class in India, but it is only an extremely small proportion of the total population. China is fourth in terms of total GDP; I don’t know where India is. On GDP per capita terms, there is an even wider gap between China and India; and that gap is STILL growing despite India’s “democracy”: China growing at 10% annually while India just 8%; and China has her population growth under control (something almost impossible for a democracy with huge numbers of poor and uneducated people to achieve), while India’s population is still expanding, corroding all the resources and growth.
    Where is the counter-evidence? If there is any, they are just exceptions. Basically most countries do not enjoy democracy when they are catching up, and not just Asian countries too: Germany had no democracy when she transformed into a world power; neither was Russia and Japan. Hong Kong (remember, it was ruled by the British when her economy took off — why didn’t the democratic-minded British grant democracy to the people in HK?), Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea. Even the United States cannot be said to be a “democracy” in the modern sense when she was founded: only a really small minority of the population could vote. Britain was not a full democracy until decades after she completed her industrial revolution and overseas expansions/exploitations. As for democracies in poor nations, one can find only endless failures: Philipines being the most disastrous example of failed America-style democracy in a country that is not yet ready for it.
    The CCP might have missed out some, or maybe really a lot of “worthy talents”. But can democracy do better at this stage? The fact that China has done so well in the last 30 years — much better than the democratic India — proved that at least not all talents are lost. PRC/CCP did commit lots of mistakes and even crimes in the first 30 years or so; but it is not so much because of a lack of democracy than the evil of lawlessness and extremism — something that happens in democratic nations too, like the Weimar Republic in the 1930s.
    Sometimes it is just difficult to judge the motive behind Western countries’ call for China to move towards democracy: the extreme naivety of such comments make us wonder if there are some unfriendly motives behind such mindless suggestions.

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  2. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Rui,
    Thanks for the comment.
    On the India thing: I mentioned it pre-emptively, to shut down the more extreme versions of the argument that democracy is only possible at certain levels of economic development. It is not, as certain African cases also suggest. If we start to delve into the India/China comparison, you are right to point out some of the successes China has had in recent years. And you are also right to mention the costs of the past – but I would push that point a bit further. How many people died during the Great Leap Forward and what was the manner of their death? Honest answers to these questions place that catastrophe among the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. Hitler killed 6 million Jews over the course of about a decade; Mao and company oversaw the deaths of perhaps 30 million in three years. Horrendously bad; virtually all man-made. Worse than the Partition of India (for which Britain bears some responsibility) and certainly worse than anything that has happened in India since 1947. We must honor these dead in our memory. We should never forget all of those citizens of China.
    As I mentioned in the post, I am not suggesting that democracy is perfect. But I do believe the absence of democracy contributed to the horror of the Great Leap Forward, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Today, I would not expect China to adopt all the trappings of American democracy, which has its own problems. But when I look at people like Chen Guangcheng and ask why honest, law-abiding people like him, who are genuinely committed to the rule of law for everyone, are harrassed and imprisioned, I come to the conclusion that the powerholders who repress him can do so because they do not face any serious threat to their political positions. A little democracy, appropriate to the Chinese context – for example, an expansion and refinement of the village election system to the township level – might well improve the lives of the people who Chen is struggling to help and who Wen Jaibao says he supports.

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  3. Bruce Avatar
    Bruce

    Wow – what a viscerally emotional response from Rui. How can one impugn India’s democracy ? It is more vibrant than that in the US. Further, the huge numbers of poor in China is essentially equal to the huge numbers of poor in India. India now has more billionaires than China, and is modernizing and growing its economy such that it will probably be the largest economy in 100 years (better demographics than China). Freedom of the press – no comparison. “Forced to recognize China’s progrees without democracy ?” That is the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. The better question is – what took so long ? Once someone shows you how to do it it should be simple. India’s large population will serve it well in the future, for the simple reason that even low GDP per capita multiplied by large number of heads = large economy (i.e. China). Frankly the contention that China has done much better than India in the last 30 years is laughable. The real reason the Indian ecnomy lagged was for the same reason China’s did – exclusion of market forces from large scale economic decisions and (something most people don’t realize) lack of government investment in physical infrastructure. India is only now building its first transnational highway system. Anyway all of these nuts and bolts issues are ancillary to Democracy. I am quite sure that the per capita GDP in ancient Greece was quite low by today’s standards yet they managed to have Democracy. Democracy is a state of mind that becomes almost inevitable once a certain level of affluence is reached.

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