Need one be a genius to spot the cynicism here?
China has contributed $1 million to help organize Sunday’s election in Iraq, raising questions at home and abroad about how a country that supports balloting in another land can deny its citizens a chance to vote for their leaders.
As China gains a growing role on the global political and economic stage, it increasingly faces such twists of logic. So far, Chinese officials seem undeterred by the apparent contradiction.
“They behave as a normal power on the international scene, but keep a lid on everything at home at the same time, blocking websites and preventing free expression,” said Jean-Philippe Beja, a China specialist at the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris. “Elections are all right in other countries, as long as they’re not done at home. And it works. That’s what’s incredible. It’s very cynical.”
The article later gets to the heart of the matter, which is that China is proclaiming its love of free elections (in Iraq, anyway) to curry favor with the US and continue its repression in Xinjiang without criticism from Bush. Love of fredom and democracy scarcely enters the equation.
The article makes some other fine points, so pardon me for snipping a large portion for your reading pleasure:
Elections won’t work in China because the masses aren’t wealthy or well-educated enough to understand the issues, Chinese officials often argue. Elections are at odds with 5,000 years of Chinese history and, anyway, the country already has a democracy with socialist characteristics, they say.
It’s becoming more difficult, however, to argue that the people lack the necessary income and education when the nation’s performance is rising on both counts. Meanwhile, more impoverished Indonesia recently pulled off an impressive peaceful transfer of power; and India, with its lower literacy rate, remains the world’s largest democracy.
“Two years ago I went to Cambodia, which is poorer than China, and watched a very good election,” said Li Fan, director of the World and China Institute, a Beijing think tank focused on rural democracy. “It’s a silly argument.”
The idea that Chinese are precluded from voting by their history tends to buckle with a glance 100 miles across the Taiwan Strait. Beijing often cites Taiwan’s bumpy electoral ride since 2000 to bolster its case, but the island’s citizens chalk this up to inexperience, not some cultural predisposition to authoritarian rule.
“China is still under a Communist regime, so they focus on Taiwan’s negatives for their propaganda,” said Lin Wen-Cheng, a professor with Zhongshan University’s Mainland Research Institute in Taipei. “Our democracy is not yet mature, but we’re confident we’ll overcome that. With Taiwan maturing as a democracy, they have no argument.”
China’s last refuge is often in the argument that it already is a democracy with socialist characteristics and that the Communist Party enjoys widespread support that makes elections unnecessary.
Even insiders acknowledge, however, that party corruption and arrogance are an enormous source of popular resentment. In addition, the system of one person, one vote is carefully restricted to sectors of the political process where no real decision-making power exists, namely villages and a few towns in the countryside and neighborhoods in the cities.
Critics say the real reason China lacks elections is that the Communist Party doesn’t want to be voted out and, after decades of absolute rule, is distrustful of any process it can’t control.
Critics say the Communist Party wants to hold onto power? Well, I’ll be damned. But then, what do critics know? Obviously they don’t watch CCTV. The CCP only wants to ban elections for the good of the people, who “aren’t ready” to vote. How can we thank the CCP enough for their loving protection and magnanimous concern for its people’s well being?
1
By Sam
The Chinese officials who argue that China is not ready socio-economically, or prepared culturally, for electoral democracy are actually making the case for the distinction between Chinese and Taiwanese national identities! Taiwan is a democratic nation; China is not. Personally, I think China can be and should be a democratic nation, but the CCP sympathizers who want to argue that the peasants are too dumb are pushing Taiwan further and further away!
January 29, 2005 @ 6:39 pm | Comment
2
By ACB
I hate to agree with communist anti democratic logic, but I don’t think that your average Chinese farmer would know how to use their vote. Voting would work in cities like Shanghai where people are more aware of other systems, but in the countryside it’s a different story.
Given the Chinese characteristic for ‘following along’ and the one sided political education that people in China get, I think that its highly likely that a large proportion of the Chinese population would just vote the way that they are told to I the belief that they would be maintaining stability, which right now means a booming economy.
I’m not trying to be insulting or to belittle people in the countryside, but I don’t think that many of them would understand exactly why one party or system would be better than the next. Most do not know what it is like in any other system so they have not point of comparison, they have grown up on a diet of communism is stable and equal and the democracy is discriminatory and chaotic.
If there was a free election, I think that the comunist party’s hold on people’s minds and use of stability and slow reform as policies might mean that China could democratically elect their old government all over again. Or they might elect enough old style comunists
to hamper reform efforts.
January 29, 2005 @ 6:56 pm | Comment
3
By richard
Look, I don’t think China is ready for an overnight shift to democracy, especially since the CCP was very thorough in destroying every other political party in China, leaving a power vacuum only it could fill. It will have to be a slow and painful process — exactly as in Iraq and Afghanistan. (And in those cases, I wouldn’t be surprised to see democracy fail altogether, for many reasons.) But it has to start somewhere, and if China is going to become a mouthpiece for free elections it had better put its money where its mouth is, or risk looking extremely hypocritical (not that they care).
January 29, 2005 @ 7:47 pm | Comment
4
By Lisa
This is the article I mentioned earlier (in the Nazi/Not Nazi post). The interesting thing is that where China is experimenting with democracy is at the village level, home of all those presumably too ignorant to vote peasants. True, they aren’t being asked to make any kinds of decisions about global or national issues; still…
Meanwhile, I direct your attention to Bill Gate’s opinion on China’s “new form of capitalism.”
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1503&ncid=1503&e=12&u=/afp/20050129/ts_afp/forumdavoschinaeconomygates_050129084900
(apologies, I will learn how to do this properly, I swear…)
January 29, 2005 @ 8:28 pm | Comment
5
By chriswaugh_bj
I wonder how much time you’ve spent in the countryside or how many Chinese peasants you’ve gotten to know, ACB. My in-laws certainly are lacking in education, but they’re not lacking in intelligence and are more than capable of making informed decisions about what is best for their lives.
And besides, India, Cambodia and Indonesia were mentioned in that post: What is it about those countries that makes their peasants somehow more informed or intelligent or capable than their Chinese counterparts? Did that article not state quite clearly that India has a lower literacy rate than China?
And as Lisa points out, it’s at the village level, where my in-laws live, that the grassroots experiments with democracy are being run. That approach certainly seems to be the best way to go about democratising China.
January 29, 2005 @ 9:03 pm | Comment
6
By bingfeng
ACB,
i don’t agree with you. peasants are exercising the direct election in village and town levels quite well. there are many village officials who use illegal means in the voting but the progress is already made. peasants are quite clever when it comes to those affairs that closely realted with their own interests, and they will just fight for their own interests. they are very serious about the voting because they realize that is their own business.
talking about shanghai, i can tell you that those young guys who worship western democracy and criticize government WILL NEVER spend 10 minutes for democracy practices, there are already some there, and they don’t understand why democracy can help them make more money. i have many stories for this.
in a higher level, i think the “roadmap” developed by the government does make sense. there are many in the government representing those rich chinese, but there are few who represent the interests of peasants. a “bottom-up” evolution is the smartest way to develop democracy in china.
and don’t forget the rule of law. chinese government seems put the rule of law ahead of the voting. i can see a lot of reasons to do that.
January 29, 2005 @ 9:38 pm | Comment
7
By bingfeng
btw, Confucius once said “bu zai qi wei, bu mou qi zheng”, which means one should not do the job if he is not in that position.
talking about democracy outside of china and implementing democracy in china are totally different.
putting yourself in a position of managing a chinese town (not mention managing a city), you will find your original “plan” won’t work in the real world, because there are so many factors you need to take into your consideration when develop implementation plans. it’s a chain of decisions you need to make, and in many cases they are interlocked.
January 29, 2005 @ 9:47 pm | Comment
8
By bingfeng
another point i’d like tp make is the CCP.
from the first glance, there is one one ruling party in china, but if you understand a little more of chinese culture, you will realize that there are some level of democracy within the CCP, different groups with different theories even representing different interest groups, all in the CCP, somewhat like the FDP of japan. if i’s correct, FDP of japan ruled that country for more than 50 years. of course they are different in many ways, but seeing CCP as one party is not correct
January 29, 2005 @ 9:52 pm | Comment
9
By Florian
China has, as already mentioned, implemented democracy in 1989. This is democracy at the grass-root level, villages and townships. And I think, this is the right way to go for China. China does not need a top-bottom democracy – as some democracy-fetishist in the West are propagating- but should go the other way. Bottom-top, first start implementing democracy in the villages, go to township and finally you end up with national elections.
Two thoughts why national elections won’t work in China right now. Democracy will only work when the voter will see cause and effect. If he does not see a result, caused by his vote, in his own life, then he will not accept democracy as a useful tool in his life. Peasants in China, I think, are mostly concerned with village market, village infrastructure and village taxes deng deng. If the villager votes for canditate A who will then, for example, implement some regulations for the local market, the villager will see cause and effect. This way he will learn democracy. If he votes for someone in Beijing, whose agenda is to favour strong relationships with Europe and Japan than with USA and Russia, he will not see an impact on his life. So why should he vote? The second thought is connected to the last senctence. How is an impoverished illiterate farmer from Gansu to make a rationale choice about international politics, WTO rules deng deng?
Yes, India is the largest democracy, but is it working? Is it effective? I don’t know the current status, but once the Indian coalition government was formed by some 25 different political parties. They will simply not be able to reach a quick consensus. But I believe, quick reactions to new situations are very important for developing countries. Deng Xiaoping would have never had the chance to set up special economic zones as quickly as he did, would he have been in a 25-party coalition.
My point is: let chinese democracy evolve from grass-roots democracy slowly to provincial election and finally to national election. But let them take their time.
January 29, 2005 @ 10:03 pm | Comment
10
By bingfeng
Florian, thanks for making the elaboration.
i can’t agree more with you except two points.
first, in my view, the greatest power of democracy is not “help you to do sthing more effectively”, it is “to help you avoid making big mistakes”. with some kind of democracy, china would never made mistakes like the “cultural revolution”.
second, i won’t attribute india’s lack of efficiency to its democracy, there are many social and cultural factors that make india realtively less efficient than other nations.
in short, i agree with you that the government’s a “bottom-up” roadmap is a very smart one, but it should not become an excuse for not implenting democracy in the national level someday.
January 29, 2005 @ 10:32 pm | Comment
11
By bingfeng
i am reading a book about Li Hongzhang(http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article?tocId=9370227)
in that book the author compared the “modernization movements” in china and japan. and i find there are some fatal limitations of china’s “bottom-up” modernizatin movement pushed by Li Hongzhang.
japan implemented a “top-bottom” movement and succeeded.
January 29, 2005 @ 10:38 pm | Comment
12
By bellevue
Bill Gates must be amazed by this *new form* of capitalism, where Microsoft Windows (any version) will cost user no more than two dollars. Who won’t anybody love it?
On a more serious side, you may soon find China becomes tougher on pirated Windows CD-ROM. Many big shots before Bill Gates got what they want by offering sweet sound bytes to China. Gates was slow to get it, but anyways he is onboard now.
As for democracy, AP has the following story today:
I don’t know if Iraqi voter al-Najr’s view on human is shared by Chinese or not – our sociologist has insisted that we must keep our mouth tight shut because we don’t have and won’t have sufficient knowledge on that. And there are also people out there believing driving a VW makes him more human than having the rights to vote.
People can argue that the condition for a full-fledged democracy is not ready in China. The real problem is, CCP is making it as an excuse to condemn the people to the status quo. CCP deliberately creates a condition to permanentize this condition, by cracking down basic freedom of expression, freedom of media, redress of injustice, rights of free association and other key componts of civil society. The lack of democracy (as in colonial Hong Kong) is quite different from the lack of freedom and human rights. For many moderates, the most acute need in China is to reform the latter, not the former. They have a good reason to feel frustrated, since these days press is often muted or presecuted, Internet is censored and blocked, and poor petitioners are still beaten up, despite the daily ‘progress’ made on CCTV news.
The hope of a top-down political reform is probably gone for good with Zhao who died this month. Now CCP has a pretty good mechanism in place to purge any like-minded people. Their success will continue to doom the future of China, and those Chinese who view human the same way as al-Najr does.
January 30, 2005 @ 12:37 am | Comment
13
By bellevue
ACB:
Nicholas Kristof offers a different perspective on China’s readiness for democracy. On 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, he recalled:
January 30, 2005 @ 1:03 am | Comment
14
By Florian
“Some of the rickshaw drivers were shot, but the rest saved many, many lives that night, rushing the wounded to hospitals as tears streamed down their cheeks. It would be churlish to point out that such people are ill-prepared for democracy, when they risked their lives for it.”
Sorry, I just don’t see it. They did not risk their lives for democracy. The Tiananmen student protests were not about democracy. This is western media propaganda and Chinese dissidents’. Just like the killing at Tiananmen guangchang.
@ bingfeng,
democracy will not always spare the people of such disasters as the Cultural Revolution. Such things also happen in democratic societies.
January 30, 2005 @ 1:30 am | Comment
15
By Lisa
I was dumbfounded when I read the Bill Gates article. Where to start? I think my favorite bit was the bit about “low medical overhead” but it was really hard to choose. God forbid the Chinese should get rich like the Koreans and become a high-wage society. What would happen to Gates’ new model capitalism then? Why, we’ll have to find a new low-wage, low-overhead population to exploit…
It’s the Walmart paradigm…
January 30, 2005 @ 1:52 am | Comment
16
By bellevue
This is western media propaganda and Chinese dissidents’. Just like the killing at Tiananmen guangchang.
Florian, Jean-Marie Le Pen has a better revisionist approach: it’s just detail in history.
Unfortunately, you cowardly resort to the scheme thugs such as Chi Haotian and Yuan Mu employed, who augued that just because the massacre didn’t occur in Tiananmen Square but somewhere else, the Tiananmen Massacre didn’t exist.
Next time you begin to lie about history, bring up a different trick, please.
January 30, 2005 @ 2:09 am | Comment
17
By Lisa
Okay, Florian (or whoever wrote that post, cause haloscan’s all freaky and I wasn’t sure), I’ll bite. If the Tiananmen student protests weren’t about democracy, what were they about?
January 30, 2005 @ 2:59 am | Comment
18
By JR
All I want to say to democracy is “Thank God for President Bush.”
January 30, 2005 @ 10:13 am | Comment
19
By bingfeng
shanghai slim,
“However, despite your surprising claim, there is no inherent conflict between rule of law and voting. ”
it’s a matter of priority. many still hold the conception that stability hleps the economic growth, and voting somehow not help the stability. so the rule of law is put ahead of voting.
“voting makes the government including the law) accountable to the people.”
there are many ways to make the government accountable to people.
voting is just one of them, and i doubt it is the most effective one.
January 30, 2005 @ 10:20 am | Comment
20
By Shanghai Slim
ACB, Chinese peasants at the village level seem to have shown you wrong
by not only understanding how to vote, but in some cases actually
electing representatives who were NOT from the Communist Party. Of course,
these officials found their abilities severely limited after the
election, when Party leaders at the next higher level prevented them from
doing much. But this only shows that the problem is not the peasants, but
rather the CCP’s refusal to allow the people’s wishes to be
implemented.
Also, the extensive (and sadly futile) use by the peasants of the
pathetic petitioning system (which provides something like 0.05% success
rate, according to the CCP itself) also proves that peasants are certainly
quite capable of understanding and using the political process.
—
As for Bingfeng, well, thank you for the best laugh I had all week with
this claim:
“and don’t forget the rule of law. chinese government seems put the
rule of law ahead of the voting. i can see a lot of reasons to do that.”
Well, I guess perhaps they do put rule of law ahead of voting. Voting
seems to be in last place. Rule of law appears to be in something like
second-to-last place, so I guess technically you are correct.
However, despite your surprising claim, there is no inherent conflict
between rule of law and voting. Voting does not lead to lawlessness.
One need not favor one at the expense of the other.
Rather, voting makes the government (including the law) accountable to
the people. Unfortunately, accountability is not something the Party
appears to be the least interested in.
January 30, 2005 @ 10:21 am | Comment
21
By bingfeng
“Thank you Lisa. I’m also trying to figure out how to preserve my conviction to truth finding (naked truth) without leaving a false impression of being radical. Not easy, I should confess, since the situation I talked about is often polarizing at the very least.
Posted by bellevue at January 29, 2005 11:06 PM ”
a few minutes after bellevue said these nice words to lisa, he dumped more shits as below in my blog:
“you SOB said you went to hunger strike in bund, f**k you sh*t! you are
a spy if you did go there … you should beat to death on the streets, you SOB”
“you shameless low laborer from a corner of shanghai, a degrading social dregs, … a pig from the north…”
how do we call such a personality? schizophrenia or angel-devil?
seriously, i suggest bellevue to see a doctor soon. no kidding or insult him.
January 30, 2005 @ 10:22 am | Comment
22
By bingfeng
“This is western media propaganda and Chinese dissidents’. Just like the killing at Tiananmen guangchang.”
well said.
in a tiger’s eyes, everyting is meat or non-meat.
in a sheep’s eyes, everyting is grass or non-grass.
in GW’s eyes, everyting is terrorits or non-terrorists.
and in western media’s eyes, everyting about china is democratic or
non-democratic.
January 30, 2005 @ 10:24 am | Comment
23
By bingfeng
“@ bingfeng,
democracy will not always spare the people of such disasters as the
Cultural Revolution. Such things also happen in democratic societies. ”
certainly it will.
if you think otherwise, pls give me an example that kind of things
happened in democratic countries. thanks.
January 30, 2005 @ 10:25 am | Comment
24
By bingfeng
“Okay, Florian (or whoever wrote that post, cause haloscan’s all freaky and I wasn’t sure), I’ll bite. If the Tiananmen student protests weren’t about democracy, what were they about? ”
well lisa, perhaps i am in the right position to answer that question
it was about anti-corruption, nothing to do with democracy at first. then after some days, some people want to put a more elegant labels to that movement, and as we all know, CIA and taiwan’s intelligence offered some guidelines including labeling it as a “democratic movement”.
don’t tell someone who went to hunger strike in front of shanghai government in the bund what that movement stands for.
January 30, 2005 @ 10:26 am | Comment
25
By Anonymous
Democracy, how scaring!
Tyrants cheerleeders at work.
January 30, 2005 @ 10:26 am | Comment
26
By Anonymous
It’s curious (euphemism) that while iraqi people are voting (in many cases with great courage under the threat of terrorist bombs), some here think that chinese people are “not ready” for democracy. Iraqis are doing something that for a chinese is still forbidden. Someone today should seriously reflect.
January 30, 2005 @ 11:03 am | Comment
27
By richard
Florian: let chinese democracy evolve from grass-roots democracy slowly to provincial election and finally to national election. But let them take their time.
The problem with this scenario is that it assumes the CCP wants to see democracy and hand its power over to whomever the people so choose. And that is, I believe, absolutely false in every way.
Meanwhile, they’ve had, according to you, 15 years. How much time is enough? Will there be a day when the CCP says, “Okay, you’ve had enough time. Let’s hold national elections!” No, I really don’t think so.
January 30, 2005 @ 11:08 am | Comment
28
By richard
Oh, and I’d like to repeat the very first comment in this thread, from Sam, because it’s point is so intelligent:
The Chinese officials who argue that China is not ready socio-economically, or prepared culturally, for electoral democracy are actually making the case for the distinction between Chinese and Taiwanese national identities! Taiwan is a democratic nation; China is not. Personally, I think China can be and should be a democratic nation, but the CCP sympathizers who want to argue that the peasants are too dumb are pushing Taiwan further and further away!
Discuss.
January 30, 2005 @ 11:10 am | Comment
29
By Lisa
Dear Bingfeng,
I am aware that the Tiananmen protests began as protests against corruption, but isn’t it fair to say that they evolved into something beyond that? I recall the signs and the banners and many of those explicitly demanded a greater degree of democracy in Chinese public life.
As for disasters like the GPCR happening in democratic societies, I can’t think of anything quite like that happening in a democratic society (please chime in if I’m forgetting something obvious). What DOES happen is that a democratic society slides slowly into something less democratic – the Weimar Republic, for example – and that’s when you have social disasters of this magnitude. Democracy isn’t something absolute that you obtain; it’s something that must be defended and reformed and in some cases and times works far better than others.
Like…yeah…pResident Bush…not a shining example!
January 30, 2005 @ 1:08 pm | Comment
30
By Lisa
As a p.s., I want to paraphrase Ben Franklin here…some time during the struggles of the American revolution, another revolutionary asked Franklin what it was they had created here. Franklin said: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Democracy isn’t something you can take for granted.
January 30, 2005 @ 3:10 pm | Comment
31
By Florian
Is anyone familiar with Pan Wei’s theory of “consultative rule of law regime”? He “provides us with a democratic theory translated in to a concept of one-party rule that combines elements of the Western liberal tradition with – as he says – the Chinese tradition of meritocracy”.
And, “Pan Wei starts by separating democracy from the rule of law. Democracy is understood by him in accordance with the Schumpeterian definition of the term as ‘a polity featuring periodic elections of top leaders by electorates’. He concedes that this is a narrow definition that excludes many ‘good things’, i.e. additional normative elements as the rule of law, the respect for human rights, the freedom of speech etc… Most importantly, the author claims [Pan Wei] that all the ‘good things’ of democracy can be obtained without the elections of top leaders.”
Source: Gunter Schubert, Reforming Authoritarianism in Contemporary China: Reflections on Pan Wei’s Consultative Rule of Law Regime, Asien 94.
January 30, 2005 @ 5:55 pm | Comment
32
By bingfeng
lisa,
“but isn’t it fair to say that they evolved into something beyond that?”
basically it was a movement caused by unsatisfaction with corrupted officials. students didn’t have anything constructive, no proposal for democracy at all, we didn’t even think about it until somebody reminded us. shanghai might have something related with “democracy”, a newspaper was closed down, so some students wanted “free press”.
all in all, it’s funny to label that as a “democracy movement” to an insider. but since western countries will feel more comfortable to call anything against ccp as “democracy movement”, it’s fine with you to call it that way. i have no problem.
January 30, 2005 @ 6:02 pm | Comment
33
By richard
Florian, I actually believe that this can happen, though there’s been no sign of it in China. It depends on the quality of the leadership. Just look at Lee Kuan Yew, who was for all intents and purposes a “dictator,” but benevolent, a visionary and fiercely opposed to corruption and waste. A rare bird, to say the least, and I have to say i was hoping that Hu would fit the basic model. Needless to say, I’ve been disappointed so far.
January 30, 2005 @ 6:03 pm | Comment
34
By richard
Bingfeng Tiananmen Square may not have been about Western-style democracy per se, but the theme of democracy — of individual liberies and freedom to challenge corrupt and ineffective officials — pervaded the demonstrations. That’s what democracy is all about.
January 30, 2005 @ 6:11 pm | Comment
35
By Simon World
Asia by Blog
Asia by Blog is a twice weekly feature providing links to Asian blogs and their views on the news in this fascinating region. Previous editions can be found here. This edition contains parallels between modern Iraq and 1912 China, parallels between kam…
February 1, 2005 @ 1:20 am | Comment
36
By Winds of Change
Simon’s China and East Asia Highlights: 2005-2-15
The following is a digest of highlights from the past month’s Asia by Blog series over at simonworld.mu.nu. The round-up has four key areas of focus: China, Taiwan & Hong Kong (Politics, Economy & lifestyle, History sport & culture, Information), Korea…
February 15, 2005 @ 1:32 am | Comment
37
By A. Goncalves
I’m reading Prof. Larry Diamond discussion of Dr. Pan Wei proposal of a “consultative rule of law regime” as transitional regime to be applied to China. There is any summary of the main arguments of its proposal published in English? I do appreciate if anyone would help.
I do believe that he fantasizes very much about the type of regime is dominant so much in Hong Kong as such in Singapore. They are both limited plataforms of social contract based regime. There is some accountability both horizontal and vertical but not a great forecast of the public and the press of the backgound behind the political decisions. Neverthless there is several political parties and in theory some possibility of democratic alternance. Within Dr Pan Wei I don’t know how this would be feasible. Where is the emerging civil society to press political and social changes? If some citizen find that any party and government official is corrupt or abuses its powers does the system provide him with means to denounce and have him removed from the position?
How young people with university graduation or wealthy entrepreneurs see this problem?
August 4, 2005 @ 2:42 am | Comment