[Before I begin this post, I have a request: A reader last week emailed me a lengthy draft paper by a US professor on Hu Jintao and the democratization of China. I lost the PDF and wanted to use it; could you please resend? Thanks.]
Perhaps the most tired argument I have ever heard is that the Chinese “aren’t ready” for democracy. While I’d agree they aren’t ready for an instant switchover to Western-style democracy, I would say that to argue the Chinese people are incapable of or uninterested in playing an active role in political/economic decisions affecting their lives is a.) untrue and b.) an insult to these people.
Howard French’s new article backs me up. When initiated properly, the democratic process can work in China and it can be embraced by the citizens.
With his smart dress, blow-dried hair and speech peppered with references to Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu, Jiang Zhaohua, the young Communist Party secretary for this prosperous township, bears little resemblance to the usual Chinese politician.
Under his leadership, Jiang’s township of 110,000 people in Zhejiang Province recently embarked on a novel experiment in governance, allowing citizens’ preferences to determine, after detailed consultations over the pros and cons, which major projects would go ahead and how their money would be spent.
“Our original manner was the government deciding everything, only announcing the results afterward to the people,” Jiang said, with a sweep of his arm to suggest official high-handedness. “We never got to know the public’s opinion. It was 20 people sitting in a room who decided everything.”
….Zeguo’s political experiment involved the polling of 257 randomly chosen people, and was conducted in large part on the advice of a Stanford University political scientist, James Fishkin.
After lengthy briefings on a long list of potential municipal projects, the electors showed a preference for environmental works, including sewage treatment plants and public parks.
If unique in form, Zeguo’s experiment takes place against a backdrop of a broad effervescence of democratic ideas bubbling up into local politics all over China. By one estimate, there will be 300,000 village committee elections in China’s 18 provinces this year alone. In many areas, officials are making efforts to involve ordinary citizens in local decision-making.
This isn’t a dreamy or even optimistic article; about half of it is devoted to why this is so hard to do in China, considering the corruption and lack of transparency that taints so many local governments — factors responsible for the explosive demonstrations we’ve seen over the past few weeks in rural villages, where the people are given no say in decisions that affect their daily lives.
But no one can deny that this “effervescence” isn’t a very good thing, and may even be proof of the creeping democracy so many of us are hoping for. It won’t happen fast, and we still can’t say whether it will happen at all.
Still, deep cynicism remains, forged by long years of high-handed official behavior and widespread perceptions of systematic corruption.
In the village of Luoxia, a part of the city of Zeguo, a shopkeeper who received a visitor as he ate lunch behind his counter said, “There’s no need at all for ordinary people to participate in decision-making.
“Those who are capable can’t get elected,” he said. “And those who are incapable buy their positions with money.”
So I’ll remain somewhat cynical for now, but I’ll also be the first to praise the Party if it truly leads to meaningful representation. It’ll be faint praise, I’m afraid, because things should never have descended to this state in the first place.
The next step will be a multi-party system, an idea that, for the moment, remains utterly inconceivable in China.
Martyn, thanks for sending me this link!
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By Laowai 19790204
Ach, if just more democracy within the party happens that’ll be great. Once that happens and gains strength, even if there aren’t formal parties the CCP will devide along various lines to form “schools of thought” or whathaveyou
June 19, 2005 @ 5:05 pm | Comment
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By richard
It’s gotta start somewhere. Just don’t expect any miracles. Success stories like this are very few and far between.
June 19, 2005 @ 5:16 pm | Comment
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By chriswaugh_bj
And the greatest absurdity of that “The Chinese aren’t ready for democracy” argument is that the experiments with grassroots democracy are happening among the poorest and least educated people in China: The peasants. Not ready, my arse.
Well, I don’t think China should try to set up any Western-style democracy overnight, but the experiments that are happening, especially where they are successful, do give me hope that, given a chance, China will be able to build it’s own democratic system. And I think that is the key: Too many people seem to think China should magically transform itself into some kind of Western-style democratic capitalist state. Bugger that. It’d fall flat on its face. China should be allowed to develop its own democratic system, and it should be allowed to develop that system over as long a period as necessary. That’s the only way China will get a functioning system that answers the Chinese people’s needs.
June 19, 2005 @ 7:15 pm | Comment
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By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
Laowai, there are already “schools of thought” within the Party. Have been for decades, though the topic is officially denied since 1989.
And Richard, I’m a bit confused when you say, “things should never have descended to this state in the first place.” Sun Yat-sen wasn’t preaching multi-party democracy, when he founded the Republic. And the war lords surely weren’t preaching multi-party democracy when they forced the Republic to hand over real control. The CCP was preaching multi-party democracy when they were the minority prior to 1949, but such rhetoric disappears easily when you are the one that has to surrender power to people you disagree with.
June 19, 2005 @ 7:34 pm | Comment
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By eswn
“Those who are capable can’t get elected,” he said. “And those who are incapable buy their positions with money.”
Oh, yes, but which country is he talking about? Hint: Check the net worth of the 100 US Senators.
June 19, 2005 @ 9:01 pm | Comment
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By richard
We definitely are ruled by the elite, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans. (Just ask John Kerry.) At least they are to some extent beholden to the law (Tom Delay is under more than one investigation) and can be whisked off their jobs if they betray their constituents (like Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich).
June 19, 2005 @ 9:49 pm | Comment
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By Martyn
Let’s not get too carried away with the “D” word. I prefer to call what the article refers to “increased participation on a very local level”.
Of course this is debatable but, as Richard said, it isn’t a ‘this is the herald of Chinese democ*acy’ kind of article that we used to read years ago.
One can only hope that Mr. Jiang’s methods receive approval from the Party and are allowed to spread. Although, this again, is debatable.
Such methods favouring local participation do have the advantage of diluting the arbitary rule of the local cadres and therefore reducing the huge potential for corruption and shady deals.
However, this is, in turn, is probably the biggest reason why any kind of local participation might be strongly resisted by the local cadre class.
The fact is, we’ll all have to continue to sit back and watch…and continue to look for the good…even when it’s usually hilariously optimistic!
June 20, 2005 @ 4:51 am | Comment
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By Martyn
Speaking of ridicuously optimistic, a thought just crossed my mind that increased local participation in the decision-making progress might be a good way for Hu Jintao to rein-in local corruption and quell local unrest…?
Or am I dreaming again. Maybe.
June 20, 2005 @ 4:54 am | Comment
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By Allan
I spoke to my girlfriend about this article and she never thought once that it had anything to do with democracy.
Therefore, I knida agree with martyn above that it’s more a case of local people having a say in local decisions NOT electing their representatives as such. Big difference.
However, as long as we thing of it in these more modest terms, then there’s slightly more chance of this model being adopted in more villages like the one feautured in the article.
A very welcome small step towards a more participation-based method of local government.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention Richard.
June 20, 2005 @ 5:48 am | Comment
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By eswn
on the same subject, there is a long article in Chinese in Phoenix Weekly at:
http://www.yannan.cn/forum/viewthread.php?tid=60959
the deal here is that a certain village in Shejiazhuang in Hebei province voted to elect an representative who was promptly rejected by the local government. the villagers wrote to Hu Jintao personally, and got a personal reply that the matter will be looked into and resolved in two months’ time. boy, where the villagers happy! but it’s been over a year now, and nothing has happened.
it looks like Hu has take this insult personally and shitcan a few people before the message gets through that he is serious (you know, the thing about killing the chickens to warn the monkeys).
June 20, 2005 @ 10:37 am | Comment
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By other lisa
ESWN, I’m a little confused – Hu took which insult personally? The local government’s, by rejecting the villagers’ choice? Or the villagers by writing him? And if Hu is determined to act, why do you think it’s taken him a year to do so?
June 20, 2005 @ 12:11 pm | Comment
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By linh
chriswaugh_bj,
Admire your deep understanding of the democracy. What’s the democracy? Some one said: “it’s nothing but a peaceful and lawful mechanism to fire the leader of a nation.” I agree with this saying. Is this mechanism unique? I don’t think so. Is the spirit of this mechanism universal? Yes!
Furthermore democracy is just an upper level stuff, which should be constructed upon the proper law reinforcement and the implementation of personal freedom. Without the support of these two strong columns, democracy won’t go anywhere as many tragedies have already revealed in this history.
Where is the road towards the democracy?
We don’t know…
From a typical engineer’s viewpoint, unknown processing conditions can generally be obtained by a number of well controlled experiments, that’s what CCP is doing. However they are a little timid right now and didn’t gain much.
Should we be patient?
Currently, I say yes!
June 20, 2005 @ 3:45 pm | Comment
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By Will
I always find that “not ready for democracy” statement interesting. I’ve heard it bandied about a lot in Southeast Asia, where I lived for a long time, by the governments in such nominal republics as Singapore and Malaysia, and the pre-democratic Indonesia (which, apparently, was ready for democracy!). Usually the qualifier “western-style” (a synonym for “multiparty”) is added in to produce the reassuring suggestion that they *are* democratic, just not in the same way.
This statement –not ready for democracy– sounds paternalistic whether it comes from well-meaning but duped outsiders or from entrenched, single-party governments or cronies desperate to cling onto power.
“You’re not ready for democracy, but you’re bang-up for entrenched interests, censorship, corruption and brutality!”
I can’t recall many examples of grass-roots citizens saying “we are not ready for democracy” (western or otherwise). Those saying it either seem to be from outside the system, or benefiting from the status-quo.
No one is ever “ready” for democracy, of course. There’s no rule book, no class, no instruction manual. You just deal with it as best you can (see Indonesian example, above). And no democracy (for the sake of this argument lets assume democracy=multi-party replublic) is perfect, as the US makes evidently clear. So we try to work around the weaknesses.
But it doesn’t matter. Ultimately it comes down to one thing: accountability of leadership. It doesn’t matter if you devolve every decision or not. Obviously, in a large nation that’s simply not practical, which is why we have republics. But you need a system to hold leadership to account. In the absence of accountability we all know what happens. The list of enlightened, unaccountable governments is depressingly short.
Western style or not, multi-party or not, national or local, democracy is simply a tool for institutionalizing accountability (peacefully firing your leadership, as was pointed out by linh earlier).
Who on earth is not ready for that?
June 20, 2005 @ 7:14 pm | Comment
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By richard
Beautifully said, Will. The painful truth is that some of my best friends in China (Westerners) are adamant that the Chinese indeed aren’t ready for democracy. These friends insist the CCP is the best thing that could have happened to China, while I see it as the greatest tragedy.
June 20, 2005 @ 7:23 pm | Comment
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By Will
Let me venture a follow-up opinion then. I think what many people are afraid of is not the end-result of democracy in China or anywhere else, but the possibility of a wrenching, awful transition. Or, worse, a failed transition. Autocratic collapse is often followed by disaster (Yugoslavia) and nascent democracies often fail (Russia, to be gloomy about its prospects).
The Russian example might be worth dwelling on. Promising beginnings have crumbled in the past four years or so. Transitional risks increase when the fundamental systems and institutions that make a republic work aren’t in place. It’s not whether the *people* are ready or not, but whether the*insitutions* are ready or not. Would the civil service keep functioning? Would the army defer to civilian authority? Would more prosperous provinces (or recently annexed ones) try to break away? In a country as large and diverse as China, these are legitimate concerns.
So, I think the statement that the Chinese aren’t ready for democracy is really code for fear that weak institutions mean that the transition might be awful or lead to something even worse than the CCP.
But what’s the alternative? Stagnation? Regression? China as a nation has strengths and advantages that these other examples didn’t. And I’m an optimist. But, ultimately the Chinese, no one else, will decide their readiness.
June 20, 2005 @ 8:14 pm | Comment
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By Imagethief
Try This On For Size: The US Isn’t Any Readier for Democracy than China Is
June 20, 2005 @ 11:14 pm | Comment
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By Imagethief
Q: Is China
June 21, 2005 @ 12:33 am | Comment
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By Imagethief
Q: Is China as
June 21, 2005 @ 12:34 am | Comment
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By Shanghai Slim
Call me a Will-ite: accountability is the tonic China is in most need of.
I’d almost even accept a Chinese theocracy if it was accountable.
Almost.
Wu Yi as High Priestess?
June 21, 2005 @ 7:39 am | Comment
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By Allan
Slim, you’re a shameless Will-ette.
Accountability, absolutely. You’re right.
Forget flowery talk about democ-racy, local elections, people participation and bloody Chinese cadres who can quote bloody Rousseau and Voltaire!!!
Let’s talk about accountability…..of which there is as close to zero as it’s possible to get……in the Chinese method of government within those goddamn Chinese characteristics.
The truth is of course that accountability in any/all tiers of government would be about as popular as the Plague amongst the Chinese political elite.
Hmmm, China isn’t ready for “Accountability” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as “western-style democ-racy”.
June 21, 2005 @ 9:29 am | Comment
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By KLS
“The truth is of course that accountability in any/all tiers of government would be about as popular as the Plague amongst the Chinese political elite.”
is this true? what about the experiments with elections at grassroots level?
June 21, 2005 @ 12:46 pm | Comment
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By richard
Too early to say about those grassroots elections. As the article said, often the lack of transparency and lack of accountability make these elections rather meaningless.
June 21, 2005 @ 1:26 pm | Comment
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By KLS
yes but it does rather suggest that the CCP elite is not 100% opposed to elections…
June 21, 2005 @ 1:41 pm | Comment
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By richard
I don’t think the CCP elite, now or ever, is 100 percent in favor of or opposed to anything (except staying in power – all are in favor of that). They’ve always been a divided bunch.
June 21, 2005 @ 1:51 pm | Comment
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By Imagethief
Q: Is China as
June 26, 2005 @ 7:40 pm | Comment