A few more issues are worth bringing up in a follow-up to our earlier blog discussing the recent Foreign Affairs article on the prospects of democratization in China. The author points out that democracy has been an aspiration of the Chinese people for a long time, but an understanding of what democracy is has been shifting and the ideals professed by the country’s revolutionary leaders all too often failed to live up to the reality of their policies.
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China’s leaders have held out the promise of some form of democracy to the people of China for nearly a century. After China’s last dynasty, the Qing, collapsed in 1911, Sun Yat-sen suggested a three-year period of temporary military rule, followed by a six-year phase of “political tutelage,” to guide the country’s transition into a full constitutional republic. In 1940, Mao Zedong offered followers something he called “new democracy,” in which leadership by the Communist Party would ensure the “democratic dictatorship” of the revolutionary groups over class enemies. And Deng Xiaoping, leading the country out of the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution, declared that democracy was a “major condition for emancipating the mind.”
The debate about what democracy means in China is back. In recent years, China has been experimenting with local elections, reform of the judicial system, and strengthening of oversight of the Communist Party (CCP) officials. President Hu Jintao called democracy “the common pursuit of mankind” and Premier Wen Jiabao said in his address to the 2007 National People’s Congress that “developing democracy and improving the legal system are basic requirements of the socialist system.” But is China-style socialism really compatible not just with free selection of political leadership, but more importantly with developing a rule-based system of democratic governance?
The centralization of power inherent in preserving one-party rule and the pervasiveness of guanxi [a web of personal bonds forged over years by the exchange of favors and assistance] call the feasibility of such “guided democracy” into question. When asked what the word “democracy” means by a delegation from the Brookings Institution, Premier Wen replied, “When we talk about democracy, we usually refer to three key components: elections, judicial independence, and supervision based on checks and balances.” But implementing them poses serious challenges to the CCP.
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Local elections. Top officials stress that the CCP’s leadership must be preserved [and] do not welcome the latitude of freedom of speech, press, or assembly. (…) Village elections have serious problems, including nepotism, vote buying, and the selection of incompetent or corrupt leaders.
Judicial independence. The question of whether the CCP serves the law or vice versa has always made judicial independence a delicate subject in China. [Guanxi] ties can have an especially constraining effect on prosecutorial and court decisions [and] China’s main challenge is no longer the lack of a comprehensive legal code but the chasm between what is on the books and its implementation.
Supervision. The problem of official corruption remains serious, and leaders routinely cite moral turpitude as one of the party’s main challenges. As the economy has surged for more than two decades, so have opportunities for graft. (…) According to the CCP, over 97,000 officials were disciplined in 2006, of whom 80 percent were guilty of dereliction of duty, taking bribes, or violating financial regulations.
Such problems testify to the core challenge of successful democratic reforms, which has remained unchanged since the time of Sun Yat-sen. Implementing top-down ideals of “democracy” – however defined – is likely to fail if it lacks grassroots ownership of the people these ideals are supposed to pertain to. The rule of law in China has to start with the CCP members acknowledging that they are not above the law, but it doesn’t end there. Instead, it must be accessible to all members of the society on equal terms and internalized as a universal value, both in the political and economic spheres.
One way to advance the rule of law is through better corporate governance rules.
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Although corporate governance in China remains a work in progress, the general trend among state-owned enterprises, especially those listed abroad, is toward greater transparency, stronger and more independent boards of directors, and management by mutually agreed rules. Over time, working in such an environment is likely to inculcate more democratic patterns of thinking in China’s business elite, as well as in senior government officials who sit on the boards of state-owned enterprises.
Today, China is not a democracy. But cultivating such “democratic habits” as local voting, independent judiciary, or anti-corruption measure such as better corporate governance may be a more effective tool of democratization than even the most pro-democratic pronouncements of China’s leaders.
Published Date: January 02, 2008