 | Defining Democracy |
China struggles to define democracy
Financial Times
By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Published: June 12 2007 16:50
In the lead-up to this year’s Communist party congress, which will set the country’s top leadership for the next five years, Chinese
Beginning with a pronouncement earlier this year from Wen Jiabao, the premier, that “democracy, law, freedom and human
rights” were not exclusive to capitalism, party scholars have talked up the once sensitive concept in numerous official articles.
But in doing so, the party has opened up the field for proponents of more orthodox notions of western democracy to speak out –
an opportunity they have grabbed, and which has largely been tolerated by the authorities.
“We did not used to talk about democracy, but we do now,” says Xie Tao, the former vice-president of Renmin University, in Beijing.
Mr Xie, 86, published an essay recently expounding the virtues of Swedish-style social democracy, combining a strong sense of
social justice with a commitment to universal suffrage.
“We must not only catch up with other economies, but we must also catch up with the political trends overseas as well,” he says.
“Not everything can be decided by one party or one person.”
Mr Xie remains reticent about countenancing radical change, declining in an interview to discuss in detail whether new political
parties should be allowed to flourish and compete head-to-head with the ruling communists. “I should shun that question,” he
says, adding that the most important issue was simply whether the country was heading “in the right political direction”.
Mr Xie’s essay in an influential but small-circulation magazine earned him only a mild rebuke from the People’s Daily, the
mouthpiece of the ruling party. “Chinese-style socialism . . . is fundamentally different from social democracy in terms of theory
and practice – it adheres to Marxism and will never allow the society to be ruled by a multi- plicity of thoughts,” the paper
responded. Its position mirrors the government’s 2005 white paper on democracy, which defined “democratic government” as the
“Chinese Communist party governing on behalf of the people”.
With this bedrock principle in mind, the sanctioning of “democracy” in official organs looks more like an attempt to domesticate
and tame the word for use by the party, rather than any radical political reform.
“You need a completely new dictionary to understand the word ‘democracy’ in China, the way the party uses it,” says a retired
former senior official.
Others, however, have welcomed the debate as the first movements of a potentially positive trend. Du Daozheng, who published
Mr Xie’s article, said in an interview with a Hong Kong magazine that this was the first time since the 1989 crackdown on pro-
democracy protests that “such a complicated and important theoretical issue was discussed fairly and calmly.” “There was no
abuse, name-calling, threats, punishment, bans or dismissals,” he said.
The democracy debate has run in parallel with other campaigns, both to make party officials more professional managers, and
force them to be more responsive simultaneously to local communities and Beijing’s diktats, a difficult balance.
The party has also been experimenting with widening the numbers of officials who can vote in intra-party elections for senior
government jobs.
“There should be a ‘third way’ between social democracy and traditional socialism,” says Wang Yukai, of the China National
School of Administration in Beijing.
Tens of thousands of top party jobs have been abolished in smaller cities and townships in an effort to make the local party
secretary – the most senior post – responsive to a broader mass of people, rather than a cabal of deputies. Mr. Wang said the
positions of about 100,000 deputy-party secretaries had been abolished over the past year. Each locality has about seven to eight
deputy party secretaries, with the positions offering substantial opportunities for patronage and corruption.
While most of the debate’s participants have stayed within relatively safe boundaries, a number of writers and scholars have
used the opening to go much further, debunking some age-old party objections to elections. In one of a series of trenchant
articles in Nanfeng Chuang magazine, Huang Woyun, a reporter with the official Xinhua news agency, attacked the notion that
ordinary Chinese were not ready for fully-fledged democracy.
“It is the very reason that democracy should be adopted in this country,” he wrote. “Democracy allows ordinary people to improve
their own quality, and that of the whole nation.”
Liu Yang, a senior editor at the magazine, said the articles were published in a “constructive and exploratory fashion” and that no
complaints had been received.
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