A Chinese Way of Democratisation?

Abstract

Democracy is regarded as a worthy value by most Chinese people including the top leadership, yet in the last two decades, it seems that no progress has been made towards a democratic China. (1) The majority of Chinese people seem content with the current regime. Defying the predictions of social and political theorists, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has not withered away, but instead has become more sophisticated in its management of the country. (2) Indeed, there is a trend both within and outside China that attributes China's phenomenal economic growth to the authoritarian nature of its government. (3) Compared with a democratic government, it is believed that an authoritarian government is able to mobilise large amounts of resources to tackle the most urgent bottlenecks of growth. Why has open demand for democratisation not accompanied economic development in China? Is China indeed creating an enduring form of authoritarianism that beats the conventional logic of political transformation? This article will attempt to provide answers to both questions. The answer to the first question has a lot to do with the CPC's growth-centred strategy adopted at the end of the 1970s when economic reforms began. With sustained economic growth and auxiliary expansion of civil liberties, this strategy has largely worked to divert people's demand for democracy. Along the way, the Party has transformed itself from a proletarian party to a party without a real political conviction, which substantially enlarges its political bases by attracting the newly emerged middle class and business elites. Recent literature also frequently cites these factors as causes for the delay of democratisation in China. (4) In particular, McNally and Wright emphasise the role played by the political thick embeddedness of private capital holders--that is, the strong and encompassing alliance between private capital holders and the current political regime--as an important cause for delayed democratisation in China. (5) In a similar vein, Dickson believes that the current Chinese political regime would survive in the form of crony communism. (6) While we do not dispute the facts used by these writers to formulate their propositions, we interpret the move of the business elites as an incidental consequence of the CPC's ideological transformation to enlarge its political bases. In essence, the CPC still wants to maintain its disinterestedness vis-a-vis the society, that is, not to affiliate with any social group either by political conviction or by policy favours. The emergence of strong business elites is a natural development in a political system that lacks popular participation. The answer to the second question is likely to be a no. The authoritarian elements of the government are distorting the economy and aggravating China's structural imbalance problems among which declining shares of residential income and high inflationary pressures are causing popular discontent. On the other hand, people have more freedom to develop diverse objectives. The political atmosphere has become more accommodating and the society more assertive. More significant but quieter changes are happening within the establishment. Many functions of the Party and the government have been institutionalised. These developments may not establish full democracy, but have laid solid social and political foundations for it. That is to say, economic progress is bringing political changes to China, albeit at a gradual and incremental pace. The next section discusses the formation of the CPC's growth-centred strategy and how it led to the expansion of civil liberty and deferred the demand for democratisation. This is followed by an exploration of the forces brought about by the growth-centred strategy that have put China on the path towards democratisation, and an explanation of China's path to democratisation from an international perspective. Why is Popular Demand for Democratisation Low in China? …