Domestic Constraints in the Genesis of Western Style of Democracy in China

Abstract

The last decade of the twentieth century is full of some form of democratic transition all around the world. Samuel P. Huntington described this phenomenon as the “Third Wave of Democratization” in his book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. There is this Modernisation Theory which explains the phenomenon of transition of the state into a democratic form of government by analyzing the economic and social progress of the states. China undoubtedly has progressed a lot economically in the last three decades and with the increasing affluence, society is also changing simultaneously. As modernization theory explains that economic progress is followed by political reforms. But still, China has managed to carry its economic growth trajectory up and improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people without making many concessions in the political field. It is still governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which is more or less authoritarian. China is among one of the few states which are still undemocratic in nature in western scholar perspectives. There is a lot of speculation about China’s future and its political system. But democracy does not have just one form in which every political system has to be fit. Chinese government and Academicians claim that China has its form of democracy. The Chinese government claims that they are regularly carrying political reform but these political reforms are far away from the western style of democracy. Some domestic constraints constrained the growth of the western style of democracy in China.