The Potentialities and Limitations for Chinese Democracy

Abstract

Democracy has been established as an important aim of political development and an integral element of political civilization since the late 1970s. However, it is not the liberal democracy in western societies. What China wants to promote is the socialist democracy that has two faces, that is, the socialist face and liberal face. As a result, the political developments have reflected two-track characteristics in democratization. One is to strengthen and improve the CCP leadership by introducing intra-party democracy, reinforcing party discipline, strengthening intra-party supervision and implementing mass line and people's principle based on the socialist nature of democracy. Another is to build democratic systems by upgrading the status of the NPC, expanding the scope of direct elections, reforming election rules, restoring the grass-root autonomy in countryside and urban community and improving the conditions of human rights in the view of liberal democracy. From these processes of democratization, we can evaluate the potentialities and limitations for Chinese democracy. As the economic and political reforms have been intensifying in China, the question whether China will democratize bas been attracted attentions from abroad as well as at home. Based on different-if not contradictory-definitions of democracy, scholars and observers tend to depict their own pictures for the democratic developments in China. This paper is designed to analyze the evolution of definitions of democracy in China, clarify the complex nature of democracy in political discourse in order to look for some clues to evaluate the potentialities and limitations for Chinese democracy.