Democracy In China Research Articles

On sealing a lakebed: mass media and environmental democratisation in China

This paper examines a transition of environmental governance in China that involves increased transparency and public participation. It pays close attention to the role of the mass media in this transformation. After briefly reviewing the history of environmental governance in China, the paper examines the particular transformations in the governance regime that are associated with the controversy over the sealing of the eastern lake in the Old Summer Palace, Beijing. The paper argues that the central government has increasingly enlisted the support of the public and the media in governing environmental matters and provides evidence that the traditional mass media and the Internet have become increasingly active in environmental debates in China.

Civic Environmental NGOs, Civil Society, and Democratisation in China

This paper examines the potential role of civic environmental NGOs in China's democratisation. Based on interviews with 31 NGO officials, the paper examines the origins, structures, and functions of civic environmental NGOs in China. It also examines how various political and resource constraints have shaped their development. While having made progress in organising educational campaigns and specific conservation projects, civic environmental NGOs have been less successful in influencing government decisions and official behaviours. Most recently, some NGOs have made limited progress on these fronts by maintaining a largely non-oppositional stance towards government and by utilising various formal and information channels for influencing government decisions. NGO leaders will have to negotiate with different party-state entities in defining their precise roles in the political process.

The Invisible Visage of Hegemonic Politics

Rising China and Asian Democratization, by Daniel Lynch, begins with an old debate. Should the United States engage China or contain it? Today, however, it has been generally accepted, by both Democrats and Republicans in the United States, that containing a rising China is no longer a viable policy option. For Lynch, then, the central question of the book is not how to contain China, but how to change it—via democratization. Of course, this question is not new either. What is new is the fact that Lynch expands our perspective on the means through which democracy in China might be promoted. Previously, the democratization of China was to be achieved either directly, through such means as political pressure, or indirectly, through such means as trade. Lynch, however, suggests that it can be done through a more subtle process of socializing China into what he calls the global “liberal-rational democratic culture.” This aspect of Rising China reflects Lynch the policy advocate. Indeed, the book ends with what amounts to a political manifesto: “For the liberal-rational global culture to prevail … concerned agents must act” (p. 215).

How Changes in the Pacific/Asia Region Are Shaping Social Work Education and Practice in Hawai'i

No problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it. Albert Einstein At the February 2007 Council on Work Education (CSWE) Board of Directors meeting, Dean Kay Hoffman, CSWE president, opened by making the statement, Social work is out of step with the most critical social issues and problems confronting us in our society. We have lost ground to other professions and are moving down a path of irrelevance. Unless we change, social work may not exist in 30 years. I reside in Hawai'i, a place far removed from the political nucleus of U.S. society, which also implies some distance from cutting-edge issues in social work. Yet, I found Dean Hoffman's words bold and profoundly resonating. In the Pacific/Asia arena social developments of capacious proportions are not within social work's rubric of primary concern, such as human trafficking, to name one. Rather than fully concentrating on these critically important issues, too many schools of social work continue to focus on producing clinicians, many of whom opt for private practice; or pressed by intense labor force demands and threats of declassification, too many schools of social work mass produce graduates to fill position slots in the public sector. In addition, social work education and practice face several systemic and structural requirements that make it very challenging for the social work profession to quickly accommodate the changing realities taking place around the world. In recent years the institutions of political democracy have replaced institutions of political repression in our part of the world, and classic forms of communism have come to an end. China, although far from being a model of democracy, has opened its economy to market forces. It is pushing hard to expand its middle class, which will have major implications related to purchasing power and consumptive patterns (East-West Center, 2002). It appears, however, that the democratization of China and other developing Asian countries is more a democracy of money. Communities are being disrupted by environmental pillaging to fuel China's insatiable need for resources. Displaced rural dwellers are flooding urban centers in search of employment. Migrant workers often suffer from workplace discrimination and scant family support. Approximately 250,000 Chinese commit suicide each year. Suicide is the leading cause of death among adults between 18 and 34 years of age (Beech, 2003). To address the social fallout from China's economic boom, some 200 social work education programs nationwide have formed since the 1990s. The overnight Chinese phenomenon provides us with insights into the relationship between the U.S. brand of social work and economic development. Our role in the greater scheme is to tend to the needs of the free market's social fallout and the disparity that is the hallmark of a corporate-driven economy. In the field of social work, competence is generally defined by one's ability to heal and repair rather than by an acumen associated with prevention, making it difficult to ascertain our complicit role in sustaining exploitive systems. In our society, the narratives emerging from a condition of economic wealth and hyper-consumerism include those that attribute social ills to permissive liberalism, emphasize free-market capitalism as the answer for delivering national prosperity, and support extravagant military appropriations as a way to combat terrorism. These themes in turn lead to cuts in federal social welfare programs, the deregulation of markets, and lucrative military contracts for corporate sponsors (Korten, 2006). At the same time, economic growth is held as a cure for poverty, unemployment, pollution, debt repayment, stress reduction and mental health, crime, divorce, and even drug addiction. These perspectives are often reproduced at the level of social work education and practice, which tends to valorize its own history of intercepting and reforming victims of capitalism. …

When Will the Chinese People Be Free?

This article asks: "What will be the future character of China's political system?" According to Freedom House, all countries above a certain income level are rated at least Partly Free, so why not China? Assuming continued growth in education and the economy, the model result shows it edging into that category by 2015 and Free by 2025. Despite evident negatives, changes in personal liberties, legal system, media, village elections, and individual values support this prediction. An in-between stage might involve more open competition within the party. When achieved, a democratic China would be a positive factor for peace in Asia.

Comment: How Will China Democratize?

Abstract: Given the mixed signals and trends in China, it may be premature to identify a specific timeframe within which China will become Free or even Partly Free on the Freedom House scale. A more fruitful intellectual exercise might be to ask not when but how the Middle Kingdom could become Free. No one should underrate the will and skill that the ruling Chinese Communist Party will put into keeping its grip on power.

Democracy in China: a distant dream

Since the late 1970s, China has made enormous efforts to liberalize its markets and integrate itself into the world economy. Yet these developments have not been accompanied by any meaningful degree of liberalization of the political system. This paper attempts to account for the lack of democratization in China. In particular, it reviews the process of gradual economic liberalization initiated under Deng Xiao Ping and discusses the issue of corruption. Economic liberalization, it is shown, has provided new opportunities for the political elite to translate power into wealth, thereby making it more reluctant than ever to relax its grip on power. In a system of “autocratic capitalism,” the ruling elite both in business and government lack the incentives to introduce political liberalization. At this stage, dreams that the country’s economic liberalization will someday lead to democracy remain distant.

Debating political reform in China: rule of law vs. democratization

Introduction, Suisheng Zhao 1. Toward a Rule of Law Regime in China, Pan Wei 2. Political Liberalization without Democratization: Pan Wei's Proposal for Political Reform, Suisheng Zhao 3. A Government of Laws: Democracy, Rule of Law and Administrative Law Reform in China, Randall Peerenboom 4. The Rule of Law as Transition to Democracy in China, Larry Diamond 5. A Comparative Politics of Democratization in China, Edward Friedman 6. Pan Wei's Rule of Law Regime and Reforming Authoritarianism in China, Gunter Schubert 7. Toward the Rule of Law: Why China's Path Will Be Different from the West, Baohui Zhang 8. The People's Court in Transition: The Prospects of the Chinese Judicial Reform, Qianfan Zhang 9. State Power and Unbalanced Legal Development in China, Yongshun Cai and Songcai Yang 10. Law and Labor in Post-Mao China, Yunqiu Zhang 11. The Internet and Emerging Civil Society in China, Guobin Yang 12. The Internet and Single-Party Rule in China, Tamara Renee Shie 13. Towards a Rule of Law Political Reform under China's Fourth Generation of Leadership, Suisheng Zhao 14. Reflections on Consultative Rule of Law Regime: A Response to My Critics, Pan Wei About the Editor and Contributors Index.

A Community of the Dispersed: The Culture of Shanghai's Neighborhood Stock Markets

One of the greatest changes the post-Mao reform has brought to urban China is the reconfiguration of spaces and communities. This includes the diminishing role of socialist institutions such as the danwei, the once all-encompassing and penetrating work unit as both a space and community, and the growing presence of new, diverse professional and social associations and managerial organizations. China scholars have studied this phenomenon for good reason as it sheds light on the shifting boundary between the state and society, the possible emergence of independent, autonomous forces that may constitute a civil society, and the potential for radical political change that may lead to the democratization of China. However, while some communities, such as dissidents and the so-called floating population, are highly visible either because of the sheer number or the nature of their activities and thus more likely to be noted, others, especially informal, loosely connected, neighborhood-based groups, attract less attention. But what happens at the neighborhood level represents local history within urban settings, where the effects of China's broad-based urban reform meet the proverbial man in the street, either being absorbed, reacted to, or played out, in myriad, often mundane but vital ways.

Does China’s middle class think and act democratically? Attitudinal and behavioral orientations toward urban self-government

In the West, the middle class has been considered a potent agent of the sociopolitical transition toward democracy and the cornerstone of democratic rule. Does a middle class in China think and act democratically and hence serve as the harbinger of democratic change in that country? This study attempts to answer this critical question by examining the attitudinal and behavioral orientations of middle-class individuals toward grassroots self-government in urban China. It is based on data collected from a representative-sample survey conducted in Beijing. The findings indicate that China’s middle class expects grassroots self-government to be formed in a democratic way; yet the middle class is critical of the currently-implemented self-government system because it is not organized as democratically as they expect, and therefore the middle class is less likely to participate in the system. These findings have significant implications for the role of the Chinese middle class in the democratization of China.

China's Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead

China's Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead. By Bruce Gilley. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 320p. 20.00 paper.Much of the scholarship on democratization in China falls into roughly two camps. Some argue that democracy in China is or will be a bottom-up process. Others aver that it will be an elite-driven top-down phenomenon. Bruce Gilley is firmly in the second camp. He argues that democratization is likely to occur as China's more moderate and liberal leaders recognize, in the face of “a multiple metastatic dysfunction,” the tenuous hold they have on China and move toward democratization as a means of minimizing their losses.

Elite-led Democratization in China

A wide consensus among scholars of China holds that if democratization comes about, it will be through an elite-led process of change. In this scenario, popular pressures from below are a spur to action at the top but by means take its place. The evidence in support of this scenario in China is found in both the organizational capacity of the ruling Chinese Communist party (CCP) and in the relative weakness of civil society and class pressures in present-day Such a transition would have profound implications for the style of democracy that follows, and thus implies the need for a distinctive form of forward-planning by states and other international actors.In this article, I will set out the empirical case for elite-led democratization in China and show why it may also have normative appeal. Following a look at the background conditions that make democracy likely, I will outline the notion of an elite-led transition and consider the likely timing and sequencing of such a transition. Finally, I will consider the implications of such a transition and the policy advice that follows.THE BACKGROUND TO DEMOCRATIZATIONAnytime we are in the realm of prediction, politics, and China, we are dealing with a triple dose of high uncertainty. It is surprise that many scholars of China have responded to this by imagining multiple scenarios for the country's political future, or by claiming that all prediction is futile. For others, it is precisely the magnitude of the socioeconomic shifts underway in China, and the instability of that country's constitutional structure, that make clear predictions so imperative. Without them, we leave ourselves entirely exposed to the high uncertainty of China's political future.Among clear predictions of China's political future, we can discern four broad types: major changes, an evolution towards right-wing neo-authoritarianism, a descent into chaos, and a transition to democracy. The no change school is often a default position for those who fear prediction altogether. But it can also be a serious predictive school. As in the case of the Soviet Union of the 19903, post-Tiananmen China is seen by this school as led by a strong, repressive state that is able to effectively crush pressures for change. This view of China places emphasis on the lack of fundamental institutional change-the persistence of a Leninist dictatorship and the claims (if not the efforts) to totalizing social control-and on the reputed anti-democratic tendencies of the population as a whole. It brings together cold warrior analysts in the west such as Samuel Huntington and cultural pessimists from China like Ju Yanan.1 This prediction has the intuitive appeal of linearity, i.e. more of the same. But it is often hard to square with the premises of its own analysis, which simultaneously espies great underlying socioeconomic transformations in China.Another school predicts the evolution to a form of right-wing authoritarian state. Despite the failure of this model after several decades in Latin America and the rest of Asia, it is believed to be durable for today's China. In this scenario, the CCP continues to shed its communist pretensions and emerges as an authoritarian regime that coopts most of the population with rapid development and national greatness. The regime, in this view, will successfully institutionalize itself as a modernized non-electoral regime along the lines of UMNO-ruled Malaysia or PRI-ruled Mexico. The virtues of this theory are its accuracy so far. Since 1989, despite predictions of CCP collapse, the CCP has moved towards this model with significant changes in its governance and ideology-allowing business owners into the party, selling off public enterprises, repressing worker and peasant movements, encouraging a new ethnocentric nationalism, and even planning a Berlin-style Olympic Games for Beijing in 2008.Chaos theorists are a wider church and include those who write about a crisis of governability, a collapse of the state, and an involution of the party in …

Organized International Asylum-Seeker Networks: Formation and Utilization by Chinese Students

This article examines the formation and role of international networks formed by Chinese students living in the West in the late 1980s and early 1990s as part of their efforts to obtain the right to remain in Western countries in the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Square violence of June 4, 1989. Various forms of migrant social networks have been a research focus in international refugee and migration studies, but international networks formed by asylum seekers themselves, and their role in asylum-seeking processes, have been largely ignored. This article is based on a multi-method comparative study of Chinese students living in Australia and the United States at the time. Their experience provides data for examining and conceptualizing the role of organized international asylum-seeker networks in the asylum-seeking process. The analysis focuses on Chinese student lobbying in 1989, led by an independent Chinese student union, which helped “the Pelosi Bill” to be passed by the U.S. Congress. The main strategies adopted by Chinese students in the United States and Australia, as well as their internationally coordinated actions, are compared. Also examined is the role of two politicized international Chinese student organizations, the Chinese Alliance for Democracy and the Federation for Democratic China, in assisting students with obtaining residence.

Psychopaths of Faith vs. The Muse of Irreverence

Going through a protracted period of transition since the end of the Cold War, the world order in the making is neither what was nor what it is yet to become. It is in “the middle of the future.” To get our bearings in this uncertain transition, we explore the two grand post-Cold War narratives—“The End of History” as posited by Francis Fukuyama and “The Clash of Civilizations” posited by the late Samuel Huntington. Mikhail Gorbachev looks back at his policies that brought the old order to collapse. The British philosopher John Gray critiques the supposed “universality” of liberalism and, with Homi Bhabha, sees a world of hybrid identities and localized cultures. The Singaporean theorist Kishore Mahbubani peels away the “veneer” of Western dominance. Amartya Sen, the economist and Nobel laureate, assesses whether democratic India or autocratic China is better at building “human capacity” in their societies.

From comrade to citizen: the struggle for political rights in China

From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China, by Merle Goldman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. xiv + 286 pp. US$39.95 (hardcover). This book promises to be something of a departure for Merle Goldman. Hitherto, her oeuvre has been largely concerned with China's intellectuals (using expansive Chinese definition thereof)· But both concept and implicit expectation that this social group can constitute backbone of an emerging civil society now seem out of date. After all, intellectuals had their chance in 1980s, and failed. Goldman reviews this history, bringing things up to date with a description of Tiananmen Mothers movement, Peace Charter Movement and activities of former political prisoners. She is especially informative on cyber dissidents. Also good is chapter on China Democratic Party (1998-99), which she describes as the most direct challenge to China's party-state system since 1949 revolution (p. 182). Goldman makes much of distinction between established and intellectuals, latter referring to would-be Communist supporters who were nonetheless rebuffed by Party. Actually, there is a large overlap between two, and both types have become so diverse that one wonders how important such categorization is. Obviously, disestablished intellectuals have been perceived by rulers to have stuck their necks out more than their establishment counterparts but, given paranoia that abounds in Zhongnanhai, one should not put much stock in this judgement. Whether one is an established, disestablished or imprisoned intellectual is largely a matter of rulers' whims. To extent that this distinction is not completely arbitrary, issue seems to be not so much what is said, but how widely it is being said and whether protagonists are perceived as being in any way organized. To put it another way, authorities are not afraid of diversity, so long as they alone make final call. The disestablishment of an intellectual may simply be result of factional politics at center. Even books by establishment intellectuals are sometimes banned and confiscated, while disestablished writers living abroad can sometimes publish in establishment press. Still, all of this is a fascinating subject, and this book provides much insight into intellectual scene and various schools of thought, including Marxist Humanists, Liberals, Neo-Maoists, New Left, Neo-conservatives and Neo-nationalists. But one then expects Goldman to move on and focus on various other types who have been struggling for political rights. …

Elite-Led Democratization in China: Prospects, Perils, and Policy Implications

Elite-Led Democratization in China: Prospects, Perils, and Policy Implications

State and Society in China's Democratic Transition: Confucianism, Leninism, and Economic Development (review)

Reviewed by: State and Society in China's Democratic Transition: Confucianism, Leninism, and Economic Development Robert E. Gamer (bio) Guo Xiaoqin . State and Society in China's Democratic Transition: Confucianism, Leninism, and Economic Development. New York: Routledge, 2003. xi, 270 pp. Hardcover $85.00, ISBN 0-415-94504-6 As the title implies, this book assesses the impact of Confucianism, Leninism, and the success of the Chinese communist regime in achieving economic development on the attitudes of Chinas intelligentsia, political opposition, private entrepreneurial classes, and ordinary people. The attitudes of all of these groups have contributed to a strong state, a weak society, and an economic development imperative. But together can they bring about democratic transition? The book is based on several months of interviews in the summer of 2000 by the author, Guo Xiaoqin, with ninety-nine government officials, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and ordinary people in Beijing, Hong Kong, and along the Yangtze River. The jobs and locations of those interviewed, and the questions asked, appear in the appendix. The author sought individuals from many walks of life, and intellectuals who both supported and opposed the Tiananmen demonstrations. He found that bureaucrats are inclined to support top-down development rather than democracy, although lower-level officials "tend to be less satisfied with [End Page 436] the status quo because they have less stake in the system" (p. 13). Although supporters of the Tiananmen demonstrations who still live in China support democracy, they also support the Party's reformers and are wary of giving too much power to the less-educated masses. Exiled dissidents have isolated themselves from China's people and public opinion. The newly rich maintain close networks with public officials and will support the status quo as long as they benefit from it. In general, the author found economic development and political stability to supersede democratic reform as priorities. He concludes that none of the groups mentioned will take real action to bring about democracy (p. 17). Instead, they count on the country's leaders to initiate democratization, slowly, during the first fifty or more years of the twenty-first century. That is because of an image shared by many interviewed that democracy is a historical trend accompanying economic development, that the leadership will press for further reforms, and that political reform will be a means to fight political corruption (although most officials are good and fair). The interviews took place at the height of Zhu Rongji's attack on political corruption, which interviewees applauded. Underlying all this support for the regime is the perception that communist rule has survived the Tiananmen unrest and has entered the twenty-first century with great success. Much of that success emanates from effective political control over an effective bureaucracy during the post-Mao era. This has not only saved the bureaucracy from developing fatigue but has convinced others in society that the regime can maintain political stability and dynamic economic development. That analysis conflicts with those who argue that China is developing "fragmented authoritarianism" with "divided, segmented, and stratified chains of command," and also with those who maintain that authority lies in the hands of a few top Party leaders. In matters of personnel, ideology, public security, and foreign affairs, authority does lie at the top; control over the economy is diversified (p. 21). Confucianism has contributed to this with its emphasis on the moral imperative of rule by educated generalist career administrators who have autonomy yet maintain unswerving loyalty to their superiors, on familiar terms with one another and the central leaders—so long as the country experiences unity and stability. Leninism contributes the notion that the Party should lay down the guidelines implemented by the government and wage class struggle through mass movements. Deng Xiaoping relaxed some of these controls, emphasizing rapid economic growth under a strong state committed to maintaining stability and continued management of the economy where needed. He replaced some personalized power with collective decision making, separated some of the activities of Party and government, instituted elections for local government, and transferred some power to provincial, city, and township governments. Guo takes issue both with scholars who see the new technocratic bureaucrats rejecting the old ways...

China's Democratic Future: How it will Happen and Where it will Lead

China's Democratic Future: How it will Happen and Where it will Lead

China's Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead. Bruce Gilley

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsChina's Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead. Bruce Gilley Barrett L. McCormickBarrett L. McCormick Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 53Jan., 2005Celebrating the Universities Service Centre for China Studies Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/20066020 Views: 9Total views on this site Copyright The China JournalPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

When Galileo Meets Allah

Going through a protracted period of transition since the end of the Cold War, the world order in the making is neither what was nor what it is yet to become. It is in “the middle of the future.” To get our bearings in this uncertain transition, we explore the two grand post-Cold War narratives—“The End of History” as posited by Francis Fukuyama and “The Clash of Civilizations” posited by the late Samuel Huntington. Mikhail Gorbachev looks back at his policies that brought the old order to collapse. The British philosopher John Gray critiques the supposed “universality” of liberalism and, with Homi Bhabha, sees a world of hybrid identities and localized cultures. The Singaporean theorist Kishore Mahbubani peels away the “veneer” of Western dominance. Amartya Sen, the economist and Nobel laureate, assesses whether democratic India or autocratic China is better at building “human capacity” in their societies.