Opinion & Commentary
Democracy's long march to China
Last month, actor Jackie Chan created uproar around the world when he told a gathering in Hainan province that China didn’t need democracy because Chinese people needed to be controlled. With the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen protests coming up next week, the focus will return to political reform in China or the lack of it. To be fair to Jackie Chan, he is half right. China shouldn’t aim for democracy right now but its people do not need to be controlled. Instead, they need to be liberated and better institutions will do that.
There is a frequent misconception in the West that democracy – meaning one person one vote – will bring prosperity, progress and freedom. Yet, democracy is what political scientists would call a value-neutral process. In the abstract, a democracy of angels would choose angels, and one of devils would vote in devils. When Westerners advocate democracy, they are really advocating ‘liberal democracy.’ After all, Palestinians voted in Hamas over the more moderate Fatah. That was democracy in action but not the result the West was really after.
How do we establish the best possible conditions for liberal democracy? We need a strong civil society where there is rule of law. Courts need to be independent and officials need to be accountable. Private property needs to be protected, individual enterprise needs to be given a chance to succeed, basic human rights must be enforced, and the government needs to be restrained. This is the meaning of liberating the people. These are the foundations for a liberal society that are sorely lacking in modern day China.
Yes, it’s true that China is still developing. But that excuse is wearing a bit thin. Reforms began in 1979. The reform period – 30 years and counting – has now lasted longer than Mao’s 27 years of terrible rule. Since then China’s economy has grown almost four-fold. The middle class is approaching 100 million–200 million people depending on the definition. The building of institutions should be speeding ahead. Instead, since the Tiananmen protests in 1989, institutions in China have in many respects gone backwards.
How can this be so? It all comes down to the increased role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Chinese economy and society, without necessary institutions existing to restrain them and make them accountable.
The number of officials before and after the Tiananmen protests has more than doubled, from 20 million to 45 million. Since the early 1990s, the CCP has retaken control of the economy. State-controlled enterprises receive over three-quarters of the country’s entire capital each year, reversing the situation prior to 1989. The private sector is denied both formal capital (i.e. bank loans) and access to the most lucrative markets which are reserved for the state-controlled sector. Only around 50 of the 1,400 listed companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange are genuinely private. Fewer than 100 of the 1,000 richest people in China are not linked to the Party. This state-corporatist model favors a relatively small number of well placed insiders. Meanwhile, a billion people are largely missing out on the fruits of GDP growth. In fact, 400 million people have seen their net incomes decline over the past decade. Absolute poverty has doubled since 2000.
This extensive role of the CCP has coincided with a rise in systemic corruption. Courts at all levels are still explicitly under the control of Party organs. According to Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) studies, stealing from the public purse by officials amounts to around 2% of GDP each year; and it is rising. According to a 2003 CASS report, over 40 million households have had their lands illegally seized by corrupt and unaccountable local officials.
Levels of dissatisfaction with especially local authorities are so bad that there were 87,000 instances of mass unrest in 2005 according to official figures, rising from a few thousand in the mid 1990s. To appease unhappy citizens, Beijing has instituted a system of ‘petitions’ whereby aggrieved citizens can appeal to higher authority against their local officials. A good idea perhaps – except for the fact that of every 10,000 petitions lodged, only three are heard.
Democracy under these circumstances is unlikely to produce a better result for the vast majority of China’s people. China needs institutions. But the CCP knows that if strong institutions are actually built, the CCP will lose its privileged placed in Chinese society and economy. And if so, eventually it will likely lose political power.
In remembering Tiananmen, we need to think one step at a time. Push for the building of institutions and then let democracy take care of itself.
Dr John Lee is a Visiting Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
