China’s Democratization and the New Authoritarianism

Yang Jianli and He Xiaochuan*

1. Origin of the Issue

In recent years, two viewpoints have become dominant among the Chinese academics. Both of them tried to evaluate the current Chinese social economic and politic situations, to predict the future development and to think about the ways of modernization in China. One is optimistic. It maintains that China is politically stable, economically sound with ongoing marketization and privatization processes while maintaining sustained high growth rates. Continuing along this path, a middle class will emerge and grow strong, nurturing a civil society and then naturally resulting in a democracy. During this process of development, any appeal or action directly asking for political reform and human rights improvement are necessarily making troubles for the person or group who needs centralized power to push or manipulate the modernization cause, and thus is bound to promote instability and delay the cause. Therefore, they conclude, it is undesirable.

The other viewpoint is pessimistic. It believes that there exist many crises behind the superficial economic boom in China. These crises will explode after Deng Xiaoping, especially after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) loses its control over the Chinese society. Once they explode, China will inevitably be in disaster. However, the Chinese public at this time possesses neither the quality nor capability to run and enjoy a democracy; therefore, any direct promotion of democracy, especially the ones from bottom up and outside the CCP system, not only can’t avoid the crises but stimulate and fuel up social upheavals. Therefore, people can only place their hope on the leadership of the CCP, helping from the sidewalk transform it to minimize the possibility of crises.

What’s interesting here is that the two opposing opinions in view of China’s current situation come to the same conclusion regarding what to do next. In fact, the first opinion believes that China is developing along a New Authoritarian path in recent years and it is a correct one. The latter opinion is quite negative towards the new authoritarian practice in the past but implies this: the New Authoritarianism is probably the only feasible approach for China considering how it has been able to maintain socially, economically and politically.

The New Authoritarianism is an inevitable topic when issues of China’s modernization are on the table. After the CCP identified what it called the “socialist market economy” as its direction of reform, the New Authoritarianism that almost disappeared after the June Fourth gained attention again from many intellectuals. The hardship in Russian and the East European countries’ reforms further triggered these intellectuals into positively considering the New Authoritarianism. What we will try to answer in this paper are the following. Does the New Authoritarianism meet China’s characteristics and reality? How far away the CCP’s practice in recent years is from the ideal of a true New Authoritarianism, and how to view and evaluate the New Authoritarianism from a historic perspective?

2. The Meaning of the New Authoritarianism

Before and after World War II, a majority of the world’s developed countries were democratic. Therefore, political scientists tend to think the democracy that protects freedom is a necessary political condition for economic modernization. It has basically been proven true by the modernization processes of these democratic countries. Since the 1960’s, however, some East Asian and Latin American countries with autocratic rules also developed capitalist economies and realized their economic modernization. Some of them have even built up a rather complete democratic political system. This mode of development caught the attention of the western academics and it was categorized as a big research area: Developing Countries’ Modernization and was further termed as New Authoritarianism.

As a new term, the New Authoritarianism here has its specific meaning. A new authoritarianism exists with respect to the old. The old authoritarianism means the totalitarian state or power that controls everything. The new authoritarianism on the other hand means the autocratic state or power that is modern orientated, has up to date knowledge, and encourages and protects economic freedom, while at the same time has strict political control. The New Authoritarianism is just an academic term for the state of a political autocracy allowing economic freedom and the associated mode of development.

Whether to be accepted or rejected by the CCP, there had been a particular Chinese political and economic background as well as added Chinese flavor when the New Authoritarianism was introduced to China. In 1988, China’s economic reform came to a dilemma. The greatly inflated macro economy was going sour and the reformists at the power center were in danger. At that time, some scholars argued the following. One, the political position of the reformists must be maintained so that the reform wouldn’t be reversed. Two, there must be a strong power that had the ability to quench the growing public dissatisfaction and to continue with the reform. Three, we must start the next critical reform, that was to privatize property rights and start building a market economy. Four, all privatization and marketization problems should only be left in the hands a liberal authority that could forcefully execute the Party’s reform plans, such as the Party-government separation, government-business separation, construction of rule of law and so on. Because of such need for a strong power, democratization would not be applicable to China, at least for now. It would only bring social unrest and destroy the stability the endangered economic development needed. Five, although both modernization and democratization were goals of reform, democratization must be chronologically secondary. It would come as a natural outcome of the economic development. What we were doing today was no more than preparing the economic and social platforms for a future democratization. Six, when looking for new means to carry out the reform, the important thing was to seek theoretic breakthrough that could guide the reform. Based on all these arguments, those scholars borrowed the experiences of reform from some East Asian countries and proposed the New Authoritarianism as the underlining theory for China’s modernization (democratization) strategy. This theory can be outlined as to maintain an autocratic power to achieve all of the following:

• Remove the hurdles for free economic development

• Make and maintain a macro environment for economic advancement

• Clearly define and protect property rights

• Use market mechanism to configure social resources and organize production and spending but interfere the free economy with state power whenever necessary

• Politically ban free election and multi-party system

• Develop the economy to prepare the condition for democratization.

In fact, the New Authoritarianism can be characterized as a transitional theory from autocracy to democracy.

Deng Xiaoping then appreciated the New Authoritarianism theory when it was first proposed to him. However, the June Fourth tragedy jokingly ended the so-called “liberal autocracy” favored by the New Authoritarianism. The CCP reformists were virtually defeated in June Fourth. As a result, the New Authoritarianism was under fierce attack from the CCP conservative faction as a theory advocating capitalist freedom and soon disappeared virtually among the top ranks of the CCP leadership. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping toured the southern China (to push for more reform of his taste) and the CCP politburo followed him with a decision of further economic reform aimed at the establishment of a “socialist market economy.” The essence of the so-called “socialist market economy” is to maintain Deng Xiaoping’s “four fundamental principles” politically while going for a market economy. The “four fundamental principles” in fact has only one, which is to maintain the CCP’s one-party autocracy. Therefore, the socialist market economy can be summarized as an economic liberalization under the CCP’s one-party autocracy. Although this mode of development was not given a New Authoritarianism title, it in fact is the very same thing with a CCP flavor.

We totally agree to Mr. Ding Xueliang’s conclusion that autocracy may not necessarily be an inevitable feature of the Authoritarian. The establishment and use of an authority is very different from using power to maintain an autocratic rule. The CCP’s New Authoritarianism is brought to do nothing but maintain and protect its power and interests. This differs from the original intention of the New Authoritarianism in that the decisions from the truly New Authoritarianism are often in line with the modernization process, but the CCP’s New Authoritarianism goes the opposite way. The outcome of the CCP’s New Authoritarianism will necessarily be going away from the ideal of the true New Authoritarianism.

3. Positive Implications of the New Authoritarianism

As a transitional theory for modernization, the New Authoritarianism for China in the current stage of development has its positive implications. First of all, it is the first reform-guiding theory recommended by the scholars in the CCP system that recognizes the values of and aimed at democracy and freedom. Although it did not become the official party-line and thus was not publicly promoted and openly practiced, it was acknowledged, semi-openly, by the CCP top leadership. It was, for the first time, openly discussed and debated among top CCP ranks. It also broke the CCP taboo that democracy could not be talked about. This in no doubt signifies a great leap forward in China and it will have a lasting impact.

In addition, the issues raised for resolution by the New Authoritarianism are very critical. It advanced the search for the ways of modernization from goal oriented to process oriented. This advancement is vitally important for China’s democratization. As Mr. Wu Jialong said, “… this is the first time the Chinese intellectuals, in their study of modernization, focused their thoughts on the theme of transition from an autocracy to a democracy. This is a critical issue delayed for a century…. China does no lack enthusiasm for democracy but the strategy to transform from autocracy to democracy.” In other words, the Chinese elite does not have the knowledge of societal transformation and the capability of delicate social planning and designing in their attempt to lead and change China. This is not only a lesson from the 1989 democratic movement, but also a lesson of ten years of “crossing the river by touching the stones in the water”.

4. New Authoritarianism is Out of Touch with China’s Reality

Any transitional theory from autocracy to democracy, unless it advocates overthrowing the autocracy with revolution, cannot avoid the issue of forcing the dictators to limit (even give up) their own power. Power, especially the autocratic power, has a natural tendency not to be limited or checked. This is the source of all difficulties. The early democrats in the West realized this problem. Madison says in Chapter 51 of his Federalist Papers, the trouble is that you first need to make a capable government of controlling the public and then you want force it to limit itself.

Therefore, we must start from this trouble to analyze whether the CCP’s power structure agrees with the assumption for a new authoritarian state in the New Authoritarianism theory. We need to compare the social, economic and political state in China with that in the Eastern Asian mode, especially that of Taiwan, which is actually the original mode in the New Authoritarianism. Only after these analysis and comparison, can we answer the question whether the New Authoritarianism matches China’s reality and should be practiced in China.

China’s reform fell from the right beginning into the contradiction of using power to reform or reforming the power. CCP’s political elite have always been wandering between maintaining their autocratic power for their own economically benefits more and reforming to benefit the people more because the latter is often in conflict with the former. Of course, any governing power, especially an autocratic one, has the same problem, but the CCP differs most fundamentally from the Eastern Asian New Authoritarian powers in the following way. From the birth of the CCP power, especially after CCP finished nationalizing individual means of production, CCP’s political power has been closed tied with its economic interests. After the economic reform, the tie has even had an openly personalized (political power tied with individual economic interests) form. This is of course caused by China’s unique history of a socialist planned economy.

Mr. Zhu Jiamin calls the Chinese flavored socialism, after the reform was started, a new capitalism. When analyzing the source of capitals of the new capitalists, Mr. Zhu says that the capital base of the Chinese new capitalists is the entire state asset in the government’s control under a centralized planned economy. In other words, this is a capital, tangible or not, accumulated in a few decades by the whole people. It includes the lands, rivers, prairie, forests, which should belong to the country according to the constitution. Therefore, the process of the Chinese new capitalization, according to Mr. Zhu, is mainly seen as a process of privatizing state asset and resources.

Now we see that comparing with the New Authoritarianism defined modernization process with a free economy in a liberal autocracy, China has one more issue: the privatization of state asset and resources driven by the autocratic power. This additional issue is unique to but common in all ex-Communist countries. It is exactly because of this that modernization in Communist countries differs itself from other types of countries.

This is a much more difficult issue than all the other issues in a transitional period governed by a new authoritarian rule. Strictly speaking, before the transition is complete, an autocratic power is not a new authoritarian power. Because the economic freedom will be very limited when state asset and resources are in the control of an autocratic power, a free economic competition in its true sense is impossible. The combination of the political power with economic interests makes it impossible to establish a new authoritarian power that encourages and protects economic freedom while exerting tight political control. Also, the corruption of the autocratic power makes it very hard to nurture an environment that a new authoritarian power has to rely on for its economic and political agendas. An autocratic power will not gain a truly public recognized authority.

Therefore, in order to practice the New Authoritarianism in today’s China, effort must be made, under current conditions in China, to somehow establish a new authority that is in line with the ideal of the New Authoritarianism and is not easy to be thrown away or over. In the mean time, this new authority has to have long enough time to establish its authority, or the autocratic successor, a person or a group, to the new authority is also a new authority that would continue the modernization process defined by the New Authoritarianism. However, all these expectations are out of touch with China’s reality, just as expecting a Gorbachev or a Yeltsin in China.

5. The CCP Does Not Possess the Authority and Capability a New Authoritarian Power Must Have

As said above, the CCP autocratic government can’t be counted as a new authoritarian power defined by the New Authoritarianism before the completion of privatizing the state asset. In addition, the privatization process in China did not induce the kind of social economic and political conditions for practicing the New Authoritarianism.

The Chinese socialist economic “pancake” is basically shared according to how much power one may have. As a result, China’s power groups are almost the same as capital groups. Except for a few, how rich one can become is tied to how much power he has. In any political system, this is the most troublesome problem. The corruption of China’s power elite has way surpassed the “four little dragons” when their economies took off. Using what Mr. Chen Yizi said, corruption is deep down in bureaucrats’ bones. This caused serious unfair income distribution and social disparity. This type of social economic conditions, with a strong flavor of political power, is far from what needed to practice the New Authoritarianism.

The New Authoritarianism demands that a new authoritarian power be a capable one - capable of establishing and maintaining a macro environment for economic development. But CCP’s nature makes it incapable of many things. From the very beginning of the reform, CCP’s power elite was wandering between maintaining its autocratic rule in favor of its own economic interests and making good laws and regulations in favor of the people’s interests. The latter was very often compromised for the former. Good laws and regulations would only be implemented when the former and the latter were not in serious conflict. A stable macro economic environment is a necessary condition for any country, but a strict budgeting and financial system very often hurts the economic interest of the ruling power and reduces their chance of becoming rich by taking advantage of the state asset and resources in their hands. Therefore, the resistance for carrying out reform orders very often comes first from the government agencies, which even the top leader may find difficult to overcome. For example, an order issued in the morning to eliminate corruption may well be stopped at noon. Some Western scholars think that a democratic government, especially one corrupted by the elite interest group, is less capable of, comparing with an autocratic government, stabilizing the macro economic environment. However, Richard Hornik, a Time senior reporter, said recently that the Chinese government’s performance in maintaining the country’s financial system, which should be a strong arm for an authoritarian power, was even worse than a corrupted democratic government.

Rampant corruption plus incompetence made the CCP government that had very little credibility even less credible. The bureaucrats themselves in the system mostly don’t have much faith in the government, and the average people have no channel to influence the government policies. Therefore, grabbing short-term economic interests, as much as one possibly can, is a commonplace from the bureaucrats to the ordinary people. A good public servant system, a sound education network and a long-term rational enterprise policy in the Eastern Asian mode have very little chance to grow strong in China. In short, without public recognized authorities, the CCP government will be incapable of completing the tasks a new authoritarian power must complete.

6. A Review of the East Asian Mode and the Taiwan Experiences

From the point of view of the New Authoritarianism, the East Asian mode has succeeded in practicing the New Authoritarianism ideals. If China models after the East Asia, it will also be able to complete the full path of a marketization first and democratization second. The mistake to come to this conclusion is that it ignored the big differences between the East Asian mode and the China mode. A lot of research has been carried out on the so-called East Asian economic development mode. Many of these studies revealed the following particular conditions in the East Asian countries. They either partially or completely do not exist in China.

1) Sense of crisis in all the four little dragons. Taiwan and South Korea felt the pressure from their Communist neighbors. Hong Kong was a colony. And Singapore just gained independence from Malaysia and was a city-state. Small country with poor resources and great dependence on foreign countries dictated that it was easier for them to have sense of urgency and crisis and thus easier to accept the West approaches, which were proven vital for their economic takeoff in a relatively short time period.

2) The Cold War between the East and the West determined that the United States were more generous in providing aids, special tariffs as well as technologies to the East Asian countries in its global strategy of containing Communists and strengthening the free world.

3) The Western countries back then were in the process of their own industrial transformation. They needed to keep research and hi-tech but transfer labor intensive industries to developing countries. The East Asian countries, taking the advantage, were able to draw foreign capitals and establish their export-oriented economic zones.

These are basically external conditions. It’s more important to look into the internal political and economic natures and changes. In the East Asian mode, the comparability between Taiwan and China is the greatest. The Kuomintang’s (KMT) defeat in China had many reasons, but no one can negate that corruption was the most fundamental one. That defeat and the tremendous pressure from the CCP gave the KMT a historical opportunity to reform itself. It successfully resolved the first and very difficult issue of using the governing power and reforming it at the same time, and thus laid the foundation to further limit using the power. On the other hand, the CCP has never had such an opportunity. In addition, differing fundamentally from the CCP, the KMT recognized the value of freedom and democracy and stuck with its democratic constitution goal. This made it possible, to a certain degree, for democratic and public forces to be able to monitor the government behavior. Starting from 1950, Taiwan has had regional autonomy and local free elections. Back then, the officials that were freely elected in the first open election included county administration leaders and council members. In the second election, it was expanded to members of the provincial Congress. In each election, there were always some non-KMT candidates elected. Because of all of above, the economic achievements could be strengthened politically in a timely fashion. Also, because the public had normal channels to participate in politics, they followed the normal market rules established by themselves to conduct their businesses.

Lastly, similar to the Western capitalist countries, the development of a free economy in Taiwan, in its economic takeoff stage, did not need capital from the government. The KMT’s reform eliminated, to a large degree, the individual and circumstantial elements that the ruling power must go pass to access state asset. In Taiwan, assets were basically in the private sectors rather than the government. Ideologically, the KMT protected private properties. Also, because it was fighting against the Communist, it was impossible for the KMT to resort to the Communist way to take away private properties from the people. Therefore, Taiwan from the very beginning eliminated the possibility for the ruling power to be allied with the capitalists. As a result, it was impossible for the KMT to be as corrupted as the CCP, nor to have such an extended unfair income distribution and social disparity. The land reform was regarded the most important and successful economic reform in Taiwan. The major reason for the success was that the KMT ruling power had no direct economic interests in Taiwan’s lands. This shows us something deep: for any ruling power, as long as its power represents direct economic interests, it will not be possible for the power to successfully govern a country without corruption.

We emphasized above that the nature and state of the KMT provided a good political starting point for reform. We should point out also that the KMT government in the 1980s was still an autocratic one. Without the democratic force in the public sectors, Taiwan wouldn’t be able to keep a fairly good political environment for such a long time period, which smoothly advanced Taiwan to a true democracy. In Taiwan’s development, the economy had a sustained increase, the income distribution was basically fair and the self-governing private sectors gradually formed and grew. Along with refined education, the general public gained the knowledge of democracy. Many intellectuals relentlessly promoted the ideals of freedom and democracy, and many more criticized the government with bold demands for more democratic reforms. The entire Taiwan society was rapidly pluralized and diversified along with the growth of democratic forces taking part in all political affairs. The KMT also brutally cracked down on democratic forces, especially the organized activities, such as the Democratic China and the Meili (Beauty) Island events, but it eventually absorbed the democratic forces into the government by expanding free elections. Free elections, starting at county level, were gradually expanded to provincial level partially in 1969 and finally to all of the central Minyi (Public Opinion) Representatives. During this period, those groups being cracked down never gave up. They persistently pushed, with rational and peaceful means, for democracy and forced the KMT to abandon bans on press and party organizations. In the mean time, being face with the pressures from the democratic forces, the KMT conducted its own democratic transformation. It successfully lessened many political conflicts resulting from pluralization by systematically expanding channels of political participation. These measures basically maintained the government’s legitimacy and credibility, providing Taiwan with a dynamically stable power structure and social environment for modernization and democratization.

As said above, the basic fact that there is an autocratic power led privatizing process of state asset and resources, which were also the resources of marketization, makes China’s modernization different from the East Asian countries. If at the early stages when the reform had initial successes with the government still having legitimate authorities and a privatization yet to begin, the government allowed local and gradually higher level elections, the privatization would be under people’s supervision and the economic reform results could be politically reinforced. Under such conditions, the CCP power could really become a new authoritarian power and China could of course enter a historic period as that of Taiwan. However, because China’s modernization has one more process than Taiwan and some East Asian countries, China must take one more step before practicing the New Authoritarianism, that is certain degree of democratization. But this step was rejected by the New Authoritarianism.

When talking about Taiwan experiences, Mr. Ding Xueliang said that an economic modernization could also be realized without a complete democracy. We want to point out that this does not mean it can be so without any change of the political conditions. The characteristics of the East Asian mode are exactly certain degrees of political rationalization. The Taiwan experiences told us that economic modernization needs timely matching political democratization, only with which the modernization results can be solidified and will be able to continue with stability.

7. An Advanced Economy is not a Sufficient Condition for a Democracy

Traditional political economists think that the more advanced an economy, the more possible to establish a democracy. Mr. O’Donnell, an Argentine political economist, systematically challenged in the 1970s the traditional theory after his study of the development history in Argentina and a few other Latin American countries in half a century. He first differentiated democratization from pluralization and pointed out that pluralization means the existence within a country of many elements of different political pursuant and beliefs, while democratization is a possible systematic manifestation of the relations among these political elements in mutual existence and the channels of their political participation. O’Donnell argued that the more advanced an economy, the easier political pluralization but not necessarily democratization. The economic development history of a few Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, proved true his viewpoints.

The economic modernization in these countries planted and nurtured various political forces in the public sectors with strong will of participation, high political pursuant and organizational skills, which led to pluralization. However, the relations among these parties as well as the channels of participation were not systemized. Therefore, there lacked political order and the governments, although democratic, in these countries had no true authority and were quite incompetent. These governments were busy to barely find ways to meet excessive demands from the stronger parties with no capability to develop a balanced economy, which resulted in high inflation. The young and well educated military factions then grabbed the governing power by means of coup, taking advantage of political disorders, and then established authoritarian governments to start a new round of economic development. About ten to twenty years after political turmoil in these countries, they finally started the normal process of democratization.

In China, thanks to economic development, we’ve seen some signs of political pluralization. The Latin American experiences tell us, if the relations of various political forces and the channels of their political participation can’t be systemized, political disorder will be inevitable and the governing power will be alternatively changing hands between democracy and military rule. Political instability will necessarily impair economic development. Mr. Huntington, an American political scientist, pointed out in his Political Order in Changing Societies that the bigger the difference is between the will of participation and the degree of the systemized participation, the more unstable the society.

8. An Evaluation of China’s Reality

Since reform, the Chinese economy has gradually been marketized, privatized and opened to the outside world. This has shaken the socialist foundation upon which the CCP had both economic and political centralization under a tight ideological control. Briefly speaking, there are five positive aspects in China’s reality today. Firstly, the majority of the people have their living standards increased along with economic development, a sharp contrast to the Mao era. Secondly, highly centralized planned economy has basically collapsed. As a whole, the public economic power has surpassed that in the hands of the central government and thus formed a balance against the central government. This has made it very hard to reverse the economic reform. Thirdly, the Chinese economy is gradually integrating into the world’s economy. According to statistics, China’s international trade has been increased from 10% of the GNP in 1978 to more than 30% in 1990. China’s economic policies have to be made and implemented more in line with outside economic environment and international rules and norms. This has greatly promoted as well as regulated the marketization process in China. Fourthly, the degree of privatization in China’s economy is also greatly increased. According to a CCP statistics, more than a half of China’s GNP is produced today by private, township or foreign enterprises. In other words, the importance of the state enterprises, a corner stone of China’s public ownership system, is reducing. In addition, the people’s freedom to own properties is making them less dependent, to some degree, upon the Party and the government that they must totally depend on under the old totalitarian rule. And lastly, all these together have given the public more room of action, which is still expanding. Political pluralization (as defined by O’Donnell) has started with a growing will of political participation.

However, the Chinese economy as of now is still far from a matured, complete and private property based market economy that has sufficient means to protect economic freedom and fair competition. In addition, the CCP is still a autocratic power that lacks authority, is totally corrupted and incompetent on the one hand but tries all it can to protect its own economic interests. It uses “stability above all” to root out any possibility of normalizing and systemizing the channels of political participation but lacks the ability itself to resolve issues, such as social security and disparity, resulted from bad macro economic environment and unfair income distribution. The latest World Bank report studying the Asian economic miracles points out that, besides individual policies, “getting the fundamentals right” is the key of the successes in East Asia. We agree to the author of the report in that China exactly has the fundamentals wrong.

We pointed out before that China today is in a state without balanced freedom, order and fairness. To develop a capitalist economy, private property and free competition are necessary, while justifiable laws provide the base for freedom. The CCP driven privatization of state asset according to power sets an unfair starting point and rules of competition. The current law system in China can’t provide a fair judiciary guarantee for competition. Setting aside if we have enough laws now, a more serious issue is that the current system can’t guarantee the fairness in China’s law making and implementing processes. Therefore, China’s “free competition” has neither fairness nor a fair order. The average public has no way of correcting or containing social disparity and power corruption, needless to say the normal channel of participation in policy making and implementation. On the one hand, complaints are piling up and occasionally breaking out; on the other hand, all people, including foreign businessmen, are trying to connect themselves with the ruling power so they can be protected and offered more economic opportunities than others. As a result, the economic order is disarrayed and corruption is rampant.

Whenever coming to an economic crisis, the CCP will always start a new round of overhaul, or what known as macro adjustment and control, which is no more than reissuing and reinstating some economic regulations with the means of administrative orders. Because these administrative orders are always carried out by the CCP bureaucrats, very often the fire is set on the healthy market mechanism grown out the positive impact of the reform and free competition, but the bureaucrat businesses can avoid the heat. Whenever there is a public protest on the other hand, the CCP will always brutally crackdown, resorting to high profile political measures or even military actions. This has effectively suppressed almost all the conditions for a free and healthy political growth, which in turn forces the public to take unusual, sometimes extreme, actions to release their dissatisfaction and to gain more political bargaining chips. In the current Chinese system, it is simply impossible to establish a rational order without sacrificing freedom and fairness.

We analyzed before some factors unfavorable to China’s long term and balanced development with stability. Here we would like to emphasize two necessary conditions for sustainable economic development: political stability and minimum public social security. These two are mutually affecting each other. Marketization will destroy the old interests map and thus inevitably trigger conflicts among the people in different social status. The phenomena of political privileges translating into economic privileges in the process of marketization has caused widespread anger in the society, which in turn publicized the conflicts between the privileged class and the average. The intellectuals working in educational and research institutions that do not directly make money will feel that they are losing their social status and thus grow hard feelings towards people in other sectors, especially the bureaucrats. In the countryside, many peasants have to go to the cities to find jobs for their living because there is simply no enough farmland to support them. This causes interest conflicts between the peasants and the laid-off workers, especially those in state enterprises, because opportunities of re-employment as well as salaries are reduced due to cheaper labor supplies from those peasants. In the cities, residential and living environment is only worsening, brewing more social turmoil. The biggest problem in the marketization process is actually the state enterprises. To compensate the state enterprises, taking up to 20% of the state budget, has been the biggest burden in Chinese economy. This together with corruption is furthering the national deficit. The CCP wants to privatize state enterprises through bankruptcies, but it finds no money to pay social securities for the unemployed. On top of this, there is the issue of social securities for those peasants who entered the cities. If the minimum social welfare of the public can’t be maintained, more social conflicts are bound to break out. When there are no peaceful and systemized channels to resolve social conflicts, the CCP government will inevitably resort to violence or bribery to silence the conflicting parties that may demand more political power beyond what the CCP allows. In other words, social dissatisfaction can’t be resolved but only accumulated, leading inevitably to bigger social turmoil and even disasters.

Based on these observations, we can conclude that the political stability for developing an economy will be a dynamic instead of static one. Huntington said at the beginning of his book Political Order in Changing Societies: Although the United States, England and the Soviet Union have different forms of government, each of them has effective control power and thus differs from other weak governments. The CCP’s argument “stability above all” and the Huntington theory have a common mistake. They both look at the society with a static view. With a dynamic view, we can see clearly that the former Soviet Union started with the fundamentals wrong. For China, the high economic growth rates in recent years shouldn’t make us optimistic. Along with the growth of the national properties, many structural problems in Chinese economy will surface, such as unbalanced infrastructure in different industries and regions, too little capital invested in education, sever unfair income distribution, bureaucratic corruption, social securities and so on. Facing all these issues, making the fundamentals correct instead of anything else is of paramount importance.

9. Time and Appropriate Democratization is Necessary and Feasible

The second viewpoint we mentioned at the beginning of this paper correctly stated the reality that China is facing great social turmoil, but the solution it proposed to deal with the turmoil is in correct. Its solution is no more than continuing with a CCP type of “New Authoritarianism”. This continuation will only continue and even further the social instability. The best outcome will be no more than an O’Donnell type of pluralization with a disarrayed political environment in which governments swings between pseudo-democracy and military dictatorship.

Some people may say, don’t rush, the CCP will be democratic as well when time comes. We don’t deny that when the CCP is about to lose control over the society, many people benefited from the old autocratic system may turn to practice democracy. If a democracy starts under such circumstances, however, these people will practice it in a corrupted manner, while some others will do the same with much hatred accumulated during all the years when they were suppressed by the old system. The prospect of such type of democracy will be tragic and horrifying.

Here we need to clarify that the democratization we often talk about has its meanings at two different levels. One is of ultimate value, which is to judge whether democracy is a system that is the most humane and protective to human life. Based on this, we decide if we want democratization. We call this a value-oriented view of democratization. The other is of function/cost, which is to examine the details of democratization in the context of its historic functionality and social cost. We must answer questions such as whether democratization is good for social stability and economic development and so on. We call this a function/cost-oriented view of democratization. The democratization in our context is both value and function/cost oriented. It is value-oriented because we recognize the value of democracy and strongly believe China should aim to that direction. It is also function/cost-oriented because we do examine the details of democratization in connection with China’s historic development process and consider the social cost we have to pay.

In our opinion, it is currently feasible to practice some basic democracy in China in the following regards. 1. Transform the National People’s Congress to a Parliament. 2. County and lower level government heads and people’s congress members are elected in open and fair elections. 3. Allow press freedom and media supervision. 4. Allow free association of non-political interest groups. These practices will make it possible to subject economic activities to regulations and provide initial channels of participation in social and state affairs to those interest groups. This effectively provides a mechanism to minimize and lessen social conflicts. It can bring in new supervision mechanism, in a timely fashion, so the government will no longer be under the control of a single interest (power elite) group. Also, this can contain and even bring down corruption and strengthen government capability of making and implementing policies better serving the general public. There are many issues, such as social security, that can’t be fully addressed by a limited democracy as suggested above, but even the government can benefit a lot by immediately practicing a limited democracy in the sense of restoring and uplifting public trust and faith in the government. This will give us a good political environment for a long term and stable development. The government can also take advantage of its newly gained authority and public trust to more powerfully push for privatization and marketization.

Also, we need to differentiate the two meanings when people say that China can’t practice democracy. One is a complete democracy whenever it is mentioned, such power separation, multi-party political race, periodical national elections, and so on. When these are in the picture at once, democratization does look difficult and even impossible. This way of thinking is mistaking the “-tization” in the word “democratization.” Democratization in our talks starts from the fundamentals and goes forward gradually. The other meaning is that the Chinese people’s quality is so low that we can’t even practice even the simplest form of democracy. The most often used argument by these people is that China’s education level is too low. This line of thinking ignored a basic historic fact. During the warlord period early this century, many provinces in China quickly started their own free elections at village and small town levels with some at the county level. The education level back then could only be lower than now. During the civil war period between the CCP and the KMT, the CCP allowed also village elections in areas it controlled. Back then, a majority of the peasants did even know how to write the names of the candidates. By throwing peas into bowls, they openly and fairly elected the people they liked. Also, many of us may still remember our elementary school years back in China. As long as the head teacher of a class did not appoint a student class monitor, we too could all openly and fairly elect our class monitor and other student cadres. How can these basic operations become impossible now because of people’s low quality? As long as the CCP authorities don’t interfere with the villagers’ private life and they have economic independence, village leaders in most areas of the Chinese countryside can be democratically elected even today. It is the same in the cities.

It is true that a complete democracy needs knowledge, skills and experiences to maintain and run, but the fundamentals are basically instinctive and natural to the human being. Andrew Nathan, a US China expert, points out in his new book China’s Crisis that China’s level of social development today, including media and public education level, has surpassed India and thus has the basic conditions met for democratization. He also points out that China is very similar to Taiwan in terms of political and cultural background. Taiwan has become a complete democracy. Therefore, Andrew Nathan argues that what splitting China on the issue of democracy in China’s political culture is probably not that between the intellectuals and average people, but that between the general public who asks for more and the Chinese leaders who fear democracy.

Some people may ask this question: If the CCP can’t even practice a true New Authoritarianism, how can you expect it to practice democracy? Is this also out of touch with China’s reality? Our fundamental difference from the New Authoritarianism is the following. The New Authoritarianism places all hope on a new authoritarian power and rejects any proactive democratic pursuant from the general public, while the initial steps of democratization we talked about above are for everyone. It would be the best if the CCP government could proactively act upon them, which will cost China the least. We do not rule out the possibility for the CCP to act proactively, but our hope is more with the will of the general public. The experiences from Taiwan and some other countries tell us: a rational opposite force that possesses the capability of constructively building a society is vitally important if it also persistently pursues democracy and promotes healthy interactions between the people and the government.