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Democracy with Chinese characteristics (150th post)
On October 17, The Global Times published an article called 'Don’t use Western values to assess Chinese democracy' by Zhang Weiwei, an academic from Geneva University. Now, I generally agree that Western democracy can’t be cut and pasted into different societies at will – I think Iraq is a good example of this. However, there were a few things in Zhang’s article that I disagreed with.
Firstly, Zhang pointed out that developing countries with Western styles of democracy are still quite backwards, e.g. India and Botswana. In regards to Botswana, Zhang says that it is still a very poor country, with an average life expectancy of less than 40. It is unfair to link democracy with Botswana’s poor life expectancy without mentioning that 37.3 per cent of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS. The CIA World Fact Book also lists Botswana’s average life expectancy as 50, not less than 40 as suggested by Zhang.
Secondly, I disagree with Zhang’s assertion that developed nations such as the US did not hold general elections before they became modernised. As an example, Zhang says that black people in the US weren’t allowed to vote until 1965 and universal suffrage didn’t come into effect in Switzerland until 1971. I agree with Zhang’s notion that democracy is a process that needs to gradually develop, but I think there is a big difference between limited suffrage and no suffrage at all.
Thirdly, I disagree with Zhang’s idea that if China was to hold a general election, a peasant government would be elected and would be unable to cope with the complexities of running the government. Zhang even quotes Mao Zedong: “A peasant government cannot lead the great cause for modernisation.” I disagree with this because a government elected by peasants won’t necessarily be run by peasants.
Political parties usually represent a particular body of people, for example the Labor party traditionally represents the workers and the National Party represents farmers. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone in the Labor party is a worker and everyone in the National Party is a farmer. Likewise, if a general election is held in China, not everyone in a peasant government will be a peasant. In most countries, the people who run for office need powerful backers, so the elite are still very much in control, although they may have to run some populist policies to get enough votes.
Despite the above quibbles, this article is a good indication that democracy is the flavour of the month in China. At the 17th National Congress, politicians talked about ‘democracy inside the Party’. Of course that doesn’t sound like democracy at all, but some experts such as Li Datong seem optimistic. |
Posted: 6:19 PM, 27/10/2007 in ChinaShare on Facebook |
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