Chinese Cooperative-Harmonious Democracy

Research on Chinese Cooperative-Harmonious Democracy

Zongchao Peng, Ben Ma, Taoxiong Liu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317479833
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After several decades of reform and opening up, China has come to a critical period of transformation and development. How to improve the development strategies to effectively promote China's democratic politics has once again attracted the world's attention.

This book compares the commons and differences between western and Chinese theories and practices of democracy model, and proposes a new democracy model for China's political reform — "cooperative-harmonious democracy". Absorbing the core values of democracy, this model draws on Chinese traditional "harmony and cooperation" and "people-oriented" thought, as well as modern cooperative game theory. More importantly, it adopts the new model to analyse some present practice cases in China, involving intra-party democracy, electoral democracy, and deliberative democracy.

This book is a valuable theoretical innovation and a significant achievement in promoting the interdisciplinary research of political science and public management. It strategically reflects on how to promote the development of cooperative-harmonious democracy from the perspective of high-level design. The policy suggestions it proposed will be a valuable reference for policy-makers.

1
Introduction

Today’s China is still under the spell of the millennium autocracy… democracy should not be delayed any longer.

– Sun Yat-sen

China is not perfect; its most prominent disadvantage, simply put, is non-democracy. Chinese people are in need of democracy… only with democracy, China can move on.

– Mao Zedong

Without democracy, neither socialism nor socialist modernization could be realized.

– Deng Xiaoping

Developing socialist democracy and establishing a socialist political civilization are an important goal for building a well-off society in an all-round way.

– Jiang Zemin

People’s democracy is a brilliant banner that has always been held high by our Party. Since the policy of reform and opening up was introduced, we have reviewed our experience, both positive and negative, in developing socialist democracy and reaffirmed that people’s democracy is the life of socialism. We have ensured that all power of the state belongs to the people and worked to steadily promote reform of the political structure. As a result, we have made major progress in developing socialist democracy and opened up and kept to the socialist path of political development with Chinese characteristics, thus charting the correct course for achieving the most extensive possible people’s democracy in China.

– Hu Jintao

Proposition

No country in today’s world dares to oppose democracy openly; even authoritarian countries have to rely on the cloak of democracy in order to obtain justification, legitimacy, and authority. Amartya Sen once stated that throughout the nineteenth century, it was not surprising to see national debates for democracy. However, in the twentieth century, questioning democracy itself was wrong. Democracy is no longer a political system of choice; on the contrary, democracy is a developmental course to follow for every country and any society.¹ Moreover, in the twenty-first century, there is no reason to deny the universal value of democracy. It can be said that democracy is the root of power for all modern nations, the foundation of all political powers, and the key concept to distinguish ancient from modern politics. Therefore, democracy is the core content and fundamental goal of modern political progress from a traditional society to a modern society.

Although democracy has become an iron rule for a modern society and politics, the incessant controversy over democratic politics indicates that there is never a consensus view on democracy, which includes a broad range of different ideas. Why do people have so diversified an understanding of democracy? This is because democracy itself is an “essentially contested”² and “interpretive”³ concept; that is, the extensive disagreement and interpretation of democracy fail to establish a neutral and appropriate concept.

Different understanding of democracy influences a country’s choice of political system and actual operation model. As no two leaves are exactly the same in the world, no democratic countries share the same political system. In another word, each country has its distinctive model of democracy. However, a successful democratic model is not only the product of a nation’s social environment, but also deeply rooted in the country’s traditions. “Any successful democratic nation has its democracy based on its level of economic development, political system and cultural environment. Therefore, democracy is an exclusive political model of a nation.”⁴

Ancient China has no tradition of democracy, while modern China has not established a standardized democracy. For China, a country with a long history of authoritarian regimes, democracy is often but a fancy word. Since the late Qing Dynasty, a variety of democratic systems, such as constitutional monarchy and multiparty governance, had been implemented, but they were often short-lived and unable to withstand the trial in practice. The establishment of new China, which is a new socialist democracy, changed China’s political operation profoundly. “Democracy, just like any other truth, must undergo the test of practice. Practice is the ultimate assessment in determining the condition and the level of democracy for any country or region.”⁵ The initial implementation of this model had contributed to a stable and consolidated regime of new China. However, it was still immature and thus unable to avoid the erroneous policymaking and the huge disaster of ten years of the Cultural Revolution. Yet the significance is that since the beginning of reform and the opening up policy, this evolving socialist democratic model that features Chinese cultural values has promoted the position of the people as masters of the country and ensured stable and rapid socioeconomic growth. The achievement is noteworthy and has basically sustained the practical trial as of today.

But whether China’s democratic model has been established is still debatable.⁶ The reform and opening up policy introduced in 1978, by breaking away from a previous traditional model of socialist democracy, has propelled progress and put many serious challenges in China’s path to democracy. This is because in traditional socialist era that featured a planned economy, society did not have any independent resource to form an independent interest demand. Therefore, the country was devoid of the political pressure that comes from diverse competing interest groups. However, as the reform and opening up deepens, traditional political structure of a highly integrated state and society begins to loosen up; pluralism is gradually replacing the old single-interest pattern and further diversifying the social structure.⁷ Coupled with people’s growing awareness of civil participation and the increasingly intensified aspirations to realize democracy,⁸ the development of democracy in China is a pressing business to be finished.

Today, after thirty years of reform and opening up, how to promote China’s development of democracy more effectively and how to build its future model of democracy is really a complex problem. Without doubt, even facing strong pressure from Western countries, China’s democratic development should not simply choose a way of Western-style liberal democracy, especially given the performance of “third wave” democracy from the liberal countries. As of now, the results of “third wave” democratization that rose in the late twentieth century are not satisfactory. Although some countries obtained liberal democracy at a great cost, the vicious competition among political parties weakens the governing mechanism, independence, and imparity of national institutions, deprives the possibility for the people to enjoy fair governance,⁹ and sees serious crises in administration; the myth of liberal democracy has begun to subside.

Western liberal democracy is a democracy developed from the concept of individualism, that is, the individual is the basic unit of democracy. This means that under the supremacy of individual rights, democracy is not collectively given. In order to reflect individualistic democracy, its prominent features are to advocate individual freedom – people have the power to oppose the government, and the government must be chosen by the people. The overall system emphasizes the implementation of a representative system, a free and competitive election, a system of multiple parties, and a decentralized autonomy to ensure the implementation of such liberal democracy. Therefore, in contrast to feudalism, Western liberal democracy is a very advanced political model, but the biggest limitation is that the overly emphasized individual rights and freedom, competitive elections, and government decentralization, as well as prioritized individual freedom and power, are sometimes at the expense of the collective public interest.

Similarly we should also review the pros and cons of China’s socialist democracy, traditional political model of China. Traditional Chinese socialist democracy originated from Marxist-Leninist political thought and the practice of the international communist movement and is influenced by the despotism of China history; it can be generally regarded as a collectivist democracy, in which groups rather than individuals are the basic units. That means that democracy is not attained from personal right, but a right granted by a collective or society to an individual. The collectivist democracy is characterized by the integration of centralism and democracy. The overall system depends on the centralized democracy to ensure the implementation of the political idea. “There is no impassable gulf between democracy and centralism, both of which are essential for China.”¹⁰ Therefore, the greatest strength of our traditional democratic model is the collective power for greater undertakings with higher efficiency, but its key limitation is that the related institutionalization is often prone to collective interests and concentration of power, and the power excessively concentrates within the Party, the upper management levels and the leaders. Therefore, we sum it up as traditional model of socialist democracy.¹¹

In terms of conflict management and cooperation, liberal democracy and traditional socialist democracy have respective practical reasons, but their problem-solving processes are both based on non-cooperative game theory. In other words, the design of both democracy models is based on the assumption that the participants in the democratic process are likely to be uncooperative. Following the premises, more emphasis is placed either on the protection of individual rights or on the defense of collective interests. Then the conflict is solved through a democratic mechanism or through a centralized mechanism, transforming the situation from a non-cooperative game to a cooperative one. Considering China’s current political development, it is impossible to choose a path of liberal democracy or simply copy traditional socialist democracy in history. In fact, as long as the democracy is not perceived as a fixed model, and the inadequacy in the democratic practice is recognized, it is possible to explore a new model of socialist democracy. Political reform is different from economic reform. The development of democracy somehow needs an overall theoretical guidance. A blueprint is more critical than the caution in “trial and error”. That is, there should be a validated top-level design based on an advanced theory of democracy development. Otherwise, fragmented reforms without guidance only have limited effect, or even become an obstacle hindering the further development of democracy.

Of course, a democracy of a macro-theoretical design does not necessarily imply a radical political reform. In fact, the principle of incrementalism is still one of the basic strategies to follow in China’s democratic reform. How can a specific model of democracy that meets China’s political outlook be created from a macro-democracy theory? In our opinion, the construct of China’s future democratic model should incorporate the core values of democracy, such as a nation of the people and state power from the people, fully leverage the intellectual resources of traditional “harmony and cooperation” thought and “people-oriented” thought, and employ the innovative cooperative game theory so as to conduct a comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth analysis.

Therefore, we believe that to see true ideological emancipation, the direction of China’s democracy development is neither a simple continuation of the existing traditional socialist democracy (a democratic model with more emphasis on the development of collective right and the concentration of power, see discussion later) nor a mechanical copy of the Western liberal democracy (a democratic model focusing more on individual freedom and decentralization), but a “cooperative-harmonious democracy” characterized by its own history, culture, and social conditions. The focus of the model is to leverage Chinese intellectual heritage, such as “harmony and cooperation” thought, and “people-oriented” thought with the existing collective rights for development, to enhance the institutional advantage by keeping moderate concentration of powers, and to take into account a moderate expansion of personal freedom and rights as well as public power control mechanism in order to achieve the organic unity between the individual and the collective, democracy and centralism; by employing principles of modern cooperative game theory in relevant system design, to promote a maximized integration of interests, to resolve conflicts, to eliminate confrontation, and to achieve cooperation and harmonious development among social parties, even in the event of possible conflict. Its core value is not only to maximize the citizens’ freedom and rights, but also to realize the best collective interests through the centralized and institutionalized authority, so as to achieve harmonious coexistence between individual rights and the collective rights as well as between major political parties.¹²

Literature review

Reviews of the liberal democratic model and studies of alternative models

In his Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, Arend Lijphart defines two major types of democracy: the Westminster, or majoritarian model of democracy and the consensus model of democracy – majoritari...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and table
• Foreword I
• Foreword II
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Historical analysis and comparison of democratic models
• 3 Chinese traditional thought and cooperative-harmonious democracy
• 4 Cooperative game theory and cooperative-harmonious democracy
• 5 Transition to democracy from the perspective of cooperative game: a case study of Spain
• 6 The design of institutional reform for Chinese cooperative-harmonious democracy
• 7 A case study of Chinese cooperative-harmonious electoral democracy
• 8 A case study of Chinese cooperative-harmonious deliberative democracy
• 9 A cases study of Chinese cooperative-harmonious intra-Party democracy
• 10 Conclusion and recommendations
• Bibliography
• Index