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Keywords Chapter Five: No alternatives to market-democracy (Part Two)
No alternatives to market-democracy
China on the idealogical defensive
Table 5.1 China in selected world rankings out of nine states
Box 5.1 China's human rights practices
China in the global knowledge structure
China and the Asian Developmental state
Chapter Five: Feeling the Stones as You Cross the River (Part One)
Chapter Five: Why the trend to market-democracy (Part Three)
Chapter Five: Key characteristics of totalitarian regimes (Part Four)
Chapter Five: A post-totalitarian regime (Part Five)
Chapter Five: References (Part Six)
Chapter Five: (Full Printable version)
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No alternatives to market-democracy
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China’s leadership has been constantly on the ideological defensive since 1989. With the disappearance of the communist system, market -democracy reigns supreme, with no contestant in sight. An easy expectation is for convergence of the world’s population on common norms of governance, incomes and life expectations. But convergence is only one prospect among many, and a fragile one at that. We can see why this is so if we consider China in the US-dominated global structure, introduced in the previous two chapters.
Changes in control over some of its key elements of security, production, credit, and knowledge have worked to fundamentally alter the relation of authorities to markets in China. Quite simply, China’s nominally monopoly party-state has to share powers in what is fast becoming a pluralist polity.
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China on the idealogical defensive
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Consider China’s security. From the regime’s perspective, this is not purely a geopolitical concern. It is also ideological. The regime conquered power in China nearly half a century ago with an ambitious socialist programme, and failed. Now China confronts market democracy, the policy package stamped “Made in the USA”, and which assumes a One World as driving towards shared prosperity, democracy and better living conditions for all.
The vision is inspired by Anglo-American liberal ideals, suggesting the removal of all constraints on individuals’ pursuit of self fulfilment, except where the exercise of one man’s freedom limits the freedom of another. From this follows the idea of a government with a limited mandate to manage public affairs, renewable through regular elections, and a broad obligation on society to assure all individuals equality of opportunity but not of reward.
Two key institutions of liberalism are:
- property rights, transmissible over generations from parents to children; and
- the market, which spontaneously co-ordinates the decisions of millions.
Any attempt by government to eliminate inherited inequalities by legislation, classical liberalism holds, destroy the incentives inspiring individuals to excel. Government is to be limited to ensuring external security, law and order, and public investment projects.
For Deng, and his successors, this is a vision which is only partially applicable to China, at least for the foreseeable future. In the China of today, Deng declared, we can never dispense with leadership by the Party. Reference [1]. The party’s task, he added, is to provide the authority to create a socialist market economy. The substance of this is spelt out clearly in the Decision of the CCP Central Committee on Some issues Concerning the Establishment of a Socialist Market Economic Structure, a key quote of which is cited in the previous chapter.
The political intent of the Decision is to create a state of law, and not a western-style democracy. China’s leaders clearly fear the consequences of introducing universal suffrage, multi-party elections, one-man-one vote and freedom of expression into a huge country with only minimal experience of democracy. Indeed, giving Chinese people the vote in elections to all levels of the state is far from being a sure-fire recipe to ensure the rule of law, a separation of powers, and checks and balances throughout the polity.
Corrupt practices are widespread, and leaders or potential leaders are always looking for ways to entrench their privileges indefinitely. Democratic elections offer one way to do so. But an early move to introduce direct elections across the length and breadth of the country could ensure that China becomes just one more illiberal democracy, Reference [2], alongside the many law-free states in the world, which have held elections for the eyes of the Americans, to paraphrase the cynical Brazilian expression of the nineteenth century about the need to write a constitution in order to float a bond in the London markets.
The problem is that, however dazzling China’s economic performance, western opinion is not prepared to condone the regime until it satisfies western criteria of democracy. Why should we believe, the rhetorical question runs, a communist party-state with the CCP’s record when its leaders say that they intend to introduce the rule of law to China? Monopoly control over power resources leads inevitably to abuse, and is incompatible with any reasonable concept of democratic government.
While we may agree with this, it is equally true that it took centuries for the rule of law to evolve in western countries and is likely to take a very long time indeed for Chinese society to gain a consciousness that law may be there to protect against arbitrary government. Furthermore, the key question is: rule of law for whom? Is it the rule of law for corporations or for inviduals. In Singapore, in some ways a model for the CCP vision of China, the legal system does quite well at protecting foreign investors, and is arguably less concerned with protecting individuals.
In fact, China appears relatively well placed in various performance league tables published by western institutions (See Table 5.1 below).
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Table 5.1
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China in selected world rankings out of nine states
| Country | GNP 1999 ($) | GNP per capita PPP 199 ($) | HDI 1999 | FDI | Corrup-
tion | Political rights | Economic freedom | Weapons suppl-
iers | Total index rating |
| China | 3 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 4 |
| India | 5 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Russia | 6 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| Indonesia | 8 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 9 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 7 |
| Brazil | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 3 |
| Turkey | 7 | 5 | 5 | - | 4 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 6 |
| Vietnam | 9 | 9 | 8 | - | 6 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 9 |
| Japan | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 2 |
| USA | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Sources: IBRD, UN, Corruption Index, Freedom House, Stockholm International Peace Institute, Heritage Foundation, UNDP, OECD, IMF, and Transparency International
To little avail. China’s leadership has to endure constant attacks in the international organisations, through western parliaments and press, or via non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International on Chinese communist human rights practices.
Chinese diplomacy may get the backing of Russia, African and Asian states, or at least have a sympathetic hearing in western capitals when it declares that human rights for poor countries are primarily about the struggle against poverty; but as shown by the long diplomatic struggle to bring China into the WTO, or to have Beijing’s stage the Olympic Games, the industrial democracies will confer prestige on China only as part of a wider package. As George Will, the well-known US political commentator, entoned, The strategic aim of US policy is, and must be, the subversion of the Chinese regime. Reference [3].
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Box 5.1
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China's human rights practices
| An Amnesty International Report 2001 for China reports that 2000 saw continued repression of peaceful dissent throughout the country. Thousands of people were arbitrarily detained for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association or religion. These included political dissidents, such as members of the banned China Democratic Party, and anti-corruption and environmental campaigners. Some were sentenced to long prison terms after unfair trials under national security legislation; others were detained without trial and assigned to up to three years' re-education through labour. Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners continued to be widespread. Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics who worshipped outside the official patriotic churches were the victims of a continuing pattern of arrests, fines and harassment. The limited and incomplete records available showed that at least 1,511 people were sentenced to death and 1,000 executed; the true figures were believed to be far higher. In the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, religious freedom continued to be severely restricted and people suspected of nationalist activities or sympathies were subjected to particularly harsh repression.
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China in the global knowledge structure
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Paradoxically, the US has a part ally in the regime itself. The global information revolution has helped to promote more market-based competition for values, products and services. This has deepened the gap between the party-state’s claim to monopoly power and the pluralist reality of China. Propaganda is no longer an easy option, as the regime has to provide credible information in an ever more open society. Reference [4].
Its policy stance so far is ambiguous: The government never ceases to toot China’s trumpet as the El Dorado for producers of
- TV sets (there are over 320 million sets installed),
- for mobile operators (the mobile phone market in China is outgrowing the US or Japan), or
- for internet firms (by 2005, China will have 300 million internet users, 100 million more than the US).
But the military, the police, the party or the Ministry of Information Industry - a giant composite ministry brought together in 1998 - have invested massively in telecommunications and data-processing to centralise control and better monitor the population.
As a result, the party-state’s monopoly on information has shrunk. The population is better informed than ever before. Chinese readers in 1978 had 930 magazine titles to chose from; by 1998, official statistics recorded 2,053 newspapers, 7,999 magazines and trade publications, and 7.24 billion copies of books representing 7,999 titles. The US government has introduced a plan to establish a computer network to help Chinese residents circumvent their government’s controls over use of the network, Reference [5] - by contrast, the Saudi government’s censureship is strongly supported by the US, an excellent example of US selectiveness in exporting its values.
The party is desperately battling to preserve its censureship powers through its administrative buro for internet propaganda, and laws are passed making it illegal to transmit materials which incite the overthrow of the government. But whatever it tries, the diverse sources of information oblige the party-state to remain credible with the public. Old style propaganda does not suffice; reliable news is a necessary resource for an ever more open society.
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China and the Asian Developmental state
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The CCP is much attracted by the example of the Asian developmental state, modelled on the Leninist doctrine of Kuomintang Taiwan, or on the dominant party-state of Singapore. The developmental state has demonstrated ability to drag populations out of poverty in the space of a generation. Reference [6]. Central controls over society run through the hands of a governing élite, chosen through a rigorous process of selection. Leaders here are not servants of the electorate’s whims. Corruption is punished by disgrace, or worse. The legal systems provide justice, subject to political discretion.
Learning from the Asian development model is not so straitforward, though. Most importantly, by the turn of the millenium, the model is dated as Taiwan and South Korea have become market-democracies, and Singapore is too small for large China to imitate in detail. That leaves China’s leadership with an apparent option, either of consolidating a Chinese-style socialist market economy under the rule of law, or of incorporating the main elements of western-style political systems.
In fact, this dichtomy of monopoly state or western democracy to which the leadership oftens refers is specious. China is special by definition, as is every other people and state. There is nothing special therefore about being special. This is not the same as saying, with President Clinton, that the internet will bring democracy to China. Rather, China’s political system is bound to take shape through a prolonged learning process from the rest of the world. As a senior official told me in Beijing, the ideas inspiring him in the drive for China’s financial market reform are rooted in his reading of Paul Samuelson’s textbook, Economics, which the Ford Foundation provided for China’s economics students in the early 1980s. Uncle Sam’s reach is long and deep.
Chapter Five: Feeling the Stones as You Cross the River (Part One)
Chapter Five: Why the trend to market-democracy (Part Three)
Chapter Five: Key characteristics of totalitarian regimes (Part Four)
Chapter Five: A post-totalitarian regime (Part Five)
Chapter Five: References (Part Five)
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