Dissent Online is currently featuring a series of articles on China. To read more on the Tiananmen Square protests, click here. To read more reports from Beijing by Daniel A. Bell, click here.

IN THE UNITED STATES, the political future is constrained, for better or worse, by constitutional arrangements that have been in place for more than two centuries. Barring dramatic developments, such as nuclear war or major terrorist attacks, it is unlikely that the political system will change much over the next few decades. In China, by contrast, the political future is wide open. According to the formulation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the current system is...

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FOOTNOTES:

• [1] Marx rushed to write and publish Capital because he thought the communist revolution was about to occur in his day and thus he feared his writings would be overtaken by events.
• [2] With the exception, of course, that most social democratic theories also defend, if not give priority to, civil and political rights. The CCP aims to secure the interests of the disadvantaged while maintaining tight curbs on freedom of the press and the freedom to participate in the political process.
• [3] Cui’s views have had political impact. In 1994, he wrote an article arguing for the preservation of the shareholding-cooperative system (SCS) that is a kind of labor-capital partnership. A leading official in the government read the article and decided to allow the SCS to spread in rural China. The centralized decision-making of the one-party state has many disadvantages, but one advantage is that it may be easier to implement radical (but defensible) ideas if the top leadership is convinced.
• [4] I would like to note that the argument regarding the end of ideology by the distinguished American sociologist Daniel Bell (no relation), has been widely misunderstood. The main argument in his influential 1960 book The End of Ideology is that Marxism has been exhausted as an ideology in the United States, not that all normative ideologies have been, or should be, replaced by non-ideological commitment to technocratic decision-making.
• [5] As Peter Hays Gries has noted, many Chinese intellectuals call on the state to deal with extreme forms of nationalism (rather than viewing the state itself as part of the problem).
• [6] In the more open atmosphere of Taiwan, the value of filial piety can also take unusual forms. A former colleague of mine at the City University of Hong Kong found, to his surprise, that gay literature often centers on relationships with parents (in contrast to gay literature in Western countries that often centers on relationships between couples).
• [7] The Central Party School in Beijing is considering a proposal to make the Confucian classics one of its core programs and another to open an after-hours school on the Confucian classics for children on its campus.
• [8] Mencius, however, allows for the possibility that force can be justifiably used to carry out “punitive expeditions,” the ancient Chinese equivalent of humanitarian interventions. But such expeditions can only be carried out if several conditions are met, such as the need to rescue people from severe material deprivation.
• [9] Civil service examinations have been revived in China, with thousands of people competing for top spots. These exams are largely meritocratic (meaning that the successful candidates are the ones with the top scores), but they test for political ideology in ways that reward conformity rather than political ability. More pertinently, the successful candidates are theoretically supposed to implement policy, not make it (unlike the successful candidates of the imperial examinations who occupied posts of political power). Internal party advancements have been made more meritocratic of late, but political advancement is still limited to party members, and those who reach the top spots do so at least partly (if not mainly) due to their ability to outmaneuver political opponents and refrain from taking unpopular positions (not the sort of traits that would be valued by a system designed to reward ability and public-spiritedness). The reform-minded members of the CCP seem to favor intraparty democratic elections for leaders (similar to political reforms in Vietnam) rather than emphasize more meritocracy within the party.
• [10] In South Korea, perhaps the most Confucian-influenced country in East Asia, Confucian intellectuals played an important role in the pro-democracy movements that eventually led to the establishment of electoral democracy in that country.
• [11] If there is to be a tricameral legislature, it would make more sense, in my view, for the third house of government to be an independent anticorruption agency (similar to the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption) with the task of monitoring corruption in the other two houses and society at large.
• [12] In Chinese, it is common to comment on the “quality” (suzhi) of the people. Nor is it just a matter of educated elites looking down on the hoi polloi. The migrant-worker waitresses at the Purple Haze restaurant in Beijing, where I am a part owner, complain about the “quality” of customers who bark commands and show disrespect.
• [13] Lee claims to be inspired by Confucianism, but he is trained in law rather than philosophy and the Confucian classics. Not surprisingly, the political system he has put in place owes much more to Chinese-style Legalism than Confucianism: the heavy reliance on fear and harsh punishments for social control in Singapore is far removed from Confucian ideals that emphasize rule by moral example and informal norms and rituals (with legal punishments as a last resort, not first resort). Had Lee been trained in the Confucian classics, it is hard to imagine he would show the same vindictiveness and lack of humility toward political opponents.
• [14] I do not mean to imply that there are no good arguments for justifying constraints on the democratic process in Singapore. One of the virtues of Lee Kuan Yew is that he has publicly attempted to justify Singapore’s regime without being constrained by Western-style notions of political correctness. I try to evaluate his arguments in my book East Meets West.
• [15] It is worth recalling that the Spring 1989 pro-democracy demonstrators were led by student elites from China’s most prestigious universities. Even the anti-intellectual Cultural Revolution was led (initially) by students from China’s most prestigious universities (including Tsinghua).
• [16] The examinees for the all-important gaokao (college entrance examinations) are sequestered during the examination process and prevented from communicating with the outside world so as not to leak the answers. And no matter how corrupt things are in contemporary China, the gaokao examination process is relatively clean.
• [17] The symbolic leader of the state—perhaps the eldest member of the meritocratic house—could also be selected from the meritocratic house. One of the problems with democracy in Confucian-influenced Taiwan and South Korea is that excessive faith is placed in elected leaders who are expected to manifest the traits of Confucian morally exemplary leaders. The leaders are then given strong executive authority, leading to abuse of power, corruption, and nepotism. Naturally, disillusionment soon sets in, there is a popular backlash, and the leaders end their days in disgrace (see Randall Peerenboom’s impressively researched book, China Modernizes). If the symbolic leader is chosen from the meritocratic house, there would be less of an expectation of morally exemplary leadership on the part of democratic leaders, the people would be more rational in evaluating their elected leaders, and the democratic system itself would be more stable.
• [18] In the sobering documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore notes that he has been hammering away about the dangers of global warming for decades, and he expresses frustration at the lack of interest among democratically-elected decision makers in the United States. China will likely be the largest contributor of greenhouse gases in a few years (in terms of new contributions; the United States will still be far ahead in terms of total and per capita contributions), and the imperative to limit these emissions should be obvious to anyone who has seen the movie. The question is, who is more likely to enact laws that limit greenhouse gases in China: political leaders chosen by poor farmers who understandably worry first and foremost about their short-term economic interests or deputies in the meritocratically chosen legislature?