Debating Democracy Promotion in China
Debating Democracy Promotion in China
Democracy in China? A Debate
SHOULD FOREIGN politicians and critics participate in the promotion of democracy in countries like China and Burma? Or should liberalization and pro-democratic change come from within? Daniel A. Bell and Michael Walzer debate the role the international community should play in China.
Daniel A. Bell – Michael Walzer – Daniel A. Bell’s Response
Q: Should the international community do more to support democracy in China?
The answer, in brief, is “no.” But I’m not necessarily against the promotion of democracy in other countries. John Stuart Mill has argued that democracy must come from within, it should not be imposed from outside. That’s not my view: there have been successful cases of democratization that were at least partly driven by outside forces, such as Germany and Japan after World War II. Today, I think the international community should do more to promote democracy in Burma. Why Burma, and not China? I think there are several reasons. It’s always a danger to theorize on the basis of two examples, but I think the cases of China and Burma can shed light on the more general conditions that need to be in place before outsiders should argue for democracy from abroad.
Let me first clarify some key terms. By “democracy,” I mean free and fair competitive elections at the national level. By “promotion,” I mean moral criticism of the non-democratic status quo: foreign critics that rely on persuasion to argue for democracy. I take it for granted that foreign powers should not use such coercive means as military invasion and economic sanctions to promote democracy in China. Few would advocate them now. But it’s much more controversial to argue that foreign critics should not even try to argue in favor of political democracy in China, and that’s what I’ll try to do here.
Here are the conditions that, in my view, would justify foreign (moral) intervention on behalf of democracy promotion. These conditions apply in the case of Burma, but not China.
1) The target country must be led by an “outlaw” regime.
I take the term “outlaw” from John Rawls’s last work, the Law of Peoples. Basically, it refers to a regime that tyrannizes its own people: the rulers rule in their own interest and they systematically violate basic human rights in order to do so. In the case of Burma (and Zimbabwe), it’s clear that the regime is truly awful and violates basic human rights, including the right to food and basic means of subsistence. The reaction of the Burmese regime to the deadly cyclone – closing off the country rather than welcoming outside aid – shows that it cares more about its own power than the welfare of its people.
The Chinese government is far from perfect, but it has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty over the past three decades and it opened the country to outside aid in response to the Sichuan earthquake. Yes, it violates some human rights, but overall it may not be so bad compared to countries at similar levels of economic development and the Chinese government leaders cannot be compared in terms of “badness” to the thugs that run Burma.
2) Outsiders can confidently predict that the rulers would lose democratic elections.
In the case of Burma, we know that the rulers would lose general elections. They tried to have elections in 1990 and were badly defeated by the opposition. In the case of China, we’re not so sure. The Chinese Communist Party might well win elections if they were held today. No doubt opposition forces would gain some seats and the policies of the CCP would come under more direct attack, which might help to explain why the CCP doesn’t want to have elections now. But there is substantial support for the CCP even among independent intellectuals. In private conversation with Chinese academics, I’ve met very few who say they hope the CCP will lose power in the next decade or so. Capitalists in China also seem to support the Communists and would likely provide support and funding for the CCP if there were elections in the country.
3) There is an obvious political alternative.
In the case of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi is a revered political figure
who is widely supported in society at large. Her party, the National League for Democracy, won 392 out of 492 seats in the 1990 parliamentary elections and they could take power if the ruling junta were thrown out of power (or if it was willing to respect the results of general elections).
In China, who would take power? In the country itself, the government nips in the bud any organized challenges to its power. Abroad there is no obvious leader among the dissident groups, which often fight among themselves. In private conversation, not many Chinese intellectuals express support for such groups.
This is not to deny that opposition forces could potentially pose a serious challenge to CCP if they were allowed to organize in China. Perhaps they would be led by an inspiring leader who could galvanize the bulk of voters to his or her side. But this is pure speculation, unlike Burma where it’s the reality.
4)Regime change would improve the people’s material well being.
In relatively poor countries, it’s not just communists who say that the
government’s priority should be to alleviate poverty. It’s a common view, and, to my mind, the right view. Burma is dreadfully poor, and 800 million or so Chinese people remain poor. Whatever its motivation, the policies of the Burmese government (like in Zimbabwe) have impoverished its people and there is no reason to believe it will do better in the foreseeable future. We can safely assume that a different, democratically elected government would improve the Burmese people’s material well-being. It couldn’t do much worse.
In China, by contrast, the government has been praised by outside forces such as the World Bank for its efforts at dealing with poverty. Its main source of legitimacy, arguably, is its capacity to improve the economy in ways that benefit the people. Perhaps a more democratic government that is accountable to the people might do even better – but such arguments are empirically complex and far more controversial than in the case of Burma.
5) The transition to democracy won’t be bad for foreigners
Democracies, even those that work well, tend to focus on the interests of citizens and neglect the interests of foreigners. It’s fine for democratically elected politicians to decide in favor of their country’s interests: that’s what they are supposed to do. In small or medium-sized countries like Burma, we don’t have to worry. But political leaders in a big country like China, where decisions affect the rest of the world, need to consider the interests of the rest of the world when they make decisions. Global warming is an obvious example.
Thus, we have reason to hope for a political model that works better than Western-style democracy in the case of China. For example, Confucian-inspired intellectuals like Jiang Qing argue for meritocratically selected houses of government that are attempts to balance and constrain democratically elected houses of government so that political decisions are informed by a more global outlook. Such proposals might be a long way from the political reality, but we have reason to hope that they can eventually succeed. In Burma, it seems sufficient to strive for democracy because whatever happens in Burma won’t have substantial impact on the rest of the world.
My conclusion is that foreigners should not argue for Western-style democracy in China. It might take an unusual degree of openness to accept this argument–a willingness to contemplate the possibility of modifying one’s own moral standpoint in a modern world where rule by the people in the form of one person-one vote has become the most sacred of political values–but that’s the way to go, I’d argue.
The answer, in brief, is yes. Like Dan Bell, I am not going to write about military intervention or economic sanctions. I am going to write about moral criticism and about something closer to what we usually mean by “support”—active engagement with pro-democracy forces in countries like China. But this engagement shouldn’t be, in my view, the work of government agents; it is the work of political activists, trade unionists, and Dissent writers.
I will take up Dan’s five conditions for external criticism in the order that he presents them:
1) The target country must be led by an “outlaw” regime.
Dan takes Burma as an example, but in that case moral criticism seems much too mild a response. Something more forceful is surely allowed, if not required, in cases like that—not invasion, but some other kind of statist response, like diplomatic pressure or economic punishment. For moral/political engagement by ordinary citizens, the threshold is much lower. China’s policy with regard to independent labor unions, for example, is entirely sufficient to justify the critical engagement of unionists and their political allies. Its policy with regard to political dissidents is entirely sufficient to justify the critical engagement of Human Rights Watch, say, or Amnesty International. The critique of “badness,” even when the badness isn’t horrific, is always a good thing.
2) Outsiders can confidently predict that the rulers would lose democratic elections.
Well, I can confidently predict that if democracy were established in China, if the rights of political association and opposition were recognized, if a lively civil society developed, and if elections were really free, with media attention equally bestowed on the government and the opposition, then the Communist Party would lose the election—if not the very first election under the new regime, then certainly the second or third. But this isn’t a condition of critical engagement. The only thing necessary to justify it is the existence of excluded alternatives, unarticulated discontent, repressed opposition.
3) There is an obvious political alternative.
But in most authoritarian countries, democratization is a long process and when it first begins, usually in the form of agitation for free speech or political association, there won’t be—and probably can’t be—an obvious political alternative. There are only non-obvious, potential, hypothetical alternatives, about which discussion has been repressed. Obvious alternatives develop only in the course of the struggle for democracy. Neither Dan nor I would want the “obvious alternative” anointed by outside agitators; all outsiders can do is support the struggle.
4) Regime change would improve the people’s material well-being.
It is hard to see how independent labor unions or democratic political parties would undercut economic growth in China. They might even spread its benefits more equally, expand the domestic market, and increase growth rates. Dan probably imagines that regime change would be a violent and tumultuous process, and this would put many millions of desperately poor people at risk. But this is an argument for prudence in engagement, not for radical disengagement. Sensible outside critics of Chinese authoritarianism would let themselves be guided by sensible inside critics.
5) The transition to democracy won’t be bad for foreigners.
Maybe a Confucian-style democracy or semi-democracy would adopt better policies on global warming than Western democracies have done. Maybe not. If Dan believes that it would, he should encourage chastened Westerners to criticize the environmental policies of the present regime, which are strikingly like those of their own governments, and support Confucian reformers in China. In any case, democratization in a great power is usually good for its immediate neighbors. Think of Poland and Hungary after the great regime change of 1989, not to speak of Lithuania, Georgia, and Armenia.
My conclusion is that we should argue vigorously for democracy in China. We should support the dissidents who seek to promote it, and we should let them decide whether their democracy is exactly like ours or interestingly different.
Thanks to Michael Walzer for his thoughtful response. Perhaps we have different interpretations of China’s social and political transformation. To my mind, it has been, as the slogan goes, two steps forward and one step backward (in my more pessimistic moments, I’d say 1.1 step forward and one step backward). China has made remarkable progress since the totalitarian days of the Cultural Revolution. Arguably, the large bulk of Chinese people have more freedoms than ever before. To the extent their freedoms are constrained, it has as much to do with economic arrangements as with political controls.
One clear area of progress is that several hundred million people have been lifted out of poverty. What about the hundreds of millions that remain poor? Michael says it is hard to see how “democratic political parties would undercut economic growth in China.” Actually, it’s not hard to imagine: the economic collapse of democratizing Russia in the 1990s should be fresh on our minds. Not surprisingly, there seems to be more support for constraints on democracy in Russia now that the regime seems to be doing better at dealing with poverty. In any case, the impact of democratization on the economy is a complex empirical question that cannot be resolved here.
I should say that I agree with Michael about the need for more freedoms of speech and association in China. But the argument here is whether the international community should support national level elections in China: meaning that the democratically chosen leaders would hold the political trump cards. To my mind, we need to consider alternative proposals put forward by critical intellectuals before endorsing that conclusion. The Confucian-inspired thinker Jiang Qing has put forward an intriguing proposal for a tricameral legislature including political powers for a meritocratically-selected house of government. Pan Wei, a political scientist at Beijing University, endorses a “Legalist” model that promotes the rule of law rather than democracy. I’d say we need detailed local knowledge, including awareness of China’s own political traditions, before settling upon the judgment that Western-style democracy is necessarily superior to such models.
As a graduate student in political theory in the late 1980s, I was greatly influenced by reading Michael’s defense of the connected social critic: the critic who is connected by sympathy and knowledge with the society that he or she hopes to improve. I don’t think we need to be connected when criticizing the sorts of egregious human rights violations we see in Burma, but China may be a better test case for Michael’s own theory…
Daniel A. Bell is professor of political theory at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His latest book is China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton University Press, 2008).
Michael Walzer co-edits Dissent.
An earlier version of Daniel Bell’s essay was presented at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and published in the International Affairs Forum report on Democratization, Human Rights, and Civil Society in China.
