Contesting democracy in contemporary China

Abstract

Although there is consensus that democracy has to be established in China, there are huge disagreements on what kind of democracy China should establish. Those disagreements can be divided into four major groups. New Leftists hold that the state should play the role of leadership and that the state capacity should be strengthened. They insist that the rule of the state should conform to the ideal of governance. However, the people are excluded from determining what the ideal of governance is. Also, the economic democracy they advocate would undermine the individual right to property, which would in turn impair people’s private freedom. Liberals hold that the unlimited state intervention in the market economy is the source of social injustices. They advocate the development of free market economy and the establishment of liberal democracy. At the same time, they also reflect on the problems of liberal democracy. There are two major problems. The first is that people are politically apathetic, which causes the crisis of legitimacy. The other is that liberal democracy is unlikely to result in morally good political decisions. So, it is argued that China’s democracy should meet the requirements of both legitimacy and justice. Confucian constitutionalism argues to restore Confucian values in the contemporary political reconstruction and thus advocates Confucian meritocracy with democracy only retained for instrumental reasons. It holds that only the politically competent and morally superior persons are eligible to participate in politics. However, there is no way to ensure that those selected through meritocracy are intellectually and morally superior. It is also hard to make Confucianism compatible with reasonable pluralism, causing the risk of undermining personal rights and freedom. The official opinion on democracy recognizes the necessity to develop democracy and stresses the Party’s leadership in its development which it holds should be implemented in accordance with China’s current political, economic and cultural conditions.