China's Democracy: Still too Soon to Say?

ZHOU EN LAI

China's much-loved premier Zhou En-lai was asked in the 1970s about the effects of the French Revolution. With China’s 4,000 years of history behind him, Zhou simply replied, “It’s too soon to say.”


A lot of people think Western-style democracy is a joke -- it's more like a pop idol contest or a beauty pageant," said Pan Xiaoli, an anchorwoman for International Channel Shanghai, an English-language TV station. "I think the Chinese watch with a sense of inherent superiority, saying, 'This is not the way for us. LA Times. 

It wasn’t that long ago that they said Apple was going to flop, because all personal computing would all be open-system. The history of real democracy is in any event very short: In America, it–generously speaking–goes back only to the post-Civil War, less generously only to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965, if you take the “one person, one vote” definition seriously.

Francis X Li

China's approach to, and definition of, democracy is different from our own. They feel that a democratic government is one that delivers what the people want. So the government is constantly
surveying the Chinese people and asking them "what do you want?". They then compile a list, check it against their budget, announce what they're going to deliver and, over the next 5 years, deliver what they promised. Every time. Imagine if our government did this!

It's not a perfect model, of course, but the Chinese people–who are sophisticated critics of governments–approve and trust their government by 86% (Pew, Edelman, Harvard). For an insightful discussion of the "Chinese model" and democracy, watch this video of Eric Li at the Aspen Institute.  (The interview begins 7 minutes in). 

America, on the other hand, is what political scientists call a "formal democracy": it has the appearance, or form, of democracy–most people are permitted to vote, though millions of prisoners are not–but not the substance of democracy: their votes don't matter because the elected officials are "pre-owned" by the wealthy people who financed their election campaigns. So elected officials do not deliver on their promises. None of them. Ever. 

That's because America is a one-party state: the Capitalist Party. 70% of the Capitalist Party's members inherit their membership because 70% of America's Capitalists inherit their wealth–and naturally want to keep it. So they buy Congressmen, making Congress a true rubber stamp assembly. The real power lies with those who own our politicians. Since all politicians on both sides of the house are pre-owned, they are not free to do what the people want (peace, jobs, education). That's why we see headlines like this:

Congress' Job-Approval Falls to 10%

(Bloomberg) The public’s contempt for the U.S. Congress continues to grow. The Gallup Poll’s latest gauge of public sentiment for the job Congress is doing sank to a record low, with 10 percent of Americans registering approval. That’s down from 13 percent in January and a previous low of 11 percent in December. Read more...

China's Model of Democracy: 900,000,000 Voters

China will reelect its village leaders this year, followed by the county and township People's Congresses as stipulated in the Constitution and the Election Law. More than two million deputies to the county people's congresses and deputies to township people's congresses will be reelected in the upcoming 18 months.

THEIR VOTES COUNT, IT SEEMS

Around 900 million voters will be involved in the election of county people's congresses and more than 600 million voters will partake in the election of township people's congresses, a major event in the country's political life and important practice for developing socialist democracy. Read more... 

With his promise to quadruple the local GDP within three years, 
Chen Guohua won a landslide victory when competing for communist party chief of Longxing Township in the landlocked Chongqing Municipality. In his five-year tenure, Chen has to make genuine efforts to achieve his highly-set economic targets, as the same people who voted for Chen would review his performance every year, and one third non-confidence votes from the total 900 Party members in Longxing may immediately remove him from the seat.

...EVEN PRISONERS 

Longxing is among the 200 townships in Chongqing, Sichuan and Hubei where direct elections for communist party chiefs are experimentally organized. Multiple candidates and contested campaigns in direct elections have already been tried for over 90 percent of village committees across the country. Read more..


For an expert, in-depth examination of grass-roots democracy in China,  how it's working, and how it's not, read Path to Democracy? Assessing Village Elections in China.  You'll have to enroll, then you can download the .pdf. 

Non-Communists Enter Chinese Cabinet

You don't have to be a member of the (80-million strong) Chinese Communist Party, but it helps. But if you are really, really smart, then the Party will overlook your non-membership: 

"A senior Party official said on Wednesday that Wan Gang and Chen Zhu, both non-communist experts, are qualified for their cabinet posts. Ouyang Song, vice head of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Organization Department, said at a press briefing that to recruit non-communist experts for posts at the cabinet level is an important decision the CPC central leadership has made.

Wan, an auto technologist who had worked for Audi for a decade, was appointed earlier this year minister of science and technology. The world-recognized hematologist Chen Zhu was named health minister. Both are from the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top political advisory body.

"Wan and Chen have both solid academic backgrounds, leadership capability and good working style," Ouyang said. "Our Party will continue choosing more qualified experts from outside the CPC to work for the government with their expertise," he said. 

Villages in China have been electing committee chairmen for about 30 years, starting with an historic poll in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 1980. The importance of these elections and significance of committee chair positions have risen over the years as urbanization spread to rural areas, bringing new, complex issues to the table of local affairs, from land expropriation to taxation.

The chairman or chairwoman is the most powerful member of a village government. He or she can influence committee decisions about land control, sales of collectively owned assets, and the distribution of revenue from land leased to developers.

Zheng Ge, an associate professor of law at Hong Kong University, said the election system certainly offers villagers a chance to choose their destiny." Read more...

As always, your comments are welcome and encouraged. Issues like this need more than just one opinion. And do feel free to add links to useful sources and stories!

Here's a promising new link: 600m rural residents to vote in 2013: official |Politics |chinadaily.com.cn About 600 million people in rural China will participate in direct elections for village committees by the end of 2013, said Jiang Li, vice-minister of civil affairs, at a news conference on Wednesday. Jiang said there are 589,000 village committees in rural areas on the mainland, 98 percent were formed through direct elections. She stressed that the direct election of a new village committee in Wukan village in South China's Guangdong province last March was not an exceptional case in China