Democracy with Chinese
characteristics By David
Fullbrook
BANGKOK - In 1976, chairman Mao
Zedong died after leading a decade of the
murderous Cultural Revolution that nearly broke
China. Three decades later, the contrast could not
be starker, except for one thing: the Chinese
Communist Party's continuing grip on power.
After some loose talk about political
reform in the 1980s, out of which came elections
for village officials and which ended with the
June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) has not
seriously revisited the issue. Yet a quiet alarm
discomforts the leadership. If a few thousand
Falungong practitioners could gather to meditate
outside Beijing's Zhongnanhai, headquarters of
China's power center, in 1999 without any warning,
what else might be brewing?
Many
autocracies have been swept aside by democracy,
mostly of a questionable quality, over the past
few decades. Communist parties figure larger in
history than in life these days. Velvet
revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus
this decade have put more writing on the wall for
dictatorships.
Instead of a blanket
clampdown or revolutionary campaign that Mao might
have launched, the CCP has refashioned some
democratic ways to strengthen its grip and temper
public discontent.
National legislators,
nominated by local party branches, have over the
past decade become bolder, openly chastising
policy, occasionally rejecting draft laws. Wider
consultations are held with experts, researchers
and the public to gather information and insights
to help the party shape its policies to dampen
opposition. Instead of packing all of its
critics and challengers off to labor camps or
forcing them underground, the CCP has given back
some political space, carefully nurturing public
debate. New state-sanctioned civil-society
organizations have captured emerging political
consciousness, opening up talk between the ruled
and rulers, notes Bruce Dickson, an expert on
Chinese politics.
Pei Minxin, a respected
sinologist, argues that the CCP has also seduced
the intelligentsia, muting prospects for new ideas
and leaders that might focus public anger, these
days often vented through riots against venal
local officials.
Better in than out, it
seems. Since the late 1990s, party recruiters have
been working overtime. More than 68 million now
carry the CCP card, up 13% since 1997, while the
population grew only 5%. Many new members are
investors and entrepreneurs, whose growing power
and influence the party wants to co-opt before
they become a threat.
For the ambitious or
cunning, the CCP is a parallel universe offering
shortcuts to contracts, grants, promotions and
protection. It is a monumental pyramid of patrons
and clients stretching from the humblest dirt-road
villages up to the grand ministries of Beijing.
Predictably, corruption flourishes in this
universe.
But the CCP still has plenty of
tools to suppress dissent and maintain its power.
The paramilitary People's Armed Police, 1.5
million strong, has honed its tactics for quelling
demonstrations and riots. About 30,000
cyber-police hunt dissidents on the Internet.
Former president Jiang Zemin allegedly established
a special unit, Office 6-10, to stalk, jail and
torture Falungong practitioners. Since at least
2005, censors have been pruning media freedom that
had blossomed in 2003 and 2004.
But what
has probably done more to shore up the party than
anything is economic reform. For many, incomes
have risen and lives improved in years rather than
decades. State banks endlessly lend to hopeless
state firms, which keeps unemployment in check
while the government struggles to finance a proper
social-security system. Whether the winners exceed
the losers is hard to say, but such is their
number, so bright are the lights of the boomtowns,
that even losers probably remain optimists.
Teresa Wright, who examined the CCP's hold
on power for the East West Center, found that
workers commonly believe the CCP is able to
protect them, never mind its authoritarianism.
That is not entirely surprising - there would seem
little else for them to believe in. China's boom
has also been lucrative for many state agencies
and bureaucrats, drawing bribes or handing out
contracts to their own firms while causing
headaches for competitors.
Moreover,
China's schools are not teaching thinking, nor
knowledge of political alternatives. Democracy is
commonly imagined as a world where officials
cannot abuse citizens, rather than one of debate,
disagreement and compromise, in which political
opponents are not enemies.
The CCP
forever? So is the party's position
unassailable? Possibly, were people not migrating
from villages most Chinese currently call home to
cities in search of jobs and better schools and
hospitals. By 2020, more Chinese will live in
cities than in villages. Cities in most places
tend to be more liberal than villages. People are
generally better informed, more demanding and
richer, and chances are they will push for a
greater say in who governs.
Before the
1970s, dictatorships looked permanent in deeply
Catholic countries such as Spain, Portugal and the
Latin American states. Many political scientists
wondered whether democracy could work in these
conservative, neo-feudal societies. Today, most
are democracies. Meanwhile, Chinese villagers have
picked up the voting habit.
"There is
growing scholarly consensus that, despite great
variation, grassroots electoral democracy has
progressed and is flourishing, affecting the lives
of ordinary Chinese villagers in important ways,
for the better ... democratic electoral quality is
most evident at the lowest level, where it matters
greatly for governance and stability but least of
all for policy making," concluded Melanie Manion,
author of a recent study of village elections.
Democracy with Chinese characteristics is
how party hacks see village voting for local
leaders, whose decisions must still pass muster
with the local appointed party boss. It looks
rather pale against another democracy with Chinese
characteristics called Taiwan, a culturally
Chinese society where parties compete ferociously.
Clearly there is every chance that democracy will
work in mainland China if the Communist Party
steps aside.
It might fall over before
that happens, though. Pei, the sinologist, thinks
that eventually there may be too many mouths
pushing and shoving at the party trough. More
members mean bigger factions, more factions, and
more squabbling over the spoils of power. Hu
Jintao's China Youth League faction is only now
finishing off Jiang Zemin's Shanghai clique this
autumn, arresting key members for corruption in
the city.
There is little ideologically to
keep members together save self-interest.
Searching for a new big idea to replace worn-out
communism, the party has come up with Jiang
Zemin's "Three Represents". Comrades and citizens,
however, are too busy with the Internet, massive
computer games, and zippy magazines trashing
celebrities to pay attention. The party has also
uncorked the genie of nationalism, but keeping it
tamed may prove impossible. Anti-Japanese
demonstrations came close to getting out of hand
in April 2004.
In the meantime, keeping a
lid on unemployment is likely to get harder.
China's torrid economic growth, off a low base,
will not last forever. For the past three summers
China's economy has looked dangerously hot, only
to be cooled by rapid policy fanning from Beijing.
Success in the future is by no means certain.
Across the Pacific, a slowdown in the US
economy could, if it turns severe, mean sharp job
losses among the export factories of Guangdong and
Zhejiang. "However one frames it,
performance-based legitimacy is a delicate and
perilous strategy for sustaining authoritarian
rule indefinitely," pointed out Larry Diamond, a
Stanford University expert on democracy in
developing countries.
The CCP's position
will be secure if it can survive the discontent of
an increasingly sophisticated and demanding public
during a recession without resorting to severe
repression that would further choke the market and
throttle confidence. The party's toughest test is
yet to come.
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