What do Chinese Really Think about Democracy and India?

Abstract

There has been much speculation about whether China will democratize and avoid conflict with India in the twenty-first century. Yet, few studies have investigated how contemporary Chinese view India and its democracy. Addressing this gap in the literature, the authors examined Chinese media coverage of India’s two-month long April–May 2014 parliamentary election, the largest election in world history, through systematic analysis of over 500 articles from ten major mass media outlets and over 27,000 messages transmitted on Sina Weibo social media. As might be expected, Chinese mass media generally portrayed India and its elections in a condescending fashion while avoiding discussion of ‘democracy’. However, the authors found a much broader array of viewpoints on Chinese social media including considerable praise for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and extensive discussion about the intrinsic and instrumental merits of democracy both in India and in general.

Notes

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² Daniel A. Bell and Chenyang Li, eds., The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Andrew Nathan, Larry Diamond, and Marc Plattner, eds., Will China Democratize? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); Émilie Frenkiel, Conditional Democracy: The Contemporary Debate on Political Reform in Chinese Universities (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2015).

³ John Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).

⁴ Huang Jinxin, ‘A new Chinese discourse of India’, Journal of Contemporary China 14(45), (2005), p. 632.

⁵ Devin K. Joshi, Barry B. Hughes, and Timothy D. Sisk, ‘Improving governance for the post-2015 sustainable development goals: scenario forecasting the next 50 years’, World Development 70, (2015), pp. 286–302.

⁶ Jan Teorell, Determinants of Democratization: Explaining Regime Change in the World, 1972–2006 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

⁷ Chen Jie and Lu Chunlong, ‘Democratization and the middle class in China: the middle class’s attitudes toward democracy’, Political Research Quarterly 64(3), (2011), pp. 705–719.

⁸ Émilie Frenkiel, Conditional Democracy: The Contemporary Debate on Political Reform in Chinese Universities, p. 211.

⁹ Daniel Drezner, ‘The new New World Order’, Foreign Affairs 86(2), (2007), pp. 34–46; Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).

¹⁰ Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions (London: Penguin, 2013).

¹¹ Pranab Bardhan, Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

¹² Devin K. Joshi and Bin Yu, ‘Political determinants of public health investment in China and India’, Asian Politics and Policy 6(1), (2014), pp. 59–82.

¹³ William C. Smith and Devin K. Joshi, ‘Public vs. private schooling as a route to universal basic education: a comparison of China and India’, International Journal of Educational Development 46(1), (2016), pp. 153–165.

¹⁴ Devin Joshi, ‘How can India catch up to China? The importance of social investment’, India Review 14(2), (2015), pp. 238–267.

¹⁵ Susan Shirk, ‘One-sided rivalry: China’s perceptions and policies toward India’, in The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know, ed. Francine R. Frankel and Harry Harding (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 75–100; Francine Frankel, ‘The breakout of China-India strategic rivalry in Asia and the Indian Ocean’, Journal of International Affairs 64(2), (2011), pp. 1–17.

¹⁶ David Malone and Rohan Mukherjee, ‘India and China: conflict and cooperation’, Survival 52(1), (2010), p. 137.

¹⁷ Lora Saalman, ‘Divergence, similarity and symmetry in Sino-Indian threat perceptions’, p. 172.

¹⁸ George J. Gilboy and Eric Heginbotham, Chinese and Indian Strategic Behavior: Growing Power and Alarm (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

¹⁹ Selina Ho, ‘Seeing the forest for the trees: China’s shifting perceptions of India’, in Research Handbook on China and Developing Countries, ed. Carla Freeman (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2015), pp. 445–464.

²⁰ Devin Joshi, ‘Multi-party democracies and rapid economic growth: a twenty-first century breakthrough?’ Taiwan Journal of Democracy 7(1), (2011), pp. 25–46.

²¹ Li Li, ‘The Indian growth model: a Chinese perspective’, in G.V.C. Naidu, Mumin Chen and Raviprasad Narayanan, eds, India and China in the Emerging Dynamics of East Asia (Delhi: Springer India, 2015), p. 66.

²² Jonathan Holslag, ‘Progress, perceptions and peace in the Sino-Indian relationship’, East Asia 26(1), (2009), pp. 41–56.

²³ Jonathan Holslag, China and India: Prospects for Peace (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 116.

²⁴ Francine Frankel, ‘The breakout of China-India strategic rivalry in Asia and the Indian Ocean’, p. 1.

²⁵ Swaran Singh, ‘India China relations: perception, problems, potential’, South Asian Survey 15(1), (2008), p. 96.

²⁶ Huang Jinxin, ‘A new Chinese discourse of India’, p. 134.

²⁷ Selina Ho, ‘Seeing the forest for the trees: China’s shifting perceptions of India’, pp. 452–453.

²⁸ Jonathan Holslag, China and India: Prospects for Peace, p. 105.

²⁹ Andrew Small, The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

³⁰ Jonathan Holslag, ‘Progress, perceptions and peace in the Sino-Indian relationship’, p. 54.

³¹ China Internet Network Information Center, ‘The 34th statistical survey on Internet development in China’, (2015), accessed 19 April 2015, http://goo.gl/4Xth5N (see also www.cnnic.cn)].

³² Xiao Qiang, ‘The battle for the Chinese Internet’, in Nathan, et al., Will China Democratize? pp. 234–248.

³³ Weibo, ‘2014 microblogging user development report’, (2015), accessed 19 April 2015. http://data.weibo.com/report/reportDetail?id=215.

³⁴ Jason Q. Ng, Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (and Why) (New York: The New Press, 2013), p. xiv.

³⁵ Lu Jia and Qiu Yunxi, ‘Microblogging and social change in China’, Asian Perspective 37(3), (2013), p. 312.

³⁶ Yang Guobin, The Power of the Internet in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Ashley Esarey and Xiao Qiang, ‘Digital communication and political change in China’, International Journal of Communication 5(1), (2011), pp. 298–319; James Leibold, ‘Blogging alone: China, the Internet, and the democratic illusion?’, Journal of Asian Studies 70(4), (2011), pp. 1023–1041; Wilfred Yang Wang, ‘Weibo, framing, and media practices in China’, Journal of Chinese Political Science 18(4), (2013), pp. 375–388; Huang Ronggui and Sun Xiaoyi, ‘Weibo network, information diffusion and implications for collective action in China’, Information, Communication & Society 17(1), (2014), pp. 86–104.

³⁷ Xiao Qiang, ‘The battle for the Chinese Internet’; Yang Guobin, The Power of the Internet in China.

³⁸ James Leibold, ‘Blogging alone: China, the Internet, and the democratic illusion?’, p. 1024.

³⁹ According to Lu Jia and Qiu Yunxi, ‘Microblogging and social change in China’, p. 312, there were 9778 government agencies and 8354 officers with accounts on Weibo in 2011.

⁴⁰ They are supposedly paid fifty cents for each post they contribute. See Jason Q. Ng, Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (and Why).

⁴¹ Jason Q. Ng, Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (and Why), p. xix.

⁴² Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, ‘How censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression’, American Political Science Review 107(2), (2013), pp. 326–343.

⁴³ Devin Joshi, ‘Does China’s recent “harmonious society” discourse reflect a shift towards human development?’ Journal of Political Ideologies 17(2), (2012), pp. 169–187.

⁴⁴ Ng, Blocked on Weibo, p. xxiv; Another type of party-state influence is self-censorship since users must use their real names to register for a Weibo account.

⁴⁵ Xiao Qiang, ‘The battle for the Chinese Internet’, p. 239.

⁴⁶ Lu Jia and Qiu Yunxi, ‘Microblogging and social change in China’, p. 314 reports that 1185 media outlets had opened official accounts on Weibo in 2010. See also Susan Shirk, ed., Changing Media: Changing China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

⁴⁷ He was nicknamed the ‘隐婚总理’ (prime minister with a secret wife) since he was registered as married, but had not seen his wife for 45 years.

⁴⁸ Devin K. Joshi, 'The impact of India's regional parties on voter turnout and human development', Journal of South Asian Development 7(2), (2012), pp. 139–160.

⁴⁹ 王晓薇, ‘甘地王朝的颠覆者莫迪’ (Modi – Adversary of the Gandhi Dynasty), 中国时报 (China Times), 14 May 2014, accessed 15 May 2014, http://www.chinatimes.cc/article/42730.html.

⁵⁰ 毛四维, ‘新加坡《联合早报》：印度民主的成败得失’ (Singaporean Lianhe Zaobao: Indian Democracy’s Successes and Failures), 新华 (Xinhua), 13 May 2014, accessed 14 May 2014, http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2014-05/13/c_126494549.htm

⁵¹ The authors did not count articles where the characters for ‘democracy’ (民主) appear in the terms ‘National Democratic Alliance’, ‘Colonialism’, and ‘Bodo Democratic Liberation Front Terrorist Group’.

⁵² Hidden tweets are accessible by clicking a link that says: ‘为了提供多样性结果，我们省略了部分相似微博，您可以点击查看全部搜索结果’ (In order to provide a diversified search result, we have eliminated those tweets that are similar. You can click here to view the entire search results’). Hidden messages occur for several reasons. Some people’s messages are always censored – for example, some netizens who have strong opinions – but their followers/subscribers can still see their tweets. Other messages are eliminated because of blocked keywords. As a result, some people use special codes like ‘zf’ instead of ‘zhengfu’ (government) because ‘zhengfu’ is blocked. For ‘democracy’ sometimes people write 皿煮 (‘boiling plate’, a Chinese homophone for the word ‘democracy’) as this is not always censored.

⁵³ The slur ‘阿三’ is only used to describe Indians. It comes from Shanghainese dialect meaning ‘stupid #$%holes.’

⁵⁴ In a number of instances, the social media conversation turned adversarial with pro-CCP and anti-democracy comments met by rebuttals that the poster was a poser/paid contributor of the五毛 (CCP Internet Brigade).

⁵⁵ See Émilie Frenkiel, Conditional Democracy: The Contemporary Debate on Political Reform in Chinese Universities.