Multiple Ways to Democracy in Contemporary China

ABSTRACT

Chinese democracy is discussed here from the perspective of intercultural dialog and the need for a global conversation and cultural understandings to build a new democratic global political order. Democracy in China is a controversial issue. But democracy is today problematic and full of paradoxes and contradictions everywhere. We indeed face a paradoxical situation: Western liberal democracy can no longer be considered the unique and universal model of democracy, yet we cannot surrender to a relativistic perspective on democracy. In this article, I first deal with some presuppositions and questions that constitute the “common sense” about Chinese politics: Is Chinese political culture compatible with democracy? Does democracy exist in China? Is talking about democracy in China a Western imposition? Even more: Is democracy necessary? All these questions are intertwined and drive us to ask which democracy we are talking about. Second, we focus on some of the main debates on Chinese democracy: transition to democracy, gradualism, the New Left, deliberative theories and present visions of democracy linked to the new era, the Chinese Dream and the Chinese concept of “Tianxia” (all under heaven) for a new model of international relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese democracy
• political culture
• deliberative democracy
• gradualism
• Chinese Dream

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Diamond (2008) suggested that the twenty-first century is an era in which democracy has experienced little further advance (at best), or even the start of a new reverse wave (at worst).

2 According to global studies on democratization, Wang (2007) predicted that China would be by 2015–2020 a hybrid regime and not a “politically closed system”—which, from his point of view, is a consequence of not taking into consideration that elections are conducted in almost 90% of Chinese counties.

3 He Baogang is the head of the Public Policy and Global Affairs Program at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and a professor of the International Studies Program at Deakin University, Australia. He has conducted fieldwork in various Chinese villages and towns.

4 The term adopted in the report of the 18th CPC National Congress was “consultative democracy.”

5 Ma and Wang’s (2014) surveys conclude that direct elections are more important than consultative proceedings in improving trust in the government, which is an important ingredient of democracy.

6 Based on an interview for Dagong Daily of Hong Kong in 2005, the article was republished and ranked as one of the most influential publications across the country in 2006. Yu was nominated by Chinese media in 2008 as one of the 50 most influential people for Chinese development in the last three decades.

7 Former editor of Dushu (Reading), a very influential literary journal, Wang Hui is at present a professor at Tsinghua University, in Beijing. A specialist in Chinese intellectual history and modernity, he has been ranked as one of the 100 most important intellectuals in the world.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cristina Reigadas

Cristina Reigadas is a consultant professor and researcher at the Institute of Research in Social Sciences “Gino Germani,” the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires; an associate researcher at the Center of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge; and a member of the Specialization in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Lanus, Argentina. Her conceptual focus is contemporary socio-political changes from a transdisciplinary and transcultural perspective. Recently she has been researching in the field of Chinese intellectual history and contemporary debates on modernity and democracy in China. She has compiled and coauthored over 40 books including Entre la norma y la forma. Cultura y Política hoy (Between the Norm and the Form: Culture and Politics Today) (1998), Globalización y nuevas ciudadanías (Globalization and New Citizenships) (2003); El sueño chino (The China Dream) (2017, with Lucía Fernández). Currently she is working on Contemporary Chinese Debates on Democracy, a new book to be published in 2022.