Thread: In China, Talk of Democracy Is Simply That

In China, Talk of Democracy Is Simply That

By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: April 20, 2007

BEIJING, April 14 — Like the spring showers that give the parched landscape a veneer of green, China’s authoritarian leaders, approaching the end of their five-year terms in office, have suggested that they would like to see their country become more democratic.

Communist Party journals and the state-run news media have published a stream of commentaries by retired officials and academics on “political system reform” and the need for “socialist democracy,” including a bold-sounding call for China to mimic Switzerland’s worker-friendly democratic governing style.


Top leaders have authorized the publication of the pro-democratic political reflections of Lu Dingyi, a Long March veteran who advocated political change before his death a decade ago, two party officials said. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao spoke at length about the value of democracy in a nationally televised news conference last month, and promised steps toward political openness on a recent trip to Japan and South Korea.

China is not embracing Western-style democracy, even in theory. But by permitting a relatively open round of political discussion, President Hu Jintao and other top leaders have sought to cast themselves publicly as progressives who are open-minded about ways to improve government practices and reduce corruption, party officials and political experts say.

Mr. Hu may also be trying to rally support among younger party members and intellectuals ahead of an important party congress in the fall. At that time, the five-year terms of the most senior officials expire, and top leaders have begun lobbying internally for the personnel and the ideological positions they favor.

Those who advocate faster political change say they hope that Mr. Hu, who is expected to serve a second five-year term as China’s Communist Party chief, will broaden the use of elections rather than rely almost exclusively on top-down appointments inside the party structure.

But even that limited step toward devolving power remains a highly delicate one. China’s leaders claim that the one-party state has long practiced democracy, in the sense of governing on behalf of the people, and they show no signs of preparing to cede any political power.

Even some top Chinese intellectuals who favor more political pluralism tend to define democracy in instrumental terms — as a force that can help party leaders stay in touch with the people and provide a popular check on corruption — rather than as the core of a new political system in which people choose their leaders in free elections.


In an internal party document issued last year, Mr. Hu sharply criticized the Communist government of Vietnam for moving too rashly toward so-called inner-party democracy. He argued that the Chinese party had to maintain tight discipline to prevent the promotion of a figure like the former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whom Chinese Communists consider a traitor to socialism, party officials who read Mr. Hu’s comments on the subject said.

Still, some other leading officials, including Mr. Hu’s most influential colleague within the party structure, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, have been pushing to increase the number of senior officials who participate in the selection of a successor to Mr. Hu, who is expected to retire in 2012.

At a minimum, the recent flurry of articles suggests that the terms democracy and freedom have lost the taboo they had after the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989, after which Deng Xiaoping squelched talk of any democratic-style political change.

“What we’re seeing is a repudiation of Deng Xiaoping’s edict that the party should focus exclusively on economic development,” said Lu De, an influential economist who has pushed for greater political pluralism.

Mr. Lu, known as a princeling because of his family ties to the party elite, is the son of Lu Dingyi, a propaganda chief and vice premier under Mao who fell out of political favor during the Cultural Revolution and spent 13 years in custody. Lu Dingyi’s thoughts on democracy and freedom, as recorded by Lu De before his father’s death in 1996, were published this week in the party journal Yanhuang Chunqiu after an extended review by top party leaders.

“I think that Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao have caught up with the thinking of party leaders from an earlier era, who understood that political change and economic change had to proceed hand in hand,” said Mr. Lu, an economic policy adviser to China’s State Council, which functions as a cabinet. “Of course, they must move step by step. It will not be one big leap and we’re there.”

Many political analysts are more guarded. Big political events like party congresses, which are held once every five years, can sometimes give rise to relatively unfettered debate that officials stop tolerating after the congress settles on a new slate of leaders. Mr. Hu stirred up expectations of imminent political change around the time he became Communist Party chief in 2002. But since then, they say, he has pursued repeated crackdowns on journalists, lawyers and rights advocates, leading many to conclude that the space for divergent political views in China has shrunk on his watch.

The state-run news media’s newly prolific references to democracy to describe a range of prosaic political actions — like setting up an e-mail address so that the public can comment on pending legislation — so devalue the term that critics of the leadership suspect that Mr. Hu’s goal may be to strip democracy of meaning.

“They want democracy to belong to the party, not to belong to people who oppose the party,” said one retired party official who declined to be identified because top leaders sometimes punish people for discussing elite politics. “If the party can define what democracy is, then it will not be as dangerous.”

The essays in party journals do not endorse multiparty democracy. Most of the authors argue that democracy can be functionally consistent with single-party rule. But they say it is necessary to enliven intellectual life and creativity, and to curtail official corruption.

Lu Dingyi argued that the party should embrace democracy and freedom because intellectuals favored those ideas and the party needed the support of intellectuals. He said people in the sciences and the arts must be allowed broad latitude to express themselves as they saw fit, provided they did not contest the party’s political leadership.

He also said the party must also move toward some form of open elections.

“If we’re going to have democracy, the most important thing is elections,” Mr. Lu is quoted as saying in the article.

He adds that the party cannot continue to act as both “player and referee” when it comes to corruption. The referee role belongs to the public, he said, and is “a basic function of democracy.”

Similar sentiments, though from less historically influential figures, were expressed in a series of commentaries in Study Times, a newspaper devoted to issues facing the ruling party, and some popular media as well.

One of the most passionate calls came from another party elder, Xie Tao, a former vice dean of People’s University in Beijing, who suggested that China follow what he described as a Swiss model of “socialist democracy.” Writing in Yanhuang Chunqiu in February, Mr. Xie warned that unless the party embraced democracy, it was headed for defeat.

“If we pursue only economic reform, to say it straight, we’re headed toward the path of bureaucratic capitalism that destroyed Chiang Kai-shek’s rule on the mainland,” he said. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party was overthrown by the Communists in 1949.

Mr. Wen, the prime minister, largely endorsed such thinking, though in more cautious language, when he held his annual news conference in mid-March. Like Mr. Lu, he argued that socialists should welcome the ideas associated with liberal thinking in the West.

“Democracy, rule of law, freedom, human rights, equality and fraternity do not belong solely to capitalism,” Mr. Wen said.

Diplomats and human rights groups say such statements have not been accompanied by any notable expansion of political participation or the development of an independent judiciary. The question remains whether the talk foreshadows a faster pace of political change or just amounts to a hollow propaganda offensive.

Mr. Hu has tried to cast the Communist Party as more responsive to the concerns of the Chinese people, hundreds of millions of whom have not seen their fortunes rise as fast as those of the urban elite during the years of China’s robust but highly unbalanced economic growth.

His catch phrase, “harmonious society,” has become the ideological umbrella under which China has taken the first steps toward developing a redistributive welfare program. Mr. Hu has also encouraged broader discussion of Confucianism, the political and social philosophy of ancient China, which treats harmony as a core virtue.

Democracy is seen domestically as another benevolent concept that hints vaguely at inclusiveness and consultation. Mr. Hu could well see it as useful at a time when riots among peasants and migrant workers have become a commonplace feature of political life, political commentators say.

Whatever Mr. Hu’s motives, China is not in the process of overhauling its political system, but rather preparing to engage in its contentious and secretive ritual of succession.

The party will decide sometime in the fall which of the current senior leaders will stay on for new terms and who among their protégés will enter the Politburo Standing Committee, one of whom seems likely to replace Mr. Hu in 2012.

Many analysts contend that the talk of democracy cannot be viewed outside the context of the congress.

“This could signal differences at the top, or pressure from a particular group that wants to seize an opportunity to get its views out on the eve of the congress,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It could also simply be part of the jockeying for political position.”

She said she did not view the flurry of articles as a sign that China was about to become measurably more democratic, at least in the way that term is understood in the West.

“I’m not convinced that it means political reform is on the agenda,” Ms. Glaser said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/wo..._r=1&ref=world

I presume Mary Engelbreit quote, "If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it" seems to be working.

Obviously the Chinese are pragmatic enough to realise that they must keep in step with the demands of the time and yet it cannot be done so drastically that they ruling elite loses their hold over the country.

It is, however, a good thing that China has been driven to abandon Maoist Communism and have veered to Socialism of a Mixed Economy. That consumerism has gripped them is a good sign since consumerism will drive the Chinese to abandon Communism completely.

Consumer goods and quality consumer goods does impact compared to the tacky Communist goods.

One wonders the turmoil that is going in China between the have and have nots.

Could that lead to a Revolution?