China and Democracy

Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China

Suisheng Zhao

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317721635
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

China's dramatic economic growth in the last two decades of the last century and the prospect of its rise as a great power in this new one have greatly increased its weight and importance in world affairs. Consequently the progress, or lack of progress, of China's transition to democracy has become a central concern of the international community. This timely collection brings together many well-known scholars to systematically explore China's current government and assess that transition toward democracy. The contributors seek to bridge the gap between normative theories of democracy and empirical studies of China's political development by providing a comprehensive overview of China's domestic history, economy, and public political ideologies. Overall the volume contends that Chinese culture and Confucianism are not the obstacles to democratic transition that some scholars have said they are, and that the success of market reforms has eroded authoritarian rule. This weakening does not guarantee a successful transition, however, and the contributors show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about the short-term prospects for democracy in China, including historical failures, the underdevelopment of civil society, political apathy, and competing social values. Though China's political culture is essentially neither anti-democratic not pro-democratic, it must still overcome many obstacles in order to achieve democracy.

Part IV

The Prospects for Democracy in China at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

9

The Prospects for Democratization in China

Evidence from the 1995 Beijing Area Study

DANIEL V. DOWD, ALLEN CARLSON, AND MINGMING SHEN

The process of democratization in the People’s Republic of China—or equally important, the lack thereof—will likely be one of the most important developments in the world in the early twenty-first century. While the normative aspects of democratization in China are both important and interesting, this paper focuses on survey-based public-opinion evidence to assess the prospects for democratization. In particular, we consider the long-term implications of the distribution of public opinion on a specific question asked of respondents in Beijing: to select their “most important value” relating to politics.

The findings of this chapter suggest that there is little apparent public opinion pressure for democracy, especially in comparison to other values. At the same time, we find that the future is likely to bring pressure for a more liberal society, with more “private space” for the individual. In addition, we find that income has no effect on the respondents’ preferences for political democracy or individual freedom. These results call into question to what extent citizens in post-June Fourth Beijing possess political values supportive of democracy and what the likely future trends will be in public opinion related to democracy.

Previous Research

In the literature on democratization in China there is universal agreement that the economic reforms have created at least limited political liberalization or opening in China.¹ Yet concurrently there is widespread disagreement over the speed, scope, and most salient features of this change.² One way of categorizing these debates is by noting where authors locate the impetus for change. In looking at change in communist systems from a broad comparative perspective, Giuseppe Di Palma suggests that we can identify two main approaches: an application of the modernization thesis that draws on the importance of changes in the structural relationship between political and economic actors, and the more process-oriented approach that is derived from Janos’s devolutionism (a focus on the shift from charismatic to legal-rational regime legitimacy)³

The second approach is based on Max Weber’s understanding of regime legitimacy, and leads authors in the direction of analyzing elite politics. In China studies, this has meant a focus on the competition between the so-called liberal and conservative factions within high levels of the party as the key variable in pushing forward the reform process. Authors such as Harry Harding, Kenneth Lieberthal, and Michel Oksenberg employ this approach in tracing the path or reforms during the 1980s.⁴

In this chapter, we are not primarily concerned with the accuracy of this elite-centered approach. Indeed, we feel that such work offers a great deal of insight into the intricacies of the decision-making process in Beijing. However, such work also has its limitations, because it emphasizes the importance of elites over that of structural changes in society. We believe that this approach is limited, because while elites may have been self-motivated by power struggles or concerns with inner party legitimacy at the start of the reform crisis, over time the dominant role of central decision makers in the reform process declines, and other factors begin to play a more important role in forcing change. Therefore, a wider concern for structural factors is needed—if not to replace the work of those looking at shifts from charismatic to legal-bureaucratic government, then to complement and augment their approach.

A survey of the literature reveals that many scholars have taken up precisely this task—identifying structural changes in the Chinese polity. Examples of work influenced by the structure-oriented approach include that of Edward Friedman, Stephen Young, and Minxin Pei.⁵. However, an obvious limitation of the work of these authors is a failure to specify the manner in which public opinion and political values are changing in China. While this is not a major problem for authors studying elite politics, for those attempting to explain structural change and the formation of certain cultural prerequisites or preconditions of a more open polity it is a major oversight. Public opinion and political values are crucial variables in the reform process in that they are indicators of the extent to which societal pressures exist for a more open political system. Such variables would seem to merit close attention and analysis. Instead, it is more common in the literature to find generalized statements and prognoses that in reality tell us very little about how public opinion and political values are changing. For example, while discussing the emergence of civil society in China, Edward Friedman observes that “the late-twentieth-century unwillingness among Chinese to accept any political line should be understood as more than cynicism or a crisis of faith; it is also a part of a healthy skepticism that makes possible an open and free polity.”⁶ Stephen Young notes that in China, “the evidence clearly indicates that the rudiments of civil society are already emerging, albeit without much formal organizational structure.”⁷ Barrett McCormick and David Kelly add, “Increasing numbers of Chinese are explicitly pondering liberal ideals, and as a practical means of organizing a complex modern society, liberalism has still wider appeal.”⁸

None of these articles offer replicable evidence that supports such observations. Rather, they are filled with references to informal interviews held with taxicab drivers, discussions with academics, and the rehashing of simplistic understandings of early versions of the modernization thesis. Nowhere do we find empirical evidence that either supports or contradicts the stated positions. While this may have been acceptable five years ago, we believe that a higher standard of evidence is now appropriate. In particular, we must begin more carefully examining the accumulating evidence about public opinion in Beijing and elsewhere, and whether or not political values are emerging in China that are supportive of a more open political system.

As mentioned above, some authors have begun to investigate this question. First, a number of recent articles and books have attempted to more accurately identify the relationship between state and society in China.⁹ These works have contributed a great deal to our understanding of the formation of a civil society, and the manner in which different segments of the population relate to local-level party and government; they attempt to identify whether or not, and in what form, the space of civil society is developing. However, their works do not go far in explaining and quantifying the nature of political values in China today; in order to do this, it is essential to analyze reliable public opinion data.

This chapter is not the first to consider the importance of public opinion and changing political values in China. Indeed, Andrew Nathan and Tianjian Shi’s Daedelus article deals directly with this question. More recently, Alfred Chan and Paul Nesbitt-Larking, Yongnian Zheng, and Jie Chen and colleagues have also written about this issue.¹⁰ Interestingly, these authors do not report the same findings. Nathan and Shi optimistically report, “In general, as theory predicts, the more urban and educated sectors showed more democratic attitudes, supporting expectation as derived from modernization theory that China’s culture will move closer to the patterns characteristic of democratic countries as the economy grows” (116). Zheng, and Chan and Nesbitt-Larking, while not as explicitly endorsing the modernization thesis, echo Nathan and Shi. Zheng observes that although his data does not necessarily show strong support for democracy, there are indications of an emerging liberalism. Chan and Nesbitt-Larking’s emphasis on “critical citizenship” in China is consistent with Zheng’s observations. Chen and colleagues find that popular support for the regime runs high, but do not extensively analyze the nature of the political values they report on, nor do they consider the extent to which their survey indicates the degree to which residents of Beijing are interested in democracy and a more open political system.

Overall, these articles are disappointing for the student of current structural changes in the Chinese polity. The work of Nathan and Shi, while promising, is already dated, as it is based on a 1990 survey conducted in Beijing. Chan and Nesbitt-Larking, and Zheng depend on data from the late 1980s, which was of questionable validity even then. While Chen and colleagues use contemporary data, their analysis is not particularly insightful, as it is restricted to gauging the level of support for the current regime, and fails to explore the more interesting question of how political values may be changing in Beijing.

Our chapter addresses these weaknesses, as we are using some of the newest, most reliable data available. In addition, we employ these cross-sectional data in a manner that allows us to assess the l...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: China's Democratization Reconsidered
• I China's Search for Democracy in the Twentieth Century
• II Chinese Political Culture and Democracy
• III Chinese State–Society Relations and Democracy
• IV The Prospects for Democracy in China at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Index