Political Thought and China's Transformation

Ideas Shaping Reform in Post-Mao China

H. Li

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137427809
• eBook ISBN: 9781137427816
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Historia asiática

Since the late 1970s China has undergone a great transformation, during which time the country has witnessed an outpouring of competing schools of thought. This book analyzes the major schools of political thought redefining China's transformation and the role Chinese thinkers are playing in the post-Mao era.

Part I

Contemporary Chinese Political Thought

1

Liberalism

Liberalism has had a long history in China. Western culture and ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity began influencing China about 200 years ago and continue to have a major impact. Although poorly understood and inadequately diffused before the market-oriented reform of the late 1970s, in the past three decades liberalism has become an important school of thought among Chinese intellectual circles, and a liberal camp was established in China in the late 1990s.¹

‘Liberalism’ (ziyouzhuyi) is notoriously difficult to define. The term has been used to describe a sprawling profusion of ideas, practices, movements, and practices in different societies and historical periods.² In the view of Zhu Xueqin, a professor of political thought and a leading Chinese liberal, liberalism can be defined as follows:

It is first of all a theory, then a realist claim. Its philosophical conception is empiricism as opposed to apriorism; its historical conception, contrary to any kind of historical determinism, originates from the evolutionist theory likely to eliminate errors; its reformist vision is dependent on a moderate progressivism that prefers gradual expansion and evolution to the artificial construction of radicalism. At the economic level, it calls for the market economy over the planned economy; at the political level, it calls for representative and constitutional democracy and the rule of law, while opposing the dictatorship of a single person or of a minority just as much as the dictatorship of the masses exercised in the name of the general will; at the ethical level, it calls for the guarantee of the irreducible value of the individual, which cannot be sacrificed, in contrast to other reducible values, as an instrument for whatever abstract goals it may be.³

A large number of Chinese intellectuals are, or intend to be, liberals and socialists at the same time, without fully understanding the tensions or contradictions between these different ideologies. Such intellectuals may subscribe to liberal and democratic values, but in the end cannot resist the seduction of state socialism and nationalism. Therefore, Chinese liberals are usually labeled as the right-wingers. In this book, “liberals” (ziyoupai) refer to those who are committed to fundamental liberal values.

The major objectives of the Chinese liberal intellectuals are summarized in Charter 08 (08 Xianzhang), which was signed by more than 9,000 Chinese citizens from all walks of life before the government completely shut down the Charter 08 Web site in mid-January 2009. Political reform appears most urgent to the Chinese liberals. They hold that without political reform, equity and social justice are impossible. Charter 08 calls on the Chinese people to “embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilized nations, and build a democratic system” as an alternative to one-party dictatorship; it provides a succinct exposition of six basic liberal values and concepts: freedom, human rights, equality, republicanism, democracy, and constitutional rule. In addition, it sets forth liberal positions on 19 major issues for political reform: a new constitution, separation of powers, legislative democracy, an independent judiciary, public control of public servants and separation of the military from political parties, guarantees of human rights, election of public officials, rural–urban equality, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, civic education, protection of private property, financial and tax reform, social security, protection of the environment, a federated republic, and truth and reconciliation.⁴

This chapter addresses the following research questions: When and how has liberalism spread China? Who are the key representatives of the liberals in the post-Mao era? What are the major arguments of the Chinese liberal intellectuals? To what extent do the policies of the current Chinese leadership reflect the major concerns of the liberals? What are the prospects for liberalism in China?

Early spread and reemergence of liberalism

Many Western liberal ideas were introduced into China at the turn of the 19th century. The late Qing liberals, such as Yan Fu (1824–1921) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929), were primarily progressive reformers. They looked to Western liberalism for a source of wealth and power, which would revitalize the declining state.⁵ The spread of liberalism thus contributed to the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911. Chinese liberalism culminated in the first phase of the New Culture Movement from 1915 to 1919. However, the Russian Revolution in 1917 became an attractive alternative to the Chinese intellectuals. With the Communist victory in 1949, classic liberalism in China lost its political base and Maoism triumphed. Liberalism, in the sense of tolerance of dissent, protection of civil rights, and the encouragement of individualism, was considered an obstacle in the post-1949 China.⁶ In Mao’s China, no independent ideology was allowed to exist. Liberalism ceased to function after the Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957–1958 due to harsh persecution. Mao not only destroyed individualism but also crushed intellectuals as a dominant class in Chinese society.

In spite of the long and dark shadows of totalitarianism, Chinese liberalism reemerged in the late 1970s. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, the negative attitude toward the Cultural Revolution was shared by the great majority of the Chinese, especially Chinese literati. A large number of the intellectuals were severely persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. They were determined to find out what caused such a disaster in Chinese history and how to prevent its reoccurrence. The majority of Chinese intellectuals embraced liberal ideology and supported Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Diffusion of liberalism was extensive by the late 1980s.⁷ When Deng Xiaoping enunciated his four cardinal principles, the liberals began to diverge from him. Deng maintained that Mao had focused too much on politics and that China instead needed to concentrate on economic development. In contrast, the liberals argue that the fundamental problem is the political system, namely, the totalitarian regime.

After 1989, the liberal camp suffered a major setback. The proponents of liberal democracy and liberal wings within the system were suppressed. Some were arrested and imprisoned, others were sent into exile; almost all were silenced. Because of the control by the authorities, the liberal bloc virtually disappeared. The government accused students and the scholars who took part in the Tiananmen movement as “liberal” and their ideology “bourgeois liberalism.” For a time, liberalism was a taboo in the intellectual discourse. After Deng Xiaoping’s nanxun (southern tour) in 1992, liberalism gradually reappeared on the scene of China.⁸ The regime has prevented the liberal scholars from forming an organization for their political endeavor, but they have managed to congregate regularly at informal occasions and at conferences organized by liberal colleagues. At present, the liberals consist of six vaguely distinctive but to some extent overlapping categories: liberal intellectuals, liberals within the CCP, Christian liberals, democracy activists, human rights lawyers, and grassroots rights activists. These six groups have advocated liberalism in their own perspectives through publications and speeches, taken part in a variety of social and political activities for the cause of democracy, expressed mutual support for each other when persecuted by the party-state, and occasionally united to issue joint petitions or open letters on the Internet to express their shared concerns or demands for democratic change.⁹

There are two types of liberalism in post-Mao China, namely, economic liberalism and political liberalism. The former advocates the speedy and thorough development of the market economy. The latter stresses the necessity of an urgent and deep political reform. These liberal scholars, albeit with differences, were influenced by Western classical liberalism, especially that of Friedrich A. Hayek. As liberalism rapidly developed in the early 1990s in parallel with the country’s accelerating globalization, liberalism shifted from the calls for freedom and democracy of the 1980s to an alternative democracy associated with the market economy.

Some moderate liberals, more aligned with European social democracy and the welfare state, call on government to pay more attention to inequality and environmental protection. For his part, Qin Hui, one of the prominent liberals, positions himself on the common ground shared by liberalism and social democracy.¹⁰ The community of liberals can also be divided into two major groups: within the system (tizhinei) and external to the system (tizhiwai). The former are typically professors, economists, journalists, lawyers, think tank policy analysts, government officials, and members of management. The former group believes that the existing party-state can be transformed from within, and that the development of civil society depends to some extent on the tacit consent of the party in power. Liberal-leaning intellectuals believe that the individual and society together formed one faction distinct from the state, and thus the individual could resist traditional centralized state authority through the establishment of a middle-class civic society.

The latter group normally doesn’t affiliate with any danwei in the public sector.¹¹ It is due to the fact that the community of liberal intellectuals was badly damaged by the Tiananmen massacre and its aftermath. They either gave up the hope of transforming “the untransformable” and decided to search for better and more feasible alternatives or took up residence overseas. Without a domestic presence, the influence of the exiled intellectuals is limited, and they have become increasingly irrelevant to politics back in China. So far in mainland China, there is no powerful and visible dissident influence that can really shake the CCP rule. The focus of this chapter is on those liberals inside the system (tizhinei). In fact, the majority of liberal scholars inside of mainland China belong to this camp.

In spite of the common goal of liberal democracy, liberals within the system have adopted an approach and strategies fundamentally different from those of the liberals in exile. Whereas the Chinese democracy movement in exile sees the political opposition (namely, themselves) as the driving force for China’s transition to democracy, the liberals within the system cherish the hope that democratic elements within the CCP will initiate the process of democratization, building on the existing institutions which are conducive to democracy. To this end, leading liberal intellectuals have made heartfelt proposals to the Party leadership for a smooth political transition from within. Feng Chongyi states correctly that the majority of intellectuals in China today are at least semi-liberals in the sense that they share beliefs in market economy, individual rights, and, to a lesser extent, liberal democracy. Yet, only a tiny minority of them hold these liberal ideals profoundly enough to express them in a systematic way or are brave enough to put their beliefs into practice by actively confronting the party-state.¹²

Unlike “establishment intellectuals” who were mainly state servants under Mao,¹³ today’s liberal scholars are “critical intellectuals.” In Western parlance, they could be called public intellectuals, intellectuals who speak out publicly on political issues. In the absence of any political pluralism in today’s China, “the public intellectuals” are called upon to play the role of an opposition.¹⁴ Some leading liberal intellectuals are known as “public intellectuals” as they frequently bring important and sometimes controversial topics to the forefront of public discussion and assert themselves in the defense of the political or economic rights of a population that either has been misguided or are not well informed.¹⁵ It should be noted that as extreme comments tend to attract more attention, some of China’s intellectuals are now paying lip service to the trend of abuse in order to increase their visibility. As a result, the word “public intellectual” itself has become a pejorative.

Liberals, constituted mostly by middle-aged veterans of wenhua re (cultural fever) who spent their youths introducing Western ideas and discourses, still command considerable prestige in Chinese society. Some of them are signers of Charter 08, the manifesto to promote political reform and democratization in China. Apart from personal networking, they exercise their influence mainly through their publications. Theories of and debates over liberalism are usually published in the Internet as well as in the liberal journals and newspapers, such as Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend), Nanfang Dushibao (Southern Metropolitan Daily), and Ershiyi Shiji (Twenty-First Century).

The liberal discourse

Over the past 30-odd years, the Chinese liberals have made remarkable advances in their intellectual endeavors. The basic concern of the liberals is the political regime. But they differ greatly among themselves in terms of how they regard the regime. In the words of Liu Junning, a liberal political scientist,

it has become the consensus among most contemporary Chinese liberals that it is important to distinguish themselves as classical liberals – in the tradition of Locke, Smith, and Hayek – since that distinction affects the destiny of liberalism in China and even the future of China itself.¹⁶

The current liberal discourse in China highlights four issues: individual liberty, economic liberalism, constitutional democracy, and embrace of the Western model and globalization. To begin with, the Chinese liberals hold that fundamental purpose of democracy is the protection of individual freedom. As a consequence, the protection of the right to own private property is a basic condition both for guaranteeing individual liberty and for furnishing a legal framework that is indispensable for the development of the market economy.¹⁷ Chinese liberalism was born in protest against the totalitarian rule. It seeks to establish both a limitation to authority and a division of authority. According to Xu Youyu, a prominent philosopher and proponent of Chinese liberalism,

the core of liberalism is affirmation of individual value and esteem, respect and protection of personal rights and interests. Profound understanding of liberalism would necessarily break with the traditional conception that suppresses individuality and takes the nation and collective as the only value. But it also requires a clear distinction between individualism and egoism or selfishness.¹⁸

Second, the liberals uphold economic liberalism. The Chinese liberals consider that although the market economy does not necessarily lead to democracy, it remains no less a necessary condition for that; in the history of the modern world, there is no example of a stable democracy that does not have a market economy.¹⁹ Liberal economists believe that the government’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• A Note on Spelling
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Ideas and China’s Transformation
• Part I: Contemporary Chinese Political Thought
• Part II: Intellectual Discourse on Critical Issues
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Chinese Names and Phrases
• Subject and Name Index