Page 2 of 2 China according to the Chinese The Origin, Process, and Outcome of China's Reforms
in the Past One Hundred Years by Enbao Wang
Reviewed by Yu Bin
China's future: Democratic or else?
"Every 30 years things go to the opposite," goes another popular Chinese saying
(san shi nian he dong, san shi nian he xi). Wang's book arrives at a
crucial juncture, as China's economic development has reached a moment of
historical reckoning for the nation's political future. What is next? How does
the rise of China's economic power relate to its political infrastructure? What
is the ideational destination of an economically rising China? How much should
China continue to learn from the West while the capitalist "beast" is
devastating not only itself but also the very habitat its own survival depends
upon? What is the utility of China's own traditional culture? To what extent
does it still have
the potential for harmonizing a rapidly modernizing China? How will China
exercise its newly found power in the world?
These questions, among others, may not be easily addressed by China's own
experience in the reform decades. In other words, Deng's theory, and its
variations of Jiang's and Hu's doctrines, may not be a reliable guide for
China's future given the fast-changing domestic and international setting.
After 30 years of its experimentation with Western market capitalism, 60 years
after its switch to Western Marxism, and 90 years after its dismay with Western
liberalism, [4] China perhaps would have to search for its own answer, own
guideline, and own "isms" for many of its problems and those of the world.
As Wang points out, the Chinese have searched for a democratic system over the
past 100 years - from Sun Yat-sen to Mao Zedong and finally to Deng Xiaoping -
while pursuing a national rejuvenation (Chapters 3 and 7). How and why is such
a quest so long and at times extremely painful? Part of the answer lies in
China's own cultural "barriers" to a democratic setting originated from the
West. But what about the West's model itself? Should the Chinese reexamine the
validity of Western democratic-capitalism as the sole path to modernity? This
questioning is more imperative in a brave new world of globalized recession,
heightened terrorism and proliferating weapons of mass destruction.
The experience of China and others already indicates that the West's
capitalism-democracy twin-recipe is not indivisible. Conversely, the
combination of the two may or may not lead to peace and prosperity for the West
itself and for others, as were the cases of democratic-imperialism and
expansionism in history. In the case of the United States, the built-in "checks
and balances" mechanism can lead to a situation with neither checks nor
balance, as indicated by those rogue CEOs, politicians' cherry-picking
intelligence and excessive use of force in the format of unilateralism and
preemption. At least the West is already asking the question by juxtaposing the
so-called "Washington Consensus" and "Beijing Consensus."
The question is not one of right or wrong, but how these developmental models
differ from one another. It is not argued here that China confront various
Western ideologies, but transcend these narrowly defined Western concepts,
which always strive for their own ideological purity and extreme end - be they
liberalism, nationalism, Nazism, militarism, communism, statism - at the
expense of the interests of others. For China's political and intellectual
elite, the nation's democratization should be by and for itself and at its own
pace, not necessarily because of or for the satisfaction of the West.
Indeed, democracy may not necessarily be the final destination for human and
social development, but a mechanism for some higher goals - such as social
harmony. Such a goal may be reachable through other paths, not just those of
the West. From a historical perspective, there is perhaps nothing wrong with
democracy as a political system that evolved from Western history and culture.
It deserves both respect and serious consideration by others, including China.
Indiscriminately imposing democracy anywhere and anytime, however, amounts to a
witch doctor prescribing Viagra to every patient, regardless of his or her age,
gender and symptoms. Ultimately, it may undermine one's own interests, as is
the case of Iraq, which has become the bloodiest democratizing case ever in the
world's history.
Beyond the policy realm, scholars need to be open-ended in exploring China's
future. While China is still far away from Western-style democracy, there are
significant political changes in the areas of elite politics, succession
mechanisms, elite-societal relations, development of the private space, etc.
Western democracy-equals-modernization orthodoxy would not be able to explain
what happens in China. Nor would the champions of Western democracy be able to
reconcile the prevailing democracy-peace theory with what William Lind refers
to "Western civil war," [5] which included wars of hundreds of years between
European princes, merchants, mercenaries, professional soldiers,
citizen-states, and ideologies. [6]
At the beginning of the 20th century, Western democracies' war with other
Western nations, which was World War I and its grand settlement at Versailles,
unleashed all the "evils" for Western democracies in the 20th century: Russian
Bolshevikism, German Nazism, Japanese militarism and Chinese communism. "The
war to end all wars," ironically and tragically became the first in a long line
of wars. This "Western civil war" finally drew to an end in 1991 with Western
liberalism celebrating the "end of history”, meaning Western liberalism
triumphing over Western communism. [7]
Western realism, however, lost no time in declaring the coming of the clashes
of civilizations between the West and "rest". [8] This mindset of perpetual war
- either with itself or with others - made the 20th century the bloodiest ever
in world history, with 75 percent of the death toll since the year 1000 and 89%
since 1800. [9]
For all of the unpleasant consequences of China's 30-year reform and historical
rise - corruption, inequality, environmental degradation, etc - China has so
far escaped the Western cycle of hegemonic wars in which rising power upsets
existing international system. If Napoleon rose from his grave, he would indeed
be shocked by what China has NOT done during its historical rise: "discovering"
the "new" worlds, seizing colonies, shipping slaves, selling drugs, fighting
endlessly with others, etc.
It is time for China to reexamine, if not escape from, the conceptual and
ideological capitalist-democracy "trap" enshrined by Western political and
intellectual elite. At a minimum, China should avoid the excessiveness of
Western ideologies. In the still deepening worldwide capitalist crisis, it is
time for China, and the world, to pause, think and search for a different model
of political economy beyond excessive greed, excessive consumerism and
excessive laissez-faire.
The goal is to strive for a proper balance between the market and the state,
between individual need and societal interests, between equality and
efficiency, between materialistic growth and cultural/spiritual harmony, and
between nurturing the innovative business class and protecting other vulnerable
social groups.
Such an approach is also common sense, as was the choice made by the little
girl Goldilocks, who preferred things not too hot, not too cold, not too hard,
not too soft, but just right. China, too, should tap into its traditional
Confucian "middle approach" (zhong yong) by pursuing a goal of more
responsible governance for a more "harmonious" society, with or without a
democratic gloss-over.
Notes
1. This is borrowed from Said’s notion that the West’s study of the non-West is
based on the West’s own experience, perceptions and invention of the "other",
which is part of the Western style of dominating, restructuring, and having
authority over the Orient. Edward Said, Orientalism (Random House, Inc.,
1978).
2. The phrase, "China’s rise of peace, by peace, and for peace," is cited from
Wang Yiwei, The dimensions
of China's peaceful rise, Asia Times Online, May 14, 2004.
3. Steven Levine, "China in Asia: The PRC as a Regional Power," in China’s
Foreign Relations in the 1980s, Harry Harding, ed. (Yale University Press,
1984), 107-114; Michael Hunt, "Chinese Foreign Relations in Historical
Perspective," in Harding, China’s Foreign Relations, 1-42; Samuel Kim, China
In and Out of the Changing World Order (Princeton University Press,
1991), 84.
4. Before 1919, most Chinese intelligentsia believed that the only way to
national salvation was total Westernization, or to learn from "Mr Science" and
"Mr. Democracy". At Versailles in 1919, however, Chinese delegates soon
discovered that their goal of regaining national sovereignty was dashed by a
secret treaty between Japan and European democracies to transfer the German
concession of Shandong to Japan, not back to China. Between the two Asian
allies, Western democracies chose the strong at the expense of the weak. The
May 4, 1919 demonstrations across China decisively turned pro-liberal
intellectual sentiment into one of anti-imperialism and nationalism.
5. Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72,
no. 3 (Summer 1993): 23.
6. Michael Howard, War In European History (Oxford University Press,
1976).
7. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" The National Interest 16
(Summer 1989).
8. Huntington, op.cit.
9. John Rourke and Mark Boyer, International Politics on the World Stage
(McGraw-Hill, 2008), 232.
The Origin, Process, and Outcome of China's Reforms in the Past One Hundred
Years: The Chinese Quest for National Rejuvenation (Hardcover) Edwin
Mellen Press (November 5, 2009), ISBN-10: 0773439048. Price US$119.95, 383
pages.
Yu Bin is Senior Fellow of Shanghai Association of American Studies and
regular contributes to Comparative Connections, Pacific Forum (CSIS) at
http://csis.org/program/comparative-connections. He can be reached at byu@wittenberg.edu.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
