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Guo, Gang
Department of Political Science
University of Rochester
May 1999
The past two decades have seen unprecedented progress in political liberalization and openness in both mainland China and Taiwan. On both sides of the strait, the ruling parties, organized around principles of Leninist Bolshevism coupled with traditional Chinese guardianship, initiated a series of political reforms that have had a profound impact on the rules of the political game. The previous excesses and arbitrariness of totalitarianism were replaced by a more responsive and consultative government with more responsible exercise of political power. However, while Taiwan is already squarely on the way to democracy, in mainland China the Communist Party still seems to have a tight (if not tighter) grip of power. In this short essay, I will first discuss several key features of the putative democratization in mainland China, in both procedural and structural terms, and evaluate the extent to which they help to develop the basic foundations of a liberal democracy (in Dahl's sense of a pluralist democracy). And then, turning back to my starting point, I will talk about the main obstacles to further democratization in light of the experience of political liberalization in Taiwan.
From a procedural perspective, this democratization in China can be characterized as a liberalization initiated by the Party to fulfill specific functions. The Party launched political reforms in the late 1970's, which was not a consequence of state crisis (the situation where the social order is at stake and the state is fundamentally threatened),[1] not a consequence of mass demand for democracy, not even a consequence of bargaining between elite social groups. The Party single-handedly started the liberalization process mainly for the following three specific purposes: first, to correct the terror and arbitrariness of the Cultural Revolution; second, to mobilize initiatives for economic reform and growth;[2] third, to institutionalize alternative legitimate channels of political participation and expression other than mass campaigns and the "four bigs".[3] As Andrew Nathan put it, "the reforms aimed to change China from a terror-based, totalitarian dictatorship to a 'mature', administered dictatorship of the post-Stalinist Soviet or Eastern European type. ... Reinvigoration of the citizen's relationship with the state was only meant to contribute to a more consultative and predictable form of party dictatorship."[4]
Given the highly instrumental characteristic of this liberalization process initiated by the Party, to what extent does this procedure help to develop the basic foundations of a liberal democracy? Strictly in procedural terms, this liberalization is not purported to democratize in the sense of a pluralist democracy.[5] The reformers certainly did not envisage a clear blueprint for democracy in the first place. Even if they did, the democracy in their mind is fundamentally different from what the term "liberal democracy" conveys. As Powell defines it: "Liberal democracies are identified by an implicit bargain between the representative governments and their citizens and a specific arrangement that regulates that bargain. The bargain is that the government's legitimacy, its expectation of obedience to its laws, is dependent on its claim to be doing what the citizens want it to do", not on "some vision of citizens' best interests as defined by the rulers or by some ideological system."[6] In this liberalization process, the Party never changes the claim that the Party, and only the Party, represent the best interests of the people. Political liberalization is, after all, changes within the system, bounded by the rule of the game. Within this boundary, liberalization can proceed very far without any systematic change. An example would be the local "new-democratic governments" led by the Communist Party in the framework of the anti-Japanese united front in the early 1940's, where the Party apparently positioned itself as the consensus-builder for the common goal of defeating the Japanese aggressors.[7]
So this procedural feature of the putative democratization, liberalization initiated by the Party, does not, by itself, significantly help develop the basic foundations of a liberal democracy. Political liberalization can move in the direction of democratization, but not necessarily.[8] The democratic potential of political liberalization in China has to be coupled with structural elements to be brought into full play. To evaluate the extent to which China has developed the basic foundations of a liberal democracy, exploration of still other features of the democratization is necessary, to which I now turn.
From a structural perspective, the democratization in China has two outstanding features, dispersion of resources and selective mass inclusion, each giving us some hope of developing the basic foundations of liberal democracy in the long run. As I will discuss below, these two features coincide to a degree with Robert Dahl's "two theoretical dimensions of democratization", i.e., public contestation and mass inclusion.[9]
Although probably not intended by the Party, the rapid expansion and structural changes in the economy brought about by the economic reforms have had a profound impact on the resource distribution of the Chinese society. In Dahl's scenario of the development of democracy, economic growth fosters the social conditions of an MDP (modern, dynamic, and pluralist) society, that is, the dispersion of political resources, strategic locations, and bargaining positions, in economic, scientific, educational, communicative, and cultural terms.[10] And of course, in a pluralist democracy such as the American system, power resources in different issue areas are not evenly distributed among the population, not even among the 閘ites, but most people have at least some power resources, and no single issue area (such as in politics) has excessive power.[11]
According to this scenario, China seems to have been moving toward an MDP society. One of the most conspicuous changes brought about by the economic reforms is probably the transformation of an all-powerful, omnipresent party-state to a partially institutionalized party-state that plays somewhat limited role in the economy,[12] which is, to a less extent, also true in politics. The economic reforms include significant decentralization, that is, the party-state's delegation of economic power to lower levels, from the province-ministry level all the way down to the individual level. For example, the Party no longer determines the "work points" and thus the livelihood of the peasants; its role in the rural area has been shifted from that of a distributor to that of an exactor and the peasants now have the power resources to be partially independent of the state. The party-state used to determine industrial production (not only by manipulating statistics, of course), but now, with a significant part of the economy already outside of the central plan, the party center has to rely on political control to ensure an effective enforcement of the economic policies,[13] and the party-state makes serious efforts to persuade individuals to invest to boost the economy. In terms of political control, the party-state's penetration of the society has greatly fallen back (except probably in the implementation of the one-child family planning policy). As Andrew Nathan wrote in 1985, the Party tried to rationalize its rule "by increasing procedural regularity in the exercise of power, fostering consultation among decision-makers, specialists, and bureaucratic interest groups, and allowing nonparty managers and intellectuals more discretion in their jobs".[14] Another example is in the area of electoral control. As Shi Tianjian relates: "The changes in the election law in 1979 forced the authorities to change the mechanism for exercising electoral control. Rather than presenting people with elections without candidate choice, the regime now controls elections through monopolizing and manipulating the nomination process: authorities nominate people they trust to be candidates."[15]
Almost inevitably accompanying this dispersion of resources in various issue areas is public contestation by elite groups, the first key aspect of democratization according to Dahl, and the selective entry of "emerging" groups in China, a deviation from Dahl's second key aspect of democratization, entry of "excluded" groups. This phenomenon in China is especially obvious in the notorious "bureaucratic-business elite network."[16] The party-state can co-opt the emerging private entrepreneurs to ensure that they do not constitute an organized threat to the rule of the Party; however, at the same time, the entrepreneurs are also co-opting the party-state. Why should those NPC delegates argue so enthusiastically for a constitutional amendment to legitimize private enterprises? To me, this is only one of the examples where the voices of the "emerging" group can be heard. The dispersion of resources in different issue areas makes it possible that this "trade of power for money"[17] works. However, the intrinsic characteristics of political power and of wealth are such that over time, power can be delegated only finitely while wealth can be generated infinitely. As the social structure moves further toward that characterizes MDP society, as the power resources become more and more dispersed, the ruling elite in China might find itself less and less able to deliver the necessary political power to satisfy the increasingly unruly "emerging" groups. This is when the dispersion of political resources, strategic locations, and bargaining positions, in economic, scientific, educational, communicative, and cultural terms in an MDP society makes it necessary to have new rules of the game, that is, bargaining through a regulated process, and this is when basic foundations for liberal democracy are realized. Although this is largely only elite contestation aspect of the democratization, as Dahl has made clear, democracy is more likely to survive over time if contestation precedes broad mass inclusion.[18]
However, there is little reason to be optimistic yet. First, since most important social groups, such as labor, are excluded from this "entry of emerging groups" during this democratization in China, their discontent at relative deprivation and their demand for redistribution may shake the fragile and inchoative foundation of liberal democracy. This danger looms especially large during economic recessions. A possible solution, that independent trade unions form an elite group within labor, is ruled out in the present party-state system.
Second, probably more importantly, this structural features of the democratization is insufficient for such a fundamental transformation of a Leninist party-state to a liberal democracy, especially in the above form of elite contestation and selective mass inclusion. In Dahl's view, modern, large-scale democratic government is, like other governments, a government by the elite.[19] The crucial difference, he argues, lies in the effective guarantees a democracy offers to oppositional elite and thus in the political provision it makes for effectively holding ruling elites accountable to the constituency. So far, it seems that I am back to the procedural feature of the democratization in China. Either procedural or structural features alone seems insufficient to develop the basic foundations for liberal democracy. Successful democratization in China seems to require the mutual guarantee of these two elements, as is clear from Taiwan's experience of democratization, to which I now turn.
The early economic take-off of Taiwan made it a "modern, dynamic, and pluralist" society long before Chiang Ching-kuo and the ruling KMT started political liberalization in response to the momentous social and economic changes.[20] Actually, when Dahl was writing Democracy and Its Critics in the late 1980's, he referred to Taiwan and South Korea as "[l]eading examples" of the insufficiency of MDP society for polyarchy.[21] The dramatic democratization in Taiwan (and also in South Korea) in the past two decades is indeed additional support for Dahl's hypothesis about MDP societies. The long existence of structural foundations for liberal democracy without even political liberalization, however, does show, to some extent, the insufficiency of structural elements.
Are Chinese societies inimical to liberal democracy? This cultural obstacle against democratization in China had seemed real before Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong died. However, given the success story of Taiwan's democratization, we should probably look more at the structural and procedural features of the putative democratization in China. A more specific look at Taiwan's democratization would impress one that the constitutional amendment, electoral reforms, etc., are not inconceivable in mainland China. They seem essentially an elite bargaining process, with little broad mass inclusion.[22] A similar path of democratization could be taken in mainland China.[23]
The obstacles to China's further democratization lie, in light of the Taiwan experience, mainly with the Communist Party. As one obvious point, the Party has no tolerance toward any forms of organized opposition to its rule, as its recent crackdown on China Democracy Party testifies, again. Another point would be the nomenclatura system, through which the Party holds tight control of the bureaucracy at all government levels. The removal of these obstacles within the Party would have to await the further liberalization of the party, most probably by a new liberal reformer at the top, provided, of course, that the Party will succeed in holding power in face of all kinds of rising social problems.