Review | Why China must complete the transition to political democracy for the sake of Communist Party legitimacy – philosopher’s new book
- In Democracy in China, author Jiwei Ci says the foundations are laid for political change, but it will only take shape after President Xi Jinping’s reign ends
- He argues China can complete a process that’s already under way – ‘a transformation with only the last, political steps left to be taken’
Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis, by Jiwei Ci, Harvard University Press, 4 stars
It somehow always feels in season to ponder when the Chinese Communist Party will have to grapple with a real challenge to its rule, and to discuss whether democratic governance is in China’s future.
In Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis, Jiwei Ci, a philosophy professor at the University of Hong Kong, makes an elaborate but cogent argument about how the party will only overcome its illegitimacy, along with other tears in the national fabric, by choosing to usher in political democracy, a change that Ci declares is “of dire necessity rather than moral luxury”.
Unlike those who predicate China’s embrace of democracy on the fall of the party, Ci envisions that as the party continues to confront crises involving its legitimacy and strains to “perform well” for its population, top leaders will wisely seek out a parachute to stave off the party’s annihilation. The party would still be indispensable, its eventual sharing of power and influence being essential not only to its own survival but to the health of Chinese society.
Ci argues that China, largely due to advances made since the early 1990s, is already democratic in the sense that society possesses “equality of conditions”. That term, taken from Alexis de Tocqueville, entails a “basic human sameness … captured in such notions as universal human rights, careers open to talents, and equality of opportunity”.
Again borrowing from de Tocqueville, Ci notes how democracy is a social condition – part of a society’s “nature and dynamic” – more than a political phenomenon or “regime type”.
As Ci puts it: “The question is not whether China will be ready for democracy, as if democracy were something totally new and alien, but whether China will be able to complete a process that is already well under way – a comprehensive transformation for which only the last, political steps are yet to be taken.”
Ci does not think China is near the brink of transitioning to political democracy. But he figures that within the next 10 to 20 years – depending on when President Xi Jinping leaves the stage – the party will face an unprecedented crisis of political authority and legitimacy, unable to draw on the two main factors that have allowed the one-party apparatus to largely resist challenge: its communist revolutionary past and its capacity to help boost the “quality of life” of Chinese people.
Ci sees Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, as a catalyst for “preparing” the country to undertake democracy in its political system. The real process of democratisation would only start after Xi is out of power, and only when leaders who follow him can assure that the party has laid the proper foundation.
Ci expounds on a number of problems that should move the party away from the status quo that it tries so intently to o
preserve. Evidence of the party’s illegitimacy – undermining its “right to rule”, according to Ci – includes the huge outlay of resources it devotes to try to maintain stability, aimed especially at avoiding another mass movement like that of the spring of 1989.
The party’s role as the lone power player in the country’s politics is infected with warning signs of weakness – massive corruption, social decay, environmental woes, tightening media controls, and an intensification of propaganda reminiscent of Mao’s era.
Ci writes that China’s lack of democratic institutions, which other nations have in abundance, threatens to turn the country into a capitalist morass that has far more problems even than neo-liberal capitalism in the West.
As Ci sees it, the party is holding on to power only with extraordinary force that, once gone, will be impossible for future leaders to replicate. Xi, president for life if he chooses, has only been able to extract intraparty loyalty through large-scale disciplining of officials in his anti-corruption campaign. Meanwhile, the state relies on the world’s most extensive surveillance system to monitor its people, levying in Ci’s words, “an incalculable psychological cost in the form of resentment and fear and the sense of impotence cumulatively burned into the national psyche”.
Ci predicts that the party’s political effectiveness will not endure once Xi is off the scene, as his successors will not be able either to command as much authority as he does nor provoke as much fear, two elements that have been instrumental to maintaining one-party rule.
Asian Review of Books
Some readers will be displeased at Ci’s take on Hong Kong. He notes that “one country, two systems” has not worked out as advertised, but that in any case, a full merger of Hong Kong with the mainland is inevitable, and the City’s residents best set aside hopes for other outcomes. Since China can bide its time, he says, party leaders are unlikely to be provoked by resistance, knowing that a clampdown against the loudest anti-Beijing voices in the city would only be proof of the party’s illegitimacy and jeopardise prospects for an agreeable, peaceful integration of Hong Kong with the rest of China come 2047.
The book seems to have been finalised before the protests in Hong Kong began in the summer of 2019 – Ci does not mention this movement but references Occupy Central from 2014-15 – and the coronavirus outbreak, which has presented Xi Jinping with the biggest test of his presidency. Facing that public health emergency, the government’s initial performance was distressing in a familiar way: authorities bungled the early stages of response, picking from its worn playbook of subterfuge, face-saving, suppression, and propaganda.
Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis has arrived at a most vulnerable juncture for the CCP. Not since the founding of the people’s republic has the party needed to so badly, and in front of the international community, deliver on its self-imposed duty to “serve the people” and work to address issues of its “right to rule”.
Ci wants China’s people to prosper under a political structure that respects personal freedoms. His theory about a coming democratic experiment is as emotionally hopeful as it is politically prescriptive – hopeful that Chinese leaders will, before it’s too late, accept that democracy is indeed the worst form of government except all others, and that the party’s next step can truly be a great leap forward.
