Chinese Democracy And A Theory Of Social Justice

In its embryonic stage, democracy was a simple being. It was characterized by small polities in which the people had full control over every decision that would affect them. At this stage of history, there was unity in the word's etymology and in its application, as majority rule was able to flourish unequivocally. But, as society ballooned in size and scope, so too did the conceptual framework and rhetoric that existed to describe it. Just as each embryo matures into a different individual with its own complexities and peculiarities, democracy in the modern world has taken on many different forms and conjures up an array of contrasting ideas. It is almost impossible now to speak of democracy without a preceding adjective; one which serves to clarify exactly what blend of institutions, ideas and guiding principles are being discussed. As such, arguments on democracy are too often sullied by nitpicking disagreements over semantics, in which the bias of participants firmly limits the objective scope of discussion. Rather than assessing a country's politics by reference to some impartial principle, people are forced, willfully or not, to make judgments according to their own, more finite set of ideals. In many ways, it is the adjective of democracy, rather than democracy itself, that is the barometer of modern academia. This problem is no more pronounced than in common assessment of Chinese politics. Western scholars, conditioned by their experience of and inclination towards their own liberal form of democracy are predisposed to dismiss China as being wholly undemocratic. Whilst it is true that China does not contain the same set of institutions that may be found in western countries, a little context shows us why such flippancy is extremely dangerous. China is the world's most populous country and its economy is among the fastest growing of all time. It should be asserted that to dismiss democratic prospects in a country that espouses both of these characteristics is to remove a significant body of evidence from scientific study. We find ourselves a paradox of having 1.4 billion anomalies in our quest for a general theory of democracy. For the purposes of academic rigour, China must, then, be included in an analysis of democracy. Further, as Womack observes, the concepts of democracy and the will of the people assume prime currency within Chinese rhetoric. Thus, an out-of-hand rejection of Chinese claims towards democracy requires access to some superior and objective knowledge of what constitutes a democratic system. Clearly, nobody is endowed with such information and more importantly, no level of experience in stable democratic politics is sufficient to justify the arrogance of claiming access to it. Chinese democracy will, therefore, be given due consideration, without recourse to any presupposed hierarchy of institutional arrangements. As already alluded to, China is commonly thought of as an authoritarian country in which the communist party subjects its people to hardship and repression. Analyzed in the same vein as the totalitarian Soviet Union and other atavist Asian countries, the general conception of Chinese politics is extremely bleak. On a very superficial level, such observations might be permissible if not entirely accurate. The remit of the political scientist, however, is to delve deeper into the machinations of a country's politics and emerge with a more robust account of the situation. Such a microscopic analysis of China illustrates how redundant cross-country comparisons are, and how at best they should remain anecdotal. Womack argues that the Chinese government has never been the subjugating and solely inward-looking tyrant that the Western conception would have one believe. Instead it has been continually concerned with the welfare of its people, with an ethics about its politics that enables self-regulation of government against such a criterion. This guiding principle has been used to justify heavy intervention in the economy, as well as a somewhat dubious handling of civil liberties. The arrogant Westerner, conditioned by ardent belief in the market, personal freedoms and individual rationality, scoffs at this is a direct contradiction in terms. It is in recognition of this supposed paradox that we discover the importance of stripping away our preconceptions of what constitutes democracy. Instead we might benefit from looking back to its simple philological meaning of power to the people. It also calls for a revision of how we perceive the compatibility of political principles with economic organization, as well as some concessions towards the equal benefits of collective rationality to individual rationality. These three strands of analysis will combine to deliver us a conception of Chinese democracy that is reflective of a theory of social justice. To turn to the first revision cited above, democracy, in its most basic and fundamental form, means power to the people. So too, the normative function of government, whichever form it takes, is to legislate and make decisions that serve the interests of society. Although the term 'society' has fairly monolithic connotations that overlook the possibility of heterogeneity, it is reasonable to assume that there are certain shared beliefs over what reflects the common good. The Chinese government has long used this as its motivation for government, and for tightly controlling the political system. Rather than resort to the use of elections as a legitimizing activity, it concerns itself principally with the achievement of these goals. Its internal structure is extremely meritocratic, as only the most talented people are initiated into governmental offices. In a sense this recognizes the practical difficulties of delivering the optimal policy for such a vast number of people. As a point of comparison, the question that must be asked, therefore, is whether this is more or less successful than the liberal solution of having mass control over the legislature. Certainly in terms of the scope in ideas that might be considered, meritocracy tries to ensure the best policies are chosen, however alien or convoluted they might first appear. On the other hand, regular elections and competitive party systems might well narrow the range of policies on offer. Rational choice theory shows how parties that are driven solely by the utility they gain from winning office tend to converge towards a zone of acquiescence, which will neither represent imminent catastrophe nor unprecedented success. In China, utility is derived only from finding the socially optimal strategy. This distinction has very subtle but extremely significant implications for the way in which information is used in each setting. In the Chinese case, information, although not fairly disseminated, is employed in trying to find the best policy for society. Contrastingly, in liberal countries it might be used cynically to endogenize and restrict the choices over which voters form their preferences. In both settings, there are asymmetries in information but crucially the Chinese example is much less restricted in its ability to discover and implement socially optimal ideas than its liberal counterpart. It is now possible to take a step back, and abstract from this some conclusions about where political power lies in each setting. Of course, in western countries the people are sovereign to the extent that they can elect and reject governments, and in China they are not. This suffices as a point of clarification and a limit on what might otherwise be posited from the argument above. That said, what this line of argument might suggest is that the formal power that people have in liberal countries is rendered insignificant by their lack of control over the range of choices they face. By comparison, in China people are made powerful ultimately because it is their welfare that is the chief aim of choices made within government. For those who believe that countries can be placed on an ordinal and linear ranking of democracy, this situation represents a troublesome crossroads. Clearly, China fails to live up to liberal criteria for democracy, but it is the conviction of this essay that we should not presuppose any hierarchy between types of democracy. China represents its own interpretation of democracy as a system which delivers social justice. As such, no ordinal ranking is possible. It is important to note that up to this point, the argument has been purely theoretical. Some salient issues that we must resolve are whether the Chinese government has been successful and whether the policies it delivers do in fact reflect a genuine concern for social justice. In essence, we should not unquestionably buy into the Chinese rhetoric. Due to the lack of political infrastructure in China, there are no genuine checks on government performance, other than those that reside within its own consciousness. As such, years of stagnation and divergence from the modern world could well be heralded as the government's best efforts on behalf of the people. The fact is, however, that this has not been the case. Its government recognized that modernization and globalization called for a serious reorientation of policy towards western capitalist ideals. It needed to strip away at the aging practices that stifled the vitality of the modern economy. Efficiency was the new game in town, and the results were outstanding; the economy grew, and remains to grow, at a rate of 8-10% per year. This translates into a doubling of income every seven to ten years. At the time of its inception, this policy pursuit was assumed to be synonymous with one which championed the widespread increase of living standards. This interpretation came to be undermined, however, as the effects of capitalist efficiency began to surface in areas previously mitigated by the 'moral market'. Before China's modernization overhaul, its economic institutions were heavily embedded in its social and political organization. Economics, unlike in liberal countries, had an ethical code which stated that security and equality came prior to efficiency. This is what Polanyi described as the 'moral market'. If somebody had a job, they would receive much more than a salary; goods such as healthcare, education and old-age insurance would be provided as well. Similarly if the products or services that a company provided were considered to be of social benefit, they would be allowed to exist even if they made losses via a system of state insurance. Economic modernization hampered the feasibility of these practices, and soon unemployment and inequality were rife. People were being asked to contribute much more to their individual livelihoods; something that was beyond the financial scope of a significant majority. Convinced that this did not reflect social justice, the government under Deng Xiaoping set about re-embedding the market into the social and political structures. This is Polanyi's double movement, as the primacy of security and equality acted as a rebounding force against the ills of marketization. Today, most Chinese people are covered and insured up to a certain desirable point, after the evolution of a credible tax and benefit system enabled successful redistribution of resources between previously isolated regions. These two movements are indicative of a willingness to renege on unsuccessful aspects of policy and ideology in favor of steering society towards a position that is based purely on outcomes. China's double movement shows a rather unique interpretation of economic behavior. Capitalism has forever been built on the assumption that the actions one takes have ramifications beyond their internal utilities. Neoliberalism took on this belief and used it to promote the unfettered market, free from government intervention. Chinese policy does not represent a rejection of the 'invisible hand' but rather an effort to make sure that it is a positive force. Guaranteeing that the market is closely intertwined in a reciprocal relationship with social outcomes allows for joint achievement of the goals of capitalism and social justice. As such, the distinction between the capitalist free world and countries such as China is somewhat farcical. China is capitalist; people own property and operate as agents in the market place, but they are urged to do so in a way in which individual and societal concerns are of equal importance. Democracy, then, is not necessarily better embodied by an unregulated system that recognizes the sovereignty of the individual, than by one in which its egalitarian ethos is embedded in the socio-economic blueprint. The final strand of analysis stems from the justification for a different socio-economic system. One of the most striking continuities that Womack observes is the prevalence of collective rationality as a motivation for policy. This differs fundamentally from western ideas which hold the individual as an irreducible sovereign actor. Theories of justice posited by Rawls and, to an extent, Mill have asserted that nothing can inflict on the individual's personal liberties. Further, the majority of western politics hinges upon the freedom of individuals from state-sanctioned harm and restriction from normal activity. No matter how much society may benefit from a concession made by an individual, such policies are not justified. In China, there is a belief that there are inherent complementarities to action that can, from a social perspective, be justified even when certain violations are present. A classic example of this is the one-child policy that China has adopted. At the individual level, this is ostensibly a violation of an individual's right to determine the paths that they and their family take. This much is true, and as such a liberal would label it undemocratic. However, through its implications for population growth, human capital accumulation and the environment, there is some credence to the argument that such a policy represents a socially optimal strategy. Previously unpalatable actions become more justifiable when the general equilibrium effects of mass involvement are taken into account. There appears to be a sense of democracy in China in which social justice has taken the place that individual justice assumes in liberal countries. Through the sacrifice and consent of individuals, society, which ultimately is a term for all individuals, is afforded access to standards of living it would not otherwise attain. Though much work is still ahead for China's economic and political development, this essay has scratched at the surface of how even today represents cause for true optimism. Some fresh perspective is required to make sense of the world's most profound anomaly, and for the ardent liberal this can be a bitter pill to swallow. A politics built on obedience and control would not often be greeted with any admiration, particularly when democracy is the key barometer. However, China represents its own interpretation of what is correct, and more importantly of how to simultaneously manage the demands of efficiency, equity and justice. At the present time, the context of China as a converging economy perhaps salvages its leaders from the pressures towards a democracy built on the individual rather than the collective. Time will tell whether a first world China, in which livelihoods are never at risk, will be as tolerant in this regard. In essence, time will tell whether any adjective other than 'Chinese' might precede democracy in describing this most fascinating country.