When China Rules the World

by Martin Jacques

  Whereas in the West the idea of popular sovereignty lies at the heart of politics, it remains largely absent in China. The concept of the nation-state was imported from Europe in the mid to late nineteenth century, with a section of the Chinese elite subsequently becoming heavily influenced by European nationalism. There was, though, a fundamental difference in how national sovereignty was interpreted. In the case of European nationalism, national sovereignty was closely linked to the idea of popular sovereignty; in China the two were estranged. While national sovereignty was accorded the highest importance, popular sovereignty was replaced by state sovereignty. [623] That was not surprising. First, as we have seen, there was a very powerful tradition of state sovereignty in China but no tradition of popular sovereignty. Second, nation-statehood was acquired at a time when China was under threat from the Western powers and Japan. In such circumstances, the overwhelming priority was national sovereignty rather than popular sovereignty. The birth of the Chinese nation-state took place in entirely different conditions from those of Europe. The European nation-states were never obliged to contend with a threat to their national sovereignty from outside their continent, as China, in common with more or less every country outside Europe, faced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Predictably, the colonial threat served to reinforce and accentuate China ’s enduring strong-state complex. [624] The imperialist threat and the domestic political tradition thus combined to infuse China ’s emergence into nationhood with the twin concepts of national sovereignty and state sovereignty.

  One of the most fundamental features of Chinese politics concerns the overriding emphasis placed on the country’s unity. This remains by far the most important question in China ’s political life. Its origins lie not in the short period since China became a nation-state, but in the experience and idea of Chinese civilization. [625] The fact that China has spent so much of its history in varying degrees of disunity, and at such great cost, has taught the Chinese that unity is sacrosanct. The Chinese have an essentially civilizational conception of what constitutes the Chinese homeland and the nature of its unity: indeed, there is no clearer example of China ’s mentality as a civilization-state. The Chinese government has attached the highest priority to the return of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, even though they had passed out of Chinese hands (in the case of Macao and Hong Kong) a very long time ago. Furthermore, little or no weight has been given to the preferences of the people who live there. [626] Their belonging to China is seen exclusively in terms of an enduring and overriding notion of Chineseness that goes back at least two millennia if not longer: all Chinese are part of Chinese civilization, and therefore China. [627] Choice is not an issue.

  Great weight is also accorded to political stability. Like Confucius indeed, Deng Xiaoping, as cited in the last chapter, was in no doubt about its importance: ‘[China ’s] modernization needs two prerequisites. One is international peace, and the other is domestic political stability… A crucial condition of China ’s progress is political stability.’ [628] The priority attached to political stability is reflected in popular attitudes. [629] In a recent survey, stability was ranked as the second most important consideration, far higher than in any other country. [630] The priority given to stability is understandable in the light of China ’s history, which has regularly been punctuated by periods of chaos and division, usually resulting in a huge number of deaths, both directly through war and indirectly through resulting famines and disasters. The country lost as much as a third of its population (around 35 million people dead) in the overthrow of the Song dynasty by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. It has been estimated that the Manchu invasion in the seventeenth century cost China around one-sixth of its population (25 million dead). The civil unrest in the first half of and mid nineteenth century, including the Taiping Uprising, resulted in a population decline of around 50 million. Following the 1911 Revolution and the fall of the Qing dynasty, there was continuing turbulence and incessant civil war, with a brief period of relative calm from the late twenties until the Japanese invasion, and then, after the defeat of the Japanese, a further civil war culminating in the 1949 Revolution. [631] Given this history, it is not surprising that the Chinese have a pathological fear of division and instability, even though periods of chaos have been almost as characteristic of Chinese history as periods of order. [632] The nearest parallel in Europe was the desire that consumed the continent after 1945 never to wage another intra-European war. The huge price China has paid in terms of death and bloodshed is in part perhaps the cost of trying to make a continent conform to the imperatives of a country, while Europe has paid a not dissimilar price for the opposite, namely bitter national rivalry and an absence of continent-wide identity and cohesion.

  CHINA AND DEMOCRACY

  In Western eyes, the test of a country’s politics and governance is the existence or otherwise of democracy, with this defined in terms of universal suffrage and a multi-party system. The last fifty years have seen a huge increase in the number of countries that boast some kind of democracy, though important areas of the world, notably the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia and, of course, China, are still, at least in practice, exceptions. There is little doubt that some kind of democracy is a desirable system if the circumstances are ripe and if it can take serious root in a culture. If, however, democracy amounts to little more than an alien transplant, as has been the case in Iraq, where it was imposed via the barrel of an Anglo-American gun, then the cost of that imposition, for example in terms of resistance, alienation or ethnic conflict, is likely to turn out to be far higher than any benefits it may yield. Democracy should not be regarded as some abstract ideal, applicable in all situations, whatever the conditions, irrespective of history and culture, for if the circumstances are not appropriate it will never work properly, and may even prove disastrous. Nor should it be seen as more important than all the other criteria that should be used to assess the quality of a country’s governance. For developing countries in particular, the ability to deliver economic growth, maintain ethnic harmony (in the case of multi-ethnic societies), limit the amount of corruption, and sustain order and stability are equally, if not rather more, important considerations than democracy. Democracy should be seen in its proper historical and developmental context: different societies can have different priorities depending on their circumstances, histories and levels of development. [633]

  Very few countries, in fact, have combined democracy as it is now understood with the process of economic take-off. [634] Britain ’s Industrial Revolution took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even by 1850, however, only around one-fifth of men had the right to vote. It was not until the 1880s that most men gained the right, and not until 1918, over 130 years after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that women (over thirty) won the same right. Broadly speaking this picture applies to other West European countries, all of which experienced take-off without democracy. In fact the most common form of governance during Europe ’s industrial revolutions was the monarchical state, absolutist or constitutional. The American experience was significantly different. By 1860 a majority of white men enjoyed the right to vote, but most blacks did not acquire it, in practice, until 1965, while women only won it in 1920: during America ’s economic take-off, thus, only a minority enjoyed the right to vote. In Japan, universal male suffrage was not introduced until 1925, well after the economic take-off that followed the Meiji Restoration. [635] In sum, the right to vote was not established in the developed world, except for a very small and privileged minority, until well after their industrial revolutions had been concluded (white men in the United States constituting the nearest to an exception). The European powers, furthermore, never granted the vote to their colonies: it was still seen as entirely inappropriate for the vast tracts of the world that they colonized, even when it had become an accepted fact at home. The only exceptions in the British case were the so-called dominions like Australia
and Canada, where shared racial and ethnic characteristics were the underlying reason for the display of latitude. It was not until after the great majority of former colonies gained independence following the Second World War that they were finally able to choose their form of governance. Much hypocrisy, it is clear, attaches to the Western argument that democracy is universally applicable whatever the stage of development.

  Some form of democratic governance is now universal in the developed world, where economic take-off was achieved a century or more ago. In contrast, the picture predictably remains uneven in the developing world, with democracy for the most part either unusual or, at best, somewhat flawed. A similar pattern concerning democracy and levels of development broadly prevails in East Asia. Japan, as we have seen, did not achieve anything like widespread suffrage until well after its economic take-off. None of the first Asian tigers — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore — achieved take-off under democratic conditions: South Korea and Taiwan were governed by far-sighted military dictatorships, Hong Kong was a British colony devoid of democracy, while Singapore enjoyed what might be described as a highly authoritarian and contrived democracy. All, though, were blessed with efficient and strategic administrations. As developmental states, the legitimacy of their governments rested in large part on their ability to deliver rapid economic growth and rising living standards rather than a popular mandate. Each of these countries has now achieved a level of development and standard of living commensurate with parts of Western Europe. Hong Kong, under Chinese rule since 1997, enjoys very limited elements of democracy; Singapore ’s governance remains a highly authoritarian democracy; while South Korea and Taiwan have both acquired universal suffrage and multi-party systems. These last examples, together with Japan, confirm that industrialization and economic prosperity generally provide more propitious conditions for the growth of democratic forms.

  In this light it seems misconceived to argue that China is now ready for, and should become, more or less forthwith, a multi-party democracy based on universal suffrage. The country is only halfway through its industrial revolution, with over 50 per cent of the population still living and working in the countryside. It is true that India remains much less developed than China and yet possesses what, by historical standards, is a remarkable democracy; but in this respect India has so far been history’s great exception. An interesting example is Indonesia, which, though an extremely diverse archipelago, now enjoys a fragile democracy. China ’s overriding priority at present is economic growth. It is determined to allow nothing to distract it from this goal. By seeking to avoid getting into an unnecessary conflicts and pursuing good relations with the United States, its foreign policy since 1980 has been directed towards ensuring that all its energy is focused on this objective. There is also a more general point. There is an inherent authoritarianism involved in the process of take-off and modernization — the need to concentrate society’s resources on a single objective — which, judging by history, people are prepared to tolerate because their own lives are dominated by the exigencies of economic survival and the desire to escape from poverty. In a sense, the attitude of the people mirrors that of government: political authoritarianism complements the authoritarian and compulsive circumstances of everyday life, with its inherent lack of choice. This helps to explain why authoritarianism rather than democracy has been the normal characteristic of economic take-off. As many have observed, there is little demand for democracy from within China. Indeed, if anything, there has been a turn away from democracy since Tiananmen Square. A combination of a fear of instability following the events of 1989, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and what are seen as the difficulties experienced by Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan as democracies — and also the Philippines and India — have reinforced the view of many Chinese that this is not an immediate issue: that, on the contrary, it is liable to represent a distraction from the main task of sustaining the country’s economic growth. [636] Implicit in this is the not misplaced view that any move towards democracy is likely to embroil the country in considerable chaos and turmoil.

  Those Westerners — what we might call the ultra-democrats — who believe that democracy is more important at all times than any other matter, would, of course, take issue with this. Bruce Gilley, for example, argues that Russia could end up better off, at least in the long run, than China because it has already addressed the issue of democracy. Given China ’s hugely more impressive economic growth and Russia ’s somewhat precarious democracy, this judgement seems tenuous to say the least. Gilley also suggests that: ‘Debates about issues like compulsory voting, fair electoral systems, money in politics, judicial review, and the like will be the dominant “historical” issues of our time.’ [637] Major issues in the West, for sure, but in a world grap pling with the problem of one superpower, increasingly preoccupied with how to handle the rise of China, and also perhaps India, where ethnic conflict often presents nation-states with their greatest challenge and where for many the task of economic take-off remains all-consuming, the idea that a cluster of issues revolving around democracy will be the dominant global issue of our time betrays a highly parochial Western mentality.

  While there is little sign of any significant pressure in China for what might loosely be described as Western-style democracy, there is, nonetheless, a continuing and growing demand for the accountability of government at local, provincial and national levels. So how should we approach the question of democracy in China? China is roughly at the halfway point of its economic take-off, perhaps beyond. Even twenty years hence, it is estimated that around 20 per cent of its population will still work on the land. There are many imponderables, but assuming that economic growth continues at a relatively rapid rate and political stability is broadly maintained, then it seems reasonable to expect serious moves towards democratization within that kind of timescale, possibly less. [638] In developmental terms, this would still be rather sooner than was the case with the other Asian tigers or the West. It should also be borne in mind that the political traditions of China are neither favourable nor orientated towards democracy. There is a very weak tradition of popular accountability, and state sovereignty has been preferred to popular sovereignty: government is, in effect, answerable to itself via the feedback loop of ethical norms. This is reflected in the central values that govern political behaviour, which can be summarized as sincerity, loyalty, reliability and steadfastness, [639] all of which derive from the influence of Confucianism, and, to a lesser extent, Communism. In contrast, the equivalent Western values are accountability, representation and participation. There is, moreover, as we have seen, no tradition of independent organization and only a very weak notion of civil society. Power resides overwhelmingly in the state. Interest groups, rather than aspiring to represent themselves collectively, seek to advance their claims by private lobbying and achieving some kind of accommodation with the state. Instead of making demands on or confronting government, interest groups prefer to associate with power on an individual basis.

  What serves to greatly complicate the question of democracy is that China has the size and diversity of a continent, although the site of democracy, globally speaking, has always been, and remains, exclusively the nation-state. There are no multinational, regional or global institutions that could be described as democratic. [640] Their invocation to a modicum of representivity is invariably via the nation-states that comprise them. The classic example of this phenomenon is the European Union, which makes no real claim to be democratic other than by virtue of its member-states — the European Parliament being elected but largely powerless. One of the reasons that democracy has worked in India, which is also of a continental scale, might in part be because it is far looser and more decentralized than China, so that individual states can act, in some degree, like quasi nation-states. This is certainly not the case in China, which for thousands of years has prided itself on its centralized and unitary status, even though, as we have seen, th
is has in practice involved a high degree of negotiated decentralization. While the more developed provinces, notably those on the eastern and southern seaboard, may already be in a position to embrace a more democratic form of polity, their progress in that direction is bound to be constrained by the far less developed condition of the majority of the country. It is possible, however, that more developed cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai may be allowed to introduce democratic reforms in advance of the rest of the country. In 2008 the Shenzhen mayor Xu Zongheng claimed that direct voting would in future account for 70 per cent of the city’s residential and village committees. [641] Meanwhile, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress issued a ruling at the end of 2007 that it would consider allowing direct elections for Hong Kong ’s leader in 2017; at present half its Legislative Council is elected. As a civilization-state that has always allowed and been characterized in practice by considerable diversity, such a development is not inconceivable.

  Finally, we should bear in mind that China is the home of Confucian thought and practice, and consequently has experienced Confucianism in a more complete and doctrinaire form than Japan and Korea, where it was a Chinese import and therefore never enjoyed quite the same degree of overweening influence as in China. As a result, it was easier for these countries to embrace democracy by, in effect, adding a new political layer to coexist along with the older Confucian traditions and practices. It will certainly be possible for China to do the same, but the weight of what might be described as Confucian orthodoxy is likely to make it more difficult. [642]