DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

DEMOCRACY
IN CHINA
The Coming Crisis

JI W EI CI

Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts, and London, ­England  2019

Copyright © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca

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ἀ e Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Ci, Jiwei, 1955– author.
Title: Democracy in China : the coming crisis / Jiwei Ci.
Description: Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts : Harvard University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019014446 | ISBN 9780674238183 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Democracy—­China—­History—21st ­century. | Democ­ratization—­
China—­History—21st ­century. | Legitimacy of governments—­China—­History—
21st ­century. | Zhongguo gong chan dang.
Classification: LCC JC423 .C56736 2020 | DDC 320.951—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at
https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2019014446
 Contents

Preface vii

Introduction: A Prudential Approach to Democracy 1

P A R T O N E   The Legitimation Crisis 33

1 Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 35
2 The Question of Regime Perpetuation 70

P A R T T W O   The Demo­cratic Challenge 99

3 The Case for Democracy 101
4 Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 156
5 Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 195
6 Demo­cratic Preparation 252

P A R T T H R E E   The International and Hong Kong Dimensions 309

7 Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 311
8 Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 333

Concluding Reflections 370

Notes 383
Index 415
 Preface

We live in extraordinarily challenging times for democracy. In China this

challenge takes the form not of democracy’s oligarchic capture, as in Amer­
i­ca and to a lesser degree in Eu­rope, but of democracy’s seeming loss of value
or relevance even before its arrival. I h ave written this book to show that
democracy has never been more necessary for China than it is ­today—­not so
much on the strength of its normative appeal as ­because of its indispens-
ability for po­liti­cal stability in the foreseeable ­f uture. ­There is no better way
of hinting (for this is all I can do at this point) at such indispensability than
by suggesting that China has already developed a substantial degree of de-
mocracy. Hence the title of the book, in one of its meanings.
But this is true only if one hastens to add that four de­cades of reform have
created a l argely demo­cratic society without a complementary demo­cratic
polity. This mismatch—­between an increasingly demo­cratic ethos in China’s
society and the still exclusively vertical character of its po­liti­cal life—­raises
legitimation challenges that cannot be met in­def­initely without democ­
ratization, or so I ­shall argue in this book. Insofar as this line of argument is
indebted to Alexis de Tocqueville (among ­others), the title I have chosen for
the book contains a none-­too-­subtle echo of Tocqueville’s classic work on
democracy in Amer­i­ca.
Not unlike one strand of Tocqueville’s thought, mine is an essentially
prudential argument for democracy (in terms of democracy’s necessity,
given China’s circumstances) rather than a normative one (in terms of democ-
racy’s moral appeal, regardless of its necessity). This is not a kind of argument
viii Preface

that is commonly made ­today with reference to China—at least not, to the
best of my knowledge, with the explicitness, comprehensiveness, and atten-
tion to its full implications that I have attempted to bring to it. I felt com-
pelled to renew and enrich this argument by calling attention to an unpre­
ce­dented legitimation crisis looming on the horizon, a crisis whose moment
of uncontainable eruption is uncertain yet whose signs are nowhere more
evident than in the drastic po­liti­cal tightening of society. Inasmuch as this
tightening prevents all airing of crisis consciousness in public, the crisis it-
self takes on an extra dimension: democracy is being given the least atten-
tion, with a virtual moratorium on open discussion of it, at a time when it is
more necessary, in a prudential sense, than ever before. I would not have
both­ered to undertake the pre­sent intellectual exercise, however, if I did not
believe that the coming crisis has as its proverbial double an opening and
opportunity. Thus the subtitle of the book connotes as much cautious hope
as foreboding. For the same reason, the book itself is a q uest, in roughly
equal mea­sure, for understanding and for an idea of a solution.
The first opportunity to systematically try out some of the main ideas in
this book came when I was invited by Tim Scanlon and Mathias Risse to
give a series of lectures at Harvard University in November 2015. The pro-
posal for this visit originated with Tim, to whom I o we an inexpressible
gratitude not only for the invitation but also for the meticulous care with
which he planned the ­whole series of lectures. Mathias played an essential
role throughout, as gracious host and thoughtful or­ga­nizer, and in other
ways that made the visit pos­si­ble and such an intellectually rewarding expe-
rience. My philosophical engagements with them during the two weeks at
Harvard ­were among the most enjoyable and instructive I h ave ever had.
I  am also grateful to Tim and Mathias, and to Lucy and Kozue, for their
touching hospitality.
The lectures, which ­were not all directly related to China, ­were given at
the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Safra Center for Ethics, the
Department of Government, Harvard Law School, and the Department of
Philosophy. My thanks go to Mark Eliot, Danielle Allen, Michael Rosen,
William Alford, and Tim Scanlon, respectively, for hosting ­t hese lectures; to
Iain Johnston and Stephen ­Angle for serving as commentators on two of
­t hese occasions; and to the audiences for their instructive feedback. While
Preface ix

at Harvard, I a lso had the plea­sure of engaging in stimulating discussions

with Eric Beerbohm, Loubna El Amine, David Estlund, Helen Haste, Eske
Møllgaard, May Sim, Anna Sun, David Der-­wei Wang, Daniel Wikler, Peter
Zarrow, and, especially, Jane Mansbridge, who went out of her way to offer
challenging criticisms and constructive suggestions that I found extremely
helpful.
I have presented e­ arlier versions of parts of some chapters at the National
University of Singapore, the University of Oxford, the University of Hong
Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Seoul Na-
tional University. I w ish to thank—as hosts or commentators—­Eric Beer-
bohm, Nick Bunnin (to whom additional, special thanks are due for help
and support over many years), Christian Daniels, Paul Flather, He Baogang,
Johannes Hoerning, Nomi Claire Lazar, Mathias Risse, and Jieuwh Song.
I have benefited enormously from discussions with friends and col-
leagues: Stephen A ­ ngle, Stefan Auer, Daniel  A. Bell (as a g ood-­humored
challenger to my views), Joseph Chan (especially on democracy in Hong
Kong), Chang Xiangqian, Albert Chen, Chen Jian (to whom I c onvey my
belated thanks for his generosity), Martin Chung, Cui Zhiyuan, John Dunn
(a source of inspiration on demo­cratic theory), Fan Ruiping, Johannes
Hoerning, Huang Yong, Jiang Dongxian, Sungmoon Kim (on Confucian
democracy), Stefanie Lenk, Li Chenyang, Liang Zhiping, Liu Antong, Liu
Qing, Mang Ping, Marco Meyer, Haig Patapan, Shang Zheng, Shu-­mei Shih,
Quinn Slobodian (on neoliberalism), Hans Sluga (including on the Occupy
movement in Hong Kong), Billy So (on modern Chinese l­egal culture), Wu
Fen, Xu Chenggang, Felix Yeung, Zhao Tingyang, and Zhou Lian. As the wide
spectrum of positions of ­those listed ­here attests, none of these colleagues or
friends is responsible in any way for the views expressed in this book.
Thanks are also due to the anonymous readers for Harvard University
Press. I do not remember ever making such extensive revisions in response
to comments from peer reviewers as I have done for this book. The depth of
my appreciation, not least of the most challenging comments, is reflected in
this very fact.
It gives me special plea­sure to thank Kathleen McDermott, my editor at
Harvard, whose admirable professionalism and steady guiding hand I have
come to fully appreciate only with the passage of time, and Mihaela Pacurar,
x Preface

also of Harvard University Press, for editorial assistance rendered with a

nice ­human touch. For the book’s production stage I could not have wished
for a better team to work with: Cheryl Hirsch as a superbly understanding
and effective production editor, and Ashley Moore as an exemplary copy-
editor, to both of whom I am most grateful. For additional textual improve-
ments, I sincerely thank Gail Naron Chalew.
DEMOCRACY IN CHINA
 Introduction
A Prudential Approach to Democracy

A MAJOR SHIFT in intellectual opinion has occurred in China, and to some

degree even in the world at large, regarding the relevance and appropriate-
ness of democracy ­under China’s current circumstances and given its tradi-
tion. I am tempted to call this shift a sea change, given its swelling propor-
tions and potentially far-­reaching consequences. To get some sense of how
difficult it has recently become to make a c ase for democracy in China, I
begin by attending briefly to this impor­tant shift.
Not the least in­ter­est­ing aspect of this change is the way in which events
in China have interacted, even dovetailed, with broader trends in the world,
creating and sustaining a climate of opinion through mutually reinforcing
­causes. And not the least unexpected beneficiary of the resulting climate of
opinion, including for the first time a broad swath of international opinion,
is a set of forces denying democracy’s relevance and suitability for China—­
indeed, paradoxically, for a China that is witnessing an inexorable democ­
ratization in its ethos, its organ­ization of production and consumption, its
structure of ­human interaction and familial relations; in a word, in its entire
society, as distinct from its po­liti­cal system. All of this is thanks, in no small
mea­sure, to democracy’s vicissitudes abroad.
Multiple developments of global significance have conspired in the past
few de­cades to bring about a major downward reassessment of democracy.
First (to name just a few), the ascendance of neoliberalism in the 1970s in the
context of cap­i­tal­ist accumulation prob­lems helped overturn the postwar
balance between democracy and capitalism massively in ­favor of the latter,
2 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

as epitomized by the skyrocketing fortunes of the much-­resented “1 ­percent.”

Then the US-­led invasion of Iraq in the wake of September 11 gave the lie
once again, in the full glare of international public opinion, to what had al-
ways been a precarious belief in democracies’ supposed love of peace. It was
not long before a human-­made disaster of a dif­fer­ent variety struck—­namely,
the financial crisis of 2008. ­After years of scandalously deregulated private
debt and financialization, this global crisis, with its epicenter at the heart of
the demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist world, ushered in an age of stagnation and austerity
that has since, along with the mi­grant crisis and the increasingly manifest
polarizing effects of globalization and digital technology, caused a severe
backlash in the form of pop­u­lism. A mood of panic has set in throughout
the Western world that has not been seen since the ­Great Depression.
It is one of the more depressing ironies of our age that developments such
as t­ hese seem to have hit democracy the hardest. To be sure, democracy is
marked, in the case of all modern Western states, by its imbrication with cap-
italism and, in the case of Amer­i­ca, by its additional, ongoing proj­ect of
empire. It is also true that democracy is vulnerable to erosion and even take-
over by oligarchy or bureaucracy. The rise of the network society has not
helped ­either, giving rise to a further crisis of democracy, in the form of media
politics and scandal politics, specific to the information age.1 Still, that de-
mocracy should bear the brunt of the reputational damage rather than capi-
talism or empire or the new plutocracy or the network society speaks vol-
umes about the po­liti­cal hermeneutics of our time. The upshot, especially
since the financial crisis and the rise of pop­u­lism, has been l­ ittle short of a
global devaluation of democracy—­the resurfacing especially among the elite
of what Jacques Rancière has called “the hatred of democracy” (la haine
de la démocratie). It is almost as if capitalism or empire or oligarchy could
be restored to vigor and virtue with a cutback on democracy or even its
replacement.
In the meantime, China has done more than any country outside the “­free
world” to confirm this harsh verdict on democracy. It had embarked on its
own economic reform at roughly the same time that Margaret Thatcher
launched her neoliberal make­over of Britain, in both cases with global re-
percussions. Since then China has been steadily rising and is now the world’s
second-­largest economy and already the largest in terms of purchasing power
parity. It has also become the highest contributor to global economic growth,
Introduction 3

although the continuation of this role is being made more uncertain by an

apparently heightened American determination to put China in its place.
­Needless to say, China has accomplished t­ hese feats in spite of not being a
democracy—­nay, according to much of Western intellectual opinion, as well
as China’s own, precisely ­because of this Chinese characteristic. Much as de-
mocracy is being blamed for not a few of the West’s ills, so the lack of it is
credited with China’s spectacular rise. But what is China, positively, if it is
not a democracy? In some contexts, it is taken unflatteringly to be a com-
munist dictatorship or an authoritarian regime. In the pre­sent context, how-
ever, China is an enviable meritocracy. It has earned this title by virtue of its
supposedly unbroken Confucian tradition and on the strength of its current
per­for­mance, the latter backed up with a corresponding official legitimating
discourse. In the eyes of many, instead of the apparently moribund demo­
cratic capitalism, China now features a meritocratic capitalism led by the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), combining the best of both worlds, thereby
not only bringing efficiency and long-­term vision but also conferring a well-­
deserved legitimacy.
This is in essence what has been called the China model. Never mind
­whether the meritocracy in question is communist or Confucian, b ­ ecause the
impor­tant feature is not its form but meritocracy itself, which carries a po-
tentially universal appeal. If only the cadres of capitalism (to use Immanuel
Wallerstein’s apt way of putting it) in the West could learn from this model
and exercise leadership with fewer constraints from democracy and greater
reliance on sheer moral and executive merit!
One impor­tant reason why meritocracy is supposed to confer legitimacy
is the (quasi-­democratic) belief that, given the choice between meritocracy
and democracy, most p ­ eople in China would s­ ettle for meritocracy. How does
one know? Well, ­because meritocracy delivers the goods and the Chinese
­people clearly care about ­t hose goods—­both their frenetic production and
their equally frenetic consumption. B ­ ecause, also, meritocracy is part of the
Confucian tradition, now increasingly taken for granted as a still-­living tra-
dition, and thus the Chinese are simply expected to f­ avor meritocracy.
But what exactly is the empirical evidence for t­ hese lines of reasoning—­
more than one hundred years a­ fter the fall of the last imperial (Confucian-­
Legalist) dynasty, with Confucianism ­either ignored or discredited for most
of the intervening de­cades? It has to be the fact, above all, that ­t here is now
4 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

barely a murmur heard in or from China supporting demo­cratic transfor-

mation, or the autonomy of civil society, or constitutionalism, or even the
vaguer proj­ect of po­liti­cal reform. This is a f act. What is not adequately
noted, however, is that this fact, in turn, has its primary cause in the offi-
cially imposed moratorium on the very discussion of such topics, including
in academia and civil society, the latter barely surviving. ­Those who used to
urge po­liti­cal reform, especially demo­cratic or constitutional reform, are ef-
fectively silenced, as are ­t hose who belonged to the once-­influential so-­
called liberal camp (ziyoupai), the term itself having virtually gone out of
circulation and acquired the uncanny feel of a distant memory. The entire
intellectual-­political field is now confined to an exceedingly narrow (even
by the CCP’s own standard in the reform era) spectrum of opinion, with
meritocracy, ­whether communist or Confucian, occupying a precious seg-
ment of it. This is one crucial reason why the doctrine of meritocracy
looms so large in ­today’s China—­larger than at any time since 1949. One
does not recall a single period since the start of reform four de­cades ago—­
with the exception of June 4, 1989, and its immediate aftermath—­when
­t here has been such a d earth or even absence of contestation of po­liti­cal
opinions. This is not a r elatively spontaneous phenomenon but a t hor-
oughly po­liti­cally engineered one, created and sustained by the Repressive
State Apparatus.
It is necessary to mention the term with which the Repressive State Appa-
ratus is paired by the French Marxist phi­los­o­pher Louis Althusser: the Ideo-
logical State Apparatuses. It is a defining feature of this famous distinction
that Althusser always speaks of the Ideological State Apparatuses in the
plural. As he explains, “While ­t here is one Repressive State Apparatus, t­ here
are several Ideological State Apparatuses. This difference is impor­tant.” On
the one hand, “the state apparatus that we are identifying as repressive pre­
sents itself as an organic ­whole; more precisely, as a centralized corps that is
consciously and directly led from a single centre.” On the other hand, “it is a
dif­fer­ent story with the Ideological State Apparatuses. They exist in the plural
and have a relatively in­de­pen­dent material existence.”2 A sure sign of this
relative in­de­pen­dence is that the Ideological State Apparatuses are left alone
even when they say ­things that the Repressive State Apparatus does not want
to hear—­even when, as Althusser puts it, “they . . . ​‘grate’ on certain occa-
sions, terribly.”3
Introduction 5

Although Althusser is h ­ ere performing an anatomy of the liberal state,

such as France, he is also laying bare the nature and operation of ideology as
such. In France, as in liberal states in general, the Ideological State Appara-
tuses (the church, schools, trade u ­ nions, the ­family, culture, entertain-
ment, the media, and so on) “are objectively distinct, relatively autonomous,
and do not form an or­ga­nized, centralized corps with a s ingle, conscious
leadership.”4 Herein lies the meaning of their plurality: plurality makes pos­
si­ble ideology as ideology, which in turn is constitutive of much of what we
typically think of as freedom. If the lack of freedom may be defined as the
overly obtrusive presence of the Repressive State Apparatus, it may also, by
the same token, be defined in terms of the absence of ideology, which in
turn can be defined in terms of the singularity of the Ideological State Ap-
paratus, itself now revealed as a contradiction in terms in the singular form.
For u ­ nless the Ideological State Apparatuses exist in the plural, as Althusser
rightly insists as a m ­ atter of definition, the apparent organs of ideology
come ­u nder the conscious, open, direct, and complete control of the Re-
pressive State Apparatus; they become the latter’s mere appendages and are
known to be such. Thus ­t hese organs are made to operate against their own
supposedly ideological (as distinct from repressive) logic, and, in this way,
they cease to be ideological altogether.
This is largely the condition in China ­today. Unlike France, China has
not several Ideological State Apparatuses but only one, for all the dif­fer­ent
institutions that are designed to perform an ideological function are centrally
controlled and devoid of even relative autonomy. Indeed, t­ hese institutions
are all supposed to bear the Communist Party as their surname (xingdang),
as it ­were, according to one official form of words. The upshot is profound
and hugely consequential: the nonexistence in China ­today of ideology in
any strict, meaningful, and effective sense, or, put differently, its degeneration
into propaganda known as propaganda. Th ­ ose who remember the days
when the Ideological State Apparatuses w ­ ere able to “ ‘grate’ on certain oc-
casions, terribly”—­A lthusser’s litmus test for ideology—­w ill know what this
means and what has been lost.
This state of affairs, more airtight than at any time in recent memory, has
rendered the support for democracy barely audible in China t­ oday. But in-
audibility does not mean nonexistence—­why ­else would the intensified op-
eration of the Repressive State Apparatus be necessary?—­and it is only by the
6 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

false and con­ve­nient equation of the two that the illusion has been created
that China, meaning not only the CCP but also the ­people at large, neither
needs nor desires democracy. This is one of the most amazing and pernicious
illusions coming out of China t­ oday. It is all the more deleterious to the de-
gree that it is taken up by Western intellectuals and politicians and projected
back onto China, in what one may call a new (po­liti­cal) orientalism.
The projection may be carried out unknowingly and from time to time
even out of an other­wise admirable cultural respectfulness and po­liti­cal mod-
esty. But it is also sometimes conducted by ­t hose who seem intent on inter-
pellating China as the nondemo­cratic other in order to highlight the China
threat—­one posed by an authoritarian regime and culture to demo­cratic
Amer­i­ca and the demo­cratic West as a w ­ hole. Such interpellation seems to
please some but alienate many o ­ thers, creating in China and the Chinese
­people a new ­enemy that the United States, among ­others, seems to need for
its own po­liti­cal and strategic purposes. As Amer­i­ca in par­tic­u­lar gets tougher
on a China thus interpellated, many Chinese ­w ill demand an equally tough
response and, what­ever their po­liti­cal views, ­w ill come to hate Amer­i­ca in
return for the latter’s increasing disapproval of China. When they thus learn
or relearn to detest Amer­i­ca, by reputation still the paradigmatic democracy
in the world, some of them may well come to hate democracy by association,
thus conforming to and confirming the new American and Western image
of China as the nondemo­cratic other. The resulting damage ­w ill be inesti-
mable, w ­ hether this new image is meant to be a compliment or a curse.
A vicious circle is thus being formed, with an all-­encompassing Repres-
sive State Apparatus silencing all demo­cratic sentiments and aspirations,
from which the inference is innocently or knowingly drawn of the absence
of such sentiments and aspirations. This inference is, in turn, reinforced by
the authoritarian-­meritocratic discourse coming out of China ­until it hardens
into conventional wisdom and, in that form, is projected back onto China in
the manner of a self-­f ulfilling prophecy—­a ll of this happening in an inter-
cultural setting in which re­spect for (po­liti­cal) difference merges impercep-
tibly with a new and ever so subtle (po­liti­cal) orientalism.
­There is one illogicality, however, that ­will not go away despite this vi-
cious circle. If China is ­really what its new domestic and international image
makes it out to be, with a culturally ingrained lack of desire for democracy
complemented by the impressive recent track rec­ord of meritocracy as
Introduction 7

practiced by the CCP, why are we witnessing a dramatic escalation of the

already formidable presence of the Repressive State Apparatus? Whence
the need for heightened repressive mea­sures when no one can reasonably
argue that such mea­sures are welcomed by the Chinese p ­ eople, least of all to
buttress politico-­cultural beliefs whose very existence would suffice to make
such mea­sures, in their current scope and intensity, unnecessary in the first
place?

The Continuing Relevance of Democracy for China

Most signs indicate that the CCP is more confident of itself—of its path,
theory, (po­liti­cal) system, and culture, in the party’s own parlance—­than ever
before, with an unabashed assertion of po­liti­cal entitlement that sweeps all
before it. Most signs, I say, but not all, in that it is reverting to palpably in-
timidating practices of thought control and stability preservation that u ­ ntil
recently ­were thought to have been permanently left ­behind. This revival of
mea­sures created in Mao Zedong’s time of domestic and international revo-
lutionary class strug­gle is giving rise to a level of fear—of being visibly out of
line and its consequences—­unseen since the fateful year of 1989 and its im-
mediate aftermath. That such emergency-­like mea­sures are deemed neces-
sary at all betrays, in turn, a level of fear on the part of the CCP itself that
also has not been seen since 1989.
Whence this latter fear? ­After all, to use its own latest terminological in-
ventions,5 the party has been highly successful in producing among an ex-
tremely large segment of the population an ever-­rising sense of fulfillment
(huodegan), happiness (xingfugan), and security (anquangan). Of t­ hese, huo-
degan comes first and stands out—­a newly minted term meaning not quite
“fulfillment” (as in the official translation) but, literally, the sense of “acqui-
sition,” with a subtle yet unmistakable emphasis on livelihood issues, on tan-
gible t­ hings and the fulfillment such ­t hings can bring. It is not a s ense of
fulfillment in its broad meaning, then, but a sense of essentially acquisitive
and sensuous fulfillment. Still, what is t­ here for the CCP to fear from the pop-
ulation if, as is hardly deniable, it is creating an ever-­higher level of such
fulfillment, combined with a corresponding sense of happiness and security?
What is left to be desired whose haunting absence could spell trou­ble in such
other­w ise auspicious circumstances?
8 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

One lack immediately springs to mind, and that is a s ense of agency

(zhutigan, my term, not the party’s): the sense of being ­f ree as individuals
and as members of civil society and of being citizens with a credible role in
shaping the life and destiny of the po­liti­cal community. This sense of
agency is conspicuously absent from the CCP’s self-­professed list of
achievements and ­future goals—­a fact highlighted rather than contradicted
by occasional vague references to undefined “democracy.” I a m not con-
cerned at this point to make any normative argument in support of such
agency but only wish to suggest a diagnostic hypothesis: having omitted to
provide for an adequate sense of agency, the CCP cannot be sure ­whether
the population, if set individually and po­l iti­c ally f­ ree, would support or
oppose its rule. It is this uncertainty that leaves the CCP in constant fear,
and all signs indicate that this fear is as distracting and debilitating as the
CCP is other­w ise strong and confident. Which means that even the party
itself implicitly acknowledges the existence of conditions in China that give
many p ­ eople reasons to desire a greater sense of agency, including through
democracy, and that therefore democracy has lost none of its relevance for
China, despite a deafening silence on the subject. It means also that, u ­ ntil
the CCP is willing and able to cater to the desire for agency, including
through democracy, its regime cannot be truly secure and therefore it
cannot be truly confident. The party’s assertion of the so-­called four ele­
ments of confidence, although backed up by formidable power, also con-
jures up a specter of weakness, unwittingly drawing attention to its Achilles
heel. Only a reasonably credible sense of agency for ordinary ­people, with
democracy and freedom as its necessary conditions and forms of expression,
can dispel this specter.
It follows that all that has been accomplished in the cause of “the g­ reat
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” does not dispense with the need—in
the interest of China’s own social and regime stability—­for democracy as
an essential part of a sense of agency on top of, and distinct from, the al-
ready substantially achieved sense of acquisitive and sensuous fulfill-
ment. This point can be reinforced by invoking the CCP’s own Marxist
heritage, in that Karl Marx was unquestionably a d emo­cratic thinker
seeking to move beyond the bourgeois demo­cratic revolution rather than
merely opposing it.
Introduction 9

The Need for a New Type of Argument

It is one t­ hing to show that the question of democracy is still relevant

for China and quite something e­ lse to address the question intelligently and
with balance and good sense. I, for one, have found the task anything but
easy. Now that I have made some pro­gress that I believe is worth sharing as
an interim report, as it w ­ ere, please bear with me as I take the first step, in
this introduction, to pre­sent a line of thought that differs significantly from
the conventional wisdom on the topic. This request is especially needed
­because the case I make for democracy in China is not chiefly normative, as
such arguments usually are, but essentially prudential.
I use three building blocks to structure my argument for the necessity
and possibility of democracy in China. Th ­ ese blocks are, first, a distinction
between the prudential (need-­based) and the normative (value-­based) ap-
proach to democracy; second, close attention to the nature and implications
of what I see as an impending legitimation crisis; and, third, a justification of
democracy that proceeds from social circumstances to po­liti­cal regime. As I
deploy them, t­ hese blocks ­w ill build an essentially prudential case for de-
mocracy in China by demonstrating the need for democracy given the
country’s specific conditions ­today.
If need provides the impetus to invention (and bringing about a workable
democracy in any country does require invention), it does not by any means
guarantee success. In the case of China, in par­tic­u­lar, the challenges are enor-
mous, and thus a f urther component of my avowedly prudential case for
democracy involves confronting t­ hese challenges and considering how best
to meet them. This, then, is a fourth building block.
I want to put t­ hese building blocks in preliminary action h ­ ere to give the
reader a sense of how they work together to produce a coherent argument.
Indeed, for the book as a ­whole, my goal is to make the argument not only
coherent but also compelling. So compelling, that is, that the parties con-
cerned, including the CCP, w ­ ill have no good reason to reject its plausibility
as a prudent assessment, first, of certain crisis tendencies in China’s po­liti­cal
status quo and, second, of democracy’s much-­needed contribution to coun-
teracting such tendencies. In this context, a compelling argument is not one
that is necessarily correct but one that has to be sufficiently plausible to merit
10 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

serious consideration. This standard is high but not impossibly so, and I do
not pursue it out of misplaced self-­confidence but only ­because the stakes are
so high. That the stakes are so high and one should therefore err on the side
of caution is itself part of my argument. For this reason, the argument w ­ ill
not serve any useful purpose ­unless it is plausible enough to give an intel-
lectual jolt to what seems a prevailing complacency about the status quo.
I do not believe for a moment, of course, that this w ­ ill be anything but an
uphill strug­gle, as I am aware of the difference between the parties concerned
having no good reason to reject the plausibility of my case for democracy and
having no reason at all to do so. One source of difficulty that is particularly
worth mentioning is that while I must try to persuade ­every reasonable reader
of the plausibility of what I say, in some places of my argument I ­w ill need to
convince specific parties, such as the CCP, ordinary Chinese citizens, and in-
ternational players or concerned parties of vari­ous kinds. This latter need
arises whenever a par­t ic­u ­lar set of actors has an exceptional stake in the
­matter ­under discussion and ­w ill understandably have the greatest difficulty
accepting my judgment if it happens to diverge from theirs. Precisely for this
reason, however, it w ­ ill be all the more impor­tant to try to convince them,
­because, given their exceptional stake, their beliefs and actions are likely to
be especially consequential.
­There is an obvious sense in which the CCP happens to be both the most
impor­tant actor to address and the most difficult one to convince. It should
come as no surprise that this sense pervades my argument. However, the ar-
gument itself is put together as an exercise in public reason, not as an ad-
junct to po­liti­cal action in the narrow sense. Accordingly, this book is not
targeted at any par­tic­u­lar audience but is meant for ­every reader who is in-
terested in understanding China’s po­liti­cal condition and po­liti­cal ­future and
what China’s po­liti­cal developments may mean for the world at large. While
my awareness of the multiple parties with whom I need to engage in an imag-
inary dialogue has given the book a c orresponding multiplicity of voices
and even sympathies, my aim is to produce a distinctive case for democracy
in China that w ­ ill hang together as one coherent and compelling argument
accessible to ­every interested member of the Chinese and global public sphere.
In constructing such a case, it is essential to make an honest attempt to
suspend partisanship (to the degree pos­si­ble), in the interest of providing a
reasonably objective diagnosis and reasonably dispassionate prognosis.
Introduction 11

Gaining a grip on China’s complex po­liti­cal situation and thinking construc-

tively about its uncertain po­liti­cal ­f uture are difficult enough, and one does
not need to create further obstacles by taking sides on intensely normative
issues, impor­tant as they are, where ­doing so is not strictly necessary for the
diagnostic and prognostic task at hand. With regard to the CCP, I w ­ ill be
candid and unreserved for diagnostic and prognostic purposes but w ­ ill re-
frain from purely moral judgment. I ­will approach the West in a similar spirit,
mutatis mutandis, especially with regard to Western democracy and attitudes
­toward China and the CCP. At stake are difficult issues over which reason-
able ­people could all too easily disagree and that therefore make good-­faith
and fair-­minded discussion especially necessary. I ­w ill thus do my level best
to avoid partisanship, and I hope the reader ­w ill find the results, including
the effort itself, positive rather than irritating and ­will set me right where such
effort is unsuccessful or, with re­spect to par­tic­u­lar ­matters, misguided in the
first place.

The Best Case for Democracy in China

Is a Prudential One

It is all too easy, even t­ oday, to argue in f­ avor of democracy, e­ ither in gen-
eral or with par­tic­u­lar reference to China. Since the end of World War II and
especially since the end of the Cold War, democracy has become a so-­called
essentially contested concept.6 As such, it signifies a major po­liti­cal value or
virtue to which no regime can long afford not to lay a claim in one way or
another; the only sustainable option open to a regime in its right mind is to
contest democracy’s meaning rather than to disown democracy altogether.
For all its failures and flaws, some arguably irredeemable, and all the bad
­things done in its name, this special normative status of democracy is not
­going to change in the foreseeable ­f uture. ­There is a sense, then, in which it
is unnecessary to try to make the normative case for democracy—as distinct
from a par­tic­u­lar understanding or design thereof. Up to a certain point, the
justificatory task is accomplished—or preempted—by the very po­liti­cal mood
or ethos of our world.
In another sense, however, this more or less taken-­for-­granted case for
democracy is rather insufficient. For one ­t hing, democracy may be very
fine in theory—in ­either unrealistically utopian normative philosophy or
12 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

starry-­eyed popu­lar imagination—­but much less so in practice.7 For an-

other, what once was or seemed achievable in practice may well be receding
from our pre­sent range of realistic possibilities, with the result that t­ oday’s
democracy is not very fine in ­either real­ity or prospect.8 To put it bluntly,
our age of radically accentuated globalization has not been a very auspicious
time to make a normative case for democracy that is at once inspiring and
plausible—­one that goes much beyond what­ever broad consensus lies in de-
mocracy as an essentially contested concept. Given this state of affairs, t­ here
seems no better balance to be struck than that suggested by John Dunn’s
judicious counsel: “An ingenuous attitude t­ owards democracy is a discredit
to any modern citizen. But a settled hostility ­towards it ­w ill always involve,
­under careful inspection, a substantial mea­sure of ingenuousness t­ owards
some other ­human grouping, and one which w ­ ill necessarily over time prove
at least equally deserving of distrust.” 9

Being unnecessary in one sense and insufficient in another, the typical,

normative case for democracy ­w ill not serve my purpose. My purpose is to
make an effective case for democracy in China, the kind of case that, if well
made, could help create or enhance a distinct set of incentives to bring about
democracy in a sober and effectual manner. I believe the only way to make
such a case for China ­today is to make a prudential one, showing that China
badly needs democracy in order to avoid grave outcomes rather than to bring
about better ones than are currently pos­si­ble, where the grave outcomes have
to do with the basic necessity of social and regime stability rather than, as it
­were, normative luxuries. In other words, the main reason for having democ-
racy in China is that democracy is our best bet for effectively responding to
current and especially impending legitimation challenges, or so I ­shall argue,
rather than that China would be much better off, normatively or other­w ise,
if it w
­ ere to opt for democracy even though it does not strictly need to. What
is impor­tant about this reason is that, while it does not imply any denial of
democracy’s normative appeal, it w ­ ill not rely on any such appeal—­except
for its empirical efficacy. It shuns any thought that democracy is such a (nor-
matively) wonderful ­thing—­either in theory or in any ­actual exemplars—­that
we must have it in China, too.
A prudential case for democracy, then, is not concerned, at least not pri-
marily, with the (Aristotelian) question of the best regime. It is concerned,
rather, with what is likely to be the most stable and durable regime u ­ nder the
Introduction 13

given historical circumstances, as subject to, and aided by, only distinctly un-
demanding moral constraints. Whereas the question of the best regime is a
general one unrestricted by time and place, the prudential question is most
appropriately posed and answered for a par­tic­u­lar time and place. Thus, the
prudential case for democracy I ­w ill be making is specific to China: it is a
response to the question of what is likely to be the most stable and durable
regime ­under the circumstances in which China now finds itself.
Thus construed, the prudential case for democracy in China is invulner-
able, say, to Joseph Schumpeter’s debunking of what he calls the classical
theory of democracy based on the notion of popu­lar sovereignty literally un-
derstood as self-­government, on the one hand, or to any persuasive demon-
stration of Western democracy’s serious failings in any regard other than re-
gime stability, on the other.10 By the same token, the prudential case deflects
the vexed question of what “genuine” democracy is, as well as the unneces-
sarily distracting question of w ­ hether democracy, once certified as “genuine,”
is a universal value. The only goods at stake in the prudential case are legiti-
macy in a (Weberian) de facto or so­cio­log­i­cal sense, or hegemony à la An-
tonio Gramsci, and the resulting social and regime stability. What is required
to deliver ­t hese goods need not be so-­called genuine democracy, what­ever
that may mean, but only a plausible and sustainable semblance of democracy,
defined as what­ever is reasonably regarded as more or less consonant with
China’s pre­sent social conditions. To this end, the prudential case for democ-
racy works at the level of what Niccolò Machiavelli calls “the effectual truth
of the ­t hing,” rather than “the imagination of it.”11
At this level, we need a s crupulous and sensible assessment of ­whether
and, if so, why democracy is ­really needed in China, and of what democracy
may reasonably be expected to do for China, without exaggeration or moral
grandstanding. This w ­ ill, in turn, require an honest, unbiased assessment of
the CCP’s strengths and vulnerabilities. It is an impor­tant fact of the party’s
rule that the main threat it ­faces does not come from or­ga­nized opposition,
which is not permitted, nor from power­ful interest groups waiting for the
right moment to show their true po­liti­cal colors, for the most power­f ul such
groups are, on balance, beneficiaries of the current system and would face
an uncertain f­ uture if t­ hings w ­ ere to change. Therefore, to appreciate the
CCP’s vulnerabilities, we must look instead at power­f ul tendencies within
Chinese society and ask w ­ hether some of ­t hese tendencies make a t ruly
14 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

formidable legitimation crisis almost impossible to avoid, leaving open

vari­ous risky po­liti­cal scenarios if effective mea­sures are not taken to pre-
vent them. We must then ask ­whether democracy ­w ill not have to be one of
­t hese mea­sures, given the party’s vulnerabilities, as well as power­f ul tenden-
cies in Chinese society, and ­whether, to give demo­cratic change a realistic
chance of success, the CCP w ­ ill not have to play a crucial and leading role in
the pro­cess, given its strengths. In seeking answers to such questions, our
object is the “effectual truth” of democracy, and our chief impediment the
ever-­present temptation to fantasize about democracy.12
This does not mean, however, that a prudential case for democracy has
no use for normative considerations. Indeed, such considerations are essen-
tial, if only ­because democracy must take one form or another, not least in its
relation to capitalism, as we ­shall see, and it is impossible to be indifferent to
the normative grounds and implications of so consequential a choice. I ­w ill
therefore allow myself to cross the line between the normative and the pru-
dential freely, leaving it to the reader to assess the (implicit) rationale and the
advisability of my moves. More precisely, then, I w ­ ill be presenting an essen-
tially prudential case, not a purely prudential one. The latter is neither nec-
essary nor sufficient and would be unduly restrictive while serving no useful
purpose.
I describe my case for democracy as essentially prudential ­because ­t here
is no doubt in my mind that normative considerations w ­ ill fall into their
proper place only within the par­ameters of a successfully conducted pruden-
tial case for democracy, in two senses: first, that they w ­ ill kick in only a­ fter
the prudential case for democracy is established, and, second, that they
should continue to be informed and constrained by prudential consider-
ations. In other words, we have to demonstrate the sheer necessity of de-
mocracy in order to get the case for democracy decisively off the ground,
and thereafter we ­w ill still need to maintain a scrupulous sense of real­ity as
we go about figuring out how demo­cratic change may come to positive frui-
tion in the real world.
This is not to suggest that a p rudential case for democracy, duly freed
from overly idealistic normative complications, ­will be easy to make. By defi-
nition, a prudential case speaks to the self-­regarding concerns of the parties
involved, with other-­regarding concerns filtered through and assimilated to
the self-­regarding ones, at least in the first instance. As such, a prudential
Introduction 15

argument seeks to make self-­regarding concerns more rational or “enlight-

ened,” or, if necessary, to trigger self-­regarding concerns where they did not
previously exist or only existed in inchoate form. The point is always to pre­
sent to the parties involved reasons for action that they could not rationally
reject—or, to put it more mildly (this is quite good enough for our purpose),
they had better not reject—­from their prudential point of view. Since we are
talking about rational or enlightened self-­regarding interests, it is improb-
able that a well-­made prudential case for democracy would fail the test of
the parties’ normative concerns should such concerns be active as well. Thus
a successful prudential case for democracy may also be expected to be one
that the parties involved would have ­little good reason to reject from their
normative point of view.
One must not assume that the parties involved have a complete conver-
gence of self-­regarding interests (nor, for that m ­ atter, of normative consider-
ations) when it comes to democracy. ­There is, however, a prudent way of max-
imizing the convergence, and that is to accept the necessity of, and make the
best of the possibility of, working within the par­ameters of the existing bal-
ance of power. As far as China is concerned, especially with regard to demo­
cratic change, t­ here can be no doubt that the balance of power overwhelm-
ingly ­favors the CCP. For this reason alone, a successful prudential case for
democracy must, first and foremost, be one that the party could not, on bal-
ance, rationally reject in the light of its self-­regarding interests.
The ­matter is complicated, however, by the changing nature of the bal-
ance of power between the CCP and the citizenry. Indeed, an unpre­ce­dented
degree of volatility w ­ ill be introduced into this balance in the event that
the party decides, and is known to have de­cided, to embark on demo­cratic
change. However much support it may be able to win for such a h istoric
decision, should it be made, the party ­w ill from that point on be bound to
gradually lose the firm grip on power that is available, however temporarily,
only to an uncompromising defender of the status quo. In making my pru-
dential case for democracy, of course, I ­w ill suggest that the status quo ­w ill
actually, in due course, cease to be defendable—­without excessive cost. But
this does not change the fact that a po­liti­cally reforming CCP cannot be
indifferent to ­whether it ­w ill have an impor­tant role to play in a demo­cratic
China it w­ ill have helped bring into being. I believe, on prudential grounds,
that this (as yet only ­imagined) understandable desire on the part of the
16 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

party must be respected and given a good deal of room. It is at this point,
among ­others, that any prudential argument for democracy in China must
be addressed just as much to the citizenry. For u ­ nless the citizenry responds
prudently to the CCP’s demo­cratic initiatives, it could well compromise or
even doom such initiatives given the party’s continuing desire for power, as
well as its vulnerabilities. The only prudent way of accomplishing orderly
and effective demo­cratic change is to try as much as pos­si­ble to work with
the CCP rather than against it. ­Unless the populace adopts this prudent ap-
proach, the party ­w ill be discouraged from developing a reasonably positive
disposition ­toward democracy. And u ­ nless the CCP is aided rather than
hindered in acquiring such a disposition and in accomplishing a task that is
already difficult enough, China may well experience very dark days in the
not too distant f­ uture.
­Needless to say, it is not part of this prudential argument that democracy
is bound to come to China in one form or another, for it is not part of this
argument that the parties involved ­w ill actually be prudent. The argument
consists rather in showing that grave consequences w ­ ill follow if China does
not de­moc­ra­tize and do so with well-­conceived and well-­executed prepara-
tion. It is intended to drive home ­t hese consequences in order to foster the
realization that it is in the interest of all concerned, not least the CCP as by
far the most decisive actor, to avoid such consequences and to take bold and
prudent mea­sures to this end before it is too late.
­Simple as its basic logic is, I do not expect such a prudential case to be
at all easy and straightforward to make. In fact, the task is harder still
­because vari­ous international actors ­w ill have some impact as well, and
their prudence or lack of it w ­ ill make a far from negligible difference. What
I do not doubt for a moment, however, is that this is the kind of case for
democracy in China that urgently needs to be made. To this end, I ­w ill
pre­sent democracy as the broadly positive yet patently less than perfect po­
liti­cal value and institutional practice that it is. It is only by approaching
democracy with a s ober view of its advantages and liabilities—­both in
general and with par­t ic­u ­lar reference to China—­t hat we ­w ill have a rea-
sonable chance of making the kind of case for democracy in China that is
urgent and potentially consequential. It is a case for democracy that even
the CCP could neither rationally nor reasonably reject without serious
qualms, or so I believe, b ­ ecause the case would remain strong despite all
Introduction 17

the reservations, both prudential and normative, that one could plausibly
have about democracy. To borrow a figure of speech from the title of John
Dunn’s 2014 book on democracy, I want to make the case for democracy
without falling ­u nder its spell.13
Fi­nally, it is worth noting the growing belief that the fundamental po­
liti­cal challenge of our digital age is presented by technology—­w ith its
profound, unpre­ce­dented implications for the totality of ­human life, in-
cluding the political—­rather than by overtly po­liti­cal ­matters such as de-
mocracy.14 While ­t here is an ele­ment of truth in this view, I doubt that the
challenge created by the so-­called fourth industrial revolution w ­ ill simply
overtake that of democracy, considered in itself, as far as the foreseeable
­f uture of China is concerned. One of the ways in which China stands out
is precisely the fact that, for all its involvement in IT, AI, robotics, and so
on, and for all their impact on its society, China remains stuck with the
yet-­to-­be-­surmounted challenge of coming up with a reasonably depend-
able formula for regime stability and perpetuation. My prudential argument
for democracy is a r esponse to this distinct and in­de­pen­dently daunting
challenge.

The Looming Legitimation Crisis

I have said that the prudential case for democracy in China consists in
showing that China badly needs democracy in order to stave off the poten-
tially disastrous consequences for social and regime stability of trying in vain
to in­def­initely maintain the status quo. Such consequences, if and when they
materialize, ­w ill amount to an extremely severe legitimation crisis that
threatens not only the rule of the CCP but also the stability of an entire
country that has been made to depend exclusively on this rule.
Regarding a po­liti­cal system, I am happy to accept the notion that if it is
not broken, it would be a bad idea to try to fix it (beyond improving it), espe-
cially to the extent of replacing the system. A ­ fter all, changing a po­liti­cal
system is fraught with risks even ­under the best of circumstances. I am also
prepared to concede that the Chinese po­liti­cal system is not broken. Why fix
it, then? ­Because we have reason to fear that it is ­going to be broken in the
foreseeable f­ uture—­broken in the sense of experiencing a potentially fatal le-
gitimation crisis.
18 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

This takes us into the territory of prognosis. ­There is no reason to shy

away from prognosis, despite its notoriously large room for error. The reason
to face up to the need for prognosis is rather more compelling. For all po­
liti­cal action, not least when it is prudentially motivated, involves an ele­ment
of conjecture about the f­ uture, as well as some interpretation of the past, and
the same is true of intellectual reflection on po­liti­cal action.
To assess the likelihood of a legitimation crisis in China, it is crucial to
determine what kind of legitimacy the CCP still enjoys. To formulate the
prob­lem in this way is not to beg the question—­whether the party is currently
enjoying any legitimacy—­but to proceed on the right kind of assumption.
Since my aim is to show an impending legitimation crisis, in the sense ­either
of something new or of something old becoming worse, it is only reasonable
and prudent to give the CCP the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume, then,
although this happens also to be my considered view, that the CCP still com-
mands a q uite considerable degree of legitimacy. The crucial question is,
What kind of legitimacy?
It has become more or less received wisdom that what the CCP still com-
mands is essentially per­for­mance legitimacy (or performance-­based legiti-
macy). Yet, this assessment is seriously mistaken and indeed is a dangerous
view to hold if it turns out to be false. As long as we subscribe to this assess-
ment, we are led to believe that it is an open question how long the CCP’s
legitimacy w ­ ill last. For it w­ ill simply be a question of how good the CCP’s
­f uture per­for­mance turns out to be—­and of the continuous interpretation
of what counts as good and relevant per­for­mance.15
Contrary to this view, I hold that the CCP still enjoys a reasonably high
degree of legitimacy in the much stronger sense of the right to rule, which is
the mandate not only to perform but also, more fundamentally, to occupy
the position (of authority) from which to perform. It is, if you w ­ ill, the party’s
equivalent of the Mandate of Heaven. If one w ­ ere to ask an authoritative
ideological spokesperson of the CCP what this mandate is, or where it comes
from, one would surely be told that it comes from 1921 and 1949 and that,
however it may be described, Mao plays an indispensable part in it—­a lways
has and always w ­ ill. ­There can be no doubt about it: the mandate springs from
the launching of the communist revolution (1921) and its first decisive suc-
cess (1949), although neither term—­communist or revolution—is explic­itly
used very much. Thus the CCP sees itself as still enjoying a lingering legiti-
Introduction 19

macy that is inextricably linked to its communist revolutionary past. This

self-­assessment is quite correct.
I would like to suggest that it is only ­because of a substantial remnant of
the old communist revolutionary legitimacy that the CCP’s good per­for­
mance in the reform era can serve to enhance it. Let us not be distracted by
quibbling about what good per­for­mance is and how good it has been. The
impor­tant ­t hing is to pin down what exactly the party’s supposed good per­
for­mance has been ­doing for, or in relation to, its legitimacy. I want to sug-
gest that what we are witnessing is legitimacy enhancement through good
performance—­t hat is, the enhancement of the CCP’s mandate to rule, as
rooted in its communist revolutionary past, through current performative
success in the form of economic growth, rising individual prosperity and na-
tional power, and so on. The question immediately arises as to how such le-
gitimacy and such per­for­mance can be yoked together—­one of many ques-
tions I w ­ ill address ­later. For now, the crucial point is that legitimacy
enhancement can take place only if ­t here is still sufficient legitimacy left for
good per­for­mance to enhance. And let us not forget that the CCP, by virtue
of being the Communist Party, can have no other publicly avowable source
of legitimacy than the one bound up with its communist revolutionary past.
Suppose this source of legitimacy runs dry and the legitimacy ceases to exist.
What then? Presumably ­there can still be good per­for­mance of sorts, in terms
of economic growth, rising living standards, and so on: what p ­ eople gener-
ally mean when they speak of per­for­mance legitimacy. But upon reflection
this does not r­ eally hold up. For, ­under the conditions hypothetically stipu-
lated (that is, the disappearance of legitimacy), what good per­for­mance can
achieve is no longer legitimacy enhancement, b ­ ecause t­ here is no legitimacy
left to enhance in the first place, but only amelioration of a lack of legitimacy.
Legitimacy is not improved; it is only made to ­matter less. Thus per­for­mance
legitimacy would be a misnomer. But, much more importantly, is it true that a
thorough lack of legitimacy can be caused to m ­ atter so l­ ittle as not to place a
regime in mortal danger? The CCP would be the first to agree that one cannot
rule a country on a long-­term basis by means of amelioration of the lack of
legitimacy. This is plainly not a good idea. Suppose this line of reasoning is
correct so far, pending more detailed argument and exposition in Chapters 1
and 2. Grant, in other words, that what the CCP is ­doing right now is le-
gitimacy enhancement through good per­for­mance, on the assumption, of
20 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

course, that t­ here is still considerable legitimacy left. It follows, decisively,

that the key question to be confronted next is how long this lingering legiti-
macy can last, rather than merely how long good per­for­mance can last. The
second question is impor­tant in its own way, but far less so than the first.
In response to the first, key question, it would be difficult to turn away
from the well-­g rounded fear that the CCP’s lingering legitimacy ­w ill be all
but completely exhausted by the time of the next leadership succession,
whenever that is, or soon thereafter. To be sure, the current leadership is the
most power­ful and most confident at least since Deng Xiaoping. And all
signs indicate that it is exerting a degree of control over the country—­not
least over ideology, over institutions of education, over what ­people say
and write—­reminiscent of the Mao era. My point ­here is not to appraise this
development but simply to suggest that, like it or not, this w ­ ill be an impos-
sible act to follow for Xi Jinping’s successor, who, significantly, as of now, is
nowhere in sight. With the communist revolutionary legitimacy completely
spent, Xi’s successor w ­ ill face unpre­ce­dented difficulty in keeping intra-
party factionalism ­under control and maintaining the CCP’s all-­important
intraparty legitimacy. In the country at large, Xi’s successor ­w ill find it a no
less insurmountable challenge to muster the ­w ill to crush another June 4 if
preventive mea­sures fail. And, of course, the more this w ­ ill is lacking and
known to be lacking, the more likely preventive mea­sures are to fail. In the
face of t­ hese vulnerabilities, no amount of good per­for­mance by itself w ­ ill
suffice. A new kind of legitimacy w ­ ill be needed.
It is needed right now, ­because China also needs demo­cratic preparation,
to be discussed in Chapter 6, and the current leadership is the only one with
the power and leisure to undertake it. It ­w ill be too late if it is left to the next
generation of leaders, who w ­ ill be much weaker and w­ ill also be much closer
to the impending legitimation crisis. That is why it is necessary to fix the po­
liti­cal system before it is broken.

Democracy as the Only Appropriate Way to Fix

the Po­liti­cal System

It is not by accident that fixing the current one-­party system requires de-
mocracy. Thanks to the four-­decade-­old reform, and therefore thanks also
to the CCP itself, China has become a demo­cratic society—­a demo­cratic so-
Introduction 21

ciety (in the sense of the eradication of a fixed social hierarchy, as in an aris-
tocracy, or of fixed class distinctions, as in Mao’s China, and their replace-
ment with what Alexis de Tocqueville calls “equality of conditions”) as
distinct from a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime. A strong dynamic is thereby set
in motion that is succinctly captured by Charles Maier, writing about the
history of democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:

Why could not democracy [as a po­liti­cal regime] simply be resisted? . . . ​

The reason was that society itself was evolving demo­cratically. Po­liti­cal
forms followed changes in social structure. If, as Tocqueville . . . ​claimed,
all history tended t­ owards the destruction of aristocracies, ­there could
be no long-­term societal barrier to a government of and by the p ­ eople. . . . ​
In 1859 Mill argued similarly, “­There is confessedly a strong tendency
in the modern world t­ owards a demo­cratic constitution of society, ac-
companied or not by popu­lar po­liti­cal institutions.” . . . ​The point, how-
ever, was that they would be so accompanied. Po­liti­cal forms would tend
in the long run to recapitulate social trends.16

Such is the dynamic unleashed by the demo­cratic constitution of society, it-

self an unstoppable trend in the modern world!
If we invoke Protagoras, the first philosophical defender of democracy, as I
­w ill do in Chapter 3, we ­w ill be able to add to demo­cratic society two further
ele­ments: a demo­cratic epistemology in which ­every person is allowed to
speak and reasons alone are supposed to carry the day, and a demo­cratic con-
ception of virtue that treats ­every citizen as capable of learning to contribute
to a shared civic life.17 All of ­t hese we already find in China to a substantial
degree: demo­cratic society, demo­cratic epistemology, and a demo­cratic con-
ception of virtue. Indeed, China is fast acquiring one more demo­cratic trait,
which may be called a demo­cratic conception of the good: the idea that ­every
man or ­woman is capable of deciding for him-­or herself what the good life
is, subject only to reasonable and reasonably permissive laws.
We can fold all of t­ hese demo­cratic traits into a l arger notion of demo­
cratic society and say that just such a society is what China already has t­ oday
to a d egree both entrenched and progressing. The only ­t hing missing is a
demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime. This is clearly a case of a nation’s collective ex-
istence being split against itself—­that is, demo­cratic in almost all significant
22 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

re­spects except a single, isolated one, that of government or system of rule.

No won­der the po­liti­cal regime—­the odd one out, as it ­were—is not stable
and has to devote a disproportionate amount of energy and ner­vous energy,
not to mention personnel and financial resources, to maintaining stability
(weiwen).
What is so good about democracy then? Not that it is good, strictly
speaking, but only that it is more fitting. It may not be better than all other
regime types in the abstract, but given a demo­cratic society that is ­here to
stay, a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime is definitely better fitting. And ­because it
is better fitting, it makes a society—an already largely demo­cratic society—­
more governable. So, to cut a long story (to be detailed in Chapter 3) short,
my arguments for democracy in China boil down to two: first, the argument
from fittingness and, second, the argument from governability. In the light
of t­ hese arguments, only a d emo­cratic po­liti­cal regime has a c hance of
maintaining a legitimate and stable government in the context of a d emo­
cratic society. Given that it is manifestly a demo­cratic society ­today, China
has already taken the first step, an irreversible first step, ­whether by design
or by default. Therefore, in the interest of a legitimate and stable po­liti­cal
order, it has no choice but to take the second.

Four Daunting Challenges

This does not mean that it w ­ ill not be easy to mess up in taking the second
step. To imply, as I have just done, that a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime is only
one step away from a demo­cratic society, already in existence, is not also to
imply that this one step ­will be ­free of the most daunting challenges. Far from
it. In practice, as distinct from concept, it ­w ill have to be one long, possibly
very long, step.
This brings me to the other half of my prudential case for democracy in
China. The first half of my case, as the reader ­w ill recall, is a ­matter of dem-
onstrating the sheer necessity of democracy for ­today’s China, of making
clear why China stands in dire need of demo­cratic change in order to stave
off a paralyzing legitimation crisis in the foreseeable ­f uture. It makes sense
to outline this part of my case first, ­because the opposite view has many
adherents, and especially b ­ ecause the enormity of the demo­cratic challenge
can be properly appreciated only in the light of the unavoidable necessity of
Introduction 23

democracy. Now that I have laid out the reasons supporting the necessity of
democracy, I must complete my case by proceeding to the difficulty of re-
sponding appropriately to this necessity. As I see it, ­t here are at least four
daunting challenges, each of which is impor­tant to surmount and none
pos­si­ble to avoid.

F I R S T C H A L L E N G E .  ​The first challenge has to do with the place and role of

the CCP in China’s potential passage to democracy. W ­ hether one likes it or
not, the party is by far the most power­ful po­liti­cal force in China. Indeed,
other than its minor, compliant allies, it is the only legally permitted po­
liti­cal force, certainly the only po­liti­cal force that has ruled China, and
hence has gained any experience of ruling, since 1949. It is safe to say that, as
­things stand, the party alone is capable of initiating po­liti­cal change in
China and making its execution reasonably smooth and orderly. For any po­
liti­cal change even to get off the ground, therefore, the party must see the
need for it and be willing to undertake it. This is all the more emphatically
true of demo­cratic change, in that such change would alter the very status
and power of the CCP and the stakes could not be higher. It would be naïve
and utterly irresponsible to believe that the party could simply be swept
aside as part of a largely orderly, if not entirely peaceful, turn to democracy.
Given the stakes involved, t­ here is no compelling reason to expect that the
CCP ­w ill let itself be swept aside—­which would mean nothing less than
ending up in the “dustbin of history”—­w ithout reacting in ways that would
seriously, even fatally, damage the prospect of an orderly demo­cratic
transition.
Even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that the CCP does somehow,
­under pressure, exit the stage without too much fuss, t­ here is just as obvious
a dearth of reasons to expect that an alternative po­liti­cal force or co­a li­tion of
forces w­ ill be able to step into the breach and, a­ fter an initial period of re-
grouping and trial and error, act with greater moral authority and po­liti­cal
sagacity than the party ever did, with regard to demo­cratic change or any-
thing e­ lse. A
­ fter all, the CCP has not given any potential po­liti­cal force the
remotest opportunity to gain experience and maturity or acquire the civic
virtues and sheer toughness and resourcefulness needed to govern a po­liti­cal
behemoth like China. Put another way, it has not given China a chance to
be held together as a reasonably peaceful and prosperous country by any
24 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

po­liti­cal force other than itself. Against this background, to imagine China’s
orderly passage to democracy without assigning a positive role to the party
is at best a leap in the dark—­not a good strategy given the enormity of the
stakes.
To avoid such a scenario, it would require that the party act voluntarily to
initiate demo­cratic change, having seen the dire necessity of democracy in
the face of a looming legitimation crisis. It would also require that the ordi-
nary citizens of China develop a positive and patient disposition ­toward a re-
forming CCP, giving full credit where credit is due and, as it w ­ ere, rewarding
the CCP with an impor­tant, even a leading, role in a demo­cratic China, at
least initially.
The indispensability of the party for an orderly demo­cratic transition is
the result of a historical contingency. The CCP is itself largely responsible for
this contingency—­for creating and maintaining China’s excessive po­liti­cal
dependence on itself—­but this does not change the fact of the m ­ atter. It can
only impinge on our moral assessment of the fact, which also does not change
the fact itself. From a prudential point of view, this fact alone ­matters.

S E C O N D C H A L L E N G E .  ​Another upshot of the same historical contingency,

one for which the CCP is equally responsible, is that individual Chinese
citizens and Chinese society as a w ­ hole have been kept u ­ nder compulsory
moral tutelage by the party. They have been effectively prevented from ac-
quiring any in­de­pen­dent moral agency, agency that is attributable to their
own initiative, individual and collective, and over which the CCP does not
have the prerogative of guidance and control. This compulsory moral tute-
lage worked well enough when, ­u nder Mao and in the early stages of the
post-­Mao reform, China was a t ightly or­ga­nized, collectivistic society,
with top-­down control of all aspects of life, including the moral. What has
happened since is the gradual but, by now, quite thorough dismantling of
the Maoist, totally or­ga­nized form of life. Yet, for reasons to be explained
in the main body of the book, the CCP has not seen fit to let go of its con-
trol over the moral life of individuals and society, nor to do what it takes to
adapt the manner and content of its moral guidance to the a­ ctual, ever
more bourgeois real­ity of the brave new China. The predictable result is a
deep and protracted moral crisis in reform-­era China, which finds the
most vis­i­ble expression not only in rampant official corruption but also, in
Introduction 25

the country at large, in a widespread lack of re­spect for moral norms and
the law.
A grave prob­lem in its own right, this moral crisis is also a major cause
for worry as far as demo­cratic change is concerned. For in the absence of a
basic level of individual and societal moral maturity (the latter meaning the
moral maturity of civil society), it is hard to imagine the unhampered emer-
gence of the minimal level of civic virtue that is necessary to give a b ur-
geoning democracy a r easonable chance to work. T ­ oday the CCP alone
stands between China and even worse moral chaos, just as it alone keeps
po­liti­cal disorder at bay. Having single-­handedly prevented individual and
societal moral maturity, only the party is capable of keeping the lid on the
Pandora’s box, morally and po­liti­cally speaking. ­Until the lock and key are
handed over to, or shared with, a more or less in­de­pen­dent civil society and
a relatively mature citizenry, China is simply not ready for the passage to
po­liti­cal democracy.
What China sorely needs, then, is demo­cratic preparation, meaning all
that it takes to create a basic level of individual and societal moral maturity
and a reasonable degree of re­spect for the law. Only by being thus prepared
­w ill citizens of a ­future demo­cratic polity no longer depend so heavi­ly on the
CCP for a semblance of moral agency. And only in this way w ­ ill they be able,
in the absence of the guiding and controlling hand of the party, to act in
concert with a reasonable degree of initiative, responsibility, and effective-
ness. This second major challenge confronting China’s shift to democracy
is daunting enough in its own right. It is made even more daunting by the
fact that any success in meeting this challenge ­w ill depend on the CCP so-
berly perceiving the need for demo­cratic preparation, which, in turn, is con-
tingent on the CCP perceiving the need for demo­cratic change and deciding
to pursue such change in the first place.

T H I R D C H A L L E N G E . Imagine a positive scenario in which the CCP perceives

the need for demo­cratic change, decides to take the plunge, and then has the
prudence to undertake demo­cratic preparation before completing the pas-
sage to po­liti­cal democracy. Even in this extremely propitious scenario,
­there is the distinct risk that, as the party has become known to think the
better of holding on to its current mono­poly of power and to f­ avor a more
fitting regime yet to be achieved, it may suffer a weakening of its centripetal
26 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

capacity. ­Were this to happen, it would create, among other dangers, unpre­
ce­dented opportunities for all separatist tendencies to suddenly expand and
try their luck in more confident and aggressive ways than ever before. Since
China has no shortage of po­liti­cal and geopo­liti­cal adversaries and since it
­w ill not become the most power­f ul country in the world anytime soon, it
­w ill be an open question w ­ hether, in such a scenario, domestic separatist
forces ­w ill not receive encouragement and even aid from foreign powers keen
to take advantage of a less united and cohesive China. Even the very possi-
bility of some such scenario is enough to constitute a distinct, and distinc-
tively daunting, challenge for China’s passage to democracy. It is a reminder
that China’s successful demo­cratic change is predicated on its ability to
hold a v ast country, with its ethnic diversity and territorial integrity, to-
gether—­and that this is dependent not only on the domestic balance of
forces but also on the international environment at large. What we know for
sure is that, if this challenge is not well handled, t­ here ­w ill be no confident
and orderly transition to democracy—in all probability, no transition to de-
mocracy at all.
It is part and parcel of this challenge that, historically, China has largely
not had the kind of values, institutions, and composition of social and po­
liti­cal forces that are responsible for the stable demo­cratic order in the modern,
especially con­temporary, West.18 In other words, democracy is deeply for-
eign to the Chinese tradition of conducting public affairs, and this profound
politico-­cultural fact is not changed by China’s new equality of conditions,
which signals the presence of a demo­cratic society. Nor, however, ­w ill this
politico-­cultural fact be able forever to prevent the increasing equality of con-
ditions from propelling China ­toward po­liti­cal democracy except at the cost
of progressively reduced governability. It is undeniable that, at least to some
degree, the socioeconomic real­ity on the ground and the politico-­cultural tra-
dition in the soil, as it ­were, are pulling in opposite directions. This mis-
match makes China’s demo­cratic challenge all the more daunting and demo­
cratic preparation all the more necessary.
It is in keeping with the just-­noted absence of demo­cratic theory and
practice in the Chinese tradition that I w ­ ill not be able to draw on that tradi-
tion to make my case for democracy in China t­ oday. Thus I w ­ ill be dis-
cussing a present-­day Chinese real­ity—­a demo­cratic society—­w ithout being
able to use a homemade, Chinese discourse to make sense of it, and this is
Introduction 27

even more true when I then argue for unimpeded pro­gress from this social
real­ity to a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime befitting it. In the latter case espe-
cially, I ­w ill have to draw heavi­ly on the theoretical and historical under-
standing of democracy developed in, of course, ­those places where democracy
has figured prominently, if always problematically and contentiously. This,
then, is not a m ­ atter of intellectual choice or affective preference but one
rooted in the plain facts of the m ­ atter—­namely, the presence of strong social
conditions, and of the correspondingly strong need, for democracy in
China t­ oday, on the one hand, and the lack of significant historical pre­ce­
dents and major intellectual resources in the Chinese tradition, on the
other. I see l­ ittle harm and mostly benefits, especially u ­ nder t­ hese circum-
stances, in learning from the theory and practice of democracy in the West,
provided that one is mindful of negative lessons as well as positive ones—­not
least the lesson that, in the final analy­sis, democracy can only grow out of,
and in response to, the real and pressing needs and challenges presented by
a society itself.

F O U R T H C H A L L E N G E . ​The fourth challenge differs from the first three in

being less purely prudential and containing an irreducibly normative com-
ponent. Nevertheless, as I conceive of it, this challenge is also prudential to a
substantial degree, and it certainly bears on the other challenges, especially
the first one.
What is at issue in this challenge is the relationship between democracy
and capitalism. This is a tough challenge in any modern democracy, and it is
hard to think of a large democracy t­ oday that is truly exemplary in this re-
gard. It should come as no surprise that the challenge is even more daunting
for a country like China whose demo­cratic po­liti­cal forces are much weaker
than its cap­i­tal­ist economic ones. What is noteworthy about China in this
regard is that the socioeconomic dynamic unleashed by the reform is now
pushing the country si­mul­ta­neously ­toward a po­liti­cal democracy and a more
purely cap­i­tal­ist economic order. This simultaneity is itself nothing out of the
ordinary, but it may well become an extraordinary menace b ­ ecause of the
gross asymmetry in power between a cap­i­tal­ist class ­eager to weaken or, better
still, capture the state for their corporate interests given the chance, on the
one hand, and ordinary citizens seeking a real increase in po­liti­cal partici-
pation, on the other.
28 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

It is also worth noting that we are living in an age in which neoliberalism

is reshaping democracy to the point where demo­cratic institutions have in-
creasingly degenerated into the handmaidens of corporations, legitimating
the latter much more than counteracting them in the interest of society. The
rich and power­f ul everywhere in the world t­ oday openly aggrandize them-
selves at the expense of society, only in dif­fer­ent ways.19 China is far from
immune to the neoliberal influence, its reform having coincided almost ex-
actly with neoliberalism’s rise and eventual conquest, to dif­fer­ent degrees, of
all Western democracies. Xi Jinping has gone out of his way to distance the
CCP u ­ nder his leadership (with its own distinct idea of supply-­side reform)
from neoliberalism, but this does not change the fact that neoliberal ortho-
doxy has become the mainstream understanding among the extremely
power­ful Chinese economic and financial elite of the correct relationship be-
tween the state and the f­ ree market. If this massive neoliberal infiltration
into Chinese po­liti­cal consciousness makes itself felt in China’s pro­cess of
demo­cratic change, as it well might, we have reason to fear that the conse-
quence ­w ill be a democracy utterly subservient to capitalism.
My worry is not exactly that a newly established Chinese democracy ­w ill
be no better than ­today’s demo­cratic capitalism in the West, itself a pale
shadow of, say, Eu­ro­pean social democracy in its heyday or the New Deal in
Amer­i­ca. What I fear is rather that, lacking long-­standing demo­cratic insti-
tutions for neoliberalism to try to roll back, as in Eu­rope or Amer­i­ca, China
­after its demo­cratic transition could turn into such a cap­i­tal­ist morass as to
make neoliberal capitalism in the West look positively socialist. If we are not
careful, this may well be the fate of China’s demo­cratic transition, leaving
many, possibly hundreds of millions, to won­der about the point of demo­cratic
change. That is why balancing democracy against capitalism ­w ill be no less
daunting a challenge than the first three. ­Because failure in this regard may
fatally undermine popu­lar support for democracy, even to the point of pre-
maturely dooming the newborn democracy, meeting this challenge is also a
prudential necessity.
It so happens that such an eventuality would spell the end not only of any
prospects of a remotely bracing democracy but also of the CCP as a poten-
tially preeminent po­liti­cal force in a demo­cratic China. For this if for no other
reason, the party, if and when it sees fit to set China on the path ­toward po­
liti­cal democracy, ­will have a vested interest in seeing to it that China’s democ­
Introduction 29

ratization does not become conflated with the shrinkage of state power in
­favor of the ­free market. Given the state of the Chinese economy and public
opinion, and given the current global ideological environment, it may be too
much to expect the party to be the first to reverse the supposedly counterin-
tuitive logic whereby the wealthy retain their dominance even in a demo­
cratic system with universal suffrage. Yet ­t here is reason to hope that the
CCP, once the demo­cratic transition is ­under way, ­w ill, if only for its own
credibility as a s elf-­professed left-­w ing party, try to ally itself more with
demo­cratic forces than with corporate interests. Indeed, the formation of
such an alliance, as well as the active promotion of social justice, ­w ill have to
be an integral part of demo­cratic preparation, in addition to the cultivation
of individual and societal maturity, if the CCP is to find an impor­tant role
for itself, still with its supposedly Marxist-­inspired identity, in a demo­cratic
China.
This is not a prediction, nor a pious normative wish. It is straightforward
prudential reasoning about a hy­po­t het­i­cal scenario in which the CCP has
taken the plunge in f­ avor of demo­cratic change yet made up its mind not to
give up its po­liti­cal preeminence but rather to maintain it in a new way con-
sistent with the norms of a demo­cratic polity. We have thus come full circle,
with the intelligibility of ­every other challenge and any pos­si­ble success in
meeting them depending on the surmounting of the first and foremost chal-
lenge. In this context, it is entirely appropriate to wish the party well with
re­spect to its rational self-­regarding interests.

In perusing the more detailed arguments in the eight chapters that follow,
readers can orient themselves by remembering that every­t hing that is said
in this book contributes ­either to demonstrating why China stands in ur-
gent need of demo­cratic change or to illuminating what the chief challenges
are and what the appropriate responses might be. Not ­every chapter is de-
voted to only one task or the other, and most mix ­t hese tasks together,
sometimes more or less imperceptibly.
The book falls into three parts, the first part showing that a looming le-
gitimation crisis calls for an urgent and prudent response, the second arguing
that the only fitting and effective response w­ ill be meaningful demo­cratic
change of one kind or another, and, fi­nally, the third dealing with the inter-
national and Hong Kong dimensions of China’s demo­cratic challenge.
30 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Chapters 1 and 2 set the stage for the book’s argument for demo­cratic
change by showing that the prob­lem of legitimacy is far from resolved even
­under what appears to be an exceptionally strong leadership delivering what
seem to be extremely impressive economic and other per­for­mances. Chapter 1
explains what po­liti­cal legitimacy is, why so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy
cannot deliver what legitimacy uniquely can and is therefore, strictly speaking,
not legitimacy, what it takes to secure legitimacy, and why the current Chinese
arrangement has not secured it, thereby leaving wide open the possibility of
a devastating legitimation crisis. Chapter 2 then examines the presence of
this possibility in the vari­ous crisis tendencies already afflicting the CCP,
which have the distinct potential for causing grave po­liti­cal prob­lems in the
near ­f uture, especially for turning the next leadership succession into an
unpre­ce­dented challenge to regime continuation.
The second part of the book, comprising Chapters 3–6, pre­sents my re-
sponse to the looming legitimation crisis, arguing for the dire need for de-
mocracy and at the same time showing the formidable challenges and com-
plications involved in meeting this need, and hence the simultaneous need
for prudence. Chapter 3 represents my concentrated attempt to hammer home
why only democracy can help China avoid a paralyzing legitimation
crisis—­why, to put it more strongly, only democracy can save China. Chapter 4
shows why democracy is necessary in order to shield individuals and com-
munities in China’s new cap­i­tal­ist society from the worst effects of a market
economy left entirely to its own devices. As the reader ­w ill recall, this figures
also as the fourth challenge confronting China’s pro­gress to democracy.
Lest we see the necessity of democracy in China and the resulting chal-
lenges as s­ imple and straightforward at least in theory, what­ever the prac-
tical difficulties, Chapter 5 provides a conceptual narrative of the complex
transitional and contradictory character of China’s current moral and po­
liti­cal condition. The picture that emerges is one in which the necessity of
democracy is intrinsically bound up with the challenge of answering it, with
both springing not from some exogenous logic or normativity but from in-
ternal dynamics that render the course of demo­cratic change anything but
­simple and straightforward. The reader ­w ill find in this chapter—­taken to-
gether with Chapters 3 and 4 and, to a lesser degree, Chapter 1—­t he closest
­t hing in the book to a systematic set of theoretical reflections on democracy,
although I pre­sent ­t hese reflections for the most part with close reference to
Introduction 31

China. My aim, in addition to the main task of shedding light on China, is

to give an account of democracy in which some of democracy’s crucial
connections—­such as with liberty, equality, morality, power, capitalism,
unity, and the good—­can fall clearly into place. For this reason, my entire
undertaking may also be viewed as, in part, an exercise in demo­cratic theory
embedded in a discussion of China.
Chapter  6 further spells out the plea for working with the CCP rather
than against it in g­ oing about demo­cratic change. It is also complementary
to Chapter 4 in putting forward the idea of demo­cratic preparation. Its sig-
nificance may be expressed by saying that the argument for democracy in
China translates, for the pre­sent and immediate ­future, into an argument for
demo­cratic preparation.
Part III of the book discusses the additional complications deriving from
the international and Hong Kong f­ actors that may help or hinder China’s
demo­cratic change. Chapter 7 addresses the relevance and potential impact
of international f­ actors, arguing, on the one hand, that China cannot expect
fully to resolve the domestic legitimation crisis u ­ nless it makes significant
pro­gress in enhancing its legitimacy around the world, and vice versa, and,
on the other, that po­liti­cal and ideological hostility t­ oward China’s (nomi-
nally) communist system is unlikely to help the demo­cratic cause.
What is happening in Hong Kong vis-­à-­v is (mainland) China is a par-
ticularly instructive case in point, ­because Hong Kong is both part of China
and subject to a p o­liti­cal arrangement that grants it a s pecial status and
identity somewhat apart from China. In Chapter 8 I discuss both democracy
in Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s impact on democracy in China. In certain
impor­tant re­spects, Hong Kong is representative of the demo­cratic chal-
lenge that China f­ aces in regions of the country that are granted or prom-
ised a h igh degree of autonomy. This is an added reason for giving Hong
Kong a substantial place in this book; another reason is that, of all the re-
gions in this category, Hong Kong is the one I happen to know best. It is also
worth emphasizing that democracy in Hong Kong and its impact on Chi-
nese democracy are so closely connected that this dual topic deserves rela-
tively comprehensive treatment in its own right.
I bring the book to a close with reflections that provide a concluding per-
spective. I ­w ill first confront the possibility—­ruled out in theory by my ac-
count of legitimacy in Chapter 1 but nevertheless deserving a final look—­that
32 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

the Chinese Dream, as per­for­mance legitimacy in its most comprehensive

and elevated form, might arrest the momentum t­ oward democracy inherent
in China’s social conditions. This is a possibility that defies the ordinary dy-
namic of sociopo­liti­cal change and whose effective life span coincides with
that of Xi Jinping’s leadership. This means that the unpre­ce­dented challenge
to regime continuation at the time of the next leadership succession ­w ill re-
main unaltered.
Fi­nally, I allow myself the luxury of speculating on the circumstances,
however improbable, in which what I have said in this book would turn out
to be wrong—­not merely wrong in some detail or with regard to timing but
wrong in its main thrust and thus as a ­whole. Such circumstances concern
in par­tic­u­lar the very close link between the demo­cratic fortunes of China
and Amer­i­ca, as well as the power relations between them. I pursue this spec-
ulation out of a h umility that, given my desire to be forthright wherever
appropriate, may not have been evident in my main argument, but also in
keeping with an impor­tant belief that informs this book. It is the belief that
democracy depends for its advent and success in a country at least as much
on fortunate circumstances, both domestic and international, as it does on
what­ever prudential and normative merit it may have.
PART ONE

The Legitimation Crisis

CHAPTER ONE

Legitimacy and Per­for­mance

SOME FOUR DE­C ADES into the still ongoing “reform and opening up” (gaige
kaifang) and nearly seventy years ­after the founding of communist rule,
China has an awe-­inspiring list of achievements to its credit, not least to the
credit of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although this is by no means
the only list, t­ here is l­ ittle doubt that communist China as a w ­ hole has been
an overachiever, surpassing even its own wildest realistic dreams. Yet, com-
munism aside, one long-­overdue task remains unaccomplished: the estab-
lishment of a po­liti­cal order, communist or other­w ise, that can be counted
on to reproduce itself over time without the permanent specter of subversion
or collapse. Nowhere is this elusive goal better captured than in a Chinese
phrase fondly used by official media and the CCP leadership: changzhi jiu’an,
loosely translatable as “enduring order and lasting stability.” China is ­today
no nearer this goal than it has been since the fall of the last imperial dynasty
in 1911 or since the party’s seizure of power in 1949. If truth be told, neither
1911 nor, despite claims to the contrary, 1949 has turned out to be the Chi-
nese equivalent, let alone continuation, of 1789—­t he inauguration of the
bourgeois demo­cratic revolution that Karl Marx, for one, both lauded as
necessary and progressive and sought to move beyond for being radically
incomplete.
Meanwhile the task of bringing about changzhi jiu’an has become more
urgent than at any time since 1949 and especially since the start of reform in
the late 1970s. The most impor­tant domestic event for China in the next ten
to twenty years w ­ ill be a sharp fall in the po­liti­cal authority of the party-­state.1
36 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

In 2029, China w ­ ill be celebrating the eightieth anniversary of the founding

of the ­People’s Republic. By then, if not sooner, the power of its revolutionary
past to impart legitimacy to the CCP w ­ ill have all but exhausted itself, with
no one around who has played any part in the revolution itself and with only
an aging, largely inactive, and fast-­depleting number of l­ater generations who
carry even second­hand memories of the revolution. A d istance of eighty
years, or four generations, w ­ ill have effectively dispelled the aura of successful
revolutionary vio­lence, with its unique ability to inspire awe and command
obedience, to naturalize and even consecrate power. A new source of legiti-
macy must be found, a new account of the normative origin of power pro-
vided. The revolutionary legitimacy of the CCP ­w ill need ­wholesale replace-
ment in the same way that the imperial legitimacy rooted in the Mandate of
Heaven did in 1911.
It is no secret that the communist teleological-­revolutionary legitimacy2
of the CCP has been steadily declining since well before the death of Mao
Zedong and especially since the launch of the economic reform by Deng
Xiaoping—­the latter signaling nothing less than the abandonment of the rev-
olution as both telos and means. So far, however, this fall in one source of
po­liti­cal authority has apparently (for we have yet to figure out exactly what
has been ­going on) been made up for by a dramatic rise in another—­t hat is,
the ­great success of the party-­state in creating economic growth, higher stan-
dards of living, and, ­later, the much more complicated phenomenon known
as national pride. The result is the effective maintenance of the party-­state’s
authority on a rather dif­fer­ent basis, or so it seems: not so much its norma-
tive appeal as its sheer per­for­mance, its ability to deliver the goods. The goods
have been coming thick and fast for nearly three de­cades, although they have
been far from equitably shared and have come at incalculable h ­ uman and en-
vironmental cost. This apparent compensatory mechanism—­t he shifting
from one leg (legitimacy) to the other (per­for­mance) instead of walking on the
twin legs of legitimacy and performance—­has all along been dogged by the
improbability that the extraordinary times of recent de­cades ­w ill continue
in­def­initely.3 As a m
­ atter of fact, such times, characterizing as they do the
­earlier developmental phase of a s o-­called newly industrializing economy,
seem already to have come to an end. The current leadership is trying to cool
expectations by referring to this rise in China’s economic challenges as the
New Normal, and to transform ambitions by sublimating the individual de-
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 37

sire for prosperity into the collective dream of national rejuvenation. More-
over, to its credit, and by force of circumstance, the CCP leadership has fi­
nally embarked on the paradigm shift from high-­speed growth to high-­quality
growth, in an attempt to move beyond a growth model overtaken by the
country’s own success and to move up the international value chain. This very
shift means that economic per­for­mance is no longer a ­matter of growth per
se but one of successful upgrading and rebalancing—an even taller order than
growth itself. Indeed, Chinese leaders themselves have acknowledged, openly
and with a fitting sense of gravity, the sheer newness, as well as enormity, of
the challenges ahead. If they show no sign of counting on any easy and pre-
dictable surmounting of such challenges, no one ­else has more reason to. Bar-
ring unforeseen improvements in the global economy, it is thus safe to say
that China’s economic per­for­mance potential has passed a point of no return:
no more dramatic growth, and hence no more dramatic boost to legitimacy
from this source. Prudence dictates, especially given what is at stake, that we
err on the side of caution rather than confidence. In any case, the point is
not that China’s economy is not ­doing reasonably well but rather that we are
gradually approaching (or must prudently proj­ect) a s ituation in which
walking on one leg—­t he compensation by extraordinary per­for­mance for
weak legitimacy—­w ill no longer suffice when the leg that has so far carried
China has become considerably weaker. But as we know all too well, China
has become overreliant on this leg precisely ­because the other one, the old
revolutionary legitimacy, was showing signs of terminal wear and tear. This
other, hitherto hobbling leg cannot simply be pressed back into ser­v ice as in
the past.
Within the next ten to twenty years, then, communist China ­will be
facing a crisis of po­liti­cal authority the likes of which it has never experi-
enced before. It is only a ­matter of time before the party-­state ­w ill no longer
be able to draw at all on the legitimation potential of its revolutionary past
as a basis for its authority. And it is also only a ­matter of time before it ­w ill
no longer be able, even in the face of further waning legitimacy, to rely so
lopsidedly and headily on performative success as a complementary source
of prestige and authority. The compounding of a legitimation crisis by per­
for­mance prob­lems ­will be all the more daunting in that per­for­mance has
come to cover not only economic growth but also such other tough items as
social justice, official corruption, and, with an ever-­rising profile in public
38 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

consciousness and expectations, food and vaccine safety and an unpolluted

environment. This double shortfall—in both legitimacy and performance—
or, put another way, a weakening of both legs at the same time, is one that
the CCP has never faced before, and it must be dealt with in ways the party
has never had to contemplate before. ­Unless it is handled by such extraordi-
nary means as are adequate to the challenge and handled in a t imely
fashion, China’s ­f uture could be bleak indeed. Th­ ere is no need to rule out
the possibility of a rosier scenario—of per­for­mance, not legitimacy—­coming
true. Countless predictions have been made, positive, negative, and any-
where in between. All ­these may be set aside in f­ avor of two s­ imple truths:
that we cannot know for sure, not even remotely in this case, and that it is
imprudent to base regime authority and po­liti­cal stability solely or even pri-
marily on the uncertain fortunes of the economy. ­Unless ­there is a h igh
probability of a positive scenario, it would be reckless to rely on it to save the
day. And we have not even considered the potentially shattering implica-
tions of the demise of communist teleological-­revolutionary legitimacy—­
assuming a reasonably good level of per­for­mance and hence largely regard-
less of per­for­mance.

June 4, 1989, and the Rise of Per­for­mance

Legitimacy

I have been speaking of legitimacy and per­for­mance as two alternative

sources of po­liti­cal authority as if they w
­ ere clear and largely unproblematic
categories. They are not, and we must now delve deeper into what they mean
and how they are related in the context of reform-­era China. Especially
problematic and requiring clarification is the notion that per­for­mance can
contribute to po­liti­cal authority in such a way that the result deserves to be
considered a distinct kind of legitimacy—­namely, per­for­mance legitimacy.
To understand the importance of per­for­mance and the rise of per­for­
mance legitimacy, we must go back to the legitimation crisis that led to the
events of June 4, 1989, and was, in turn, exacerbated by them and their af-
termath. June  4 signaled two ­things: a deepening of the legitimation crisis
involving the CCP’s revolutionary past, and a new discontent with the party-­
state’s purely economic per­for­mance. The students’ invocation of the de-
ceased Hu Yaobang—­t he former CCP general secretary known for his ex-
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 39

ceptional willingness, in the interest of reform, to move away from aspects of

the party’s revolutionary past—­spoke volumes about the nature of the legiti-
mation crisis. At the same time, the students w ­ ere reacting, and understood
themselves to be reacting, to changes in the Chinese economy that seemed to
have ­little directly to do with legitimacy. Chief among their grievances,
shared by society at large, was a set of what have since come to be called live-
lihood issues (minsheng wenti)—­namely, a s pate of unpre­ce­dented price
rises that had started to cause panic among the general public. ­These two
sets of concerns—­w ith the legitimacy of the CCP’s mandate as rooted in its
revolutionary past and with the “per­for­mance” of an economy in the pro­
cess of being reformed—­came together in an irrepressible outpouring of
public resentment of official corruption and the loud and clear call, spear-
headed by the protesting students, for democracy. The students may not have
had a clear idea of what they ­were ­after or, as a ­later complaint has it, even
what democracy was. But in joining together the twin concerns in their pro-
tests, they ­were nothing if not prescient—­a harbinger of ­things to come and
of a problematic that is still with us.
The CCP, for its part, first had to deal with the immediate challenge to its
legitimacy, indeed to its very survival. It did so by violently putting down the
student-­led democracy movement and then launching a nationwide ideolog-
ical campaign aimed at restoring its legitimacy, at least a semblance of legiti-
macy in the form of the complete absence of re­sis­tance, even verbal re­sis­tance.
It was not without internal division at the highest level of the party, nor in-
deed without moments of mortal danger, that Deng was able to muster the
determination and the sheer military force to crush the students’ “rebellion.”
But when all is said and done, we must see in Deng’s decision and its suc-
cessful execution what must have been a very substantial degree of intraparty
legitimacy. Had this legitimacy been even higher, ­t here would undoubtedly
have been less division and less hesitation than we ­later heard about. But the
very fact that the CCP was able to put down an extremely popu­lar movement
with the open and determined use of deadly force is indicative of a level of
intraparty legitimacy, and hence unity, that must have been very consider-
able indeed. And it is worth noting that the CCP’s intraparty legitimacy has
always mattered even more than its legitimacy in the country at large. In a
way, from the very fact of a high level of intraparty legitimacy, we may even
infer the belief among the more power­f ul members of the CCP at the time
40 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

that the party still enjoyed a substantial degree of legitimacy in the country
at large. This belief was to be proved entirely correct by subsequent develop-
ments, but not before the CCP had gotten around to addressing the second
of the students’ grievances—­namely, ­t hose directed at livelihood issues and
hence at the economy as a ­whole.
This second prong of the CCP’s response to June 4 took the form, espe-
cially, of Deng’s famous southern tour in 1992 to revive the economy and the
sinking fortunes of the party in the wake of the national and international
shock of 1989. Every­one knows what happened a­ fter Deng’s initiative, and it
would be no exaggeration to say that the reform got its second lease on
life—­and what life! From that point on, the party started to pursue economic
growth with unpre­ce­dented determination and freedom from dogma and,
some would say, at all cost. We have since witnessed not only rapid economic
growth culminating in China’s rise to the status of the world’s second-­largest
economy but, more importantly for our purposes, a renewed legitimacy for
the party. Thus, not only has the students’ second concern been effectively
addressed, but their first grievance, having to do with the basis of the CCP’s
legitimacy, has also receded. And the latter is due as much to genuine popu­lar
approval of the CCP as to the deterrence effect of June 4. Since this rejuve-
nated legitimacy has a lot to do with economic growth and with efficient per­
for­mance in general, it is thought by many to be a brand-­new kind of legiti-
macy. What ­else could it be but per­for­mance legitimacy?

What Is Per­for­mance Legitimacy?

But what exactly is per­for­mance legitimacy? It is sometimes also called

performance-­based legitimacy, making it explicit that the legitimacy in ques-
tion is a function of good (meaning, mostly, efficient) per­for­mance, or per-
formative success, and nothing e­ lse. In the Chinese case at hand, this notion
usually seems to carry the implication that per­for­mance legitimacy is all that
the CCP has enjoyed since 1989 and all that is needed. In other words, the
implication is that per­for­mance legitimacy has been a comprehensive substi-
tute for the CCP’s old teleological-­revolutionary legitimacy, and that, as such,
it has been in­de­pen­dently effective and, indeed, very much so.
The picture becomes more complicated when per­for­mance legitimacy is
paired with the other, more standard kind of legitimacy in the distinction
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 41

between input legitimacy and output legitimacy. Per­for­mance legitimacy is

output legitimacy—­what a regime is able to deliver in the shape of vis­i­ble
goods, which is amenable to assessment ­after the delivery. By contrast, input
legitimacy is a regime’s title to state power, an already warranted position
from which it ­w ill then be able to try to deliver what it intends to deliver. For
the CCP, the title, or mandate, even t­ oday still comes from what­ever is sup-
posedly contained in its name (gongchandang, communist party), or ­else
its name would have outlived its usefulness and deserved to be abandoned
for something ­else. More on this ­later, but for now it is necessary to take up
a question that concerns the relation between input and output legitimacy
and is prompted by this very distinction. In the Chinese case, the question
takes this specific form: What is the nature of the relation that has existed
since, say, 1992 between the so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy newly gained
by the CCP and the party’s old teleological-­revolutionary legitimacy? This
question, in turn, gives rise to further questions—or dif­fer­ent ways of
raising what is essentially the same question. How much of the old teleological-­
revolutionary legitimacy is left, or, how strong is it ­today? Does it even
­matter how much is left and how strong it is, and why? Is so-­called per­for­
mance legitimacy a sufficient basis of po­liti­cal authority? Is it in­de­pen­dent
or dependent, and if the latter, on what is it dependent? Is de facto power—­the
sheer fact of being in power and being power­f ul enough to maintain that
power, at least for the time being—­enough to provide a starting point, a prior
position of authority, for per­for­mance legitimacy? Or is legitimacy—­t hat is,
input legitimacy—­necessary to create the starting point for per­for­mance
legitimacy—­t hat is, output legitimacy—to get off the ground?
Before we address such questions, some clues provided by the CCP itself
are worth noting. True, the CCP may have been pursuing economic growth
at all cost, but at the same time it has been guarding its links to the revolu-
tionary past—to 1921 and 1949 and the Long March (literally and meta­phor­
ically) in between—­w ith even greater jealousy and determination. True, the
CCP has been using performative success to strengthen its position, but it
has never given any indication of ­doing so as a substitute for its old commu-
nist revolutionary legitimacy; other­w ise it would not have needed to care so
much about the latter. True, the CCP is giving the Chinese Dream a teleo-
logical substance—­“the ­great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (replacing
the e­ arlier emphasis on individual prosperity and happiness)—­t hat seems to
42 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

have nothing explic­itly communist or revolutionary about it, but it has done
every­t hing pos­si­ble to place the Chinese Dream in the context of 1921 and
1949 and to render the party essential, rather than merely contingently useful,
to its realization.4 “Stay true to the original aspiration” (Buwang chuxin) is
the party’s foremost exhortation to itself, tirelessly highlighted at the nine-
teenth party congress and ever since. What­ever one may say to draw atten-
tion to the subtle or not-­so-­subtle reinterpretation of “the original aspiration,”
even more telling is the emphatic reference to this aspiration as the original
one. True, the CCP, in pursuing economic growth and other per­for­mance
goals, has turned China into what, in many re­spects, looks like a cap­i­tal­ist
society, but it has also stuck to its public self-­understanding as a communist
party presiding over a socialist market economy, with the result that it has
acquired a double identity, neither component of which is less impor­tant or
defining than the other. One could go on in this vein, but this is already
enough to suggest that the proposition that the CCP’s performative success,
amounting to per­for­mance legitimacy, has served as a substitute for its old
communist revolutionary legitimacy is one that the CCP would be the first
to reject. And I believe the party would be entirely correct in ­doing so.
This implies, of course, that the CCP still believes it enjoys to a consider-
able degree its old teleological-­revolutionary legitimacy, or ­else what is no
longer ser­viceable would be ripe for substitution or radical adjustment. In this
too I think the party is entirely right, although the exact degree of legitimacy
in question is hard to gauge and must be left open to debate. Recall what I
said ­earlier about the CCP’s intraparty legitimacy and its dependence on (the
perception of) wider legitimacy in the country at large and vice versa. I said
all that with reference to the strength of the CCP’s position during and ­after
June 1989. I believe the same kind of strength is enjoyed by the party ­today.
Simply put, all signs indicate that the CCP ­today still possesses a sufficiently
strong combination of intraparty legitimacy and wider legitimacy in the
country to maintain a reasonable degree of unity and cohesion and keep po-
tentially fatal factionalism at bay, and to maintain the deterrence effect of
June  4 against any similar uprising. This deterrence effect, created by the
actions of the CCP leadership in 1989, is dependent for its continued efficacy
on the perceived or i­ magined ­w ill on the part of the CCP leadership ­today to
prevent or, if necessary, suppress a repeat of June 4. Th ­ ere is ­every reason to
believe that this ­w ill is indeed strongly pre­sent, which is not to say that it is
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 43

necessarily overwhelmingly pre­sent (it was not so even at the time of Deng);
hence the importance of prevention. And the ­will to thwart and crush all op-
position is, in turn, a function of perceived intraparty legitimacy, itself in-
dicative of perceived wider legitimacy around the country. ­Were ­things other­
wise or perceived other­w ise, China simply would not be as stable as it is
­today. On the other hand, w ­ ere the CCP’s legitimacy, intraparty and beyond,
even higher than it actually is and, more importantly, enduringly so, China
would not need to devote such a large amount of resources and so much ner­
vous energy to maintaining stability or, more bluntly put, to preventing an-
other June 4.
This is where the CCP stands in its own estimation of its legitimacy, or so
we can reasonably infer. It derives a ­great deal of confidence from its perfor-
mative success domestically and, increasingly, also in the international arena,
though not without ominous pushback from the United States in par­tic­u­lar.
And it undoubtedly believes that all this performative success does something
positive for its legitimacy; this is one crucial reason why it has been pursuing
economic growth with such abandon. Yet good per­for­mance by itself does
not speak to the party’s distinctive history and self-­understanding, and, just
as impor­tant, it cannot serve as a basis, discursive or psychological, for the
sheer ­w ill to put down all opposition. For ­t hese purposes, legitimacy—in a
sense that is stronger than and qualitatively dif­fer­ent from so-­called per­for­
mance legitimacy—is called for. That is why the CCP is hanging on for dear
life to its communist revolutionary legacy, however necessary and expedient
it may have found it to finesse the interpretation and pre­sen­ta­t ion of this
legacy.
If we pay close attention to the CCP’s own words and, especially, deeds,
we w­ ill be left in l­ ittle doubt that the party believes, first, that legitimacy (as
distinct from so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy) is even more impor­tant than
per­for­mance (or per­for­mance legitimacy), and, second, that the party still
enjoys a substantial amount of legitimacy. If, as a ­matter of its public self-­
understanding and self-­presentation, the CCP takes its own legitimacy so se-
riously, then we must do so as well in order to understand how the party
operates and intends to operate. If, as a ­matter of self-­estimation, the CCP
still considers itself to be in possession of a considerable, if precarious, level
of legitimacy, then we must, in assessing its pre­sent and ­f uture, give it some
benefit of the doubt.
44 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

The Importance of the Right to Rule

It so happens that I agree with both the CCP’s self-­understanding and its
self-­estimation. Recall, however, my ­earlier prognostic concern that in the
foreseeable ­future the party may well suffer an unpre­ce­dented legitimation
crisis comprising a double shortfall in legitimacy and per­for­mance at the
same time. Not only is this prognosis not in conflict with the party’s self-­
understanding and self-­estimation, it is actually based entirely on my agree-
ment with both of the latter. Indeed, from the CCP’s own words and deeds,
it would be all too easy to infer a sense of crisis on its part that is not so dif­
fer­ent from mine, although ­t here is no need to insist on this point.
The impor­tant t­ hing is that the legitimation crisis I am talking about is
not yet staring China in the face. It is coming but still in the distance. If the
current leadership is betraying an exceptionally acute sense of the possi-
bility of just such a crisis, through its unpre­ce­dented anticorruption cam-
paign and its firm yet anxious tightening of ideological and security con-
trols, it is just as definitely evincing a d egree of confidence, however
qualified, that has not been seen at least since Deng. It is one t­ hing to say
that a formidable crisis ­w ill emerge ­unless effective mea­sures are taken to
prevent it and something ­else to assess ­whether the crisis has already ar-
rived. The unpre­ce­dentedly grave legitimation crisis u ­ nder discussion has
definitely not arrived; far from it.
To say this is to believe, as I d o, that the current leadership is still en-
joying, to a substantial degree, the mandate to preside over China—or le-
gitimacy in a bona fide sense. This mandate is what we may call the right to
rule, and the leadership’s confidence is nothing but part of the larger po­
liti­cal fact of the CCP’s still broadly acknowledged right to rule. This right
must not be reduced to per­for­mance legitimacy. It is true, of course, that since
the close of the Mao era and especially since the honeymoon of Deng’s re-
form came to a definitive end in 1989, the party has been increasingly re-
lying on economic growth and rising prosperity to maintain public support
for or acquiescence in its continuing rule. In this context, per­for­mance is a
­matter of largely economic success, with its widely (if inequitably) distributed
benefits, and so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy is the po­liti­cal acceptability
that thereby accrues to the CCP. This is all very well except that per­for­mance
legitimacy is not legitimacy strictly construed, if only ­because what­ever po­
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 45

liti­cal acceptability is conferred by performative success alone would not be

able to underwrite the legitimate threat and use of state vio­lence, including
to put down June 4 or to preempt its recurrence.
The right to rule includes, above all ­else, the title to employ force in the
interest of rule and of self-­preservation, and this title goes well beyond mere
per­for­mance legitimacy. As such, the right to rule pertains to government
(tongzhi) in its strict and basic sense as distinct from governance (zhili). Gov-
ernment in this sense includes the right to prevent and suppress opposition—­
such opposition as would undermine the po­liti­cal order if left unchecked.
And this derives, in turn, from the right to be in power—­and thereby to be
in legitimate possession of the means of vio­lence—in the first place. By con-
trast, governance is only about managing differences and conflicts within
more or less stable par­ameters already established through government, as
well as delivering other public goods. It is thus a ­matter of carry­ing out re-
sponsibilities, hence of per­for­mance, whereas government is the prior right
to occupy the position that confers such responsibilities, as well as to carry
them out—­and to use vio­lence, if necessary, both to keep itself in this posi-
tion and to discharge its responsibilities. Government or, strictly speaking,
the right to govern (or to rule) is alone “ex ante effective in legitimating deci-
sions,”5 and hence it alone amounts to legitimacy in the fundamental sense
of (prior) authorization. Governance is secondary to and parasitic on gov-
ernment, and, by the same token, per­for­mance is secondary to and parasitic
on legitimacy.
It is worth mentioning in passing Jürgen Habermas’s distinction between
legitimacy as a lifeworld concept and per­for­mance (steering) as a system con-
cept. Within Habermas’s framework, to believe that so-­called per­for­mance
legitimacy can be a substitute for legitimacy proper would be to confuse or
conflate the lifeworld and system. Per­for­mance legitimacy, strictly speaking,
pertains to system—­t he result of successful steering of the economy. Legiti-
macy proper, on the other hand, has to do with the lifeworld—­t hat is, with
communicating subjects who must be convinced (by good arguments) rather
than bought off (with material benefits such as rising living standards). ­There
is thus a huge, qualitative difference between legitimation deficits and steering
deficits.6
It is also worth briefly bringing in the concept of sovereignty.7 It would
suffice to point out the closeness in meaning between the right to rule and
46 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

sovereignty to realize how far so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy falls short

of what is required by the CCP and of what is indeed claimed by it. For what
the CCP claims for itself, and still enjoys to a substantial degree (as I am ar-
guing), is what is in effect sovereignty of the party, as expressed in the lan-
guage of a species of popu­lar sovereignty that is mediated by the CCP’s con-
stitutionally stipulated exclusive representative function. By this standard,
per­for­mance legitimacy is not enough and not what is needed first and fore-
most. The exclusive right to rule, or sovereignty—­t hat which authorizes the
uniquely legitimate use of state power—is what the party needs and claims;
in other words, legitimacy in its fundamental and integral sense. Compared
to this, so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy is secondary and derivative, in-
volving only what is (well) done with what must be antecedently and in­de­
pen­dently authorized in the first place, although it contributes to legitimacy
proper in ways that I s­ hall discuss presently.
This distinction between the right to rule and per­for­mance legitimacy is
crucial for any reliable diagnosis of the po­liti­cal strength of the party ­today
and for any plausible prognosis of how long this strength is likely to last. For
analytical purposes, per­for­mance legitimacy is best used as a descriptive no-
tion, a n otion applied from a t hird-­person, observer perspective to the
real­ity of the po­liti­cal relation between the CCP and the populace. In the pre­
sent context, the right to rule is to be taken in exactly the same descriptive
sense. Thus, by using the phrase right to rule, I do not intend ­here to make a
first-­person, reflective, normative judgment but only to render a third-­person,
empirical assessment of ­whether the party actually enjoys—­t hat is, is suffi-
ciently widely acknowledged to have—­t he right to rule.
It makes a world of difference ­whether one views the current po­liti­cal
standing of the CCP vis-­à-­v is the populace chiefly in terms of per­for­mance
legitimacy or the right to rule. From a diagnostic point of view, as we ­shall
see, the difference boils down to, first, w ­ hether the party r­ eally enjoys much
legitimacy in the first place and, second, what exactly the party is d ­ oing when
it copes with legitimation prob­lems by ostensibly relying on performative suc-
cess. With regard to the second issue, it w ­ ill turn out that both per­for­mance
legitimacy and the right to rule are partially pre­sent in the current po­liti­cal
relationship between the CCP and the populace. Even so, it is still useful, in-
deed essential, to draw the distinction in order to capture the complexity of
the relationship and especially to be alert and attentive to the ever-­evolving
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 47

balance between per­for­mance legitimacy and the right to rule and its pro-
found implications. In the meantime, this brings me to the ­matter of
prognosis.
From a prognostic point of view, the difference between the two percep-
tions of the po­liti­cal standing of the CCP vis-­à-­v is the populace is more im-
mediately obvious, so I can briefly state it. If, or insofar as, the CCP is relying
on per­for­mance legitimacy, its po­liti­cal ­future ­will depend on ­whether it ­will
be able to maintain its performative success, at what level, and for how
long—­the only other significant variable being what happens to be the popu­lar
understanding of performative success at any given time and how success-
fully the party is able to shape it. On the other hand, if, or insofar as, the CCP
is still largely enjoying the right to rule, then the crucial question is ­whether
and for how long it ­w ill be able to keep fresh and plausible the conditions for
this right to rule. Depending on which prognostic approach is a­ dopted, one
­w ill be looking for dif­fer­ent signs to see how well the party is ­doing and at
what point, if any, it ­w ill encounter exceptionally challenging, even insur-
mountable, legitimation prob­lems. Depending on this choice as well, one ­will
­either view Xi Jinping’s speech at the nineteenth party congress as a highly
significant and potentially highly impactful attempt to shape the popu­lar un-
derstanding of what properly counts as performative success in what is now
called the new era—­t hat is, the Xi era—or view it as both this and an ex-
traordinarily determined renewal of the CCP’s claim to the right to rule.
I happen to f­ avor the second prognostic approach, as well as the diag-
nostic approach that goes with it—in keeping with the CCP’s own self-­
understanding and self-­estimation. I hasten to add that ­t here is an ele­ment
of truth in the other approach too, and yet, as we ­shall see, this is the case
only if the so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy is viewed as complementary to,
indeed parasitic on, a substantial degree of the right to rule. Without this
proviso, as I ­w ill try to show, the very notion of per­for­mance legitimacy
­w ill cease to make much sense even diagnostically, let alone for prognostic
purposes.
Now, t­ hose who prefer to work with the notion of per­for­mance legiti-
macy precisely in the absence of this proviso may well object that, diagnosti-
cally, I am attributing to the CCP more legitimacy than it r­ eally has—­t hat is,
more bona fide legitimacy in the sense of the right to rule. They may go on to
suggest that I seem to be hinting, by way of an implicit prognosis, that the
48 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

party may well be able to hang on to its po­liti­cal supremacy in­def­initely.

Paradoxically, however, it is their diagnosis that is more open to such prog-
nostic implications. For if the CCP is able to rely effectively and exclusively
on per­for­mance legitimacy, and has been for quite some time, t­ here is no
reason why it cannot continue to do so in­def­initely other than the highly
contingent one that a r easonably high level of per­for­mance may not be
forthcoming. The strongest conclusion supported by an awareness of such
contingency is that per­for­mance legitimacy is without guarantee, but then,
by the same token, the discontinuation of per­for­mance legitimacy can be
no more certain, in princi­ple. Moreover, per­for­mance is a flexible notion,
subject to official (as well as popu­lar) reinterpretation and reshaping, and
therefore per­for­mance legitimacy must be treated as flexible as well. This
adds to the contingency already noted, with the result that it is doubly con-
tingent how well and for how long the CCP will be able to maintain a
reasonably high level of per­for­mance and hence a reasonably high level of
per­for­mance legitimacy. Per­for­mance legitimacy, if such it is, may grind to
a halt anytime but could also last a very long time indeed, with manageable
ups and downs along the way. Although this lack of certainty ­either way
would be enough to set one’s prudential instincts ­going, the prognosis based
exclusively on per­for­mance legitimacy is hardly a definitely pessimistic one.
I am, ­needless to say, not competing to see who can deliver the more neg-
ative prognosis (or diagnosis, for that ­matter). The point is not to be negative
but to be accurate—to have a conceptually reasonably precise basis for a prog-
nosis (or diagnosis) along the right lines. In this spirit, let me put forward
what happens to be a more negative prognosis. It is based on my diagnosis,
according to which the CCP is still enjoying the right to rule, to a substan-
tial degree, and that is the main reason why it has been able to preside over
China with the stability and the economic and other achievements for which
it is correctly credited—­and indeed to allow its performative success to help
enhance its legitimacy in the first place. Now, in the light of this diagnosis,
the principal determinant of the CCP’s foreseeable po­liti­cal ­f uture is what
happens to t­ hose conditions that have served as the basis of its right to rule.
As I w ­ ill spell out presently, ­t here is reason to think that t­ hose conditions,
which have been gradually deteriorating in the reform era, ­will weaken dras-
tically and precipitously in the foreseeable f­ uture—­t hat is, once the pre­sent
party leadership has effectively (not only nominally) left the po­liti­cal stage.
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 49

What thus lies in store for the party, and for the country at large, is an unpre­
ce­dented legitimation crisis with the distinct potential to shake to its foun-
dations the CCP’s right to rule. When this happens, my hypothesis goes, no
amount of performative success or per­for­mance legitimacy ­w ill be able to
compensate, and the only effective substitute ­w ill have to be a new basis for
the right to rule. To spell out this line of reasoning, we must look more closely
at the nature of the relation between per­for­mance and legitimacy.

Enhancement of Legitimacy versus Amelioration

of a Lack of Legitimacy

I have argued that per­for­mance legitimacy is not r­ eally legitimacy in the

sense of the right to rule, where “the right” signifies (normative) title or war-
rant and “to rule” involves the comprehensive exercise of power well beyond
mere per­for­mance and governance. This does not mean that performative
success cannot contribute in a s ignificant way to legitimacy—­that is, legiti-
macy properly so called. In the pre­sent case, the key to such a contribution
lies in the CCP’s ability to create a narrative that makes it pos­si­ble to hitch its
performative success to what­ever remains of its old teleological-­revolutionary
legitimacy. That is why successive leaderships of the party since Deng have
been careful to retain the totemic status of Mao in their legitimation dis-
course. That is why they are hanging on to the original name of the party
despite the noiseless evaporation of communism from the CCP’s doctrine
and agenda, the occasional lip ser­vice notwithstanding, just as they are re-
fusing to let go of Marxism as still supposedly the under­lying theoretical basis
and guidance for what is happening in China t­ oday, including all of its per-
formative success. And that is also why they, and the propagandists in their
employ, never tire of linking the achievements of the Deng-­initiated reform
(the so-­called second thirty years) to the accomplishments of the Mao-­led
­earlier phase of communist rule (the so-­called first thirty years), and, of
course, linking both to the Marxist-­inspired revolutionary strug­gles whose
success led to the founding of the P ­ eople’s Republic of China in 1949. It is of
the highest ideological and symbolic significance that the current CCP leader-
ship’s ­grand objectives are framed in terms of two “one hundred years”—­the
first one hundred years reaching all the way back to 1921, the year that saw
the birth of the CCP, and the second one hundred years dating from 1949.8 It
50 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

is b ­ ecause of their supposedly uninterrupted link to 1921 that China’s

achievements by 2020 ­w ill be thought pos­si­ble and be what they are, in
meaning and significance, and the same is true of the even bigger accom-
plishments that China is projected to have secured by the year 2050. Indeed,
without the jealous guardianship of the party’s links to ­these two ­great be-
ginnings, the loci of “the original aspiration,” t­ here would be no 2020 or 2050
to speak of—­and no CCP to speak of at ­either of ­these ­future times.
For all its social, economic, and even po­liti­cal transformation in the re-
form era, then, the CCP remains unshaken in its official self-­understanding
and public identity in terms of its communist revolutionary origins. This is
­because it is from its founding moment alone that even t­ oday’s CCP still de-
rives all of its right to rule, all of its legitimacy in the strict sense. Of course,
performative success ­matters, but in a way that is legitimacy enhancing only
when interpreted as having its place and meaning in the longer, larger
teleological-­revolutionary master narrative. (This is why the occasional,
somewhat abashed reference to a communist ­f uture cannot be avoided alto-
gether even as China is fast becoming a billionaires’ paradise.) To contribute
to legitimacy, performative success needs a goal, a point of reference, a po­
liti­cal agent with a definite identity, and all of ­these are provided by this master
narrative. Conversely, for the master narrative to retain its relevance ­today,
to be a living narrative, it must unceasingly renew itself, and this requires,
among other t­ hings, a new kind of per­for­mance. The economic reform, whose
upshot is now insistently called the socialist market economy, is but part of
the latest chapter of the CCP’s master narrative. Another part is “the g­ reat
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” whose nature and meaning is suppos-
edly “socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era” (the name given
to Xi Jinping Thought), rather than mere nationalism, if only by virtue of its
being led by the party. In this context, what is called per­for­mance or per­for­
mance legitimacy as if it ­were something in­de­pen­dent or freestanding is ac-
tually nothing but a sign of the successful renewal of the master narrative—­the
communist revolution’s new lease on life in a new era. Nothing seems more
natu­ral, in this master narrative, than the reinvigorated or reinvented com-
munist revolution feeding on, and manifesting itself in, a new kind of per­
for­mance fit for the twenty-­first ­century.
­W hether, and to what degree, per­for­mance can be thus hitched to legiti-
macy and thereby contribute directly to it is a complicated ­matter. Given the
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 51

communist revolutionary tenor of the CCP’s legitimacy, which cannot be re-

moved without also eviscerating the legitimacy itself, and given the quasi-­
capitalist thrust of the Chinese economy and way of life t­ oday and hence of
what counts as performative success, it should come as no surprise if such
linkage does not happen smoothly and with anything approaching universal
credibility. The CCP definitely has its work cut out for it. But it would be naïve
to dogmatically rule out all room for some kind of belief sufficient to achieve
a mea­sure of success in hitching genuinely appreciated per­for­mance to some
vaguely endorsed legitimacy. Much depends on the interpretative ingenuity
of the party, not least in making a p lausible move from a d istinctive
teleological-­revolutionary agenda to the much more general and increasingly
depoliticized one of “the g­ reat rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Much also
depends on the goodwill and credulity of the populace, which in turn is af-
fected by how well aggregate performative success translates into substan-
tial and widespread benefits for individuals and communities. Above all, the
CCP must be taken to still boast a substantial amount of legitimacy, to begin
with, to which performative success can be hitched. The more the party suc-
ceeds in updating its master narrative and making its links to the revolu-
tionary legacy plausible, the better able it ­w ill be to channel performative
success into a renewed right to rule instead of leaving it unassimilated and
freestanding.
Insofar as performative success has served to shore up the CCP’s right to
rule—­that is, its legitimacy in the strict sense—it can only have done so along
the lines just sketched. Other­w ise, per­for­mance would come across as free-
standing, in which case it would not bestow or enhance the right to rule, the
title to exercise power, in all the customary senses associated with rule and
power. Other­wise, to be more precise, performative success would not be able
to count as such within the CCP’s own master narrative, and no legitimating
consequences would accrue to the party as the performer. Only when per-
formative success contributes to legitimacy in an internal, organic way—­that
is, via a reasonably credible master narrative—­does it deserve to be called per­
for­mance legitimacy. But then ­t here ­w ill be no need for a separate category
of per­for­mance legitimacy, ­because all legitimacy is dependent on success in
some kind of per­for­mance that is fit to be incorporated into some legitima-
tion discourse.9 What defines a par­tic­u­lar instance of good per­for­mance is
­whether it is internally related to legitimacy—­t hat is, by lending itself to
52 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

assimilation into the master narrative constructed around the legitimacy

in question. Only per­for­mance that meets this standard is potentially legiti-
macy enhancing. Any other per­for­mance can bear on legitimacy only in
an external, ad hoc manner and hence with only l­ imited efficacy; more on
this in a moment.
The distinction between per­for­mance and legitimacy remains a u seful
one, however, allowing for the possibility that per­for­mance can indeed be
disconnected from legitimacy. When this possibility materializes, the dis-
tinction between per­for­mance and legitimacy ­will take a unique form—­
namely, as the distinction between freestanding per­for­mance (that is, per­
for­mance whose meaning for citizens differs from its official meaning in the
regime’s legitimation discourse and that is hence uncoupled from legiti-
macy) and inclusive legitimacy (that is, legitimacy understood as inclusive of
what­ever per­for­mance is internal to it).
This new distinction enables me to make a further, rather dif­fer­ent point
about the contribution of the CCP’s performative success to its legitimacy
from my ­earlier one. Implicit in my e­ arlier point, with its distinct scenario,
is the notion of inclusive legitimacy such that good per­for­mance makes an
internal, organic contribution to legitimacy by being embedded in the same
master narrative of which legitimacy itself is an integral part. A dif­fer­ent sce-
nario is suggested by the notion of freestanding per­for­mance. By definition,
freestanding per­for­mance is per­for­mance external to or uncoupled from
legitimacy, but this does not mean that it cannot impinge on legitimacy in
some other way. When freestanding per­for­mance impinges on legitimacy,
then, what happens is not that performative success contributes strictly to
legitimacy but rather that such success helps ameliorate a lack of legitimacy,
with the result that although legitimacy itself is not enhanced, its lack is
nevertheless made to ­matter somewhat less, other ­t hings being equal. We
approach h ­ ere a situation in which a po­l iti­c al order is “adhered to from
motives of pure expediency,” as distinct from the more reliable motive of
conformity based on legitimacy.10 ­There are thus two ways in which a
­regime’s performative success can make a positive difference with regard to
legitimacy—­t hrough enhancement in one case and mere amelioration (pure
expediency) in the other. We only have to make this distinction to realize
what a huge difference ­t here must be between enhancement of legitimacy
through internally related good per­for­mance, on the one hand, and amelio-
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 53

ration of a lack of legitimacy through externally related, freestanding good

per­for­mance, on the other. What may appear to be the same performative
success in fact stands in two radically dif­fer­ent relations to legitimacy—an
internal relation to legitimacy or an external one to a lack of legitimacy—­and
the mechanisms involved, as well as their effects, are correspondingly
divergent.
The commonsense understanding of the ­matter is rather confused ­because
it does not draw this much-­needed distinction. By per­for­mance legitimacy it
seems to mean amelioration, in that it takes compensation to be the chief
mechanism mediating positive per­for­mance and not-­so-­positive legitimacy.
Yet the very notion of per­for­mance legitimacy, if taken at face value, pushes
one ­toward the other interpretation. Despite this confusion, a more chari-
table reading may suggest that what is usually meant is amelioration of a lack
of legitimacy rather than enhancement of legitimacy.
I mention this confusion not only ­because it is worth clearing up but also
for a much more impor­tant purpose, and that is to suggest that precisely this
confusion is (understandably) caused by the complex and evolving real­ity on
the ground. First, though, some recapitulation is in order. When I say, as I
did e­ arlier, that the current CCP leadership is still largely enjoying the right
to rule, I mean to emphasize that this is a m ­ atter of legitimacy strictly con-
strued rather than of per­for­mance as in so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy.
I also wish to recall that the performative success of the party can contribute
to legitimacy enhancement only if the party is able to hitch such success to
what remains of its legitimacy, and this requires that what is left of its legiti-
macy must be substantial enough to begin with. What we find h ­ ere is, in a
nutshell, legitimacy enhancement through performative success. Now, it is
pos­si­ble to doubt that ­t here is much lingering legitimacy to begin with and
hence to doubt that ­t here can be much performative enhancement of legiti-
macy. In other words, in appraising the role of the CCP’s performative suc-
cess in relation to its legitimacy, it is pos­si­ble, indeed perfectly reasonable, to
question how much of what we are witnessing is enhancement and how much
is mere amelioration. While I would still insist, for reasons already given, that
the current CCP leadership still enjoys the right to rule to a substantial de-
gree, I am equally strongly inclined to add that this mandate is rather shaky
and incapable of transforming all performative success into legitimacy.
Thus, all one can cautiously and plausibly say is that we are witnessing both
54 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

enhancement of legitimacy and amelioration of a l ack of legitimacy, in

ever-­evolving proportions.
For my purposes it is quite unnecessary to make a more precise or de-
finitive assessment than this. What is impor­tant, rather, is to recognize a
broad trend. Having noted that both enhancement and amelioration
through performative success have been at work u ­ nder the current leader-
ship and before, I think it safe to suggest that the f­ uture ­w ill see an ever-­
dwindling proportion of enhancement in ­favor of mere amelioration. This
is for the ­simple reason, more on which in a moment, that t­ here w ­ ill be less
and less legitimacy for performative success to be hitched to and thereby
enhance.
It is not difficult to see where this pro­cess of waning legitimacy and the
shrinking possibility of legitimacy enhancement through good per­for­mance
­w ill lead us. For sooner or ­later an inflexion point ­w ill be reached at which a
critical mass of legitimacy can no longer be maintained, with two devastating
consequences. In the first place, without a sufficiently large mass of legitimacy
to soak up performative success, the very possibility of legitimacy en-
hancement through performative success ­w ill be lost. One shudders at this
­prospect—­the prospect that performative success, however other­wise im-
pressive, ­w ill one day no longer be capable of enhancing the CCP’s distinc-
tive legitimacy. What about amelioration of the lack of legitimacy, then? The
prob­lem is that with legitimacy enhancement now out of the equation, ­t here
must be an irredeemable lack of legitimacy to compensate for, which is in-
deed what it takes to render legitimacy enhancement no longer pos­si­ble. This
leads, then, to the second devastating consequence, and that is the radically
reduced efficacy of amelioration when t­ here is simply too much of a lack of
legitimacy to ameliorate, even assuming what would other­wise be consid-
ered a high degree of (freestanding) performative success.
It is at this point, a true inflexion point, that the unpre­ce­dented legitima-
tion crisis I spoke of e­ arlier ­w ill stare China in the face. If this is the case, the
implication is profound: what is truly necessary to maintain the po­liti­cal
status quo in its essentials is not so much the near certainty of unceasing per-
formative success as the indefinite continuation of the CCP’s current and
only legitimacy as rooted in the vitality of its communist teleological-­
revolutionary past. What is most to be feared, accordingly, is not the party’s
alleged overdependence on per­for­mance but rather its reliance on a termi-
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 55

nally implausible revolutionary legitimacy both in its own right and as a con-
dition for appropriating performative success.

Excursus on Daniel Bell and Po­liti­cal Meritocracy

It is worth making a digression to show, in terms of the distinction just

established, why Daniel Bell’s defense of what he calls the China model is
mistaken insofar as it is based on the notion of per­for­mance legitimacy. Bell
says, in the introduction to his 2015 book, that he is arguing for po­liti­cal mer-
itocracy as distinct from what may be called administrative meritocracy.11 I
do not see anything r­ eally or sufficiently po­liti­cal about such a meritocracy.
This is ­because, first, Bell passes over the fact that the legitimacy of the CCP
is bound up with the communist revolution stretching back to the two cru-
cial years of 1921 and 1949. No m ­ atter how much t­ hings have changed since
the start of the reform four de­cades ago, the CCP itself has not given up its
communist revolutionary legacy. This fact alone means that Bell’s argument
for po­liti­cal meritocracy solely in terms of per­for­mance legitimacy is seri-
ously skewed by removing the CCP’s self-­professed foundational ele­ment of
its legitimacy from the equation.
The second reason why Bell’s argument is insufficiently po­liti­cal is that
he proceeds on the openly stated assumption that China’s one-­party po­
liti­cal system is, in his words, “not about to collapse.” Bell says that one can
simply make this assumption and “argue for improvements on that basis.”12
I think this is less prudent than a po­liti­cal argument should be. If (a big “if”)
this assumption is correct, Bell’s entire argument becomes quite plausible and
persuasive, at least to some—­which makes this a crucial assumption. I have
my own reasons for questioning this assumption, as presented elsewhere in
this chapter and in Chapter 2. But ­here it suffices to defer to the CCP itself,
which is obviously conducting its business on an assumption very dif­fer­ent
from Bell’s, and this fact deserves to be taken seriously. The party’s own as-
sumption is seldom named but is implicit in the scale and intensity of its
current mea­sures to strengthen its “po­liti­cal security” (zhengzhi anquan),
from which it is not difficult to glimpse a c orresponding lack of certainty
regarding regime perpetuation.
It is necessary therefore to bring politics—or more politics—­into Bell’s
argument and see what results from this change. To this end, one must first
56 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

try to pin down what it is that we, including Bell, must be talking about when
we speak of meritocracy in the current Chinese context. The CCP was not
set up, in 1921, as a meritocratic organ­ization in the sense in which we are
using the term meritocracy ­today. Nor even did it come to power, as the
founder of the P ­ eople’s Republic of China in 1949, as a meritocratic organ­
ization. It was a Leninist vanguard party, but that is totally dif­fer­ent from
what Bell means by meritocracy. According to his understanding of meritoc-
racy, the party mutated into a meritocracy only in the reform era, especially
­after the reform got its second lease on life in 1992. For, from that point on, it
started to pursue economic growth with grim determination and, initially
and for quite some time thereafter, at all cost. The result was not only stun-
ningly rapid and sustained economic growth but also, more impor­tant for
our purposes, a renewed legitimacy for the CCP. Since this revived legiti-
macy clearly bears some impor­tant causal relation to good economic and
other per­for­mance, it has come to be called per­for­mance legitimacy. Bell’s
name for it is “po­liti­cal meritocracy.”
The prob­lem with po­liti­cal meritocracy as explained by Bell is that it is
too vague a concept in its semantic relation to legitimacy. Some clarification
is needed and can be facilitated by my distinction between enhancement of
legitimacy through good per­for­mance and amelioration of a l ack of legiti-
macy through good per­for­mance, as drawn e­ arlier in this chapter. I t hink
what Bell means when he talks about CCP-­style meritocracy is best under-
stood as what I am calling legitimacy enhancement through good per­for­
mance. The ­matter becomes clearer still if we make a slight terminological
adjustment and call it legitimacy enhancement through meritocracy, meri-
tocracy being a ­matter of good per­for­mance.
The point of translating Bell’s notion of meritocracy is to show that meri-
tocracy cannot stand alone—­t hat is, cannot serve as its own source of legiti-
macy. Rather, meritocracy finds its precondition in some already more or
less legitimate po­liti­cal arrangement, and it finds an impor­tant ele­ment of
its usefulness in contributing to the enhancement of the legitimacy in ques-
tion. We misunderstand meritocracy, as meant by Bell, if we think that it is
self-­sufficient or that it is legitimacy itself. Meritocracy is nothing but a way
of ­doing ­t hings—­involving institutions and personnel—­t hat reliably pro-
duces good per­for­mance, however good per­for­mance is understood in a le-
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 57

gitimate po­liti­cal order in the first place. As such, meritocracy is only of

secondary importance—­because it is parasitic on legitimacy.
By the same token, meritocracy is also not on the same level as democ-
racy and is thus, strictly speaking, not fit to be pitted against democracy,
or mixed with it. ­After all, democracy is first and foremost a p rinci­ple of
­government—­a way of conferring legitimacy on government, not merely a
method of producing the personnel to administer a po­liti­cal unit at what­
ever level. The village-­level elections that Bell talks about have l­ ittle to do
with legitimacy: they are a procedure for producing officials at the grass-
roots level and derive their seeming legitimacy-­engendering function from
endorsement higher up the chain of command, ultimately from the CCP’s
authorization. Bell is definitely not talking about a m ixed regime on the
model of Aristotle or Polybius.
This, then, is what I think Bell means—or must mean if his overall argu-
ment is to make clear sense: namely, that the real alternatives, in the Chinese
context, are not democracy versus meritocracy but democracy (as a basis of
legitimacy) versus communist one-­party rule (as a basis of legitimacy). When
Bell argues for meritocracy in China, therefore, he is actually pitting com-
munist one-­party rule against democracy and favoring the former. This does
not make him an “apologist” for the CCP, however, but instead the defender
of a kind of meritocracy that is made pos­si­ble by the party. For Bell ­favors
communist one-­party rule for a par­tic­u­lar reason, and that reason is only that
it delivers better performance—of a generically modern and therefore es-
sentially bourgeois kind—­t han democracy would, at least in the Chinese
context. (This is why Bell is indifferent regarding the choice between the
current CCP and another CCP, with the second C in the latter standing for
Confucian, as the guarantor of meritocracy and would prob­ably ­favor the
latter, other ­things being equal.) Bell’s reasoning may be spelled out thus: in
the current Chinese arrangement, meritocracy (per­for­mance) helps enhance
communist one-­party rule (legitimacy), and the latter, in turn, is good at
producing and maintaining a m eritocracy—in a v irtuous circle. It is this
combination of two ele­ments that Bell is actually pitting against its alterna-
tive, which also consists of two ele­ments—­namely, democracy (legitimacy)
and the (supposed) relative absence of meritocracy and hence a lower level of
per­for­mance. One upshot, among ­others, is that it would not pay to initiate
58 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

demo­cratic change in China to fix a system that not only ­isn’t broken but is
in fact working reasonably well, though not perfectly.
This seems the most plausible way of making sense of Bell’s argument for
po­liti­cal meritocracy. Thus understood, the argument is vitiated by two as-
sumptions. The first, already noted, is that the CCP is not g­ oing to face a po-
tentially fatal legitimation crisis. The second assumption, an unspoken one,
is that per­for­mance ­matters more than anything ­else, which forgets that per­
for­mance is not legitimacy and that legitimacy m ­ atters even more, both in
its own right and as a precondition of per­for­mance.
Recall my point that China’s current meritocracy is parasitic on legiti-
mate communist rule. I e­ arlier first translated Bell’s notion of meritocracy
as meaning legitimacy enhancement through meritocracy and then showed
the enhancement to be reciprocal, in that communist one-­party rule also en-
hances meritocracy. Now, it may be that Bell does not care that much about
legitimacy enhancement through meritocracy. For he seems to care rather
more about meritocracy enhancement through communist one-­party rule.
What­ever the case may be, it remains true that meritocracy is parasitic on
legitimacy—­that is, on the legitimacy of communist one-­party rule. Given
this dependence, and given that it would not be prudent to rule out the pos-
sibility of a legitimation crisis, we must be cognizant of a pos­si­ble scenario in
which the legitimacy of communist one-­party rule ­will drastically weaken or
even dis­appear, leaving meritocracy with ­little or nothing to be parasitic on.
What then? Bell, in the second appendix to his book, pre­sents a dialogue
concerning meritocracy in both a communist form and a Confucian form,
which end up being indistinguishable. In so d ­ oing, Bell is betraying, ever so
subtly, a lack of confidence in his assumption that China’s communist one-­
party rule is rock-­solid. ­W hether the hidden substitute combination—­
Confucianism as a new basis of legitimacy plus meritocracy—­w ill work is a
­matter I ­w ill take up briefly in Chapter 3.

Good Per­for­mance Is Almost as Essential

as Legitimacy

Distinguishing between enhancement of legitimacy and amelioration of

a lack of legitimacy is a crucial conceptual step in our attempt to pinpoint the
crux of the CCP’s ­future legitimation crisis. The most impor­tant upshot of
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 59

this distinction, as we have seen, is the absolute indispensability of a substan-

tial amount of legitimacy in order for good per­for­mance to play the highly
impor­tant role of an additional boost. It follows from this relation between
legitimacy and per­for­mance that, for the purpose of assessing the likelihood
of a s erious legitimation crisis in the foreseeable ­future, it makes the most
sense to concentrate on legitimacy, although the impact of per­for­mance is by
no means negligible. This is what I s­ hall do, but first t­ here is one further step
to take in clarifying the relation between legitimacy and per­for­mance.
This step involves showing that legitimacy and per­for­mance are even more
internally related, and hence even more closely related, than I have been able
to demonstrate through the notion of inclusive legitimacy—so called, as the
reader w ­ ill recall, ­because it is natu­ral to think of legitimacy as including
some kind of per­for­mance that is internally related to it. In other words, ­every
type of legitimacy requires as a basic condition of its fulfillment a certain de-
gree of good per­for­mance as defined by the legitimacy in question. What
this means is that the per­for­mance in question, the per­for­mance covered by
inclusive legitimacy, has no po­liti­cal meaning or significance apart from the
legitimacy to which it organically contributes. For per­for­mance is essentially
a ­matter of competence in realizing the shared ends of a society, no m ­ atter
what t­ hese ends happen to be and how they have come to be formed. Since
shared ends reflect and are supported by shared values, competence regarding
the former also involves, at a deeper level, a reasonable degree of fidelity to
the latter. It is only against this background of shared ends and values that
­there can be such a t­ hing as good per­for­mance by a ruler, and, if so, all good
per­for­mance must be legitimacy enhancing.13 Incidentally, if this is the case,
then the notion of amelioration of a lack of legitimacy through good per­for­
mance appears to be a contradiction in terms, and it is therefore necessary
to revisit the notion in order to be more exact about what it means and is
meant to be used for. This I w ­ ill do in due course. For now, I want to empha-
size that just as with shared ends, so with the shared values under­lying them,
per­for­mance is normally mea­sured with reference to them as they are (more
or less) given, or as if they w ­ ere given. Moreover, ­because, and to the degree
that, they are given and taken for granted, they recede into the background.
That is to say, t­ hese shared ends and values, which do the work of legitimation,
can dis­appear so much from view as to create the illusion that per­for­mance
alone is what ­matters. When we speak of the good per­for­mance of the CCP
60 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

in recent de­cades, for example, the shared ends and values all revolve around
economic growth, rising living standards, and national rejuvenation, against
the carefully engineered backdrop of a not-­so-­distant past of national weak-
ness, individual poverty, and disruptive class strug­gle. The party has played
a leading role, of course, in creating the shared ends and values in the first
place, but it is only ­after a consensus has emerged that we have sufficiently
unproblematic and objective-­looking standards by which to mea­sure its
per­for­mance. And it is only competent per­for­mance based on publicly em-
braced standards that can serve as a boost to legitimacy. Such legitimacy is
made all the more secure if and when ­t hose in power are able to effectively
articulate the shared ends and values and thereby put their stamp on the
legitimacy-­giving source, as the CCP seems to be ­doing in terms of the Chi-
nese Dream.
It is not at all surprising that the legitimacy generated in this way has
been considerable. A ­ fter all, insofar as the CCP is given credit for good
per­for­mance, this must mean that it has well served the needs, interests,
and values of Chinese society as t­ hese have evolved in the reform era. It is
another m ­ atter, a debatable ­matter, exactly how well it has done so, by public
standards, in view of the corruption, in­equality, and environmental degra-
dation that have caused so much resentment or dissatisfaction, for t­ hese
­t hings too have come to belong to the per­for­mance dimension of legitimacy
in a way not always amenable to the CCP’s control. What is clear, and only
natu­ral, given the thoroughly internal relation between a ruler’s good per­
for­mance and society’s values, is that the better the CCP’s per­for­mance is re-
garded, the greater its legitimacy w ­ ill be. Indeed, b
­ ecause of this internal
relation, good per­for­mance is always required for legitimacy and bad per­for­
mance is always detrimental to legitimacy. This internal relation between
legitimacy and per­for­mance, which cuts both ways, makes the uninterrupted
maintenance of legitimacy a very tall order indeed. In good times it is pos­
si­ble for the party’s per­for­mance to be so dazzling that it seems to render the
very question of legitimacy superfluous and even invisible, not least given the
further fact that the party is already in power and has all the coercive and
ideological instruments of state power at its disposal. But it is pos­si­ble for this
to happen, or to imagine it happening, only for a time, b ­ ecause maintaining
good per­for­mance according to existing standards is difficult enough, main-
taining consensus about the ends and values by which per­for­mance ­w ill be
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 61

judged on an ever-­evolving basis can be very tricky in its own way, and main-
taining both si­mul­ta­neously over time is next to impossible ­under the
modern conditions of life. We do not yet know how successful the Chinese
Dream w ­ ill be—as per­for­mance, as consensus about ends and values, and as
calibration between the two—­and it would be premature to count on its un-
hampered success.
Just remember how Mao’s earnestly pursued communist proj­ect came to
grief. Unlike the goals and aspirations of the reform initiated by Deng, com-
munism did not emerge with much (credible appearance of) spontaneity from
within Chinese society. Instead, for better or worse, it was overtly imposed
on Chinese society as a goal ­toward which, upon the CCP’s seizure of power
in 1949, the entire ­people had henceforth to move ­whether they liked it or
not. As such, communism was no ordinary end and value but a telos, an over-
arching goal with Reason and Science and History on its side. It thus pro-
vided not merely a mundane and contingent standard for what was to count
as competent per­for­mance but, well beyond this, something so unimpeach-
ably grounded and so ultimately impor­tant as to give meaning and purpose
to every­t hing else—­including po­liti­cal power. It was the CCP’s resounding
answer to the question of why it, the Communist Party, was alone fit to wield
po­liti­cal power. One of the most striking features of a teleological notion of
legitimacy is that good per­for­mance is so closely bound up with it as to be
hardly distinct, and this means that bad per­for­mance ­w ill sooner or l­ ater
bring down the telos itself and all the legitimacy based on it. This, indeed,
has been the fate of the teleological legitimacy that the CCP was able to con-
struct for itself at a time when it believed in communism and, naming itself
accordingly, believed in its ability to deliver the goods. The result was a dis-
tinctive legitimation crisis, a crisis of perceived bad per­for­mance as mea­sured
by the communist telos. In the end, it was disappointing per­for­mance, not
so much the cognitive discrediting of the telos itself, that brought the Mao
era to an end, rendering a major new departure necessary and forming the
basis of the consensus around which Deng’s reform was launched.14
This is where we are t­ oday. Mao’s communism may have been discon-
tinued, revolution may have been given up as a means of accomplishing
society’s ends and values, and the teleological conception of legitimacy may
have been filled with new content, such as the Chinese Dream, that is mas-
sively depoliticized compared with the old communist telos. But t­ oday’s CCP
62 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

still rules by a logic that makes legitimacy and per­for­mance so mutually

dependent that the party-­state is si­mul­ta­neously and equally vulnerable to
legitimation prob­lems and per­for­mance prob­lems. Indeed, serious per­for­
mance prob­lems cannot but be legitimation prob­lems, and vice versa. And,
as I have already suggested, such prob­lems can occur not only in the form of
inadequate per­for­mance with reference to taken-­for-­granted ends and values
but also at the level where ends and values are determined and calibrated with
per­for­mance. It is only in this comprehensive light that we can properly ap-
preciate the double shortfall, mentioned at the start of this chapter, in all its
gravity.

The Paradox of Legitimacy

I must now make a digression in order to prevent a pos­si­ble misunder-

standing—­and also to further bring out, by means of a contrast, the special
character of the CCP’s systemic vulnerability to legitimation crises. Nothing
in the previous section must be taken to imply that legitimacy and per­for­
mance are necessarily so tightly joined together that they must stand or fall
together. All I was claiming is that this extremely close relationship is true
of the CCP—­t he CCP of t­ oday no less than the CCP u ­ nder Mao—­and that
this makes the one-­party rule in China extremely fragile and costly to main-
tain. The crux of the ­matter, as we have seen, is too close a connection be-
tween legitimacy and per­for­mance. It is, paradoxically, precisely for this
reason that an inclusive legitimacy like China’s must learn how to rely for its
durability on a normative source—­legitimacy in a strict, narrower sense—­
that is to a significant degree in­de­pen­dent of contingent per­for­mance. This
paradox gives the tall order confronting the Chinese po­liti­cal system a twist
that the CCP has so far shown ­little willingness to face up to.
I have noted that the CCP still enjoys a substantial level of legitimacy
amounting to the right to rule. This right is one that the party has been able
to maintain without interruption since 1949, and it should come as no sur-
prise that the party is so used to ruling, and the country is so used to being
ruled by it, that po­liti­cal power in communist China has acquired a nearly
de facto—­t hat is, objective and unquestioned—­character. It is simply a fact
of life. The leading position of the CCP is so much taken for granted—­
positively endorsed or grudgingly conceded or numbly treated as close to a
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 63

natu­ral phenomenon—­that, except for brief periods such as ­those in 1957 and
1989, t­ here has been a nearly universal lack of motivation, belief, and agency
when it comes to challenging the CCP’s hold on state power. Small won­der,
then, that maintaining the party’s legitimacy has come to seem entirely a
­matter of per­for­mance. The extremely close relation between legitimacy and
per­for­mance is understood—­misunderstood—­t hrough the eclipse of the
more impor­tant part of the equation. The prior question of the right to rule
has simply been preempted or bracketed, almost in the manner of conserva-
tion of energy, including intellectual energy.
The prob­lem is that this cannot last forever, if only ­because of the enor-
mous difficulty of meeting all the requirements for maintaining the CCP’s
kind of inclusive legitimacy—­and b ­ ecause the only effective way of responding
to this difficulty is the paradoxical move of developing an alternative, nar-
rower source of legitimacy more or less uncoupled from per­for­mance. The
need for such a source is already evident in the CCP’s proneness to legitima-
tion crises. As the CCP’s inclusive legitimacy continues to decline, this need
­w ill only grow stronger.
The alternative source is required not to show how well ­t hose already au-
thorized (or, more strongly put, justified) to be in power are using that power
to serve public ends but rather to make clear why they are authorized to be
in power in the first place. In other words, it speaks to legitimacy ex ante
rather than per­for­mance ex post—to the normative origin or basis of po­liti­cal
power regardless of per­for­mance as long as the latter is lawful. Legitimacy
in this sense is what­ever is “ex ante effective in legitimating decisions.”15 Since
decisions are a ­matter of per­for­mance, legitimacy is what­ever is ex ante ef-
fective in legitimating per­for­mance and is, ipso facto, in­de­pen­dent of per­
for­mance. I am tempted to describe this as exclusive legitimacy (exclusive of
per­for­mance) in contrast with inclusive legitimacy, provided that we bear in
mind that per­for­mance does not thereby cease to impinge on legitimacy in
impor­tant ways short of undermining it altogether.
I hasten to note that I am simplifying the ­matter, for now, by understanding
legitimacy in terms of the normative origin or foundation of po­liti­cal power.
As a m ­ atter of fact, this origin or foundation could also be cosmological or
sacred and in ­either way would go beyond what is usually regarded as nor-
mative. I am leaving aside the cosmological or sacred for my pre­sent purposes
­because I take it, pending further argument, that ­under modern conditions,
64 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

and hence ­u nder the conditions of Chinese society ­today, legitimacy is a

­matter solely of the normative basis of po­liti­cal power.
The notion of exclusive legitimacy just introduced leads to a new distinc-
tion between legitimacy and per­for­mance that is very dif­fer­ent from the one
drawn e­ arlier. The ­earlier distinction, as the reader w
­ ill recall, is between in-
clusive legitimacy (inclusive of per­for­mance internally related to legitimacy)
and freestanding per­for­mance (per­for­mance without internal relation to le-
gitimacy). By contrast with this ­earlier distinction, the pre­sent one involves
a strict, narrower notion of legitimacy whose unique feature is its relative in­
de­pen­dence from per­for­mance, and, correlatively, a notion of per­for­mance
that is relatively loosely related to legitimacy (although it need not be free-
standing). It may have already occurred to the reader that this is the kind of
relation between legitimacy and per­for­mance that is characteristic of a demo­
cratic regime. We know this to be the case ­because it is pos­si­ble for a govern-
ment that enjoys demo­cratic legitimacy (conferred, say, by so-­called ­free and
fair elections) to perform badly with regard to what happen to be the main
goals of society and still maintain a working minimum of legitimacy and
hence stability.
As we also know from the experience of democracies, the notion of inclu-
sive legitimacy is applicable to a demo­cratic regime as well. For a demo­cratic
regime, in addition to relying on a strict basis of legitimacy that answers to
the need for authorization of state power, can hope to work well only when it
is able to back up this legitimacy with a good enough level of per­for­mance
and, especially, to refrain from acting in ways, even if lawful, that are per-
ceived to undermine society’s impor­tant ends and values. In this sense, a
demo­cratic regime too is ­under ­great pressure to secure a reasonable level of
per­for­mance legitimacy in the form, above all, of publicly acknowledged suc-
cess in “the purposeful strug­gle to improve the practical circumstances of
life.”16 This combination of strict, exclusive legitimacy and positive per­for­
mance gives rise to a distinct kind of inclusive legitimacy. We may call it
demo­cratic inclusive legitimacy in that while the good per­for­mance in ques-
tion is internally, organically related to the legitimacy (hence inclusive legiti-
macy), its relative shortage w ­ ill not undermine legitimacy in the way typical
of a nondemo­cratic arrangement (hence demo­cratic legitimacy). Thanks to
this inclusive legitimacy, then, we have a po­liti­cal regime that is supported
on two legs—­legitimacy and performance—­t hat are mutually reinforcing
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 65

when ­t hings go well but that do not so easily collapse together when per­for­
mance happens to be weak. This is the unique strength of demo­cratic inclu-
sive legitimacy, a strength that lies, above all, in the presence within it of a
strict, exclusive legitimacy that is relatively self-­sufficient and in­de­pen­dent
and is relatively loosely connected to per­for­mance even when the latter or-
ganically contributes to it. And this is what China w ­ ill need if it is to achieve
what has so far been the elusive goal of enduring legitimacy and stability.

Per­for­mance Legitimacy versus Ideological

Legitimacy

Lest we entertain too rosy and unsophisticated a view of the strict, ex-
clusive legitimacy that is part of demo­cratic inclusive legitimacy, I want to
propose a f urther distinction, based on Louis Althusser’s account of ide-
ology, between per­for­mance legitimacy and ideological legitimacy, and place
demo­cratic exclusive legitimacy in the latter category. In spelling out this
distinction, I also intend to shed further light on the nature and limitations of
per­for­mance legitimacy.
Althusser, as we have seen, distinguishes between the Repressive State
Apparatus (RSA) and the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). It should be
easy to see that what we normally call legitimacy—­that is, legitimacy proper—
is actually ideological legitimacy, in the straightforward sense that it is pro-
duced by the ISAs. This notion of ideological legitimacy can of course be used
pejoratively and critically by drawing attention to what is false (the preemi-
nence of the dominant class’s interest masquerading as the equal interest of
all) and functionally reprehensible (the maintenance of class domination) in
a claim to legitimacy, however well-­g rounded the claim may appear to be
(thanks to compromises with the less well served classes, backed up with ide-
ological rationalization). Since I a m conducting a p rudential argument,
however, I ­shall use this notion with a largely descriptive intent, only hinting
at its potential for the purpose of ideology critique.
Descriptively, ideological legitimacy entails the existence of ISAs. This
­simple idea has profound implications. If we recall that the ISAs are largely
non­ex­is­tent in China, we ­will immediately realize, in the pre­sent context, that
the party-­state does not, indeed cannot possibly, enjoy ideological legitimacy—­
what we normally simply call legitimacy. It is for this reason, and ­because
66 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

the RSA does not serve as a source of legitimacy as distinct from coercion,
that the party-­state must rely instead on the so-­called per­for­mance legiti-
macy, as a substitute for the unavailable ideological legitimacy. The effectual
distinction, then, is that between per­for­mance legitimacy and ideological le-
gitimacy. But what exactly is per­for­mance legitimacy when viewed in con-
trast with ideological legitimacy?
Per­for­mance legitimacy is definitely not legitimacy produced by the RSA,
for that would be a contradiction in terms. Yet it also is not legitimacy en-
gendered by the ISAs, for the latter are non­ex­is­tent in China, as already noted.
Thus, if per­for­mance legitimacy is to make any sense, it must be located in a
space where positive affects—­pleasure, approval, or at least more or less
willing acquiescence—­are produced without e­ ither repression or ideology (in
Althusser’s strict sense) playing a direct role. ­There is indeed a space of such
affects, and it is characterized, in the advanced global bourgeois civilization
of which China has decidedly become a part, by the twin pleasures of pos-
sessive individualism and consumerism. Such affects are called, in the CCP’s
own latest terminology (as briefly discussed in the Introduction), huodegan,
the sense of acquisitive success, and xingfugan, the sense of satisfaction de-
rived from it and from such other sources as ever-­expanding opportunities
for pleas­ur­able and empowering consumption. In its ability to produce such
affects for the swelling ranks of the ­middle classes, and to use such affects to
channel attention and energy away from po­liti­cal concerns, China is second
to none. ­Here then is the basic formula for per­for­mance legitimacy: per­for­
mance consists in the steadily rising production of commodities whose ac-
quisition and enjoyment help create positive affects in a population imbued
with bourgeois values and aspirations, along with the provision of gainful
employment and opportunities for upward social mobility, while legitimacy
stems from the attribution of such affects and their material condition of pos-
sibility to the party-­state as leader of prosperity and reeducator of affects.
Thus, the absence of the ISAs need not mean that the party-­state main-
tains its rule by means of the RSA alone. Far from it, for t­ here is ­little doubt
that the bourgeois lifestyle, as distinct from satisfaction of the bourgeois de-
mand for some say in po­liti­cal ­matters, is itself a p ower­f ul instrument of
co-­optation—­even at the hands of the CCP. Indeed, a nominally communist
party-­state presiding over a largely cap­i­tal­ist economy and an essentially
bourgeois society has a special need precisely for this kind of co-­optation,
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 67

which is none other than the so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy. A liberal

demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist state stands to benefit from such per­for­mance legiti-
macy, too, but it also has at its disposal the ISAs, which are useful for times
good and bad, but especially for bad times. The CCP, by contrast, has cor-
nered itself into a position of having to do without the ISAs, and that is why
per­for­mance legitimacy is so indispensable and why good economic per­for­
mance in par­tic­u­lar looms so extraordinarily large in its po­liti­cal calculations.
This is a fact rich in ironies, for per­for­mance legitimacy in ­today’s world is
essentially bourgeois legitimacy and, as it happens, the CCP relies on it to a
degree far surpassing the degree to which the traditional cap­i­tal­ist states do.
­Because the latter’s capitalism differs from China’s so-­called state capitalism
by virtue of their liberal democracy, they feature an abundant array of ISAs
and can therefore afford to have less, or less desperate, recourse to the purely
bourgeois per­for­mance legitimacy that has come to underpin China’s self-­
professed communist rule.
To think of per­for­mance legitimacy in this way—as purely bourgeois—is
to locate it squarely in society—­that is, in bourgeois society—in the cap­i­tal­ist
mode of production. Viewed thus, per­for­mance legitimacy, while accruing
to t­ hose who govern, does not reside in the state, for it is produced by neither
the RSA nor the ISAs, the latter non­ex­is­tent in China in any case. If ­t here is
any sense at all in treating per­for­mance legitimacy as a species of legitimacy,
it has to be b­ ecause, while only ideological legitimacy is legitimacy proper,
per­for­mance legitimacy has something in common with it that is far from
negligible. That is, while such ­things as lifestyle and fashion, real estate owner­
ship and stock market speculation, entertainment and tourism, and the rest
of consumerism do not exactly win hearts and minds in the absence of the
appropriate, voluntarily embraced interpretations typically produced by the
ISAs, and for this reason are not themselves ideological, they nevertheless
perform a function of pacification that is to some degree (but only to some
degree) shared by ideology. This is what per­for­mance legitimacy is all about:
pacification through the material production of positive affects, including
plea­sure and visceral approval, rather than the discursive production of con-
sensus and consent, the latter being the mode of operation specific to ideo-
logical legitimacy.
The nature and effects, on the one hand, and the limitations, on the other,
of per­for­mance legitimacy derive from, respectively, its overlap in function
68 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

with and its difference in mode of operation from ideological legitimacy. Such
limitations need not preclude the sublimation of per­for­mance legitimacy into
some semblance of ideological legitimacy, as can happen, for example,
through the reconceptualization of individual prosperity and plea­sure in
terms of national wealth and glory. But such sublimation is hamstrung by
the absence of the ISAs.
This is not just a ­matter of sublimation—­say, into love of country—­
necessarily failing to rest on a communicatively secured basis of shared rea-
sons and thereby to both temper and solidify affect with cognition. For what
per­for­mance legitimacy is also incapable of producing in terms of positive
affects is the all-­important sense of civic agency, as distinct from the trun-
cated, atomistic sense of agency accessible to the consumer of commodities
or the possessor of property. In a broadly cap­i­tal­ist order such as China shares
with the so-­called ­free world, only ideological legitimacy is able to accom-
modate a sense of civic agency, and, when it does that, it has to rely not only
on the ISAs, as strictly construed by Althusser, but also on demo­cratic insti-
tutions. In this connection, one may choose to follow Antonio Gramsci in
employing the distinction between the state and civil society, thereby at least
implicitly allowing for a greater potential autonomy of civil society from the
state than is granted by Althusser. Alternatively, one may prefer to use Al-
thusser’s distinction between the RSA and the ISAs, thereby viewing the re-
lationship between bourgeois civil society and the cap­i­tal­ist state as ulti-
mately one of subordination. As far as my pre­sent purposes are concerned,
­t here is no need to choose between Gramsci and Althusser, for what would
remain unaffected is the need to appreciate the decisive role of demo­cratic
institutions in creating and sustaining a sense of civic agency. ­There is also
no doubt that a plausible and widespread sense of civic agency is part and
parcel of ideological legitimacy. Even if we opt for Gramsci’s distinction and
locate this part of ideological legitimacy on the side of the state rather than
civil society, the latter roughly corresponding to Althusser’s ISAs, ­there need
be no inconsistency in attributing to the state, as conceived by Gramsci in
contradistinction to civil society, a decisive role in the creation of ideolog-
ical legitimacy. What ­matters, for our purposes, is just that a sense of civic
agency is an indispensable ele­ment of ideological legitimacy ­under modern
conditions, and that democracy is a necessary condition for giving plausi-
bility to civic agency and therefore for supporting a sense of civic agency.
Legitimacy and Per­for­mance 69

More generally, to use Althusser’s terms, ideological legitimacy depends on

a ratio of power and visibility between the RSA and the ISAs that leaves ample
room for the latter: other ­things being equal, the more the ratio ­favors the ISAs
(without of course ever outweighing the RSA), the greater ­will be the strength
of sheer ideological legitimacy. What is impor­tant to add is that the existence
of po­liti­cal institutions of democracy, however they fit into Gramsci’s and
Althusser’s dif­fer­ent conceptual schemes, ­w ill tilt the balance further still in
­favor of ideology as distinct from repression.
It is of course not difficult to imagine that, even in the absence of civic
agency, the spread of individual prosperity and enjoyment can help feed a
collective sense of strength and approbation bordering on a conscious love
of country that typically could only be produced with the aid of the ISAs.
But inasmuch as a sense of civic agency is missing, t­ here can be l­ ittle truly
agential appropriation of what­ever is positive about one’s nation. This means
that the resulting love of country ­w ill be disproportionately dependent on
perceived benefits and, in this sense, essentially opportunistic. It is surely im-
probable that such fair-­weather patriotism, as it w ­ ere, would be sufficiently
deep and durable to serve as an effective replacement for the absence of ide-
ological legitimacy.
Indeed, what is true of an opportunistic love of country is true of per­for­
mance legitimacy in general, sublimated or not. That is why the CCP’s cur-
rent formula for regime stability and perpetuation cannot be counted on to
work in­def­initely—­a nd why the lasting solution is not to maintain per­for­
mance legitimacy alone as much as pos­si­ble, impor­tant as this is, but to add
ideological legitimacy to the state’s repertoire. It bears repeating that ideo-
logical legitimacy, as distinct from the crude propaganda effects achievable
by the RSA, presupposes the existence and proper functioning of the ISAs in
general, and that the civic component of such legitimacy requires credible
demo­cratic institutions in par­tic­u­lar.
CHAPTER TWO

The Question of Regime Perpetuation

WE ARE NOW IN A POSITION to look more closely at the substance of the legiti-
mation crisis soon to be faced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One
idea previously explored has crucially prepared the ground: the hypothesis
that the f­ uture of the party-­state’s legitimacy and the shape and timing of
any legitimation crisis ­w ill be determined chiefly by the trajectory of the
CCP’s communist revolutionary legacy rather than by contingencies of its
per­for­mance. So it is on the growing weakness of this legacy that I ­shall focus,
by examining the vari­ous crisis tendencies in which it is already manifesting
itself. ­These tendencies are especially worth investigating ­because they have
the distinct potential to escalate into a full-­blown legitimation crisis, not least
for posing an unpre­ce­dented challenge to regime continuation at or near the
next leadership succession.
Since my aim is to assess the likelihood of a potentially fatal legitima-
tion crisis in the foreseeable f­ uture, it is advisable to exercise due caution
by proceeding on two assumptions: first, that the CCP still enjoys a sub-
stantial amount of its old communist revolutionary legitimacy; second,
that the party ­w ill be more or less able to maintain its current level of
economic per­for­mance (with, say, only gradually and moderately decreasing
growth, compensated by higher-­quality growth), although in real­ity it
may not. The second assumption, holding the CCP’s per­for­mance roughly
constant at its current level, ­w ill help concentrate the mind on the impli-
cations of waning revolutionary legitimacy. It ­w ill also provide a suitably
tough test for the prognosis that a terminal crisis affecting this legitimacy
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 71

­ ill be enough by itself to cause a c omprehensive legitimation crisis of

w
unpre­ce­dented magnitude.
A natu­ral way to begin unpacking this looming crisis is to revisit the no-
tion of amelioration of a lack of legitimacy through good per­for­mance, a no-
tion that at this point needs further clarification. As we have seen, given the
extremely close relation between good per­for­mance and a society’s shared
ends and values, good per­for­mance is invariably legitimacy enhancing. It
seems to follow that the very notion of amelioration of a lack of legitimacy
through good per­for­mance is a contradiction in terms. If we nevertheless have
reason to retain this notion, as I think we do, it is necessary to spell out ex-
actly what it means and is useful for. I have already given a hint of its useful-
ness, and that is the rather uncertain character of such legitimacy as the CCP
still seems to enjoy. It is next to impossible to ascertain what proportion of
what we are observing in China at this moment is legitimacy enhancement
and what proportion is mere amelioration. Indeed, this has been the case for
a long time, prob­ably stretching all the way back, to one degree or another,
to the time of Deng Xiaoping.
We do not have to look far to find the reason, residing as it does in a fun-
damental and obvious series of facts about the reform first launched by Deng
and still in pro­gress: that the CCP has initiated and carried out the reform;
that the reform has taken the country a very long way from its communist
revolutionary origins, what­ever the exact degree to which China has ended
up cap­i­tal­ist t­ oday; and that the party has nevertheless been determined to
maintain its public, official identity as a communist party and the public, of-
ficial identity of China as a socialist country. Given the undeniable, at least
partially (say, partially cap­i­tal­ist, partially not; partially state cap­i­tal­ist, par-
tially other­w ise cap­i­tal­ist) cap­i­tal­ist real­ity on the ground, the CCP’s ideo-
logical interpretation of the reform and its stubborn self-­description in so-
cialist terms w ­ ere already stretching credulity to the breaking point at least
as far back as Jiang Zemin’s reign. What we have been witnessing for quite
some time is the decisive breach of any credible link between real­ity and of-
ficial description. Since the description in question has to do with the nature
of China’s po­liti­cal and social identity, and, by the same token, of the CCP’s
own identity, this breach cannot but be a momentous disruption of public
belief in what the party stands for—­indeed possibly in the party in its en-
tirety. However g­ reat its achievements in the reform era, and however much
72 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

credit it has received from the populace as a result, ­t here can be ­little doubt
that the CCP has lost itself in the pro­cess. It has lost its old self and not yet
found a new self. And it is difficult to imagine it fashioning a credible new
identity for itself that remains unambiguously socialist or communist without
reversing the broad sweep of what the reform has been about. As t­ hings stand,
we have to say that the CCP no longer has a publicly understood and accepted
identity; what it says about its identity—­about this identity in its double rela-
tion to Marxism, on the one hand, and to the real­ity on the ground, on the
other—is simply not plausible. The master narrative it has cobbled together,
from one leadership to the next, does not command much credence. Given
what is at stake, this is nothing less than a crisis—­a plausibility crisis.

The Plausibility Crisis

What is at stake is the CCP’s legitimacy. True, the party has been able to
keep up an incredible level of per­for­mance in the reform era. True, this must
mean, given the nature of the link between good per­for­mance and society’s
ends and values, that the party has massively contributed to the realization
of Chinese society’s ends and values—in addition to helping create t­ hose ends
and values in the first place. True, given the inseparability of realizing soci-
ety’s ends and values, on the one hand, and boosting the ruler’s legitimacy,
on the other, all of this must have translated into genuine legitimacy for the
CCP. This is one reason why I am prepared to attribute a substantial amount
of lingering legitimacy, of the right to rule, even to the CCP of ­today. Despite
all this, t­ here are nagging doubts about the exact relation in which the party
stands to Chinese society’s ends and values. For all that the party has itself
helped give shape to ­t hese ends and values, it is highly implausible that they
are communist, or even socialist, ones.
­Under Mao Zedong, revolutionary legitimacy drew its meaning and
power from a mixture of many ele­ments. Mao’s rule was both charismatic
and traditional (to use Max Weber’s terms), with a revolutionary leader sup-
ported by an openly Leninist vanguard and a hidden (­because superficially
rejected) Confucian paternalism. Substantively, it was eschatological (a par­
tic­u­lar instantiation of the teleological, with communism all but envisioned
as paradise on earth, achievable in real time rather than in the fictitious
space of heaven), proletarian centered (dictatorship of the proletariat), sci-
entific / rationalistic and hence per­for­mance oriented (scientific socialism,
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 73

modernization, catching up with the West, and so on), and nationalist (anti-­
imperialism and—­setting the Chinese revolution apart from its Rus­sian
forerunner—­national in­de­pen­dence, or minzu duli, as well as a cleansing of
the shame of humiliation suffered since the Opium War). Of ­t hese ele­ments,
the charismatic, the eschatological, and the proletarian are, with the death
of Mao and of communism and the rise of capitalism, completely gone—­t he
equivalent of removing Christ and paradise from Chris­tian­ity. Still intact
and indeed accentuated are the scientific / rationalistic and performance-­
oriented features, as well as the nationalist, while the traditional is partly
making something of a comeback and partly just becoming more explicit. So
the CCP now has a legitimation formula, as it ­were, that essentially comprises
only the scientific / rationalistic, performance-­oriented, and nationalist—­
with the traditional playing a s econdary, somewhat ambivalent role, and
with the charismatic and the eschatological figuring only as mnemonic
and rhetorical remnants. Missing too is the moral ethos of liberation—­
liberation of the proletariat, above all, and from, among other t­ hings, an emer-
gent guanliao zibenzhuyi (comprador-bureaucratic capitalism, the pre-1949
counterpart of today’s crony capitalism) and remnants of a supposed fengji-
anzhuyi (feudalism), of which Confucianism was considered a p art—­that
used to pervade the CCP’s old legitimation discourse. The result is not merely
a truncation of the old communist revolutionary legitimacy but its positive
evisceration. For the scientific / rationalistic, performance-­oriented, and na-
tionalist features used to find their meaning in the eschatological—­and in
revolution (including the charismatic revolutionary leader) as the pathway to
it—­and now, with the eschatological and the revolutionary effectively aban-
doned, they cease to be what they once w ­ ere. We are left, without fanfare or
even acknowl­edgment, with a new legitimation formula—­the combination
of economic success and national rejuvenation—­that bears l­ ittle relation to
the CCP’s old communist teleological-­revolutionary identity.
The CCP knows this full well. All it takes to square the circle is to decide
­ hether it is a square or a circle—to adjust its identity to the new ends and
w
values of Chinese society (and own up to the resultant identity change) or
­else to attempt to transform ­t hose ends and values into greater consistency
with its self-professed identity. Neither option is ­viable, however, b
­ ecause the
second option is ruled out by the very nature and direction of the reform,
which has itself reached a point of no return, and ­because the first option
would amount to po­liti­cal suicide, at least at this point in time. With so much
74 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

of its being and fortune inextricably tied to its communist revolutionary ori-
gins, the CCP cannot simply walk away from its no longer coherent public
self-­understanding as a communist party. It would be sheer folly and reck-
lessness to do so simply ­because this self-­understanding has become inco-
herent and implausible.
Yet the CCP cannot avoid paying a heavy price for this incoherence and
implausibility, which is why the price deserves to be called a plausibility crisis.
The price is an ineradicable uncertainty over the party’s legitimacy—­over how
much legitimacy it enjoys, indeed ­whether it ­really does enjoy much legiti-
macy in the first place. This is, above all, b ­ ecause ­t here is no clear, unmistak-
able po­liti­cal agent—­that is, one with a clear, unmistakable identity—to whom
legitimacy can be attributed. While helping realize society’s ends and values
is undoubtedly productive of legitimacy, it is by no means a ­simple and
straightforward ­matter, given the peculiarities of the Chinese situation, how
the party can reap full benefit from this fact. This means that the CCP’s good
per­for­mance may not be as legitimacy enhancing as it appears at first sight.
By the same token, we cannot be entirely certain that what appears to be le-
gitimacy enhancement is not in fact mere amelioration of a lack of legitimacy.
The line is not so clear ­because the CCP’s identity as the performer of posi-
tive deeds is not so clear.
I noted in the discussion of legitimacy enhancement versus mere ame-
lioration that we must be witnessing both in ever-­evolving proportions; it
is thus a m­ atter of determining what the real­ity on the ground happens to
be at any given time. Which of ­t hese two scenarios we are inclined to see at
any given moment is dependent not only on the real­ity on the ground but
also on how we are disposed to view that real­ity. Since, in a case of clearly
identifiable good per­for­mance, neither the good per­for­mance itself nor its
contribution to society’s ends and values is in doubt, and only the exact
identity of the CCP is, it must largely be a ­matter of interpretation ­whether
we are witnessing enhancement of legitimacy or mere amelioration of a
lack of legitimacy. It is, to a significant degree, a ­matter of what we think of
the CCP, especially how closely we are inclined to tie its identity to its
legitimacy.
­There is l­ ittle doubt that it m
­ atters a g­ reat deal how good the per­for­mance
happens to be when we make the judgment. The more impressive the CCP’s
per­for­mance, it seems, the less rigorous or squeamish we tend to be in our
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 75

instinctive demand for plausibility when it comes to the tension between the
CCP’s public self-­understanding and the real­ity on the ground, especially if
we are clear beneficiaries of the good per­for­mance in question. This could
be a m­ atter of the relative flexibility of our demand for plausibility or per-
haps of fluctuation in how greatly plausibility ­matters to us. Whichever is the
case, and the two actually shade into each other, t­ here can be l­ ittle doubt that
the CCP’s ambiguous and elusive identity makes any judgment about its le-
gitimacy both difficult and unstable.
But such judgment we must make, and this task is made easier if we
maintain a c onceptually clear distinction between enhancement of legiti-
macy through good per­for­mance and amelioration of a lack of legitimacy
through good per­for­mance, for all the reasons adduced in Chapter 1. Th ­ ose
reasons still stand; what has changed is only the realization, which is only to
be expected, that interpretation, not just the real­ity being judged, is an
impor­tant ­factor affecting our judgment. As a m ­ atter of fact, interpretation
always plays a role in judgments of legitimacy, so, to be more precise, what is
special about the case at hand is that, given the exceptional amorphousness
or ambiguity of the CCP’s identity, interpretation plays an even larger role
than usual. This makes what­ever legitimacy the party may still enjoy shakier
and more uncertain than it would other­w ise be. Also left standing is my
judgment that the party still enjoys a c onsiderable degree of legitimacy,
making it pos­si­ble that much of what good per­for­mance is ­doing is still le-
gitimacy enhancement as distinct from mere amelioration. I hold this judg-
ment b ­ ecause ­t here are in­de­pen­dent reasons, as already noted, for consid-
ering the CCP still to command the right to rule. It is no accident that this
mandate is closely related to what remains of the CCP’s identity as rooted in
its communist revolutionary past.

The Crisis of “Revolutionary Spirit”

Rooted in its communist revolutionary past? A ­ fter all, communism—

the striving for communism—is a c rucial part of that revolutionary past
and, as such, has completely lost its plausibility as the CCP’s public self-­
description. This is part of the plausibility crisis. So how can the revolu-
tionary past still retain any resonance and potency when it is hollowed out
with the cessation of the communist proj­ect?
76 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

An impor­tant part of the answer is that the CCP’s revolutionary past has
three dimensions: its form is teleological; its (teleological) content is commu-
nism; and its means of execution, including the mentality of its participants,
is revolution. What is most impor­tant for this discussion is that ­these dimen-
sions, while inextricably linked u ­ nder Mao’s leadership, are distinct and can
be separated. Thus it is that, although communism as the (teleological) con-
tent of the revolutionary past is dead, the revolution itself, as a way of acting
and feeling, still retains part of its old aura. Traits fostered by revolutionary
war and its aftermath include strength of will, willfulness, toughness, dis-
cipline, harsh instincts, grim determination, habituation to primitive relations
of authority, the readiness to resort to vio­lence, a callousness regarding means
and ­human cost in general, and an apparent loftiness of spirit as manifest in
courage and self-­sacrifice. All of ­t hese ­were motivated by or channeled
through ostensible belief in the ­great cause of communism, which provided
reasons both for brutality against enemies (and one’s own comrades) and for
self-­sacrifice. ­Those who participated in the revolution, including its more
peaceful post-1949 phase still u ­ nder the leadership of Mao, w ­ ere ­shaped as
much by the sheer experiential aspect of the revolution as by its ostensible
communist content—­indeed much more so.
The era of reform has seen the parting of t­ hese two dimensions of the
CCP’s revolutionary past. With the communist content gradually but de-
cisively left ­behind, successive leaderships of the party since Deng have
nevertheless managed to retain something of the old “revolutionary spirit”
(geming jingshen)—­pure or disembodied revolutionary spirit, one might say,
­because its erstwhile substance is completely taken out. This remnant of the
pure revolutionary spirit is the necessary psychological-­characterological ac-
companiment to the CCP’s right to rule ­today. Not that this lingering revolu-
tionary spirit is without substance—­the Chinese Dream, for example, is part
of its new substance—­but what gives the current leadership the strength of
­w ill and toughness of mind absolutely necessary for asserting the exclusive
right to rule is what remains of the revolutionary spirit itself.
Only ­t hose who still abundantly partake of this spirit have any chance of
success in acquiring and maintaining enough intraparty legitimacy to con-
tain internecine factionalism, the Achilles heel of a Leninist party, as the CCP
has been able to do since 1949. And only they ­w ill have the toughness and
audacity to suppress another June 4. ­These manifestations of the right to rule,
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 77

indeed the ­will to rule, come, above all, from the substantial remnant of the
revolutionary spirit. Of course, the CCP’s impressive rec­ord of economic per­
for­mance in the reform era must have lent extra strength to its w ­ ill to rule,
as has its new agenda, “the ­great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” which
has replaced the old communist one. But no amount of good per­for­mance
by itself ­w ill do the trick, keeping intraparty factionalism ­under control and
creating the credible appearance of the ­w ill to prevent or, if necessary, put
down a rebellion like June 4.
Where, then, is the crisis of the revolutionary spirit? The answer: in the
foreseeable f­ uture. For the material and po­liti­cal conditions of life that had
created and sustained the revolutionary spirit essentially came to an end with
the passing of Mao, and it did not take long thereafter for what had remained
of such conditions to dissipate almost completely. From then on, the days of
the revolutionary spirit w ­ ere numbered. It was largely a function of experi-
ence and memory how long the revolutionary spirit’s new, dematerialized
lease on life beyond Mao would last. Now, with the almost complete passing
of leaders tested by revolutionary war and ennobled by communist victory,
we are seeing the dematerialization of the revolutionary spirit in a further
sense and truly its last gasp.
Bluntly put, as far as its impact on Chinese politics is concerned, the rev-
olutionary spirit ­w ill come to an end with Xi. This is not merely ­because he
possesses a unique combination of personal attributes but, far more impor­
tant, b­ ecause he belongs to a generation of leaders whose exit from the po­
liti­cal stage ­w ill mark a true inflexion point in the CCP’s collective experi-
ence and memory. This generation—­those now in their sixties—is the last still
able to help themselves substantially to the revolutionary spirit for purposes
of legitimacy. It is the last generation still in remotely plausible contact with
the CCP’s “original aspiration” (chuxin), as referred to in the party’s most
prominent current maxim, “Stay true to the original aspiration” (Buwang
chuxin). If the exact substance of “the original aspiration” (communism) has
surely lost its resonance, the revolutionary spirit that constitutes its affective
and characterological dimension is something e­ lse. The latter retains some
of its potency if we understand it not so much in po­liti­cal and ideological
terms as in the form of a certain toughness of mind and nerve when it comes
to defending the CCP’s right to rule at all cost. This toughness has a g­ reat
deal to do with the organic link that Xi’s generation has to the revolutionary
78 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

vio­lence that brought the party to power in 1949—­a link made pos­si­ble by
substantial direct exposure to the first-­generation revolutionaries, especially
on the part of the sons and d ­ aughters of ­t hese revolutionaries (hong erdai).
The fact that Xi is among ­t hose sons and ­daughters, backed and emboldened
by many just like him, makes a huge difference, not least in terms of self-­
confidence and sense of entitlement, stakes and resolve, and habits of
strug­gle and leadership still substantially rooted in the past.
Indeed, this lineage is in turn supported by the culturally ingrained, and
not particularly Marxist, belief that ­t hose who have seized power through
the barrel of a gun have a prima facie title to rule it (­until their Mandate of
Heaven runs out). In this sense the revolutionary spirit is, in its last gasp ­today,
none other than a lingering ethos in which the scions of the ­People’s Republic
of China’s found­ers are still able to maintain a reasonably strong right to rule.
It is an open secret that this bloodline is the principal repository of the revo-
lutionary spirit, such as it is. If the right to rule based on an unspoken revo-
lutionary bloodline obviously still commands substantial deference, it is no
less obvious how grudging that deference has become. All signs indicate that
this right w ­ ill not extend, even to the slightest degree, to the grandchildren
of the country’s found­ers, not least ­because the latter have grown up in a re-
form era that has seen revolution make way for capitalism. One of the most
predictable yet fatal by-­products of the reform is that the revolutionary spirit
no longer has a movement or proj­ect as its body. Its only remaining host is
the experience and memory of Xi’s generation. What reason is ­there to doubt
that the CCP’s right to rule, based in large part on the politico-­cultural cap-
ital of violent seizure of power, and most immediately reflected in the very
­w ill to rule, w­ ill end with Xi and his generation?
With the revolutionary spirit and the concomitant confidence and strength
of ­w ill gone, the nature and ethos of Chinese politics ­w ill have changed be-
yond recognition when the time comes for the next batch of leaders to take
over. They w ­ ill be a dif­fer­ent breed of leaders who, without the intangible ben-
efit of the revolutionary spirit, ­w ill find it much more challenging to main-
tain intraparty legitimacy and legitimacy in the country at large. They ­w ill
lack strong po­liti­cal authority of the kind now possessed by Xi and, especially,
lack the w ­ ill to act decisively in a pos­si­ble repeat of the Bo Xilai challenge or,
especially, of June 4. It is at such junctures that the crisis of the revolutionary
spirit ­w ill make its formidable impact felt.
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 79

Two Crisis Scenarios Due to the Waning of

Revolutionary Spirit

One must not make the naïve ­mistake, however, of assuming that ordinary
Chinese ­people care much about such ­t hings, indeed about the legitimacy of
the po­liti­cal power ruling them. All Chinese cannot but be concerned with
how their lives are affected by the exercise of po­liti­cal power, and hence they
are not indifferent to the performative success or failure of their government.
But they take more than a passing interest in the legitimacy of their govern-
ment only ­u nder extraordinary circumstances. They do so, that is, only
when their daily lives come u ­ nder exceptional strain or threat and when,
moreover, a heightened level of fear or resentment is mobilized through ef-
fective articulation and organ­ization by some of the more morally sensitive
or po­liti­cally resourceful members of their society. It is unlikely, however,
that, when the occasion pre­sents itself, the latter ­will step forward mainly
from outside the ranks of the CCP itself, or that, if they do, they w ­ ill have
much of an impact by themselves. No popu­lar uprising ­will succeed without
the acquiescence of, or significant internal division among, power­ful ele­
ments within the party itself.
In order to maintain the legitimacy of its rule over the country, then, the
CCP must first continue to enjoy legitimacy within its own ranks, especially
at the higher echelons. The legitimacy that m ­ atters most is intraparty legiti-
macy, and hence the most dangerous decline is that of intraparty legitimacy.
Herein lies the CCP’s most daunting challenge, one that has become public
knowledge since Bo’s dramatic downfall. With the partial exception of this
publicly aired intraparty conflict, it is next to impossible to get an accurate
and intimate sense of how this challenge is working itself out at the higher
levels of the party, given the closely guarded inner workings of po­liti­cal power
in China. But what we do know is ominous enough. First, ­t here can be ­little
doubt that intraparty legitimacy ­w ill be increasingly difficult to maintain—
in all probability dramatically so ­a fter the current leadership steps down.
When we speak of the CCP’s declining legitimacy, we ­w ill fully appreciate
the seriousness of the situation only if we bear in mind that the chief and most
consequential manifestation of this decline is within the party itself. In this
regard, the apparent success of Xi’s attempts to impose party discipline
and cohesion, to extract intraparty loyalty, and thereby to halt the slide in
80 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

intraparty legitimacy gives l­ ittle ground for hope on behalf of the CCP if one
takes into account the extraordinary mea­sures, not least the awesome anti-
corruption campaign, needed for such success—­and the extraordinarily
power­f ul leader, Xi, needed to force such mea­sures through. Second, it is
reasonable to think that intraparty legitimacy ­w ill be even harder to keep
intact than legitimacy in the country at large, if only ­because ­those within
the party tend to be much better informed about the party’s vulnerabilities
and the precariousness of its seeming cohesion. This awareness increases the
higher up one is in the party hierarchy, with ­t hose at or near the top having
access to information that affords them a holistic appreciation of the major
crisis tendencies, along with the personal risks they face as leading members
of the ruling elite. It is difficult to imagine the party leadership ­after Xi being
able to confidently maintain intraparty legitimacy once the revolutionary
spirit and the aura of revolutionary vio­lence have ceased to play any role in
the collective psy­chol­ogy of the CCP.
This predictable dip in intraparty legitimacy upon Xi’s retirement ­w ill
make the party ever more vulnerable in the face of two potential scenarios.
In the first scenario, we see the all too familiar undoing of a strongman’s work
­after his demise or departure, letting loose the factionalism and disunity hith-
erto contained with an iron fist. We then see this more or less spontaneous
implosion turn into a self-­conscious legitimation crisis within the CCP’s own
ranks, reflecting as it must the resurfacing of the party members’ awareness,
up to this point repressed or other­w ise denied expression, of the CCP’s crit-
ical lack of legitimacy in the country at large. The rest is also easy to imagine:
an intraparty legitimation crisis creates the occasion for the release of a hith-
erto suppressed and pent-up sense of legitimation crisis enveloping the en-
tire society, followed by all manner of outward manifestations, including pos­
si­ble protests and demonstrations of a kind that most have been too afraid
even to publicly contemplate since 1989. What it is reasonable to imagine hap-
pening next ­w ill depend largely on how a post-­X i CCP openly caught up in
crisis is disposed to react.
This brings me to the second scenario, which in a way carries over from
the first but can also be approached in­de­pen­dently. From among the pos­si­ble
protests and demonstrations in the first scenario, or, alternatively, the nu-
merous “incidents of mass unrest” happening in China ­every year, one
could escalate into a major rallying point for a public outpouring of accu-
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 81

mulated grievances that would be difficult to put down without vis­i­ble blood-
shed. If t­ hings ­were to get to this stage, the CCP’s w ­ ill to take decisive action
would be severely tested, and one should not be surprised if the prospect of
a bloody suppression ­were to trigger a crisis of intraparty disunity with rather
dif­fer­ent consequences from ­t hose of the events in 1989. Such an unsettling
chain of events is unlikely to occur in the near ­f uture, for the pre­sent leader-
ship still obviously has the w ­ ill to suppress social protests at very consider-
able cost. The visibility of this w ­ ill is itself a power­f ul deterrent, and it be-
speaks a corresponding degree of confidence that the current leadership has
in its intraparty legitimacy, as well as in its legitimacy in the country at large.
In this context, the ­w ill to put down all opposition is part and parcel of the
­will to rule, which, in turn, is the psychological dimension of the right to rule.
But this level of confidence and this level of deterrence cannot continue in­
def­initely, indeed cannot survive much beyond the next leadership succes-
sion. Ever since 1989, the CCP has been rightly fearful of social unrest and
acted resolutely on the hard-­earned lesson that it cannot afford a repeat of
June 4.1 The pre­sent leadership is no exception. The next leadership, however,
­w ill inherit the fear but not the resoluteness. Th ­ ere is simply no escaping the
fact that a sharp decline in po­liti­cal authority increases the likelihood of so-
cial unrest and po­liti­cal agitation and at the same time weakens a regime’s
­w ill to use violent means to crush a rebellion even when such means are
necessary.

The Identity Crisis

First the plausibility crisis involving the original teleological substance of

the CCP, then the crisis of the revolutionary spirit—­the combined upshot is
ominous. In response to this twofold crisis, the party has spared no effort in
fashioning for itself a new identity more in tune with the new social and po­
liti­cal real­ity and new popu­lar aspirations. But this cannot be easy. Given
the fundamental split between China’s new real­ity and the CCP’s historically
determined self-­description, the party cannot but feel pulled in two directions
at the same time. It must, on the one hand, be seen to be sticking steadfastly
to its historically given communist identity, this being the only identity it
has ever had and can ever have as long as it remains a communist party, if only
a largely nominal one. The unavoidable result, thanks to the ever-­widening
82 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

gap between this identity and the CCP’s at least partially cap­i­tal­ist deeds, is
the plausibility crisis already discussed. Thus it is easy to understand why the
party must, on the other hand, move obliquely and subtly, yet still visibly,
away from its old communist identity in f­ avor of a new identity less jarringly
at odds with China’s new cap­i­tal­ist real­ity.
The principal means of this strategic move is the CCP’s depoliticization
of its teleological form: retaining the teleological form itself but pouring
into it a new, less po­liti­cally specific or distinct substance. Hence, the crucial
importance of something like the Chinese Dream. ­There is no mention of
communism in the Chinese Dream, nor even of communism ­after the real-
ization of the Chinese Dream. A ­ fter all, a Chinese communist dream—­t hat
is, a communist dream for China alone—­would be a c ontradiction in
terms, while a Chinese dream of communism for the entire world, admit-
tedly ­free of self-­contradiction, would be tantamount to declaring war on
the globalist cap­i­tal­ist order if it is taken seriously. But more importantly, the
con­spic­u­ous absence of the CCP’s foremost defining feature (communism)
from its new mission statement (“the ­great rejuvenation of the Chinese na-
tion”) is clearly motivated by the need to overcome the plausibility crisis. The
Chinese Dream, covering as it does individual prosperity and happiness (as
huodegan and xingfugan continue to be touted by no less an authority than
Xi Jinping), as well as national rejuvenation, is con­ve­niently generic and re-
sponsive to the increasingly generic values and aspirations of t­ oday’s Chi-
nese. This in fact is the source of its appeal. It is a Chinese dream and, as
such, could be ­every Chinese man’s and ­woman’s dream, not exactly a com-
munist party’s dream, and definitely not a dream of communism. It could just
as easily be e­ very Chinese cap­i­tal­ist’s dream: official propaganda makes no
more mention of capitalism’s (eventual) demise and replacement—­just
imagine the shock waves such talk would create in the domestic and global
stock markets! Yet this cannot be the be-­a ll and end-­a ll of the Chinese
Dream. For the party must have an essential place in this dream, and that is
why, despite steering clear, for the most part, of any open invocation of com-
munism, the CCP never tires of linking the Chinese Dream to the crucial
year of 1921, the year that saw its founding as an unambiguously communist
party. The very mention of the CCP and 1921  in the same breath is a r e-
minder of the original communist identity of what has now morphed into a
less po­liti­cally distinct and more functional organ­ization. If it is imperative
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 83

for t­ oday’s CCP to create for itself a new, more flexible identity, it is no less
imperative to make sure that this new identity’s strong and uninterrupted
link to 1921 is not forgotten. The party simply has no other way of renewing
an identity that is intimately connected with its unique history and its his-
torically given self-­understanding. To be sure, the party has chosen to ac-
centuate the appeal to nationalism in the Chinese Dream at the expense of
communism, but this very appeal must be at least implicitly predicated on
the incorporation of national rejuvenation into the communist revolu-
tionary master narrative. Other­wise the CCP would in princi­ple be dispens-
able to the meaning of the Chinese Dream and only instrumentally and
hence contingently essential for its realization. For the CCP, this is definitely
not good enough.
Thus it is that the CCP is constantly pulled in two directions—­both away
from its communist identity and ­toward it. It cannot maintain a resolute, un-
ambiguous identity that is at once organically linked to its communist past
and coherently related to its quasi-­capitalist pre­sent. Getting too close to its
communist past w ­ ill reinforce the plausibility crisis. On the other hand,
moving too far away from this past in the interest of increased coherence with
the pre­sent ­w ill cause the CCP to lose itself, the only self that is compatible
with its very name. In this latter case, the implausibility of the party’s self-­
description ­w ill undoubtedly be reduced, but only at the cost of a dif­fer­ent
crisis that is no less serious and debilitating: a crisis of identity. Caught be-
tween its history and its name, on the one hand, and its new ends and deeds,
on the other, the CCP of ­today knows not what its own identity is, and, in
this very impor­tant sense, it cannot be said to be ­doing well as a regime. The
party cannot decide which crisis is worse—­t he plausibility crisis or the iden-
tity crisis—­for each is devastating in its own way and neither can be miti-
gated without aggravating the other.
Further light can be shed on this dilemma by clarifying the relation be-
tween po­liti­cal power and ideological power.2 Over many de­cades, the CCP
has developed an inflexible, even fixed relation between its po­liti­cal power
(as the only organ­ization with the right to rule China) and its ideological
power, b ­ ecause the latter is defined and severely ­limited by the very name and
idea of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP can get away with exercising
its po­liti­cal (and economic) power in noncommunist ways, but only for so
long. It cannot do that in­def­initely without undermining the credibility of
84 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

its ideological power and thereby weakening its position of leadership, which
is based on its distinctive combination of po­liti­cal and ideological power. It
cannot do so, that is, without causing or worsening a plausibility crisis. What
is even more certain is that the party cannot simply dispense with this ideo-
logical power—­its name and all—­for all its inflexibility. For without this
unique ideological power, the CCP would stand to lose both its identity and
its exclusive claim to po­liti­cal power based on this identity, and for this double
loss—an identity crisis and po­liti­cal crisis in one—no gain in ideological flex-
ibility would be able to compensate. Yet a very heavy price ­w ill be paid if the
CCP, precisely for this reason, sticks to this ideological power, inviting un-
answerable criticisms of its uses of po­liti­cal (and economic) power and giving
bite to charges, say, of false pretense and hy­poc­risy regarding what China fun-
damentally is and is ­doing. Between the rock (plausibility crisis) and the
hard place (identity crisis) t­ here is nowhere to hide, and only constant ducking
can delay the shipwreck—­but for how long? When all is said and done, the
party ­will have to live or die by the special relation between po­liti­cal and ideo-
logical power by which it is defined and empowered and yet in which, to the
same degree, it is trapped. The dilemma is now made almost unbearably in-
tense by the certainty that the ideological power associated with the CCP’s
name ­w ill suffer a steady and irreversible decline.
What has prevented this dilemma from getting even worse for the cur-
rent CCP leadership, as for its three pre­de­ces­sors to one degree or another, is
the lingering vitality of the revolutionary spirit. When this spirit is gone, the
plausibility crisis and the identity crisis ­w ill only grow in intensity and lead
to far more serious consequences. Xi Jinping alone stands between t­ oday’s
relative calm and tomorrow’s storm.

Xi’s Anticorruption Campaign and Its Dilemma

The current leadership took over at a special moment in the progressive

deterioration of the moral-­political condition of the party and, by natu­ral
influence, of the country at large. By 2012, ­after more than ten years of moral
anarchy and reckless self-­aggrandizement ­under Jiang Zemin, followed by
another ten years of impotence (including, presumably, impotent good in-
tentions) and inaction u
­ nder Hu Jintao, the CCP had become truly rotten to
the core. Nothing better epitomizes the near-­terminal character of the rot
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 85

than the dramatic fall from grace of Zhou Yongkang, General Guo Boxiong,
General Xu Caihou, and Ling Jihua, four truly impactful movers and shakers
in Hu’s reign who between them had controlled the security apparatus, the
military, and the day-­to-­day ­running of the party. What was this rot, as evi-
denced in the shocking malfeasance of ­these power­ful members of the party,
but the moral and behavioral manifestation of a near-­terminal legitimation
crisis? What was the urgency of stopping the rot but the desperate need to
prevent it from making a mockery of all of the present-­day CCP’s claims to
the communist revolutionary legacy?
When Xi came on the scene, he was faced with a fundamental choice: allow
the rot to continue unto death by following largely in Jiang’s and Hu’s foot-
steps or try to stop it, in which case he would have to take a leaf from Mao’s
book, at least initially.3 This was the first fork in the road that Xi confronted
on his assumption of power. He made the right and harder choice, or so it
seems, and he did so, presumably, ­because he cared in a way that Jiang had
not, if only given the dif­fer­ent circumstances, and ­because he was able to
amass a degree of power that Hu had sorely lacked. However complex and
mixed Xi’s motives may have been, ­t here is no denying the singularly mo-
mentous significance of his assumption of the party’s leadership. For he is
the only top CCP leader since Mao—that is to say, the only CCP leader in
the entire reform era—­who has had both the occasion and the apparent mo-
tivation to tackle the party’s legitimation crisis as seriously as it deserves and
who, in addition, has acquired sufficient power to act on his apparent sense
of crisis. It is only in this light that we can adequately grasp (which is not to
endorse) the meaning and significance of the anticorruption campaign, the
crackdown on dissent, the tightened control over the media, and the inten-
sification of propaganda, all of which add up to a perceived sharp turn to
(methodological) Maoism.
What is unique about corruption is that it affects both legitimacy and
per­for­mance and does so in complex and subtle ways. What­ever one may
think of the pre­sent leadership and its anticorruption campaign, one has to
give it credit for making the only serious and determined attempt to fix the
prob­lems of rampant official corruption that have piled up over two de­cades
or longer. ­These prob­lems require urgent fixing ­because they are fast de-
stroying the CCP’s claim to power and even its sheer power. It is difficult to
say how successful the campaign has been, or could realistically be, if only
86 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

­ ecause the amount of corruption that needs fixing is im­mense. Given the
b
way corruption has operated by creating networks of protective complicity,
it is almost inconceivable that significant pockets of integrity and cleanli-
ness exist anywhere at the higher levels of the CCP. This applies not the least
to Xi’s po­liti­cal enemies, with the result that from its very outset the anticor-
ruption campaign cannot but have been an exercise in killing two birds
with one stone—­and choosing the right birds, not necessarily (all) the worst
birds, to kill. Only a reckless leader with misguided righ­teousness would
target his allies and in the pro­cess risk undermining himself and dooming
the very fight against corruption. Yet to act other­w ise would be arbitrary
and be seen as arbitrary, thereby compromising the legitimacy gains of the
campaign. And ­t here is nothing like arbitrariness to create an atmosphere
of fear in which cadres no longer dare to throw caution to the wind in pro-
moting local economic growth, thereby drawing positive attention to them-
selves and maximizing their chances of promotion. What­ever may have
been the positive effects of corruption on economic growth given the alleged
absurdity of the state regulatory apparatus and other f­ actors, such effects are
now largely gone. This very phenomenon ­w ill have a negative impact on the
legitimacy of the CCP, depriving it of what has been an effective tool of le-
gitimacy enhancement or amelioration through performative success even
while improving its image on the issue of corruption. It is as yet unclear
­whether the latest strategic shift in emphasis from sheer growth to greener,
more balanced, and higher value-­added growth ­w ill be successful enough
to compensate for slower growth.
With all t­ hese complications, and t­ here are more, it is both rash to fault
the anticorruption campaign and premature to celebrate it. The only ­t hing
we know for sure is that China is stuck with it, for better or worse, or per-
haps for both better and worse. For once the campaign began, it could not
be ­stopped without encouraging corruption to return with a vengeance,
­unless it was credibly shown that corruption had been largely rooted out
and most of t­ hose guilty caught and adequately punished—­but every­one
knows this to be a near impossibility. U ­ ntil such evidence is available, the
anticorruption drive has to go on for yet another reason: any perceived wa-
vering in determination would betray weakness on the part of the leader-
ship and invite all-­around pushback. And as long as the fight against graft
continues, so must the purge of enemies and saboteurs that is an integral
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 87

part of it. U
­ nder China’s current circumstances, an ongoing anticorruption
campaign has to be an ongoing purge, and such a high-­stakes combination
requires, objectively, an exceptional concentration of power, both for effec-
tiveness and for sheer self-­preservation. If the antigraft component of the
campaign is commendable and indicative of strength, the ele­ment of purge
is a c lear sign of regime weakness and even danger. Both are uncannily
reminiscent of Mao’s situation during the Cultural Revolution and the fate
of his legacy thereafter.
For now, we can count on Xi to continue this campaign and to maintain
the appearance of determination and effectiveness in bringing it to frui-
tion. But t­ here is no telling what is g­ oing to happen with the next batch of
leaders. To the degree that the pre­sent leadership deserves credit (or blame),
it is precisely b ­ ecause it is special, b
­ ecause it has gone beyond the call of
duty, as it ­were, and surpassed conventional expectations (unsurprisingly,
both for good and for ill). In the authority it has created for itself on the
basis of its institutional power and in the way it has used that authority, it
has definitely exceeded what could be expected as a m ­ atter of course from
the po­liti­cal system itself, and exceeded what most observers did expect.
The immediately preceding leadership—of Hu Jintao—­provides ample
proof, and it, rather than the pre­sent one, exercised a d egree of po­liti­cal
authority closer to what one has reason to expect in the age of postcommu-
nist po­liti­cal cynicism and irreverence. But, ­a fter Xi, even Hu would be an
impossible act to follow, given the progressive worsening of the plausibility
and identity crises and especially the fast-­receding revolutionary spirit. No
one in their right mind would bet on the respectable clout of Hu, let alone
the unexpectedly high authoritativeness of Xi, being passed on to the CCP’s
f­ uture leadership.
Against this background, that ­f uture leadership ­w ill find it next to im-
possible to carry on the anticorruption campaign and yet, equally, it ­w ill not
be able to afford to drop it. The pre­sent leadership is stuck with the cam-
paign, but so far it has shown itself to be up to the challenge. The prob­lem for
the next leadership is that it ­will be stuck with it but ­will not be up to the chal-
lenge. Xi’s launch of the anticorruption campaign was a truly fateful move,
necessary as it was, and it has no chance of coming to a good end ­unless the
pre­sent leadership or its successor finds a new basis for its po­liti­cal authority
and, with it, a new way of conceiving and ­handling corruption.
88 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

The Strengths and Liabilities of Xi as the

New “Core”

We have been assuming an unproblematic leadership succession when

Xi’s time is up, but this is an increasingly questionable assumption. To ap-
preciate what is at stake, we must take care to distinguish between two prob­
lems: leadership succession and regime perpetuation. The first prob­lem may
appear to have been largely resolved since Deng stepped down from (the
direct exercise of) power. But it is manageable only on the assumption that
regime perpetuation or at least indefinite continuation does not itself become
a prob­lem. With each change in leadership, however, this is an assumption
that has looked ever more extravagant to make. This is the context in which
the next leadership succession—­from Xi to his successor—­w ill take on an
unpre­ce­dented level of importance, for it is bound to be overshadowed by
the larger question of regime perpetuation. Indeed, the dramatically higher
stakes are already prefigured in the widely mooted possibility—­some would
even say necessity—of postponing the next leadership succession.
Looking at the m ­ atter with detachment, one must first of all try to under-
stand what it would mean for the leadership succession to be delayed—­against
what has come to be perceived as a hard-­won norm essential for the CCP’s
stability and public relations. It would be trivializing the extraordinary stakes
of the ­matter to attribute the delay, should it come to pass, entirely or even
primarily to personal ambition, impor­tant as it undoubtedly is. For it is not
implausible to think that, next time around, what has previously only been a
­matter of leadership succession w ­ ill have an unpre­ce­dented impact on regime
perpetuation. If this is true, the objective and deeper meaning of postponing
the leadership succession—­the message, as it ­were—­can hardly be denied: re-
gime perpetuation must trump leadership succession, and Xi is (regarded
as) indispensable for regime perpetuation.
Whence the (perceived) indispensability? Well, the writing has been on
the wall for some time, and perhaps the best way to read it is to use the Aris-
totelian categories of the One and the Few (that of the Many not needed in
the pre­sent context). In the history of the CCP, Mao was the paradigmatic
case of elite rule dominated by the One. Deng continued this tradition while
whittling it down somewhat, both by necessity (he had considerably less au-
thority than Mao) and by design (in order to create a stabilizing pre­ce­dent),
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 89

and giving noticeably more say to the Few. Crucially, in a formally instituted
and acknowledged way, Deng remained the “core” (hexin) of the leadership.
When Jiang Zemin took over, he inherited the all-­important core status, and
this meant keeping largely the same balance between the One and the Few,
despite many differences. For this reason, Jiang could be said to be person-
ally responsible for what happened u ­ nder his watch, for good (the very con-
siderable loosening of po­liti­cal repression and the corresponding expansion
of civil society, among other ­t hings) and ill (not least crony capitalism and
official corruption), to an extraordinarily high degree befitting the rule of the
One. The decisive change came with Hu Jintao, Jiang’s successor, for he was
never able to acquire the core status and had to share power with the Few to
a degree unpre­ce­dented in the history of communist China. By then the Few
had come to mean essentially other members of the CCP’s politburo, espe-
cially its standing committee. But, far more significantly, Hu had to contend
with Jiang, who in one way or another almost managed to hang on to his
former core status, b ­ ehind the scenes, and to exert greater influence on the
Few surrounding Hu than Hu himself could. The result was a greatly altered
balance of power between the One and the Few, and, for the first time in com-
munist China, we had a regime closer to oligarchy than to one-­man rule.
Significantly, it was during this rule of the Few that the crony capitalism and
official corruption first unleashed by Jiang became truly rampant, eventu-
ally endangering the very survival of the CCP. What may have been perceived
in the first six years or so of Hu’s rule as continued liberalization—­from Jiang’s
reign—­seems in retrospect to have been largely an epiphenomenon.
It should thus come as no surprise, especially with hindsight, that the at-
tempt to put official corruption ­under control and save the CCP was to coin-
cide with the shift of power from the Few to the One. It appears that Xi was
expected to more or less continue the oligarchic pattern, as the first among
equals in the manner of Hu. ­After all, he too was handed the reins of power
without the core status. But Xi himself, as it turned out, had other ideas, set-
ting in motion an unpre­ce­dentedly resolute and systematic anticorruption
campaign and in the pro­cess emerging decisively as a new One above the Few
and having the core status conferred on him in due course. To be sure, the
anticorruption campaign has also been a purge of the Few (and their most
impor­tant supporters), and vice versa. Viewed from a detached perspective,
however, this coincidence is simply a function of the causal relation between
90 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

rampant official corruption and the rule of the Few, although this is far from
being the only t­ hing it is. Among other t­ hings, it is also a Legalist master-
stroke, meting out reward and especially punishment, and creating loyalty
and especially fear, at a time of loose party discipline and cohesion—­balanced
and tempered by the Confucian-­like recourse to high-­minded moral exhor-
tation. And, of course, anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of Chi-
nese history w ­ ill recognize in the new One-­Few configuration the paradig-
matic subordination of vassals (chen) to ruler (jun)—­almost all the way from
the First Emperor to Chairman Mao.
­W hether one applauds the new rule of the One (as one has to, at least
conditionally, if one approves of the anticorruption campaign) or con-
demns it (as one must, in response to the escalation of po­liti­cal repression),
the toughest question confronting the CCP down the road w ­ ill be how to
shift once again from rule of the One to rule of the Few. For China’s social
circumstances ­today w ­ ill not permit any rule of the One to last. They w
­ ill
not allow an irrevocably broken politico-­cultural paradigm to be restored
except ­under a state of emergency—­a nd even then with extraordinary dif-
ficulty. It is quite extraordinary that Xi has been able to establish himself as
the One atop the Few when the difference in talent and virtue within the top
layer of the CCP’s elite is generally regarded ­today as not so ­great as to war-
rant anything approaching kingship. Against this patent lack of marked
superiority, the revived personality cult surrounding Xi is serving as an in-
dispensable ­counter, almost predictable within the tradition of a Leninist
party. Using this and other means, Xi has succeeded against the odds, ar-
guably in response to objective needs of the CCP, but t­ here is l­ ittle reason
to expect his successor to beat the odds again. For better or worse, Xi’s ­w ill
be the last rule of the One, and therefore the next leadership succession ­w ill
at the same time be a reversion from rule of the One to rule of the Few.
Could this unavoidable move be a r­ ecipe also for a reversion to the ram-
pant official corruption that had required rule of the One to fix in the first
place? Could this be an unwitting ­recipe for even worse ­t hings now that the
fragile new politico-­cultural paradigm established by Deng is further
weakened by discontinuation? Or is ­t here reason to hope for orderly po­
liti­cal liberalization, for a change—as distinct from the disorderly
(corruption-­ridden) liberalization of the past on the one hand and the or-
derly (corruption-­curbing) retrenchment of the pre­sent on the other? The
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 91

answer ­w ill depend crucially on what Xi does while he still wields power as
the One.

Xi’s Enhanced Power, the Country’s Increased

De­pen­dency

It is now clear that Xi has no formal, including constitutional, obstacles

to staying in power as the One in­def­initely, even for life—­subject only to the
irremovable contingencies of personal health and po­liti­cal power strug­gle.
Nevertheless, the historic lifting of term limits on the presidency is more sym-
bolic and symptomatic than substantively impor­tant in itself, given that (as
commentators have never tired of noting) the presidency is less power­ful than
the positions of party general secretary and chairman of the party’s central
military commission, both already ­free of term restrictions. ­There is no de-
nying the symbolic significance of this constitutional amendment—­namely,
that the One is absolutely indispensable for all that truly m ­ atters to the CCP
and, in its view, to the Chinese nation. The One is indispensable not only in
the sense that Xi is indispensable for filling the position of the One but also
in the potentially further-­reaching if less definite sense that the One, no
­matter who occupies the position, is henceforth required for leading the party
and governing the country with the requisite authority. The latter sense,
understandably unacknowledged, is nevertheless one that cannot be denied
without making the constitutional amendment appear ad hoc and creating
other undesirable impressions. How seriously this at least rhetorically un-
avoidable implication is actually intended ­will become known for sure only
in the fullness of time, but not without major consequences—­not least if
term limits have to be reintroduced in the absence of a s uccessor strong
enough to step into Xi’s shoes.
For now, Xi is the indispensable One—­t he Indispensable One. The con-
stitutional amendment provides the most incontrovertible proof pos­si­ble
that this is what the CCP publicly thinks. This is the symptomatic signifi-
cance of the scrapping of presidential term limits, revealing a s tunning
belief—­and readiness of belief—in the de­pen­dency of the entire party and
country on the leadership of one man, in the person of Xi. The constitu-
tional amendment is indeed the enactment of this belief, the transformation
of a passing intraparty consensus, in all likelihood a forced one, into an
92 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

enduring national, public fact. What­ever opposition may have been over-
come in the pro­cess only goes to show how weak, wavering, and pathetic
that opposition was, if indeed it existed sufficiently to warrant the name. It
does not ­matter ­either that the belief in Xi’s indispensability may not be sin-
cerely held even within the ranks of the party, for this (if true) has patently
not been enough to stand in the way of the constitutional creation of Xi’s
indispensability as an overwhelmingly impor­tant public fact. In this sense,
the very fact that the CCP has supported or acquiesced in Xi’s symbolic in-
dispensability and the nation’s symbolic de­pen­dency is enough to show
that what is symbolized is, in all probability, true. The apparently unob-
structed collective investment in the symbol is itself symptomatic. Now Xi is
indispensable, or has become so, and one should not be surprised if indis-
pensability generates yet more indispensability—to the point where the sta-
bility and well-­being of China are indissolubly linked to the po­liti­cal and
personal fortunes of one leader. We may have already come to this point;
one arguably has more to fear for China’s ­future from Xi’s leaving the po­
liti­cal stage than one did even from Mao’s, with no other po­liti­cal figure suf-
ficiently tried and tested to take over from Xi, reassuringly for party and
country, as Deng was known to be able to do (­after a brief interval) from
Mao. This is yet another aspect of the return to more unpredictable times.
No one can, or should, rule out the possibility of a fierce power strug­gle
at the very top of the CCP, even of a coup at Xi’s expense. The degree of such
a possibility is contingent on Xi’s perceived strength, the latter in turn sub-
ject to how successfully Xi steers China’s economy and negotiates its increas-
ingly complex role and standing in the world. It w ­ ill also be contingent on
how collectively desperate and resourceful Xi’s enemies—­a ll ­actual and po-
tential victims of Xi’s anticorruption drive and purge—­are. But make no
­mistake: any successful attempt to unseat a leader whose eponymous thought
has been written into the party and state constitutions so recently and with
such seeming una­nim­i­t y would be tantamount to collective suicide, spelling
the beginning of the end of the CCP itself by broadcasting the emperor’s
nakedness to the ­whole world. Indeed, it would not be farfetched to hypoth-
esize that this very logic was among the most decisive considerations moti-
vating the constitutional amendments in the first place.
Xi’s position is truly historic. For our pre­sent purposes, how he ­w ill ac-
quit himself in this historic position is, above all, a ­matter of ­whether he ­w ill
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 93

use his now de facto and constitutionally sanctioned indispensability to in-

crease this indispensability, and hence the country’s de­pen­dency on him,
even more; or to achieve the opposite, to gradually and prudently wean the
country from the ultimately undependable de­pen­dency on one leader, how-
ever wise and capable—in other words, ­whether he maintains and strengthens
the rule of the One, or paves the way for the eventual introduction of the
(mixed) rule of the Few and the Many (which is what democracy can realis-
tically aspire to in the real world), thereby empowering the Many as a way of
averting the instability of the rule of the One and checking the corruptibility
of the rule of the Few.

Time to Prepare for Stormy Weather

All signs so far indicate that Xi is pursuing the first option rather than the
second, and the signs are observable in how he has gone about setting the
CCP on the right course. For, once Xi had de­cided to stop the rot of the
party and to stem its near-­terminal legitimation crisis, as discussed ­earlier,
another fork awaited him down the road, where he would have to turn in
one of two directions in search of a l ong-­term cure for the legitimation
crisis. One option was seeking to revive the CCP’s old communist revolu-
tionary legitimacy, while the other would involve a departure from the par-
ty’s beaten track, an attempt to fill the po­liti­cal void with some kind of demo­
cratic legitimacy. ­After several years of waiting filled with hesitation and
second-­guessing and some wishful thinking, on the part of all manner of ob-
servers, it has now become clear that Xi has, at least for the time being, re-
jected a new, avowedly demo­cratic beginning with Chinese characteristics
in ­favor of an unflinching affirmation of the CCP’s habitual recourse to po­
liti­cal and ideological retrenchment in the face of danger. This is his preferred
­battle plan for saving the CCP. Unlike at the first fork, however, he has made
not the harder but the easier choice—­and yet what may well turn out to be
the less effective one in the long run.
This is not a normative judgment but a prudential appraisal. I have already
noted Xi’s unique combination of attributes: his seemingly exceptionally
keen concern for the fate of the CCP, his correspondingly acute sense of the
party’s legitimation crisis, the apparent strength of character he has displayed
in acting on this sense of crisis, and his apparently instinctive knowledge and
94 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

deployment of the party’s Confucian-­Legalist and Leninist legacies. That Xi

is unique among the party’s top leaders in the reform era in ­t hese regards
shows him to be truly special, at the very least a hard act to follow. But timing
­matters, too. Xi witnessed the near-­terminal condition of the patient, which
must have triggered his physician’s calling, not to mention his survival in-
stinct as a member of the collective patient. Much more importantly, he hap-
pens to belong to the last generation of Chinese who ­were toughened by the
harsh and sometimes brutal conditions of the new, communist China cre-
ated by Mao and his comrades, and who had beaten into them at least second­
hand memories of the blood-­soaked and sacrifice-­laden communist revolu-
tion, not to mention the ruthless persecutions the party all too readily inflicted
on its own, including Xi’s f­ ather. In this Xi is not unique, admittedly, for it is
a ­matter of generational experience. But if we put this together with his
unique combination of attributes, which shape his sense of and response to
the CCP’s legitimation crisis—­and do not forget, of course, his huge po­liti­cal
capital and sense of entitlement based on a revolutionary bloodline with an
inexorable expiry date—we immediately realize that he is not a hard act to
follow but an impossible one. What next? What ­w ill happen when his time
is up—if only for reasons of health or sheer ­human mortality now that presi-
dential term limits have been removed?4
Up to now, Xi has succeeded in resetting impor­tant rules of the po­liti­cal
game, such as with re­spect to official corruption and party discipline; in en-
forcing the new rules with an authority almost unique in the reform era;
and thereby in altering and improving conduct and appearances and even,
among many ordinary citizens, the CCP’s image as it relates strictly to be­
hav­ior. But ­t hese and many other successes have not led to changed hearts
and minds that could form the basis of a durable transformation in moral,
po­liti­cal, and institutional culture capable of lasting beyond his tenure. In-
deed, by scaling back to the point of nonexistence the Ideological State Ap-
paratuses that w ­ ere already extremely weak and l­ imited even ­under his pre­
de­ces­sors, he has ruled out that very possibility. The result is even greater
reliance on the Repressive State Apparatus and, in terms of elite and mass
psy­chol­ogy alike, on the role of fear. This means that the current po­liti­cal ef-
fectiveness of the CCP, such as it is, ­w ill last only as long as the exceptionally
high level of fear lasts, and that fear w
­ ill endure only as long as its source—­a
greatly feared leader—is around. It would not be at all implausible to see
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 95

­ ere one of the deeper reasons for the removal of presidential term limits.
h
The prob­lem with this constitutional mea­sure, however, and, at a deeper
level, with the role of fear in politics, is that fear works by appealing to in-
centives rather than beliefs and therefore is ill suited to addressing the CCP’s
legitimacy deficit. Indeed, however signally the recourse to fear may have
succeeded in arresting the surface consequences of this deficit, such as offi-
cial corruption and the executive weakness of the central leadership, it has
also inadvertently highlighted the legitimation crisis and, indeed, revealed,
via a very s­ imple po­liti­cal inference, how serious the CCP itself thinks this
crisis is.
­Unless Xi believes he is able to fix the legitimation crisis once and for all
while he holds the reins of power and thus to leave his successor with a CCP
in rude po­liti­cal health and no legitimation crisis to reckon with, he should
be worried. He may, on account of this very worry (and for other reasons),
see fit to prolong his tenure as paramount leader beyond the ten-­year span
that had come to be taken for granted u ­ ntil the 2018 constitutional change,
perhaps even to maintain his grip on power for life if necessary. But this does
not solve the prob­lem beyond delaying the inevitable. It is in this sense that
I have said that Xi alone stands between the pre­sent and the inflexion point
in the CCP’s legitimation crisis. If for this reason the inflexion point is not
exactly staring China in the face t­ oday, we know that it ­will within a more or
less fixed time span in the foreseeable ­f uture. This makes for a looming le-
gitimation crisis in a truly ominous sense—­a clear and pre­sent danger lodged
in a definite ­f uture.
When the time comes, Xi ­w ill no longer be around, po­liti­cally speaking,
to shield China from danger but, even more consequentially, all the condi-
tions for keeping the communist revolutionary legacy plausible and vital ­will
be gone as well. In a m ­ atter of years, by the time the pre­sent leadership leaves
the po­liti­cal stage or soon thereafter, the communist revolutionary legacy w ­ ill
have suffered an irreparable double loss—­the loss of almost all living memory
of the revolution, even at second hand, and the total loss of the revolution’s
con­temporary relevance as a worldview or way of life. This double loss, in-
volving as it does inexorable interactions between evolving real­ity and
changing collective psyche, is fast progressing before our eyes, and its com-
pletion in the near ­f uture is unstoppable. When this inflexion point arrives,
the communist revolutionary legacy ­w ill have lost all vitality, all life to give
96 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

new life. And this means that ­t here ­w ill no longer be any living, throbbing
communist revolutionary material to work with in order to creatively renew
the only legitimation discourse the CCP has ever known how to use. With
the fountainhead dried up, all ideological extensions or accretions, nation-
alistic or Confucian or any other, ­w ill lose their vitality as well, or ­else they
­w ill have to come into their own and gain a new, in­de­pen­dent lease on life,
which is a very tall order indeed and unlikely to happen soon, if at all.
One must not be deceived, therefore, by the appearance that the current
leadership of the CCP is more confident, more assertive, and more in con-
trol than its pre­de­ces­sors. This appearance, even if largely reflective of real­ity,
is precisely the prob­lem. Not only is the pre­sent leadership the exception that
proves the rule, but the pre­sent time is the last opportunity for such an ex-
ception to appear. If one t­ hing about the next leadership succession can be
known with almost total certainty, it is that the new leadership ­w ill be much
weaker than the pre­sent one. Indeed, even for the pre­sent leadership, it is
not all fair weather, with challenges to its po­liti­cal authority reflected in re-
pressive mea­sures that have delegitimating consequences no less than deter-
rence effects, and reportedly taking the oblique form of a new type of self-­
preserving inertia and passiveness on the part of fear-­ridden cadres. So one
can imagine how impossibly daunting it ­w ill be for a much weaker ­f uture
leadership to cope with the twin challenges of legitimacy and per­for­mance.
One can count on the coming of rainy days, definitely rainier days.
Let corruption then stand as one example of how implausible it would be
to expect the indefinite continuation of the status quo—­a nd of the urgent
need to prepare for the coming of stormy weather while the sun still shines,
if none too brightly. Even if the pre­sent leadership is not the only one capable
of such preparation, it is without doubt the one in the best position to un-
dertake it. Th
­ ere is no better, and timelier, use to which the pre­sent leader-
ship could put its unrepeatable authority. If truth be told, it is difficult to
imagine China remaining credibly “red” ­after Xi. As a ­matter of fact, through
no fault of Xi’s, China has already changed its “color,” as part of the larger
metamorphosis set in motion by Deng; what it has not yet done is only to
own up to this fact. The resulting mismatch of real­ity and name, rather than
the scheming of domestic turncoats or foreign instigators, has set the stage
for a so-­called color revolution. The challenge, however embarrassing and dif-
ficult to manage, is for the CCP to acknowledge this mismatch and or­ga­nize
The Question of Regime Perpetuation 97

a planned and gradual, if initially unannounced, color reform, as it ­were, in-

stead of one day falling victim to a less orderly and less benign color revolu-
tion. Such a course of action would be no more than a belated po­liti­cal re-
form aimed at squaring name with real­ity—­a real­ity created by the CCP itself;
the resulting rise in consistency would, in turn, bring changes to the percep-
tion of the real­ity and thus also to the real­ity itself. This is the only way to
resolve, once and for all, the plausibility crisis, the identity crisis, and the crisis
of “revolutionary spirit,” which together have conspired to drive the party to
progressively more desperate and unsustainable mea­sures in the interest of
survival. If Xi has the wisdom and courage to accomplish this feat, he w ­ ill
have put his indispensability—­his unchallenged power made pos­si­ble by the
2018 constitutional amendments—to good and indeed historic use, and he
­w ill be justly remembered as the most admirable One in CCP history.
PART TWO

The Demo­cratic Challenge

CHAPTER THREE

The Case for Democracy

WE ARE IN THE ­M IDDLE of making an essentially prudential case for democ-

racy in China. This case falls naturally into two stages. The first stage, just
presented, was intended to show that China’s current po­liti­cal arrangement
is on the brink of a potentially fatal legitimation crisis and therefore needs
major change in order to avert the crisis. The second stage now takes the fur-
ther step of demonstrating that democracy alone can provide an appropriate
answer to the legitimation crisis and serve as a new and better basis for le-
gitimacy and hence stability. It is not by accident that ­t hese two stages of the
argument have a common thread, in that the crucial f­ actor in determining
­whether a po­liti­cal regime is in crisis and w ­ hether a dif­fer­ent one is the an-
swer to the crisis is the presence or the lack of fit between a po­liti­cal regime
and the nature of the society it rules.
It w
­ ill have emerged that the current po­liti­cal regime in China has lost its
fit with the social real­ity on the ground—as ­will have a thinly veiled hint that
democracy is likely to have a much better fit with it. Viewed in this way, the
legitimation crisis of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is, at its heart, the
pro­cess whereby this lack of fit is becoming ever more serious and apparent.
The lack of fit, in turn, has resulted from the fact that the party itself has ini-
tiated a quasi-­capitalist (that is, in part state cap­i­tal­ist) reform while, by ne-
cessity, holding fast to the communist revolutionary legacy as the continuing
basis of its legitimacy, its right to rule. It is not surprising that the CCP has
had g­ reat difficulty imposing its tattered revolutionary legitimation discourse
on the brand-­new, distinctly nonrevolutionary social real­ity that the reform
102 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

has brought into being. What is to be marveled at, rather, is how much suc-
cess the CCP has had in hitching its impressive performative success, all of
it part of the new social real­ity, to its increasingly antiquated species of le-
gitimacy. No one would have dared to predict four de­cades ago, when the re-
form had just gotten u ­ nder way, that a party still calling itself communist
would be able, for so long and with such effectiveness, to maintain its right
to rule in a society whose lived, everyday real­ity was to become no longer re-
motely communist. It is all the more remarkable that this incredible run is
being stretched even longer by the current CCP leadership, with their excep-
tional crisis consciousness and equally exceptional determination. For all
this quite extraordinary resourcefulness, however, they ­w ill not be able to
delay the inflexion point in­def­initely. For when the lack of fit between po­
liti­cal regime (meaning especially its mode of legitimation) and social real­ity
becomes irreparable and patently so, the po­liti­cal regime must make way, or
­else it w­ ill sooner or ­later descend into a paralyzing legitimation crisis.
What the no longer-­fitting po­liti­cal regime must make way for is, natu-
rally, what­ever regime ­w ill better fit the new social real­ity. Given this social
real­ity, and as long as it remains largely of the same kind, the latter regime
­will be the only prudent and hence sustainably v­ iable option—­whether or not
it deserves to be deemed a better regime in abstraction from the nature of
the social real­ity. The new regime need not be better; it only must be better
fitting. This, then, is the prudential reason for a new regime. Since in the pre­
sent context the new regime must, as it happens, be a demo­cratic one, what
I have been moving ­toward turns out to be a prudential case for democracy.
However, to be more precise, the case must be made, first, for the need for a
new, better-­fitting regime (that is, for the old regime’s loss of fittingness) and,
only then, for democracy as the fitting candidate to meet this need.
I can think of no better way to spell out this prudential case for democ-
racy than by returning to the very origins of democracy—to the first debate
over democracy.
If ancient Athens was the world’s first democracy, the Sophists may be
regarded as democracy’s first philosophical teachers and defenders. Demo­
cratic politics was the soil from which the Sophists arose, answering the need
for effective speakers in the council, the assembly, and the law courts, and
the call, which fell on the Sophists, to instruct citizens in Athens, Syracuse,
and other democracies in the Aegean world in the art of persuasion. But even
The Case for Democracy 103

more impor­tant was their role in articulating a conception of demo­cratic so-

ciety, which rested, in turn, on a conception of knowledge and virtue dia-
metrically opposed to that of the philosophical partisans of aristocracy such
as Socrates and especially Plato.
In this Protagoras has come down to us as the greatest Sophist, in the
form of the few surviving fragments of his writings and, of course, of
­Plato’s reconstruction, in the dialogue Protagoras, of his confrontation with
Socrates. In this dialogue and elsewhere (especially ἀ e Republic and ἀ e
Statesman), where Socrates and Plato argue for the equation of virtue with
knowledge, for knowledge as solely concerning the highest and absolute
good and hence as the preserve of the best and brightest, for such an exalted
conception of the good as being the purpose of po­liti­cal life, and for an
equally exalted conception of knowledge-­v irtue as the basis of rule (the po-
tential philosopher-­k ing’s reluctance notwithstanding), Protagoras differs
radically on ­every count. An unabashed agnostic, he derives from his skep-
ticism about the existence of the gods his famous conclusion that “man is
the mea­sure of every­t hing,” meaning (presumably) that ­t here is no other,
higher court of appeal when it comes to knowledge, virtue, or the purpose of
­human life, including that of po­liti­cal life.1 Given this mundane, which is to
say purely ­human, standard, knowledge is no longer qualitatively dif­fer­ent
from opinion, virtue comes within the reach of e­ very citizen (with its acqui-
sition both requiring education and being consistent with its universal acces-
sibility), and life in the polis can have no higher purposes than ­t hose of the
­human beings who take part in it. Thus, neither knowledge nor virtue nor
po­liti­cal life has any reason to be the privilege of the highborn or the best
endowed.
­After all, “man is the mea­sure of every­t hing”—­w ith “man” understood in
all the mundane contingency and diversity observable at any given time. It
so happens that the Sophists both sprang from democracies and, as teachers
of demo­cratic practice, w ­ ere the best and most widely traveled. Thus they saw
firsthand the dif­fer­ent mores and customs in many places and, on this basis,
came up with the sharp distinction between nature and ­human convention.
As far as the latter was concerned, they evinced a philosophical and prac-
tical open-­mindedness that bears comparison with what ­today we sometimes
call pluralism and relativism. Small won­der that they could readily see both
sides of an issue and founded their pedagogy in teaching pupils how to argue
104 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

both sides of a case. This is more like, say, Habermasian communicative ac-
tion (or, more precisely, practical discourse) than sophistry in its frequently
intended pejorative sense. Hence it is closer to the mark when the intellec-
tual bent of the Sophists is compared to that of the eighteenth-­century En-
lightenment in Eu­rope. But a perhaps more exact counterpart in modern
times is American pragmatism, so much so that to read Protagoras’s speech
in Plato’s dialogue and the surviving fragments of his writings is to be con-
stantly reminded of John Dewey and perhaps even Richard Rorty, among
o
­ thers.2
What is distinctive in Dewey’s pragmatism and even more so in Rorty’s
neopragmatism is, above all, the all-­encompassing character of their
pragmatic-­democratic thinking, which cuts across knowledge and action,
facts and norms, politics and society, and, in so d ­ oing, brings Protagoras’s
idea of man being the mea­sure of every­t hing to its logical conclusion.3 Just
as Protagoras may be considered the theorist of democracy for the ancient
Greek world, so the likes of Dewey and Rorty are intellectual spokesmen for
our modern demo­cratic age. Except for its exclusion of slaves and w ­ omen,
which in any case Protagoras’s philosophy does nothing to justify, and for its
preoccupation with war, the world of Greek democracy is remarkably sim-
ilar, in the relevant re­spects bearing on our pre­sent discussion, to our modern
demo­cratic age.
In this similarity, what stands out above all ­else is a demo­cratic concep-
tion of ­human beings as social (as distinct from Aristotelian, strictly po­liti­cal)
animals, coupled with a demo­cratic conception of knowledge and virtue.
Demo­cratic politics is of course impor­tant—­understandably more so in the
ancient Greek world than in ours b ­ ecause ours is incomparably richer in the
possibilities of social life—­but it is necessary and fitting only in the context
of a demo­cratic conception or, better still, a demo­cratic real­ity of social life,
as well as a demo­cratic epistemology. In other words, a demo­cratic regime
needs to rest on the basis of a demo­cratic society, which it can help reinforce
and enlarge but can seldom conjure out of thin air. It is not without signifi-
cance that Protagoras, in responding to Socrates’s challenge to the demo­cratic
conception of virtue and politics, employs an allegory in which Prometheus
first bestows on h ­ uman beings the gifts of fire and skill in the arts only to
have ­these incomplete gifts rendered truly beneficial by Zeus through the fur-
ther gift of universal civic virtue.4 This suggests that the polis, as seen by
The Case for Democracy 105

Protagoras in contradistinction to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, has no higher

purpose than to enable ­human beings to take full advantage of their ordi-
nary abilities and talents in a shared social life of peace and enjoyment. The
epoch-­making significance of Protagoras’s philosophical argument for de-
mocracy lies in its plausible account of demo­cratic social, epistemological,
and moral relations in the light of which a demo­cratic regime is left as the
only fitting po­liti­cal arrangement.5
Some clarification is in order. As a m ­ atter of empirical, historical real­ity,
it is true that t­ here was not, and could not have been, nearly as much social
or private life in the ancient Greek world as we have t­ oday. The energy that is
nowadays devoted to life in society or the private realm, to the exercise of
the so-­called liberties of the moderns, was channeled overwhelmingly into
life in the polis, consisting as it did in the liberty of the ancients. Almost
the only meaningful way to be a social animal was to be a po­liti­cal animal.
To understand the raison d’être of democracy, however, we must take a con-
ceptual step back from the historical, material contingency of the Greek
world and see b ­ ehind or beneath this contingency the fact that a po­liti­cal
regime always stands in some relation—of more or less fittingness or lack of
fittingness—to the society with which it is conjoined. This is the case even
when social life happens to be less, even much less (as in the ancient Greek
world), prominent than po­liti­cal life. And this is entirely consistent with the
fact that ­t here are times when it is pos­si­ble for politics, including demo­cratic
politics, to remake society, and with the fact that all social relations are po­liti­
cally constituted to one degree or another. But no m ­ atter how a set of social
relations, a form of social life, or a k ind of society may have come about,
once it has become entrenched and is no longer amenable to a po­liti­cal re-
gime’s efforts to remake it, it is the po­liti­cal regime that must make itself fit
the state of society.
In treating Protagoras as the originator of this line of argument, then, I am
understanding “society” in the sense of the socioeconomic condition and
structure of a place or community, not (anachronistically) as a somewhat in­
de­pen­dent domain distinguished from the “state” in our modern way. It was
only with Alexis de Tocqueville that this type of argument for democracy—­the
argument from the nature of society—­came to be expressed in its distinc-
tively modern form. While mindful of this undoubtedly significant develop-
ment, I ­shall nevertheless treat it, for my purposes, as an internal variation
106 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

within a larger species of argument. This means that the society / regime dis-
tinction as used in my discussion is a general one that is meant to cut across
the rise of (bourgeois) society as a distinctively modern phenomenon vari-
ously remarked on by Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Constant, François
Guizot, Tocqueville, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt, among o ­ thers. This
general society / regime distinction is larger than the specifically modern dis-
tinction between a Hobbesian “state” and a commercial “society” à la Mon-
tesquieu, thought of as a distinct order in its own right. Thus, while I ­w ill
draw on Tocqueville, in par­tic­u­lar, for his insights into the connection be-
tween society and regime, I see his insights as belonging, in the first instance,
to the same kind as can be found in Niccolò Machiavelli, whom I ­shall in-
voke briefly, and even Protagoras. This does not mean that modern society,
predominantly bourgeois and set apart from a u niquely centralized state,
does not have its special implications with regard to po­liti­cal regime. My
point is simply that the close relation between society and regime is a gen-
eral fact not confined to the modern world. Yet it is equally impor­tant to
note that the general argument for a demo­cratic regime from the nature of
society takes on par­tic­u­lar pertinence and force in the modern setting.
To return to Protagoras’s argument for democracy, my basic point is that
his most power­f ul and ingenious contribution is to have sketched a highly
plausible conception of ­human nature in demo­cratic terms. This conception
involves, above all, a more or less egalitarian mode of h ­ uman sociability,
entailing and in turn being supported by a more or less egalitarian episte-
mology. Once this demo­cratic theory of ­human nature is accepted in princi­ple
and, better still, has substantially infiltrated social real­ity, it is but a short step,
both conceptual and practical (which is not to say practically easy), to po­
liti­cal democracy.
By this point, Protagoras’s case for democracy may begin to look uncan-
nily familiar. This is ­because almost exactly the same type of argument was
to be made famous for our time by Tocqueville in Democracy in Amer­i­ca, in
which he attempts to show that once equality of conditions (l’égalité des con-
ditions) has come to prevail in a society, it w ­ ill lead naturally, if not neces-
sarily immediately, to the adoption of a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime.
But it is worth bringing up another impor­tant figure who anticipated
Tocqueville’s argument. I am referring to Machiavelli, in whose Discourses
we find the most succinct expression of a similar argument: “Let, then, a re-
The Case for Democracy 107

public be constituted where ­t here exists, or can be brought into being, no-
table equality; and a regime of the opposite type, i.e. a principality, where
­t here is notable in­equality.” Why? ­Because “other­w ise what is done ­w ill
lack proportion and ­w ill be of but short duration.”6 In speaking of notable
equality or notable in­equality, Machiavelli, like Tocqueville, is referring not
to the character of a po­liti­cal regime but to the shape of social circumstances,
especially the proportion of the wealthy to the (more or less internally equal)
­middle class and the balance of power between town and country. Thus what
we have ­here is an exemplary case of forming one’s realistic or effective nor-
mative po­liti­cal preferences in the light of the social circumstances that
happen to prevail and are likely to endure. In the case of “notable equality,”
­here understood strictly as characterizing the social circumstances of a
polity, Machiavelli is saying ­there is no reasonable chance of anything other
than a republican government enduring for long, although he rightly gives
equal emphasis to the prevalence of civic virtue as a condition for a republic
to survive and flourish. This argument from social circumstances to po­liti­cal
regime is the essence of Machiavelli’s reasoning, which we find also in Pro-
tagoras before him and in Tocqueville ­after him. To be sure, a republic as
Machiavelli understands it is not exactly what Tocqueville means by democ-
racy or what we mean by it ­today. It is instead a mixed regime in the Roman
mode, more concerned with expansion and self-­defense than with commerce,
and especially in greater need of civic virtues of a more martial and com-
munitarian kind, than is true of the democracies of ­today. But the under­lying
thought is much the same in relevant re­spects.
Since I am making what is essentially a prudential case for democracy, I
do not want exactly to take the side of Protagoras, Machiavelli, or Tocqueville
insofar as any of them expresses a strong normative preference for democ-
racy (or republicanism) that is in­de­pen­dent of consideration of social circum-
stances. I leave open the question of ­whether, and to what extent, they ex-
press such a preference. What is impor­tant and decisive for my purposes is
(only) that Protagoras (even as he exists mostly in the pages of Plato), as the
first theorist of democracy, has carried the day in our time while Socrates
and Plato, for all their incomparable intellectual influence, have lost their
­battle on behalf of aristocracy.7 What­ever their respective philosophical
merits, history has won the argument for Protagoras against Socrates, at least
for now and as far as we can see into the f­ uture.
108 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Imagine now, in the shadow of Protagoras’s historic victory, a demo­cratic

society coupled with a demo­cratic epistemology, but one that operates without
a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime. We would say that its current regime, not being
demo­cratic, is not fitting. We would say that the life and spirit of the country
is split against itself and that an already demo­cratic society is in need of a
demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime. This is exactly the situation we find in China
­today. Only China has gone much further in its evolution as a demo­cratic
society with a demo­cratic conception of knowledge and civic virtue than Pro-
tagoras’s Greek world ever did or could.
This new demo­cratic real­ity and social imaginary can find no more de-
finitive expression than in Xi Jinping’s first public speech on November 15,
2012, as general secretary of the CCP: “Our ­people have an ardent love for
life. They wish to have better education, more stable jobs, more income,
greater social security, better medical and health care, improved housing con-
ditions, and a better environment. They want their c­ hildren to have sound
growth, have good jobs and lead a more enjoyable life. To meet their desire
for a happy life is our mission.”8 The worldliness of Protagoras is written all
over this conception of the good life and of the role of the CCP as devoted
entirely to furthering it. Man is the mea­sure of every­t hing, says Protagoras.
Take h ­ uman beings—­human beings as we find them—as the point of refer-
ence (yiren weiben), proclaims the party’s new philosophy as reflected in Xi’s
speech. Gone is the elevated telos of an “intelligible” communist f­ uture that
must be superimposed on mundane, merely “sensible” goals in the ­here and
now. Gone with it is the need for a self-­styled vanguard whose privileged
members alone are supposed to possess the elevated Marxian knowledge and
noble revolutionary virtues required to lead the masses out of the cave on
their way to earthly paradise, as in the depiction of the Greater Leader (Mao
Zedong) as the (red) sun. The leaders of the party ­today are no longer looked
up to as if they formed a species apart, as Mao and Zhou Enlai once undoubt-
edly ­were by generations of Chinese who instinctively shunned all thought
even of their mortality. Philosophically and ideologically, if not quite po­liti­
cally and institutionally, t­ oday’s CCP has been cleansed of all traces of Pla-
tonism.9 All but in name, Marx—­the Leninist, Platonic Marx—­has been re-
placed by Protagoras. Which means that, all but in name, democracy’s time
has come. It is time to rectify names.10
The Case for Democracy 109

Systemic, Objective Pressures for Democracy

What I h ave just set out is the plain truth of the ­matter. This does not
mean that the plain truth w ­ ill be plain for every­one to see, especially for
­those who have long been in power and in the habit of exercising power in a
certain way. For them, this plain truth about the necessity of democracy for
China can easily be blocked by two con­ve­nient illusions: first, that performa-
tive success can permanently serve as a boost to or even substitute for legiti-
macy (that is, as legitimacy enhancement or amelioration); and, second, that
the old communist revolutionary source of legitimacy can be revived.
It is impor­tant to dispel ­t hese illusions, for other­w ise they serve as a mis-
taken and irrational basis for action and this is dangerous. I am not sure how
difficult it ­w ill be to show ­t hese to be illusions, but ­t here is at least one good
reason to be hopeful: both the plain truth about the necessity of democracy
and the correlative fact that ­t hese are illusions are due to circumstances ac-
tively brought about by the CCP itself. And it takes only brief reflection to
see that t­ hese circumstances of the CCP’s own making amount to nothing
less than systemic and objective pressures ­toward democracy.
As far as economic conditions are concerned, t­ here has occurred, thanks
to the reform, a much greater division in function between the po­liti­cal and
economic domains, the latter including state-­owned enterprises, especially
­those categorized as “for profit” as distinct from “welfare or public ser­v ice”
firms. Although the CCP is still firmly in charge of both domains, it is in-
creasingly dealing with them as involving two distinct kinds of activity, with
the market granted for the first time its own relatively in­de­pen­dent logic and
imperative, and with private enterprises taking up a h uge chunk of the
economy in terms of both gross domestic product and especially employ-
ment. We might say that the economy, even as it remains firmly u ­ nder the
control of the party-­state, has become radically more impor­tant and more
in­de­pen­dent in relation to po­liti­cal power. Even if this does not weaken the
power of the party-­state, it certainly reduces the sheer po­liti­cal part of its
power in ­favor of the economic. And this cannot but have a profound im-
pact on the nature and extent of po­liti­cal power and thereby on the CCP as
a po­liti­cal institution, making it more functional and less ideological. I would
not argue that this in itself makes Chinese society more demo­cratic, if only
110 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

­ ecause I have my doubts about the effects of unchecked economic power on

b
the nature of social relations. But t­ here is l­ ittle doubt that ­here we have one
impor­tant instance in which the CCP has learned to manage China through
the essentially Western practice of separations. And we know, of course, that
the formal separation of the po­liti­cal and economic domains is a crucial fea-
ture of cap­i­tal­ist liberal democracy. While the degree of this separation in
China is nowhere near its Western counterpart’s and, generally speaking, the
separation itself neither means nor entails democracy and may even curtail
democracy, as it does to one degree or another in Western countries, such
separation clearly reduces both the need and the justification for a nondemo­
cratic form of government. It is definitely the case that the more strongly a
society is marked by such a separation, the less its government requires or
even permits a leadership with a teleological vision, such as that of the CCP.
Thus we have ­here a gradual and unobtrusive yet very consequential devel-
opment for China. No less consequential are two so­cio­log­i­cal by-­products of
the growing importance of the economic domain, much of it privatized: first,
an increasingly sizable ­middle class naturally, if not always uninhibitedly and
consciously, drawn to broadly liberal and (bourgeois) egalitarian values, and,
second, a growing entrepreneurial class with an even greater, if as yet under-
standably unarticulated, reluctance to defer to unelected po­liti­cal power.
­These and other offshoots of China’s economic transformation merge into the
more general condition of social equality that I ­w ill come to shortly.
Ideologically, the four-­decade-­old reform has turned China into a very
strange animal. This animal walks like a duck (though not completely) but
does not quack like a duck, and therefore it is both a duck and not a duck.
China is, in very impor­tant re­spects, including both values (for example, ra-
tionally pursued greed) and institutions (for example, the stock market), a
cap­i­tal­ist society.11 But it still calls itself communist, and as long as it does so
and is strongly motivated to do so, it w ­ ill not quite be a c ap­i­tal­ist society.
The motivation for maintaining a communist identity may remain for quite
some time, boiling down to the determination of the CCP to prolong its ex-
clusive leadership, including over an economy that ­w ill therefore not be al-
lowed to become quite as autonomous as in Western cap­i­tal­ist democracies.
Hence the state-­owned enterprises, even the “for-­profit” ones that strictly
make up state capitalism, have as their first imperative the perpetuation of
CCP rule. But this is now. It is difficult to believe that, say, ten to twenty years
The Case for Democracy 111

from now China ­w ill still be able to call itself communist. And it is even
harder to believe that ten to twenty years from now this appellation, even if
still in use, w­ ill continue to serve as a remotely plausible justification of the
CCP’s exclusive hold on state power. Cognitively, communism is already a
­thing of the past, despite its remaining part of the name of the party that still
rules in China. Nevertheless, the po­liti­cal capital of the name is not yet ex-
hausted, thanks both to awe-­inspiring memories of the more positive achieve-
ments of the party in its conquest and building up of China and to lingering
fears evoked by the more brutal part of the Maoist legacy. Most of this ­w ill
be gone in the foreseeable f­ uture. Links to the revolutionary past, cognitive
and affective, positive and negative, w ­ ill be greatly attenuated in ten to twenty
years, if not sooner, to the point where the name “communism” ­will no longer
produce even a faint echo in collective memory or the national po­liti­cal
psyche. The so-­called historical nihilism (lishi xuwu zhuyi) whose spread the
CCP is trying so hard to stop ­w ill, well within a ­couple of de­cades, have few
mnemonic and affective remnants of the revolutionary past even to annihi-
late. The fear of historical nihilism is the fear of a CCP leadership that is des-
tined to be the last generation still able to avail itself of the po­liti­cal capital
of the revolutionary legacy. Although members of the current leadership do
not thereby become larger than life—as Mao once was and Deng Xiaoping
was, too, if to a noticeably lesser degree—­they, especially Xi, nevertheless still
manage to create some kind of aura around themselves, w ­ hether this aura
provokes love or hate. Their appeal to the revolutionary legacy handed down
from their ­fathers’ generation does not come across as entirely a joke, and
their ideological invocation of what­ever is contained in that legacy is like-
wise not to be dismissed at the level of po­liti­cal gesture and deterrent. They
are plainly still imbued with a lingering “revolutionary spirit.” Yet even they
use the remnants of the communist revolutionary legacy sparingly and mostly
on special, strategic occasions. For ­t hese are veritably no more than the last
remnants and, as such, are increasingly also a liability, serving as a reminder
of what the CCP has ceased to be and of a gaping void of legitimation that it
is incapable of filling. It is easy to imagine, then, what challenge ­w ill befall
the next generation of leaders, and the generation ­after that. One ­t hing is for
sure: they w ­ ill have to manage without the po­liti­cal capital of the commu-
nist revolution, and they thus ­will be a dif­fer­ent breed of leaders (“public of-
ficials” w
­ ill be a more suitable name), having had scant experience of the
112 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

formerly communist China and never been much exposed to the revolu-
tionary past even at second hand. In the absence of all this help, it is almost
unthinkable that they would have the audacity and the ability to maintain
their leadership and their claim to leadership without a plausible mea­sure of
freely expressed popu­lar consent. No longer inflatable by credible connec-
tions with the revolutionary past, the prestige of ­future leaders ­will inevitably
shrink, and they w ­ ill require a direct, minimally believable mandate from
the p­ eople as their newfound equals.
The provision for this popu­lar mandate, if and when it happens, ­w ill be
the culmination of a pro­cess of change whose interim stage, having to do with
the nature of social conditions, is already too far gone to be reversed. What
we find at this interim stage is what I have elsewhere called a substantive pop­
u­lism.12 By this I mean the fact that the CCP now sees its official business as
that of furthering the popu­lar, essentially apo­liti­cal goals of prosperity and
happiness. The subjects of t­ hese goals are ordinary Chinese, and the goals
are as ordinary Chinese themselves see and value them. This is true also of
the sublimated, and more nationalist, form in which ­t hese goals have been
presented, as the Rise of China and, latterly, the Chinese Dream. As far as
mainstream goals and values are concerned, the CCP does not claim to know
better than ordinary Chinese do and does not openly presume to second-­
guess the ­people it other­w ise still leads. This is a profound change: the party
no longer sees itself as pursuing the lofty goal of a far-­off communism and
leading the populace in this pursuit, ­whether or not the latter is willing to go
along, but instead finds its new mission, along with its new claim to power,
entirely in its ability to further the widely shared goals, ­whether at the indi-
vidual or the national level, of ordinary Chinese.13 This is a thoroughgoing
pop­u­lism, except that it is not subject to any credible formal procedure for
registering and affirming popu­lar preferences, such as demo­cratic elections,
and that is why I call it substantive pop­u­lism. Even without the much-­needed
introduction of proper demo­cratic procedures, however, this substantive pop­
u­lism already bespeaks what Tocqueville calls a demo­cratic state of society
or equality of (social) conditions.
In view of t­ hese profound changes in economic, ideological, and espe-
cially social conditions, it is difficult to believe that ­things can simply go on
as they are without gradually adding up to an irresistible pressure for corre-
sponding po­liti­cal change. Compared with 1978, the year known for the
The Case for Democracy 113

Xidan Democracy Wall, and 1989, the year of the aborted democracy move-
ment, China ­today may be, or may appear to be, subjectively further re-
moved from democracy. Yet objectively, with the remarkable advance in
equality of conditions since the early 1990s, the country is much closer to
democracy than ever before. Nay, objectively, it is already on the verge of
democracy—­and that is why strong countermea­sures are needed and every-
where in evidence. And this fact, the objective advance of democracy,
cannot but also be registered, however subtly and obliquely, in mass con-
sciousness, including po­liti­cal consciousness.
As China continues its current economic and social transformation, the
equality of conditions w ­ ill only be enhanced and reinforced. It w ­ ill not be
very long before an even greater equality of conditions, accompanied by an
even stronger and more entrenched sociopo­liti­cal psy­chol­ogy nourished by
such equality, makes it much harder to justify and maintain a completely ver-
tical po­liti­cal structure devoid of credible popu­lar consent, other t­ hings
being equal. And other t­ hings ­will not be equal, b­ ecause ­future leaders of the
CCP, progressively distanced from the legitimating origins of the revolution,
­w ill not be able to command nearly as much authority, and provoke nearly
as much fear, as the pre­sent leadership does. Thus, barring unforeseen suc-
cesses or catastrophes of an extraordinary magnitude, the pressure for an al-
ternative basis of legitimacy w ­ ill inexorably grow. China w ­ ill have to adopt
democracy in one way or another, or ­else it ­w ill incur more and more un-
bearable financial and po­liti­cal costs for the maintenance of stability u ­ ntil
the proverbial last straw breaks the camel’s back.

From Social Equality to Po­liti­cal Democracy

In the brief sketch just given of the economic, ideological, and especially
social f­ actors favorable to democracy, I h ave highlighted a s trong trend
­toward equality as the most crucial ­factor in the unique suitability of democ-
racy for modern conditions. This is not just any equality and must therefore
be carefully defined. It so happens that ­t here is no better way of pinning
down this equality than in terms of what Tocqueville calls the demo­cratic
social state (l’état social démocratique), characterized by a general and perva-
sive equality of conditions.14 Although Tocqueville’s notion of equality of
conditions is a familiar one, two brief observations ­w ill not come amiss.15
114 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

First, it cannot be emphasized enough that the demo­cratic social state is

distinct from po­liti­cal democracy.16 For Tocqueville, democracy is first and
foremost a type of society that contrasts in its entirety with all other types of
society inasmuch as they are marked by a general in­equality of conditions.
Indeed, this contrast is so fundamental that all socie­t ies that derive their
character from an in­equality of conditions in one way or another can be
lumped together u ­ nder “aristocracy” in the exceptionally broad sense Toc-
queville gives the term. This is a momentous enough transformation in the
eyes of Tocqueville to warrant his description of democracy and aristocracy
as marking not so much dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal regimes as “two distinct kinds of
humanity.”17 In our modern kind of humanity, what is no longer acceptable
is the hierarchical organ­ization of presumed ­human differences, conceived
in terms of intrinsic superiority and inferiority, into a rigid aristocratic order
based on rank and status. The advent of this new kind of humanity has re-
quired nothing less than a revolution, as exemplified by the American Revo-
lution and the French Revolution, whose goal, especially when viewed in the
light of their long-­term consequences, was the permanent eradication of fixed
vertical differences within ­human society.
Second, it is worth noting that the so-­called equality of conditions does
not mean economic equality or any other kind of quantitative equality, or
equality of outcome in general.18 Rather, the equality in question is essentially
a ­matter of equality of membership in a l argely inclusive society. This, in
turn, gives rise to a notion of equality as a threshold qualification for par-
ticipation in a largely inclusive social life: the qualification to join a mobile,
competitive form of life that is open to all and whose outcomes for each and
all, including possibly highly unequal quantitative ones, are not known in
advance and can never be fixed once and for all. The basic qualification it-
self, as distinct from what one makes of it, and perhaps ideally protected
against excessive advantages of ­family background, is the same for every­one.
This sameness, in turn, bespeaks and embodies the sameness of every­one, a
kind of qualitative likeness much commented on by Tocqueville and o ­ thers
a­ fter him. 19

As a w ell-­defined notion, then, Tocqueville’s “equality of conditions”

means the removal of any po­liti­cally or coercively maintained fixed hierar-
chies, as in an aristocratic order, and the resultant, highly consequential lev-
eling of all to a b asic h
­ uman sameness that is variously captured in such
The Case for Democracy 115

notions as universal ­human rights, ­careers open to talents, and equality of

opportunity. In other words, this is social equality in a s pecial sense—­
social as distinct from po­liti­cal, and equality in the sense of a basic ­human
sameness rather than quantitative equality or equality of outcome.20 If to
speak of basic h ­ uman sameness sounds slightly overstated, one can make
essentially the same point in terms of the dramatic reduction of power dif-
ferentials in society, which Norbert Elias places ­u nder the very helpful
concept of “functional democ­ratization.” Writing in the same spirit as
Tocqueville did but with less (indeed seemingly no) normative involvement,
Elias says that functional democ­ratization “is not identical with the trend
­towards the development of ‘institutional democracy’ ” but rather represents
“a shift in the social distribution of power”21—in other words, a g rowing
equality of (social) conditions.
The reason why the notion of equality of (social) conditions, or social
equality for short, is so impor­tant is that, while it is not itself democracy in
the po­liti­cal sense, it produces a momentum in its direction that is well-­nigh
irresistible. That Tocqueville also calls it the demo­cratic social (as distinct
from po­liti­cal) state is telling. Since I rest my case for democracy so heavi­ly
on this notion and its implications, it is worth spelling out the inner connec-
tion between social equality and po­liti­cal democracy further than in my
­earlier discussion of Protagoras and Machiavelli. This w ­ ill allow me, having
just described the domains (economic, ideological, and social) in which this
equality has found expression in China, to return to a higher level of abstrac-
tion and, more than in my treatment of Protagoras and Machiavelli, pro-
ceed in the form of explicit arguments. My aim is to drive home the point
that just as advancing equality of conditions rules out the revival of the CCP’s
old revolutionary legitimacy, so it points to only one appropriate way to make
up for the latter’s demise. And that is po­liti­cal democracy broadly construed
as a regime compatible with equality of conditions.
Following the spirit though not entirely the letter of Tocqueville, I would
like to treat equality of conditions in the social state as the first and most
impor­tant condition for democracy. This makes sense if we distinguish, as
Tocqueville does, between the general conditions of a society and the po­liti­cal
system of that society. As is well known, however, Tocqueville regards social
equality not as a condition for democracy but as the most impor­tant part
of it. His point, semantic and terminological, is well taken, for he is largely
116 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

correct in claiming that so closely related are equality of conditions as a fea-

ture of the social state and democracy as a property of the po­liti­cal system
that both must be seen as constitutive of democracy. But Tocqueville is more
subtle than this claim gives one to understand, in that he does not say that
equality of conditions ­w ill automatically and immediately lead to a demo­
cratic po­liti­cal system. What he suggests instead is more open and flexible
yet by no means ambiguous. “One has to understand,” he writes, “that
equality ends up by infiltrating the world of politics as it does everywhere
­else. It would be impossible to imagine men forever unequal in one re­spect,
yet equal in o ­ thers; they must, in the end, come to be equal in all.”22 In other
words, once equality of conditions has become a fact of life in a society, ­there
comes about a natu­ral and power­ful momentum ­toward a demo­cratic po­
liti­cal system, a momentum that ­w ill not cease ­until the goal is reached, al-
though it is impossible to say how long it w ­ ill take to reach the goal and what
exact form its arrival w ­ ill take. A crucial part of this momentum, one might
add, comes from the fact that equality of conditions, as understood by
Tocqueville, is not merely an empirical fact. Over time, through being af-
firmed and valorized by ­t hose fighting to gain or entrench this condition, it
becomes also a moral fact, as it w ­ ere, inspiring its own expansion into all
relevant aspects of ­human life. Democracy—­that is, po­liti­cal democracy—
is an all too natu­ral step of this expansion.
I see no reason to depart from the core of Tocqueville’s insights in this
regard. It is nevertheless necessary to make ampler allowances than he
seems to have done for the length and difficulty of the pro­gress from social
equality to po­liti­cal democracy. And it is for this reason that I have chosen
to treat social equality as a condition for democracy rather than part of it in
order to give extra emphasis to the point—­Tocqueville’s point—­t hat equality
of conditions is not yet po­liti­cal democracy and need not immediately give
rise to it. This extra emphasis is especially called for in the Chinese context,
where the road leading from social equality to po­liti­cal democracy is likely
to be much more tortuous than was true of the early American experience
that Tocqueville commented on. Despite this, Tocqueville’s basic thought is
left intact—­namely, that social equality stands in an extremely close and
power­ful causal relation to po­liti­cal democracy.
Implicit in this thought is a d istinctive argument for a d emo­cratic po­
liti­cal system. Given equality of conditions in a s ociety, so the argument
The Case for Democracy 117

goes, it is fitting that a demo­cratic po­liti­cal system should be established in

that society. Let us call this the argument from fittingness, where the fitting-
ness is a ­matter of ensuring that equals act consistently as equals across all
relevant domains of life. Although this argument is based on a c ausal—­
that is, social and psychological—­understanding of ­human society, its nor-
mative implications are clear and its normative force undeniable: as equality
of conditions makes a demo­cratic po­liti­cal system fitting and yet does not
produce an automatic and immediate shift to such a s ystem, it is morally
desirable to act in such a way as to bring about that shift whenever pos­si­ble
and to do so sooner rather than ­later. ­Until this happens, the po­liti­cal system
­w ill lack (moral) fittingness and (social-­psychological) stability.
So far I have been speaking of po­liti­cal democracy’s fittingness u ­ nder
equality of conditions from the third-­person perspective, which is largely
what Tocqueville does. I should think that this fittingness is obvious even
from this third-­person perspective. If this is the case, the same fittingness
becomes all the more undeniable from the first-­person perspective, which it-
self cannot be denied to anyone ­under equality of conditions. For, ­under
equality of conditions, how can anyone sensibly and persuasively tell citizens
to their face, in a first-­person context of action rather than observation, that
they are not f­ ree and equal enough to have democracy or not reasonable
and rational enough to make democracy work for the benefit and dignity of
the imperfect beings that all ­humans happen to be? When we move from
the third-­person to the first-­person perspective, we are making natu­ral pro­
gress from Tocqueville to Jürgen Habermas—­f rom a so­cio­log­i­cal to a dis-
course argument for democracy.23 ­There is a sense in which Tocqueville
made the first move, and Habermas’s theory of communicative action, in-
cluding his discourse argument for democracy, is but the impressive upshot
of shifting—­democratically, as it w ­ ere—­from the third-­ to the first-­person
perspective, and of deriving what Habermas calls rationalization of the
lifeworld (as if it ­were an in­de­pen­dent phenomenon) from the more funda-
mental pro­cess of equalization of conditions. But thanks to Habermas,
among ­others, Tocqueville’s case for democracy in terms of fittingness ac-
quires a natu­ral extension that makes it well-­nigh unarguable (from the
first-­person perspective).24
The argument from fittingness can be made stronger still, for reasons
that ­will lead to a further, somewhat dif­fer­ent argument, which I ­will call the
118 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

argument from governability. Tocqueville does not mention t­ hese reasons, at

least not explic­itly, but they can be naturally added to his line of thought. In-
deed, this further argument can be treated as an extension of the argument
from fittingness, stating the consequences of a regime’s lack of fittingness
(which the argument from fittingness itself does not do) and showing the con-
sequences to be dire. As I have noted, equality of conditions as understood
by Tocqueville boils down to a qualitative sameness of all members of society.
And this, in turn, means that no one can have the title to rule. For, strictly
speaking, the title to rule is predicated on in­equality of conditions, such that
­t hose who are naturally and qualitatively superior in one relevant re­spect or
another have the title to rule over their inferiors. Democracy at its core is
nothing but the disavowal of such in­equality and hence of the superiority that
creates the title to rule. Insofar as democracy is nevertheless regarded as com-
patible with the practice of ruling, it exists to make acceptable the periodic
suspension of the absence of a title to rule by creating, as it w ­ ere, temporary
licenses for public office through such means as so-­called ­free and fair elec-
tions. It creates a government u ­ nder a qualitative equality of conditions that
would other­w ise give no one even the temporary legitimacy to exercise po­
liti­cal power. Strictly speaking, the result is not quite what is usually called
the demo­cratic form of government, if only b ­ ecause a demo­cratically elected
government is far from self-­government and, for the most part (that is, with
the partial exception of the legislative branch), does not exercise the enor-
mous power at its disposal in a remotely demo­cratic manner.25 If this method
of se­lection nevertheless has something commendably demo­cratic about it,
it is only b
­ ecause it is made necessary by the equality of conditions that pre-
vails in the social state. It is, in princi­ple, the least objectionable response to
such social conditions and provides the closest (which is not to say truly close)
approximation to the po­liti­cal princi­ple of sovereignty of the p ­ eople that most
naturally follows from such conditions. Thus it is that any po­liti­cal power that
behaves as if it had some title to rule that could bypass some credible expres-
sion of popu­lar consent (a deliberately vague and flexible formulation to
which I s­ hall return) would come across as an affront to the modern moral
and po­liti­cal sensibility.26 The greater the equality of conditions, the more
egregious the affront, and ­t here comes a point in the pro­gress of equality of
conditions where a society becomes positively ungovernable in the total ab-
sence of popu­lar consent. Elias captures this point with his characteristic de-
The Case for Democracy 119

tachment and clarity when he writes, referring to the historical experience

of modern Eu­rope, “Except where the institutionalized balance of domina-
tion corresponded to the ­actual power differentials of the mass, the increase
[in the power of the mass] showed itself in the diffuse manifestations of dis-
content and apathy, and in looming rebellion and vio­lence.”27 ­There is no
reason to think that any modern society, including China, ­w ill be immune
to this law once equality of conditions becomes firmly established in it as a
fact of life and as common sense. Equality of conditions is well on its way to
becoming just t­ hose t­ hings—­a fact of life and common sense—in China. As
this happens, a crucial normative fault line—­t he general demand to be per-
suaded rather than compelled on impor­tant m ­ atters of public interest28—­
will appear in China for the first time. B ­ ecause this normative fault line w ­ ill
occur as a real and objective event in China’s po­liti­cal culture and collective
moral psy­chol­ogy, one may expect the governability of the country to depend
more and more on reasonably open and demo­cratic channels for the expres-
sion of public opinion and popu­lar consent. Thus, the argument from gov-
ernability, far from possessing only normative force, is supported by the in-
corporation of this force into the causal nexus of po­liti­cal life.
To ­t hose who point to the apparent stability of China ­today in empirical
refutation of this argument, I ­w ill simply add that ­t here is no better proof of
the potential for ungovernability than the gargantuan cost of shoring up this
stability. And let us not forget that the mea­sur­able material cost of bud­get
and manpower is compounded by an incalculable psychological cost in the
form of resentment and fear and the sense of impotence cumulatively burned
into the national psyche.
It is a separate, and prior, question w
­ hether t­ here is an argument of compa-
rable clarity and force for equality of conditions itself, for acting in such a way
as to bring about equality of conditions in the first place, or at least for prefer-
ring equality to in­equality of conditions. Tocqueville takes up this question, and
his approach to it is instructive. He treats as his point of reference (­human)
nature as opposed to convention and asks ­whether equality of conditions (de-
mocracy in the broad sense) or in­equality of conditions (aristocracy in the
broad sense) is closer to ­human nature, such that the convention based on it
does less vio­lence to ­human nature. His answer is somewhat ambiguous, or
one might say dialectical, in that he believes that equality of conditions is, on
balance, closer to h ­ uman nature, especially on account of the tendency of the
120 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

­ uman affections (say, in the ­family setting), and yet he also thinks that ­there
h
are certain good ­things in ­human nature, such as the love of higher ­things and
the quest for nobler accomplishments, that the convention based on in­equality
is better suited to bringing out. In the end, however, Tocqueville takes the
plunge (undialectically, as it w ­ ere) in ­favor of equality of conditions, in the
(pious?) hope that the manner of realizing it w ­ ill leave at least some room for
the good ­t hings that in­equality of conditions used to make pos­si­ble but only
at the cost of g­ reat distortions of other aspects of h ­ uman nature. What we
find, then, is an argument for equality of conditions from ­human nature. I
suspect that Tocqueville was influenced in making this argument by the real­ity
that he saw in Amer­i­ca and foresaw as the destiny of Eu­rope. As we know, he
went so far as to treat the onward march of equality as providential. Providen-
tial or not, the real­ity of equality of conditions that Tocqueville identified as
the hallmark of democracy was and is h ­ ere to stay, and, given his dialectical
view of the pros and cons of equality and in­equality, one could reasonably
suggest that Tocqueville’s argument from ­human nature is supported and in
part motivated by an implicit argument from real­ity based on the sheer recog-
nition that equality has already become a f act of life. The latter argument
makes a virtue of necessity, to be sure, but does so not only ­because the
necessity is simply ­t here but also ­because the necessity itself contains impor­
tant virtues despite leaving out other virtues. It may therefore be more pre-
cise to think of the overall argument as an argument from (largely benign)
necessity. ­W hether or not this reading of Tocqueville is correct, the argument
from necessity as I have just explained it is one to which I myself subscribe.
I have teased out, then, three arguments for democracy from Tocqueville’s
account of equality of conditions. What is remarkable about ­these arguments is
their special, conditional kind of normative force, which is at the same time a
species of prudence. The argument from necessity, which applies to equality of
conditions itself, derives its normative force from confronting equality of con-
ditions as already largely a fact of life and finding both sufficient strength and,
on balance, sufficient virtue in it to conclude that it is neither pos­si­ble nor de-
sirable to return to in­equality of conditions. On this basis, the argument from
fittingness proceeds to make the obvious point that, given equality of social
conditions, democracy is the most morally appropriate and, implicitly and as
a ­matter of prudence, the most stable regime type. The argument from gov-
ernability then brings out this prudential implication by attending to the con-
The Case for Democracy 121

sequences of an inappropriate regime and reasoning from a regime’s lack of fit-

tingness to a country’s lack of governability. What makes the combined case
of t­ hese latter two arguments compelling is that it is at once normative
(showing democracy to have the best moral fit with equality of conditions)
and prudential (showing democracy to be the most conducive to stability
­under equality of conditions), and inseparably so (in that what is prudential
­here rests on perception of the normative and is hence itself normative).
While separate and distinct, then, the three arguments are marked by
their unity of operation. For once the argument from necessity is triggered by
social real­ity, as it ­were, as it must be to one degree or another in any modern
society, the arguments from fittingness and from governability w ­ ill automati-
cally come into play, although it may take time, even a difficult pro­cess, for
them to translate into real­ity. In this way, the three arguments add up to an
integral case for democracy that is far from being purely or merely normative.
They also derive their force from the fact of equality of conditions and find
their causal potency in the laws of social and po­liti­cal psy­chol­ogy ­under
equality of conditions. For this reason, once equality of conditions has be-
come a fact of life in a society, as it clearly has in China ­today, the combined
force of ­these arguments becomes inescapable. With their moral and pruden-
tial appeal resting on undeniable factual and causal premises, ­t hese argu-
ments are compelling to an exceptional degree. They may even be thought of
as laws of society that any government presiding over a country marked by
equality of conditions ignores at its peril and at the cost of the country it rules.

A View from Marx and Historical Materialism

It should not be difficult to see a c lose affinity between Tocqueville’s

causal view of historical change and Marx’s. What Tocqueville and Marx
have in common in this regard is traceable all the way back to Aristotle (and
indeed Protagoras, if more speculatively) and is more directly attributable to
the fact that François Guizot was a significant influence on both, Marx’s class
and personal antagonism to Guizot notwithstanding. This is not to suggest
anything like total resemblance in terms of approach to historical explana-
tion between Marx and Tocqueville. For Marx is the originator of historical
materialism, and what sets historical materialism apart from Tocqueville’s
view, as it does all other views before Marx, is—to simplify for our pre­sent
122 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

purposes—­the way Marx goes one step beyond identifying the decisive influ-
ence of the social on the po­liti­cal. Marx does so by positing, ­behind this in-
fluence, the prior and deeper determining influence of the economic on the
social itself. Think of the po­liti­cal in terms of ­legal relations and forms of
state, think of the social as civil society, then think of civil society itself as
being internally divided between social structure and po­liti­cal economy, and
we see how Marx traces the causal relation among t­ hese ele­ments from one
to the next: “My investigation led to the result that ­legal relations as well as
forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-­
called general development of the h ­ uman mind, but rather have their roots
in the material conditions of life, the sum total of which Hegel, following
the example of the En­glishmen and Frenchmen of the eigh­teenth ­century,
combines ­under the name of ‘civil society,’ that, however, the anatomy of civil
society is to be sought in po­liti­cal economy.”29 Exactly the same layered ex-
planation is found in Friedrich Engels’s 1883 preface to ἀ e Communist
Manifesto such that “economic production and the structure of society of
­every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom constitute the founda-
tion for the po­liti­cal and intellectual history of that epoch.”30
In neither text is democracy mentioned, to be sure, and, in any case, Marx
means by democracy what is tantamount to ­human (as distinct from merely
po­liti­cal) emancipation, not bourgeois democracy, reserving the term republic
for the latter. But the main point is not affected—­namely, that social structure
determines the po­liti­cal system, and that economic production, in turn, de-
termines social structure—­and we can easily fit Tocqueville’s insight regarding
the relation between demo­cratic society and demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime
into the first half of Marx’s proposition. I for one would be perfectly happy to
have Tocqueville’s insight augmented by the second half of Marx’s proposi-
tion, although—­and this is beyond the scope of our pre­sent discussion—­the
relation between “base” and “superstructure,” indeed the very formulation of
the distinction itself, needs to be understood with greater precision and so-
phistication than Marx himself was able to provide.31
The impor­tant point is that, what­ever adjustments may need to be made
with regard to the second half of Marx’s proposition, Marx is almost at one
with Tocqueville with regard to the first half. In other words, Marx and Engels
would make the same kind of arguments I have been making (with the help of
Tocqueville)—­and would indeed do so even more forcefully, treating China’s
The Case for Democracy 123

need for po­liti­cal democracy as a need arising from the increasingly demo­
cratic character of Chinese society in­de­pen­dently of anyone’s ­will, a need (to use
Engels’s phrase) not “engendered in the minds of man.” And they would see
my prudential argument for democracy in China as—­again to borrow a
phrase from Engels—­“nothing but the reflex, in thought, of [a need] in fact.”32
I myself would not go that far. But their (hy­po­thet­i­cal) claim is, at its core, a
perfectly reasonable one: that, considering its social structure (and economic
development) ­today, China is ripe, or ­will soon be ripe, for a bourgeois demo­
cratic revolution. If one does not like the phrase “bourgeois demo­cratic
revolution,” containing as it does two potentially offensive terms, let it simply
be said that China’s increasingly demo­cratic society is creating an objective
and irresistible need for transition to a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime.
That no paralyzing crisis has yet occurred on account of the mismatch
between social structure and po­liti­cal regime is, on a broadly Marxist view,
due to the fact that t­ here is no comparable mismatch further up the chain of
determination—­t hat is, between economic production and social structure.
In other words, the relations of production have not yet turned into the pro-
verbial fetters of productive forces, ­because the mismatch between social
structure and po­liti­cal regime—­w ith the social structure itself being still
largely consistent with economic life—is at one remove from the deeper and
more fundamental mismatch that, according to Marx, would cause a social
revolution and end a mode of production and life to make way for a new one.
That said, ­t here is no sound reason, even from a Marxist standpoint, to
dismiss the admittedly less impor­tant mismatch between social structure and
po­liti­cal regime as being incapable of producing highly debilitating effects
of its own. This is true especially when such effects, in turn, produce side ef-
fects on the relation between social structure and economic production, and
even more so in view of the largely in­de­pen­dent momentum of the looming
legitimation crisis.

Demo­cratic Pride Strengthens the Desire

for Democracy

It w
­ ill have emerged from my discussion of the fittingness of democ-
racy ­under equality of conditions—­only reinforced by the considerable if
partial affinity between Tocqueville and Marx—­t hat the sense of fittingness
124 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

is both normative and psychological. Being psychological, it is subject to

causal forces. In par­tic­u­lar, ­t here seem to be causal forces at work that bear
on the dynamics of the relation between demo­cratic society and demo­cratic
po­liti­cal regime.
­These causal forces are well captured by Jon Elster in terms of what he
calls mechanisms—­a mechanism being “a specific causal pattern that can be
recognized ­after the event but rarely foreseen.”33 One mechanism identified
by Elster is the spillover effect: “The spillover effect says that if a person fol-
lows a certain pattern of be­hav­ior P in one sphere of his life, X, he w ­ ill also
follow P in Y.” Now recall what Tocqueville has to say about the relation
34

between demo­cratic society and demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime (in a p assage

cited ­earlier): “One has to understand that equality ends up by infiltrating
the world of politics as it does everywhere e­ lse. It would be impossible to
imagine men forever unequal in one re­spect, yet equal in ­others; they must,
in the end, come to be equal in all.”35 This is, of course, the inspiration
­behind my argument for democracy from fittingness. Insofar as this argu-
ment is psychological (in addition to being normative), its basis lies in the
spillover effect—in the idea that the sense of fittingness ­w ill not cease to
agitate for change ­until the effect is achieved.
It is worth noting, however, that the spillover effect does not seem to pre-
clude the influence of a dif­fer­ent, indeed diametrically opposed, mechanism.
The latter is what Elster calls the compensation effect: “The compensation ef-
fect says that if [a person] does not follow P in X, he ­w ill, if he can, do so in
Y.”36 If it is true that members of a demo­cratic society ­w ill not rest satisfied
­u ntil they also become citizens of a demo­cratic polity (spillover effect), it
seems no less true that their desire for a demo­cratic polity need not be very
intense and that one cause of this lack of intensity (as distinct from a lack of
desire) is precisely that they already enjoy to a considerable degree the ben-
efits of a demo­cratic society (compensation effect). Th ­ ere is yet one further
complication in that the compensation effect can work in conjunction with
the crowding-­out effect. “The crowding-­out effect says that if he does follow
P in X, he w ­ ill not do so in Y.”37 Where the compensation effect works by
providing alternative benefits, the crowding-­out effect does so through
power­ful distractions. ­These, both benefits and distractions, make up the psy-
chological dimension of so-­called per­for­mance legitimacy and explain why
per­for­mance legitimacy can help create the appearance of legitimacy proper
The Case for Democracy 125

and, by the same token, why a substantial drop in per­for­mance legitimacy

can be po­liti­cally dangerous.
What are we to make of ­t hese complications? The correct approach is not
to deny or make light of the compensation effect or the crowding-­out effect
but instead to give due weight to another impor­tant causal ­factor, pride, and
to determine what outcome the new balance of ­factors is likely to produce.
Thomas Hobbes famously speaks of pride as a potent force in h ­ uman na-
ture. As such, pride gives rise both to the need for the Leviathan and to the
Leviathan’s limits. Now, u ­ nder equality of conditions, the Hobbesian generic
pride becomes demo­cratic pride, what­ever e­ lse it may also be. Nothing is more
natu­ral than for pride to be s­ haped by the condition of social relations and
to learn gradually to assert itself as such relations become more equal. Th ­ ere
thus comes a point in the growth of equality of conditions where the Levia-
than ­w ill have to adjust its sovereign might—­a nd its form—to demo­cratic
pride. This, of course, is only part of the causal trajectory of democracy, but
its potency must not be underestimated. And the power of demo­cratic pride
is such that members of a society marked by equality of conditions cannot,
sooner or ­later, help but think of themselves as worthy of being recognized
and treated as po­liti­cal equals, at which point they ­w ill expect their govern-
ment to bear some credible resemblance to the ideal of popu­lar sovereignty.
It is not plausible to believe that demo­cratic pride w ­ ill cause their desire for
a demo­cratic polity to be unbearably intense, u ­ nder normal circumstances
(defined in terms of the normal presence of the compensation effect and the
crowding-­out effect).38 Nor, on the other hand, is it plausible, or prudent, to
believe that demo­cratic pride w ­ ill not, u
­ nder normal circumstances, even be
sufficient to create a reasonably strong and sustained desire for a moderate
degree of po­liti­cal participation (such as is available in the so-­called mature
democracies ­today). This is why I have described the object of demo­cratic
pride as a regime that bears some credible resemblance to the notion of
popu­lar sovereignty—no more, no less.
This is another way of saying that our sense of democracy’s fittingness
­under equality of conditions, itself both cognitive and normative, is rein-
forced by demo­cratic pride and that this should make the desire for democ-
racy based on fittingness that much stronger. To be sure, demo­cratic pride is
one causal f­ actor among o ­ thers and its object is one good among o ­ thers. Yet,
being a species of pride, and one that is bound to be widely shared ­u nder
126 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

equality of conditions, it surely must be strong enough not to easily give way
in the face of the compensation effect and the crowding-­out effect. In other
words, demo­cratic pride must surely be able to assert itself with reasonable
(that is, neither overwhelming nor negligible) force despite such benefits or
distractions as prosperity, opportunities for plea­sure, or even individual lib-
erty. Even when such benefits or distractions abound, demo­cratic pride
must be reckoned with. When they dwindle or dis­appear, it w ­ ill be a force to
be marveled at or feared.

Equality of Conditions and Its Effects

­ ere can be l­ ittle doubt that social equality as described has arrived in
Th
China. We can therefore no longer pretend that democracy is not an option,
or not a good option, for China. We cannot even plausibly claim that ­whether
democracy is a good option in princi­ple is open to reasonable normative dis-
agreement, nor even that democracy, while normatively appealing, is an option
that had better be taken but need not be taken precisely ­because its appeal is
(merely) normative. The decisive f­ actor that has emerged from our reconstruc-
tion of Tocqueville’s arguments for democracy is what Chinese society has
come to be like and what po­liti­cal arrangement best fits such a society. On this
basis, I would like to suggest again, this time in more concise terms, that the
CCP has itself helped create in China a very considerable degree of equality of
social conditions and that the po­liti­cal implications of such conditions simply
cannot be ignored any longer. To put it bluntly, the party w ­ ill soon have no
choice but to compensate for its fast-­receding links with the original, revolu-
tionary foundation of its legitimacy with a plausible new rationale based on
democracy. All it takes to appreciate this coming necessity is to observe and
reflect on the broad trajectory of equality of conditions in communist China so
far and its already profound effects on social and po­liti­cal relations and, some-
what more slowly but no less surely, on collective po­liti­cal psy­chol­ogy.
I have already given a rough sketch of the pro­gress of equality of condi-
tions in its economic, ideological, and social manifestations. Switching now
to a bird’s-­eye view, one can see the appearance and expansion of this equality
in communist China as the upshot of two momentous pro­cesses. The first is
a quasi-­democratic leveling that happened ­under Mao’s leadership, whereby
­people w ­ ere made po­liti­cally and legally equal in princi­ple, but subject to the
The Case for Democracy 127

exclusion of so-­called class enemies (lots of them, and their ranks could swell
whenever the need arose), and in a manner compromised by the po­liti­cally
enforced urban-­rural divide. In the era of reform, this divide has completely
lost its moral and po­liti­cal legitimacy, although it is yet to be administratively
dismantled. At the same time, the category of class enemies that underlay and
compromised Mao-­style egalitarianism has been abolished so that po­liti­cal
and ­legal equality now extends in princi­ple to all. ­These changes, especially
the latter, constitute the second momentous pro­cess that has propelled
equality of conditions forward, this time courtesy of the temper and exigen-
cies of the reform era. Since one mechanism at work in this second pro­cess
is the discursive cessation of class conflict and its inherently conflict-­
promoting goals, the pro­cess may be thought of as a quasi-­liberal neutral-
ization (that is, a moderation or deintensification) of values in Chinese so-
ciety, somewhat comparable to the shift from the passions to the interests and
the rise of liberal toleration that happened in early modern Eu­rope.
The discursive removal of the category of class enemies along with their
so-­called reactionary values entails also the discursive evaporation of the pro-
letariat and especially of ­t hose proletarian values that used to be pitted
against so-­called bourgeois ones. The result is a quasi-­bourgeois, humanistic
universalism that was anathema in Mao’s time. ­Today, all ­people supposedly
want essentially the same ­things and hold essentially the same values, at least
in the sense that where differences in aspirations and values still exist, they
are no longer conceived in terms of good and bad, still less in terms of good
and evil, and even less in terms of po­liti­cal good and evil. One world, one
dream, we are told (as by the Chinese motto for the 2008 Beijing Olympics),
with the Chinese Dream continuous (according to Xi Jinping) with the Amer-
ican Dream, among the dreams of other nations. Likewise, the happy and
prosperous life of all Chinese, regardless of class (hence class is not even men-
tioned), and as the p ­ eople themselves understand it, has become the express
goal of the CCP. Furthermore, the achievement of this goal by China, says
Xi, ­w ill contribute also to the realization of similar goals by other members
of the now harmoniously conceived ­family of nations—­t hat is, a community
of the shared ­future of humankind (renlei mingyun gongtongti).39 According
to new Chinese official doctrine, then, what amounts to an all-­encompassing
equality of conditions, with no one (­either individual or nation) deserving
to be left ­behind, has descended not only on China but on the entire world.
128 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Almost as noteworthy is another consequence of the two waves of equal-

ization in CCP-­led China, and that is the transformation of the ­family as a
site of authority. The traditional patriarchal system started to crumble, in
Mao’s China, thanks especially to a sustained effort to equalize relations be-
tween men and ­women, both within and outside the ­family.40 Then, in the
de­cades of reform initiated by Deng, the relation between parents and ­children
has under­gone an equalization that is no less profound in its impact on the
­family and beyond. The combined result of t­ hese two changes is the decisive
erosion of the subordination of m ­ other and c­ hildren to the ­father, indeed of
­children to parents, and hence the comprehensive weakening of familial au-
thority. This becomes especially obvious when we observe, say, the difference
in filial disposition between the generation born in the 1950s and the so-­
called post-1980s or post-1990s cohort. Thus, in t­ oday’s China, it can no
longer be said of the ­family, as it always could within the Confucian tradi-
tion, that it is the training ground for obedience to authority—­a flexible virtue
that is easily transferable from the f­ amily (filial piety) to the state (loyalty).
Although Chinese parents by and large still have a considerable say in their
­children’s lives (especially concerning marriage and property), the deference
shown them is based more on emotional and financial solidarity between the
generations than on sheer patriarchal or parental authority, of which remark-
ably l­ ittle is left a­ fter Mao’s egalitarianism and Deng’s pragmatism. Almost
to the same degree that they have trou­ble accepting the familial authority of
their parents qua authority, young Chinese t­ oday, especially the urban and
the better educated, evince a nonchalance t­ oward po­liti­cal authority that was
unheard-of in the entire Chinese past, including the communist episode.
True, ­t hese young ­people may belong to the fan club of this or that star or
celebrity, but only b ­ ecause they choose to do so, u­ nder such influence as they
are willing to accept. In the final analy­sis, they defer only to themselves, like
latter-­day believers who decide for themselves what to believe, how they be-
lieve, and w ­ hether they believe at all. What­ever views ­t hese young Chinese
consciously hold of democracy, t­ here can be ­little doubt that theirs is a thor-
oughly demo­cratic mentality, in a broad sense. The po­liti­cal implications of
­t hese changes—­t he collapse of familial authority and its gradual yet inexo-
rable extension to the po­liti­cal domain—­are already profound and ­w ill be-
come increasingly so. Equality of conditions erodes and fi­nally destroys not
The Case for Democracy 129

only parental authority and that of elders but also the deification of rulers
that once seemed natu­ral ­under in­equality of conditions.
It is much to the CCP’s credit, from ­today’s vantage point, that it has helped
bring about equality of conditions in one way ­u nder Mao and in another
­under Deng and his successors. The combined upshot of ­these two egalitarian
waves has changed China beyond recognition. What­ever the material achieve-
ments of the economic reform, its greatest social and po­liti­cal consequence
undoubtedly has been the broad kind of equality of conditions that Toc-
queville thought he observed in Amer­i­ca nearly two centuries ago. Aside
from the presence of the CCP and some of its consequences, I daresay that
the equality of conditions found in China ­today compares very favorably in-
deed with its American counterpart back at the time of Tocqueville’s journey
through eastern Amer­i­ca. For we see in China ­today the public recognition,
without exceptions (such as slavery), of exactly what Tocqueville had in mind
as equality of conditions—­the qualitative sameness of ­people as distinct from
the quantitative difference between, say, rich and poor. And we see the im-
plications of this newfound equality b ­ ehind every­t hing that is happening in
China—­t he throb and restlessness of a new, pervasively competitive life; the
desperate worship of money, success, and celebrity as the only markers of an
ever-­mobile, insecure superiority; the unstoppable rise in economic and other
quantitative in­equality; the seething resentment and protest against it, stem-
ming directly from a passion for equality and informed by the demand for
equality of opportunity (a derivative of equality of conditions, just as economic
in­equality and other inequalities of outcome are a natu­ral consequence of
the same equality of conditions); and, in art, culture, and taste, the disap-
pearance of every­t hing that used to be considered high or noble or simply
qualitatively dif­fer­ent.
­There is ­every reason to believe that this unpre­ce­dented equality, incom-
plete and sometimes inconsistent as it may be, is ­here to stay and needs only
time to run its natu­ral course, bringing with it an ethos of individualism and
a passion for stability (conducive to rather than incompatible with cap­i­tal­ist
competitiveness, including “creative destruction”), prosperity, and hedonism.
It is none other than this product of the CCP itself, w ­ hether intended or not
(one cannot say it was unintended entirely and all along), that has stripped
the old revolutionary legitimacy of its aura and indeed emptied the past as
130 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

such of the power to confer legitimacy on any regime seeking to govern

­here and now. By the same token, advancing social equality leaves po­liti­cal
democracy as the only appropriate alternative to make up for the shortfall
caused by the demise of revolutionary legitimacy.
It is worth emphasizing that this is not b ­ ecause—­and definitely does not
have to be ­because—­equality of conditions is bound sooner or ­later to pro-
duce an overwhelming subjective preference for democracy. It is one ­t hing
to suggest that democracy may well come knocking on the door before we
know it so we had better be prepared for this eventuality and start thinking
about it now, and something ­else to believe that this ­w ill happen ­because, or
chiefly ­because, democracy w ­ ill definitely one day become the conscious
popu­lar po­liti­cal preference in China. ­There is no axiom of po­liti­cal life that
dictates that democracy must under all circumstances come about demo­
cratically, and no reason to believe that a more demo­cratic regime w ­ ill be-
come an urgent and worthy cause in China only when democracy has turned
into an indubitable object of popu­lar desire.
Thanks to the compensation and crowding-out effects, such desire is
unlikely to possess sufficient vigor or foresight as long as the CCP man-
ages to do a reasonably good job of maintaining economic growth, rising
living standards, and social order—­t hereby creating the very reasonable
apprehension that all of t­ hese good ­t hings could be jeopardized if China
­were to gratuitously or for other dubious reasons switch to a p o­liti­cally
dif­fer­ent and untested (in China) way of d ­ oing t­ hings. There is also the
fact that democracy is the so-­called liberty of the ancients and, as such, is
in modern society naturally outweighed in importance and salience by the
so-­called liberties of the moderns, ­t hose liberties that ­people have occa-
sion to use in their everyday, nonpo­liti­cal lives. ­These modern liberties
exist plentifully in China t­ oday as a r esult of the economic reform, al-
though they are de facto freedoms that have yet to be publicly affirmed
and protected as such. I w ­ ill discuss ­later this ambiguous status of individual
freedoms in China. For now, suffice it to say that, what­ever one’s views on de-
mocracy may be, in general or with par­tic­u­lar reference to China, one should
not be surprised by a lack of popu­lar desire for democracy in China, if this
indeed turns out to be the case, and need not hastily attribute such lack en-
tirely to conscious fear of offending the current po­liti­cal and ideological
orthodoxy.
The Case for Democracy 131

Far stronger is the likelihood that the apparent dearth of popu­lar desire
for democracy in China, if true, is due largely to what is known as adap-
tive preference formation, the adjustment of desires to opportunities—­
that is, the formation of preferences through subconscious adjustment to
forcibly imposed social or, as in the pre­sent case, po­liti­cal conditions. One
should therefore not be surprised, e­ ither, if the lifting of such conditions
one day is followed by the sudden eruption of a pervasive unwillingness to
accept any but a demo­cratic regime. Indeed I very much suspect that some-
thing like this ­w ill happen, just as I expect an outpouring of passion for de-
mocracy from t­ hose who already have this passion but feel too inhibited to
give open expression to it in the repressive atmosphere prevailing today.
What­ever the case may be, consciously held and openly expressed po­
liti­cal preferences should not be treated as decisive, especially given the se-
rious absence of freedom of conscience and expression in China ­today. All
too often we simply cannot know with confidence what ­people’s preferences
are. To the degree that more or less reliable information is available, we have
reason to doubt ­whether even truthfully expressed preferences are true
preferences—­true in the sense of being largely ­free from distortion by exces-
sive adaptation. Perhaps most impor­tant of all, if ­t here is any increased pref-
erence for democracy, it may well be expressed—­indeed known to the citi-
zens involved themselves—­only obliquely in the form of a correspondingly
decreased willingness to follow and obey the still-­undemocratic po­liti­cal
authority of the CCP, at vari­ous levels, except u ­ nder strong pressure or in-
ducement. Compared with this highly consequential (potential) change in
po­liti­cal attitude, what ­people’s po­liti­cal views happen to be, and what they
say t­ hose views are, is of decidedly secondary importance.
Thus, when I speak of democracy being the only appropriate response to
the demise of revolutionary legitimacy, I do not mean this in a purely (and su-
perficially) subjective sense—in the sense that democracy ­will be openly,
knowingly, and strongly desired by so many that it cannot be resisted any
longer. Rather, the steadily increasing appropriateness of democracy I have in
mind is, first and foremost, systemic and objective. Continuing changes in eco-
nomic, ideological, and especially social conditions are bound sooner or ­later
to produce an incapacitating deficit in po­liti­cal authority, regardless of the citi-
zens’ po­liti­cal cognition as distinct from their effectual po­liti­cal attitudes. And
such a deficit w ­ ill have to be compensated for in one major way or another.
132 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

This is not to imply that what is happening objectively ­today lacks a sub-
jective dimension or that such a d imension is unimportant—­far from it.
The subjective dimension comes into the picture to the degree that the def-
icit in po­liti­cal authority has a strong adverse impact on the deference of
citizens ­toward po­liti­cal authority, irrespective of their views on democ-
racy. Moreover, this deficit has no chance of being effectively addressed
­u nless the remedy has an enduring fit with the deeper po­liti­cal psy­chol­ogy
of a modern citizenry that is ­shaped, above all, by equality of conditions,
again irrespective of what ­people actually take to be their own po­liti­cal
preferences. In ­these ways, the subjective dimension is of crucial importance,
and yet it works at a level that is deeper than what citizens happen to think
at a given time. It is at this level that two of the arguments I ­earlier advanced
for democracy—­t he argument from fittingness and the argument from
governability—­have their true and strongest force. Against the objective back-
drop of equality of conditions, it stands to reason that democracy alone is
capable of being judged fitting—­enduringly and nonopportunistically—
in the eyes of citizens and thereby making them stably governable. The
longer this objective backdrop lasts and the stronger the equality involved,
the closer citizens’ subjective preferences ­will be to the natu­ral affinity be-
tween social equality and po­liti­cal democracy. But t­ here is no reason to
think that a decisive, conscious shift in subjective preferences w ­ ill happen
overnight or to insist that it must happen before a country, such as China,
finds it necessary to start earnest preparation for the passage from social
equality to po­liti­cal democracy.
In China especially, waiting would be an unaffordable luxury. As we have
seen, the impending double shortfall in legitimacy and per­for­mance ­w ill
create a dangerous weakening of authority whose very unpre­ce­dentedness
calls for unpre­ce­dented mea­sures. In this context, equality of conditions both
contributes to the weakening of po­liti­cal authority and limits the range of
fitting responses to it. Given the natu­ral affinity between social equality and
po­liti­cal democracy, it makes democracy the only fitting response to the
looming legitimation crisis and hence the only response that has the poten-
tial to work not merely as a stopgap but enduringly. It is the only response
that is both prudent—­going ­a fter stability via legitimacy—­a nd realistic—­
working with a notion of legitimacy that is in keeping with the most impor­
tant circumstances—­t hat is, equality of conditions—on the ground.
The Case for Democracy 133

This means that democracy is at once sorely needed and pos­si­ble. What a
cruel challenge it would be if t­ hings w­ ere other­w ise! As it is, the challenge is
daunting but not impossible. This view of the need for democracy and of its
possibility is realistic, not romantic, just as the view of equality of conditions
on which it rests is. And, much as waiting is a luxury that China can ill af-
ford, so starry-­eyed demo­cratic idealism can only be a r­ ecipe for quick dis-
appointment and equally quick disaster. This is not to deny the normative
case for democracy—­t he normative part of the larger, prudential case for
democracy—­but one must be careful not to take it further than has a rea-
sonable chance to come true in the real world. For democracy is no panacea
and does not offer any remotely reliable formula for making a modern so-
ciety prosperous and just, or not too quantitatively unequal. It does not even
contain anything like a foolproof formula for stability—­t he kind of stability
we value democracy for—­and may even turn stability into a challenge of its
own. All the same, ­under entrenched equality of conditions, democracy
alone has the built-in potential to produce a stable po­liti­cal order, and this is
­because it has by far the greatest fit with a society marked by equality of con-
ditions and, indeed, also with the long-­term sociopo­liti­cal psy­chol­ogy of
members of such a society.
In keeping with this normative modesty, the CCP need not adopt any
par­tic­u­lar model of democracy, Western or other­w ise, nor should it ap-
proach democracy in a dogmatic fashion focused narrowly on elections. The
task it has unwittingly fashioned for itself by creating a society of equality of
conditions is broader and more flexible: to devise a type of regime that is
most consistent or at least reasonably consistent with equality of conditions.
It w
­ ill be an inestimable boon for China if the party is able to rise to the
challenge by choosing democracy in this broad yet definite sense.

Completing a Pro­cess Already ­Under Way

The most impor­tant lesson to take away from our brief encounter with
Tocqueville is that to appreciate the deeper need, and case, for democracy, we
must not think of democracy as a narrowly po­liti­cal question. This lesson is
generally ignored in commonsense approaches to the question of democracy,
including democracy for China. I believe it would not be a caricature to sug-
gest that such approaches incline us to treat the question of democracy for
134 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

China as, at least conceptually, a fairly ­simple and straightforward one. Ac-
cording to the conventional wisdom in ­these approaches, (a) democracy is a
­matter of po­liti­cal regime rather than of society; (b) as a po­liti­cal ­matter, de-
mocracy has to do chiefly with the form of government rather than, say, the
ends of government (beyond the nearly automatic invocation of “for the
­people”); (c) as a form of government, democracy is essentially majority rule
based on the ­free and fair election of the most impor­tant public officials by
universal suffrage; (d) thus conceived, democracy is nowhere to be found in
China and, for t­ hose who take democracy to be the only legitimate form of
government, the task is to set out the normative case for democracy and to
devise the po­liti­cal means to establish democracy in a country where none
exists t­ oday—­hence to bring about ­wholesale change from scratch.
What is missing from such a picture is any inkling that profound changes
are already afoot in China that may in the foreseeable f­ uture make democ-
racy more or less unavoidable, not merely desirable. Th ­ ere is l­ ittle doubt that
such changes are taking place in the economic, ideological, and especially
social conditions of China. And it is not difficult to foresee, given the intrinsic
connection between social equality and po­liti­cal democracy as already spelled
out, that they w ­ ill make any regime other than a demo­cratic one harder and
harder to justify and maintain. Indeed, ­earlier changes along the same lines
have already done so to a degree that would have been hard to imagine only
four de­cades ago. If such changes continue, as they almost certainly w ­ ill
­because no po­liti­cal forces exist that are strong enough to arrest them for long,
it ­will only be a m
­ atter of time before democracy comes knocking on the door
and the call must be answered in one way or another.
This is how the question of democracy w ­ ill pre­sent itself in China in the
near ­future: not on the strength of subjective, normative inclination but
­under the pressure of systemic, objective circumstances. To the degree that
it is already clear—­from the combination of fast-­disappearing revolutionary
legitimacy, the insufficiency of economic per­for­mance as enhancement or
amelioration, and unstoppable pro­gress in equality of conditions—­how the
foreseeable f­ uture is likely to unfold in this regard, this is indeed how the
question is already presenting itself in China ­today. The circumstances that
­will one day thrust the question onto center stage are ones to which one must
respond while taking into account a mixture of normative and other con-
siderations, of course, but they ­w ill confront normative agents and norma-
The Case for Democracy 135

tive deliberators with an objective fact not of their own conscious, normative
making. The question is only how well China is prepared for the unavoid-
able and, given the unavoidable, what it w ­ ill take for the country to make
the best, in both normative and prudential senses, of a type of government
it ­w ill have no choice but to adopt u ­ nder social circumstances that are h ­ ere
to stay.
To speak of democracy becoming unavoidable in the foreseeable ­f uture is
to suggest that democracy is already a partial real­ity in China and that this
partial real­ity ­w ill only become more complete with time. Therefore, to be
more precise, the question is not w ­ hether China ­will be ready for democracy,
as if democracy w ­ ere something totally new and alien, but w ­ hether China
­w ill be able to complete a pro­cess that is already well ­under way—­a compre-
hensive transformation for which only the last, po­liti­cal steps are yet to be
taken. In this light, the circumstances that ­w ill one day make ­t hese last steps
difficult to resist, though they offer no guarantee that the steps w ­ ill be taken
well, are themselves nothing but components of a partially demo­cratic real­ity
with its own power­ful momentum. More simply put, China is already, ­today,
a partially demo­cratic country.
It is largely thanks to Tocqueville—­and to pre­de­ces­sors such as Protag-
oras and Machiavelli—­t hat we are able to see ­t hings in this deeper perspec-
tive, one that affords the prescience much needed as a guide for timely po­
liti­cal action. Once we think of democracy as a ­matter not only of regime
type but also, more profoundly, of the nature and dynamic of a society, we
see right past the shortsightedness of conventional wisdom. This, in turn,
allows us to raise the question not only of ­f uture democracy for China but
also of already existing democracy in China. The latter question, that of de-
mocracy in China, has the advantage of being a suitably complex one: com-
plex ­because China is demo­cratic in some re­spects but not ­others, demo­cratic
to some degree but not entirely. By examining this question, we ­w ill be able
to see dif­fer­ent aspects of China, dif­fer­ent interests and powers, and, above
all, contradictions that derive from such differences. It is ­t hese contradic-
tions that we w ­ ill need to grasp if we are to get the facts of the ­matter right
and, on this basis, draw accurate conclusions both about the power­f ul dy-
namic at play in the completion of such democracy as is already pre­sent in
Chinese real­ity and about the enormous difficulty of bringing about this
completion in an orderly and positive fashion.
136 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Consent, Repre­sen­t a­tion, and Demo­cratic

Credibility

What is it, exactly, that might be accomplished when the partial demo­
cratic real­ity in China is brought to a proper completion? What ­will count as
proper completion? Why w ­ ill that constitute a more dependable answer to
the quest for legitimacy and stability that has so far eluded China? Th ­ ese ques-
tions demand answers, especially ­because ­there are so many examples of de-
mocracy without stability. This fact raises a further set of questions, having to
do with the exact relation between stability and democracy: What is it about
democracy that, when it works reasonably well, makes for stability? And how
is stability pos­si­ble despite so much disagreement and discontent, indeed re-
garding the practice of democracy itself? More modestly put, for the last
question may seem to call for an overly ambitious causal answer, what is it
that is constitutive of what we may call demo­cratic stability—­the kind of sta-
bility that democracy is uniquely capable of providing u ­ nder modern condi-
tions when it works reasonably well in this regard, even when it is not working
well other­wise? What­ever it is, that is what China needs to have in its quest
for legitimacy and stability and what it must learn from so-­called advanced
or mature democracies, despite all the prob­lems they have. Indeed, at least
for our pre­sent purposes, the presence of demo­cratic stability is chiefly what
makes a democracy advanced or mature. What is this demo­cratic stability?
What is, as it w­ ere, the demo­cratic formula for regime perpetuation?
For all its prob­lems, democracy—or constitutional democracy, to be
precise—­must be granted one unique advantage, and that is its proven capa-
bility to serve as a basis for a relatively stable po­liti­cal order, for regime per-
petuation. This advantage is neither arbitrary nor ahistorical (or “universal”
in a corresponding sense), for it rests, above all, on the equality of social con-
ditions that characterizes the modern world.
In making this par­tic­u­lar kind of case for democracy in China, it is impor­
tant to avoid any hint of romanticism about how well democracy is ­doing,
say, in Eu­rope or the United States. To this end, as well as to clarify the notion
of consent used e­ arlier without explanation, I would like to invoke a distinc-
tion that Jean Hampton draws between what she calls convention consent
and endorsement consent.41 Convention consent is the somewhat grudging
consent, or acquiescence, that can reasonably be assumed to be (implicitly)
The Case for Democracy 137

granted to a po­liti­cal regime thought of as the outcome of some (hy­po­t het­

i­cal) constitutional convention. The consent is grudging in that it signals not
moral approval of the regime but only that the regime is considered prefer-
able to anarchy or the ending of anarchy by means of sheer domination.
This is the degree of consent that must be (hypothetically) attributed to any
convention that is capable of establishing a minimally legitimate government;
hence convention consent. By contrast, endorsement consent is more or
less w ­ holehearted consent, by virtue of having exactly what convention con-
sent lacks—­namely, moral approval of a regime—­and it offers this approval
on the basis of considering the regime to be at least reasonably just. For my
purposes, I would gloss “reasonably just” as falling between what Antonio
Gramsci calls domination (as distinct from hegemony) and what Marx calls
­human emancipation (as distinct from po­liti­cal emancipation), for this is the
intermediate normative space, as it ­were, in which democracy, as a legitimate
regime, can realistically be expected to operate.
Given the strict meanings of convention consent and endorsement con-
sent as defined by Hampton, it seems quite clear that Eu­ro­pean and Amer-
ican democracy ­today enjoys much more than mere convention consent and
yet considerably less than remotely universal endorsement consent. If judg-
ment of a society as reasonably just is a necessary condition of endorsement
consent, as Hampton stipulates, we have reason to doubt that endorsement
consent would be readily forthcoming in the United States or Eu­rope ­today.
­There is simply too much public resentment against the growing distributive
injustice in f­ avor of the “1 ­percent” and against the all but irredeemable com-
plicity of the po­liti­cal establishment in this travesty of demo­cratic equality.
This does not mean, however, that democracy enjoys only convention
consent in the United States and Eu­rope. Indeed, it seems that moral ap-
proval is still generally granted to something about the po­liti­cal arrangement,
but what? It is fairly obvious that the way demo­cratic government happens
to be working, with its enactment of laws and adoption of policies and the
effects thereof, does not receive anything like pervasive endorsement con-
sent. Instead we see widespread discontent with demo­cratic government at
this primary level. This discontent also seems to extend to the secondary
level, which consists of the rules defining how demo­cratic government is to
operate, as well as how it is to be selected and periodically replaced through
an electoral system. This can be seen in the po­liti­cal apathy and sense of
138 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

disenfranchisement that increasingly afflict democracies in Eu­rope, as well

as the United States, where, for example, in the eyes of a very large number
of ­people, Citizens United and McCutcheon have made a bad situation even
worse. It is very doubtful that the electoral system itself, the system that is
responsible for producing a demo­cratic government, is now able to com-
mand broad and unqualified endorsement consent, for so many citizens feel
more impotent and frustrated than empowered in the po­liti­cal pro­cess.
One is indeed tempted to push further and ask ­whether the discontent,
and the lack of endorsement consent implied by it, does not sometimes go
all the way to the tertiary level, to the highest-­order rules that set the par­
ameters for secondary rules and define how they, including t­ hose of the
electoral system, are to be revised if necessary. The answer to this kind of
question at the tertiary level—­t hat which involves nothing less than the
constitution—is harder to determine. But the impor­tant t­ hing is that even
if the answer turns out to be discouraging, ­t here still seems a further level, a
quaternary level, to which endorsement consent may retreat. For, despite all
the lack of unqualified endorsement consent, most ­people in advanced de-
mocracies do not seem to want extralegal revolution, or to abandon democ-
racy in any other way. They may withhold endorsement consent from the
way government actually performs, even from the way government is se-
lected and replaced, and, for some, possibly even from the constitutionally
stipulated way of changing how government is to operate and how it is to be
selected and replaced. If this is so, then almost the entire practice of elec-
toral democracy seems to be in trou­ble and ­t here looms the specter of a
widespread sense of permanent disenfranchisement. However, as long as
most p ­ eople oppose extralegal revolution and do so as a ­matter of settled
preference, despite Citizens United and McCutcheon and worse, t­ here must
be presumed to be some quaternary institution that still commands their
full endorsement consent.
­There is indeed such an institution, and it is the rule of law—­the rule of law
in a deeper and more abstract sense than the constitution. To be more precise,
it is democracy as the rule of law or demo­cratic rule of law. This is exactly the
meaning of democracy that Hampton seems to have in mind and, in any
case, needs to postulate. But when Hampton says that her “analy­sis pre­sents
modern democracies as committed, above all, to the rule of law, a phrase that
on this analy­sis means government established by rules that define not only
The Case for Democracy 139

structure, scope of authority, and officeholder se­lection but also how the pre-
ceding rules can be changed,”42 she seems to be situating the rule of law at a
level no deeper than the tertiary one. This is not good enough, for it does not
allow for any fallback in the event that endorsement consent is lacking even at
the tertiary, constitutional level. To provide for such an eventuality—­that is,
to create a l ocus for endorsement consent when all three concrete, tangible
levels have failed or do not suffice—­a fourth, truly foundational level is re-
quired, however amorphous and ineffable. This level must be deeper and
more abstract than what Hampton in the foregoing quote makes it out to be,
deeper and more abstract even than the constitution. It is the level not of the
constitution per se but of the spirit of the constitution, and, by the same token,
not of the rule of law in its existing form but of the spirit of the rule of law—in
a word: constitutionalism. As such, it must be the repository, in terms of
public po­liti­cal culture, of the very rationale for having a demo­cratic constitu-
tion in the first place: to ­settle differences, however ­great, through peaceful
and relatively civilized contestation according to open and revisable rules,
however flawed, instead of lapsing into the proverbial state of nature or re-
sorting to revolution as its real-­life equivalent. This is how Elias sees the deeper
workings of democracy or the demo­cratic rule of law, which exists to stabilize
“bloodless t­ rials of strength” or “bloodless compromises” ­under modern con-
ditions of functional differentiation, interdependence, and corresponding
self-­constraint.43 To borrow the language (not the view) of Jürgen Habermas
while cleaving to the more realistic picture of Elias, this may be tantamount, if
need be, to preferring even distorted communication, which democracy has
so much trou­ble regularly rising above, to naked or violent strategic action,
which it has found a reasonably (though not entirely) successful way to avoid.
When such a preference establishes itself as the instinct and ethos of a ­people,
backed up with constitutionally enshrined basic rights, as it seems to have
done in the countries of Western Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, aided no doubt
by relatively favorable circumstances (and, in our time, also by the defeat of
communism as a ­viable fundamental alternative), something takes shape at
the quaternary level that seems capable of absorbing endorsement consent as
a last resort and thereby keeping at bay regime-­threatening conflict and dis-
order despite a less than perfect constitution.
Once we have a c lear view of this four-­level structure, t­ here seems l­ ittle
doubt that the g­ reat resilience of a mature democracy principally resides in
140 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

the way it provides multiple, progressively deeper and firmer loci of endorse-
ment consent. If endorsement consent is insufficiently strong at the primary
level, it can find considerable compensation, as it ­were, at the secondary level,
and both of t­ hese levels can rely, in case of slack, on the powerfully centripetal
tertiary, constitutional level, which, in turn, has under­lying it an even more
seemingly indestructible quaternary level. The advantage afforded by such
depth of structure becomes very striking indeed if we compare this model with
its Chinese counterpart. Although it is difficult to render a precise comparison
briefly, one can nevertheless say without g­ reat distortion that in the Chinese
case the main and, given the fast-­disappearing revolutionary legitimacy, po-
tentially sole locus for endorsement consent (or lack thereof) is available at the
primary level, that of the making of laws and policies and their implementa-
tion. That is why per­for­mance legitimacy is such a life-­and-­death ­matter.
Unsurprisingly, ­t here is something Hobbesian about this distinctively
modern Western accomplishment. Thus what seems to be at work at the qua-
ternary level is, as it ­were, negative democracy—­a set of rules and institu-
tions chiefly designed to secure the absence of vio­lence or revolution in the
se­lection and replacement of government rather than any reasonably assured
and just delivery of more positive goods. While negative democracy by its
very nature cannot provide per­for­mance legitimacy, which is available chiefly
at the primary level, its very negativity—­its catering to the extremely strong
fear of po­liti­cal evil in the shape of vio­lence and tyranny—is precisely what
makes it so power­ful. The current situation in the United States, for example,
seems to require some such understanding if we are to be able to explain why,
despite the alleged unconstitutional system of “double government” and the
alleged real­ity or prospect of “the fall of the constitution and the rise of a
shadow government,” endorsement consent still seems to be widely granted
to something about the po­liti­cal arrangement taken as a ­whole.44 This object
of endorsement consent can be none other than the demo­cratic rule of law
construed in the deepest sense. Even if what thus retains endorsement con-
sent does not quite qualify as reasonably just, as Hampton requires of en-
dorsement consent, ­t here is ­little doubt that moral approval is still amply
pre­sent in it,45 enabling demo­cratic rule of law to serve as a legitimate basis
of reasonably stable government.
It is necessary at this point to bring in a notion that Hampton does not
invoke and that I have so far studiously avoided: repre­sen­ta­tion. It is a truism
The Case for Democracy 141

of modern democracy that democracy is a m ­ atter of repre­sen­ta­tion, of the

state representing society—­t hat is, the interests of or in society. According
to this truism, ­t hose represented are not only interest-­bearers or passive
beneficiaries in society but also citizen-­agents who, through po­liti­cal par-
ticipation, help reproduce the representative organs of the demo­cratic state
and maintain the health of such organs. It was once thought to be a unique
advantage of modern democracy that the system of ­f ree and fair elections
based on universal suffrage, aided by a reasonably well-­informed public sphere,
is able to take care of both the material and the agential interests of the
represented—to make the state truly representative (of society) and the
repre­sen­ta­tion itself truly demo­cratic (by giving citizens real po­liti­cal powers).
Such a scenario, if made good, would lend real credibility, beyond mere em-
pirical credence, to the fundamental animating idea of democracy—­namely,
sovereignty of the ­people.
Alas, this scenario is not much found in real­ity, and therefore what I have
referred to as the truism of modern democracy is actually only a common-
place that is far from true. We know this from the fact that too much of what
happens at the primary level (what demo­cratic government daily does and is
able to deliver for society), and at the secondary level (how the representa-
tive organs of the demo­cratic state are reproduced) as well, is not credibly
the object of endorsement consent. In plainer language, t­ here is woefully in-
sufficient endorsement consent at the more tangible levels of demo­cratic
politics. As I have noted, we have to retreat to the tertiary level (of allegiance
to the constitution), or even all the way to the quaternary level (of politico-­
cultural faith in demo­cratic rule of law as an alternative to violent conflict),
in order to locate a reasonably secure object of endorsement consent. In other
words, endorsement consent still exists, but it has become abstract.
What this retreat signifies is that representation—­the state representing
society by reasonably justly and effectively serving the interests in society
and by providing citizens with real opportunities for po­liti­cal participation—
has become, or turned out to be, largely a fiction. Many undoubtedly still be-
lieve the fiction, but a dangerously large number are having second thoughts.
It follows, especially for the more skeptical, that the function of the electoral
system has under­gone a fundamental change. In the real world it no longer
serves to make real and credible the representative function of demo­cratic
government but instead only to make vis­i­ble and plausible a new kind of
142 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

consent. What characterizes this new consent is that it has parted com­pany
with repre­sen­ta­tion and therefore is an endorsement only of the demo­
cratic rules of contestation—­t hat is, demo­cratic rule of law—­w ithout much
solid hope for such contestation to produce representativeness in terms of
desired outcome. If we are not to shy away from the truth of the ­matter, we
may have to admit that this is more or less the only purpose left that is still
reasonably well served by ­f ree and fair elections. Of course, as long as elec-
tions continue to be held, they may be counted on to help shore up the fic-
tion of repre­sen­ta­tion for the more credulous, u ­ nless or ­until demo­cratic
politics becomes even less representative than it is ­today. It is essentially
this combination—of abstract endorsement consent and a fiction of repre­
sen­ta­tion kept half-­a live by an electoral system that is no longer representa-
tive despite being (formally) f­ ree and fair—­t hat is keeping the demo­cratic
system afloat.
Keeping the demo­cratic system afloat, I m ay add, in the all-­important
sense of serving as a reasonably effective mechanism for (peaceful) regime
perpetuation. I w ­ ill say, without the slightest irony, that this is no mean
achievement. And I say this b ­ ecause, for all the prob­lems now besetting Eu­
ro­pean and American democracy, it is alive and well in a l­ imited sense—­
namely, demo­cratic rule of law—­and for a ­limited yet extremely basic and
impor­tant purpose—­namely, the provision of a r easonably stable and en-
during po­liti­cal order. It is alive and well ­because at the quaternary level, as
demo­cratic rule of law, democracy still commands widespread moral ap-
proval. This moral approval, in turn, allows other­w ise unrepresentative
­f ree and fair elections to serve their (ideological) function of helping create a
not insubstantial semblance and sense of po­liti­cal agency—­something no
nondemo­cratic system is remotely capable of d ­ oing to the same degree! Th
­ ese
two ­factors combined—­general moral approval of demo­cratic rule of law
and a modest sense of po­liti­cal agency made plausible by ­f ree and fair
elections—­g ive democracy a unique appeal (despite its ele­ment of make-­
believe) and resilience (despite its vulnerability to disagreement and dis-
content). As the only po­liti­cal form compatible with modern equality of
conditions, democracy ­faces no truly formidable threat from any nondemo­
cratic alternative ­under circumstances of reasonable peace and prosperity.
Such achievement of Hobbesian peace, and much more, by apparently
demo­cratic means that effectively hide the unpalatable absoluteness of sov-
The Case for Democracy 143

ereignty is a truly astounding po­liti­cal invention.46 For this reason alone,

China has extremely impor­tant lessons to learn from Eu­ro­pean and Amer-
ican constitutional democracy.
We are now in a position to spell out what it would mean for China to
become a w holly demo­cratic country, complementing its already largely
demo­cratic society with a demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime. To this end, I want to
make sharper and more explicit a d istinction ­toward which I have been
working so far. This is the distinction between repre­sen­ta­tion, (endorsement)
consent, and the credibility of claims to repre­sen­ta­tion or consent. Using this
distinction, and mindful of the messiness of the real world, one could with
reasonable realism define democracy in terms of more or less credible repre­
sen­ta­tion and consent, with the degree of credibility depending crucially on
the relevant institutional mechanism (with its attendant ideology). Compli-
cations immediately arise, and one of ­t hese is caused by the pos­si­ble diver-
gence between repre­sen­ta­t ion and consent. Th ­ ese may be said to converge
when endorsement consent is pre­sent at all levels, not just at the highly ab-
stract levels of allegiance to the constitution and faith in demo­cratic rule of
law. Accordingly, the existence of abstract endorsement consent alone—­
implying as it does strong disapproval of what happens at the more concrete
levels of po­liti­cal outcomes and processes—is distinct from repre­sen­ta­tion
and signals its relative absence. A further complication exists in the shape of
the difference between two capacities of the represented—as passive interest-­
bearers (with the interests located in society) and as active citizen-­agents
(with the agency pertaining to and manifest in the po­liti­cal sphere). It is ­here
that the mechanism for making repre­sen­ta­tion and consent credible plays an
essential but rather complicated role.
Repre­sen­ta­tion can be real or unreal—­that is, nonexistent—­despite claims
or beliefs to the contrary. Consent, on the other hand, is ­either ­actual—­t hat
is, actually given or withheld (without duress)—or hy­po­t het­i­cal—­t hat is,
not actually expressed but such as can be reasonably inferred. Th ­ ere is a
sense, of course, in which hy­po­thet­i­cal consent may be said to be real or
unreal, too, depending on the reasonableness of the inference, just as ­actual
consent can be regarded as more or less real according to its degree of
freedom from self-­misunderstanding and misinformation, but this can be
mostly set aside for our purposes. For what is impor­tant is that ­t here is
nothing as effective as ­actual consent, or more precisely the opportunity to
144 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

give or withhold ­actual consent, for lending credibility not only to the
­a lleged existence of (real) consent but also to claims to (real) repre­sen­ta­
tion. The opportunity to actually give and especially withhold consent
serves to make government demo­cratic not in the sense of self-­government—
it is the consent to be governed and be represented—­but in the more modest
sense of government having to depend openly and verifiably on the citi-
zenry for legitimacy.47 That is why f­ ree and fair elections, however open to
partisanship and manipulation and other­wise flawed, are so difficult, in-
deed well-­nigh impossible, to get rid of once they have become part of a
mature demo­cratic po­liti­cal regime. A well-­functioning ­free and fair elec-
toral system serves to translate ­actual consent smoothly and unobtrusively
into what is believed to be real consent and, potentially, credible (believed to
be real) repre­sen­ta­tion. Even when other­w ise lacking in substance, elections
stage highly vis­i­ble and powerfully charged ritual enactments and affirma-
tions of endorsement consent to the po­l iti­c al system at regular intervals.
A large part of their credibility comes, no doubt, from the perception that
the opportunity to give or withhold consent, as made available by a ­f ree
and fair electoral system, allows significant scope for citizens’ po­liti­cal
agency, an impor­tant (objective and subjective) good in its own right in ad-
dition to its supposed instrumental role in securing tangible benefits.48
Given this conceptual scheme, we can say that American democracy ­today,
for example, has evolved a reasonably effective mechanism for making ab-
stract endorsement consent credible. A crucial ele­ment of this mechanism is
the opportunity for a­ ctual consent as made available by the system of f­ ree
and fair elections, although it is worth emphasizing that what this helps make
credible is not so much repre­sen­ta­tion as abstract endorsement consent. We
may add, and this is a subtler point, that where American democracy is not
­doing well in terms of the repre­sen­ta­tion of interests (and, by the same token,
is thwarting po­liti­cal agency with regard to interests),49 it is compensating,
as it ­were, by still providing relatively plentiful scope for po­liti­cal contesta-
tion and, in this way, for citizens’ po­liti­cal agency and sense of agency (as dis-
tinct from favorable outcomes). Thus we are witnessing not only the coming
apart of repre­sen­ta­tion and consent but also the divergence within po­liti­cal
agency between activity and sense of participation, on the one hand, and ef-
ficacy regarding interests and outcomes, on the other. At one time or an-
other in its history, American democracy may have succeeded much better
The Case for Democracy 145

in securing endorsement consent at concrete levels, in giving more efficacy

to po­liti­cal agency, and hence in making credible not only abstract endorse-
ment consent but also repre­sen­ta­tion. But it is not d ­ oing even reasonably well
now in terms of repre­sen­ta­tion or effectual po­liti­cal agency, and the prospects
of improvement are not bright. Roughly the same assessment can be made
of Eu­rope.
­There is no reason for China not to aim for a higher degree of repre­sen­ta­
tion than is being achieved ­today in the Western democracies.50 Indeed this
is what the CCP is already ­doing in ­t hose vari­ous ways that fall naturally
­under the rubric of per­for­mance legitimacy. ­There is l­ ittle doubt, given its
use of per­for­mance as a crucial prop for its legitimacy, that it cares very much
about consent as well. The prob­lem is that the consent being sought, how-
ever real (or unreal), is for the most part not a­ ctual consent. Therefore, even
if the consent claimed cannot simply be ruled out as unreal for being hy­po­
thet­i­cal, it lacks the credibility that is indispensable to legitimacy. What the
CCP badly needs is an institutional mechanism for making credible its
claimed success at repre­sen­ta­tion, as well as the popu­lar consent or support
it claims to enjoy as a natu­ral consequence. Given the less than shining rec­ord
of electoral democracy, one has ­every reason not to make a fetish of elections.
­There is nothing intrinsically amiss with the CCP’s apparent desire to achieve
repre­sen­ta­tion while bypassing “Western-­style” ­free and fair elections. The
name of the demo­cratic game is credibility—­credible repre­sen­ta­t ion and
credible consent—­not elections as such. But credibility, in turn, requires (a
regime’s) claims to repre­sen­ta­tion or consent to be falsifiable to a reasonable
degree. Certainly, f­ ree and fair elections are a blunt instrument for enabling
falsification, but they have earned their far from negligible status as a mini-
mally trustworthy method in the absence of better ones. If the CCP is un-
happy with this method, for one reason or another, it must find a better one.51
Any mechanism that can produce the needed credibility (of repre­sen­ta­tion
or consent) is demo­cratic in the requisite sense.52
In this, the CCP definitely has its work cut out for it. In seeking a better
method than elections, it must meet two other conditions. What­ever mech-
anism is used to make repre­sen­ta­tion and consent credible must also, first,
be (at least minimally) responsive to the desire of many citizens for po­
liti­cal agency. If a proposed mechanism lacks such responsiveness, it is un-
likely that it ­w ill do much to make repre­sen­ta­tion or consent credible. In
146 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

this regard, per­for­mance legitimacy clearly falls short, for it lacks an agential
dimension, taking care of interests only but not participation. Then, second,
the mechanism must be capable of supporting, by helping create the neces-
sary credibility, an abstract endorsement consent just in case repre­sen­ta­tion
fails or is in­effec­tive and only the recourse to something much deeper—­say,
allegiance to the constitution or faith in demo­cratic rule of law—­can save
the day.
All of this makes China’s achievement, or completion, of democracy a
very tall order. One has no reason to make the task even harder, and unneces-
sarily so, by being dogmatic e­ ither about what democracy is or about how it
can best be achieved. Only the bare essentials must be insisted on. Repre­
sen­ta­tion is extremely impor­tant, but it is also extremely difficult to achieve.
Failing a reasonable degree of representation—­always a distinct possibility—
we need to rely on abstract endorsement consent. Both repre­sen­ta­t ion and
consent must be made credible, if not by ­free and fair elections, then by
some other equally or, one hopes, more effective mechanism, and ­either
method must leave reasonable scope for po­liti­cal agency, as an instrument
and for its own sake. In a nutshell, democracy is a m ­ atter of credible repre­
sen­ta­tion and / or credible consent—­“and / or” ­because repre­sen­ta­tion and
consent may diverge, in which case credible abstract endorsement consent
may have to suffice. Within t­ hese par­a meters, China has a good deal of
room to maneuver, drawing on its pos­si­ble strengths in repre­sen­ta­tion (of
interests) and overcoming its clear weaknesses with regard to ­actual con-
sent and po­liti­cal agency. In addition, it needs to make up for its lack of
some po­liti­cal deep structure, as it w
­ ere, that is worthy of abstract endorsement
consent—­t hat is, something capable of commanding endorsement consent
at a sufficiently deep, abstract, and enduring level. This does not have to be
exactly like the demo­cratic rule of law in its En­glish, French, American, or
any other historical versions. Even h ­ ere, ­t here should be scope for experi-
mentation and invention rather than mere imitation. The only t­ hing that
would be hard to imagine is how any po­liti­cal arrangement could be stable
in China that is not demo­cratic in the general, relatively flexible senses just
sketched or, in other words, that defies the modern equality of conditions
that China shares with Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca and much of the rest of
the world.
The Case for Democracy 147

Tian, Hence Confucianism, Is Not a ­

Viable Alternative

It should come as no surprise that t­ here used to be a Chinese functional

equivalent of the demo­cratic rule of law. How ­else could the Chinese empire,
universal and all-­encompassing in its conception, have lasted for more than
two thousand years despite all the upheavals of dynastic change? I am refer-
ring to tian—­t hat is, Heaven as a cosmological being sharply distinguished
from ancestral spirits, moralized, and accorded the highest authority, and,
as such, conferring only a c onditional, nonpermanent mandate on rulers
and thereby allowing them to be held to account in terms of such a mandate.
This tian did for the entire duration of Chinese imperial rule what demo­
cratic rule of law (or constitutionalism more generally, depending on how
far back we go in history) has been ­doing for modern Eu­ro­pean and Amer-
ican socie­ties, especially as we now find them. It served as a foundation for,
and gave ultimate legitimacy to, one dynasty ­after another that each saw its
fair share of strife and discord at all levels below tian. It provided a potent
source of continuity through all the violent dynastic successions. It underlay
the dominant Confucian normative order centered on ren (humaneness)
and embodied in li (rituals), thereby raising h ­ uman normative conventions
to the level of Heaven-­ordained justice and at the same time subjecting such
conventions to a higher authority. And it lent its name, and all the unargu-
able legitimacy implicit in the name, to the ruler (tianzi, son of heaven), his
rule (tianchao, heavenly reign), and his domain (tianxia, all ­under heaven).
It gave the emperor his unique role as the indispensable link, dramatized
through ritual observances, between cosmic pro­cesses and h ­ uman fortune—­
with the successful per­for­mance of this role, as manifest in the relative ab-
sence of natu­ral catastrophe and famine, confirming the presence of tian-
ming (mandate of heaven). And, in a master stroke as full of tension as it was
ingeniously stabilizing, it set itself, in the shape of tiandao (the way of
heaven) and tianli (the princi­ple of heaven), apart from and above the ruler,
thereby constituting a s ource of legitimacy immune to the unworthy be­
hav­ior of rulers and turning the Confucian scholar-­official class into some-
thing of an in­de­pen­dent countervailing moral force within an other­w ise
undivided imperial sovereignty.
148 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

When the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, fell in 1911, it was nothing less
than tian as the deepest foundation for imperial rule that came to an end—­
what turned out to be an irreversible end. ­Because the Qing was thus the last
dynasty, its fall meant the end not only of a dynasty but also of the entire spe-
cies of rule grounded in tian—­t he demise not merely of a par­tic­u­lar dynasty
but of the Heavenly Reign as such.
What followed was the inauguration of a republic, the first in China, much
like what happened ­after the French Revolution, at least in the generic sense
of creating an altogether new basis for po­liti­cal rule. And just as the dust took
a long time to s­ ettle in the wake of the revolution in 1789, so a­ fter 1911 one
quest a­ fter another for legitimate and stable constitutional, republican rule
ended in failure ­until the CCP seized power on a basis that neither relied on
tian nor was exactly republican. For the basis of the brand-­new po­liti­cal order
established by the party was thoroughly teleological, as opposed to ­either cos-
mological or constitutional. The telos was communism, of course, a worldly
goal that u ­ nder Mao was meant to be realized according to a more or less
definite schedule. As long as this supposedly scientifically grounded teleology
was credible, aided immeasurably by an aura of ruthless invincibility due to
successful revolutionary vio­lence, it looked as if a worthy substitute for tian
had been found, a new basis for legitimate rule no less solid and enduring.
This has turned out to be an illusion, and that is why we are back to square
one—­why, as I intimated ­earlier, China is ­today no closer to accomplishing
the task of replacing tian than it has been since 1911 or 1949. To be sure, China
is incomparably more stable and cohesive t­ oday, as well as stronger and more
prosperous, than it was at ­either of ­t hose ­earlier times. But this has been due
to a teleological warrant of legitimacy that is now well on its way to losing all
its credibility and efficacy, and due to a complementary or compensatory per-
formative success that is not guaranteed to continue in­def­initely. The gaping
void that opened up with the fall of tian is as unfilled as ever. The rule of the
CCP as a bona fide communist party—­t hat is, ­until the launch of the proto-­
capitalist reform in the late 1970s—­has turned out to be no more than an in-
terregnum. But what w ­ ill this interregnum lead to?
At the fundamental level, the highest meaningful level of abstraction for
the m­ atter at hand, the choice is between tian and democracy, between the
reinvention of tian and the inauguration of democracy (up to the quaternary
level, as demo­cratic rule of law). This choice is comparable to the one posed,
The Case for Democracy 149

in the Eu­ro­pean context, by Tocqueville in terms of democracy versus aris-

tocracy, with the latter covering all regime types or bases of rule that do not
belong u ­ nder democracy. In the case of China, given its long and unique tra-
dition, the fundamental choice is between democracy and tian as the foun-
dation of a legitimate po­liti­cal order. So which should be chosen? The one to
be reinvented or the one to be inaugurated?
Taiwan has already opted for democracy. For all the prob­lems with its
demo­cratic practice (and one should expect no less), it has taken a ­giant leap
­toward dispensing with tian as the basis of a legitimate and stable po­liti­cal
order. Time ­w ill tell how definitively successful this leap was. So far, how-
ever, most signs have been encouraging if we take care to disentangle the per-
formative success of demo­cratic governments from the dif­fer­ent kind, and
dif­fer­ent order, of success involved in establishing the basis of government
in the first place.
I am bringing up the case of Taiwan not only as a positive example in the
Chinese quest for legitimacy and stability ­after the demise of tian but for an-
other impor­tant reason as well. This has to do with the place of the Confu-
cian tradition in the newfound demo­cratic po­liti­cal order. It is safe to say that
the Confucian tradition was much better preserved ­under the Kuomintang
in Taiwan than ­under Mao on the mainland—­w ith the result that cultural
Confucianism is arguably still more alive in Taiwan than in mainland China,
notwithstanding the entrenched Japa­nese influence, as well as more recent
complications caused by the sharp rise in separatist tendencies that have not
spared cultural identity. Yet it is no less safe to say that Confucianism is not
part of the foundation of Taiwan’s new demo­cratic po­liti­cal order. This is true
at least in the sense that, as far as the basis of legitimacy is concerned, Confu-
cianism is not in competition with democracy in Taiwan, and that, if it w ­ ere,
its defeat or marginalization would be predictable. Thus, in what­ever form or
to what­ever degree that remnants of the Confucian tradition are continuing to
play a role (I am not implying that the form is impor­tant and the degree
large, or other­wise), it remains the case that the fundamental choice is between
inaugurating democracy and reinventing tian and that Taiwan has taken the
plunge for the former. It has emerged from its Kuomintang-­led interregnum
as a polity founded on what seems to be an enduring demo­cratic basis.
Indeed, the same can be said, in spirit if not detail, of a country such as
South K ­ orea, which, unlike Taiwan, can be described as a ( partly, but only
150 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

partly) Confucian democracy.53 Th ­ ere is nothing incoherent about what is

called Confucian democracy, but only provided that the role of Confu-
cianism is not to rival or dilute democracy but only to help shape the po­
liti­cal preferences of the demos, both substantive and procedural.54 This
proviso gives us, as it ­were, unalloyed democracy, one whose demo­cratic
core is left intact. If one insists on thinking of it, in a c ase such as South
­Korea, as alloyed with Confucianism, it is so alloyed only in the same sense in
which democracy in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca is alloyed with Chris­tian­ity
(in one form or another, and often coexisting with other, lesser religious in-
fluences and with consciously secular values once derived from religious
traditions). All democracies are alloyed in this way, in that they all have as
their sovereign a ­people who, in turn, must have some self-­understandings
that make their influence felt in po­liti­cal life and yet stem from sources
other than democracy itself. Thus Confucian democracy makes perfect
sense, subject to this proviso, and it makes sense in a way that “Confucian
liberalism” or “Confucian liberal democracy” would not, liberalism being a
species of universalism or universalistic humanism that essentially, in its
constitutive intent, transcends culturally peculiar identities.
­There is an extremely impor­tant sense, however, in which what­ever Con-
fucian values and practices are able to figure in a Confucian democracy ­w ill
no longer be what Confucianism fundamentally was and is. This is ­because
Confucianism, as the Chinese tradition’s foundational, comprehensive dis-
course, is at the deepest level a cosmology. It is this cosmology that underlies
the moral Confucianism that, in turn, informs po­liti­cal Confucianism (which,
it should be added, in turn always in practice worked in tandem with
­L egalism). Without this cosmology, a ruler could still be a sage (shengren) but
no longer a Son of Heaven, and a dynasty could at best only be sagely rule
short of Heavenly Reign, and this simply is not good enough. What is merely
moral, Confucian or other­w ise, cannot be beyond debate or dispute, so it, in
turn, requires a kind of grounding or naturalization that in the Chinese tra-
dition only tian is capable of providing. Also, of course, what is merely moral
is, paradoxically, something that rulers could more easily and certainly more
visibly fall short of, leading to potentially delegitimating consequences.
Without tian, too, the ruler’s domain, conceived as All u ­ nder Heaven, would
be devoid of ultimate justification, which no amount of merely normative dis-
course could adequately furnish.
The Case for Democracy 151

Even if one ­were to think of tian as a noble lie à la Plato, one would have to
concede that it has been so woven into the fabric of Confucianism as to be in-
distinguishable from a truly held article of faith. For Confucianism, from its
very inception, took itself to be following the only correct way, and this had to
be conceived as the Way of Heaven. Thus knowledge regarding the disposition
of Heaven rather than only of mere ­humans was required of the ruler in his
capacity as the Son of Heaven and as the arch-­mediator between Heaven and
­human affairs. To give up the notion of tian would be to give up the notion of
tiandao, which, in turn, would be not only to jettison the now embarrassing
idea of tianzi but also, more generally, to open the way to conventionalism
without foundation, to mere h ­ uman normativity, to pluralism, relativism, or
perspectivism—in a word, to democracy! And this is exactly what has befallen
Confucianism in our day now that it has been divested of tian and tiandao at
the hands of its more liberal interpreters. ­Whether or not this was a good move
in itself, this plainly could not have been what Confucius and his followers be-
lieved in their own day, and tian could not have been merely a noble lie in­ven­ted
to serve some pressing purpose and dispensable when no longer needed.
What is of paramount significance, then, is not ­whether Confucianism,
considered (in the spirit of a thought experiment) as a “philosophical” scheme
in­de­pen­dent of time and place, has to rest on a cosmology revolving around
tian but w ­ hether, considered as a historical discourse legitimating a par­tic­
u­lar kind of rule, however flexibly or broadly conceived, it is capable of co-
herently dispensing with such a cosmology. The plain fact is that since the
Western Zhou’s decisive invention of the Mandate of Heaven, especially since
the establishment of the Confucian-­Legalist state in the Han dynasty, no im-
perial rulers with the least concern for what we would t­ oday think of as le-
gitimacy as distinct from sheer domination have chosen to dispense with the
Mandate of Heaven and no Confucian scholars have remotely advised them
to do so. The extraordinary weight of this historical fact places the burden of
proof squarely on ­t hose who argue other­w ise ­today while maintaining that
what is left a­ fter the removal of tian is still po­liti­cal Confucianism.
For all the reasons just adduced, tian is an essential part, indeed the deepest
part, of Confucianism, although it has seldom been the part most talked
about. It indeed makes good sense that it does not attract as much discursive
attention as normative Confucianism does, notwithstanding the latter’s basis
in the former. Given its nature and its role, tian, once known to be ­there (that
152 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

is, everywhere), is best invoked ritually or as necessary but other­wise, for the
most part, left in the background, securely taken for granted.
When many va­ri­e­ties of con­temporary Confucianism make light of cos-
mology or even remove it altogether, then, the result is not just Confucianism
revised and updated but, well and truly, Confucianism dismembered and
eviscerated. With the all-­important tian taken out, what remains of Confu-
cianism is ripe for incorporation into a modern, essentially non-­Confucian
worldview. Th ­ ere Confucianism gains a new lease on life but only as a sup-
plement. However substantial this new role may be, it is defined and delim-
ited by something more basic that is not supplied by Confucianism itself. This
is manifestly true of Confucian democracy, where an attenuated, purely nor-
mative and cultural Confucianism plays second fiddle in a po­liti­cal regime
that is founded on a dif­fer­ent, demo­cratic basis. In other words, democracy
is ti (essence), and Confucianism only or largely yong (instrumentality). Cos-
mology alone, its distinctive cosmology, gives Confucianism its foundation
and life source and guarantees its integrity and self-­sameness. It is thus only
­after its dismemberment or evisceration that Confucianism is fit to enter into
combinations, as it w ­ ere, such as Confucian democracy, whose center of
gravity lies elsewhere than in Confucianism. The vacuum left by the aban-
donment of cosmology in general and of tian in par­tic­u­lar is filled with de-
mocracy. Demo­cratic rule of law has taken over the foundational role that
tian used to play but is no longer able to play.
This is not to take issue with Confucian democracy, or similar uses of
Confucianism, but only to suggest that no such appropriation of Confu-
cianism can change the fundamental choice facing China ­after the passing of
the revolutionary teleological interlude: Tian or democracy? Without ex-
plicit invocation of the Mandate of Heaven, ­t here can be no truly Confucian
approach to po­liti­cal legitimacy. Inasmuch as Confucian democracy and
moderate Confucian po­liti­cal perfectionism in their dif­fer­ent ways have
opted for democracy, they are Confucian only in a secondary sense.55 Nei-
ther of ­t hese is Confucian in the deep, foundational sense of a self-­sufficing
paradigm in­de­pen­dent of and fit to be pitted against the modern Western
paradigm of democracy—­democracy in Tocqueville’s broad sense as de-
fined in contrast with aristocracy. When all is said and done, all such Con-
fucianism must be taken to (implicitly) subscribe to democracy in the broad
sense and, by the same token, to democracy as an essential modern po­liti­cal
concept in terms of which Confucianism must re­orient and remake itself.
The Case for Democracy 153

Confucianism does not, that is, serve as a grounding for democracy, still less
for a nondemo­cratic order, but only serves to give an already (self-)grounded
democracy a certain culturally distinctive form. The latter role, while conse-
quential in many ways, is not of the first importance, for it does not make
Confucianism a fundamental alternative to democracy and is not intended
to do so.
The alternative, the only alternative, is the reinvention of tian, the revival
of Confucianism with a cosmology, or, simply, cosmological Confucianism.56
This is the radical mission of Confucianism conceived as ti rather than merely
yong, Confucianism not as a supplement to democracy but, with the help of
tian, as an alternative to democracy. W ­ hether this is desirable is another
­matter, and ­there is no need to take it up for our purposes, although my view is
easily inferable from the discussion. In comparison with it, however, all other
versions of Confucianism pale in ambition (as distinct from normative ap-
peal), useful as they are at lower levels of meaning and consequence—­that is,
useful only in the form of variations on the dominant theme of democracy.
The same is true of what is called po­liti­cal meritocracy, Confucian or
other­w ise, for it, too, is not foundational but must be attached to something
that is. As it happens, the meritocracy (of sorts) we see in China t­ oday finds
its place and meaning in the CCP’s current agenda and is parasitic on what­
ever legitimacy underlies this agenda. As such, this meritocracy is more a
­matter of the efficient execution of shared, taken-­for-­granted ends,57 such as
economic (first high-­speed, then high-­quality) growth and the Chinese
Dream as its ideological form, than of the disclosure and imposition of
ends—­say, communism—in the manner of prophets like Mao (albeit a some-
what derivative prophet given his debts to Marx). Thanks to its already en-
trenched equality of conditions, China ­today simply has no room for new
prophets, for any ends-­regarding meritocracy. Thus po­liti­cal meritocracy
­today has to appropriate an existing ends-­regarding mandate, such as de-
rived from what I e­ arlier called substantive pop­u­lism, rather than truly de-
fine ends for itself and hence what counts as merit in the meritocracy, as
Maoist communist meritocracy once was able to do in its capacity as the
self-­proclaimed vanguard. In the final analy­sis, then, po­liti­cal meritocracy
­today is only an administrative meritocracy, for it is essentially a m ­ atter of
per­for­mance with re­spect to largely given or taken-­for-­granted ends, and of
leadership only in this largely instrumental sense, and this means that its
source of legitimacy must be found elsewhere.
154 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Although other­w ise not directly comparable, nationalism too fails to be

a fundamental option, for the same reason. Like Confucian democracy or
po­liti­cal meritocracy, and unlike tian, it is no substitute for democracy; it
does not qualify for such a role even in princi­ple, devoid as it is of its own
raison d’être and hence parasitic on some in­de­pen­dent source of legitimacy
such as communism (source of revolutionary patriotism), democracy (source
of constitutional patriotism), or tian (basis for a paradoxical patriotism de-
voted to one part of tianxia and presupposing divisions thereof).
We are thus left, a­ fter the communist revolutionary interlude, with tian
as the only fundamental alternative to democracy. Only a Confucianism
that embraces this alternative is a radical, truly distinctive Confucianism,
Confucianism as ti, as a paradigm in its own right, rather than as a cultural
remnant finding a new lease on life in a modern, demo­cratic paradigm.
The question is w ­ hether such Confucianism has any reasonable chance of
reinventing a lost tian as the Chinese alternative to demo­cratic rule of law
for the purpose of securing legitimacy and stability in t­ oday’s China. Cer-
tainly, radical Confucians with this sense of mission exist. The most sophis-
ticated among them are conscious of the need for nothing less than the rein-
vention of tian, conscious of the deep reasons under­lying this need, and
conscious of the difficulty of accomplishing such an audacious task. Intel-
lectually, at least, they must be credited with knowing what they are d ­ oing
and what it takes to succeed. One sign that they are aware of the enormous
odds against their proj­ect is that even they are not above making compro-
mises with the real­ity and sensibilities of the modern world. Jiang Qing, an
ultraconservative Confucian, for example, while attempting to reinvent a
comprehensive po­liti­cal Confucianism equipped with a f ull-­blown cos-
mology, nevertheless is prepared to ­settle for a mixed regime with a popu­lar
component, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Machiavelli (of the Dis-
courses) or even of the eighteenth-­century British constitution.58
­There is a s ense in which Confucian cosmology has died twice: first, as
part of the modern pro­cess of enlightenment or nihilism (depending on one’s
perspective) that has caused the proverbial death of God, and, second, as a
result of the relentless uprooting in Mao’s China of what had remained of
the Confucian legacy, especially during the Cultural Revolution. ­After this
double death, it is extremely doubtful, to put it mildly, that Confucianism
can be brought back to life, root and branch. From a purely po­liti­cal point of
The Case for Democracy 155

view, any revival or reinvention of a comprehensive Confucianism, one with

an all-­encompassing worldview, would leave no room for Marxism, the
CCP’s official doctrine, and hence no room for the CCP itself as a nominally
Marxist party. Small won­der, then, that the CCP, despite its eagerness to tap
the legitimation potential of Confucianism, has s­ topped well short of em-
bracing anything remotely resembling a C onfucian cosmology. It is re-
vealing, in this connection, that the Confucian-­sounding suggestion, made
by some astute scholar-­ideologues, that the party is now entrusted by the
Mandate of Heaven with the sacred mission of restoring China’s former
glory has so far not been taken up by the party itself.59
And one must not forget that this temptation is being resisted by a CCP
whose original wellspring of revolutionary legitimacy is ­running dry. With
this source of legitimacy turning out to mark only an interlude, albeit an ex-
tremely consequential one, we are left only with tian versus democracy. If
not tian, then democracy, for ­t here is nothing ­else that could impart legiti-
macy beyond the contingent, short-­lived effects of mere performative success.
Throughout Chinese history rulers have never seen fit to dispense with le-
gitimacy proper and s­ ettle for mere per­for­mance legitimacy. In traditional
China, legitimacy proper resided in the Mandate of Heaven, with per­for­
mance legitimacy subordinate to and reflective of it. In CCP-­led China, le-
gitimacy proper resided in a communist teleology, again with per­for­mance
legitimacy subordinate to and reflective of it. To suggest that per­for­mance
legitimacy by itself ­will suffice t­ oday is tantamount to admitting that the cat-
egory of legitimacy proper is being left empty and claiming that po­liti­cal
authority and social stability can be maintained over time without filling it
in one way or another. This is surely the most audacious claim in the entire
history of Chinese po­liti­cal thought! At least the CCP has not made this claim;
nor, of course, the admission.60 And it speaks volumes, in this context, that
the CCP has unabashedly assigned a place to democracy on its list of so-
cialist core values.61 What­ever the party may mean by democracy, it un-
mistakably, by virtue of the sheer fact of having democracy appear on that
hallowed list, acknowledges democracy at least as an essentially contested
concept—­t hat is, as a concept that the party knows it cannot bypass in its
self-­legitimation and hence a concept it has no choice but to contest and ap-
propriate to its own advantage. This is extremely impor­tant, for the door
to democracy is thrown open, discursively open, by the CCP itself.
CHAPTER FOUR

Democracy and the Self-­Protection

of Society

IN MAKING MY PARTIALLY Tocqueville-­inspired case for democracy in terms of

equality of conditions, I have had to leave out something of crucial impor-
tance—­the connection between equality of conditions and capitalism. I did
so to better concentrate on the connection between equality of conditions and
democracy, in turn largely b ­ ecause Tocqueville himself did the same, seeing
almost no link between equality of conditions and capitalism. ­Because of this
omission, my account of equality of conditions is incomplete, my account of
democracy in terms of equality of conditions incomplete to the same degree.
Correcting this omission is much more than a merely academic exercise, for
this brings a key term into our discussion, demo­cratic capitalism, and, par-
allel to it, a key function of democracy, the self-­protection of society.
While ­t hese are the most direct and obvious consequences of the omis-
sion and its correction, they are not the only impor­tant ones. For the eco-
nomic per­for­mance that ­either enhances legitimacy or ameliorates its lack
is largely the per­for­mance of a cap­i­tal­ist or proto-­capitalist economy, and
therefore it is impossible to get an adequate picture of China’s current le-
gitimation crisis without taking a careful look at what its capitalism is like.
Furthermore, we w ­ ill find, as an impor­tant by-­product, that the effects of
unsatisfactory economic per­for­mance on legitimacy confirm, from a new and
distinct ­angle, the extreme closeness of legitimacy and per­for­mance we have
already observed.
­There are two other, more general gains to be made from thus resituating
democracy and the legitimation crisis in the context of capitalism. One is an
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 157

understanding of Western democracy that is two-­dimensional, involving

democracy’s relation both to the state (constitutional democracy) and to
capitalism (demo­cratic capitalism), hence of democracy as an (effective or
failed) antidote both to imperium, state power, and to dominium, the power
of private property. The other, drawing on the first, is the possibility of a
more accurate comparison of China’s current legitimation crisis with that of
Western demo­cratic capitalism. The combined result promises an appraisal
of China’s demo­cratic challenge, as well as the demo­cratic challenge in the
world at large, that is more accurate and more sober than it would other­w ise
be. Such an appraisal, taken together with the lessons of demo­cratic stability,
­w ill counsel Chinese to exercise modesty and vigilance in equal mea­sure
when deciphering the experience of Eu­ro­pean and American constitutional
democracy and demo­cratic capitalism.

Democracy and Capitalism

Suppose that I have made a plausible enough case for democracy—­one that
rests crucially on the po­liti­cal implications of equality of social conditions.
Such a case, however plausible, remains an overly general, ­because truncated,
one. For it neglects, albeit in the pre­sent case purposely, to specify the na-
ture of the society in which equality of conditions happens to exist, that gives
rise to the need for and the momentum t­ oward democracy, and that helps
determine the kind of democracy needed and pos­si­ble. Equality of conditions
in what kind of society, then, or, in other words, what kind of equality of con-
ditions? By equality of conditions, Tocqueville obviously has in mind early
nineteenth-­century Amer­i­ca, and he gives us to understand that such equality
was not much compromised by what he calls industrial or manufacturing ar-
istocracy (the corporate elite, as it is sometimes called ­today) and that there-
fore democracy did not have much to fear from this (in his view) rather su-
perficial departure from social equality.1 ­Either Tocqueville was mistaken
about Amer­i­ca, at least partially, and about the relation between democracy
and capitalism in general, or times have changed. Or both, as I think is actu-
ally the case.2 In the world ­today and as it has been for quite a long time,
democracy is part of a larger politico-­economic order best described as demo­
cratic capitalism. As such, democracy finds both its raison d’être and its
limitations in a somewhat subsidiary and largely reactive role in relation to
158 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

capitalism. Thus, equality of conditions as it exists ­today is equality of con-

ditions as defined and ­shaped by capitalism, with its inherently unequal
relationship between capital and l­ abor, and by democracy reacting to it. In
our time, therefore, the question of democracy is the question of demo­cratic
capitalism, and, as part of this question, the legitimation crisis of democracy
is the crisis of demo­cratic capitalism.
To get a f uller picture of demo­cratic capitalism, it is helpful to distin-
guish three ideal-­typical relations in which democracy can stand to capi-
talism. Corresponding to t­ hese three relations, we can also speak of three
meanings of democracy. The simplest way to spell out t­ hese ideal-­t ypical
relations is by attending to the interplay between the (cap­i­tal­ist) economic
sphere and the (demo­cratic) po­liti­cal sphere. Three broad models or possi-
bilities immediately pre­sent themselves. In the first, the po­liti­cal sphere is
dominated by the economic sphere, with democracy serving capitalism. In
the second model, the po­liti­cal sphere is balanced against the economic
sphere, with democracy counteracting capitalism, in the form of the social
demo­cratic welfare state. The third model differs from the first two in being
more imaginary than real, although what is ­imagined is a rational response
to the real. What this model imagines, as Karl Marx does in “On the Jewish
Question” among other works, is a s cenario in which the very distinction
between the two spheres is overcome, with democracy transcending capi-
talism in the direction of socialism and beyond. Thus it is not inaccurate to
describe the proj­ect to bring about such a scenario as “democracy against
capitalism.”3
In the first model, democracy serving capitalism, it is obvious that de-
mocracy is ­little more than a contingent derivative of capitalism: it serves
the needs of capitalism u ­ nder conditions created by capitalism. The classic
statement of this situation comes from Joseph Schumpeter: “Historically,
the modern democracy r­ ose along with capitalism, and in causal connection
with it. But the same holds true for demo­cratic practice: democracy in the
sense of our theory of competitive leadership presided over the pro­cess of
po­liti­cal and institutional change by which the bourgeoisie reshaped, and
from its own point of view rationalized, the social and po­liti­cal structure
that preceded its ascendancy: the demo­cratic method was the po­liti­cal tool
of that reconstruction. . . . ​Modern democracy is a product of the cap­i­tal­ist
pro­cess.”4 Schumpeter immediately goes on to ask, with refreshing candor
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 159

and bluntness, the question of “how well or ill cap­i­tal­ist society qualifies for
the task of working the demo­cratic method it evolved.” His answer is equally
candid and blunt: “Cap­i­tal­ist society qualifies well. The bourgeoisie has a
solution that is peculiar to it for the prob­lem of how the sphere of po­liti­cal
decision can be reduced to t­ hose proportions which are manageable by
means of the method of competitive leadership. The bourgeois scheme of
­things limits the sphere of politics by limiting the sphere of public authority;
its solution is in the ideal of the parsimonious state that exists primarily in
order to guarantee bourgeois legality and to provide a firm frame for autono-
mous individual endeavor in all fields.”5
In the second model we find a more equal relation, so to speak, between
democracy and capitalism than is envisioned by Schumpeter. But make no
­mistake: ­here democracy is allowed to serve as a counterweight against capi-
talism only within a cap­i­tal­ist order, and, as long as this is the case, t­ here is
no guarantee that democracy w ­ ill continue to be allowed to do so.
As long as democracy is allowed to counteract capitalism, however, we
have what deserves to be called demo­cratic capitalism6 —­democratic not in
the sense of capitalism itself having become demo­cratic but in the neverthe-
less significant sense of capitalism being substantially affected by the demo­
cratic pro­cess. A k ey ingredient of this demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist order is the
taming of the working class as a precondition for the cap­i­tal­ist class to con-
cede universal suffrage. Another key ingredient is the constitutional separa-
tion of the economic and po­liti­cal spheres such that the rights of property
and capital in the former are effectively protected from the demo­cratic op-
erations of the latter. In this regard, what Karl Polanyi says of the United
States—­“The American Constitution . . . ​isolated the economic sphere en-
tirely from the jurisdiction of the Constitution, put private property thereby
­under the highest conceivable protection, and created the only legally
grounded market society in the world. In spite of universal suffrage, Amer-
ican voters ­were powerless against ­owners”—is true of demo­cratic capitalism
in general.7 Thus when universal suffrage fi­nally arrived, it did so with cru-
cial features that made it largely compatible with capitalism.
While Polanyi is largely correct about voters in a cap­i­tal­ist democracy
being powerless against ­owners of capital, he fails to emphasize something
very impor­tant—­namely, that it is pos­si­ble even for a tamed working class
and a subordinated po­liti­cal sphere to obtain very considerable concessions
160 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

from the cap­i­tal­ist class. Such concessions take the form, essentially, of nearly
full employment, relatively decent working hours and conditions and wages,
and a reasonable level of social provisions for such ­things as education, health
care, and retirement—in other words, a cap­i­tal­ist welfare state. And ­t hese
concessions are made pos­si­ble, above all, by or­ga­nized ­labor with the bar-
gaining power and ideological resources, combined with the ballot box, to
alter the balance of power among capital, the working class, and the state.
This happens without fundamentally challenging the cap­i­tal­ist system.
Nevertheless, the social demo­cratic welfare state deserves to be considered
an impressive moral and po­liti­cal achievement within capitalism, replacing
the hard domination of the cap­i­tal­ist class with a softer, more consensual,
and, one might even say, more “humane” hegemony.
The prob­lem with social demo­cratic capitalism, even within its own terms
of reference, is that this distinctive arrangement may well not last, ­because
the balance of power needed to make it work is a modus vivendi liable to be
upset in the course of class strug­gles. In other words, within the second model,
democracy counteracting capitalism, always lurks the danger of its regressing
to the first model, democracy serving capitalism. For this reason, the reliable
humanization of capitalism, as it ­were—or, in the words of Polanyi, the “en-
deavor to make society a d istinctively h ­ uman relationship of persons”8—­
requires none other than the overcoming of capitalism by undoing the sub-
ordination of the (demo­cratic) po­liti­cal sphere to the (cap­i­tal­ist) economic
sphere. This very necessity makes the third model—­democracy transcending
capitalism, or socialism understood as “the tendency inherent in an indus-
trial civilization to transcend the self-­regulating market by consciously sub-
ordinating it to a demo­cratic society”9—­intelligible and attractive; hence the
permanent residual appeal of Marxism even ­after it has ceased to be a main
source of inspiration for po­liti­cal movements. Yet viewed from within capi-
talism, this model ­will naturally look utopian, and, ­because capitalism has so
far won in the real world, as signaled by a lack of pro­gress beyond merely po­
liti­cal and hence partial emancipation, it is utopian.10
I have brought up this third, largely utopian model b ­ ecause it best brings
out the rationale for democracy in the context of capitalism. It is a rationale
that is largely shared by the second, social demo­cratic model, but is not pur-
sued by it with sufficient rigor and soberness. For our purposes, what is
impor­tant is just this shared rationale, and perhaps no one has spelled it out
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 161

with greater clarity than Polanyi, whose classic statement on this subject re-
tains its full relevance ­today.

The Rationale for Democracy in the Context

of Capitalism

According to Polanyi, ­there is something deeply problematic with the ap-

plication of the market mechanism, or unimpeded commodification, to
land, money, and, for our purposes, especially l­ abor. This is b
­ ecause

to allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of

­human beings and their natu­ral environment indeed, even of the
amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the de­mo­li­tion
of society. For the alleged commodity “­labor power” cannot be shoved
about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting
also the ­human individual who happens to be the ­bearer of this pecu-
liar commodity. In disposing of a man’s ­labor power the system would,
incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity
“man” attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cul-
tural institutions, h
­ uman beings would perish from the effects of so-
cial exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation
through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be re-
duced to its ele­ments, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers
polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and
raw materials destroyed. . . . ​Undoubtedly, ­labor, land, and money
markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand
the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch
of time ­unless its ­human and natu­ral substance . . . ​was protected
against the ravages of this satanic mill.11

Polanyi is saying (and he is not mincing words) that, left to itself, capitalism
can be counted on to cause both suffering and alienation through the forced
commodification of t­ hings that are not commodities. In the face of the satanic
mill of a “pure” market, nothing is more needful than the “self-­protection of
society.” Democracy, though explic­itly mentioned not in the quoted passage
but only ­later in his account, exists to provide such protection. Refreshingly,
162 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Polanyi sees democracy not narrowly as only an antidote to imperium (that is,
po­liti­cal domination) but instead as a reaction to the distinctive combination of
dominium (that is, social domination) and imperium that is capitalism. This
is what democracy is for ­under an equality of conditions that renders other­
wise equal citizens and equal ­bearers of ­human rights vulnerable to the dehu-
manizing ravages of the cap­i­tal­ist market left to itself.
We do not have to look far to find the reason why democracy can serve
the self-­protection of society against capitalism, at least in theory. ­After all,
the cap­i­tal­ist class makes up only a small minority in a cap­i­tal­ist society. Thus,
in a cap­i­tal­ist society that happens also to be a democracy with universal suf-
frage, it stands to reason, apparently, that the majority, by exercising their
po­liti­cal rights, ­w ill see to it that their most impor­tant interests ­w ill be pro-
tected against the cap­i­tal­ist class. It was just this s­ imple reasoning that made
the cap­i­tal­ist class in the nineteenth ­century and even the early twentieth so
fearful of the working class and the poor in general that they found nothing
more impor­tant than keeping universal suffrage at bay. “But the more the
­labor market contorted the lives of the workers, the more insistently they
clamoured for the vote,”12 and thus exactly the same reasoning in reverse
motivated the strug­g les of the working class for universal (manhood) suf-
frage, culminating in the Chartist movement of 1838–1848, which ended in
bloodshed and failure:

In ­England it became the unwritten law of the Constitution that the

working class must be denied the vote. The Chartist leaders w ­ ere
jailed; their adherents, numbered in millions, w­ ere derided by a legisla-
ture representing a bare fraction of the population, and the mere de-
mand for the ballot was often treated as a criminal act by the authorities.
Of the spirit of compromise allegedly characteristic of the British
system—­a ­later invention—­t here was no sign. Not before the working
class had passed through the Hungry Forties and a docile generation
had emerged to reap the benefits of the Golden Age of capitalism; not
before an upper layer of skilled workers had developed their ­unions and
parted com­pany with the dark mass of poverty-­stricken laborers; not
before the workers had acquiesced in the system which the New Poor
Law was meant to enforce upon them was their better-­paid stratum
allowed to participate in the nation’s councils.13
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 163

Meanwhile, a p arallel development took place in the United States

whereby the taming of the working class was supplemented by a constitu-
tional separation of the economic and po­liti­cal spheres that effectively pro-
tected economic power from po­liti­cal equality.
Fast-­forward to the twenty-­first ­century. What Polanyi (following a f a-
mous poem by William Blake) calls the satanic mill of capitalism is no
longer so satanic, and for this reason no longer so desperately resisted, at
least in developed cap­i­tal­ist socie­ties. In the meantime, all the advanced
cap­i­tal­ist democracies have instituted universal suffrage, not just the uni-
versal manhood suffrage that was one of the goals of the failed Chartist
movement. Yet at the same time the satanic mill has moved to the so-­called
emerging markets, including China, whose laborers, often working u ­ nder
alienating conditions not so dissimilar to ­t hose of the nineteenth ­century,
alone make pos­si­ble the mass consumerism in the apparently more humane
developed economies, as well as for the growing ­middle class in their own.
In this way the organic bond between capitalism and the satanic mill—­
somewhere in the commodity chains—­remains uncut. Also intact is capi-
talism’s preferred way of taming, and best utilizing, the working class, by
pitting its members against one another, within the same country and, now,
in our age of globalization and with unpre­ce­dented effectiveness, across na-
tional bound­a ries. Small won­der, therefore, that the relocation of the sa-
tanic mill to developing economies has coincided with the progressive wors-
ening of the plight of the working class in the developed demo­cratic
cap­i­tal­ist countries. If, as Polanyi emphasized, the working class got the vote
only a­ fter it had been tamed sufficiently to no longer pose a deadly threat to
the cap­i­tal­ist class, it is no less true, as Polanyi also noted, that the working
class had allowed itself to be tamed in large part b ­ ecause, as in the economic
boom ­after the Chartist movement, the cap­i­tal­ist class was able and willing to
make significant concessions. Indeed, progressive concessions and the par­tic­
u­lar impact of World War II led to the ­great invention known as the cap­i­tal­ist
welfare state.
­Today, however, what was once taken for granted in the heyday of the
welfare state when it came to the self-­protection of society already seems to
belong to the irreversibly lost good old days. Instead of the working class
uniting for the self-­protection of society (if not for communism), it is the
cap­i­tal­ist class around the world that is more united and more power­ful
164 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

than ever before. And this is ­because it has captured—­appropriated as an

indispensable part of its global hegemony (hegemony in Antonio Grams-
ci’s precise sense)—­t he only ­t hing that can offer ordinary ­people a m od-
icum of protection in a cap­i­tal­ist society: democracy. Thus, Polanyi’s under-
standing of the raison d’être of democracy in terms of society’s self-­protection
is anything but outmoded. As a ­matter of fact, in the face of the unpre­ce­
dented cohesion and power of the global cap­i­tal­ist class, democracy is more
necessary than ever before.14
It is only in this light that we can adequately grasp the nature of legitima-
tion crises in demo­cratic capitalism. A legitimation crisis occurs when de-
mocracy seriously fails to achieve the self-­protection of society against the
dehumanizing (and denaturing) effects of un­regu­la­ted or ill-­regulated capi-
talism and when such effects undermine the values in terms of which p ­ eople
understand themselves and their society (such as solidarity, shared prosperity,
and pro­gress in terms of intergenerational upward mobility). But, as Wolf-
gang Streeck tells us, a legitimation crisis can also happen when the self-­
protection of society is considered by the ­owners and man­ag­ers of capital to
have gone too far, by the standards of market justice as distinct from social
justice, and when the cap­i­tal­ist class reacts to diminishing profit margins by
holding back from the investments society badly needs.15 Thus, a legitima-
tion crisis signals the failure of democracy from one point of view and the
(excessive) success of democracy from another. In this light, democracy per-
manently seesaws between the dominance of capitalism and the self-­
protection of society—as long as we live with the cap­i­tal­ist organ­ization of
the economy. Democracy exists to see to it that the seesawing motion does
not come to a stop on the side of capitalism.
Polanyi’s understanding of democracy in terms of society’s self-­protection
against the satanic mill of capitalism also furnishes a common denominator
for assessing the relative merits of dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal systems, or dif­fer­ent con-
figurations of the same po­liti­cal system. It may indeed be regarded as the
most impor­tant common denominator for the comparative evaluation of
modern po­liti­cal arrangements. It applies to all modern socie­t ies, not just
demo­cratic ones, as long as they have a more or less cap­i­tal­ist market economy.
­There is l­ ittle doubt that China lends itself to this kind of comparative
evaluation vis-­à-­v is demo­cratic capitalism. This in itself marks the extent to
which China is already a cap­i­tal­ist society: the satanic mill of capitalism al-
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 165

ready represents the greatest danger to Chinese society and protection against
this danger its chief challenge. We must not forget the already partially cap­
i­tal­ist character of its economy and of its equality of conditions when we con-
sider what China has to gain from becoming a democracy and what form
such a democracy is likely to take and should best take. By the same token,
we cannot rule out the possibility that, in becoming more formally demo­
cratic, China may do worse, not better, with regard to the self-­protection of
society against capitalism, even considering that it is not d ­ oing particularly
well right now. China does not yet properly have its own Wall Street, Silicon
Valley, and military-­industrial complex to contend with—­one of the mixed
blessings of the strict mono­poly of po­liti­cal power held by the Chinese Com-
munist Party (CCP).16 Its billionaire class, though already mighty and
growing, is not yet calling the shots. If economic freedom for Jack Ma and
­people of ambition and energy like him is part of the CCP’s formula for sta-
bility, this same formula gives the party itself no uncertain control over the
ground rules of the game and a huge chunk of the game itself in the shape of
state-­owned enterprises. But ­t hings can change quickly with the advent of a
formal, constitutional democracy that, as it happens, does not see the pro-
tection of society against capitalism as one of its chief missions. Thus, for all
who value democracy especially (though by no means exclusively) for Po-
lanyi’s reasons, it is necessary to place at the top of the demo­cratic agenda
the imperative to prevent such a scenario from materializing. To this end, it
is worth taking a brief look at how demo­cratic capitalism is faring in Western
Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca with regard to the self-­protection of society
against capitalism.

Lessons from the Crisis of Demo­cratic Capitalism

This takes us back to the model of demo­cratic capitalism erected in

Western Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca in the wake of World War II. That
model has since largely served as the point of reference for appraising the
good and ill of democracy.17 Known as social democracy in Eu­rope and the
New Deal in Amer­i­ca, this model featured, above all, a relatively evenly bal-
anced compromise between capitalism and democracy, with the state per-
forming a difficult but largely successful balancing act between the demands
of capital and the claims of the rest of society, between market justice and
166 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

social justice.18 That the state was able to do so, and for so long, is, in retro-
spect, quite an extraordinary achievement.
This combination of demo­cratic capitalism—of capital’s preeminence in
the economic sphere, on the one hand, and (formally) equal citizenship in
a demo­cratic po­liti­cal sphere, on the other—is inherently, and hence nor-
mally, tilted in ­favor of the former. This uneven balance resides in a defining
feature of capitalism that democracy can do l­ ittle to change: “Cap­i­tal­ist so-
ciety is distinguished by the fact that its collective productive capital is ac-
cumulated in the hands of a m inority of its members who enjoy the ­legal
privilege, in the form of rights of private property, to dispose of such capital
in any way they see fit, including letting it sit idle or transferring it abroad.”19
It follows that “economic crises in capitalism result from crises of confi-
dence on the part of capital; they are not technical disturbances but legiti-
mation crises of a special kind. Low growth and unemployment are results
of ‘investment strikes’ on the part of ­owners who could invest their capital
but refuse to do so b ­ ecause they lack the necessary confidence.”20 ­There is
obviously only one way to avoid “investment strikes,” and that is to make the
profit-­dependent ­owners and man­ag­ers of capital reasonably happy by satis-
fying their expectations, which for this reason alone are “more impor­tant
for [the cap­i­tal­ist system’s] stability than ­t hose of the capital-­dependent pop-
ulation; only if the former are satisfied can the latter too be satisfied, while
the reverse is not necessarily true.”21 If this need not mean that the cap­i­tal­ist
class has an invariably overwhelming threat advantage, it does nevertheless
mean that the default situation is one in which this class calls the shots. As
Streeck puts it, “The fact that the ‘psychological’ trust of capital in po­liti­cal
conditions is the main technical prerequisite for the functioning of a cap­i­
tal­ist economy sets narrow limits to the correction of market justice by
demo­cratically empowered social justice. A basic asymmetry of a cap­i­tal­ist
po­liti­cal economy consists in the fact that the demands of ‘capital’ for an
adequate return operate in effect as empirical preconditions for the func-
tioning of the ­whole system, whereas the corresponding demands of ‘­labor’
count as disruptive.”22
In this light, one should not be surprised that the golden era of demo­
cratic capitalism—­social democracy in Western Eu­rope and the New Deal in
Amer­i­ca—­gradually unraveled ­after nearly three de­cades of remarkable
success (the trente glorieuses) following the war. This is an extraordinary
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 167

case of the exception proving the rule. And when theorists such as Streeck
seek to explain the fortunes of demo­cratic capitalism in this way, their
point is not merely experiential and inductive but finds its basis in the nature
of capitalism itself—in the idea that this nature of capitalism is not changed,
and cannot be changed, when capitalism is yoked with democracy. This
means that the fruitful coming together of capitalism and democracy we are
talking about is only an apparent success, ­because it is an exception inca-
pable of outlasting the rule. It is in this sense that Streeck speaks of postwar
demo­cratic capitalism in Western Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca in terms of a
“forced marriage” or “shotgun marriage.”23 “In real­ity, the history of capi-
talism ­after the 1970s, including the subsequent economic crises, is a history
of capital’s escape from the system of social regulation imposed on it against
its ­will a­ fter 1945. . . . ​­These promises capitalism was neither able nor willing
to fulfil forever.”24 Thus, strange as this may sound, the default position is
separation or divorce; what must be deemed a departure from the norm and
calls for explanation is the marriage itself: how it happened by force and
what the force was. If this is the case, what I ­earlier identified as one of the
ideal-­t ypical relations between democracy and capitalism—­democracy ef-
fectively counteracting capitalism—­turns out to be the product of extraor-
dinary circumstances rather than a stable model.
The extraordinary circumstances that “forced” the seemingly successful
marriage between democracy and capitalism ­were World War II and its af-
termath, which brought a dramatic change in material conditions and in
ethos, not least in public expectations regarding social justice and demo­
cratic participation, and a shift in the balance of power between capital and
the citizenry sufficient to push the state to cater to the interests of the latter
as never before. The result was the modern welfare state as a unique com-
promise between the cap­i­tal­ist class and the rest of society, between the for-
mer’s demand for market justice and the latter’s claim to social justice. What
makes this compromise unique is that the combination of historical cir-
cumstances favorable to it was exogenous and highly contingent, and, as it
turned out, unrepeatable and incapable of indefinite extension. It is not pre-
ordained that the second model in the ideal-­t ypical relations between de-
mocracy and capitalism, having once carried the day against the first, ­w ill
continue to do so in­def­initely. It was rather only a m ­ atter of time before the
positive effects of the war on social justice wore off and the exception revealed
168 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

itself as such—­t hanks, as far as timing was concerned, to a combination of

accumulation and legitimation prob­lems in the 1970s and a­ fter. If we want a
general causal explanation, therefore, no better one can be found than along
the lines suggested by Streeck, to the effect that, “looked at with hindsight
and in the light of the turbulences that followed, the quarter ­century imme-
diately a­ fter the war should without difficulty be recognized as truly excep-
tional.” And this is ­because the normal condition of demo­cratic capitalism is
“ruled by an endemic and essentially irreconcilable conflict between cap­i­
tal­ist markets and demo­cratic politics that, having been temporarily sus-
pended for the historically short period immediately following the war,
forcefully reasserted itself when high economic growth came to an end in
the 1970s.”25
What has happened since is a series of politico-­economic balancing acts
increasingly ­shaped by an ever more power­f ul—or, to be more precise, ever
more normally power­f ul—­cap­i­tal­ist class. If the global inflation of the 1970s
and the explosion of public debt in the 1980s reflected in large part desperate
attempts by the demo­cratic state to prolong the gains of social justice u ­ nder
more challenging circumstances, their replacement by rising private indebt-
edness in the 1990s and beyond, followed by the sovereign debt crisis and
redoubled fiscal austerity since 2008, marks the definitive triumph of neo-
liberalism on behalf of capitalism.26 What this triumph represents, above all,
is a profound shift in the balance of power between democracy and capitalism,
in ­favor of the latter. To use Polanyi’s terminology, the demo­cratic mea­sures
for the “self-­protection of society” have been significantly rolled back and the
“satanic mill” of capitalism—­predominantly financial and digital capitalism
­today—­has regained much of its profit-­maximizing freedom from the goals
and constraints of the wider society.
Profound and momentous as this change has been, what is most charac-
teristic of it is that it has brought us back to the normal state of affairs for
demo­cratic capitalism. That this is the case finds additional support in Walter
Scheidel’s demonstration that what­ever equalizing effect on the distribution
of material resources may be attributable to the rise of postwar social democ-
racy “would at least in part have been driven by the pressures of war.”27 Now
that the pressures of war and their lingering effects on ethos, values, and
especially balance of power have worn off, capitalism has quite naturally re-
gained its edge in its relation with democracy. To the degree that the democ­
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 169

ratization of capitalism ­after 1945 was due to the pressures and effects of
war, one should expect nothing less than “a pro­cess of de-­democratization
of capitalism through the de-­economization of democracy.”28 By the same
token, the so-­called oligarchic shift in demo­cratic capitalism in recent de­
cades is nothing out of the ordinary: a shift back to normal, not away from
it, and therefore something that was just waiting to happen.
For this reason, the suggestion that the oligarchic shift is a phenomenon
largely peculiar to American demo­cratic capitalism, as made by Jacob Hacker
and Paul Pierson, misses the deeper, structural balance of power favoring
capitalism that is inherent in demo­cratic capitalism as such.29 Insofar as the
United States does differ from (especially continental) Eu­rope, it is a ­matter
of degree rather than kind. The cautious optimism that the pendulum w ­ ill
almost inevitably swing back to democracy (presumably short of a helping
hand from what Scheidel calls the “Four Horse­men” of leveling: mass-­
mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and cata-
strophic plagues), again as evinced by Hacker and Pierson, among many
­others, is more an article of faith than a belief grounded in the normal power
of democracy in demo­cratic capitalism.
It may well be that the normal power of democracy is not strong enough
to sustain a marriage of equal partners with capitalism. If we combine the
insights of Streeck and Scheidel, then this does seem to be the case. And thus
it is in the era of neoliberalism rather than in close temporal proximity to
the equalizing and demo­cratizing effects of the war (that is, during the heyday
of Eu­ro­pean social democracy and the American New Deal) that we see the
true—­t hat is, the normal—­face of demo­cratic capitalism, the greater ease
with which democracy serves capitalism (by legitimating it as compatible
with democracy) than counteracts it (by effectively pitting social justice
against market justice).30 If so, Polanyi’s call for the self-­protection of society
against capitalism cannot simply and safely be left to the normal workings
of demo­cratic capitalism. It w ­ ill always remain an extremely tall order, an
uphill strug­gle, as long as we stay within the par­ameters of capitalism, demo­
cratic or other­w ise.
While Polanyi’s line of thinking still stands, we would do well, for both
diagnostic and prognostic purposes, to make certain empirical adjustments
in his description of capitalism’s destructive impact on h ­ uman life, which fits
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries better than the late twentieth
170 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

and early twenty-­first. For the capitalism that has won out in ­today’s Western
Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca is no longer exactly that of the “satanic mill”
Polanyi speaks of, and the “self-­protection of society” that has been weak-
ened by the neoliberal onslaught is far from completely dismantled, thanks
to the residual power of democracy. The trou­bles of Western democracy,
however serious, are ­t hose marked by the erosion of exceptionally effective
mea­sures for the self-­protection of society rather than by their nonexistence
or disappearance. A welfare state diminished by fiscal austerity and mocked
by runaway in­equality and the power of private-­sector creditors still stands
as a bulwark against the mass immiseration of the not so distant past. So in
the wake of the drastic rollback of democracy and the welfare state at the
hands of neoliberal capitalism, ­t here is a s ense in which life proverbially
goes on in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, almost as usual. As long as the con-
dition of the vast majority does not come once again to resemble the “satanic
mill,” the oligarchic shift that is in fact the normal state of demo­cratic capi-
talism may simply continue without major challenge.31 When all is said and
done, Ernst Bloch’s insight into the desire for “the transformation of the to-
tality” is unlikely to find the necessary material conditions in twenty-­first-­
century Eu­rope or Amer­i­ca.32
This is not to deny that demo­cratic capitalism is in the firm grip of a le-
gitimation crisis. To have a clear understanding of the nature of this crisis,
however, it is necessary to remember that it is democracy that has been put
on the defensive in what was once—in a departure from the norm—­a more
evenly balanced tug-­of-­war with capitalism. In this impor­tant sense, the cur-
rent legitimation crisis is a c risis of democracy (within demo­cratic capi-
talism) rather than of capitalism—­and of the welfare state as democracy’s his-
torically most impor­tant by-­product. Despite sluggish growth, the cap­i­tal­ist
class is not exactly reeling from accumulation prob­lems, for it has found a
way of mitigating the impact of such prob­lems through a new pattern of
production and distribution in its ­favor made pos­si­ble by deregulation,
mobility of capital, and other mea­sures that comprise t­ oday’s finance-­ and
IT-­dominated capitalism. 33 ­Until accumulation prob­lems ­really hurt the
cap­i­tal­ist class or the method of shifting the burden of such prob­lems onto
the rest of society provokes uncontrollable social rebellion, it may be some-
what misleading to describe the legitimation crisis of demo­cratic capitalism
as chiefly a c risis of capitalism. It is rather a c risis of democracy vis-­à-­v is
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 171

capitalism: a situation in which the expectations of the capital-­dependent

population rather than ­those of the profit-­dependent ­owners and man­ag­ers of
capital go unsatisfied, and in which social justice rather than market justice
is losing its sway.
What are we to make of this undeniable decline of democracy in the
West? How are we to rethink the relation between democracy and capitalism
in the light of this decline? I have already provided part of the answer by
showing that, given the very nature of capitalism, the oligarchic shift must
be seen as marking a r eturn to the normal condition of demo­cratic capi-
talism. To this it is necessary to add another part of the answer, one respon-
sive to the timing of the onset of the crisis. Since we are talking in par­tic­u­lar
about the failure of social democracy—­t hat is, of democracy counteracting
capitalism—we need to figure out the crucial f­ actors that, beginning in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, made it more difficult for democracy to coun-
teract capitalism in the interest of social justice.
I have already noted the revolt of the cap­i­tal­ist class against the social
demo­cratic welfare state. While this revolt was directed against the entire
social demo­cratic distribution of power and profits, its victory came as a
result, above all, of defeating or­ga­nized ­labor.34 But most impor­tant of all is
that t­ hese developments took place ­under the circumstances of an intensi-
fied class strug­gle that had itself been caused by a prolonged downturn in the
cap­i­tal­ist economy. For our purposes, what ­matters is not why this happened
but that it happened—­and its effects. As growth stalled, so did pro­gress in
social justice, ­because the comfortable profit margins once required and in-
deed presupposed by the po­liti­cal efficacy and material benefits of the demo­
cratic welfare state had simply dis­appeared.35 Bluntly put, it was a ­matter of
which class was to bear the brunt of the crisis of cap­i­tal­ist economic growth.
Neoliberalism was the cap­i­tal­ist class’s economic and ideological means—­
under what had become normal circumstances well over two de­cades ­after
the war—to shield itself from the effects of the profit squeeze and shift them
onto the rest of society. Or­ga­nized ­labor used all the means afforded it by the
demo­cratic system to fight back, but to no avail, thanks to the new balance
of power and of opinion in the neoliberal state. In the pro­cess, demo­cratic
participation lost much of its meaning for ordinary p ­ eople, as it ceased to work
as a reasonably effective means of bringing about the re­distribution of wealth
in ­favor of the working masses. Austerity severed the once taken-­for-­granted
172 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

link between democracy and social justice, and for a growing number of citi-
zens this meant in effect the loss of democracy’s substance and raison d’être:
the self-­protection of society against capitalism (in Polanyi’s formulation).
This was not exactly a cause for cele­bration by the rich and power­f ul, how-
ever, in that democracy’s sinking fortunes soon started to drag down the le-
gitimacy of the cap­i­tal­ist game itself, as evident in the ominous spread of
antiglobalist sentiment.
In this light, the crisis of democracy reveals itself as part of a much larger
crisis, one that also implicates and hurts capitalism. I see this larger crisis
as a fourfold one: stagnant economic growth, the demise of social justice,
the hollowing-­out of democracy, and the delegitimation of capitalism.
That ­t hese four components of the larger crisis hang together as one integral
crisis is due to the mutual dependence among economic growth, social jus-
tice, democracy, and capitalism’s legitimacy. Growth creates the material con-
ditions not only for relatively full employment but also for social justice—­for
the relatively amicable re­distribution of wealth downward. “Since profit is ev-
erywhere, the concept of allocating it rationally between players becomes
popu­lar, as does the possibility of redistributing wealth downwards. The era
feels like one of ‘collaborative competition’ and social peace.”36 It would
definitely be naïve to think of growth as a sufficient condition for social jus-
tice ­under demo­cratic capitalism, but, just as definitely, growth seems to be a
necessary condition, at least in the absence of Scheidel’s “Four Horse­men” of
leveling. Social justice, in turn, is, for ordinary citizens who securely enjoy
liberties of the moderns and seek the socioeconomic means of taking advan-
tage of such liberties, the main substance of democracy and the core of its
appeal. Given this, whoever is opposed to social justice cannot (coherently)
be well disposed ­toward democracy, ­either.37 Capitalism for its part is de-
pendent on the positive link between social justice and democracy for its
moral image, its public relations. The idea that capitalism can have demo­
cratic legitimation on the cheap—on the basis of a formal democracy largely
devoid of social justice—­may well be an illusion. In this context, “No bour-
geois, no democracy,”38 Barrington Moore  Jr.’s way of summarizing a
Marxist thesis, acquires a new meaning in our age of mass democracy—­
namely, no reasonably prosperous and happy ­middle class, no legitimate
capitalism. Thus, when ­t hings go well, they go well together, with economic
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 173

growth giving democracy room for maneuver and allowing capitalism to

appear compatible with social justice, while making it pos­si­ble for social
justice to lend substance and purpose to democracy and for the positive link
between democracy and social justice to impart moral standing to capi-
talism. This is the benign circle of social democracy, or social demo­cratic
capitalism, for which growth serves as a necessary (though not a sufficient)
condition. By the same token, a prolonged crisis of economic growth may be
counted on to trigger a comprehensive crisis of demo­cratic capitalism. How,
within the confines of a cap­i­tal­ist system in which society depends on cap-
ital, and capital on profits, can a prolonged recession not bring in its train a
retrogression in social justice and the hollowing-­out of democracy, and how
can ­t hose outcomes not lead to the erosion of legitimacy for capitalism? No
(substantial) economic growth, no pro­gress in social justice; no pro­gress in
social justice, no well-­f unctioning democracy for the “or­ga­nized extraction
of mass loyalty”;39 no robust social justice and democracy, no solid legiti-
macy for capitalism. In a nutshell, democracy ­will be in trou­ble when it is no
longer able to feed on high growth as its indispensable room for maneuvering
u
­ nder demo­cratic capitalism.40
When this happens, the intrinsically problematic nature of the relation
between democracy and capitalism, softened and even hidden in good times,
comes to the fore. Interestingly, we find Polanyi pitting democracy (the self-­
protection of society) against capitalism from the Left and Friedrich von Hayek
pitting capitalism against democracy (social justice) from the Right. Thus we
have two exceptionally serious thinkers converging on what to both of them
is a fundamentally conflictual relation between democracy and capitalism
while perceiving and fearing the threat from exactly opposite directions. It
would be hard to think of a more striking intellectual confirmation of the
deep-­seated tension between democracy and capitalism, just as ­there could be
no sharper reminder than the recent experience of Western democracy—
the most successful in modern times—­t hat this tension does not f­ avor
democracy.
Insofar as it is helpful for China to look to Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca
(among other places) for inspiration and lessons regarding democracy, it is a
democracy in defeat and in crisis that pre­sents itself. It is anything but a pretty
picture:
174 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Trade ­u nion membership fell . . . ​t hroughout the world of demo­

cratic capitalism, and often enough as a result of successful efforts at
union-­breaking by governments and employers. Collective bargaining
declined as a consequence, and with it the wages at the lower end of
the ­labour market, while the earnings of shareholders and, even more
so, man­ag­ers improved dramatically, making for a stunning and sus-
tained rise in in­equality inside democratic-­capitalist socie­ties. Needs
for “restructuring” ­under alleged pressures of “globalization” ­were
and continue to be invoked to justify retreat by governments from po­
liti­cally guaranteed full employment, the growing individualization of
the employment contract, increasingly precarious employment, the
renewal of managerial prerogative, the privatization of government
ser­v ices, and “reformed”—­i.e., recommodifying—­social policy—­a ll
of which can be observed almost everywhere in rich democracies. . . . ​
Capitalism withdrew from the commitments extracted from and en-
tered into by it at the end of the Second World War. However this pro­
cess may be interpreted or explained, it cannot possibly be conceived
as having been driven by a r ising influence over policy by demo­
cratically or­ga­nized citizens.41

Such negative fortunes of democracy in the West are of considerable rel-

evance for pondering the prospects of democracy in China—­a ll the more so
if we take into account the latest mutation in capitalism in the shape of sur-
veillance capitalism.42 How long w ­ ill high economic growth last in China?
­Will China take advantage of such growth to develop democracy while the
sun shines? Or ­will it use the per­for­mance legitimacy gained through growth
to delay democracy ­until democracy becomes unavoidable and yet the sun
no longer shines so brightly? How well, in the event of demo­cratic change,
­will China be able to foster a positive link between democracy and social jus-
tice? How well w ­ ill the CCP be able thereby to reclaim its socialist creden-
tials and do so in a new—­t hat is, democratic—­setting? More generally, when
democracy is in retreat vis-­à-­vis capitalism in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca, what can
democracy mean and do in China, a country adopting more and more cap­
i­tal­ist ways and values? Must democracy mean in China what it has meant
in the West—­namely, “the po­liti­cal anonymization of class rule” (more on
this l­ ater) and the resultant autonomy of the market from a constitutionally
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 175

circumscribed state—­a po­liti­cal formula that has done more to facilitate cap-
italism than to protect society? And with what likely consequences, in a
country where the nature and composition of the cap­i­tal­ist class, the level of
economic and ­legal development, and the moral and cultural tradition are
all very dif­fer­ent from their Western counter­parts? How well prepared ­w ill
a newly demo­cratizing China be to ­counter the unpre­ce­dented challenges to
democracy posed by surveillance capitalism, when the so-­called mature de-
mocracies of the West are already being thrown off balance? Last but not least,
must China not pay some heed, out of prudential and moral concern for it-
self and the world as a ­whole, to the far from improbable end of capitalism in
the not too distant ­f uture and prepare itself accordingly, with regard to de-
mocracy and other­wise?43

Why Neoliberalism Has Not Entirely

Conquered China

What has weakened democracy in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca is, of course,

the antidemo­cratic capitalism that has come to be known as neoliberalism—
in the plain words of Colin Crouch, “that fundamental preference for the
[cap­i­tal­ist] market over the [demo­cratic] state as a means of resolving prob­
lems and achieving h ­ uman ends.”44 It would not be incorrect to think of
neoliberalism as the softer, less satanic version of the satanic mill in our
time—­softened and made more palatable by the partly constraining and
partly propagandist discourse of ­human rights and corporate social respon-
sibility. Although t­ here are as yet no demo­cratic institutions in China for
neoliberalism to conquer, this has not prevented neoliberalism from finding a
far from negligible foothold ­t here. It has been noted that Deng Xiaoping,
credited as the chief architect of China’s reform, was something of a believer
in neoliberal doctrine, if not u ­ nder this name. This view is given consider-
able plausibility by the exceptionally high tolerance for in­equality and envi-
ronmental degradation that has marked China’s reform almost from the
beginning—­something that cannot in the late twentieth and early twenty-­
first centuries and in a supposedly socialist country be explained away in
terms of the unavoidable crudeness and ruthlessness of primitive accumula-
tion—­and by the large-­scale, Chinese-­style privatization and deregulation
that have characterized the economy.
176 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

­ ere is ready proof of a dif­fer­ent kind as well, in that some impor­tant

Th
items on neoliberalism’s agenda happened to be part of China’s old socialist
way of ­doing ­t hings—­such as the weakness of trade unions—­now adapted
to cap­i­tal­ist ends. As Paul Mason writes, “The destruction of ­labour’s bar-
gaining power . . . ​was the essence of the entire [neoliberal] proj­ect: it was a
means to all the other ends. Neoliberalism’s guiding princi­ple is not f­ ree mar-
kets, nor fiscal discipline, nor sound money, nor privatization and off-
shoring—­not even globalization. All ­these ­things ­were byproducts or weapons
of its main endeavour: to remove or­ga­nized ­labour from the equation.”45 It
makes one shudder to think how this most central of neoliberal objectives
was achieved in reform-­era China with l­ ittle effort and no fanfare, for pre-
vention sufficed and no dismantling was necessary.
It is also worth remembering that the start of China’s reform coincided
almost exactly with the onset and early spread of neoliberalism in the heart-
land of Eu­ro­pean and US demo­cratic capitalism. ­There has never been any
doubt that the cap­i­tal­ist market economy China was so ­eager to learn from
the West was the one newly reshaped in the image of neoliberalism. This is
especially true of the swelling ranks of economists, from whom have been
drawn many of China’s most impor­tant officials presiding over the economy.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are generally well thought of among
them and by the Chinese public at large. Hayek and Milton Friedman (and
the Chicago school in general) are the economics profession’s intellectual he-
roes, and, through their Chinese disciples’ tireless propaganda, even heroes,
or at least influential in terms of their ideas, among a significant part of the
educated population. It is a remarkable feature of China’s ideological land-
scape that almost every­one who has a serious grudge against the past and pre­
sent misdeeds of the supposedly communist party-­state is reacting, or over-
reacting, to ­t hese misdeeds by converting to neoliberal beliefs about the
virtues of the market and the vices of the state. For such ­people—­and they
are legion—­pro­gress means shrinking the state (state-­owned enterprises) in
­favor of the market (the private sector)—­t hat is, promoting guotui minjin
against guojin mintui, where min refers to Marktvolk as if they w ­ ere equiva-
lent to “the ­people.”46
Despite all this, neoliberalism has not conquered China the way it has
done Eu­rope and the United States. True, neoliberalism is very strong in
China as ideology, which arguably has infected the CCP itself, especially its
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 177

higher echelons, even more than ordinary p ­ eople. True, many practices have
been ­adopted in China that ­were inspired by neoliberal ideas in one way or
another. True, and most importantly, the pre­sent leadership of the CCP has
gone so far as to publicly assign a p redominant role to the market in re-
source allocation and in the operation of the economy as a ­whole. But when
all is said and done, the party has not seen fit to inaugurate a sufficiently
autonomous system of economic exchange to relieve itself of its preeminent,
po­liti­cal responsibility for a well-­f unctioning economy—­a nd thereby of
the need for nonstop, counterproductively obtrusive po­liti­cal legitimation of
its authority. And it ­w ill not be able to do so as long as it is in charge. It is
exactly for this reason that neoliberalism cannot go very far—­not nearly as
far as it has in Western demo­cratic capitalism—­before it runs up against
insurmountable obstacles posed by the very presence of the CCP and the
consequent lack of an autonomous market.47
It is widely thought that its four-­decade-­old reform has turned China
into what in certain key re­spects is a cap­i­tal­ist economy and society. ­There is
no better argument for this view than the fact, noted e­ arlier, that the para-
mount challenge faced by Western democracies—­namely, the protection of
society and nature against the satanic mill of a dominant market—is now
also one of the main challenges confronted by China t­ oday. It has not quite
become as singularly overwhelming a c hallenge in China yet, however,
­because the country has not developed “the po­liti­cal anonymization of class
rule” that, as Jürgen Habermas shows with admirable percipience, strictly
characterizes the po­liti­cal organ­ization of cap­i­tal­ist socie­ties and the dis-
tinctive crisis tendencies to which it gives rise. Thanks to the supposedly
autonomous character of economic exchange u ­ nder capitalism, the po­liti­cal
order is freed from the burden of direct, openly po­liti­cal legitimation. What
happens instead is that “the property order has shed its po­liti­cal form and
been converted into a relation of production that, it seems, can legitimate
itself. The institution of the market can be founded on the justice inherent in
the exchange of equivalents; and, for this reason, the bourgeois constitu-
tional state finds its justification in the legitimate relations of production.”48
It is easy to see that if this is what capitalism is like in its po­liti­cal and, by
the same token, its economic organ­ization, then China is not yet entirely the
cap­i­tal­ist entity it is so often taken to be. However significant the extent
to which China has become cap­i­tal­ist, it has definitely not developed a
178 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

sufficiently autonomous system of economic exchange to make the rule of

the CCP po­liti­cally anonymous and to shift the burden of legitimation to the
in­de­pen­dently grounded relations of production. In this par­tic­u­lar regard,
China is not able to quack like a cap­i­tal­ist duck, and, ­because of this, it cannot
quite walk like a cap­i­tal­ist duck, ­either. It must rely instead on a dif­fer­ent kind
of legitimation, a more or less teleological legitimation (in the form, say, of
communism in the past and of the “­great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”
now), and it must allow its policies and actions to be informed and con-
strained by this legitimation to a substantial degree if it is to make such le-
gitimation even minimally plausible.

What Is Special about China’s Legitimation Crises

As a result, the pressure points inherent in China’s po­liti­cal order and the
locus of the attendant legitimation crises are rather dif­fer­ent from ­those found
in Western demo­cratic capitalism. Not handicapped by the Western-­style
separation between an autonomous market and a liberal constitutional state,
the Chinese party-­state has more room for maneuver, more power over the
economy and hence over all the ­t hings affected by the economy. This may
partly account for its economic successes in recent de­cades, although t­ hese
achievements have exacted a huge ­human and environmental cost for which
the party-­state must be held responsible to the same degree. On the other
hand, not being handicapped by the Western-­style separation between an
autonomous market and a c onstitutional state must also mean not being
shielded by such a separation, ­either, when the latter would come in handy.
­Under demo­cratic capitalism, as long as the ideology of separation is
credible and effective, ­t here is a mutually protective relationship between
the economic system (­free exchange) and the po­liti­cal system (constitutional
democracy). The economic system, supposedly autonomous, shields the po­
liti­cal order and t­ hose ­running it from bearing the brunt of the blame for so-­
called economic crises, notwithstanding the fact that the electoral system
encourages politicians to exaggerate their role and make undeliverable prom-
ises with regard to the economy, thereby eroding popu­lar belief in a consti-
tutive fiction of the demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist order. The po­liti­cal system, also sup-
posedly autonomous, in turn shields the economic system through its
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 179

commitment to ­free exchange and through the legitimation of this commit-

ment by means of constitutional democracy.
Thus the way to overcome per­for­mance prob­lems ­under demo­cratic capi-
talism is almost invariably thought to lie mainly in fixing the economy rather
than correcting what has gone wrong with democracy, ­unless it is believed
(as it seldom is) that improved democracy would bring greater economic
growth. The occasional outburst of social anger can make it fleetingly look
as if a legitimation crisis triggered by per­for­mance prob­lems has become a
fully conscious crisis of social integration and hence a crisis directly of the
demo­cratic component of demo­cratic capitalism. But public attention always
seems to have a way of returning to economic measures—­now especially
monetary mea­sures ­adopted by the nondemo­cratic institution of the central
bank—­giving one reason to think that the public secretly or not so secretly
knows and accepts the irrelevance and impotence of democracy in relation
to the autonomous market.
Without the benefit of some such ingenious compartmentalization, the
Chinese party-­state is more vulnerable than its Western demo­cratic coun-
terpart, having to take the lion’s share of responsibility for economic failures
no less than successes. This is the main reason why a high level of economic
growth is so impor­tant, and a lack of it so po­liti­cally delegitimating. Another
reason, incidentally, is that, much as a cap­i­tal­ist democracy must somehow
keep its cap­i­tal­ists happy in order to foster investment and growth, so the
Chinese party-­state must channel disproportionate gains to its own class of
cadres in return for their loyalty and economic initiatives, and thus high
growth rates are necessary for Chinese-­style trickle-­down economics to work.
Neither of ­t hese reasons, however, is merely a ­matter of purchasing legiti-
macy.49 In the first, in par­tic­u­lar, it is a ­matter of discharging a po­liti­cal re-
sponsibility, and lessening a po­liti­cal vulnerability, that comes with a system
of po­liti­cal leadership that has chosen not to divest itself of the ­great power
over, and with it a corresponding level of responsibility for, the economy and
all that goes with it. ­Under this system, ­t here is simply nowhere for the CCP
to hide when the economy is not ­doing well or ­doing less well than before.
This means that the Chinese party-­state cannot speak of economic crises
in the same way Western demo­cratic governments can. In their strict sense,
economic crises are serious disturbances of a market economy conceived of
180 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

as an autonomous system and, as such, presuppose a degree of separation be-

tween system integration and sociopo­liti­cal integration that is simply absent
in China. For this reason, ­every crisis in China that other­w ise resembles an
economic crisis is directly a po­liti­cal crisis. The CCP’s role is so defined that
it cannot convince anyone that “it no longer rules”50 —­i ncluding over the
economy. Not that it even wants to! And this is what chiefly holds China back
from becoming fully cap­i­tal­ist.
This has not prevented the party-­state, however, from making vari­ous at-
tempts at self-­exoneration. Such attempts run a built-in risk of incoherence,
for reasons already hinted at, and yet they are not completely incoherent. To
begin with, the party-­state’s direct control of the economy is nowhere near
total. As is well known, the economic reform initiated by Deng has privatized
­great swaths of the Chinese economy and, as part of this pro­cess, brought
about a degree of denationalization and decollectivization of the means of
production that is seen, with good reason, to have diluted the formerly so-
cialist character of the Chinese economy. Thanks to this profound transfor-
mation of the economy and of the CCP’s relation to it, we now have an inter-
mediate situation in which the party-­state still presides over a nonautonomous,
so-­called socialist (whose most precise meaning is none other than “nonau-
tonomous”) market economy and yet is no longer in direct control over the
entire economy. It directly controls only state-­owned enterprises, which,
although extremely impor­tant and power­ful, yield pride of place to the pri-
vate sector in terms of share of both gross domestic product and (urban)
employment.
This new, intermediate role of the party-­state in relation to the economy
is entirely in keeping with the massive depoliticization of the party since the
start of the reform four de­cades ago. Depoliticization does not mean, of
course, the po­liti­cal anonymization of the CCP’s rule. Far from it, as is evi-
dent from the party-­state’s unwillingness and inability to hand the economy
over to an autonomous market and thereby shield itself from the delegiti-
mating consequences of economic failures. What depoliticization means,
instead, is that the CCP has made the successful ­running of the economy its
main task and the chief means of enhancing its legitimacy—­a long with the
maintenance of social stability essential to this task. In other words, the prin-
cipal function of the CCP is to preside with efficiency and stability over a
nonautonomous (yet to a large degree private, cap­i­tal­ist) economy. Depoliti-
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 181

cization refers, then, to the reinvention of the CCP as a functional organ­

ization devoted single-­mindedly to economic development, while the limits
to this depoliticization reside in the need to keep the economy nonautono-
mous and to give it some semblance of a partly correctly so-­called socialist
market economy.
Thanks to this make­over, the CCP has understandably found it necessary
to allow the market to play as large a role in the economy as is consistent with
its not being a fully autonomous market—­t hat is, consistent with the CCP
having a kind and degree of authority over it that is not pos­si­ble in a consti-
tutional democracy. This is a further sense in which we can speak of the de-
politicization of the party: depoliticization means giving the market as
much say as pos­si­ble, subject to what is left of the party’s prerogative. It is only
in this sense that we can reasonably understand what the pre­sent leadership
means when it says it ­w ill allow the market to play a decisive role in resource
allocation. The par­a meters within which this is applicable are taken to go
without saying, or ­else China would cease to be a so-­called socialist market
economy. To take the CCP to task for not being as good as its word is to (de-
liberately, ideologically) misunderstand what is involved and to call on the
party to give up the raison d’être of its existence. Considering how China has
gotten to this point, and understanding that ­going beyond it may amount to
po­liti­cal suicide, the role the CCP has been willing and able to assign to the
market is very considerable indeed.
Much of the CCP’s willingness and ability to go this far was the result of
overcoming strong domestic po­liti­cal, ideological, and indeed economic re­
sis­tance on China’s way to joining the World Trade Organ­ization in 2001.
Since then, China has become the world’s second-­largest economy, gradu-
ating from being a peripheral part of the global cap­i­tal­ist order to its current
status as a key player. In both capacities, China has transformed itself to the
very limits of its CCP-­defined identity, having had to play by the rules of a
game set by power­f ul cap­i­tal­ist democracies, with their ideology of an au-
tonomous market and a noninterfering state. This means that China has be-
come as cap­i­tal­ist as it can be, short of relinquishing its self-­understanding
as a socialist market economy.
The upshot of ­t hese developments is that, on the one hand, the CCP re-
mains in charge of the economy, which means that the economy is not treated
as autonomous. Yet, on the other hand, the economy has acquired many key
182 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

institutional and ideological characteristics of capitalism, which means China

now f­ aces largely the same challenge of protecting society from the ravages
of capitalism as demo­cratic capitalism does. Meanwhile, the CCP has evolved
into a largely functional organ­ization with a predominantly economic agenda,
and this means that it is both less able and less motivated to carry out the
self-­protection of society—­a brand-­new task thrust in front of it by the eco-
nomic reform. This, then, is the hybrid China that is our subject when we
talk about making it demo­cratic or more demo­cratic.
Like demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist states, China, with its own distinctive market-­
state relation, is liable to suffer both prob­lems with the economy and failures
in the self-­protection of society. Unlike them, however, the Chinese state is
not systemically shielded by the separation of the economy and the po­liti­cal
order as supposedly autonomous arrangements, and thus it is more liable to
experience both economic and social prob­lems as direct, inescapable threats
to its legitimacy. When such prob­lems become serious and intractable, they
take on the character of legitimation crises. Th ­ ese crises are what they are
­because they raise questions about ­whether the CCP is capable of developing
both the motivation and the ability to solve them. They raise questions, that
is, about the normative raison d’être of the party. And b ­ ecause this raison
d’être has hitherto had its source in the identity of China’s po­liti­cal system,
such questions strike at the very roots or normative under­pinnings of this
system. Although, as we have seen, the Western constitutional state is by no
means immune to the adverse impact of disruptions that occur in the sup-
posedly autonomous economic system, the legitimation crisis to which the
constitutional state is subject is of a lesser order of magnitude compared with
what can befall the Chinese party-­state. In the event of major per­for­mance
disruptions, the Chinese party-­state is fully without ideological protection
from e­ ither the demo­cratic character of the state or the autonomous char-
acter of the economy.
In this light, the close internal connection we saw between the CCP’s le-
gitimacy and per­for­mance turns out to be even closer. Or, to be more pre-
cise, we could say that we have just uncovered yet another dimension of that
internal connection. What defines this further dimension is that, lacking the
buffer provided by the separation between constitutional state and auton-
omous market, the CCP is directly exposed to the possibility that serious
per­for­mance prob­lems, w ­ hether regarding economic growth or the self-­
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 183

protection of society, w­ ill immediately translate into legitimation prob­lems

that cast doubt on its very fitness to rule. Hence it would be closer to the truth,
in the case of the Chinese party-­state, to see the line between legitimacy and
per­for­mance as essentially blurred and even to suggest a causal account in
which serious per­for­mance disruptions tend logically (that is, in the absence
of the buffer) to prompt questions regarding legitimacy.

How Legitimation Crises Translate into Pressures

for Democracy

The most impor­tant upshot of such questioning is a larger-looming specter

of democracy, somewhere in the popu­lar imagination and potential agita-
tion, as an alternative to what China is now. In the case of Eu­ro­pean and
American capitalism, which is already demo­cratic, no such upshot follows
from even a serious legitimation crisis, which for this reason alone must be
taken to carry an altogether dif­fer­ent meaning and level of threat. On the
one hand, as already noted, the po­liti­cal order has its rear covered by the sup-
posed autonomy of market exchange and by the correlative constitutional
limits on state action and, by implication, on state efficacy. On the other
hand, with regard to the self-­protection of society, even when democracy is
viewed as in­effec­tive, nothing is left but to hold out the hope of electing a
more competent or well-­meaning government next time or strengthening
the existing demo­cratic system. Barring truly catastrophic breakdowns
(which, incidentally, the 2008 financial crisis turned out not to have quali-
fied as), demo­cratic capitalism is able to keep at bay all desperate outcries for
an alternative to itself—­for t­ here does seem no alternative!51
Not so in China, lacking as it does also the second buffer enjoyed by demo­
cratic capitalism—­t hat is, the absence of any plausible alternative to democ-
racy (in addition to the first—­t hat is, the supposedly autonomous character
of the cap­i­tal­ist economy). In an age when democracy is almost universally
embraced as the only fully legitimate basis of government, any regime not
performing satisfactorily is likely to add fuel to calls for democracy if it is
not already regarded by its own p ­ eople as demo­cratic. China is not yet so re-
garded, and thus, whenever its government is found seriously wanting in its
per­for­mance, democracy naturally springs forth, in consciousness if not in
action (depending on the room for dissent), as an alternative and, over time,
184 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

as one that is long overdue. This is where legitimation crises in China have a
po­liti­cal significance and effect that are very dif­fer­ent from ­t hose in Eu­ro­
pean and American cap­i­tal­ist democracies. In China such crises have a built-
in potential to mutate into the pressure for democracy, as they did in 1989
and could do anytime now. That the CCP is making such mutation more dif-
ficult and costlier than ever shows that it is acutely aware of exactly such a
possibility and of the logic b ­ ehind it.
Without the dual buffer of constitutional state and autonomous market
economy, the Chinese party-­state lives in constant fear that major per­for­
mance prob­lems—­regarding growth, welfare, and social stability—­w ill give
rise to questions about its legitimacy and pressures for demo­cratic change.
Such questions come up in times good and bad but are all but irresistible in
not so good times. Why are they in power? Why only they, and always? Why
must their view on this or that ­matter—on any public ­matter—be the last
word, and even when they are not ­doing that good a job? In good times, the
party-­state is able to deflect or even preempt such questions by encouraging
citizens to assess how competently the rulers, once in power, are exercising
that power and to forget the distinct, prior question of how they have come
by the title to that power in the first place. But this subterfuge depends for its
success, in present-­day China, on a level of performative success that is simply
unsustainable. What is thus to be feared is not only bad times but the very
possibility of bad times. And surely no one in one’s right mind would want,
for purposes of legitimacy, to count on China, what­ever its absolute level of
per­for­mance, comparing favorably with arguably relevant other countries
(­whether some large developing economy in terms of per capita gross do-
mestic product, or a failed state in terms of order). Neither this kind of com-
parative solace nor the stratagem of deflection can be a ­recipe for enduring
legitimacy, and, by the same token, neither can long stave off the pressure
for democracy as exactly such a ­recipe.
It is another ­matter, an equally impor­tant ­matter, what form such pres-
sure ­w ill take. In China ­today, it is essential to distinguish two kinds of pres-
sure, based on ­whether it stems from concerns about the state’s excessive
power over the economy and the market’s consequent lack of autonomy, or
from demands for the better self-­protection of society. In terms of class in-
terests, one would generally expect the first kind of pressure to come from
the cap­i­tal­ist class and the second from the grass roots of society. The ­actual
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 185

picture is made a lot more complicated, however, by the successful propaga-

tion of neoliberal doctrine in recent de­cades among the general population
and by the widespread and indiscriminate resentment of state power as
such—­the latter made somewhat understandable by, among other t­ hings, the
state’s massively preferential treatment of state-­owned enterprises, in glaring
contrast with the unapologetically shabby treatment by state-­owned banks
of relatively small private enterprises. What is nevertheless clearly discern-
ible in Chinese society, among rich and poor, officials (temporarily in the
closet) and ordinary citizens, is a one-­sided understanding of democracy that
largely identifies it with a constitutionalism granting autonomy to the market
and limiting the power of the state. Almost completely lacking is a concep-
tion of democracy aimed at containing or counteracting capitalism for the
sake of the self-­protection of society. This is unfortunate, even though calls
for the protection of society are by no means absent and can take other forms,
such as the commonsense demand on government, demo­cratic or not, to
make better and more equitable provisions for education, health care, and
so on. For the raison d’être of democracy is misguidedly narrowed and the
appeal of democracy correspondingly weakened. At the same time, the enor-
mous moral capital of democracy is all too easily delivered to capital’s
proj­ect of state capture, depriving the cause of social justice of this moral cap-
ital and leaving democracy ­free of the need to be even reasonably just. Last
but not least, the very framing of the demand for social justice in isolation
from democracy tends to translate sooner or ­later, and all too one-­sidedly,
into a pressure for economic growth, which may not be conducive to greater
social justice and can be used as a reason precisely to weaken its appeal.
To the pressures just described—­whether directly for constitutional de-
mocracy or indirectly via social justice—­t he CCP must respond in one way
or another. ­These are pressures with Chinese characteristics, springing as
they do from legitimation crises in a society that is substantially but not fully
cap­i­tal­ist and not constitutionally demo­cratic. Hence they are pressures of a
kind to which, as I have noted, Euro-­A merican demo­cratic capitalism is
largely immune when faced with other­w ise similar legitimation crises. As
part of the same package, however, the Chinese state does not have to con-
tend with an extremely power­f ul and cohesive cap­i­tal­ist class the likes of
which have brought democracy to heel in Euro-­American demo­cratic capi-
talism and have indeed largely captured the state in the age of neoliberalism.
186 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

This too is an extremely impor­tant ­factor to take into account if we are to

appreciate the complexities involved in China’s pro­gress ­toward democracy.
­There is a sense in which the Chinese state is more advantageously situ-
ated than its Eu­ro­pean or American counterpart vis-­à-­vis the cap­i­tal­ist class.
It is true that, given its huge dependence on economic growth—­whether high
speed or high quality—to ward off major legitimation crises, and given the
already enormous size of the private sector in the Chinese economy, the Chi-
nese state finds it imperative to secure the cooperation of the cap­i­tal­ist class.
Despite this new relation in which the CCP stands to the cap­i­tal­ist class, it
remains somewhat less true of China than it is of Eu­ro­pean or American
demo­cratic capitalism that “the demands of ‘capital’ for an adequate return
operate in effect as empirical preconditions for the functioning of the ­whole
system.”52
What is particularly thought provoking, indeed chillingly so, is that it is
democracy itself that has allowed the state to be so beholden to the cap­i­tal­ist
class. Or, to be more precise, it is only when t­ here is a combination of consti-
tutional democracy and autonomous market economy—­that is, only in demo­
cratic capitalism—­t hat the cap­i­tal­ist class can acquire this degree of power.
For this outcome is pos­si­ble only through two conjoined processes—­namely,
constitutional democracy’s effective delimitation of the state followed by the
cap­i­tal­ist class’s successful revolt against an already vulnerable democracy.53
And, as the still-­ongoing ascendancy of neoliberalism has shown, this is a
degree of power that seems increasingly capable of neutralizing the very pur-
pose of democracy as the self-­protection of society.
It is a chilling thought that, if and when China is able to make big strides
in the direction of constitutional democracy, it may well find itself increas-
ingly confronting a power­ful and cohesive cap­i­tal­ist class poised to defeat the
purpose of democracy just as its Western counterpart has done. By the same
token, it ­w ill have contributed to an unpre­ce­dented expansion of neoliberal-
ism’s dominance and a corresponding, globally consequential setback in the
self-­protection of society against capitalism. Lest we rush to a conclusion in
­favor of the status quo in China, however, a dif­fer­ent chilling thought must
be introduced.
This further thought arises from a scenario—­some would say an amply real-
ized scenario, despite all the successes of the anticorruption campaign—in
which the Chinese state, freer though it is from an overwhelmingly power­ful
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 187

cap­i­tal­ist class, is letting loose on society a class of ­people who may be no less
predatory than the cap­i­tal­ist class in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca. And what is espe-
cially detrimental to democracy in this scenario is that this class of ­people
comes overwhelmingly from within the ranks of the CCP itself. Herein lies
the true meaning of official corruption in China in the reform era: not the
self-­enrichment perpetrated by so many cadres at vari­ous levels of the party
and government—­however illegal and rapacious—so much as the creation of
an entire crony cap­i­tal­ist class. The existence of this class is enough to turn
countless citizens against the state in ­favor of the market, the supposedly au-
tonomous market that is the more easily believed in ­because it is an untried
fiction in China. Small won­der that neoliberalism has had so ­little trou­ble con-
quering so much of China’s ideological space. More seriously, the fact that
Chinese-­style crony capitalism has grown from within the ranks of the CCP
itself has eroded and undermined the party’s legitimacy as nothing e­ lse could.
We have well reached the point where, if the party does not soon put a defini-
tive stop to crony capitalism, it ­will cease to be distinct from the crony cap­i­
tal­ist class and ­will be nothing but its creator and spokesperson. It is not at all
obvious that this state of affairs poses a lesser threat to the self-­protection of
society than the cap­i­tal­ist class does ­under demo­cratic capitalism. How dif­
fer­ent are the lawless crony cap­i­tal­ist predators aided and abetted by the CCP
in China from the ­legal or semilegal but not much less crony cap­i­tal­ist preda-
tors unleashed by neoliberalism in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca?54
Faced with ­t hese options, I believe that one can confidently prefer one to
the other only out of self-­interest or intellectual laziness or by entertaining
massive illusions about ­either one and about the differences between them.
A lot rides on this judgment. If it is largely correct, not forgetting the near
inevitability that a neoliberal order implanted in China w ­ ill be many times
worse than its original model in the West, then this is what follows: for ­t hose
who care about democracy in China and do so with the self-­protection of so-
ciety as part of their agenda, democracy must mean a p olitico-­economic
arrangement that effectively protects society both from the legally permis-
sible predators of neoliberal advanced capitalism and from the lawless pred-
ators of Chinese-­style crony capitalism. This is a tall order, of course, but any
demo­cratic f­ uture that falls well short of this twofold objective simply leaves
so much to be desired as to raise the question why a demo­cratic ­f uture is
worth trying to bring about in the first place.
188 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

The point I am making is not meant to contribute to an abstract norma-

tive argument for a par­tic­u­lar way of approaching democracy; for my pur-
poses such an argument is well supplied by Polanyi. Rather it is intended to
address, especially, a d istinctive pressure for democracy noticeable in a
country fast becoming cap­i­tal­ist in impor­tant re­spects while remaining a
one-­party state. On the one hand, this pressure can be most accurately ar-
ticulated as a call for the protection of society against capitalism as the prin-
cipal form of dominium in our time. On the other hand, the fact that China
is still a one-­party state serves as a constant reminder that society also needs
protection from imperium. Indeed, it is clear from the very phenomenon of
Chinese-­style crony capitalism that imperium and dominium can work to-
gether in a way that imperils society more than e­ ither alone is capable of
­doing. Meanwhile, Western democracies have shown themselves to be vul-
nerable to a d if­fer­ent kind of combination of imperium and dominium,
thanks to the unpre­ce­dented capture of the state by the cap­i­tal­ist class in the
age of neoliberalism.55 Thus, if we care about containing both imperium and
dominium and especially preventing their collusion, ­whether in China or in
the West, we must (in the case of China) not only contend with the impe-
rium of the party-­state but also guard against, and (in the case of the West)
pause to rethink, any constitutionalism that protects capitalism more than
it does society.

Tocqueville and Marx, or a Dual Perspective

on Democracy

If the reader has sensed a certain tension in my account of democracy, this

perception is entirely accurate, the tension itself reflecting a profound contra-
diction between democracy and capitalism. Raised to a h igher level of ab-
straction, this contradiction is one that exists between (civil) society and the
(po­liti­cal) state. In a cap­i­tal­ist democracy, the only kind of democracy yet
known in the modern world, civil society is marked, above all, by the cap­i­
tal­ist relations of production, while the po­liti­cal state features a demo­cratic
arrangement both partly made pos­si­ble by ­these relations and compromised
by them. Yet it would be inaccurate to see bourgeois civil society only in terms
of the in­equality that is at odds with the equality supposedly under­lying the
po­liti­cal state. For bourgeois civil society, unlike, say, Eu­ro­pean feudal so-
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 189

ciety in one way and the ­imagined communist society in another, is both
equal and unequal. It is Tocqueville’s ­great insight, though by no means his
alone, that such equality as characterizes bourgeois civil society, which he
terms equality of conditions, makes democracy in the po­liti­cal state not only
pos­si­ble but also, over time, necessary. If we think of equality of conditions in
civil society as societal democracy, as Tocqueville does, then we are led to see,
first, that societal democracy is more basic than po­liti­cal democracy and,
second, that democracy is indivisible in that the former, once it has arisen,
­will unleash a power­ful dynamic leading ­toward the latter.
Neither of ­these propositions—­the determinative role of civil society in
relation to the po­liti­cal state, in general and with re­spect to democracy in
par­tic­u­lar, and the unity or indivisibility of sociopo­liti­cal pro­gress—­would
have been alien to Marx, except for the fact that Tocqueville fails to see, or at
least to attach sufficient importance to, the other side of bourgeois civil
society—­namely, its intrinsically unequal or undemo­cratic character. It is
­here that Marx better captures the more complex and fraught relation be-
tween civil society and the po­liti­cal state. For Marx, po­liti­cal democracy
would be a contradiction in terms, in that the state itself, and ipso facto de-
mocracy as a feature of the po­liti­cal state, is rendered necessary precisely by
the undemo­cratic (or insufficiently demo­cratic) character of civil society, and
­because civil society determines the character of the po­liti­cal state more
than the other way around. That is why Marx refuses even to attach the
name “democracy” to the bourgeois state, calling it instead a “republic.”56
The point ­here is not terminological nicety but Marx’s claim that bourgeois
democracy is not true democracy, for its formal princi­ple is not its material
princi­ple,57 yet it is nevertheless a democracy of sorts—­t hat is, “a state may
be a ­free state without man himself being a ­free man”58—­t hanks to its formal
princi­ple. In other words, it falls well short of full, “­human emancipation”
while deserving nevertheless to be regarded as the outcome of a partial, “po­
liti­cal emancipation.”59 “Po­liti­cal emancipation certainly represents a g­ reat
pro­gress. It is not, indeed, the final form of h­ uman emancipation, but it is
the final form of ­human emancipation within the framework of the pre-
vailing social order.”60 Such is the bourgeois “republic” that Tocqueville un-
equivocally calls democracy. It would be hard to deny the essentials of
Marx’s claim even if we take into account the very considerable improvements
that bourgeois democracy has wrought since his time, such as universal
190 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

suffrage and the welfare state. Yet, at the same time, even Marx, rigorously
interpreted, would not negate the truth enunciated by Tocqueville, provided
it is seen as the partial truth that it is. B ­ ecause Tocqueville’s truth is no more
than partially true, it is only reasonable that we should add to it the correc-
tive, albeit differently partial, truth uncovered by Marx. More importantly,
as long as we are stuck in a cap­i­tal­ist world, as long as the transcendence of
capitalism is not on the horizon, ­t here is something to be said for both
valuing bourgeois democracy and recognizing its limitations—­t hat is, for
adopting both Tocqueville’s perspective and Marx’s, and therefore neither
entirely on its own.
Thus combining Tocqueville and Marx, we are able to see that bourgeois
civil society is both equal, in Tocqueville’s sense, and unequal, in Marx’s, nei-
ther canceling out the other—­precisely with the result we are witnessing
­today. For i­ sn’t it the case that societal democracy in Tocqueville’s sense must
lead sooner or ­later to po­liti­cal democracy, or ­else the po­liti­cal state ­w ill be
unable to ensure regime stability and perpetuation? Yet ­isn’t it also the case
that po­liti­cal democracy by itself cannot remotely live up to the full poten-
tial of democracy ­until or ­unless society can move beyond the cap­i­tal­ist and
other intrinsically unequal relations of production and thereby become demo­
cratic in Marx’s sense?61 Short of the materialization of this potential, cap­i­
tal­ist democracy is a c ompromise formation reflecting the equality (in
Tocqueville’s sense) and the in­equality (in Marx’s sense) that coexist in our
form of sociopo­liti­cal life. Within this formation, a state form is demo­cratic to
the degree that it allows the strug­gle for greater equality (in Marx’s sense as
well as in Tocqueville’s, for even the equality dear to Tocqueville is seldom
fully assured) to take place, and in the mea­sure of success that it permits such
strug­gle to achieve.62 And it is, at the same time, undemo­cratic in that both
the room for such strug­gle and the possibility of its success are ­limited by the
role of this state form—­cap­i­tal­ist democracy—in maintaining the dominance
of the cap­i­tal­ist class in society and hence in­equality in Marx’s sense.63
For analytical purposes, then, Tocqueville and Marx are each impor­tant
in his own way. Tocqueville helps us see the po­liti­cal implications of societal
democracy and the sheer necessity of po­liti­cal democracy for regime stability
and perpetuation ­under modern conditions. Marx, showing that po­liti­cal de-
mocracy, along with the very separation of po­liti­cal state and civil society, is
precisely symptomatic of the lack of full societal democracy, sheds comple-
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 191

mentary light on the inevitable contradictions and frustrations of po­liti­cal

democracy once it is achieved.
By taking note si­mul­ta­neously of Tocqueville’s and Marx’s insights, we
put ourselves in the best position to see the same fundamental challenge that
confronts China and the West (and all modern socie­ties, for that ­matter)
and, at the same time, the dif­fer­ent contradictions that characterize their
respective conditions. In China and the West alike, the fundamental chal-
lenge is that of advancing societal democracy, for in a modern setting nothing
is more determinative of the quality of po­liti­cal life than the degree of de-
mocracy pre­sent in civil society. If we are being honest, we have to say that
even in terms of societal democracy alone, regardless of po­liti­cal democracy,
the Western countries are t­ oday, by and large, more advanced than China.
This may not be as radical a difference as appears at first sight, however, in
that it is quite pos­si­ble that the degree of democracy pre­sent in a society is,
in our cap­i­tal­ist world order, in turn largely a function of that society’s place
in the global value chain. The higher a society is situated in the economic
value chain, it seems, the more elevated its standing in the moral value
chain, as it ­were, the latter including such ­things as ­human rights and po­
liti­cal democracy. If this is true, then the moral appraisal of societal democ-
racy becomes a far more complicated m ­ atter than we normally take it for,
and, as far as the coexistence of equality and in­equality is concerned, all
modern socie­ties to date are equally in the systemic grip of the contradic-
tions of capitalism.
Be that as it may, China ­today, on top of sharing this fundamental Marxian
challenge with the Western and other democracies, ­faces the additional
prob­lem best identified by Tocqueville—­namely, that of moving from soci-
etal democracy, ­limited as it is, to a corresponding degree of po­liti­cal democ-
racy. ­Until China accomplishes this move, it w ­ ill be at the mercy of a contra-
diction from which all po­liti­cal democracies, Western and other­wise, are ­free.
This may not be a philosophically very exciting contradiction, but it is one
that bears on nothing less than regime stability and perpetuation u ­ nder
modern conditions, hence posing an enormously consequential question of
po­liti­cal prudence. True, the po­liti­cal democracies in the world ­today are all
cap­i­tal­ist democracies, and, as such, they necessarily fall well short of societal
democracy in Marx’s sense and are therefore full of the unresolvable contra-
dictions and unappeasable disappointments symptomatic of a c ompromise
192 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

formation. But to take proper note of this fact is not to dismiss another fact
of a d if­fer­ent, far from insignificant order. For it is no mean achievement
that the advanced po­liti­cal democracies in the world ­today have managed to
accomplish the mundane but all-­important passage from societal democracy
to po­liti­cal democracy. They have thereby removed a contradiction whose
presence unfailingly prevents the establishment, u ­ nder modern conditions,
of a relatively stable po­liti­cal order based on relatively credible ideological le-
gitimacy. This is something that China has yet to accomplish, and it would
be an extraordinary non sequitur to dismiss this Tocquevillian challenge for
China by pointing to the failure of actually existing po­liti­cal democracies to
rise to the other, Marxian challenge.
Nor does such failure amount to a general argument against democracy.
For the failure, rather than of democracy, is precisely perpetrated against de-
mocracy. In strictly Marxian terms, it is a m ­ atter of so-­called democracy
being confined to the po­liti­cal state and kept largely out of civil society,
thereby giving rise to the very dualism of po­liti­cal state (idealism) and civil
society (materialism). Less strictly speaking, it might be treated as a ­matter
of societal democracy being insufficiently strong to render po­liti­cal democ-
racy more truly representative. In ­either case, the cause of the prob­lem is not
democracy but rather its confinement or evisceration by relations of domi-
nation in bourgeois civil society. Even po­liti­cal democracy as critiqued by
Marx is not the cause of the prob­lem but merely its symptom. One can see,
in this light, what an utterly confused and self-­defeating move it is for ­t hose
in the West who other­w ise think of themselves as supporters of democracy
to blame it for their countries’ prob­lems and to look to so-­called meritocratic
systems for a better po­liti­cal alternative. One can see, too, why the Chinese
Left, if it is serious, should have no business echoing and even encouraging
this development.
It is even more impor­tant to see, especially in the case of China, that
democracy pre­sents two distinct sets of prob­lems, the Marxian and the
Tocquevillian. Th ­ ere is ­little doubt that the latter is the more urgently perti-
nent for China ­today. This urgency is dictated by a basic feature of present-­day
Chinese real­ity—­namely, that societal democracy in Tocqueville’s sense, al-
ready undeniably pre­sent and daily advancing, has yet to lead to po­liti­cal
democracy, and ­u ntil it does, regime stability and perpetuation ­w ill re-
main the CCP’s paramount challenge. Only when this long-­delayed move
Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society 193

is attempted or at least seriously contemplated can—­a nd must—­t he even

more challenging set of prob­lems raised by Marx be brought properly
and with full relevance into the foreground. Despite its own official self-­
understanding, China is largely at a s tage whose po­liti­cal predicament is
especially well captured by Tocqueville. Nevertheless it should take no more
than a reasonably serious effort at demo­cratic extrication from this predica-
ment for China, already substantially characterized by the cap­i­tal­ist mode of
production, to be ripe for the Marxian critique of bourgeois democracy—­
indeed also for the less uncompromising and more realistic social demo­
cratic warnings against the corrosive powers of capitalism. ­There is reason,
then, to place Tocqueville in the foreground for now, with Marx, and social
democracy, kept ready as a necessary dialectical counterforce whose insights
and admonitions of a dif­fer­ent order we would do well to bear in mind even
as we contemplate the Tocquevillian passage from a l­ imited societal democ-
racy to some form of po­liti­cal democracy. ­Here lies the vital relevance to
China’s demo­cratic reform of a thinker such as Polanyi who combines the
intellectual perspicacity of a Marx with the sober realism of social democ-
racy at its best.
It is a ­great illusion held by segments of the Left in China, new and old,
that China t­ oday remains a largely socialist country despite its profoundly
transformative economic reform and, as such, is axiomatically superior to lib-
eral demo­cratic capitalism—­based on the kind of logic Georg Lukács once
stubbornly held with regard to the Soviet Union u ­ nder Stalin. But this illu-
sion is hard to sustain in the face of undeniable consequences of the reform—­
among ­t hese, a level of economic in­equality worthy of the most unflattering
picture of capitalism, despite China’s justifiably lauded success in its cam-
paign against grinding poverty; the unmistakably bourgeois aspirations, as
well as commodity fetishism, now informing the CCP and ordinary p ­ eople
alike; the introduction of cap­i­tal­ist relations of production and private prop-
erty rights, along with the successful reshaping of the economy on the basis
largely of cap­i­tal­ist market princi­ples and incentives; and the very fact of
China’s spectacular rise within a global cap­i­tal­ist order aided and abetted by
the greatest cap­i­tal­ist powers. The Left is not alone, however, in misreading
the exact nature and full magnitude of China’s demo­cratic challenge. For
more than a few Chinese liberals subscribe to the serious misjudgment that
democracy as actually practiced in the West and especially in Amer­i­ca—­
194 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

that is, liberal demo­cratic capitalism—­has largely delivered on the promise

of democracy and thereby attained a s tatus and success close to moral fi-
nality. This is part of the “end of history” thesis of which all too many well-­
meaning Chinese citizens remain to be fully disabused—no less than some of
their opponents need to part with the poorly examined belief in actually
existing socialism’s superiority to demo­cratic capitalism.
If we are f­ ree from the illusion and the misjudgment just noted, we should
have ­little hesitation in treating the question of democracy for China at the
pre­sent stage as, first and foremost, a prudential ­matter of regime stability
and perpetuation. Thus the only compelling pre­sen­ta­tion ­today of democ-
racy’s claim to the urgent attention of the Chinese leadership and citizenry
alike, given actually existing democracy’s many serious flaws and given
China’s rising fortunes u ­ nder an alternative po­liti­cal system, is by asking,
insistently and rigorously, ­whether prudent demo­cratic reform or resolute
continuation of the status quo is more conducive to the country’s social
and po­liti­cal stability, all ­things considered. For this reason, the kind of case
I am making for democracy in China has perforce to be more Tocquevillian
than Marxian, or, what amounts to largely the same ­t hing, more Machiavel-
lian or Hobbesian than Aristotelian. If my discussion of Marx, Polanyi, and
other thinkers of the Left seems in places a departure from this prudential
conception of the argument, it is worth emphasizing that the seeming de-
parture is actually meant to strengthen the prudential argument. For, without
developing a sufficiently strong antidote in po­liti­cal institutions and po­liti­cal
culture, particularly in society itself, against the evisceration of democracy
by capitalism—­one of the chief lessons being daily taught by actually ex-
isting democracies—­a superficial, formal completion of the Tocquevillian
move from societal to po­liti­cal democracy ­w ill not well serve the purpose
even of regime stability and perpetuation.
CHAPTER FIVE

Contradictions and Arrested Transitions

THE TWO OUTSTANDING FEATURES of China that have emerged so far are that it
is not a democracy in one sense but very much one in another and that it is
cap­i­tal­ist and yet not quite cap­i­tal­ist. While it would be simplistic to think
of such a c ontradictory state of affairs as suggesting a t ransitional stage
leading to a k nown destination, ­t here is clearly something fundamentally
unsettled about China’s pre­sent condition. ­After four de­cades of unceasing
reform, producing as many unintended as intended consequences, and driven
as much by unintended consequences as by deliberate initiatives, China is
still very much a work in pro­gress in key aspects of its politics, economy, and
much e­ lse. This is not ­because China is yet to become like, say, the United
States as a cap­i­tal­ist economy or a demo­cratic polity, as it must or is destined
to be, but rather b ­ ecause its own reform has unleashed dynamics that have
not run their full course and contradictions that have not worked themselves
through. ­These are motions and fault lines in China’s own moral and po­
liti­cal condition.
It is essential to understand t­ hese ­factors if we are to form ideas about
China’s demo­cratic challenge that do justice to the complexity of the real­ity
on the ground. I have already argued that it ­w ill soon be necessary for China
to replace its defunct, revolutionary legitimacy with a new, demo­cratic one.
But necessity is one t­ hing and the difficulty involved quite another. In the case
of China ­today, the necessity and the difficulty are bound together: China’s
path to democracy w ­ ill be as difficult as it is necessary, best seen especially
in the contradictions to which I have referred. ­These contradictions, in turn,
196 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

can be usefully captured and assessed as they unfold at the level of moral and
po­liti­cal culture.
In this chapter I w ant to give a g limpse of China’s moral and po­liti­cal
culture on the move—­t hose ele­ments of it that have been part of China’s re-
cent evolution as an incompletely demo­cratic country and partially cap­i­
tal­ist society. This is all the more necessary in that even Chinese citizens
themselves and foreign observers who know the country well often fail to
fully appreciate how far, since the start of the reform, China’s moral and po­
liti­cal culture has evolved, propelled by changes in its social and economic
conditions. And it is precisely b ­ ecause China has gone this far that it has
­great difficulty ­going even further and yet does not have the live option of
standing still. Given the power­f ul dynamic set in motion by its own reform,
China has no choice but to go much further.
But where? Surely not just ­toward more democracy in some generic sense,
for the substance, temper, and internal balance of a democracy are s­ haped to
a significant degree by culture, including especially moral and po­liti­cal cul-
ture. Part of the answer, then, must lie in ­t hose ele­ments of China’s moral
and po­liti­cal tradition that still speak to the unique real­ity and needs of the
Chinese condition. Thus I want to spare some attention, ­toward the end, for
two such ele­ments as they intervene in the contradictions within China’s cur-
rent moral and po­liti­cal culture and make their influence felt on the further
evolution of what is now only a partially demo­cratic and partially cap­i­tal­ist
China.
Since the very idea of a partially demo­cratic and partially cap­i­tal­ist country
implies as its point of reference a more fully demo­cratic and cap­i­tal­ist one,
­t here is perhaps no better way to pre­sent my account of China than through
comparison, where appropriate, with the United States. And it so happens
that ­there is a common denominator for such a comparison. If I ­were to single
out one t­ hing as the most profound outcome—­and dynamic—of China’s re-
form in the past few de­cades, I would without hesitation point to the rise of
the so-­called liberties of the moderns. It is for the first time u­ nder Chinese
communist rule that a vast domain of private life has emerged, making avail-
able an unpre­ce­dented range of liberties for the pursuit of wealth, plea­sure,
consumption, lifestyle, and so on. Since my focus is on China, I ­w ill bring in
the United States, or sometimes the West more generally, for comparison only
where it helps throw a characteristic of China or a prob­lem of democracy into
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 197

sharper relief as an object of understanding or appraisal. My aim is to use

comparison to bring out pertinent questions or initiate much-­needed reflec-
tion, not to suggest or imply that China must follow the United States or the
West in general, u ­ nless that is where it o ­ ught to be heading given its own,
internal dynamic and the state of its current contradictions.
­W hether it is a good ­t hing to head ­t here is another question. Good or
bad, it is the fate of modern socie­ties, ­under the pressure of equality of condi-
tions, to have to move in the direction of po­liti­cal democracy, or ­else they ­will
sooner or ­later suffer an inescapable, dangerously debilitating and destabi-
lizing legitimacy deficit. Likewise, it is the fate of modern individuals,
­because of a psychic economy and moral psy­chol­ogy fostered by equality of
conditions, to have to enjoy freedom in order to be moral agents, or ­else they
­w ill end up with an equally incapacitating agency or subjectivity deficit.
The fate of modern socie­ties and that of modern individuals come together
in that only po­liti­cal democracy can give individual liberty the range and
protection that moral subjectivity requires.
But neither democracy nor liberty, fated as we are to embrace them, is an
entirely unambiguous good, a good that especially in practice is without ques-
tionable consequences. Some of ­t hese consequences are questionable pre-
cisely b ­ ecause they undermine the most impor­tant reasons for valuing what
democracy and liberty supposedly represent in the first place. And yet ­t here
seems no plausible and better alternative to democracy, not only in the po­
liti­cal sphere but, as I ­w ill attempt to show, even for the purpose of moral life
­under modern conditions. We have no choice but to confront complexities
such as t­ hese if we want to take democracy with the seriousness it deserves
and with a (relative) freedom from illusions that alone can make it work. Ac-
cordingly, my reflections w ­ ill take me further afield than the more mundane
aspects of moral and po­liti­cal culture and ­w ill be more speculative, and per-
haps more theoretically ambitious, than in any other part of the book. An
impor­tant advantage of such reflections is that they w ­ ill allow me to piece
together a fuller and more nuanced picture of democracy than elsewhere in
the book—so as to affirm democracy with the necessary sobriety and with
an openness to new, dif­fer­ent ways of making it work for China.
For Chinese democracy—­that is, any but the most superficial and predict-
ably counterproductive attempt at exogenous transplantation—­will have to
grow out of China’s own, internal dynamic and its own, internal contradictions.
198 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

While some of t­ hese contradictions can and simply must be overcome, such
as the contradiction between the existence of essential de facto freedoms and
their lack of valorization and l­egal protection, other contradictions may well
be of a dif­fer­ent, deeper kind. I believe we are dealing with contradictions of
the latter category when we consider China’s twin needs for demo­cratic le-
gitimacy and a manner of po­liti­cal integration of sufficient centripetal force
to hold the vast and complex country together. The same is true when we ask
how we can reconcile the importance of liberty in a modern society, which
China already is, with the still-­powerful pull in ­today’s China of the so-­
called priority of the good (a term to be explained in due course). Such con-
tradictions are dif­fer­ent and deeper ­because we cannot overcome them. We
can only work through them in one way or another, and having to do so is
the unique fate of being Chinese in the modern world.

A Most Impor­t ant Common Denominator with

the United States

Four de­cades ago, before the era of reform had started, one could cer-
tainly undertake to compare the moral and po­liti­cal cultures of China and
the United States and gain much illumination, as some scholars must have
done. I daresay, however, that what­ever would have served as a suitable
common denominator for getting the comparison off the ground back then
would surely have given the comparison the predominant character of a
contrast, the bringing to light of big and profound differences.
Back then, an American visiting China would have found the experience
out of the ordinary, w ­ hether in a positive or negative sense. None of the
modern liberties r­ eally existed in China in t­ hose days and, indeed, few of the
pleasures and opportunities of modern life w ­ ere available that would have
made such liberties necessary and their absence a s ource of frustration.
Americans in China would have felt like the proverbial fish out of ­water,
gasping for air and desperate to get back to where they belonged, ­unless they
­were of that rare breed of foreigners who identified so much with the Chi-
nese revolution as to be able to make light of every­t hing ­else. Similarly, a
mainland Chinese who set foot in the United States for the first time would
have suffered a veritable culture shock—­a term that was indeed much used
back then to describe just such an experience. A Chinese in Amer­i­ca in t­ hose
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 199

days would no less have been a fish out of w ­ ater, or perhaps a fish finding it-
self in ­waters initially too choppy for comfort, surrounded (to break off the
meta­phor) by a dazzling array of consumer goods and a tempting yet discon-
certing absence of inhibitions about pleasures and enterprises.
­Today, many an American or other Westerner would feel quite at home
in China, as legions in fact do, in metropolises such as Beijing or Shanghai.
True, they complain about air pollution, control of the internet, and, espe-
cially if they are in business, a lack of the rule of law (although a so-­called
authoritarian state takes in the slack and provides plenty of stability and
predictability for commerce and investment). But such complaints are clearly
meant to be directed at a twenty-­first ­century society in which the liberties,
con­ve­niences, and opportunities of the moderns have come to be taken for
granted. A lingering, nominal communism has not stood in the way of stock
markets and golf courses and billionaires. Meanwhile the better off among
the mainland Chinese have left their erstwhile culture shock entirely ­behind,
many of them seeking wealth and happiness and security across the Pacific
with ­little sense of their foreignness in a land that ­until recently had served
as the quin­tes­sen­tial bourgeois other. They even have come to share the griev-
ances against China typically aired by Americans and Eu­ro­pe­ans, and many
of them have settled in Amer­i­ca as their new home, or second home, precisely
for this reason, among ­others. Th ­ ose who have thought better of emigration
find the opportunities for ­career advancement, comfortable private life, or,
in the case of the more ambitious, aggrandizement available in Beijing or
Shanghai or Shenzhen too attractive to give up. One hears some of them
speak, not without condescension, of American cities other than New York,
San Francisco, and Los Angeles as “second-­tier cities” (a term for ranking the
clout and glamour of Chinese cities) or complain that too much of the US
infrastructure is decrepit. Some even have among their negative perceptions
of a city like Los Angeles the fact that t­ here are simply too many Chinese wan-
dering around as tourists or living t­ here already—­presumably mostly main-
land Chinese, not a few of whom are thought to be corrupt former officials
or their f­ amily members.
How times have changed, how China has changed, in barely four de­cades!
As if the changes themselves w ­ ere not breathtaking enough, they even find
official expression in the recently in­ven­ted idea of the Chinese Dream. It is
a distinctively modern dream, supposedly cherished by all moderns ­today,
200 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

of the kind of prosperous, comfortable, secure, and peaceful life known only
to the moderns and uniquely prized by them, and, by extension and as a nec-
essary means, of a motherland rich and strong enough to make all this pos­
si­ble. Thus, even in its nation-­centered version, the Chinese Dream bespeaks
a massive democ­ratization and bourgeois westernization compared with the
erstwhile vanguard-­imposed and class-­based proj­ect of communism.
Thus it is that ­today we have between China and the United States a
common denominator for the purpose of comparison that did not exist at
all in, say, 1977. This common denominator—­liberties of the moderns—­now
looms large, and it promises to shed much light on China’s moral and po­
liti­cal culture if we examine China’s way of organ­izing modern liberties in
comparison with the American way. T ­ oday, liberties of the moderns rank es-
pecially high among the ­t hings China has in common with the United
States, and the two countries may be said to be more alike than they are
dif­fer­ent. They are both quintessentially modern socie­ties, given the pre-
eminence of modern liberties in them. Their differences, ­great as they are,
lie only in the way such liberties are or­ga­nized.

China Abounds in De Facto Freedoms without

Affirming Freedom as a Value

Some of you must be taking exception to my characterization of China in

terms of liberties of the moderns and hence also to my adoption of such lib-
erties as the common denominator for comparing the moral and po­liti­cal
cultures of China and the United States. Modern liberties in their typical or
in any reasonably strict sense,1 you may say, do not yet exist in China despite
its admittedly profound transformation in recent de­cades; some of you may
even suggest that modern liberties, even as construed without the foregoing
qualification, are nowhere to be found in China. I would say that you are right
in the first case but seriously mistaken in the second. In fact, I can think of
no better way of starting my comparative exercise than by showing why this
is so. To this end, I want to identify, at the level of ideal types, three reasons
for, and three corresponding narratives of, freedom.
The first is of a kind that reflects the importance that a certain type of
freedom has for members of modern socie­ties given the very nature of modern
life. Benjamin Constant famously distinguishes between the liberty of the an-
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 201

cients and that of the moderns. The liberty of the ancients is so called
­because it is constitutive of a domain of life—­the public or political—­that was
especially impor­tant for the privileged equals, the citizens, among ancient
Athenians. The liberty of the moderns, in contrast, derives its name from its
usefulness in a domain of life—­t he private—­t hat is especially useful for par-
ticipants in modern bourgeois or petty-­bourgeois life. As is well known, Con-
stant gives pride of place to the private domain and hence to the kind of
liberty required in it, b ­ ecause it is t­ here that members of modern socie­ties
happen to find the most extensive scope for pleas­ur­able and self-­constituting
activities, thanks to the fact that “the pro­gress of civilization, the commer-
cial tendency of the age, the communication amongst ­peoples, have infinitely
multiplied and varied the means of personal happiness.”2
I have already described the appearance of liberties of the moderns as the
single most profound outcome of China’s economic and social reform. Some
clarifications and qualifications are now in order. ­There is no denying that
modern liberties abound in China ­today. If one spends some time in Shanghai,
for example, one ­w ill soon discover that few individuals whose sole passion
is the enjoyment of success and happiness in the private realm, including for-
eigners accustomed to all the nice ­t hings that advanced capitalism has to
offer, have reason to feel deprived of liberties. It is arguable that t­ hese liber-
ties fall short of what Constant calls liberties of the moderns. “The aim of
the moderns is the enjoyment of security in private pleasures,” writes Con-
stant, “and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions to t­ hese
pleasures.”3 Constant also insists, in a well-­k nown statement, that “po­liti­cal
liberty is [individual liberty’s] guarantee, consequently po­liti­cal liberty is in-
dispensable.”4 It is true, in this light, that such individual liberties as one can
find in China ­today are without guarantees in the form of ­either the rule of
law or po­liti­cal liberty and are therefore—­especially in the case of the free-
doms of speech and publication that ­matter so much to intellectuals and
social activists—­subject to constant reversal and even repression, as we have
seen in the past few years. Yet it is hardly less obvious that they are of suffi-
ciently secure availability to most ­people for most purposes as the typical
modern individual in China ­today goes about what Constant calls his or her
speculations, enterprises, and pleasures.
It is another mea­sure of how much China and the United States have in
common in terms of modern liberties that Jean-­Jacques Rousseau’s distinction
202 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

between the bourgeois and the citizen and his strictures against modern so-
ciety based on this distinction are almost equally applicable to both—­
except that the Chinese are less citizens than Americans are (much as the
French w ­ ere back in the eigh­teenth ­century, compared with the En­glish) and,
in this sense, even more purely bourgeois.
The upshot is that in China ­today, modern individual liberties are avail-
able, for the most part, only in a de facto sense, and yet they largely suffice
for the mundane uses to which such liberties are typically put. I characterize
­t hese liberties as only de facto in the sense that they are not articulated and
valorized as liberties and are not legally guaranteed and culturally supported
through such articulation and valorization. Thus, while they serve the prac-
tical purposes of everyday life, they are not raised to the level of a moral value,
a socially affirmed and individually embraced value. Despite their lack of val-
orization, however, t­ hese liberties do exist, and they seem to serve the pur-
poses of most members of Chinese society well enough. In this way, China
­today largely lives up to a very plausible formula of modern liberty—­namely,
that of ­people “living as they please, within the bounds of the law and their
own incomes.”5 Thus, if the typical uses of modern individual liberties are
all we care about, then we have to say that in China t­ oday the de facto free-
doms do not strictly require moralization and institutionalization into posi-
tively affirmed and legally and po­liti­cally protected liberties.
It is obvious, however, that de facto liberties are far from sufficient for
some purposes and therefore are insufficient for t­ hose p ­ eople who find such
purposes impor­tant. Among such purposes are t­ hose of religious freedom,
for example, and undeniably ­t here is a sizable portion of the Chinese popu-
lace for whom the existing de facto liberties do not provide nearly enough
room for practicing their religion, as a m ­ atter of private life, openly and
without fear.6 Such p ­ eople and such purposes, the religious being only one
example, require for their satisfaction a second, dif­fer­ent kind of freedom
and a d if­fer­ent narrative of the rationale for freedom. They require the
higher liberty, if you w ­ ill, to conduct the spiritual and moral part of their
lives in a way that nonviolently departs from that of ­others and from the
mainstream. The liberty in question, often known as liberty of conscience
and freedom of thought, is at bottom the liberty to be, and this, in turn,
means the second-­order liberty, as it ­were, to be ­free—­reflectively and con-
sciously ­free. What we find ­here are a distinct need for freedom and a dis-
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 203

tinct kind of freedom often traced to the existential challenge posed by the
religious wars of sixteenth-­century Eu­rope and to the gradually evolved lib-
eral solution to challenges of this broad category, culminating in what John
Rawls calls reasonable pluralism. What is most impor­tant in providing a
narrative for this kind of freedom is that, given the very nature of this need
for freedom, de facto liberties simply ­w ill not suffice, even if they exist to an
extent that would other­w ise cover the need. For t­ hose who have this need
and who prize freedom out of this need, the freedom cannot but pre­sent
itself as consciously affirmed—as mattering, for this reason, on the second-­
order (reflective) level as much as on the first-­order (de facto) level. For them,
it is as if freedom is always already valorized, always already a value, and
this value only comes to be more firmly held and more intensely striven for
in the face of what is perceived as unreasonable interference or repression.
It may appear, however, that this need and this freedom, accompanied as
they are by an act of valorization and by the resulting concept of freedom as
a value, are pre­sent—or at least happen to be pre­sent—in China only for a
minority of the citizenry. In a way this is indeed the case, as can be seen in
the fact that prac­ti­tion­ers of religions are among the most insistent in their
pursuit of freedoms and among the most explicit in g­ oing about their pur-
suit u­ nder the very description of freedom. Yet what they are pressing for is
not so dif­fer­ent from the freedom that is required to be moral agents or moral
subjects. It is true that their quest for freedom takes a more conscious and
more combative form, but this is only ­because theirs is a kind of subjectivity
that happens to have more obstacles placed in its path in China t­ oday than is
usually the case. The desire to be moral subjects, to have a significant mea­
sure of agency in one’s moral life, however, is a generic desire and, as such, is
no less keenly felt by the seemingly more ­silent majority who happen not to
encounter so seriously or so frequently the prob­lems that afflict the more
religiously inclined.
This brings to the fore, then, a third reason for freedom, as distinct from
the religious one per se, and that is the need for freedom as a condition of
moral subjectivity. This is the kind of freedom I discuss in my e­ arlier book,
Moral China in the Age of Reform. The relatively secure presence of this
freedom is one of the g­ reat strengths of American moral culture, despite all
the criticisms that can fairly be made of its uses and of the unequal relations
of power to which it is often subject. If I w ­ ere to associate this notion of
204 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

freedom with an influential figure in modern thought, it would be Immanuel

Kant. In his short essay “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlighten-
ment?,’ ” Kant recommends a certain intellectual and moral maturity in the
name of enlightenment and identifies a certain freedom as a condition of this
maturity. This is a distinctively nonpo­liti­cal liberty and is meant to be exer-
cised in the public as distinct from the private use of reason. To make intel-
lectual and moral maturity pos­si­ble is the be-­a ll and end-­a ll of this freedom.
As is well known, freedom is, for Kant, a regulative idea; the same I take to
apply to maturity as Kant speaks of it. In this regard, I both draw on Kant
and depart from him. By moral subject, I mean someone who is willing and
able to act with maturity, to take responsibility for himself or herself as an
individual and as a member of society—­doing so, I might add, in such ­things
as securing a living, finding happiness and meaning in life, and cooperating
with ­others. In fact, this is the kind of responsibility ­every member of a
modern society has no choice but to carry insofar as he or she is successfully
socialized as what is called an individual. Thus, while Kant’s notion of
freedom, and by the same token his notion of maturity, may be metaphys-
ical, my notions of freedom and subjectivity are sociohistorical, intended as
they are only for members of a distinctively modern society.
In my account, intellectual subjectivity is the minimal ability and will-
ingness needed in one’s relation to the objective or factual dimension of the
world, and moral subjectivity is the minimal ability and willingness needed
in one’s relation to other subjects qua subjects—in both cases, but especially
the latter, with the minimum defined by the requirements of h ­ uman life in
a modern setting. This minimum, varyingly met in empirical cases, is a pre-
supposition of all that is due to an equal citizen and l­egal subject in the modern
sense. Subjectivity, as I use this notion, does not require more than this
minimum and therefore the way ­people make choices and take responsibility,
­either as individuals or as citizens acting together, need not show perspicacity,
wisdom, thoughtfulness, or any other such quality. Subjectivity, in my sense,
while a condition of such positive qualities, does not requires or guarantee
any of them.
If to this understanding of subjectivity we add the post-­Kantian (say,
Louis Althusser’s) insight that a moral subject is always a subject in the double
sense of subjection (“subjected to”) and subjectivity (“subject of”), then
moral subjectivity is anything but ­simple, and a moral subject is seldom as
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 205

good or wise, indeed never as much an agent in the first place, as we may hope
it is. Freedom likewise. Yet, contradiction ridden as it is, moral subjectivity
is something one cannot do without, and, given the nature of modern life,
this subjectivity, in turn, cannot do without freedom, conditioned and com-
promised as the latter is. Freedom is not a bed of roses but rather a field of
po­liti­cal contestation and ideological engineering. Still, ­there is no bypassing
freedom as a condition of moral subjectivity in the modern world.

How the Absence of Freedom as a Value Has

Led to a Moral Crisis

When we try to understand China’s moral culture t­ oday, the first t­ hing
worth noting is the absence of freedom as a (moral) value amid plentiful de
facto freedoms. This lack, however, does not warrant the view, still widespread,
of China as an unfree society. If it ­were unfree, how would one describe and
understand the hugely enlarged space for action—­for what Constant calls the
modern individual’s speculations, enterprises, and pleasures—­compared
with Mao Zedong’s time or even with the ­earlier years of reform? Nor would
it be accurate to say that what I am calling de facto freedoms boil down to
economic freedom, although it is true that, among all the de facto freedoms
now vis­i­ble everywhere in China, economic freedom comes closest to en-
joying the moral and po­liti­cal status of a value. For t­ hese de facto freedoms
cover all areas of life other than po­liti­cal dissent and participation. Thus it is
not true that freedoms do not exist in China, or that they are confined to eco-
nomic activity.
The prob­lem instead is that despite their range and abundance, de facto
liberties do not add up to a publicly recognized value and cannot draw moral
significance and po­liti­cal and ­legal protection from the presence of such a
value. This is a fact of the utmost consequence precisely b ­ ecause China is al-
ready, in many areas of everyday life, a f­ ree society in a de facto yet still very
impor­tant sense. In a radical departure from the first three de­cades of com-
munist rule, the better part of them characterized by the collectivization or
nationalization of virtually all the means of production, the party-­state of
­today no longer sees it as its prerogative and responsibility to provide e­ very
citizen with a livelihood and a worldview through what used to be the nearly
total po­liti­cal control and supervision of e­ very aspect of life. Although the
206 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

state still looms large in their lives, sometimes oppressively so, t­ here can be
no doubt that ­today’s Chinese find themselves having to exercise choice and
discretion as they have never done before ­under communist rule. In ­t hings
large and small, they have to fend for themselves, without anything remotely
resembling the state’s past guidance or help, in an ever-­expanding private
sphere. This new necessity—­w ith new, de facto freedoms as the other side of
the same coin—­applies to the economic aspect of a Chinese person’s life much
as it does that of his or her counterpart in the United States. At the same time,
the new combination of necessity and de facto freedom extends to every­thing
that belongs to one’s moral and spiritual life (if, or especially if, one is not a
member of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]). This has an importance
that is hard to exaggerate, for it introduces a prob­lem, a contradiction, at the
heart of moral life in China.
Everywhere one looks in China, one sees that moral life has been left un-
touched in any positive way by all the official propaganda: individuals receive
­little plausible, credible, internalizable, and hence effective moral guidance
from the state. Despite this universally known fact, members of Chinese so-
ciety are unable to turn to other sources of moral guidance, for t­ hese are
simply not allowed to exist and compete with the CCP. But above all, they
are not permitted to fend for themselves as far as their moral life is concerned,
for a very ­simple reason: they are not permitted to think of themselves as ­free
moral agents, ­because freedom itself is not allowed to serve as a moral value
in society—­a moral resource that helps ­people give existential meaning to
their de facto freedoms and impart moral-­volitional unity to their actions.
They may have their de facto freedoms intact, since the state has kept a low
profile in this regard and, for all intents and purposes, stayed out of their
moral lives. Moreover, they are not prevented from choosing dif­fer­ent ways
of (private) life for themselves, provided they do so strictly as individuals. Yet
something crucial is missing—­freedom as a moral value, which alone can give
public expression to their a­ ctual self-­reliance, place it u
­ nder a properly moral
light, and thereby enable the merely de facto ­free individuals to come into
their own as moral subjects. Short of this step forward in China’s moral cul-
ture, the new conditions of life and the new de facto freedoms w ­ ill continue
to call for a new moral subject that cannot come into being. The merely de
facto f­ ree individuals ­w ill remain as they are, with plenty of scope for action
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 207

and yet no claim to their moral lives and moral selves amid all their de facto
freedoms. The result is a prolonged moral crisis—­a crisis of moral subjectivity
caused by the lack of freedom as a value amid the rise of de facto freedoms—­
that has shadowed China’s economic and social reform.

The Communist Moral Culture Dead and

beyond Resuscitation

The crisis of moral subjectivity is symptomatic, therefore, of a fatal defi-

ciency within China’s existing moral culture. It has grown out of that very de-
ficiency and represents a challenge to which China’s existing moral culture is
totally unequipped to respond. For the plain fact is that this moral culture
still pretends to be an essentially communist one—­a continuation, if a some-
what embarrassed one, of its Maoist pre­de­ces­sor. It does so, has to do so, for
exactly the same reasons that the CCP retains its name and public self-­
understanding despite the profound change in its nature. But t­ hese reasons,
though themselves an impor­tant part of present-­day Chinese real­ity, cannot
make that real­ity other than it is and therefore cannot prevent the collapse of
all three pillars of the old communist morality—­communism, asceticism,
and altruism. Communism, the teleological underpinning of all t­ hings
moral in the Mao era, is no longer a plausible, still less an actually pursued,
goal of the CCP or the populace. Asceticism, a ­matter of necessity in Mao’s
time and the sociopsychological basis of self-­denying morality, has been
swept aside by rising prosperity and a new, proto-­capitalist economy that re-
lies on hedonism and consumerism. And altruism, in the sense of readiness
to make sacrifices not only for individual o ­ thers but also and especially for
the collective and the country, has lost its object and rationale in a radically
transformed society where it no longer makes sense to give up one’s own so-­
called selfish interests in order to “follow the party” and “serve the ­people.”
For all intents and purposes, the brave new China we see ­today is a bona fide
cap­i­tal­ist society in the most vital goals and values that make up its dynamic,
economic and other­wise (except for the CCP’s imperative to keep itself in
power), and inform the everyday aspirations and pursuits of ordinary ­people.
For such a society, the old communist morality is almost entirely obsolete and
useless, and this means, above all, that the old communist moral subject—­
208 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

with its belief in communism, its ascetic libidinal organ­ization, and its daily
practice of altruism—is also obsolete and useless. A cap­i­tal­ist society has no
need and no place for a communist moral subject.
What is needed instead—­objectively rather than as a ­matter of optional
preference—is a b ourgeois moral subject. This is indeed all but openly
acknowledged in the CCP’s own understanding of the goals and aspira-
tions that are high on China’s agenda, both official and popu­lar. What is the
much-­touted Chinese Dream, for example, but a v ariation on the proto-
typically bourgeois American Dream, with a c ollectivist or nationalist
dimension thrown in for good mea­sure? In fact, as already noted, Xi Jinping
implied almost as much in his conversation with Barack Obama at the
former Annenberg Estate in California. And who is the agent and benefi-
ciary of the moderately prosperous society (xiaokang shehui) China is at
pre­sent striving to establish but a bourgeois subject or, somewhat less jar-
ringly to the lingering communist sensibility, a m iddle-­class subject? If
such visions as the Chinese Dream and a m oderately prosperous society
appear bland and nondescript, this impression is made pos­si­ble by, and
therefore is symptomatic of, a transformation in values that is anything but
bland and nondescript. Under­lying the substantive and rhetorical neu-
trality of the Chinese Dream and a moderately prosperous society is the
disappearance of class and class strug­g le from the theory and discourse of
the CCP. Gone is the entire category of class enemies against whom the pro-
letariat used to be defined, and gone with it, therefore, is the working class
as a class for itself. Gone also are all values and aspirations defined in class
terms, as ­either proletarian or bourgeois, and as being locked in deadly
conflict. The result is a universalism that used to be absolutely anathema to
the party, and ­t here can be no doubt that this newfound universalism is a
bourgeois one, reinterpellating the formerly privileged proletariat as no
more than aspirants to membership in the bourgeois or ­middle class. In a
radical departure from its own past conception and rhe­toric, the CCP now
treats the ­human being, both qua individual and qua species, as the pre-
eminent standard (yiren weiben) and unabashedly takes up a worldview
that smacks of the humanism of the bourgeois Enlightenment. All p ­ eople
supposedly want essentially the same t­ hings and hold essentially the same
values, with all but the sharpest of conflicts (­t hose involving terrorists and
dissidents) now belonging ­under what used to be called “contradictions
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 209

among the p ­ eople” and thus having the character of what is treated as rea-
sonable pluralism in the United States. The happy and prosperous life of
ordinary Chinese, as they themselves understand such a l ife, has become
the goal of the party and the very raison d’être of national rejuvenation.
The principal contradiction of the new era (the Xi era) is thought to exist
between the ever-­rising aspirations of the ­people, no longer divided by
class, on the one hand, and the insufficiency and unevenness of socioeco-
nomic development, on the other. The apparent blandness and neutrality of
the CCP’s latest vision are nothing but a reflection of the profound change
just briefly summarized. However muted and laconic the pre­sen­ta­t ion of
this change may have been in official pronouncements, make no ­mistake:
this is a sea change, a paradigm shift in values and therefore also in the
CCP’s self-­understanding, in its own conception of its nature and mission.
It is easy to understand, then, why the old communist moral subject is no
longer ser­v iceable and why a new moral subject—an essentially bourgeois
one—is needed in its place. It is indeed from this fact, more than from any
other, that we know for sure that China is no longer a communist society, a
society on its way to communism, and that what is still called the Chinese
Communist Party is no longer a communist party.
Yet the pretense continues that t­ hings have not fundamentally changed.
The official agents of propaganda are still in business and are indeed still op-
erating in their exhortative mode. The CCP still sees itself as the moral
guide of the entire population, which it still treats as in need of moral tute-
lage, although it can do ­little to positively fulfill this self-­appointed role and
is aware of this in­effec­tive­ness as fully as anyone ­else. The culture industry,
when co-­opted by the official propaganda machine as it has to be from time
to time, still churns out films and tele­v i­sion dramas celebrating the heroic
personalities and deeds of the revolutionary de­cades as if monumentalizing
the past could still effectively lend legitimacy to the pre­sent and serve to teach
moral lessons to ­those living t­ oday. And the official propaganda machine it-
self, through its tele­v i­sion programs and newspapers among other media,
has never ­stopped putting on public display con­temporary role models with
supposedly exceptional loyalty to the party and love of the p ­ eople. All of t­ hese
productions bear only the most tenuous connection to the pre­sent in terms
of the morality needed and pos­si­ble ­today, and all of ­t hese agents speak with
a voice that cannot but fall on deaf ears.
210 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Thus it is that times have radically changed, thanks to the economic and
social reform initiated by the CCP itself, and yet the only morality currently
on offer is all but entirely lifted from an era predating the reform and there-
fore does not speak to the new real­ity and the new needs and prob­lems of
­today. Th­ ere can be only one outcome—­a moral vacuum, a moral no-­man’s-­
land. The so-­called proletarian virtues (in the shape of communist-­inspired
7

asceticism and altruism) have evaporated, along with the proletariat as a class
for itself or even labeled as such. Bourgeois goals and aspirations have staged
a triumphant comeback, not least among the ranks of the CCP, but without
the accompaniment of a bourgeois morality or even the official permission
for such a morality to emerge. What is the rampant official corruption openly
acknowledged by the party itself but, in large part, the taking of illegal short-
cuts to achieve bourgeois goals? What could better explain the prevalence of
such corruption than the absence of a morality, along with its necessary l­egal
support, that is suited to the new cap­i­tal­ist or quasi-­capitalist society? And
what is China’s moral crisis but the effects of the lack of such a morality on
an entire society?
This is not to say that the morality needed in China t­ oday w ­ ill come into
being simply on the strength of the need itself if only the po­liti­cal obstacles
to its emergence are removed. Nor is it to pretend that bourgeois morality
itself, even in the best-­ordered cap­i­tal­ist socie­ties, does not have its own se-
rious prob­lems ­today, not least with the paradigm shift from a society of pro-
ducers to a s ociety of consumers.8 What are, or can be, t­ oday’s bourgeois
virtues anyway, other than ­t hose left over from the society of producers and
from a past able to draw on the ideological resources of the Protestant ethic,
among other ­things? How much room is ­there, with capitalism itself increas-
ingly divested of its e­ arlier ideological interpretations, even for virtues as
such, given how capitalism by nature, left to its own devices, is disposed to
or­ga­nize ­human life around external rather than internal goods and over
time to erode practices as distinct from institutions?9 Insofar as such virtues
still exist, how long can they last when the needs and imperatives of the
society of consumers seem to corrode them further with each passing
year? ­These are real and very serious prob­lems, but they are, as it ­were, other
socie­ties’ prob­lems—­the kind of prob­lems confronting, say, American society
in its moral and po­liti­cal organ­ization of liberties whose possibilities and
constraints are made more complex by the ever-­faster and more intractable
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 211

evolution of an endlessly resourceful digital capitalism. They are not yet the
prob­lems that China has the luxury to face as its foremost moral challenges,
although it behooves its citizens to spare some thought for such prob­lems,
which have definitely hit the country in a big way as well.
The prob­lem that stares China in the face is this: the morality of an ­earlier,
communist China is entirely obsolete, and a morality capable of creating new
moral subjects and supporting a new moral order is yet to be born—­yet to be
allowed to be conceived. The proletarian virtues have dis­appeared for good,
and no new virtues have been established in their place. In the meantime,
China is a society without a relevant and effectual morality. This means, to
put it bluntly, that China is a society without a morality—­a morality “fit for
purpose.” It does not have virtues to go with its newfound liberties of the
moderns. This is yet another sense in which ­t hese liberties are only de facto
liberties.
It would nevertheless be incorrect to say that moral subjectivity is simply
missing. What is lacking, rather, to use Althusser’s helpful terminology, is a
set of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) working relatively in­de­pen­dently
from and yet broadly in support of the Repressive State Apparatus—­a nd
hence also any moral subjectivity properly informed by the avowed precepts
and values of the supposedly communist state. What moral subjectivity t­ here
actually is has thus been formed by default rather than design—­that is, ­under
influences other than ­t hose ostensibly exerted by the propaganda and cul-
tural organs of the party-­state. Not the least of such influences are ­those orig-
inating from the ISAs of liberal demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist states, especially
Amer­i­ca. For all the growing national pride and po­liti­cal anti-­Americanism
evident in China ­today, the general population has lost ­little interest in ­things
American and Western, not least when it comes, for rich party members and
affluent ordinary citizens alike, to the dead serious business of their c­ hildren’s
education. The conclusion is inescapable: all too many Chinese are still power-
fully drawn to the values propagated by the American and Western ISAs.
Much as they are partial to their own country in one way or another, their
hearts and minds are often engaged elsewhere. A ­ fter all, who can deny that
they inhabit a cap­i­tal­ist society and embrace a bourgeois way of life? And yet
the state of which they are citizens is unable to develop plausible values ca-
tering to their need for subjectivity and indeed does not even have the ISAs
to produce such values in the first place.
212 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

What­ever the precise degree of American and Western influence, it by no

means amounts to a complete ideological takeover. The CCP sees to it that
this does not happen, most conspicuously with regard to religion, yet it has
not been able to create its own moral culture. The result is a combination of
partial ideological colonization and near moral anarchy contained largely by
the Repressive State Apparatus. Such a condition does not mean, of course,
that t­ here are no moral subjects to be found in China t­ oday; far from it. But
the fact is that such moral subjects as we can all readily bear witness to in
China—­disproportionately among the younger members of the ­middle class,
or so it seems—do not owe their moral subjectivity and their corresponding
moral conduct to the prevailing moral culture, for what we find is a prevailing
lack of moral culture. Thus, with their moral subjectivity nourished largely
by external bourgeois ISAs that are nevertheless not allowed to completely
colonize China’s ideological space—­what a morally ambiguous situation!—­
these Chinese moral subjects, what­ever their age and number, cannot but be
exceptions. They are indeed the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule, and
the sad rule is that China is now suffering from the profound lack of a func-
tioning moral culture of its own, with the result that most of its members are
left floundering in a moral wasteland. The de facto freedoms that now abound
make it pos­si­ble for ­people to act. ­Until such freedoms are raised to the level
of a value, however, they w ­ ill not enable ­people to act with an affirmed sense
of self and meaning and a reasonable level of considerateness for ­others.

China Needs a New Moral Culture

I am inclined to think that the moral crisis confronting China exists at

an altogether deeper and hence more potently dangerous level than all
other prob­lems. It is, as I have noted, a crisis of moral subjectivity—­t hat is to
say, of the demise of an old moral subject and of the absence of a new moral
subject, and hence of the absence in Chinese society ­today of any moral sub-
ject constituted endogenously and by design. It is, one might say, a prob­lem
at the meta-­moral level, at a level that concerns the preconditions or presup-
positions of any reasonably well-­f unctioning morality, ­whether we like the
tenor and substance of that morality or not.
Nothing is more impor­tant for a moral culture than the distinct moral sub-
ject that is created by it and that, in turn, gives life to it by acting in accor-
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 213

dance with it and adapting and even changing it while ­doing so. The moral
subject is the ­bearer of a moral culture and, as such, a microcosm of that
moral culture and its best mirror. The most impor­tant fact about China’s
moral culture right now is that it is not functioning as a moral culture should;
it is a moral culture in crisis. It is also, if we are reasonably optimistic about
its ability to change or evolve positively, a moral culture in transition. There-
fore, to understand China’s moral culture, its living moral culture, we must
understand its crisis, especially the moral subject, or the absence thereof, that
lies at the heart of this crisis. To this end, I ­w ill spell out more systematically
the nature and structure of a moral subject itself.
What is a moral subject, and what does it take for the moral subject to be
formed and maintained? To put it simply, one becomes a moral subject by
developing a certain disposition to act morally and to do so for what one un-
derstands as moral reasons. This disposition, the state of being positively
and stably disposed t­ oward a certain way of comporting oneself in society, is
nothing but willingness. One must ­will to act in a certain way, even when one
does so for reasons that one regards as in some impor­tant sense objective
rather than products of one’s own w ­ ill. One’s reasons for so acting must be
interior (or subjective, in one of its senses): t­ hese reasons must somehow come
to exist in that inner space we call conscience or moral consciousness or moral
subjectivity. They must be what Bernard Williams calls “internal reasons.”10
Thus, the creation of the moral subject is about the production of this will-
ingness through the formation of internal reasons or, to be more precise,
through the social production of moral reasons that lend themselves to ac­
cep­tance and absorption by individual members of society. Put another way,
becoming a moral subject is a ­matter of internalizing socially originated rea-
sons that thereby become one’s own and hence partly autonomous reasons,
­whether or not one understands one’s resulting moral agency in terms of au-
tonomy. To the degree that one succeeds in such internalization, one be-
comes an active and willing adherent to a morality and sees that morality as
part of one’s own inner nature: one becomes a moral subject. Acquiring moral
subjectivity in this sense—as part of one’s relation to self and society and of
one’s understanding thereof—is a basic need that is distinct from and irre-
ducible to welfare or happiness. ­There is, especially in modern society, no
better proof of the successful formation of moral subjectivity than that the
willingness that is part and parcel of being moral is relatively stable u ­ nder
214 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

reflection—­t hat is, the kind and amount of reflection ­people typically bring
to bear on such ­matters.
A moral culture need not offer a ­great deal of room for such reflection,
however, and such room as exists need not be conceived of in terms of au-
tonomy. Moral subjectivity per se does not require more than a stable moral
willingness rooted in reasons that are somehow internalized. This willing-
ness can be produced, and the socially originated reasons internalized, in
one of two ways distinguishable at a h igh level of abstraction. In the first,
one acquires the requisite willingness or internalizes the given reasons by
deferring to a moral leader and imitating one or more moral exemplars and,
in the pro­cess, identifying with both to some degree. One engages in such
deference, imitation, and identification ­because one sees, or is brought to see,
the good as embodied in exemplary moral personalities. One thus becomes
a moral subject ­u nder the description, both cultural and individual, of
conforming to the good and gaining access to the good through the me-
diation of exemplary moral personalities. A twofold willingness is at work
­here: one must willingly accept the mediation involved in order to gain ac-
cess to the good and then must willingly conform to it. The intersubjective
relationship, the relationship between leader or exemplar and follower or
imitator, is ­here constitutive, for the latter, of the subject-­object relationship,
the object being the good. What is impor­tant is not the fact of the ­matter so
much as the descriptor—­the description ­under which one conceives of be-
coming, and is enabled to actually become, a moral subject. The descriptor
need not be true, still less completely true; it only has to be plausible, and
plausible ­under the habitual degree of reflection, to ­those involved. On the
basis of this descriptor, as distinct from what­ever real­ity may be reflected in
or distorted by it, we can give this type of moral culture the name of mo-
rality through identification. ­There is no doubt that such a moral culture,
viewed as an ideal type, has historically been very impor­tant, even domi-
nant. The moral culture of Mao’s China belongs to this type, and the moral
culture of China ­today has yet to escape its influence. If the descriptor,
though it need not be true, must be plausible, it must be further noted that
the plausibility of the descriptor depends on its having a reasonably good fit
with material or objective conditions. For example, the once plausible de-
scriptor of pursuing (conforming to) communism and gaining access to the
true meaning of communism through the mediation of the CCP as the van-
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 215

guard is no longer plausible ­under the real social and economic conditions
that prevail in China t­ oday.
­These new conditions call for a new morality, and, what­ever substance
the new morality may contain, it must belong to another ideal type. This
other ideal type is quintessentially modern, and therefore its descriptor
must be plausible u ­ nder modern conditions, where a basic equality in moral
agency is taken for granted and economic and cultural life is or­ga­nized ac-
cordingly. This need not rule out identification with exemplary moral per-
sonalities, but such identification, even when it happens, is deemed accept-
able only if it derives from and is consistent with the ­free exercise of one’s
own equal moral agency. Thus the descriptor operative in a m odern mo-
rality must be drawn from that ­family of concepts which includes freedom,
autonomy, and the like.11 Call it, then, morality through freedom. When I say
that the de facto liberties that abound in China ­today need to be sublimated
into freedom as a value, what I mean, therefore, is that freedom must serve
as a descriptor for China’s new morality, as it does in modern socie­ties such
as the United States. This necessity springs not from any intrinsic superi-
ority of American moral culture, however, but from an entirely internal
Chinese consideration: the fact that the willingness that is part and parcel of
moral subjectivity can no longer, ­after nearly four de­cades of economic and
social reform, be produced through compulsory deference to moral authority
or compulsory imitation of moral exemplars. This willingness can be pro-
duced, ­under ­today’s circumstances, only by leaving p ­ eople with a lot more
room for choice, for reflection, for taking their own counsel, for the possi-
bility of taking part in the evolution of their shared moral culture. As we
have seen, the old, Maoist moral subject suited to the collectivistic, totally
or­ga­nized way of life is no longer ser­viceable, and the much more individu-
ated way of life that has sprung up since the end of the Mao era requires a
correspondingly more individuated moral subject. This new moral subject
needs much greater room for moral initiative, which can be created and
properly named only by using freedom as a descriptor. We need a new mo-
rality and a new name for it.
Can this new morality be created and a new name be given to it? I c an
only hope so, especially given the po­liti­cal complications. What I do know,
or at least have reason to fear, is that if the moral crisis is not resolved, and
resolved soon, it ­w ill have grave implications for China’s po­liti­cal ­f uture, just
216 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

as the po­liti­cal dimension of the moral crisis is already making the crisis itself
much more intractable than it would other­w ise be. In this we catch a glimpse
of the deep continuity between China’s moral culture and po­liti­cal culture,
between its moral and its po­liti­cal prob­lems, as well as their potential solu-
tions. Nothing better demonstrates this continuity, and the danger of
failing to create a v irtuous circle, than a g rowing imbalance and tension
between social equality and po­liti­cal in­equality.

Social Equality without Po­liti­cal Equality

Just as it is inaccurate to say that China is not a f­ ree country, so it would be

no more precise to claim that China is not an equal society.12 Yet the opposite
is not quite true, e­ ither, in one case as in the other. Once again, we find a so-
ciety ridden with contradictions, one whose most power­f ul dynamic in
moral and po­liti­cal culture is the very considerable equality already pre­sent
and entrenched, vying with inequalities old and new and stubbornly resistant
to change. Unlike freedom, however, equality has already acquired the status
of a publicly affirmed value in China, well beyond official lip ser­vice, and ­there
is no better way of capturing the spirit and meaning of this value in the Chi-
nese context than in terms of what Alexis de Tocqueville calls equality of
conditions. This is essentially, as we have seen, an equality of moral-­legal
status that confers the right and opportunity to take part in an inclusive yet
competitive social life. What is equal, and egalitarian in spirit, is only the right
of participation together with the opportunity for success, leaving it open for
outcomes to be unequal, even highly so. But this is already no mean pro­gress,
amounting as it does to the egalitarian conception of all ­humans as minimally
competent cognitive and moral agents who therefore deserve a basic level of
re­spect and dignity. Something like this is what Tocqueville refers to as equality
of conditions, which contrasts starkly with an in­equality of conditions that he
somewhat loosely but in this context very pertinently labels aristocracy. ­There
is ­little doubt that equality of conditions thus understood has settled in China,
and much of the credit must go to the CCP.
For this equality of conditions, as the reader w ­ ill recall, has come about
through two momentous pro­cesses, both of which have occurred ­u nder
communist rule. First, Mao’s China saw a massive leveling of classes whereby
the majority of ­people ­were made po­liti­cally and legally equal in princi­ple.
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 217

This demo­cratic move—­democratic in the sense of removing fixed social

hierarchies—­was l­ imited, however, by the fact that it was subject to the ex-
clusion of so-­called class enemies and compromised by a po­liti­cally enforced
urban-­rural division. Notwithstanding ­t hese two major qualifications,
Mao’s egalitarian efforts at least deserve the name of quasi-­democratic lev-
eling. Along with a relative material equality, this leveling is China’s egali-
tarian legacy from the first three de­cades of communist rule. Then came
Deng Xiaoping’s launching of economic and social reform. Thanks to this
reform, which is still in pro­gress, the two qualifications inherent in the Maoist
conception of equality have been dropped, the first one entirely and the
second at least in princi­ple. It is worth bearing in mind that ­t hese changes
have come about during a t ime that has also witnessed a d ramatic rise in
in­equality—­t hat is, material or economic in­equality. ­There nevertheless
remains a sense in which they make up a d istinct egalitarian pro­cess, an
epoch-­making one that has advanced much further the equality of condi-
tions first established u­ nder Mao. Insofar as this second egalitarian pro­cess
features conflict reduction through the softening and universalization of
values, it has a distinctly liberal, at least quasi-­liberal, flavor that is reminis-
cent of early modern Eu­rope’s passage from war to commerce.
China now finds itself with a set of social conditions, then, that have de-
veloped out of ­t hese two momentous egalitarian pro­cesses. If Mao’s China
was a far cry from the so-­called republican China, not to mention traditional,
Confucian China, t­ oday’s China is no less dif­fer­ent from Mao’s China. It is
only in the new era that it makes a certain sense to say, as China’s slogan
for the 2008 Olympic Games did, “one world, one dream,” and to have, in
place of communism, a notion of the Chinese Dream that is all too obviously
modeled on the American Dream. And it is only t­ oday’s CCP that is able to
tell the world, as Xi Jinping did in the wake of the eigh­teenth party congress
and confirmed at the nineteenth party congress, that promoting the happy
and prosperous life of ordinary Chinese, as understood by themselves, and
as made pos­si­ble by national rejuvenation, is the only mission of the party.
Certainly, the equality of conditions thus brought into being is far from
perfect even by its own standard. I do not mean, in this context, in­equality
of outcomes per se, such as economic in­equality, although its staggering rise
in post-­Mao China is a formidable prob­lem for other reasons. This is a quan-
titative in­equality that is only to be expected even from the most perfect
218 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

equality of conditions. For equality of conditions is a qualitative equality and,

as such, is entirely compatible with quantitative in­equality, in princi­ple, even
if it may exist in considerable tension with exceptionally serious instances of
the latter. When I say that China still falls well short of perfect equality of
conditions ­today, I mean to suggest that this is a ­matter of qualitative equality.
It is true that all members of Chinese society are now taken to have the
same ­legal status and the same rights and opportunities that come with such
status. This is not just empty rhe­toric, for ­t here is simply too much real­ity on
the ground that cannot be explained except in terms of pro­gress in equality
and of a corresponding passion for equality. Nevertheless, no one can plau-
sibly deny that the officially and popularly affirmed equality of ­legal status
has yet to be effectively translated into any credible semblance of equal rights
and opportunities. An ugly gap is plainly vis­i­ble between the concept and the
practice of equality. This is ­because vested interests die hard, such as the de
facto privileges of city dwellers vis-­à-­v is the claim to equal treatment by
­people from the countryside, and ­because, if truth be told, overhauling ine-
galitarian institutions and entitlements left over from the past is not always
high on the agenda of the CCP or of the better-­off members of Chinese
society.
Thus, when it comes to the urban-­rural divide, the undeniable pro­gress in
equality of status is as yet more a ­matter of public sentiment and broad policy
direction than of big, concrete steps ­toward equal treatment—­say, with re­
spect to the extremely large number of mi­grant workers (nongmingong) in
the cities. This name itself is indicative of a stubborn real­ity of basic in­equality
for whose elimination neither the CCP nor advantaged city dwellers seem re-
motely prepared to make the necessary “sacrifices.” Likewise—­and this is
something that cuts across the urban-­rural divide—­the demand for equality
of opportunity that is an intrinsic part of equality of social conditions falls
victim all too often to unfair advantages enjoyed by the offspring of the rich
(fu erdai) and the power­f ul (guan erdia). Th ­ ese are just examples, albeit
impor­tant and especially glaring ones, of the substantial obstacles that still
stand in the way of the relatively full realization of social equality. And it is
naïve to think it w ­ ill be a ­simple and straightforward ­matter to clear away
such obstacles or to prevent new ones from taking their place.
Despite all t­ hese challenges, the presence in China of the basic tendency
­toward equality of conditions is not in doubt. The egalitarian die has been
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 219

cast. The good conscience that used to accompany remnants of systematic

qualitative in­equality has been powerfully disturbed and, for many, destroyed.
All discourses in support of qualitative in­equality are off-­limits in public. The
passion for equality is vis­i­ble and growing everywhere, as is its negative ex-
pression in the form of resentment. Where remnants of old social and po­
liti­cal habits still frustrate egalitarian moral expectations, as happens all too
often even ­today, ­t hose expectations do not lose their collective psycholog-
ical confidence and potency. What­ever ­else may or may not happen in China,
it is almost unimaginable that the pro­gress of social equality can be arrested
for long or irreversibly rolled back.
It is doubtful, however, that this pro­gress can ever be completed, even in
princi­ple, ­unless po­liti­cal in­equality is removed along with what remains of
social in­equality. For social equality is only part of a larger egalitarian scheme
of ­t hings that must also cover po­liti­cal equality. I believe Tocqueville is en-
tirely correct in seeing an organic relationship between equality of (social)
conditions, on the one hand, and po­liti­cal equality, on the other. Thus he
writes, “One has to understand that equality ends up by infiltrating the world
of politics as it does everywhere e­ lse. It would be impossible to imagine men
forever unequal in one re­spect, yet equal in o ­ thers; they must, in the end,
come to be equal in all.”13 If this much is true, it must also be true, given the
same organic relationship, that no equality is complete in any single domain
of life u ­ ntil it is complemented by equality in all other relevant domains.
Demo­cratic social relations, holding among private persons, ­will not be fully
equal ­u ntil they are supported by demo­cratic po­liti­cal relations, holding
among citizens.14
In China t­ oday we see this integral character of equality in a certain awk-
wardness that marks the po­liti­cal sphere. In theory, po­liti­cal equality is now
as much a part of official doctrine as social equality has been. But while so-
cial equality is, to a substantial and ever-­increasing degree, a fact of life, po­
liti­cal equality has lagged far b ­ ehind. It is true that the old imperial haughti-
ness of po­liti­cal power has been much modified, and this in turn reflects an
adjustment of po­liti­cal relations u ­ nder the pressure of the profound change
in social relations. ­After all, it makes much less sense ­today for officials to
behave, especially to be seen to behave, as masters rather than so-­called ser-
vants of the ­people now that the combination of quasi-­democratic leveling
and quasi-­liberal neutralization has led the CCP to proclaim the happy and
220 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

prosperous life of ordinary Chinese, and nothing but this, its only mission
and raison d’être. Nonetheless, such pro­gress in po­liti­cal equality has s­ topped
well short of po­liti­cal liberty, or po­liti­cal democracy. Average Chinese citi-
zens are, in truth, civic nonentities, with no credible right to fear-­free par-
ticipation in po­liti­cal life except within a range so fixed and narrow as to be
meaningless, and hence their civic aspirations and capacities are systemati-
cally discouraged and stunted. This does not mean that their interests are not
taken care of, to be sure, but such interests are decidedly ­those of private
persons, not of citizens. What is sometimes called Chinese-­style consulta-
tive democracy, as conducted chiefly through the Chinese P ­ eople’s Po­liti­cal
Consultative Conference at the national and lower levels, is conceived ac-
cordingly and therefore is hardly more demo­cratic than the humane society
favored by Mencius, supposedly the most democratic-­minded major Con-
fucian thinker. Mencius famously says, “[In a state] the p ­ eople are the most
impor­tant; the spirits of the land and grain (guardians of territory) are the
next; the ruler is of slight importance.”15 The kind of importance granted to
the p­ eople by the CCP t­ oday is of the same kind, for the p ­ eople are preemi-
nent, now as then, only in their capacity as min (the masses), and their con-
cerns are correspondingly understood in terms of minsheng (livelihood
issues). Likewise, the aim in serving the interests of the p ­ eople in their es-
sentially creaturely and receptive capacity is, just as in Mencius’s dictum
(for Mencius immediately goes on to say that “to gain [the hearts of] the
peasantry is the way to become an emperor”), to win their allegiance or
acquiescence rather than to provide for their agential interests as citizens, as
full and equal members of a republic, which China t­ oday supposedly is. For
now, the idea of a republic, of the ­people being masters of their country, exists
only on paper, and ­those who rule in the name of the p ­ eople are yet to be
subjected to a substantial and credible mea­sure of popu­lar consent. If po­liti­cal
equality cannot ­really mean an equality of power enjoyed by all, power of
the demos in the strict sense, the least it can do is allow a reasonably credible
approximation to popu­lar sovereignty by means of some degree of roughly
equal po­liti­cal liberty, if only in the manner of a mixed regime (­whether or
not openly acknowledged as such).
It should come as no surprise that this gap between the substantial pres-
ence of social equality and the substantial lack of po­liti­cal equality, in the
form of po­liti­cal liberty, has huge consequences for the quality and extent of
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 221

social equality.16 I have noted that, ­because of the organic and integral na-
ture of equality, the equality of social conditions ­will always remain only par-
tial as long as po­liti­cal equality is not achieved. This is especially evident at
the level of po­liti­cal psy­chol­ogy. In China ­today the inevitable shortfall in so-
cial equality, in the equality of moral-­legal status at its core, takes the form,
above all, of a relationship between rulers and ruled that still bears many of
the characteristic features of the creditor-­debtor relationship.
As is well known, this relationship was actively promoted throughout the
Mao era. For many years, all members of Chinese society ­were given to un-
derstand, through all kinds of po­liti­cal and cultural campaigns culminating
in the Cultural Revolution, that they owed a profound debt to the CCP for
the good fortune of living and flourishing in a new, socialist society. The debt,
embodied in the peace and goodness of New China and in the incalculable
loss of life and blood needed to bring them about, was so boundless it could
never be fully repaid, with official propagandists g­ oing to extreme lengths,
especially during the Cultural Revolution, to drive this point home. Despite
the hopelessness of ever completing the payment, however, the debt was nev-
ertheless to be acknowledged and incrementally discharged in the most
concrete of currencies, through daily manifestations of loyalty, obedience,
and hard work. This was the core of the po­liti­cal socialization all Chinese un-
derwent in Mao’s time. Every­one had to learn his or her place in relation to
po­liti­cal power, through instruction and the experience of pain, and the place
was that of a permanent debtor. Cast in this role, one became bound to the
creditor and lost all good conscience in one’s dealings with po­liti­cal power.
Even ­after four de­cades of reform devoted in part to undoing the revolu-
tionary aspects of the revolution, the CCP has not quite ­stopped seeing itself
as the creditor and the ­people as its debtors. Only the object of debt has
changed, no longer a ­matter of being lifted from the class oppression and ex-
ploitation prevalent in the old society but instead one of enjoying ever-­
higher living standards and basking in the glory of China’s rise as a world
power. What remains unchanged is the status of the party as the leader of
China, and, for all t­ hose Chinese who feel positive about the more recent
rec­ord of the party, successful leader still means creditor. In the meantime,
­u nder the impact of the profound change in social relations, the creditor-­
debtor relationship has become more moderate and more subtle. Th ­ ere has
even appeared a conception of government as existing to provide ser­v ices to
222 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

the ­people (fuwuxing zhengfu). But this conception, partly a variation on the
old theme of “serving the p ­ eople,” has not quite put an end to the creditor-­
debtor relationship; from time to time, especially on celebratory or festival
occasions, the official media still unabashedly celebrate the p ­ eople’s gratitude
to the party-­state. It is rather a subtler and somewhat more modest way of
prolonging the creditor-­debtor relationship, with the CCP of ­today creating
debts through what is now nicely called ser­v ice, in keeping with the more
equal social relations prevailing ­today. As part of this newly adjusted balance
of power, the debtor has become more assertive but has not thereby ceased
to be a debtor. As long as the CCP’s leadership is still expressly or tacitly re-
garded as legitimate, t­ hose who live ­u nder it w ­ ill remain trapped in the
creditor-­debtor relationship that provides the politico-­psychological basis of
communist rule. And with this relationship still goes the debtor’s psy­chol­ogy
of deep-­seated inferiority and unworthiness vis-­à-­v is state power.
One fundamental change, however, has definitely occurred in what re-
mains of the creditor-­debtor relationship, and, not surprisingly, this change
has its cause in the growing equality of social conditions even as that equality
is thwarted by the continuing po­liti­cal in­equality. While the debtor in the
Maoist mold had a bad conscience in relation to po­liti­cal power, he had, as it
­were, a good conscience about this bad conscience. He was a debtor without
internal conflict, ­because the condition in which he lived was not yet split
between a more or less equal social state (that is, a society marked by equality
of conditions) and a largely unequal po­liti­cal state. He was thus a single-­
minded and simple-­minded debtor and, as such, was even, as it w ­ ere, hap-
pily unhappy. Since the end of the Mao era, the debtor has progressively lost
this single-­mindedness and simple-­mindedness. For the social and po­liti­cal
relations that in Mao’s time formed a seamless w ­ hole with no conceptual or
material dividing line have to a significant degree come apart in the age of
reform. The debtor now finds himself in a social state in which he has come
to see himself as an equal and an individual and has gradually acquired some
taste for equality and in­de­pen­dence and a modicum of pride that goes with
it. In the po­liti­cal state, however, he is still as far removed from any experi-
ence of po­liti­cal liberty or po­liti­cal equality as he ever was, and he has no real,
material basis for seeing more worth in himself as a citizen or po­liti­cal agent
than he ever did. Thus standing astride an equal social state and an unequal
po­liti­cal one, he cannot but end up double-­minded, unsure of his newfound
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 223

equal status (in the social state) and yet increasingly resentful of his continued
status as debtor (in the po­liti­cal state). In truth, he both is and is not a debtor,
both is and is not an equal, and, in this confused condition, he is assertive
and grudging but does not yet stand tall. His passion for equality is thus both
stunted and heightened, and hence distorted, by his lingering debtor psy­
chol­ogy and comportment. And the resentment that results from such dis-
tortion is directed both at the weakened creditor and at the still insufficiently
strong debtor himself and is incapable of resolution or even appeasement. Ob-
serving this precarious balance, one would not be without reason in thinking
that something has to give, sooner or l­ater, and this is as true of the individual
debtor as it is of the society at large that is delicately poised between a growing
social equality and a stubborn po­liti­cal in­equality.

The Advantages and Liabilities of Demo­cratic

Social Power

One of Tocqueville’s insights based on observing American democracy

that retains much of its truth and explanatory power t­ oday is that a perva-
sive equality of conditions translates into an altogether new form of power:
demo­cratic social power, or the unlimited rule of public opinion. “I observe,”
writes Tocqueville, “how, beneath the power of certain laws, democracy
would blot out that intellectual liberty supported by the social, demo­cratic
state in such a way that, having broken the shackles formerly imposed upon
it by class systems or men, the h­ uman spirit would be closely confined by the
general ­will of the majority.”17 Demo­cratic social power is none other than
this “general ­w ill of the majority,” which Tocqueville regards as an all-­
encompassing social phenomenon rather than a narrowly po­liti­cal one. As
such, demo­cratic social power is the power of society that springs naturally
and immediately from the very fact of equality of conditions, under­lying
demo­cratic po­liti­cal power and making it pos­si­ble and palatable. It is larger
and deeper and stronger than any po­liti­cal power, encompassing it and
bending it to the rule of public opinion no less than it does actions and even
thoughts in society. (This is why the US tech g­ iants that control the digital flow
of information are so incredibly power­ful.) But this is the case only when a
country is demo­cratic not only in its social conditions but also in its form of
government, as the United States was and is. Social power comes from equality
224 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

of conditions, first and foremost, but only if it is not prevented, as it certainly

is in China, from ­doing so by a lack of po­liti­cal liberty that checks the circu-
lation of opinions in society. (This is why the Chinese counter­parts of the
American IT power­houses are not nearly as power­ful.) Once this obstacle is
removed, social power knows no limits ­under equality of conditions and ­will
end up bringing po­liti­cal liberty and ­every other liberty ­under its sway. Al-
though its sway is softer and subtler, above all b ­ ecause it is demo­cratic and
has every­one’s share in it, Tocqueville gives us reasons to worry about it
­because of the threat it poses to the very po­liti­cal liberty and other liberties
whose presence makes its sway pos­si­ble in the first place. This is the dilemma
that Tocqueville, on his tour of Amer­i­ca in 1831, saw at the heart of democ-
racy, and what has happened since in the world’s advanced democracies has
amply confirmed his prescience. ­There is no more reliable indicator of the
strong presence of po­liti­cal and other liberties than the invincibility of the
social power they unleash, overrunning every­thing around it and not sparing
the spirit of in­de­pen­dence in the liberties themselves. And no way has been
found of giving f­ ree rein to the liberties without in the very act exposing them
to the omnipresent, often suffocating rule of social power. Juggling this di-
lemma has been an impor­tant part of the story of freedom in a democracy
like the United States, and it is only appropriate both to acknowledge free-
dom’s gains and to count its losses at the hands of social power.
For better or worse, in my personal view for both better and worse,
China has almost never had to face this dilemma. For this is a prob­lem that
comes to the fore only when conditions of social equality are combined with
­those of po­liti­cal liberty. While China has traveled a long distance on the path
­toward equality of conditions, it still lives in fear or anticipation of po­liti­cal
liberty and t­ hose in power still seem to be d ­ oing all they can to keep the
spirit of equality in society from infiltrating the po­l iti­cal sphere as Toc-
queville says it must sooner or ­later. It is arguable, or perhaps even unargu-
able, that the equality of conditions in China t­ oday, viewed strictly apart
from the po­liti­cal sphere, already far exceeds its nineteenth-­century coun-
terpart that Tocqueville observed in the United States. But as long as China
does not take significant steps ­toward po­liti­cal liberty, it ­w ill not, as it ­were,
raise itself to the level where it encounters the dilemma involving liberties and
social power. For now China is largely spared the prob­lem, but not exactly
for the right reasons.
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 225

Po­liti­cal liberty is yet to be established. Social power, demo­cratic social

power, is yet to have the room to expand and overtake po­liti­cal power. In the
meantime, the power that establishes rules for actions and thoughts is over-
whelmingly po­liti­cal. Not yet in the seductive embrace of social power, China
remains in the formidable clutch of po­liti­cal power.
This does not mean that demo­cratic social power has not started to make
itself felt in China. It is d
­ oing so, quite predictably, through the internet and
social media, which equality of conditions has made available to hundreds
of millions of p ­ eople and which po­liti­cal power can do only so much to con-
trol. The network society thus spawned has, in turn, despite all the censor-
ship, furthered and entrenched equality of conditions by “outcompeting and
outperforming vertically or­ga­nized corporations and centralized bureaucra-
cies”18 in terms of its socializing impact. The licenses that netizens are able
to take are not po­liti­cal liberties, nor guaranteed individual liberties, but this
does not necessarily make the social power they generate any less potent in
areas where they have acquired a de facto permissibility if not legitimacy.
When it is a ­matter of grievances against lower levels of government and es-
pecially against allegedly corrupt officials, or of concerns over issues deemed
more social than po­liti­cal, such as environmental pollution or unsafe vac-
cines, the loosely knit community of netizens already creates a g­ reat deal of
social power. If this is the chief kind of demo­cratic social power that po­liti­cal
power must reckon with, t­ here is also the circulation of opinion and taste,
(fake) news and gossip, taboos, and norms of social correctness that, through
the power of numbers, already poses a threat to the de facto room for intel-
lectual and moral in­de­pen­dence currently pre­sent in Chinese society. In this
we already have a foretaste of the corrosive and suffocating effect of social
power on po­liti­cal liberty before such liberty is even allowed to exist. In the
absence of po­liti­cal liberty, it is not surprising that the internet and social
media have become the most power­f ul extensions of equality of social con-
ditions. They stop short of po­liti­cal liberty and yet constantly take up c­ auses
that are in one way or another po­liti­cal. They may not be strictly po­liti­cal,
but they are definitely demo­cratic, and they are the closest t­ hing in China to
the infiltration of the po­liti­cal sphere by the spirit of equality of the social
sphere. Small won­der that the more perceptive of Chinese netizens are al-
ready voicing the kind of fears and worries reminiscent of Tocqueville’s warn-
ings about demo­cratic social power. Yet, also reminiscent of Tocqueville,
226 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

they remain ambivalently supportive of the de facto liberties on the internet

and the increasingly potent social power they spawn.
None of this changes the basic fact, however, that in a socially equal China
po­liti­cal power remains dominant, having to take no more than a sideways
glance at an incipient social power. In this re­spect China ­today resembles the
ancien régime more than it does republican France or demo­cratic Amer­i­ca.
China’s prob­lem is not yet the tyranny of demo­cratic social power, one that
brings the po­liti­cal and other liberties of individuals and the power of gov-
ernment alike ­under the sway of its irresistible, b ­ ecause demo­cratic, laws. Its
prob­lem, rather, remains the overwhelmingly po­liti­cal form of power and the
effects of this power on Chinese society and the individuals who make up
this society.
It is worth spelling out why this is a prob­lem. Surely the prob­lem is not
power itself but the nature of power—­political versus social power. ­After all,
some form of power is necessary to hold a society together and make pos­
si­ble the many other ­things that need to happen in any society. To regard po­
liti­cal power as a prob­lem, then, is to believe that it is less benign than demo­
cratic social power, and one thinks this way not ­because social power is
preferable in itself but ­because it is a by-­product of equality of conditions com-
bined, very fittingly, with po­liti­cal and other liberties. Thus one accepts
demo­cratic social power as necessary, as one would po­liti­cal power if social
power ­were unavailable, and furthermore one prefers social to po­liti­cal power
in seeing the former but not the latter as the price to pay for equality and es-
pecially liberty, with an awareness that liberty is necessarily somewhat com-
promised by social power.
The crucial question is how much liberty is compromised by demo­cratic
social power. The answer turns on how social power compromises liberty. The
answer to the latter question is that demo­cratic social power compromises
liberty, po­liti­cal and other­wise, in ways that are somewhat invisible, especially
when compared with how po­liti­cal power interferes with liberty.
Social power is more or less invisible ­because it is more or less demo­
cratic. It is invisible to the degree that it is demo­cratic. It is demo­cratic in
that every­one is si­mul­ta­neously at its giving and receiving end, as it ­were,
and to the degree that every­one has an equal influence on it. Exactly equal
influence is impossible, of course, but provided that the in­equality is not
extreme and results largely from the perceived equality of opportunity to
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 227

exert influence, then social power w ­ ill remain more or less invisible. Demo­
cratic social power is not only the power over every­one but also supposedly
the power of and from every­one. Thanks to this provenance, social power
is registered somewhat like the unobstructed power of oneself; hence its
invisibility.
It is through such invisibility that social power effortlessly brings about
conformity to its dictates. B ­ ecause conformity happens in this way, it too is
invisible, not least to t­ hose who conform. To what­ever degree invisible so-
cial power feels uncoercive, conformity to it is comfortable and willing. And
to what­ever degree a s ociety is made up of comfortable and willing con-
formists following an invisible social power, that society ­w ill be reasonably
stable and orderly, with its members enjoying their po­liti­cal and other liber-
ties and yet d­ oing so in such ways as to fit perfectly into grooves overwhelm-
ingly and yet flexibly s­ haped by social power. Most impor­tant of all, by
acting freely, feeling f­ ree, and understanding themselves as f­ ree, and yet si­
mul­ta­neously having their f­ ree actions and thoughts receive direction and
substance from social power, members of a demo­cratic society have ­little
trou­ble becoming moral subjects and maintaining their moral subjectivity
over time. Although I am presenting this picture as an ideal type applicable
to a demo­cratic society such as the United States, I do not intend it as a cari-
cature. Some such picture worried Tocqueville mightily, as we know, as it
has done some of the most perceptive thinkers since, not least members of
the Frankfurt school. I ­w ill return to this worry ­later. For now, it is worth
noting one impor­tant and positive consequence of social power—­namely,
that it is conducive, perhaps uniquely conducive, to the formation and main-
tenance of moral subjectivity. This is precisely where po­liti­cal power can be
problematic, especially u ­ nder modern conditions.
Compared with social power, po­liti­cal power is undemo­cratic in the ab-
sence of po­liti­cal liberty. That is to say, po­liti­cal power is undemo­cratic when-
ever it is not merely a mode of social power, as all po­liti­cal power must be in
an ideally demo­cratic society. For exactly the same reason that social power
is more or less invisible, po­liti­cal power unassimilated by social power is
highly vis­i­ble, registered as being imposed from the outside and compelling
the individual’s unchosen obedience.
The visibility of po­liti­cal power unaccompanied by po­liti­cal liberty is one
­thing, however, and its coercive character another. Where willing obedience
228 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

is securely and stably available, always with the help of ideology, it prevents
the visibility of po­liti­cal power from manifesting itself as coerciveness and
thereby inviting re­sis­tance. Such obedience is especially difficult to maintain,
and the supporting ideology to make credible, u ­ nder equality of conditions,
for why should t­ hose who are accustomed to acting in­de­pen­dently and as
equals in society and thinking of themselves in this light nevertheless obey
an undemo­cratic po­liti­cal power and do so willingly? No reasons for obedi-
ence are sufficiently compelling to be able to dispense with support from the
manifest coerciveness of such po­liti­cal power, of course, and thus the resulting
obedience ­w ill fall as far short of willingness as the po­liti­cal power is vis­i­ble
and visibly coercive.
This remains largely the situation in China. But a more precise under-
standing requires careful attention to the gap I n oted e­ arlier between the
substantial presence of social equality and the substantial lack of po­liti­cal lib-
erty and hence of po­liti­cal equality. It is not exactly that po­liti­cal power is
­running riot; it cannot easily do so in the face of an equality of conditions
that is already entrenched and is steadily growing. Yet in the absence of po­
liti­cal liberty, the equality of conditions already achieved does not translate
into social power in the way it does in a comprehensively (that is, both so-
cially and po­liti­cally) demo­cratic country, such as the United States. Where
social power is lacking, po­liti­cal power has to do the work all by itself. This
has a very impor­tant consequence regarding moral leadership. On the one
hand, the presence of equality of conditions, achieved on the basis of quasi-­
democratic leveling (­u nder Mao) and quasi-­liberal neutralization (­u nder
Deng and thereafter), ­favors the weakening of all forms of moral superiority,
especially if prescribed and imposed, and their eventual abandonment. It
cannot but throw into sharp relief all sentiments and institutions that are at
odds with the basic social fact of modern life. A ­ fter all, equality of conditions
means nothing but equality in ­legal status, including especially a basic moral
status that ­matters far more than what­ever claims, themselves disputable in
princi­ple, may be made to levels of moral attainment above it.19 Yet, on the
other hand, po­liti­cal in­equality persists in China, albeit in a more moderate
form, and, in this context, what remains of po­liti­cal in­equality requires an
ideological justification in terms of moral in­equality, if only to minimize what
would other­w ise be an even more obtrusive coerciveness. This means that
the CCP, in order to hang on with some semblance of good reason to its ex-
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 229

clusive po­liti­cal leadership, must continue to claim exclusive moral leader-

ship and to cast the other­w ise equal and in­de­pen­dent members of society as
standing in unarguable need of moral tutelage.
What if most p ­ eople are no more willing to accept being so cast than they
are to submit to undemo­cratic po­liti­cal power and yet, in the face of over-
whelming po­liti­cal power, become as tired and wary of asserting themselves
in their moral life as in the po­liti­cal? The answer can only be that, just as they
fail to attain agency in po­liti­cal life and to acquire the spirit, interest, and
skills that go with such agency, so much the same t­ hing happens to their
moral life. They end up, that is, without much of a moral life ­because they
are kept from attaining the kind and degree of agency that is necessary for
moral subjectivity u ­ nder the modern equality of conditions. For better or
worse, and I d ­ on’t think one can quite say “for better,” no demo­cratic social
power is available that gives them sufficient room for initiative and partici-
pation and hence for willing and comfortable conformism. They have nei-
ther the freedom nor the freely acquired substance to become moral subjects,
and in this way the moral subjectivity of an entire p ­ eople, as individuals and
as members of society, becomes one of the biggest casualties of undemo­cratic
po­liti­cal power operating ­u nder demo­cratic social conditions. Demo­cratic
conformism and the kind of moral subject it makes pos­si­ble may be bad, but
a breakdown of moral subjectivity for want of a social power that commands
willing conformity is no better, and prob­ably much worse. And yet as China
gradually closes the gap between social equality and po­liti­cal in­equality, or
so one hopes, it is worth taking to heart the prob­lems of social power that
come from the moral ambiguities of democracy itself.
It is not entirely true that what is problematic with social power is its
invisibility. What makes social power invisible also thereby hides its char-
acter as power and the character of power as coercive in one way or an-
other. But why is this a prob­lem? One prob­lem with power, as we have seen,
is the possibility that it w ­ ill undermine the conditions for moral subjec-
tivity. But this possibility materializes only when the power in question is
undemo­cratic po­liti­cal power, especially when such power finds it neces-
sary to monopolize moral leadership over society. Social power, by virtue
of being demo­cratic, does not give rise to this possibility, at least for most
­people. If we nevertheless find fault with social power, it is ­because its ad-
vantage is also its danger: what is conducive to moral subjectivity is exactly
230 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

what is instrumental in creating a conformist moral subjectivity that eats

away at the soul of po­liti­cal and other liberties. Does social power, qua so-
cial power, necessarily create this conformist danger? And when social
power does turn out to be oppressive and suffocating with its ability to
generate conformism and to sweep aside all re­sis­tance and even conscious
awareness ­because of its invisibility, does its demo­cratic character have to
bear the brunt of the blame?
It is hardly deniable that power is a fact of life, social, po­liti­cal, and other­
wise. Also undeniable is that power exists in the form of in­equality and is
in­equality. Demo­cratic power is no exception. This is especially obvious in
the case of demo­cratic po­liti­cal power, which is often a combination of oli-
garchy and popu­lar consent.20 But this is just as true of demo­cratic social
power. The equality of influence (or, more precisely, of the lack of influence)
that Tocqueville locates at the heart of demo­cratic equality is only relative,
and even this relative equality is difficult to realize u ­ nder even the most fa-
vorable circumstances. What­ever equality means in a democracy, it cannot
21

possibly mean equality of power, ­either po­liti­cal or social. But this need not
be a prob­lem. What clearly is a prob­lem, as we have seen, is that moral sub-
jectivity ­w ill be in jeopardy u
­ nder equality of conditions if po­liti­cal power is
too vis­i­ble and too visibly coercive. This prob­lem can be avoided, it seems,
only if po­liti­cal power is demo­cratic, which means only if po­liti­cal power
becomes part of, and a mode of, social power. Thus, the rise of social power
in place of, or at the expense of, po­liti­cal power is a ­great achievement of
modernity, what­ever its pitfalls, and the relative invisibility of power, and
hence of the unavoidable in­equality and coerciveness of power as power,
seems the best that could be demanded of power, especially as far as moral
subjectivity is concerned. What is ­t here under­lying this invisibility that can
reasonably and usefully be brought to light as an object of critique and im-
provement? Surely not the mere fact of power itself, nor its intrinsic in­
equality and coerciveness.
One prob­lem, it seems, has to do with in­equality of a distinct kind or at a
distinct level: not the lack of equality of power, such equality being impos-
sible, but the lack of fair equality of opportunity that enables each and all in
a demo­cratic society to compete for relative advantage. The prob­lem, then, is
in­equality as unfair advantage or in the form of mono­poly even if such mono­
poly arises from the accumulation of advantages each of which is fair in it-
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 231

self. For ­t hese inequalities add up to a disproportionate influence wielded by

a few, however invisibly, and thus they engender a conformism to what is in
effect a minority and, in so ­doing, threaten to render null and void the po­
liti­cal and other liberties of what in real­ity is a largely uninfluential majority.
This prob­lem, in both of its forms but perhaps incontrovertibly in the second
(that is, mono­poly), can fairly be laid at the door of capitalism. Much of the
morally questionable in­equality that pervades demo­cratic social power, in-
cluding demo­cratic po­liti­cal power as one of its modes, is caused by capital-
ism’s and cap­i­tal­ists’ excessive influence on the content and dynamic of so-
cial power, which, in turn, is traceable to the rise and consolidation of
mono­poly over time coupled, although defenders of capitalism may dispute
this, with a lack of fair equality of opportunity. Demo­cratic social power,
then, contains in its content as well as in its dynamic too much of the power
of capital. And the same is true of the conformism that this social power im-
poses on all. This makes the conformism more cap­i­tal­ist than demo­cratic or
liberal and is the source of a distinct creditor-­debtor relationship that exists
not between po­liti­cal power and citizens, as in China, but between capital
and t­ hose employed by it, as in the United States (and increasingly in China
as well).22 It could be, therefore, that po­liti­cal and other liberties are threat-
ened by cap­i­tal­ist social power, not necessarily demo­cratic social power, al-
though liberal democracy has yet to find a way of conjoining itself to a mode
of production that is not cap­i­tal­ist.
We must not rush, however, to condemn capitalism in this context. If we
value the coexistence of social and po­liti­cal equality and we value demo­cratic
social power both as a by-­product of this coexistence and as the only reliable
way of making moral subjectivity pos­si­ble ­under modern conditions of life,
then we must appreciate the relative invisibility that both reflects social pow-
er’s demo­cratic credentials, however compromised, and allows it to serve
the benign functions it does. What if the easiest, if not the only pos­si­ble, form
that demo­cratic social power can take is that of the power of capital? What
if, in other words, the cap­i­tal­ist mode of production alone has so far proved
capable of providing the material basis for the diffuse, invisible social power
we know t­ oday? What if the society that ­favors equality of conditions is itself
none other than a bourgeois or middle-­class society? What if it turns out that
the invisible hand that drives the market is also the only invisible hand that
can shape demo­cratic social power?
232 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Why China Needs Both Unity and Separations in a

New Balancing Act

If the hypothesized state of affairs in ­t hese questions is true, we may be

reduced to throwing up our hands, on the understanding that demo­cratic
social power is inevitable ­under the simultaneous presence of demo­cratic
social and po­liti­cal conditions, that it is much to be preferred to undemo­
cratic po­liti­cal power, that capitalism (liberal demo­cratic capitalism, to be
precise) is the only way of giving concrete form to this social power, and
that, therefore, we must learn to live with liberal demo­cratic capitalism as the
most desirable ­human normative order, what­ever its flaws from an “ideal”
perspective divorced from the unalterable real­ity of h ­ uman society. If t­ hings
are ­really so, some ­w ill say, they may be a cause not for throwing up our
hands but rather for sober appreciation of what we have got, of what the
luckier and more sensible of modern socie­ties have been able to achieve.
Indeed, liberal democracy is wont to claim it has achieved more than
this. For it has in­ven­ted a way both to replace undemo­cratic po­liti­cal power
with demo­cratic social power and at the same time to contain that social
power through what Pierre Manent aptly calls the organ­ization of separa-
tions. Manent lists six separations: separation of professions, or division of
­labor; separation of powers; separation of church and state; separation of
civil society and the state; separation of represented and representative; and
separation of facts and values, or science and life.23 Foremost among t­ hese
separations, in Manent’s account, are ­those between represented and repre-
sentative and between powers, which, along with the implicit separation
(and hence opposition and contestation) among representatives, conspire to
ensure that such po­liti­cal power as is able to escape demo­cratic social power
is largely impotent. At the same time, some of the other separations serve
to bring about a like impotence, if not of social power itself, at least of citi-
zens to interfere with one another. The result, combining ­these two kinds of
impotence, is that the command-­obedience relation that would other­wise
figure between ruler and ruled and serve as a model for all other relations in
society, as it tends to do in any social order devoid of ­these separations, is
largely removed from life in a liberal demo­cratic society. Such a “mechanism
of power producing the impotence of power” is what makes for liberty, po­
liti­cal and other­w ise, and is indeed itself what is meant by liberty.24
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 233

This is an illuminating generalization about the raison d’être and mode

of operation of liberal democracy, not least its American variety. Much of it
is true, too, but the idea of power becoming impotent—­rather than changing
its form or location, and thereby possibly becoming more benign or more
invisible—­cannot but give one pause. If we believe, with Manent, that the sep-
arations add up to an insurmountable obstacle to the command-­obedience
relation everywhere in a liberal democracy, then it follows that members of
such a society “have no other perspective for their activity and ambition
than . . . ​to turn their desires and their efforts to domains that are foreign to
power or to politics strictly speaking, to domains where properly speaking
one does not exercise power over other members of society. The citizens have
only to exercise their talents and to become rich or famous by exercising their
talents. In a po­liti­cal regime ordered in this way, life consists mainly of eco-
nomics and culture.”25 Economics and culture blissfully untainted by the
command-­obedience relation, by any power relations whatsoever! In this uni-
versal absence of power is supposed to reside the liberty that is nothing less
than universal freedom from power.
Leaving aside culture with its own distinct power, we are all too familiar
with the power ever pre­sent in the economic domain, the power of t­ hose pre-
eminent in it to infiltrate politics proper and to bend it more or less invisibly
to the imperatives of capital. In this regard, even po­liti­cal power is less im-
potent than Manent makes it out to be, and, more importantly, the economic
domain is infinitely less ­free of power, including po­liti­cal power, than Ma-
nent deduces from the ideal logic of separations. It is true that liberal demo­
cratic capitalism is marked by a certain separation of the po­liti­cal and eco-
nomic domains, which is part of the larger separation of civil society and
state. Yet the separation is only formal, and what this means can only be
grasped if we realize that the po­liti­cal and economic domains work together
as one integral system of class relations while ­doing so, in a manner unique
to demo­cratic capitalism, through their formal separation.26 Manent cor-
rectly identifies this formal separation but makes the common m ­ istake of
treating it as more than a formal separation—as if the economy ­were not a
site of power, as if this power did not spill over massively into the po­liti­cal
domain, as if the power of capital w ­ ere not to a large degree social power and
po­liti­cal power in one. Or perhaps Manent, the exceptionally astute po­liti­cal
thinker that he is, has not ­really made any m ­ istake: he may only be describing
234 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

what one can see in a society where power is filtered through the separations,
including the formal separation between the po­liti­cal and economic domains.
For if ­t here is one ­t hing accomplished by such filtering, it is that power ends
up being invisible or at least much less vis­i­ble. As we have seen, this relative
invisibility of power is a ­great advantage, other ­t hings being equal, and that
is why, for all its flaws, demo­cratic social power, even as made pos­si­ble by capi-
talism, has a lot to be said for it in comparison with undemo­cratic po­liti­cal
power, given modern conditions.
But this also means we are nearly back to square one, with the serious
prob­lems raised by demo­cratic social power completely unresolved. Liberal
democracy has in­ven­ted a form of power whose coerciveness is more or less
invisible ­because it is more or less hidden by its constitutive separations, not
least the (formal) separation between po­liti­cal and economic power. This is
conducive to the formation of moral subjectivity u ­ nder modern conditions,
what­ever may be said of the character or content of the moral subjectivity
thereby formed, and yet all of Tocqueville’s worries about conformism and
despotism over the soul are still with us, as are the concerns ­later raised by
thinkers in the Marxist tradition about the conquest of social power by the
power of capital. This balance sheet, with both the positives and the nega-
tives on it, is worth bearing in mind as we examine the Chinese alternative
to the modern Western organ­ization of separations.
The Chinese way, both traditional and current, is not the organ­ization of
separations but the exact opposite—­t hat is, the prevention of all separations
except one. The one separation granted legitimacy is that between ruler and
ruled, such that ideally all power is concentrated in the hands of the ruler
and, again ideally, the ruler is perfectly good, with the result that the ruler
has the ideal combination of might and right to rule over All u ­ nder Heaven
(tianxia) and to keep the entire realm in a state of ­wholesome unity. Formu-
lated at this level of abstraction, the Chinese way of organ­izing po­liti­cal life
belongs to a general model that is found to one degree or another in all
predemo­cratic socie­ties.27 Where China is distinctive, as compared with the
West, is both in the extent to which this unity is carried and in the way it is
conceived and implemented.
The fundamental fact that had given shape to traditional Chinese po­
liti­cal culture ever since the First Emperor’s unification of the Warring
States is the absence of competing jurisdictions, such as existed in feudal
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 235

Eu­rope in the form of “the parcellization of sovereignty”28 and in the modern

West in the form of the separation of powers. Throughout its exceptionally
long continued existence, China has, consistently and without truly subver-
sive interruption, found it both necessary and pos­si­ble to or­ga­nize itself as a
highly centralized bureaucratic state. The partially fraught relationship be-
tween emperor and imperial bureaucracy that came to define the Confucian-­
Legalist state from the Han dynasty onward does not represent even a minor
departure from this pattern, being a m ­ atter not of competing jurisdictions
but rather of distinct parts of the same central state authority. Nor was this
pattern interrupted by periodic strug­gles over dynastic succession, for ­t hese
­were fought over the same undivided sovereignty in the person of the emperor
and thus dynastic change kept constant the same appeal to the Mandate of
Heaven and rested on largely the same imperial-­bureaucratic institutional
arrangement.
The effects of the unbroken existence of a highly centralized bureaucratic
state on Chinese po­liti­cal culture cannot be overstated. One of t­ hese effects
is the overwhelming importance of state and officialdom, both as a center of
po­liti­cal power and as an apparatus of private appropriation—­perhaps com-
parable in some ways to the ancien régime in France but even more unre-
strained thanks to the absence of competing jurisdictions. Another effect, no
less distinctive, is the ideological cohesion of the intelligent­sia, especially the
scholar-­official class, with the state. In the absence ­either of horizontally com-
peting jurisdictions, such as t­ hose presided over by the Roman emperor and
the papacy, or largely even of vertically divided in­de­pen­dent po­liti­cal forces,
such as the estates, the traditional Chinese intelligent­sia was not formed by
division among and attachment to competing jurisdictions or po­liti­cal forces
from which they could receive backing and protection; unsurprisingly, it was
not known for even a moderate mea­sure of corporate freedom and in­de­pen­
dence. ­These effects, or ele­ments of traditional Chinese po­liti­cal culture,
among ­others, have lasted in one way or another to this day. They thus make
up the Chinese way of organ­izing po­liti­cal life, both past and, to a substan-
tial degree, pre­sent.
The traditional name of this Chinese way is dayitong—­the ­Great Unity,
or, perhaps more suggestively, the G ­ reat Oneness—­the oneness not only of
ruler but also of his rule’s moral and cosmological basis and of its mecha-
nism of implementation, entailing as well the oneness of culture and ide-
236 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

ology, of territory, and of All u

­ nder H ­ eaven.29 Part of this oneness is a degree
of unity of ideological power (chiefly Confucianism, as propagated by the
scholar-­official class) and po­liti­cal power (of the emperor, following essen-
tially Legalist princi­ples) unheard of in the history of Eu­rope, where, for ex-
ample, the Catholic Church maintained for a very long time a far more in­de­
pen­dent ideological power.30 Oneness need not mean a c omplete lack of
differences, but differences, unlike what ­today comes ­under the (liberal)
rubric of diversity or pluralism, can be or­ga­nized into a benign state of har-
mony only when subjected to the ­Great Unity. Only then does it make sense
to conceive of the perfect society, as the Chinese tradition did, in terms of
the oneness of well-­being called Universal Harmony (datong), with no one
left out of the Harmony and no one deviating from its Way. At the center of
it all is the virtuous and Heaven-­appointed ruler (tianzi, son of heaven), who
is the perfect embodiment of the oneness of All ­under Heaven and its all-­
powerful caretaker. With the right ruler at the center and as the rallying
point, all is well u­ nder Heaven.31
This conception belongs to China’s checkered, (ideologically) largely Con-
fucian past, with the ideal of unity or oneness informing all aspects of gov-
ernment and yet more often than not compromised and even betrayed by a
recalcitrant real­ity in which we repeatedly encounter rulers who are more like
tyrants than sages, conditions of apparent unity that are less harmonious than
forcibly imposed, and, unsurprisingly, regular breakdowns of order necessi-
tating renewal through dynastic change.32 What is all the more remarkable is
that it is none other than this manifestly less than perfect G ­ reat Unity that
has helped keep China together as an empire—or what is sometimes called
a civilizational state—­despite all its other failures. This paramount task of
keeping China together as an undivided jurisdiction is still with us and as
challenging as ever. It is therefore not surprising that much of the legacy of
the ­Great Unity is still cherished—­not only on the strength of a long tradi-
tion of ideas and practices but more importantly b ­ ecause it answers to a
still-­ongoing paramount need.
This is also why China’s po­liti­cal system ­today owes a ­g reat deal to this
legacy and still needs to draw on it. With its belief in a one-­party po­liti­cal
system and its claim to being the only suitable party, the CCP is carry­ing on
the tradition of the ­Great Unity. Its central role in China, if not for All ­under
Heaven, is to provide a new oneness. But this new oneness is new b ­ ecause it
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 237

has had to adapt to modern conditions and can only do so through the se-
lective use of separations. ­Under social conditions that have come to mark a
progressively modern China, the new oneness has to exist in tandem and ten-
sion with the irresistible need for separations. The resulting contradictions
and need for reasonably stable balancing acts are unlikely ever to go away.
As a ­matter of fact, if we look at the separations on Manent’s list, we see that
the separation of professions, or division of ­labor, and the separation of facts
and values, or science and life, have already become well established in China,
especially in the era of reform—­notwithstanding the recent reiteration of “sci-
entific socialism” with special reference to the CCP’s new doctrine of “so-
cialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era.” At the other end of the
spectrum, however, the separation of powers is still anathema, a separation
that cannot be embraced without ­doing vio­lence to the newly adapted
oneness.
If ­t here is any significant room for maneuver short of such vio­lence, it is
to be found with regard to the separation of civil society and state. As a m
­ atter
of fact, steps have already been taken in this regard, and ­t hese involve espe-
cially the formal separation of the economic and po­liti­cal domains. No one
can suggest that this formal separation is anywhere near complete in China
or even that it can ever become complete as long as the CCP maintains its
po­liti­cal prerogatives over the economy. Complete or not, the separation of
the economic and po­liti­cal domains is only part of the separation of civil
society and the state. For civil society cannot truly separate itself from the
state ­until it becomes morally in­de­pen­dent from the state. This means that
civil society can come into its own only when it acquires all the liberties of
the moderns and does so in terms of a moral value that gives protection and
meaning to what are other­w ise only de facto liberties. When this happens,
China may also be said to have accomplished its near equivalent of the
Western separation of church and state.
What is desperately needed in China t­ oday is just this separation of civil
society and the state. As I have already discussed, the CCP, u ­ nder circum-
stances of its own making, is no longer able to carry out the moral socializa-
tion of the populace by means of the old model of compulsory deference to
the central authority’s moral leadership. ­There is no better, and no more dis-
turbing, proof of this than the fact that postcommunist China has been un-
dergoing a profound crisis of moral subjectivity, with no end in sight.
238 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

This crisis is a compelling reason to call into question the moral subordi-
nation of civil society to the state, which in effect means that civil society can
barely exist, let alone mature over time. One consequence of this subordina-
tion is that the CCP continues to place the entire burden of ensuring the
moral integration of society on itself when this is neither necessary nor ef-
fective any longer, thanks to the socially decentering effects of the reform. It
is high time the party allowed civil society to play a role it has itself patently
failed to play all by itself. This need not mean that the CCP should completely
give up its moral leadership. We know this is not g­ oing to happen, as the
party’s exclusive hold on po­liti­cal power requires its continued assertion of
moral leadership—­not only the rhetorical pretense to such leadership but also
sufficient institutional real­ity of it to make one-­party po­liti­cal leadership plau-
sible and palatable. Why not share the role of moral socialization with civil
society, then? But this would require giving civil society the moral in­de­
pen­dence and freedom it needs and, of course, allowing it to properly exist
through genuine separation from the state in the first place. This is the form
that the contradiction between oneness and separations takes t­ oday, and
thus a successful balancing act is one that must secure the separation of civil
society from the state without entailing the one separation that the CCP ­w ill
decidedly not accept—­t hat is, the separation of powers. The question is
­whether this is at all pos­si­ble, especially as part of democratic preparation.

Priority of the Good and the Accommodation

of Liberty

I see no reason why this balancing act is not pos­si­ble in princi­ple. ­There is
nothing in such a possibility that exceeds the room for compromise and ad-
justment that are the stuff of major yet stability-­preserving po­liti­cal change.
This possibility itself has a normative dimension in that, other ­t hings being
equal, its normative attractiveness would make its realization more likely, es-
pecially at the hands of a leadership with foresight, decisiveness, and pru-
dence. It is this normative dimension we can usefully explore.
Recall that the scenario I am envisioning is that the CCP is not g­ oing to
immediately take the radical step of introducing the separation of powers
and thereby bringing its own mono­poly of po­liti­cal power to an end; hence
a scenario short of (po­liti­cal) democracy. The oneness of po­liti­cal powers is
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 239

the only oneness left over from the tradition and from the legacy of commu-
nist rule that cannot and ­will not be abandoned without a radical change of
heart. The possibility I am putting forward acknowledges this safeguarding
of tradition and the status quo. It acknowledges therefore that the CCP’s
desire to maintain its mono­poly of po­liti­cal power requires, as an essential
condition for its plausibility and as a symbol of continuity, that it preserve
also a significant part of its moral leadership. What I a m arguing, on this
premise, is that the CCP must relinquish the rest of its moral leadership in
­favor of a civil society that w ­ ill thereby enjoy a moral in­de­pen­dence backed
up by morally affirmed liberties, not just the de facto liberties that are now
available. This w ­ ill allow civil society to come into its own for the first time
­under communist rule, taking over the responsibility for a major portion of
moral socialization for the populace and thereby bringing to an end the
crisis of moral subjectivity that the party has proved incapable of solving on
its own. Given that all of this is meant to happen without incurring the
separation of powers and posing a real challenge to the CCP’s continued
po­liti­cal leadership, the newly empowered civil society must for its part re­
spect and be seen to re­spect the po­liti­cal leadership of the party and must
therefore act with restraint not only po­liti­cally but also in exercising its
share of moral leadership. Its self-­understanding and mode of operation
must be consistent with ­t hese conditions. In return, civil society w ­ ill have a
significant share of moral leadership and, on the strength of this responsi-
bility, ­w ill gradually become an in­de­pen­dent source of moral socialization
and hence of social cohesion and stability. This ­w ill be China’s version, as it
­were, of the separation of church and state.
If something like this scenario is ­going to work, it must involve the real
moral in­de­pen­dence of civil society and its exercise of (partial) moral lead-
ership. This means, in turn, that civil society must no longer be ­under the
moral leadership of the CCP: it must be a morally in­de­pen­dent force, for only
in this capacity w ­ ill it be able to play that essential role of moral socializa-
tion and social cohesion for which the systemic in­effec­tive­ness of the party
makes another player necessary. How can this be squared with the CCP’s
preservation of a major part of moral leadership? Remember that the need
for the party to retain part of its moral leadership is po­liti­cal, not moral, in
that this need is dictated by its continued mono­poly of po­liti­cal leadership.
It follows that what is left of the party’s moral leadership must be restricted
240 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

to this supporting role—­perhaps a largely symbolic role—­for its still-­exclusive

po­liti­cal leadership.
Given that the CCP is ­going to maintain its exclusive po­liti­cal leadership
anyway, its correlative claim to a part of moral leadership ­w ill not be a bad
­t hing. For po­liti­cal power needs to be held up to proper moral standards, all
the more so when that power is the preserve of one po­liti­cal party. What better
way, u­ nder the circumstances, to hold the ruling party to moral account than
to do so immanently by the moral standard the CCP sets for itself in exer-
cising what remains of its moral leadership? And what better agents to un-
dertake such supervision than the morally (more) ­free and in­de­pen­dent citi-
zens who make up a robust civil society ­after first overcoming the crisis of
moral subjectivity?
This is a ­matter, then, of the CCP shoring up its po­liti­cal leadership with a
moral rationale and thus opening up a space for immanent public criticism.
From this use of moral leadership an extremely impor­tant upshot follows, for
the very fact that the moral justification is meant to impart legitimacy to a
one-­party po­liti­cal leadership is enough to determine that it is not ­going to be
couched primarily in terms of, say, right—­t hat is, what Kant calls “the
formal condition of outer freedom”—­“outer” in the sense of be­hav­ior affecting
o­ thers.33 ­After all, no doctrine of right would single out the CCP, or any other
actor for that ­matter, in advance as being alone qualified for po­liti­cal leader-
ship. One can therefore be sure instead that this justification ­will give pride
of place to (what in philosophical parlance is called) the good, consisting of
(worthy) ends and requisite virtues, such as, in China ­today, popu­lar societal
and national goals along with the moral, po­liti­cal, and administrative virtues
supposedly uniquely possessed by the party for their accomplishment. To be
sure, within the scenario I a m talking about, liberties of the moderns w ­ ill
have been raised to the level of a m oral value and protected as such. But
freedom as a value, and right understood in terms of serving to make liber-
ties equally accessible to all, ­will not be suitable for carry­ing the burden of
moral justification needed for a one-­party po­liti­cal leadership.
The only suitable paradigm is one that in con­temporary philosophical
jargon goes by the name of priority of the good. It ­will have become clear that
such priority, in China’s case, is made necessary, above all, by the po­liti­cal
priority, as it w­ ere, of the CCP. I believe, however, that t­ here is some virtue
in this priority of the good that goes beyond the sheer current necessity (more
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 241

fait accompli than need) of one-­party leadership. As Tocqueville and many

­after him have reminded us, demo­cratic social power has its own drawbacks.
In the pre­sent context, ­t hese drawbacks can be partly reformulated in terms
of a certain undialectical attachment to the so-­called priority of the right. It
­w ill help shed light on the issue at hand if we translate “the priority of the
right over the good” into “the priority of freedom over the good.” This trans-
lation makes sense in that right exists not as an end in itself but to make pos­
si­ble the equal freedom of each and all to pursue their legally permissible
ends as they see fit.34 Thus, to give priority to the right over the good is to
give priority to permissible individual freedom over any good, individual or
especially collective, that might other­w ise be used to override such freedom.
It is not my view that the priority of the good as exemplified in the (hy­po­
thet­i­cal Chinese) scenario I have just proposed is necessarily superior to the
(largely Western) priority of the right. I nevertheless think ­there is one impor­
tant ­thing to be said in its ­favor, if only ­because it is dialectical in a way that
the priority of the right as normally construed is not. This proposal, making a
virtue of Chinese po­liti­cal real­ity rather than being a mirror of it, is dialectical
in the sense that, while giving a privileged status to the good, it nevertheless
manages to allow the existence of liberties of the moderns, understood as
resting on a morally affirmed value, and hence also the existence of a morally
in­de­pen­dent civil society. It is dialectical, especially, in that it does not reduce
the liberties to the good (that is, treat the liberties as a mere function of the
good—of the requirement to provide the subjective room needed to act and be
in accordance with the good) or derive them from the good. The liberties re-
tain their in­de­pen­dent value even if the good is given even higher value and
even if some tension is expected to arise as a result. In comparison, the pri-
ority of the right as typically understood, and, by implication, of freedom as
well, is devoid of dialectical tension in that it tends to privilege freedom in
such a way that the good ends up as ­little more than the pluralistic outcomes
of individual f­ ree choice subject only to very permissive side constraints. ­After
all, freedom can have priority only if it is not, in turn, determined by ante-
cedent ends imposed by o ­ thers, especially the state. The prob­lem is that when
freedom is so conceived, it becomes, in effect, freedom from the good—­that is,
from any antecedent good that is not itself the upshot of prior ­free choice.
It is b
­ ecause of this absence of dialectical tension—­and, b ­ ehind it, of a
dialectical conception of the w ­ hole ­matter—­t hat a certain species of liberal
242 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

thinkers can speak of “the end of history,” although they appear to have gone
into hiding in the face of seeming empirical evidence to the contrary. But
­t here is a sense in which the very doctrine of priority of the right (and, by
implication, of freedom) posits the end of history—­a normative end, and po-
tential ending, of history conceived as a realistic utopia fully capable of coming
true even if it has yet to do so. In this realistic utopia, to borrow Rawls’s
terminology, a permanent condition of reasonable pluralism w ­ ill obtain in
which reasonable comprehensive doctrines—­t hat is, to simplify, reasonable
conceptions of the good life—­w ill coexist in peace and mutual re­spect on
the basis of a s hared commitment, made pos­si­ble by an overlapping con-
sensus, to ethically neutral princi­ples of justice and right, which ­w ill perma-
nently keep society stable for the right reasons by taking permanent pre­ce­
dence over all comprehensive doctrines.35 Such a result, if it comes to pass,
may bring passion-­fi lled strife ­under control, but it risks ­doing so at the cost
of putting an end to humanity’s moral history (as distinct from its history of
desire and conflict of desire), in that a permanent priority of the right and
freedom w ­ ill forever put the good—­a ll the discursive and other practices
informed by it, commendable or condemnable—in its place.
If one is rightly wary of talk of the end of history, t­ here seems to me no
better general reason for this wariness than the inherent dialectical tension
between freedom and the good. I w ­ ill go so far as to suggest that the ability
to make room for such tension and thereby to rule out in princi­ple all nor-
mative, utopian conceptions of the end of history is a necessary condition
for the vitality of any moral-­political order.
­There is l­ ittle doubt that freedom must figure prominently in such uto-
pian conceptions, if only ­because ­human beings are irreducibly agents.
What makes liberal conceptions of utopia distinctive is that freedom, justly
distributed and amply aided by prosperity, alone seems truly essential in
them, with the good being a function of exercises of freedom (within law).
This predominance of freedom threatens, however, to undermine the very
raison d’être of freedom, even as viewed from within liberalism itself. For
freedom, any freedom whatsoever, makes sense only if it is understood as
being directed, in one way or another and in some impor­tant sense, ­toward
the good, and, crucially, the good that is thus necessary for freedom can, in
turn, make sense only if it is not tautologically reduced to freedom by being
relegated to a mere function or upshot of permissible exercises of freedom.
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 243

Conversely, the good makes sense only if it is pursued in freedom, and, cru-
cially, the freedom thus presupposed can maintain its integrity only if it is
not assimilated to the good by being treated as no more than the leeway
needed to do the good or be good. Th ­ ere seems no better way to pin down
this relation between freedom and the good than in (admittedly rather pon-
derous) terms of the dialectical coprimordiality of freedom and the good.
This coprimordiality is dialectical b ­ ecause, and in the sense that, given the
equally fundamental status of freedom and the good from the start, t­ here
exists an irresolvable tension at the heart of any conception of a nearly ideal
­human society: a constitutive antinomy within utopia, one might say, and a
definitive mark of the intrinsic implausibility of all utopias and, in terms of
their projected realization, of the end of history.
It is thus not difficult to appreciate the temptation in utopian, and even in
merely normative, constructions to remove the irremovable antinomy that
at once underlies and preempts all utopias. One way, the liberal way, to suc-
cumb to this temptation is to attenuate the good in f­ avor of freedom. The
other way, characteristic of all predemo­cratic and nondemo­cratic utopias, in-
cluding classical Confucianism and Maoism, is to demote freedom in ­favor
of the good. Not surprisingly in view of the antinomian character of utopia,
both undialectical constructions make utopia ripe for dystopia—in the form
of oppression (in the name of the good) in one case, and of nihilism (in the
name of freedom) in the other.
One must not pretend, however, that t­ here is no price to be paid for avoiding
oppression by leaving the good completely unsupported by coercion. As Ma-
nent says of the modern liberal state, “The law permits the citizen to be in-
different to all the goods that have been the object of the h ­ uman pursuit; and
­little by ­little it ­orders that indifference. How is it pos­si­ble to believe that what
the law, which is naturally awe-­inspiring, allows is truly wrong?” In this way,
“by subtle, indirect but infallible means, authorization comes ever more to
resemble an injunction and has the same effects.”36 Yet ­t here is nothing like
unwisely applied coercion—­but how impossibly difficult it is to apply coer-
cion wisely!—to empty even what is most as­suredly good of all meaning and
turn it into its own mockery. And that is presumably why Iris Murdoch, one
of the most trenchant modern defenders of the priority of the good, ends
up treating this priority (which she calls sovereignty) as a moral doctrine
rather than a po­liti­cal one. This leads her to support what she calls po­liti­cal
244 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

liberalism, meaning by it a liberalism applicable to the po­liti­cal sphere and,

to be precise, a liberalism that we should take to be neutral between its clas-
sical and Rawlsian po­liti­cal versions. 37 The impor­tant ­t hing is that Mur-
doch, having presented a most eloquent case for the priority of the good, is
prepared to confine it to the moral sphere and thereby deprive her doctrine
of all (coercive) teeth. But she has a point. Yet Manent also has a point, and
it would be a gross oversimplification to s­ ettle the issue completely in terms
of picking the lesser of two evils. What the combination of Murdoch and
Manent—­one erring on the side of freedom despite the good and the other
(in the quoted passage) gravitating in the opposite direction ­because of the
good—­shows, rather, is that it is not given to the h ­ uman condition to bring
freedom and the good into perfect harmony.
It is just this upshot that brings home the defining antinomy of utopia
and hence the sheer impossibility of any utopia coming true and thereby
marking the so-­called end of history—­t he impossibility of a condition that
we have reason to treat both as so­cio­log­i­cally final and as ethically the last
word. The closest we can hope to get to utopia is precisely by facing up to
this impossibility and learning how to preserve and make the best of the
tension between freedom and the good.
This tension—­irresolvable tension—­repels and makes futile all attempts
at any reasonable equilibrium. John Skorupski, for example, pre­sents what
in some re­spects is a quite persuasive case against the one-­sided under-
playing of the good in po­liti­cal liberalism, but he makes a typical m­ istake of
defenders of the good by proceeding as if t­ here ­were such a t­ hing as getting
the balance right between freedom and the good. For him the correct bal-
ance is found in classical liberalism, especially that of J. S. Mill. This correct
balance, being liberal, maintains permissive neutrality (the state refraining
from the use of coercive means to help or hinder any reasonable comprehen-
sive doctrine). At the same time, qua classical liberalism, it rejects persuasive
neutrality (the state holding itself back even from the use of argument and
education to further what it deems better comprehensive doctrines).38 But
who is to decide which comprehensive doctrines are better? What if ­those
subscribing to the reasonable comprehensive doctrines not so favored choose
to disagree and take exception to the use of public resources to promote what
in their eyes are simply the preferences ­either of the majority or of a s elf-­
appointed elite? ­Isn’t the very fact of reasonable pluralism—if one accepts
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 245

this fact (on what grounds would one reject it?)—an ineradicable (except
by illiberal means) source of embarrassment to the very notion of priority of
the good, even if a moderate, classical liberal one? At the end of the day, one
does not have to be a Rawlsian po­liti­cal liberal to have serious doubts about
taking any dogmatic position in ­favor of priority of the good. ­There simply
i­ sn’t a correct such position, and, thus, pitting classical liberalism against po­
liti­cal liberalism in the one-­sided way Skorupski does runs the distinct risk
of getting badly out of step with the ever more permissive times we live in.
This does not mean that we can avoid taking a position, for in any po­
liti­cal arrangement we are bound to have priority (and, as one might also
say, hegemony, in a somewhat Gramscian sense) e­ ither of freedom or of the
good. The only t­ hing we can do in compensation is to see this one-­sidedness,
this hegemonic settlement, for what it is and seek to bring the subordinated
notion, w ­ hether freedom or the good, insistently back into the moral and
po­liti­cal culture. For, without giving the subordinate notion its due, or at
least a significant mea­sure of its due, the dominant notion itself ­will be on the
verge of ceasing to make sense, with all of its practical consequences.
If I w
­ ere to draw one general implication from this line of thinking that is
especially relevant for thinking about the moral f­ uture of China, I would say
that as the country learns to make its social and po­liti­cal life more ­free, it
would be well advised to proceed dialectically and with as much openness
as is prudent ­under the circumstances. It would be able, that is, to make gen-
uine and sober moral pro­gress only by allowing a larger place for the good
than is found in liberal socie­t ies and by simultaneously developing a cog-
nizance of the irreducibility of freedom sorely lacking in its own tradition.
In a nutshell, then, I believe that the relation of freedom and the good is es-
sentially dialectical, that therefore neither freedom nor the good commands in-
trinsic priority, and, furthermore, that this rules out all fixing of the relation
between freedom and the good in terms of some kind of reasonable equilibrium,
let alone priority. The relation between freedom and the good is a riddle of the
­human moral and po­liti­cal life to which ­there is no right answer. Why, then, do
I appear to f­ avor the priority of the good in the context of China t­ oday? The
first part of my answer is precisely that neither freedom nor the good has in-
trinsic reason to enjoy priority. But why give priority to the good, then, since it
too does not enjoy intrinsic priority? The answer, the second part of my answer,
is that this happens to be the way China is (and has been for a long time) and
246 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

t­ here is no realistic prospect of changing it in the near ­future. What I am sug-

gesting, then, is that the question of priority regarding the relation between
freedom and the good cannot be determined a priori and must therefore be
treated as a m ­ atter of making the best of a c ultural and po­liti­cal real­ity and
guarding against suppression of the dialectical tension within what­ever pri-
ority happens to obtain. I have settled for the priority of the good in the Chi-
nese context for this reason alone. I therefore treat it as a culturally constituted,
and hence a contingent, priority rather than a philosophically grounded one.
If this understanding of the ­matter is plausible, it may provide a way of
aligning the importance of liberty and civil society in China not only with a
still highly power­ful moral-­cultural tradition of priority of the good but also
with the po­liti­cal leadership of the CCP. It ­w ill not resolve the contradiction,
of course, b ­ ecause it cannot, and we have just seen that it is a good t­ hing it
cannot. What is doable and is impor­tant to do is to be cognizant of the con-
tradiction and approach it dialectically. This means, in the Chinese context,
given the culturally entrenched priority of the good (and the po­liti­cal pri-
macy of the CCP), that it is freedom whose importance we must constantly
be reminded of and whose place we must seek to enlarge and jealously pro-
tect, within what in a dialectical conception o ­ ught to be reasonably flexible
par­ameters of the priority of the good.
One way to think concretely and constructively about how to achieve this
objective is to take a leaf out of Skorupski’s book but use it and adapt it in a
dialectical spirit. I have in mind his distinction between permissive and per-
suasive neutrality and his characterization of classical liberalism in terms of
permissive neutrality uncoupled from persuasive neutrality. The Chinese
state has shown itself to be far from averse to permissive neutrality with re-
gard to many de facto liberties. What it has yet to do is to turn this practice
into avowed permissive neutrality. Clearly a degree of avowed permissive neu-
trality as extensive as that in classical liberalism would completely under-
mine China’s culturally constituted priority of the good. But a substantial
amount of avowed permissive neutrality is both necessary and pos­si­ble. At
the same time, one may expect the Chinese state to abjure persuasive neu-
trality with more confidence and vigor than can be true of classical liberalism.
But, as in the case of the classical liberal state, the means of persuasion em-
ployed, to be effective, must be plausible, and, to be plausible, they must be
compatible with a substantial amount of freedom—­t hat is, they must work
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 247

in conjunction with a good deal of permissive neutrality. Taken together,

mea­sures such as ­t hese ­w ill not turn the CCP into an unwitting practitioner
of classical liberalism; far from it. But they w ­ ill take China a long way ­toward
creating a new moral and po­liti­cal culture that is more coherent and more
resonant with the socioeconomic real­ity on the ground.
What about the fact, however, that this dialectical way of h ­ andling the
contradiction between freedom and the good—by accentuating that which
is not given structural priority—­will, as long as the CCP remains in power,
stop short of the separation of powers? It is certainly arguable that this sepa-
ration is a necessary condition for democracy in the sense of modern repre-
sentative government, although separation of powers may also serve as a way
of deflecting democracy. But a more open and more basic question for China
is not w
­ hether it can achieve democracy without separation of powers but
rather ­whether democracy (with or without the separation of powers) must
mean the abandonment of the Chinese moral-­cultural tradition of priority
of the good. Th­ ere is ­little doubt that ­t hose who advocate Confucian liberal
democracy of one kind or another have paid the price of giving up the Con-
fucian priority of the good and subjecting what­ever Confucianism remains
to the liberal priority of the right. They all consider the price worth paying
and, in the case of ­wholehearted endorsement of priority of the right, do not
even think of it as price. But objectively, in the sense of a condition, it is a
price. The fundamental question is ­whether this is a price that has to be paid
for democracy—­t hat is, ­whether what appears to be a condition, or a favor-
able condition, is a necessary condition. To be more precise, however, liberty
must be considered apart from democracy in this context, for, as I have ar-
gued, liberty, not just de facto liberty but even valorized liberty, can be dia-
lectically accommodated within a society marked by priority of the good. So
the question, reformulated, is w ­ hether the Chinese moral-­cultural tradition
of priority of the good is a price that has to be paid for democracy.

Democracy in Society, State, and Culture: China

and the West

I have now reached a p oint at which it seems especially appropriate to

make fully explicit something that should have emerged already but has yet
to be named: demo­cratic culture. Adding this concept to my account ­w ill
248 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

also make it pos­si­ble for me to conclude with a schematic yet relatively com-
prehensive comparison of China and the West in terms of democracy.
I have, following Tocqueville, distinguished between two loci of democ-
racy, as it w ­ ere: society and the state. As far as society is concerned, it w
­ ill be
recalled that I have, following Karl Marx, identified a species of social in­
equality, in Marx’s sense, that is perfectly compatible with social equality in
Tocqueville’s. Indeed the coexistence of Tocquevillian social equality and
Marxian social in­equality is the hallmark of bourgeois society and a major
source of the contradictions plaguing the bourgeois demo­cratic state.
To t­ hese loci of democracy it is necessary to add a t hird: culture. Thus
democracy can be located in society, in the state, and in culture, and, cor-
respondingly we can speak of demo­cratic society (or societal democracy),
demo­cratic polity or state (or po­liti­cal democracy), and demo­cratic culture.
Demo­cratic culture, in turn, can be a feature of society or of the po­liti­cal
sphere. In the former case, we have what may be called a demo­cratic societal
culture, and, in the latter, a demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture. A demo­cratic soci-
etal culture comprises the ethos, values, and habits of the heart that inform
what Tocqueville calls equality of conditions in society. Obviously t­ here
cannot be a demo­cratic society without a demo­cratic societal culture growing
from it and reinforcing it. A demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture stands in the same
relation to a demo­cratic polity as a demo­cratic societal culture does to a demo­
cratic society. Furthermore, just as one demo­cratic society may differ from
another and sometimes markedly, so the same is true of demo­cratic state
forms. But all demo­cratic po­liti­cal cultures have in common the core values,
beliefs, and understandings that are not only produced by but also constitu-
tive of the demo­cratic practices and institutions in the po­liti­cal domain.
Where does China stand, as compared with the West, in terms of this
breakdown of the analytically distinguishable yet operationally interdepen-
dent loci of democracy?
With regard to democracy in society, I have been at pains to show that
China has reached a level of equality of conditions, in Tocqueville’s sense, that
is essentially comparable to, if understandably somewhat less advanced than,
what is generally found in modern Western countries. China has done so by
undertaking truly transformative economic reform and joining the global
cap­i­tal­ist order, especially since its induction into the World Trade Organ­
ization. By exactly the same token, China has developed a new kind of social
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 249

in­equality, in Marx’s sense, that is specific to the cap­i­tal­ist mode of produc-

tion. That such in­equality is more pronounced in China than in developed
Western socie­ties is, to a large degree, a function of China’s place in the global
value chain. Thus, all t­ hings considered, as far as democracy in society is con-
cerned, China finds itself in the same paradigmatic condition as the West
and f­ aces largely the same contradiction between Tocquevillian social equality
and Marxian social in­equality. In other words, it is true of both China and the
West that society is demo­cratic in one sense but undemo­cratic in another—
a major source, in roughly equal mea­sure, of the hopes and aspirations and
of the strug­gles and disappointments in both places.
China differs conspicuously and profoundly from the West, however,
with re­spect to democracy in the po­liti­cal state. All the Western countries
have successfully made the Tocquevillian move from societal democracy to
po­liti­cal democracy. This is one of the most impor­tant ­factors, though by no
means the only one, that help impart an exceptionally high degree of under­
lying stability to their po­liti­cal order. China, already largely a demo­cratic so-
ciety (in Tocqueville’s sense), has yet to achieve this fit between society and
polity, and ­until it does it w ­ ill continuously face—in ways, it is worth em-
phasizing, unique to a demo­cratic society unmatched by a demo­cratic po­
liti­cal form—­the specter of regime instability and even discontinuation. Thus
China’s po­liti­cal challenge is both Marxian, in terms of social in­equality co-
existing in tension with social equality, and Tocquevillian, with regard to
the prudentially necessary extension of societal to po­liti­cal democracy. By
contrast, the advanced po­liti­cal democracies of the West have largely resolved
the latter challenge, especially since the end of World War II, and, in this
sense, their politics is simpler, safer, and less daunting.
When it comes to democracy in culture, it is essential to bear in mind the
distinction between demo­cratic societal culture and demo­cratic po­liti­cal cul-
ture. It should come as no surprise that a d emo­cratic societal culture has
evolved in reform-­era China in tandem with a rising demo­cratic society. In-
deed, it would be difficult to distinguish, in practice, between a demo­cratic
society and a demo­cratic societal culture, for they evolve together as only con-
ceptually distinct components of a phenomenologically indivisible pro­cess.
One must hasten to draw a further distinction, however. For, just as social
equality in Tocqueville’s sense can coexist with social in­equality in Marx’s in
a cap­i­tal­ist order, so in this order a demo­cratic societal culture à la Tocqueville
250 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

can be abundantly pre­sent while a demo­cratic societal culture à la Marx is

largely absent. This is exactly the case with China, its self-­professed alle-
giance to Marx notwithstanding—­and, to a lesser degree, thanks to its tra-
dition of social democracy (in Eu­rope) and liberalism (in the United States),
with the West as well, especially since the ascendency of neoliberalism.
As far as demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture is concerned, the contrast between
China and the West could not be sharper. Despite the neoliberal encroach-
ment on the Western demo­cratic state, ­t here is no doubting the continuing
vitality of a demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture in most Western states—­not least as
manifested in all manner of social movements, however ­limited their reach
and enduring success. Strictly speaking, especially for the Western world as
aw ­ hole, the uninterrupted existence of this demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture in
its pre­sent form, encompassing, among other ­t hings, both universal suffrage
and the welfare state, dates back only to the end of World War II. ­There is a
sense, however, in which this con­temporary demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture is
continuous—in one way or another, to one degree or another, which one must
take care not to exaggerate—­with its pre­de­ces­sor po­liti­cal cultures, including
­t hose of classical antiquity and the M ­ iddle Ages. Many f­ actors have contrib-
uted to t­ hese pre­de­ces­sors, not least the pervasive presence of multiple, com-
peting jurisdictions, especially in the l­ ater medieval period.39
Such competing jurisdictions have been almost completely absent from
the history of China since its unification and, unsurprisingly, so has any po­
liti­cal culture that can remotely be regarded as demo­cratic or republican.
The not uncommon imputation of germs of demo­cratic thought to Mencius is
entirely mistaken. For what Mencius very commendably defends, as a
ground even for “revolution,” is, in modern language, the right to subsis-
tence or self-­preservation rather than citizenship or po­liti­cal agency. In this
he is no more a champion of democracy or promoter of demo­cratic po­liti­cal
culture than is Thomas Hobbes, who too gives pride of place to ordinary
­people, as it w
­ ere, but only in terms of their self-­preservation—­that is, their
overwhelmingly desired protection from the fear of violent death. This is not
to decry the absence of any semblance of demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture in the
Chinese tradition but to point up the formidable challenge to China’s or-
derly demo­cratic transformation in the absence of directly useful political-­
cultural resources. If demo­cratic pro­gress is a ­matter of positive interaction
Contradictions and Arrested Transitions 251

among society, polity, and culture, then t­ here can be ­little doubt that China
is somewhat handicapped.
I see no reason, however, why a demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture cannot evolve,
if gradually and relatively slowly, on the basis of con­temporary social and po­
liti­cal conditions. It definitely can, just as a demo­cratic societal culture has
thus evolved as part of an emerging demo­cratic Chinese society. Moreover,
this new demo­cratic societal culture has gained enormously from adapting
relevant influences from outside and indeed from “creatively” reinterpreting
ele­ments of China’s own tradition. ­There is no reason why the same cannot
happen for the rise of a demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture, aided also by an already
strong and vital demo­cratic societal culture.
One condition must be satisfied, however, for a demo­cratic po­liti­cal cul-
ture can evolve in China, with or without drawing on foreign and ancient
sources, only if it is allowed to do so. This is the same condition that applies
to China’s much-­needed passage from societal democracy to po­liti­cal democ-
racy. For practical purposes, this passage, from demo­cratic society to demo­
cratic polity, and the extension of demo­cratic societal culture to demo­cratic
po­liti­cal culture are one and the same. In both cases, the necessity is strong,
as is the built-in momentum, and what it takes to answer to the necessity and
release the momentum is only for the CCP not to stand in the way but instead
to make the bold decision to undertake prudent, gradual demo­cratic reform.
Even then, ­things ­will be anything but easy and straightforward. But at least
China w ­ ill have moved beyond denial and refusal and embarked on the cru-
cial interim stage of demo­cratic preparation.
CHAPTER SIX

Demo­cratic Preparation

I HAVE TAKEN PAINS so far to show that, for China t­ oday, democracy is a
­ atter of dire necessity rather than moral luxury. The need to place my en-
m
tire discussion on a firm footing arises from an inescapable difficulty—­
that of knowing exactly, or even approximately, what to think of democracy
in a situation in which democracy is presumably pos­si­ble and desirable and
yet not a ­matter of sheer necessity. The difficulty is a ­matter of weighing the
normative and other claims of democracy against the enormous risks in-
volved in experimenting with democracy in a country as huge and com-
plex and, in impor­tant re­spects, as fragile as China if ­there is no urgent or
desperate need to undertake such an experiment.
This difficulty melts away, however, once we come to see the dire neces-
sity of democracy for China. For if this necessity is true, as I firmly believe it
is, then thinking about democracy for China has itself become a necessity.
And this intellectual necessity—or what creates it—­provides a nonarbitrary
and normatively nonindulgent point of departure for what­ever one may
go on to think and say about democracy in China. This is the case almost
regardless of one’s disposition t­ oward democracy, for all that is needed is
the additional assumption that democracy belongs to the range of accept-
able options for China. This is a normative assumption, to be sure, but one
that is weak and easy to accept. It is all one needs to be reasonably well dis-
posed ­toward democracy in the pre­sent Chinese context and to be worried
about its prospect. For ­whether one strongly likes democracy or not, and
for what­ever reasons, objective circumstances make democracy a necessity
Demo­cratic Preparation 253

that is getting closer to China with each passing de­cade, if not quite each
passing year.
Thus we have reason to think of democracy as being realistic in China—
in the sense that the parties concerned have a prudential interest in making
it happen. Alongside this prudential interest, the parties concerned also have,
unavoidably, a normative interest in thinking about how best to bring about
democracy and what kind of democracy is best suited to China’s circum-
stances as they stand at pre­sent and as they evolve. It is natu­ral, in this con-
text, to put the prudential interest and the normative interest together u ­ nder
the integral rubric of realistic utopia. I borrow this term from John Rawls but
use it rather differently. I mean it simply as a po­liti­cal vision that results from
the congruence of prudential and normative interests. H ­ ere a realistic utopia
gets off the ground u ­ nder the impetus of a prudential interest. Subsequently
it can fall short of realism by failing to attend sufficiently to the specific cir-
cumstances of Chinese society as they pertain to the orderly establishment
of democracy. It can also be faulted normatively for not being a particularly
attractive vision of democracy. But the normative criticism is plausible—­
consistent with the idea of realistic utopia in question—­only to the degree
that it is sensitive to the constraints that are placed on any normative con-
ception of democracy by the existing circumstances of China. Such circum-
stances may be expected to evolve, not least ­after the successful establishment
of democracy, in which case a dif­fer­ent, more normatively attractive concep-
tion may become realistic l­ ater.
Once we are equipped with some such notion of a realistic utopia of de-
mocracy, we w ­ ill be in a position to evaluate what the parties involved are
­doing or failing to do to bring it about. Given the special circumstances of
China, the most impor­tant actor is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), for
­unless it sees fit to lead China in orderly pro­gress ­toward democracy, such
pro­gress ­w ill be highly unlikely in the foreseeable ­f uture and all efforts to
this end made by other actors may be as costly as they are futile. But other
parties, including the citizens of China and the ­people and governments of
foreign countries, also have a stake and a more or less impor­tant role to play.
Their actions and omissions too can be assessed in terms of realism and on
normative grounds. Thus, to limit the discussion to domestic actors in this
chapter, the CCP and the citizenry of China alike lend themselves to both
prudential and normative appraisals of their actions and omissions.
254 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

I like to think, however, that, as far as the party is concerned, what is

most needed is a clear awareness of its own prudential interest in putting
China’s gradual, orderly pro­gress t­ oward democracy on its po­liti­cal agenda.
What is usually called po­liti­cal reform (around which a new, eerie silence
has descended) would be meaningful and impor­tant only if it ­were part of
such a v isionary agenda. Thus I w ould be especially inclined to fault the
CCP for failing to show this prudential interest and for laboring ­under illu-
sions that prevent its emergence. The stakes could not be higher. ­Until the
CCP develops this interest and does so with the requisite seriousness and
determination, one would have to characterize China’s prudential interest in
establishing democracy as merely a theoretical one—an interest all the par-
ties concerned o ­ ught to have in view of the real­ity on the ground—­t hat has
not yet evolved into a real and operative interest.
As far as Chinese citizens are concerned, the biggest danger is a lack of
realism of two dif­fer­ent kinds. ­Those in China who are keen to see their
country become a democracy tend all too often to dream of a positive
demo­cratic ­f uture largely derived from negating what they perceive to be
China’s undemo­cratic real­ity. They then, as part of the same move, give
their demo­cratic dream a spatiotemporal existence by identifying it more
or less with actually existing democracy in the West. By the same logic, as
increasingly happens in China, t­ hose believers who ­later find that Western
democracy does not live up to their imagination often make a U-­turn, re-
jecting democracy as fervently as they had ­earlier embraced it. In so ­doing,
they completely forget that the best case for democracy is not some exem-
plary practice of democracy in the West or anywhere e­ lse but China’s own
inescapable need for it.
If this kind of unrealism is a ­matter of what one can and cannot reason-
ably expect from democracy, t­ here is another kind of unrealism that turns a
blind eye to the po­liti­cal real­ity of China. An impor­tant aspect of this real­ity
is the scale and complexity of China as a cultural and po­liti­cal entity, which
poses a unique challenge for demo­cratic government, with no suitable and
worthy model or pre­ce­dent to follow. Another, no less impor­tant aspect of
Chinese real­ity is the sheer fact of the overwhelming power of the CCP, its
fragility notwithstanding, along with the po­liti­cal necessity that this fact im-
poses on all other actors to work with this de facto dominant force. In my
view it is foolish and foolhardy to pit democracy against the party and to
Demo­cratic Preparation 255

make the striving for democracy si­mul­ta­neously an attempt to overthrow the

party. Such a strategy e­ ither would be doomed to perpetual frustration or
would succeed in such a way as to court disaster by bringing down the only
po­liti­cal force that is capable of steering China ­toward the orderly establish-
ment of democracy. If the CCP is willing and able to lead China t­ oward de-
mocracy, on its own initiative or ­u nder pressure, it deserves a chance and
­every support to do so. What ­matters is how best to ensure basic social and
po­liti­cal stability while making demo­cratic pro­gress and, equally impor­tant,
how best to enhance rather than sweep aside the self-­protection of society in
the face of capitalism while leaving ­behind an undemo­cratic one-­party state.
The dogmatic ruling-­out of the CCP as a principal agent for achieving t­ hese
goals rather than as their intransigent obstacle is a luxury China can ill
afford.
In po­liti­cal ­matters we are not normally confronted with the morally
­simple and comfortable choice between supporting good and shunning or
resisting evil. We certainly would be ill advised to think and act in such
­simple dichotomies in China t­ oday when considering how best to further
the cause of democracy and how best to conceive of the CCP’s role in it. The
task of establishing democracy is a p o­liti­cal one, first and foremost. Mo-
rality has its place in this task, and that is why we speak of a realistic utopia,
but democracy can be successfully pursued only in the spirit of a realistic
utopia. It must be pursued with due recognition of, if not exactly re­spect for,
any relatively durable balance of power and with a w illingness to work
within par­ameters determined by this balance of power. Thus I suggest that
the only constructive way to achieve the orderly establishment of democ-
racy in China is to work for the maximal convergence of the citizens’ nor-
mative interest in having an attractive form of democracy and the CCP’s
prudential interest in developing an arrangement that gives it the best pos­
si­ble ­future it could have in a demo­cratic China. This does not mean, of
course, that the CCP does not have its own normative interest, which in any
case must be inextricably bound up with its prudential interest. It only means
that any normative vision of democracy developed by actors other than the
CCP, in their capacity as theorists or as citizens, must be carefully designed
to leave sufficient room for the possibility of its convergence with the most
impor­tant prudential interests of the party if it is to retain its credentials as
a realistic utopia.
256 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

China’s Vertical Unity

If ­t here is one interest, at once prudential and normative, where the case
for convergence is most compelling, it has to be in making sure that what­
ever democracy China develops is conducive to or at least compatible with
holding the country together and keeping its sovereignty and stability se-
cure. To appreciate what this entails, we need an idea of how the ­Middle
Kingdom, past and pre­sent, has managed to hold itself together through all
the vicissitudes of an exceptionally long, largely uninterrupted civilization.
Throughout China’s long history, the art of ruling has involved creating
and maintaining unity, preferably with harmony. Only an extremely strong
central power, one with ­great centripetal force, is capable of holding China
together and making it work in the only way it has so far known how. Thus
unity is made pos­si­ble vertically, and exclusively so, and this has been, and
still is, the single most impor­tant fact of po­liti­cal life in China. This vertical
structure of unity takes dif­fer­ent forms in traditional and communist China,
and ­t hese forms are produced and sustained differently. But the art of gov-
ernment required is the same in its reliance on vertically achieved unity. The
art of government through separation—­t hat is, horizontal separation, say, of
powers, of state and society, of the po­liti­cal and the economic, of public and pri-
vate, and, not least, of ­people into largely self-­governing moral individuals—
has been foreign to the Chinese way of making its society work and, despite
profound shifts in economic, social, and psychological real­ity in the reform
era, this has not fundamentally changed even ­today.
To obtain a clear, broad view of the continuity between pre­sent and past
and of how communist China has adapted the time-­honored formula of ver-
tical unity to new circumstances, let us first take a brief look at the traditional,
largely Confucian conception and practice of vertical unity.
It is a commonplace that the vertical structure of unity is accomplished
in traditional China through a densely woven web of hierarchical relations
at once po­liti­cal and familial.1 Preeminent among ­t hese relations from a po­
liti­cal point of view (a point of view that is distinct or discrete only at the
second-­order level, that of the observer or analyst) is the relation between
ruler and minister and, by extension, between the ruler and all his subjects.
But from the point of view of ­family and kinship (again distinct and discrete
only at the second-­order level), the pivotal relation is that between ­father and
Demo­cratic Preparation 257

son, followed by the relations between husband and wife and between older
and younger b ­ rothers. Just as the father-­son relation takes pride of place
among the relations, so filial piety (xiao), the virtue pertaining to this rela-
tion, holds the same place among the virtues. The relation between older and
younger ­brothers may be regarded as a variation on this relation, and hence
ti, the virtue of brotherly re­spect (of a younger b
­ rother for an older ­brother),
is of a piece with the virtue of filial piety. Together, as we are told near the
beginning of the Analects, “filial piety and brotherly re­spect are the root of
humanity.”2 This is echoed in the Mencius, this time applying to all four vir-
tues (ren, humanity; yi, righ­teousness; zhi, wisdom; and li, propriety): “The
actuality of humanity consists in serving one’s parents. The actuality of righ­
teousness consists in obeying one’s elder ­brother. The actuality of wisdom
consists in knowing ­these two ­things and not departing from them. The ac-
tuality of propriety consists in regulating and adorning t­ hese two ­t hings.”3
The crucial importance of the father-­son relation, along with its corre-
sponding virtue, has a lot to do with the fact that it is the strongest candi-
date for being a relation of natu­ral hierarchy. Natu­ral not only in an ordi-
nary sense but also in the deeper, cosmological sense of being sanctioned by
Heaven: “Heaven produces creatures in such a way as to provide them with
one foundation (such as parents being the foundation of men).”4 Once the
idea of Heaven-­ordained hierarchy is thus established, it can then extend to
the relation between ruler and minister. If “it is the Way of Heaven that the
son always serves his ­father,” no less is it the case that “serving the ruler is
like Earth showing re­spect to Heaven.”5 Once the ruler-­minister relation too
is so cast, it infuses the other relations with its more stringent command-­
obedience character. Affection (qin) and authority (zun) are thus perfectly
joined.
With the father-­son relation being paradigmatic in one realm and the
ruler-­minister relation in another, a homology is established between ­family
and state, which together served as the primary survival units, to use Norbert
Elias’s term, and hence, unsurprisingly, also as the primary moral units.
Kinship relations are po­liti­cal relations, and, even more impor­tant, po­liti­cal
relations are (like) kinship relations. At the head of the state stands the ruler,
who is, however, head of the state in the same way and with the same natu­ral
legitimacy as the ­father is head of the ­family. An exemplary ruler combines
the roles of ruler and f­ ather and thereby unifies the f­ amily and the state. He
258 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

operates along one vertical axis and at the same time serves as the linchpin
of all the other vertical axes. He is at the center of a hierarchically structured
totality that has never been held together in any other way.
This form of centripetal imperial rule based on the hierarchical family-­
state homology came ­under unpre­ce­dented threat from Western powers,
beginning with the Opium War, and it collapsed in 1911. What followed, in-
stead of fulfilling the promise of the newly founded republic, w ­ ere nearly
four de­cades of bloody disunity and disharmony interrupted only by the Japa­
nese invasion and a t emporarily united front against it. Thus it was that
when the communists fi­nally established the P ­ eople’s Republic of China in
1949, they set about restoring unity and harmony—­but only among the pro-
letariat and its allies, of course, while waging a ruthless strug­gle against so-­
called class enemies, who ­were seen as obstacles to the true unity and har-
mony that ­were to come with the advent of communism.6
Mao Zedong’s China did not, however, retain most of the unequal rela-
tions that had formed the unity of traditional China. Where traditional,
Confucian China had relied on the family-­state homology in maintaining a
comprehensively hierarchical set of relations, Mao’s China ­adopted a communist-­
inspired collectivism, with command-­obedience relations existing side by
side with largely equal ones. For Mao removed, with impressive if incomplete
success, all the rigidly unequal traditional relations except one. The result was
an egalitarian society, a society in which ­people ­were equal, at least roughly
so, in all re­spects but the po­liti­cal. In its new form, po­liti­cal in­equality es-
sentially meant two ­t hings. First, ­t here ­were friends and enemies, defined in
strictly class terms, and only the former, called “the p ­ eople,” constituted the
revolutionary collective, whose members ­were equal. Second, the equality
among members of the revolutionary collective was qualified by a rigorous
chain of command within the ranks of “the p ­ eople” and by the further fact
that this chain of command was meant to be based on unequal levels of po­
liti­cal consciousness (simply put, loyalty to the CCP, above all ­else), with ­those
at the top forming a v anguard whose title to rule was deemed as natu­ral,
Heaven-­ordained, and absolute as that of the imperial rulers of the past. From
­these two inequalities ­there emerged a new vertical structure consisting of the
dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie and the leadership of
the CCP over the “­people.”
Demo­cratic Preparation 259

In its quest for unity and harmony, as well as in its almost exclusive reli-
ance on vertical relations to that end, communist China shows a deep and
broad affinity with Confucian China. Nevertheless, what we find in commu-
nist China is a much less elaborate vertical structure, in two significant re­
spects. First, the homology between ­family and state has largely dis­appeared,
so that the state must carry the burden alone and po­liti­cal relations must sub-
sume or dominate familial and kinship relations. Second, inasmuch as unity
is to be achieved vertically and the only vertical relation is a po­liti­cal one,
unity can be achieved only po­liti­cally. It follows from the conjunction of ­these
two facts that the centripetal force needed to hold society together in commu-
nist China, having to do every­thing itself and d ­ oing it po­liti­cally, must be ex-
tremely power­f ul, much more power­f ul than the ruler in traditional China.7
It is (as if) according to some such logic that the entire Chinese society
has been refashioned ­u nder the CCP. Within the new vertical structure for
achieving unity and holding the country together, ­there is to be only one cen-
tripetal po­liti­cal force and that is the party. This was a prescription, to begin
with, one that had some basis not only in the Leninist pre­ce­dent but also in
the Chinese po­liti­cal tradition.8 Over time, with the CCP’s consolidation of
power and penetration into the entire social body, the prescription has been
turned into a fact that is hard to deny: only the party can save China, it used
to be said with tireless frequency, and this remains true ­today. But it is a fact
of the party’s own making.
Every­thing that happens in Chinese society must revolve around this
central po­liti­cal prescription-­fact. It is part and parcel of this prescription-­
fact that no po­liti­cal force other than the CCP and ­t hose acknowledging its
undisputed leadership must be allowed to exist. Consequently, the only le-
gitimate po­liti­cal relations are ­those that exist vertically between the party-­
state, on the one hand, and “the ­people,” on the other. All horizontal po­
liti­cal relations among “the ­people” in­de­pen­dent of the party are anathema,
and thus freedom of association is permitted only within the chain of com-
mand presided over by the party. And nothing ­else must stand in the way of
the party-­state maintaining and effectively exerting its centripetal force, and
that is why it makes sense that freedoms of speech and of the press must be
so regulated as to prohibit the expression of any public opposition to the
princi­ples and policies of the central leadership.
260 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

To the degree that this model has worked, and the degree is high with
regard to social order and economic development, China has cultivated a
firm de­pen­dency on the leadership of the CCP. ­Because such de­pen­dency
needs to be continuously reproduced, society must not be given any chance
to become in­de­pen­dent. Accordingly, the design of po­liti­cal institutions
and the manner of po­liti­cal socialization, not least the inculcation of po­
liti­cal virtues, promote de­pen­dency and discourage all forms of po­liti­cal
agency and subjectivity other than ­t hose fit for followers. It is as if a strict
moratorium has been placed on all training for capacities, virtues, and
dispositions—­and all experimentation with po­liti­cal institutions—­t hat
could one day stand Chinese society in good stead should it become neces-
sary to adopt a demo­cratic system of government. Thus China lacks the rudi-
ments of a demo­cratic or even protodemo­cratic po­liti­cal culture—­a fact that
exists in the most awkward and formidable tension with China’s no less un-
deniable need for democracy in the foreseeable f­ uture.9 In the absence of such
training, experimentation, and culture, democracy, if suddenly introduced,
could easily descend into chaos, and thus the frequently encountered cau-
tion regarding democracy that is based on fear of just such a scenario is by no
means irrational or exaggerated. Such caution is compounded by the addi-
tional fear, also not to be dismissed, that the ensuing chaos would create the
need and incentive for a new centripetal force and ideology, which could have
no guarantee of being more attractive and effective than the pre­sent one.
When I alluded to the need for demo­cratic preparation, this, then, is
what I had in mind: the need arises from entrenched deficiencies, and the
latter, in turn, are rooted in the time-­honored Chinese practice, both Con-
fucian and communist, of normatively ordering society through a structure
of almost exclusively vertical relations. Against this background, the one
­t hing most needed is to lift the moratorium as soon as pos­si­ble, but gradu-
ally and prudently.

China Needs Both Democracy and Strong

Central Authority

One of the most impor­tant reasons for proceeding gradually and pru-
dently is that China’s need for an exceptionally strong central authority—­one
with a strong centripetal force—is a very real one. The need goes far beyond
Demo­cratic Preparation 261

cultural inertia or path de­pen­dency. No doubt ­t hese ­factors play a role: think
of the administrative organ­ization of the country in terms of prefectures
and counties, the so-­called junxian zhi; the centralized and highly rigorous
ideological training and control of the bureaucracy through indoctrina-
tion based on a uniform belief and value system; and the penetration of the
central authority’s po­liti­cal ­will and ideological influence right down to the
grassroots level in informal (Confucian) or formal (communist) ways. But
they play this role in no small mea­sure as a response to what Mark Elvin
calls “the burden of size,”10 which t­ oday takes a d if­fer­ent yet no less chal-
lenging form. To begin with, the continental scale and complexity of a mas-
sively populated country makes a s trong central authority essential if the
country is to be held securely together, even with a w ell-­designed federal
system (in place of the current province-­county system). This is all the more
so if, as is now clearly the case, ­t here are centrifugal forces from within—­
driven by ethnic or po­liti­cal dynamics made intractable by current as well as
historical ­factors—­that pose clear and pre­sent threats to Chinese sovereignty
and territorial integrity. When t­ hese ­factors are considered together with
the fact that the Chinese ­people have never had much of a chance to train
and ready themselves for any type of rule other than one imposed by an ex-
ceptionally strong central authority (in its Confucian-­Legalist or communist-­
Legalist form), the resulting “exceptionalism” is perfectly plausible, though
it should not be fetishized or overly naturalized.
In this context, when I use a phrase like “an exceptionally strong central
authority,” I mean no more (and no less) than a central authority able to rise
to the challenge of an exceptionally difficult task. The task of holding the
country together in relative peace and stability used to mean, above all, the
prevention of (pre-­Qin-­style, or, suggestively, for Western readers, medieval
European-­style) feudalization. It obviously has a dif­fer­ent meaning t­ oday, but
the task remains the same. Accordingly, an exceptionally strong central au-
thority, as I use this notion, needs to be strong only in ways required by this
task, but not (necessarily) other­w ise. Thus, for example, the Confucian-­
Legalist state of the past was able to establish its authority through, among
other t­ hings, a unique amalgamation of po­liti­cal and ideological power, and
this took the form of a (nonhereditary) Confucianized bureaucracy that
helped make the central authority exceptionally strong in the requisite sense
while also checking the personal power of the emperor and making it less
262 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

strong in other senses.11 The same should apply in princi­ple to what an ex-
ceptionally strong central authority should mean ­today, with its par­tic­u­lar
strengths depending on what the task requires ­under ­today’s circumstances.
It is arguable, and this is my argument, that one of its required strengths
is none other than democracy, while the democracy required, in turn, has
its toughest test in showing precisely that not only w ­ ill it not weaken the cen-
tral authority of the state in relevant re­spects but, if implemented well, it w ­ ill
also significantly strengthen it, and in ways nothing e­ lse could, given the pres-
ence in China of a substantial and ever-­rising equality of conditions.
Thus it is understandable that a further complication of China’s situation
is precisely that it is not a democracy and therefore is vulnerable to having
its legitimacy challenged and, as a consequence, its sovereignty given less de-
finitive significance than it other­w ise would (or might) receive. One could
not put it more bluntly yet subtly and with greater accuracy than John Dunn:
“To American observers, all but inevitably, [democracy] is a category that
challenges the po­liti­cal standing of the Chinese Communist Party and the
legitimacy of all who have risen to power through it. It hovers permanently
on the brink of repudiating Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, over Tibet, over
Xinjiang, and if the ­People’s Republic ever runs into big trou­ble and regional
warlording recommences, potentially over any substantial segment of the
country.”12
It may well be that China’s not being a democracy is used, at least partly,
as a pretext for some geopo­liti­cal agenda that has nothing to do intrinsically
with the nature of China’s po­liti­cal system (or ­human rights rec­ord, for that
­matter). Even so, the very invention of this pretext and not some other is it-
self a po­liti­cal real­ity. And the geopo­liti­cal agenda itself, supposing it exists,
must have something impor­tant to do with the fact—­the awkward fact—­that
China is si­mul­ta­neously the world’s second-­largest economy, making it now
the only credible threat to American supremacy, and yet not a democracy,
like the United States. As long as this awkward fact remains, we may expect
China’s internal centrifugal forces to be reinforced in ways both direct and
subtle by “outside forces.”
When all ­t hese ­factors are put together, they give us reason to think that
China t­ oday has an even greater need for a strong central authority than it
did in imperial times. Yet, as we have just seen, China’s lack of democracy
weakens such an authority by rendering it vulnerable to an ideological and
Demo­cratic Preparation 263

po­liti­cal pressure to which it has no adequate response except by becoming

a democracy and putting itself in a position to credibly contest the meaning
and form of democracy. ­Were this only a ­matter of responding to outside
pressure, t­ here could be a case for resisting the pressure and, to the same de-
gree, strengthening the centripetal force of the leadership by putting even
more power in its hands, as is happening ­today. But, as we have seen, the sys-
temic, objective pressure for democracy within China itself is well-­nigh ir-
resistible, and t­ here is no legitimate reason to resist that.
What this means is that China ­today stands in equally undeniable need
both of democracy and of an exceptionally strong central authority. Thus, the
manner in which the latter need is being met u ­ nder the CCP requires major
change for it to be compatible with democracy, just as democracy must be so
conceived as to be compatible with the need for a central authority with the
requisite centripetal force. In this regard, the fortunes of democracy in China
are indissolubly bound up with a demo­cratic or demo­cratizing China’s ability
to hold the entire country securely together and safeguard its sovereignty and
territorial integrity.13 If this ability is lacking, one can be certain that the
demo­cratic proj­ect ­w ill be doomed, despite all the systemic, internal pres-
sures for democracy, just as no ­future central leadership (­after the pre­sent one)
­w ill be able to acquire sufficient centripetal force without the aid of demo­
cratic legitimation.14
Fortunately, the presence of and reliance on a strong central authority in
China need not be an obstacle to democracy, and can even be an asset, for a
power­f ul reason that resides in the very nature of the modern nation-­state.
No one has spelled out the affinities between the modern nation-­state, cen-
tralization, and the distinctively modern democracy with greater insight than
Elias:

Through centralization and monopolization, opportunities that pre-

viously had to be won by individuals through military and economic
force, can now become amenable to planning. From a certain point of
development on, the strug­gle for monopolies no longer aims at their
destruction; it is a strug­gle for the control of their yields, for the plan
according to which their burdens and benefits are to be divided up, in
a word, for the keys to distribution. Distribution itself, the task of the
mono­poly ruler and administration, changes in this strug­gle from a
264 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

relatively private to a p ublic function. . . . ​Permanent institutions to

control them are formed by a g reater or lesser portion of the p ­ eople
dependent on this mono­poly apparatus, and control of the mono­poly,
the filling of its key positions, is itself no longer de­cided by the vicis-
situdes of “­free” competition, but by the regularly recurring elimina-
tion contests without force of arms, which are regulated by the mono­
poly apparatus, and thus by “unfree” competition. In other words, what
we are accustomed to call a “demo­cratic regime” is formed. This kind
of regime is not . . . ​incompatible with monopolies as such and depen-
dent for its existence on the freest pos­si­ble competition. On the con-
trary it presupposes highly or­ga­nized monopolies, and it can only
come into being or survive ­under certain conditions, in a very specific
social structure at a very advanced stage of mono­poly formation.15

In this light, t­ here is no contradiction between centralization and democ-

racy; instead centralization paves the way for democracy (of the modern kind
we are discussing), and democracy is, in turn, all but dictated by centraliza-
tion. What ­matters—­what gives centralization and democracy their proper
meaning—is above all the “public” character of the po­liti­cal arrangement that
emerges at the stage of monopolization marked by the rise of the nation-­state.
Thus democ­ratization is “the phase in which a relatively ‘private’ mono­poly
becomes a ‘public’ one.”16 It is no accident that the CCP pre­sents its chosen
state form as a public mono­poly—as evident in its very name, the ­People’s
Republic. The impor­tant ­thing is that the only way to give real­ity to this self-­
presentation and make it credible is, according to Elias’s logic, to match
centralization with democ­ratization. And, as he shows, it takes a strong na-
tional mono­poly to create a truly public—­that is, democratic—­one.
In this light, too, we can pin down more precisely what it means to claim
that China requires an exceptionally strong central authority. ­There is no
mystery to such a claim, and no cause for fetishizing what is in fact an un-
derstandable need whose strength varies with circumstances. “Growth in the
‘power’ of the central functionaries is, in a society with a high division of
functions, an expression of the fact that the dependence of other groups and
classes within this society on a supreme organ of co-­ordination and regula-
tion is rising; a fall in the latter appears to us as a limitation of the former.”17
On this understanding, the exceptional concentration of power in the
Demo­cratic Preparation 265

Chinese state (“central functionaries”) is, in princi­ple, nothing but a reflection

of the exceptionally high dependence of other groups and classes on its ca-
pacity for coordination and regulation. It should be an open question w ­ hether
the exact, ­actual degree of concentration of power is roughly proportional to
the real needs for coordination and regulation or is grossly excessive with ref-
erence to such needs—­either in the sense of overreacting to real needs or
making what are other­w ise real needs unnecessarily strong. I doubt it can
plausibly be denied that China’s unique circumstances require an exception-
ally strong state of some form. But what is equally not in doubt is that this
form must be demo­cratic in order to create the plausible appearance of a
public mono­poly that makes for the legitimacy of a modern state.
Elias gives us reason to conclude, then, that an exceptionally strong state
itself need not be a prob­lem. Only such a state that acts like a private mono­
poly is, but t­ here is no reason to think that a strong state cannot acquire a
reasonably public character and find the demo­cratic means to make this
public character credible. Thus China’s demo­cratic proj­ect has its work cut
out for it by the country’s unique circumstances (as well as tradition), but the
proj­ect itself is perfectly coherent and feasible—­and, by the same token, ur-
gently necessary.

Why China Must Be Flexible in How It Designs

Its Democracy

On account of ­these unique circumstances (as well as more widely appli-

cable considerations), I believe we should mean by democracy something rea-
sonably general: a po­liti­cal regime broadly defined in terms of its fitting-
ness for—­and its conduciveness to stability and governability ­under—­equality
of conditions. ­Under such conditions, the avowable princi­ple of a legitimate
regime can only be sovereignty of the ­people—in order to let ­there be no
doubt that the regime understands itself and intends to conduct itself as a
public mono­poly. It is only by virtue of its public character that the state can
be representative of society and its authority can command the latter’s con-
sent. But a r egime’s claim to ­these characteristics—­publicness, representa-
tiveness, consent—­will only be an empty claim ­until a way is found of making
it credible to the general public. A so-­called f­ ree and fair electoral system is
one way of generating such credibility. But while it seems the most intuitively
266 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

or immediately convincing way, it need not be the only one. Credibility is

what counts, and how it is achieved is best left open to accommodate dif­fer­ent
national circumstances and allow for experimentation. Let me suggest, then,
that a regime can reasonably be considered demo­cratic if, or to the degree
that, it can satisfy the credibility condition over time with regard to the three
characteristics just mentioned. In other words, a sustainably credible claim
to publicness, representativeness, and consent makes a regime demo­cratic.18
The publicness that is part of this characterization of democracy was im-
plicit (how could it not be, since it is a truism?) in my discussion of repre­sen­
ta­tion and consent in Chapter 3. It is worth saying more about it—­and about
its relation to repre­sen­ta­tion and consent—­now that I have made it explicit.
In ­doing so, however, I ­will make a small digression in order to shed further
light on per­for­mance legitimacy in terms of publicness. The basic point is that
per­for­mance legitimacy does not qualify as legitimacy ­because it lacks pub-
licness in its rationale and in the nature of its effectiveness. It does not speak
to the publicness Elias shows to be the defining feature of a legitimate nation-­
state. This is not to deny that per­for­mance legitimacy can effectively enhance
a regime’s ability to win the conditional support of masses of ­people. But
such support is not, strictly speaking, public support—­support for the regime
qua public institution for reasons bearing on its public character as distinct
from its contingent effects on purely private interests. Such effects are not
produced by rulers who have a credible claim to public office that precedes and
authorizes their per­for­mance, and they are not produced for citizens who
have a properly public say in what per­for­mance they want, whom they con-
sider to have the title to deliver the per­for­mance, and what counts as good
per­for­mance. In the absence of publicness at both the giving and receiving
ends, per­for­mance legitimacy is nothing but an ongoing chain of private
transactions—­between a de facto ruling group that has not acquired a cred-
ible public character, on the one hand, and members of society who react to
the per­for­mance of this ruling group entirely in their capacity as private indi-
viduals, on the other. What passes for legitimacy is therefore not the affirma-
tion of public interests but only the satisfaction of private ones. If enough
private interests are sufficiently satisfied, then somehow this can give the ben-
eficiaries good enough reasons to accept their rulers. This indeed often hap-
pens, but no amount of private interest satisfaction can by itself turn a private
mono­poly into a public one. It thus could not be more obvious that de facto
Demo­cratic Preparation 267

ac­cep­tance of a regime solely on the grounds of its private role (its public role
being in question) and of its per­for­mance in this role does not translate
into legitimacy, the latter deriving its meaning from publicness alone.
This does not mean that the satisfaction of private interests is unimportant
or unrelated to the public function of government. But what ­matters for le-
gitimacy is not the satisfaction of private interests per se but the satisfaction
of such interests in ways and by agents that are publicly determined. A le-
gitimate modern state is in this sense a unique conjoining of the public and
the private. Members of such a state are more bourgeois than citizens, to be
sure, and, as such, are more preoccupied with private interests than public
ones, and with the latter mostly as conditions for the former. Thus what counts
as public and therefore stands in a direct relation to legitimacy is the public
determination of how (mostly) private interests, including liberties, oppor-
tunities, and resources, are to be satisfied in accordance with some public no-
tion of justice and then of what public goods are necessary to this end. Pub-
licness, repre­sen­ta­tion, and consent all find their meaning ­here. Small won­der,
then, that per­for­mance legitimacy can win and keep support for a regime—
as long as the per­for­mance is good enough and lasting enough—­a nd can
thereby create some semblance of real legitimacy. ­After all, modern public-
ness itself is about mostly private interests, and it rises above the private to
the level of the public only through the demo­cratic production of social
justice—by p ­ eople in their public capacity as citizens for the benefit of the same
­people qua private members of bourgeois society. This is why Elias says that
the modern demo­cratic nation-­state results from the “strug­g le for the
control of [the] yields of [monopolies], for the plan according to which their
burdens and benefits are to be divided up, in a word, for the keys to distri-
bution,” and that “distribution itself [is] the task of the mono­poly ruler and
administration.”
Thus publicness is both the essence of the modern state as a m ono­poly
formation and the feature that legitimates its all-­important distributive
function. Repre­sen­ta­tion (or representativeness) is but a d if­fer­ent way of
stating this essence of the state as a public function, the execution of which
means taking care of (being representative of) all interests in society, all pri-
vate interests, in accordance with some public notion of justice. Consent is
repre­sen­ta­tion viewed from the side of society, of the represented, of private
interests, and, through its institutionalization, it serves as a marker of the
268 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

presence of publicness or representativeness. As the latter, consent can be lit-

erally productive of “representatives” and hence representativeness of one
degree or another, and it thereby functions as an institutionalized attempt
to ensure publicness and make its existence credible to all concerned.
­These, then, are the general features a regime must have in order to govern
with fittingness and stability ­under modern equality of conditions. Such a
regime qualifies as a demo­cratic one in the reasonably strong sense of a re-
gime that is able to sustain a credible claim to publicness, representativeness,
and consent over time. Yet this standard is also reasonably open and flexible:
anything weaker would simply be too weak. As long as some such standard
is satisfied, it is advisable to leave the form of government, as well as the
manner of choosing it, open and variable in order to avoid the dogma that
the only genuine form or method of democracy is the one that prevails in its
many variations in con­temporary Western socie­ties.19 It is especially neces-
sary to do so in order to leave room for due consideration of China’s special
need for a strong state with exceptional centripetal force.
It bears repeating that the most impor­tant and daunting challenge in
pursuing demo­cratic pro­gress in China is precisely how to take care of this
need ­under a demo­cratic regime. What should not be in doubt is that the
need for a strong central authority w ­ ill be left unaltered by a change in re-
gime type. For ­t hose ­factors responsible for this need, such as the sheer size
and ethnic complexity of the population and all the attendant prob­lems of
cohesion and administration, ­will remain the same; if anything, they may
well become even more intractable, even with democracy as a new and more
effective source of legitimacy. As far as China is concerned, then, a ­v iable
democracy must be broadly conceived in terms of what­ever credible form of
publicness, representativeness, and popu­lar consent, along with such dis-
cursive public ­w ill formation as is (minimally) presupposed by ­these, is ca-
pable of making China stable and governable ­under equality of conditions.
This may well mean, in practice, that a demo­cratic China, at least in its
early stages, ­w ill need the CCP at the helm no less badly than the so-­called
authoritarian China does now. A ­ fter all, the party is the only po­liti­cal force
in China that boasts any experience of governing the country since 1949. It
has given no other po­liti­cal entity the slightest chance to emerge, let alone
establish itself, except as a compliant minor ally of the CCP. One can take
issue with this state of affairs all one wants, for good reason, but the fact re-
Demo­cratic Preparation 269

mains that ­t here is no other centripetal po­liti­cal force to turn to than the
CCP.20 We ­will be stuck with this fact—­this po­liti­cally created fact—­for quite
some time to come and, like it or not, we must fully realize what it means if
we are to think realistically about how China could make orderly pro­gress
­toward a demo­cratic arrangement. With its monopolistic yet in many ways
positive experience of governing China for seven de­cades, the CCP, by its own
claim uniquely capable of saving China in an e­ arlier time, may now be the
only po­liti­cal force that can steer China safely ­toward democracy—if it sees
fit to do so.
It must be expected, however, that, in the propitious event that the party
does see fit to do so, it ­will ­favor a demo­cratic arrangement that caters to Chi-
na’s need for a strong central authority and at the same time no less to its
own desire to play the role of this central authority for as long as pos­si­ble.
One need not be squeamish about the merging of ­t hese two considerations
(on the part of the CCP) as long as it happens in a broadly and sustainably
demo­cratic setting.
It would be premature, indeed risible, to try to stipulate what that setting
must be like, beyond the requirement that it must give substantial and cred-
ible expression to publicness, representativeness, and popu­lar consent, with
the attendant rights and freedoms for citizens. If the CCP ­w ill predictably
shape the demo­cratic setting to its own advantage, it w ­ ill also be true that
the demo­cratic setting itself, as long as it is a substantially demo­cratic one,
­w ill, in turn, shape the party, if slowly then also surely, ­until the latter be-
comes an organ­ization that is used to operating u ­ nder the princi­ples and con-
straints of a demo­cratic polity. By then, the demo­cratic arrangement tailor-­
made by and for the CCP w ­ ill have become delinked from any specific
beneficiary—­depersonalized, as it ­were—­leaving only a certain structure of
institutions and values that are themselves to be judged and adjusted in terms
of how well they serve the general need that China, as a uniquely complex
social and po­liti­cal entity, has for cohesion and stability ­u nder equality of
conditions.
That democracy is feasible and desirable in China rests on the premise,
and hope, that it can take a form capable of generating a strong enough cen-
tral authority to hold the vast and complex society together in a peaceful
and stable order while at the same time satisfying the need, itself a ­matter of
governability, for publicness, representativeness, and popu­lar consent. This
270 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

dual requirement is the only fixed point of reference flexible and realistic
enough for appraising democracy in China.
Thus, as far as the scheme of institutions and values is concerned, all one
could say is, first, that, insofar as the institutions are designed to make pos­
si­ble a strong central authority (by which we must mean an exceptionally
strong central authority) that is at the same time subject to the requirements
of publicness, representativeness, and popu­lar consent, they may be expected
to leave less room for freedoms, such as the freedom to substantially chal-
lenge and destabilize a government a­ fter it is duly put in office through f­ ree
and fair elections or other­w ise appropriate methods. Second, although a
strong central authority is needed for the rather generic purposes of cohe-
sion and stability, that central authority w ­ ill be able to serve t­ hese purposes
well only if it goes about ­doing so in furtherance of some conception of public
goods—­say, harmony and equity—­t hat commands very broad public appro-
bation and support. The strong central authority is thus defined—­and si­mul­
ta­neously enabled and ­limited—by two f­ actors. An extensive set of rights
and freedoms for citizens, as required by publicness, representativeness, and
popu­lar consent compatible with a strong central authority, ­w ill allow citi-
zens to realize and value their agency, both individual and po­liti­cal, and thus
to willingly accept such limits as are necessary to create a sufficiently strong
central authority. At the same time, a popularly endorsed conception of public
goods ­w ill make it pos­si­ble for citizens, on the one hand, to identify with the
central authority and thereby help make it strong and, on the other, to ap-
praise the central authority and hold it to account in substantial and critical
yet prudent ways.
The second ­factor ­w ill require a lot more of what Jane Mansbridge calls
unitary, as distinct from adversary, democracy than is typically found in the
modern demo­cratic state, and, of course, genuine unitary democracy must
rest on the creation of shared ends and values rather than the suppression of
conflicting interests.21 Since we are talking about unitary democracy on the
scale of an entire state rather than some organ­ization within it, this is a very
tall order indeed. But while size m ­ atters, what can make almost as big a dif-
ference is how we approach the balancing of unitary and adversary democ-
racy. “One cannot,” writes Mansbridge, “like most con­temporary po­liti­cal
scientists, throw away the half of ­human experience that values unitary goods
and judge a polity solely on adversary criteria. One must judge the pros and
Demo­cratic Preparation 271

cons of sizes and forms of government according to the often competing

claims of unitary and adversary democracy.” It is also worth emphasizing the
obvious point that both unitary and adversary democracy are made rather
than simply found, although they cannot simply be created at ­w ill or from
scratch. And this means that the making of democracy is a proj­ect that is so-
cial as well as po­liti­cal, involving the shaping of interests as much as the
designing of po­liti­cal institutions. This makes both easier and more difficult
the challenge of “how to articulate the entire complex of unitary values with
­those of adversary democracy.”22 I would say that this is especially the chal-
lenge faced by a country like China that must make a virtue of the necessity
of a strong central authority while trying to build a democracy of genuine
substance.
Since this is an extremely tall order, one must not expect too much, espe-
cially at the beginning. For better or worse, the arrangement likely to emerge
in China ­w ill definitely not conform to the priority of the right over the
good that is the heart and soul of modern Western liberal democracy.
What we may expect to find instead, in keeping with China’s inherent need
for a larger proportion of unitary democracy than is typical, w ­ ill be closer to
the priority of the good, as explained in Chapter 5, with the degree of pri-
ority corresponding to how strong the central authority needs to be. But this
­will not be anything like the standard, traditional priority of the good, in that
it is meant to coexist, in dialectical tension, with extensive rights and free-
doms, as well as the demo­cratic prerogative of citizens to publicly appraise
the central authority and, if necessary, hold it accountable.
Still, this arrangement may be expected to place more limits on democ-
racy than one is accustomed to in the dominant understanding of how de-
mocracy is supposed to work. But one must not exaggerate how far it falls
short—­even apart from the need to avoid unrealistic expectations. Let’s face
it: it is true of almost ­every existing liberal democracy in the world that it is a
combination of oligarchy and popu­lar consent (polyarchy, as Robert Dahl
calls it, meaning a democracy of sorts made pos­si­ble by a plurality of mutu-
ally constraining hierarchies of power that prevents not so much po­liti­cal
domination as mono­poly of such domination);23 that its orderly operation
rests in large part on the cohesion and stability of the more or less informal
oligarchic component;24 that oligarchic cohesion and stability derives, in turn,
from a seamless alliance of liberal democracy and capitalism, of a po­liti­cal
272 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

class and a corporate elite; and that, therefore, popu­lar po­liti­cal participation,
while shifting the balance of power somewhat t­ oward the demos, is con-
fronted with a paucity of real po­liti­cal options.25 It is indeed just ­these features
that characterize what is commonly considered an “advanced” democracy.
It w
­ ill be a long time, if then, before China is able to give its democracy,
supposing its orderly arrival, such an “advanced” form. U ­ ntil then, in the ab-
sence of the requisite informal oligarchic cohesion and stability, the impera-
tive to hold the country together in peace and good order has to be met chiefly
through a strong formal central authority.26 And the need for such authority
is made all the stronger by the exceptional scale and complexity of Chinese
society, the legacy in part of that unique cultural-­political entity called the
­Middle Kingdom, which was always, not least during the Yuan and Qing dy-
nasties, more an empire than a state. Given the geopo­liti­cal circumstances it
­faces ­today, China already finds it an increasingly difficult challenge to keep
certain separatist forces at bay, a challenge all too easy to render even more
intractable by ill-­considered policies. Any demo­cratic development, however
necessary for its own reasons, must rise to this additional challenge if it is to
enjoy popu­lar support; other­w ise, it would run the serious risk of being re-
jected, all ­t hings considered, or ­else contributing to the partial breakup of
China and dooming democracy at the same time. As ­t hings stand in China
and in the world at large, the typical Western combination of po­liti­cal elite
and plutocracy would simply not do the trick for China. Th ­ ere is no formula
for preventing what may be called demo­cratic disintegration other than an
exceptionally strong central authority, just as ­t here is no effective way of
maintaining any such authority ­today except by laying it on a reasonably
demo­cratic foundation.27 A successful democracy in China must learn to
create a central authority with sustainable centripetal force and make it com-
patible with such publicness, representativeness, and popu­lar consent as are
fitting ­under equality of conditions.
It is only ­after the completion of this daunting task that China may grow
in strength and maturity as a democracy. One may then look forward to the
day when the challenges just noted w ­ ill recede and perhaps cease to exist as
the result of a significant further rise in power both hard and soft. Only then
­w ill China be able to afford to be a liberal democracy. Since a liberal democ-
racy is e­ ither liberal demo­cratic capitalism or, as yet only in theory, liberal
demo­cratic socialism, it may be pos­si­ble to imagine and to try to bring about
Demo­cratic Preparation 273

a realistic utopia of a kind of liberal democracy, coupled with a dif­fer­ent kind

of socialism, neither of which has ever been realized.28 Should China opt for
liberal demo­cratic socialism and make a reasonable success of it, it would de-
rive from its increased power not a new threat advantage vis-­à-­v is the rest of
the world but the ability to pre­sent to other nations an example of a socialism
that is for the first time worthy of its name. But as the reader w
­ ill have real-
ized, I am getting way beyond anything that can now be considered realisti-
cally utopian by my own standard.

China Urgently Needs Demo­cratic Preparation

Let me return to the path of realistic utopia and address what must now
be the first order of business for China’s demo­cratic pro­gress: demo­cratic
preparation. It w­ ill have become clear from all the realistic ele­ments of our
realistic utopia that China is not yet ready for democracy—­t hat is, for po­
liti­cal democracy, for completing the passage from demo­cratic society to
demo­cratic polity. Since the lack of readiness does not in any way reduce the
urgency of the need for this passage, what China desperately needs now and
for some time to come is demo­cratic preparation.
By demo­cratic preparation I do not mean, or at least do not chiefly mean,
what usually goes by the name of po­liti­cal reform. For any po­liti­cal reform
truly worthy of the name must amount to the initiation of po­liti­cal changes
whose express aim is to effect a transition from the pre­sent regime to a demo­
cratic one, at least a much more demo­cratic one. Thus understood, po­liti­cal
reform is not exactly demo­cratic preparation but rather the beginning of the
completion of democracy. If we nevertheless want to treat po­liti­cal reform as
part of demo­cratic preparation ­because it is, ­after all, only the beginning of
what could be a protracted pro­cess, it must come last among all the steps of
demo­cratic preparation. And it is of crucial importance that t­ hese steps are
taken in the right order.
Having named the last step po­liti­cal reform, I w
­ ill characterize the other
steps as reforms as well. To begin with, moral reform is badly needed in order
to overcome the rampant moral crisis in the reform era and make pos­si­ble a
reasonably mature citizenry and civil society, which ­w ill give China a shot
at the orderly passage to po­liti­cal democracy. Central to this reform is the
valorization of freedom as a condition for individual and societal maturity.
274 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

This broad objective can also be promoted in another, complementary way,

in the shape of a ­legal reform designed to enhance individual and societal
agency through stronger and more effectively protected ­legal rights. Moral
reform and ­legal reform may thus be expected to work in tandem and be mu-
tually reinforcing. Since ­legal reform, as conceived in a m ore “technical”
way than is pos­si­ble with moral reform, can be effective yet also po­liti­cally
safe, prudence may suggest giving it some tactical priority, depending on
other relevant circumstances.
Another reform is badly needed as well, and that is ­because the current
level of economic (or quantitative) in­equality in China, with its divisiveness
and unceasing production of resentment, is clearly inimical to any reasonably
healthy demo­cratic development. In response to this systemic in­equality, China
requires what may be called social justice reform both for its own sake and in
the interest of demo­cratic preparation. Such reform, involving but ­going be-
yond poverty reduction, cannot start soon enough if conducted with a combi-
nation of prudence and vision. It is needed all the more b ­ ecause it can serve
the equally impor­tant purpose of preparing the CCP itself for democracy—by
enhancing its popularity for the best of reasons and thereby improving its
chances of a leadership role in a ­future demo­cratic China. In addition, social
justice is good for democracy not only for these kinds of reasons but also
­because the only effective way to make an exceptionally strong central au-
thority benign, and no stronger than is strictly necessary, is to have a just and
happy society that w ­ ill not require the strong state to be repressive in order to
keep resentment and discontent from disrupting the social order.
Thus l­egal, moral, and social justice reforms make up demo­cratic prepara-
tion, only ­after which will po­liti­cal reform ­be able to accomplish its distinct
mission and bring about po­liti­cal democracy as the final step of the democ­
ratization pro­cess. I ­will address each of ­these three reforms in turn, but first
a few observations on the riskiness of premature political reform.

Forget Po­liti­cal Reform—­for the Time Being

I do not think one can reasonably expect the CCP to undertake po­liti­cal
reform right away, still less u­ nder the explicit rubric of po­liti­cal reform.
Given the exclusively vertical structure of power through which Chinese so-
ciety has always been held together and given the even greater reliance on
Demo­cratic Preparation 275

purely po­liti­cal power that characterizes the modern, revolutionary ver-

sion of this structure, the CCP simply cannot afford to appear weak. And,
as e­ very seasoned China observer, Chinese or foreign, knows, ­t here is no
surer way of appearing weak than by undertaking po­liti­cal reforms and
thereby letting it be known, by unavoidable implication, that a regime lacks
confidence in its moral and po­liti­cal high ground. In this regard, the lessons
of Louis XVI and Mikhail Gorbachev have definitely been taken to heart in
Beijing.29 For the first time since Deng Xiaoping, we have a central leader-
ship that has both fully absorbed t­ hese lessons and created for itself enough
po­liti­cal authority, first and foremost within the CCP itself, to act on them.
In the way it has secured this authority and in the high-­profile uses it has
made of it, the pre­sent leadership is acting not willfully but in strict accor-
dance with the vertical logic of power that Mao and his comrades first estab-
lished and that has not fundamentally changed despite the profound eco-
nomic and social transformations in the reform era.
­Until this logic is changed, no central leadership can be expected to act
contrary to it, except by default, and, of course, the logic itself w­ ill not un-
dergo real change u ­ nless the central leadership undertakes to make it happen.
But no central leadership can easily afford to take such a step. For to initiate
a fundamental change, and especially to be seen to be ­doing so, is bound to
loosen the grip on the power of ­t hose undertaking it, and this at a time when
such power is needed most. ­There is in China ­today not the remotest con-
sensus, official or popu­lar, regarding democracy, and no prospect of one. The
long-­standing and recently reinforced moratorium on discussion of the very
topic (­under the rubric not only of democracy but also of constitutionalism)
is not the least cause of this confusing state of affairs, leaving every­one, in-
cluding the CCP itself, largely in the dark about the real, rather than strenu-
ously contrived, mood of the party and the country. The country’s desperate
objective and perhaps (for we cannot know for sure) deep subjective need for
democracy is one ­t hing, but its ability to form a unified po­liti­cal ­w ill to act
on this need is quite another, the latter rendered almost impossible by the
absence of unconstrained discussion just mentioned. In the absence of such
a ­w ill and consensus, a leadership with the temerity to undertake major po­
liti­cal form without incontrovertible evidence of a dire necessity might risk
drawing more ire than appreciation. It could be blamed for betraying the
legacy of the communist revolution in the eyes of some and for proceeding
276 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

too slowly and too undemo­cratically in the eyes of o ­ thers. It could become
one of the first casualties of the pro­cess well before it was able to guide it to
orderly and self-­sustaining fruition.
Such dire necessity, as distinct from warning signs, does not quite exist in
China ­today, not yet, and one would hate to see it arise before the country is in
a better position to react to it. It would therefore be unrealistic to think that
the pre­sent leadership is ­going to take even minor steps outside its familiar
logic of power, especially given that it has rediscovered the way, which eluded
its immediate pre­de­ces­sor, of acting effectively within it. Thus the morato-
rium on preparation for stormy po­liti­cal weather continues and does so as if it
could last forever. For reasons I discussed ­earlier, however, it cannot last for-
ever. Simply put, as long as the economic and social changes set in motion by
the reform are not halted, their cumulative side effects ­will only deepen con-
tradictions, in real­ity and in po­liti­cal consciousness, between a g rowing
equality of conditions and an essentially unaltered vertical structure of power.
The course of events in the foreseeable f­ uture w ­ ill depend on, among other
­things, the legitimacy and per­for­mance of the central leadership, the shape of
the economy, the state of social justice, the international po­liti­cal environ-
ment, and how well ­those countries fare that already have ­either a mature or a
shaky demo­cratic form of government. But the contradictions between social
equality and po­liti­cal in­equality have a m omentum and causal potency of
their own. Sooner or ­later, as long as the current economic and social dynamic
is not fundamentally altered, such contradictions w ­ ill grow to the breaking
point or, before then, to a point where a central leadership much weaker than
the pre­sent one would not be able to contain them.
China t­ oday is blessed in a way with the most authoritative and effective
leadership in decades—­authoritative and effective within its own vertical
logic of power and by the corresponding standard. But ­because this leader-
ship seems to use its authority and effectiveness to contain the contradictions
rather than to find a way out of them, thereby at once ameliorating them and
allowing them to accumulate and become more acute, this is a mixed blessing.
It is a blessing nonetheless, for it buys time, even though the time thereby
made available for what one hopes ­will be a learning pro­cess is, for now, being
compromised by an enhanced moratorium—in the form of even more strin-
gent restrictions on freedoms of speech (including academic speech) and of
the press—on any semblance of demo­cratic preparation.
Is t­ here any plausible way out of this double bind?
Demo­cratic Preparation 277

Moral Reform as a Crucial Part of

Demo­cratic Preparation

­ ere can be no s­ imple and straightforward answer. It is helpful, how-

Th
ever, to start with an observation that could hardly be wrong—­namely, that
the CCP finds itself confronted with serious prob­lems in its governing of
China. Th ­ ese are prob­lems the CCP itself recognizes as prob­lems, which it
has a vested interest in resolving or at least keeping from progressive dete-
rioration. Chief among ­t hese, and of special relevance h ­ ere, are rampant of-
ficial corruption, willful and irresponsible use of po­liti­cal power, and grave
shortfalls in social justice made even worse by corruption and abuse of
power. For reasons already noted, however, one cannot expect the CCP to go
about resolving prob­lems such as ­t hese in ways that have the foreseeable
prospect of weakening its power and hence its effectiveness. One should not
therefore expect solutions in the shape of major po­liti­cal reform—­reform
that is po­liti­cal in substance, involving the fundamental power relations,
and is presented and perceived as po­liti­cal.
How about moral reform? The need for moral reform arises from the fact
that all of the prob­lems just mentioned have their origin, at least part of their
origin, in a moral crisis that has beset China in the era of reform and that
the CCP itself is prepared to acknowledge and keen to resolve, both in its own
right and as a root cause of other prob­lems. The moral crisis pre­sents a prob­lem
of a social-­infrastructural kind: deeper, more basic, more pervasive, and more
diffuse. While on account of t­ hese features it may be even more difficult to
­handle, both the pinpointing of the prob­lem and the attempt to resolve it are
less po­liti­cally risky, which is not to say that no risk is involved. And I for one
believe it is even more impor­tant than the question of democracy—­more
impor­tant in its own right and as one of the most essential preparations for
democracy.
Since I have already discussed the moral crisis at length, a much briefer
account ­will suffice ­here. As the reader ­will recall, by the moral crisis in post-
communist China I mean, first and foremost, a crisis of moral subjectivity.
We can directly perceive this crisis only by observing its outward manifesta-
tions. Hence, in an e­ arlier book, I devote a fair amount of space to the crisis
of moral be­hav­ior.30 But my main interest lies elsewhere: in the deeper, less
readily observable crisis of moral subjectivity, or of the moral subject. Given
its very nature, the crisis of moral subjectivity cannot be fixed simply by
278 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

changing and improving be­hav­ior. Overcoming this moral crisis ­will require
nothing less than the creation of favorable conditions for the birth of a new
moral subject.
­Because moral willingness, the disposition to act morally and to do so for
what one understands as moral reasons, lies at the heart of moral subjectivity,
a crisis of moral subjectivity must have its primary cause in the failure of so-
ciety to produce and maintain this all-­important willingness. To cut a long
story short, the prob­lem is that this moral willingness used, in prereform
China, to be effectively produced in a way that has been rendered entirely use-
less by the reform. This is ­because the old reasons for acting morally, in-
volving deference to moral authority and imitation of moral exemplars, no
longer made sense once China abandoned the old collectivistic, totally or­ga­
nized way of life in ­favor of a much more individualistic one consisting largely
of bourgeois pursuits. For this new way of life, ­whether one likes it or not,
new reasons for moral be­hav­ior are needed, and, what­ever ­these reasons may
be, they must be fitting for a much more individuated kind of moral subject.
Hence they must speak to the new moral subject’s desire for moral initiative
and leave sufficient room for such initiative. This means that the old reliance
on compulsory deference and imitation must be replaced by a new re­spect
for a moral agent’s freedom as the primary perceived source of his or her
moral willingness. In order for this to happen, freedom as a moral value,
above and beyond mere de facto freedoms, must first be made available.
The crux of the prob­lem is that this has not even begun to happen; the
kind of freedom that is a necessary condition for the emergence of a new
moral subject appropriate for ­today’s China has not been created. Morally
speaking, China ­today is between two worlds—­one dead, the other yet to be
born; the old moral subject obsolete and known to be so, a new one yet to
make its urgently needed appearance in what is now a moral vacuum.
What is crucial in this causal nexus is that the necessary freedom, and
hence the badly needed moral subject, has not been allowed to appear. This
brings up a po­liti­cal complication of the moral crisis, especially of its pos­
si­ble solution. China has a distinctive po­liti­cal structure, one that gives sole
po­liti­cal leadership to the CCP. So far it has been part of this dispensation
that the mono­poly of po­liti­cal leadership is treated as inseparable from a sim-
ilar degree of mono­poly of moral leadership. The latter mono­poly has
worked less well, as we all know by now, which is why China is saddled with
Demo­cratic Preparation 279

a moral crisis. The frightening thought is that, as long as the po­liti­cal mono­
poly of moral leadership is not given up or at least significantly relaxed, it ­will
prevent the rise of freedom as a moral value and this, in turn, ­will make im-
possible the birth of the desperately needed new moral subject. Thus the
po­liti­cal complication of the moral crisis must be resolved if the moral crisis
itself is to be resolved.
Is the CCP ­going to part with its mono­poly of po­liti­cal leadership in the
near ­f uture? Obvious not. Is it nevertheless pos­si­ble for the party to main-
tain its hold on po­liti­cal power while loosening its grip on moral leadership
and thereby allowing the rise of freedom as a moral value and, with it, the
emergence of a new, freer, and more individuated kind of moral subject? I
see no reason why the answer cannot be affirmative, in princi­ple. But I also
believe that making a positive answer come true would require po­liti­cal
genius—­t hat rare combination of foresight, daring, fortitude, prudence, and
much else—­operating ­u nder relatively favorable circumstances. For this
reason, I want to be sympathetic and refrain from rushing to firm judgment
about how well the pre­sent leadership is ­doing in a larger scheme of t­ hings
yet to fully reveal itself; it has at least several more years to show what it is
truly up to and capable of. At the same time, ­t here is a place for legitimate
criticism, b ­ ecause the moral crisis must be dealt with in one way or another,
and ­t here are shortsighted, expedient ways and relatively farsighted, durably
effective ways of ­doing so, and Chinese citizens have ­every right and ­every
responsibility to push for the latter.
While we are on the subject of the po­liti­cal dimension of the moral crisis,
some readers may be wondering w ­ hether I have not exaggerated the serious-
ness of the moral crisis and its po­liti­cal intractability. If the moral crisis is as
grave and consequential as I have made it out to be, how, you may ask, could
China be d ­ oing so well on so many fronts, having already risen to become
the world’s second-­largest economy and being poised to turn its economic
prowess into global cultural and po­liti­cal clout? Why ­hasn’t China suffered
anything like a comprehensive breakdown despite the alleged moral crisis?
Why, indeed, does it sometimes even seem, at least to some, that the moral
crisis itself has been somewhat on the mend—at least in one of its forms, of-
ficial corruption and its contagious effects on society at large—­since the pre­
sent leadership took over in 2012? The answer (aside from the difficulty of
making an accurate assessment, as caused especially by the media blackout
280 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

on negative aspects of the country’s moral condition) is ­simple: it is po­liti­cal

power that has mainly been responsible for ­t hese achievements, such as they
are, and its stock in trade, not least in Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign,
is not so much credible moral exhortation as the effective projection of fear.31
Not ordinary po­liti­cal power, to be sure, but excessive po­liti­cal power, as it
has to be. For in the absence of reasonably well-­formed moral subjects ca-
pable of acting with relative in­de­pen­dence from po­liti­cal power, in the ab-
sence of a strong civil society, and hence in the absence of the power of civil
society as a source of moral socialization and of cohesion, only po­liti­cal power
can do the trick. And, to be effective, po­liti­cal power has to be excessive—­
excessive to the degree that moral subjectivity, civil society, and social power
are lacking. If we look at the ­matter in this way, we can no longer simply blame
po­liti­cal power for being excessive. We should rather criticize the conditions
­under which po­liti­cal power has no choice but to be excessive in order to be
effective. And we can also criticize t­ hose ­factors, including agents and insti-
tutions, responsible for creating such conditions in the first place or for
keeping such conditions alive beyond necessity. But such critique, necessary
as it undoubtedly is, is a much more complicated affair.
Leaving this deeper, more complicated critique aside, the basic fact to
bear in mind is that, as t­ hings stand, China can be held together, can be
made to tick, only through a heavy reliance on po­liti­cal power, and hence
only by a po­liti­cal power strong enough to support this heavy reliance. For
this reason alone, and in the short run, the exceptionally strong leadership of
Xi is at least partially good news for China. Chinese society was undergoing
a profound transformation ­under Jiang Zemin, who led post-1989 China (es-
pecially ­after Deng’s death) ­until 2002. Jiang obviously had other ­t hings on
his mind than the elementary moral health of China, or of the CCP for that
­matter, and he used po­liti­cal power accordingly, leaving an ambiguous legacy
of po­liti­cal liberalization and moral anarchy in almost equal mea­sure. As
Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao presided over a period of ten years when central
po­liti­cal leadership (as distinct from state capacity) was at its weakest in the
entire history of Chinese communist rule. It would not be inaccurate to say
that for the better part of that de­cade the central leadership was neither
loved nor feared, even by the party’s own standard. It is only natu­ral that,
despite the less dramatic character of economic and social transformation
compared with the previous ten years, the moral crisis spun out of control
Demo­cratic Preparation 281

in a way that few could foresee, notwithstanding the gradual return of

con­spic­u­ous po­liti­cal repression in the ­later phase of Hu’s rule. Xi’s current
leadership is definitely more feared, including within the ranks of the party
itself, and, among a large part of the population, it seems to be more loved.
Po­liti­cal power is working with a level of authority (and repressiveness) we
have not seen for a long time. The pre­sent leadership seems to mean busi-
ness, and it has put an impressive amount of business on its agenda. Th ­ ere is no
doubt about the success of some of its efforts so far, especially where authority
and determination, as distinct from vision or humility, may be expected to
make a big difference. The campaign against official corruption is a case in
point, although much remains to be done and no one knows w ­ hether, and
how, the daunting remainder ­w ill be done.
This is reason enough to breathe a sigh of relief, but it is also a cause for
concern, even apart from the cost in increased po­liti­cal repression as such.
For it is clear that such success (if one happens to support the ends) as the
pre­sent leadership has achieved is due almost entirely to the effective use of
po­liti­cal power. The result is that while the crisis of moral be­hav­ior may have
abated in some re­spects, the crisis of moral subjectivity remains as acute as
ever. What­ever improvement in moral be­hav­ior we have seen in the past few
years is the result of more effective po­liti­cal leadership, rather than of the
coming into being of a new moral subject. But my concern h ­ ere goes beyond
the moral crisis as moral crisis. It extends, via the effect of po­liti­cal power on
the moral crisis, to the consequences of an intractable moral crisis for China’s
po­liti­cal development—an interaction with the distinct potential to create a
vicious circle that draws us ever closer to a more comprehensive crisis. It is
the latter concern I want now to foreground.
­Because China is held together almost by po­liti­cal power alone, what­ever
weakens po­liti­cal power w ­ ill cause prob­lems that are bound to profoundly
affect Chinese society on ­every level, including the moral. A breakdown in
po­liti­cal power ­w ill mean the breakdown of the entire society. 32 I do not
think this is quite true of socie­ties in general. Even if we grant, for the sake
of argument, that this is a m ­ atter of degree, I would still maintain this is true
of China to an extraordinary degree. China t­ oday is arguably closer than it
has ever been, in its relatively brief modern experience, to Ferdinand Tönnies’s
definition of Gesellschaft—­that is, a society (as distinct from a community)
in which p ­ eople are “essentially detached” and “remain separate in spite of
282 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

every­t hing that unites them”33—­except, it is impor­tant to add, that it has

precious ­little to unite them, in the first place, but po­liti­cal power. This ­w ill
continue to be the case ­until Chinese society is cemented by reasonably well-­
formed moral subjects who can muster enough agency to play a more or less
in­de­pen­dent part in holding society together. When that happens, Chinese
society ­will be able to depend for its stability and vitality on two forms of power
instead of one, with a healthy mea­sure of in­de­pen­dence from the vicissitudes
of po­liti­cal power.
It is only then that China w ­ ill be able to afford to take major steps ­toward
democracy, as it w ­ ill need to do in the foreseeable ­future. Alexis de Tocqueville
is largely correct, in my view, that democracy is marked, above all, by an
equality of conditions that prevails in the social state. In such a social state,
­people are, ideally speaking, not only equal but also ­free. I would only add
that it is only as reasonably well-­formed moral subjects that members of a
society can be ­free and equal. Other­w ise they would need a vastly superior
po­liti­cal force to hold them together as a society and give them the semblance
of a moral life, in which case they would be neither f­ ree nor equal, not even
approximately. In this light (I am not exactly invoking the social contract),
democracy is a truly dangerous experiment with the normative ordering of
collective h ­ uman life, for it is, in the limit case, about horizontally, hence only
loosely, connected individuals voluntarily coming together to form a cohe-
sive society and a durable po­liti­cal order, and t­ here is no guarantee that they
can bring this off. Failure in such an experiment invites the most excessive
of excessive po­liti­cal power, which is why what Tocqueville calls despotism
(of a distinctively modern kind) is always only one step away from democ-
racy.34 It is also why a society made up of reasonably well-­formed moral sub-
jects is so essential for democracy, with democracy, in turn, capable of
strengthening civil society in a virtuous circle. A society made up of reason-
ably well-­formed moral subjects has at least a decent chance of succeeding
in the experiment, always an ongoing experiment, with democracy.
So, to be perfectly honest, I do not think China is remotely ready yet for
po­liti­cal democracy, for taking the last step to formally complete the demo­
cratizing pro­cess. This ­w ill remain the case ­until a way is found of creating
reasonably well-­formed moral subjects capable of bringing a significant mea­
sure of stability and cohesion to society in­de­pen­dently of po­liti­cal power.
And yet, as I have suggested, in another sense China is already ripe for de-
Demo­cratic Preparation 283

mocracy—­nay, it is already a substantially demo­cratic society—in that it is

already characterized, to a substantial and ever-­increasing degree, by equality
of conditions.
This, then, is our current situation. Thanks to the equality of conditions
that has arisen as a result of the quasi-­democratic leveling ­under Mao and
the quasi-­liberal neutralization in the era of reform, China has within its pre­
sent social circumstances a natu­ral momentum ­toward po­liti­cal democracy.
Yet, ­because of its crisis of moral subjectivity, China cannot afford to let this
momentum run its natu­ral course and must instead hold it back; in compar-
ison with this, the existence of vested interests standing in the way of de-
mocracy represents a lesser menace, in that overcoming them would be a
more localized operation. This creates an internal contradiction—­between
the systemic necessity of democracy and the equally systemic inability to
make it work. And it is a contradiction that cannot be resolved but only
contained—­through economic growth, through improvements in governance
and in social justice, or by intensifying identification with rising national
power, and so on. Each of t­ hese mea­sures is a tall order, and t­ here is no guar-
antee that ­t hese ways of containing the contradiction ­w ill always be avail-
able or effective. Indeed, if truth be told, even the sustained accomplishment
of all t­ hese feats would not be able to halt the quickening steps of democracy
as the po­liti­cal capital of the communist revolution dwindles inexorably with
each passing year.
In this context, I would venture to suggest that the most desirable change
that could happen to China, and hence the greatest ser­v ice the CCP could
perform for it, is for the CCP to begin to create favorable conditions for the
emergence of a new moral subject and an autonomous civil society. It is worth
noting that in this regard China no longer belongs to the category of “totali-
tarian socie­t ies of bureaucratic socialism,” of which Jürgen Habermas ob-
serves that “­here a panoptic state not only directly controls the bureaucrati-
cally desiccated public sphere, it also undermines the private basis of this
public sphere,” with the result that “communicative rationality is . . . ​de-
stroyed si­mul­ta­neously in both public and private contexts of communica-
tion.”35 Thanks to its plentiful de facto individual freedoms, China already
has a more or less integral private sphere, which Habermas rightly sees as
tightly connected to an autonomous civil society. In the Chinese private
sphere t­ oday, communicative rationality is no longer severely ­limited, let
284 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

alone destroyed. What has yet to happen is for the de facto freedoms to be
valorized and protected by law and for an autonomous civil society to be al-
lowed to rise on the basis of an already existing integral private sphere. Once
this occurs, once the new moral subject and an autonomous civil society are
formed, po­liti­cal power’s impact on society in general and on its moral ecol­ogy
in par­tic­u­lar ­will weaken. Po­liti­cal power ­will still be of foremost importance,
perhaps necessarily so in a country as big and complex as China, but its stakes
­w ill no longer be so unbearably high that major po­liti­cal change, especially
demo­cratic change, becomes almost unthinkable. Precisely when po­liti­cal
power becomes less power­f ul or less excessive, it ­w ill be more power­f ul or
dynamic in another way. It w ­ ill have more room for maneuver, for change,
for deliberation, for popu­lar involvement, even for intense contestation,
without threatening to unleash chaos on society, including on its moral life.
Only in this way can China come to afford politics for the first time, for po­
liti­cal change, however sweeping, and po­liti­cal contestation, however intense,
­w ill be taking place in a setting where it can be expected that a healthy mea­
sure of stability and cohesion is in­de­pen­dently provided by reasonably well-­
formed moral subjects sustained by a reasonably autonomous civil society.

Legal Reform and Its Positive Po­liti­cal

and Moral Consequences

To argue that moral reform is essential is not to suggest that such reform
is in the offing. It is only to show that it would make both normative and
prudential sense for the CCP to undertake it, with what­ever level of risk in-
volved outweighed by the risk of ­doing nothing. A ­ fter all, while the break-
down of moral order is all too vis­i­ble, the crisis of moral subjectivity under­
lying it requires for its correct diagnosis and proper response a way of
approaching moral m ­ atters—­w ith freedom and maturity (moral adulthood)
at the center of it all—­that is rather foreign to the CCP’s entrenched pater-
nalistic and propagandist instincts. Such instincts, along with the practices
they spawn, ­w ill have to change before the party has any chance of seeing
the moral crisis for what it is and developing an adequate sense of crisis in
response to it. That pro­gress in this regard does not have insurmountable
prudential obstacles in its way can give us no more than modest hope that it
­w ill actually happen. But one could not try hard enough or often enough to
Demo­cratic Preparation 285

show that moral reform is essential and can in princi­ple be pulled off with
benefit rather than damage to the CCP.
I rather doubt, however, that the near ­future ­w ill see anything like moral
reform in its own right, a moral reform of the requisite kind and one that is
conceived and conducted as such. But it is just pos­si­ble that moral reform may
happen as a by-­product, intended or not, of another undertaking. ­Because
that other effort has to do with the law, with the line between po­liti­cal and
­legal power, I ­shall dub it ­legal reform, although this is not how it is officially
designated. Much as in the case of economic power, even as ­legal power be-
comes more in­de­pen­dent, if and when it does, it ­w ill remain ­under the over-
arching control of the CCP. But a functional separation, accompanied by clear
recognition and institutionalization of the distinct nature and operation of
­legal power and further supported by a corresponding professional ethos,
could go a long way ­toward reducing the sheer presence of po­liti­cal power as
po­liti­cal power and thereby reducing its negative effects, including on the
moral crisis and its potential solution. ­Here again, however, one would be well
advised to limit oneself, for the most part, to spelling out the inner logic of a
certain possibility rather than speculating about the sheer empirical likeli-
hood of its coming true. To show that something is necessary, beneficial, do-
able, and without undue risk is as far as an intellectual contribution to such
­matters can go in its effort to be realistic (as part of a realistic utopia).
It is revealing, and perhaps moderately encouraging, in this connection,
that the CCP is placing unpre­ce­dented emphasis on the role of law in im-
proving governance of the country, including in its fight against official cor-
ruption and the abuse of power. This is a m ­ atter not of the replacement of
bad laws (erfa) with good ones (shanfa), nor even of the more effective im-
plementation of good laws, although both are impor­tant, but of governing
the country in a dif­fer­ent, more transparently rule-­based way. The new way,
amounting to nothing less than a basic orientation and blueprint (jiben fan-
glüe), was inaugurated at the CCP’s eigh­teenth national congress in 2012 and
finds its most authoritative and detailed expression in a set of guidelines and
mea­sures ­adopted at its fourth plenum in 2014 to “govern the country in ac-
cordance with the law” (yifa zhiguo).36 ­Whether, strictly speaking, this is rule
of law or rule by law, one charitable reading is that the enhanced role of law
is meant in one way or another to c­ ounter the willfulness (renxing, as the once
red-­hot term has it) of po­liti­cal power.37 Even if the target is such willfulness
286 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

on the part of local and central-­government officials at levels well below the
apex of power, the experiment with pitting the law against the willfulness of
po­liti­cal power is of the utmost importance. It is still too early to say how
effective it is likely to be, other than that it would be more likely to succeed
if it could be conducted without posing any serious challenge to the leader-
ship of the CCP, including its leadership over the law. Thus the experiment
has limits placed on it from the outset.
Even so, the experiment could have extremely far-­reaching consequences
if it could lead, as it is meant to do in its openly stated rationale, to a systemi-
cally reduced reliance on the largely unhampered ­w ill of po­liti­cal power as
distinct from the authority of the law. Should this come to pass, it may bring
with it, w ­ hether by way of intended or unintended consequences, a gradual
but profound change in po­liti­cal culture and in the scope of societal initiative
and in­de­pen­dence, however constricted the scope may be at the beginning
or at any other point in time. Once the law sets publicly known par­ameters
for the exercise of po­liti­cal power (in princi­ple at all levels but in likely real­ity
at all but the highest level), everyday life in society w ­ ill be able to unfold with
a dif­fer­ent kind of freedom—­beyond the de facto freedoms that now may exist
in abundance and yet are always highly vulnerable to the willfulness of po­
liti­cal power. When the arbitrary w ­ ill of po­liti­cal power recedes from the rou-
tines of everyday life, even with the top leadership retaining its po­liti­cal pre-
rogatives above the law, it w ­ ill be pos­si­ble for ordinary members of society
­under ordinary circumstances to exercise their agency ­under the relatively
reliable protection of the law. Over time, as may reasonably be expected, they
­w ill evolve into agents or subjects more accustomed to initiative and discre-
tion and more jealously protective themselves of the legally demarcated space
that makes such initiative and discretion pos­si­ble.
Moreover, any real improvement of transparency in the creation and im-
plementation of laws w ­ ill be part of the pro­gress in the broader publicness of
public m­ atters. In law as in any other public ­matter, publicness is conducive
over time (regardless of how good or how bad ­t hings are at the start, or at
pre­sent) to rational justification on the part of officials and the production
of rational motives on the part of the public. This means also that, with re-
gard to the ­actual scope of societal initiative and in­de­pen­dence permitted by
law, even if the scope is relatively narrow at the start (or even narrower than
before), one has reason to count on the ­g reat cumulatively transformative
Demo­cratic Preparation 287

power of transparency and publicness to expand that scope over time. This
is regardless of the short-­term intention of ­t hose who set the l­egal reform in
motion. The only ­t hing that ­matters is ­whether the reform brings a real in-
crease in the transparency of the entire ­legal pro­cess and, more generally, in
the publicness of public m ­ atters.
If and when such an increase occurs, the prob­lems noted ­earlier as re-
quiring urgent action by the CCP w ­ ill be much more amenable to resolution
than they are now. To begin with, the law, with its newfound transparency
and gradually improved rationality, in addition to a­ ctual ordinances be-
coming better as well as better implemented (over time), ­w ill stand more
effectively and reliably as a barrier against the willfulness of po­liti­cal power
that has been such a big cause of so many of China’s social and po­liti­cal prob­
lems. But even more crucially, the positive socializing impact of the law’s
being just, respected, and followed and of the incremental change in po­liti­cal
culture ­w ill help produce better-­formed citizens. It is ultimately from such
citizens that all officials, including top officials, w
­ ill be recruited, and so one
may expect a corresponding improvement in the integrity and per­for­mance
of officials—­t he more so ­under the watchful eye of citizens more aware of
what they have the right to expect. By this point a virtuous circle w ­ ill have
been formed.
I need not go further with this line of thought, as I do not mean to specu-
late on the ­future but only to suggest a plausible scenario that might get China
out of the double bind in which it now appears to be trapped. With this sce-
nario, I intend to bring out the following considerations. First, it is one ­t hing
to openly and directly prepare for democracy right away, which is implau-
sible for reasons already noted, and something ­else altogether for the CCP to
deal with urgent prob­lems that it both recognizes and has the incentive to
resolve. Second, and this is not a negligible fact, among the mea­sures a­ dopted
by the CCP for dealing with ­these prob­lems is an increased role of law, along
with a conception that unequivocally pits re­spect for the law against the will-
fulness of po­liti­cal power. Third, such a mea­sure, if successful, ­w ill have the
far-­reaching consequence, ­whether intended or not, of creating favorable con-
ditions for a new, more public, and more rational po­liti­cal culture; a society
more in­de­pen­dent of po­liti­cal power; and a new, freer kind of citizen more
capable of exercising initiative in society. Fourth, and just as impor­tant, all
of this could happen—­a nd this is why it could conceivably be allowed to
288 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

happen—­w ithout having in princi­ple to pose an unmanageable challenge to

the po­liti­cal leadership of the CCP. Th ­ ese considerations add up to the dis-
tinct possibility of a virtuous circle.
Some such virtuous circle need not entail or require the rule of law in the
modern Western sense. In any case, it is far from clear what the rule of law
in the Western sense actually is, or o ­ ught to be. Is it the rule of law based on
private law as advocated by Friedrich von Hayek, a bulwark not only against
despotism and the police state (in the manner of Rechtsstaat)38 but also
against a social demo­cratic state interfering with a supposedly spontaneous
market order? 39 Or is it the rule of law informed by communicative ratio-
nality as proposed by Habermas, making the rule of law almost synonymous
with democracy and democracy itself synonymous with unhampered and
undistorted communicative action regarding public ­matters?40 The former,
very much alive in the theory and practice of neoliberalism ­today, is antidemo­
cratic. The latter, boasting impeccable demo­cratic credentials, is largely uto-
pian even in the most advanced Western socie­ties, and I daresay it s­ hall re-
main so at least for the foreseeable ­future. Then ­there are an indefinite number
of possibilities between ­t hese poles.
The very complexity of this picture o ­ ught to give us pause and serve as a
warning against dogmatism. Just as I have argued for an open and flexible
understanding of what democracy requires, so I s­ hall do the same with the
rule of law. And one of the considerations that defines democracy o ­ ught to
be treated as central to the rule of law as well: publicness. We know that the
CCP is not g­ oing, anytime soon, to give up its prerogative when it comes to
deciding what the content of the law should be. W ­ hether this is a case of the
CCP being “above the law” in an unarguably bad sense depends on ­whether
the law determined in this way possesses a credibly public character, being
equally in the interest of all in its intent and impartial in its implementation.
­After all, the modern rule of law and indeed the modern state itself—­both
manifestly bourgeois institutions—­have their fundamental rationale in the
establishment and protection of the equal rights of all, such that departures
from this rationale invite contestation, including ideology critique of the
(bourgeois) rule of law itself. It is undeniable that the CCP’s very prerogative
with regard to the law makes it vulnerable to such contestation, to the charge
of being above the law in the unarguably bad sense of acting to one degree
or another as a private mono­poly (to use Elias’s term). And t­ here can be no
Demo­cratic Preparation 289

doubt that this charge is validated by the sheer gravity and scale of official
corruption. Thus, as long as the CCP maintains its double-­edged preroga-
tive, it must bend over backward to avoid using it, and being seen to use it,
in the interest of a private mono­poly masquerading as a public one. China
­w ill have achieved the rule of law in a credible sense when the link between
this prerogative (being above the law in an arguably formal, neutral sense)
and the tendency ­toward private mono­poly (being above the law in an unar-
guably bad sense) is cut and seen to be cut, and when publicness has become
the generally acknowledged character of the law in its intent and execution.
It w ­ ill be a daunting challenge to bring this feat off, to put it mildly, but as it
wages its unpre­ce­dented campaign against official corruption, the CCP de-
serves more benefit of the doubt than it usually receives. We w ­ ill know it has
succeeded if and when it proves able to create the virtuous circle mentioned
­earlier. Only through such success ­w ill it also be able to convince critics and
skeptics that yifa zhiguo (governing the country in accordance with the law)
is not merely a strategy for strengthening dangde lingdao (leadership of the
party), with renmin dangjia zuozhu (the ­people as masters of the country)
thrown in for propagandist effect.41
In this light, the worst obstacle to the rule of law in practice is the corrup-
tion of the ­legal system, especially of the courts. As long as the CCP is able to
make and keep the ­legal system clean, it ­will rid the latter of the worst kind of
po­liti­cal interference that has plagued the system in recent de­cades. A ­ fter all,
the vast majority of cases handled by the courts are not themselves po­liti­cal
­matters, and the constitutional princi­ple that places the law u ­ nder the CCP’s
leadership does not in and of itself require or warrant po­liti­cal interference
in such cases. It does not therefore seem implausible to suggest that once cor-
ruption is largely cleansed from the ­legal system, the strength of the claim
that the party is above the law ­w ill be weakened in the eyes of ordinary, law-­
abiding citizens ­going about their everyday lives. What remains objection-
able ­w ill then be confined more or less to a subset of cases that are po­liti­cally
sensitive in one way or another. The impor­tant point is that it may not be
necessary to wait for significant pro­g ress in this subset of especially chal-
lenging cases in order to reap major benefits of ­legal reform. Some recent
developments, such as the exclusion of coerced testimony and the signifi-
cantly expanded role of p ­ eople’s assessors in the trial pro­cess (the Chinese
near equivalent of the jury system), are cases in point. As far as demo­cratic
290 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

preparation is concerned, success in rendering more plausible and vis­i­ble the

publicness of the law in its intent and execution—by improving the quality
of laws, ensuring their corruption-­free implementation, raising re­spect for
the law as the embodiment of the equal rights of all citizens, and so on—­w ill
be enough to land China in a virtuous circle. In this regard, what is most to
be feared is not the CCP’s leadership of the law but the in­effec­tive­ness of such
leadership—­t hat is, its inability to rid the law of the corruption that dam-
ages the party and the country alike.
Suppose a v irtuous circle does materialize, perhaps even with a m oral
reform added thereafter. What then? ­Will the CCP have unwittingly pre-
pared for full-­fledged democracy in China and, in so ­doing, paved the way
for its own exit from the po­liti­cal stage? No, by no means. In this scenario, we
know that the CCP ­w ill have brought into being an improved China, one
whose society is more in­de­pen­dent of the state and more truly stable, whose
citizens are freer and more self-­reliant, and hence a society that would be
better able to ­handle the move to a more demo­cratic form of government.
One should hasten to add that the party ­w ill have done all of this not by way
of indulging in a n ormative fantasy but u ­ nder the very real pressure of
having to resolve social and po­liti­cal prob­lems in order precisely to main-
tain its legitimacy and ensure its survival. Balanced against the increased
momentum ­toward democracy as a result of ­t hese developments, then, ­w ill
be the party’s enhanced legitimacy. ­There is no telling exactly what this
new balance of ­factors w ­ ill be like and how it w ­ ill evolve. But it is entirely
pos­si­ble that in guiding China to this more benign point in its po­liti­cal evo-
lution, the CCP ­will have accumulated an unpre­ce­dented (in its own his-
tory) amount of positive experience in working with a stronger society and
a more mature citizenry. Thus it w ­ ill have learned how to govern effectively
and maintain its legitimacy in a progressively more demo­cratic setting and
­will itself have become more demo­cratic in its own princi­ples, spirit, and
mode of operation. And it may even have developed a way of reconciling the
overwhelming imperative to hold Chinese society together in peace and
prosperity with the irresistible necessity of adopting a form of government
that accords with the irreversible equality of conditions. If so, it ­w ill have
made good for the first time its long-­professed belief in “demo­cratic cen-
tralism,” along with all the other undeniably genuine demo­cratic aspira-
tions it had cherished and fought for ­u ntil not long ­a fter its conquest of
Demo­cratic Preparation 291

power in 1949.42 It may even be able to convince a sizable portion of a more

mature and more responsible citizenry that “demo­cratic centralism”—­a gen-
uinely demo­cratic centralism—is the form of democracy likely to work best
for China.

Moral and ­Legal Reforms Converge on

Enhancing Freedom

It w
­ ill have become obvious that what I h ave called moral reform and
­legal reform have one impor­tant aim and, if successful, one impor­tant out-
come in common, and that is substantially enhanced freedom—­whether
achieved via more in­de­pen­dent moral agency or better-­protected ­legal rights.
It is absolutely essential for the success of t­ hese reforms—­indeed even for get-
ting them off the ground—­t hat the freedom expected to grow out of them be
so understood and exercised as not to immediately challenge and be seen to
challenge the leadership of the CCP. When I ­earlier expressed caution re-
garding the empirical likelihood of moral reform, I did so partly with this
worry in mind. It so happens that ­t here is a way to allay this worry, thereby
reducing, in princi­ple, the po­liti­cal risk of moral reform, and of ­legal reform
as well, and increasing the likelihood of their being taken up, other ­t hings
being equal. The key, I would suggest, lies in distinguishing between the use
of freedom as a condition for individual and societal maturity, on the one
hand, and its use for po­liti­cal purposes, on the other, and, on this basis, in
­going about moral and l­egal reforms without the immediate aim of creating
po­liti­cal liberty.
I noted e­ arlier that the road leading from equality of conditions to po­
liti­cal democracy in China is likely to be a l ot more tortuous than Toc-
queville found to be the case in Amer­i­ca. While equality of conditions is
undoubtedly already strongly pre­sent in China, another essential condi-
tion for democracy is as yet largely missing, a condition that Tocqueville
understandably did not write about, presumably b ­ ecause it could be taken
for granted in the context of Amer­i­c a. The condition I h ave in mind is
individual and societal maturity, a condition that naturally comes to the
fore when the prior condition—­t hat is, equality of conditions—is already
largely established. Taken together, ­t hese two conditions are so much a part
of the very meaning of democracy that they may be considered democracy’s
292 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

metaconditions. The second of ­these conditions, individual and societal ma-

turity, deserves a careful look.
Equality of conditions is a m ­ atter of degree, and what is most impor­tant
in determining its degree is how much freedom is pre­sent in a par­tic­u­lar in-
stance of equality of conditions. H ­ ere again Tocqueville is instructive, al-
though he does not directly talk about the maturity for which freedom serves
as a necessary condition. Operating at the level of what Max Weber was ­later
to call ideal types, Tocqueville wrote that “men ­will be completely ­free ­because
they w ­ ill be entirely equal; they ­will all be completely equal ­because they ­will
be entirely ­free” and that therefore “demo­cratic nations aim for this ideal.”43
­There is thus a sense in which equality of conditions is not complete ­until
freedom is fully realized and equally enjoyed. Imagine a situation in which
the ends and goods of ­human life are so conceived and society so constituted
that it no longer makes sense to consider any subset of ­human beings funda-
mentally superior to the rest and yet in which it is nevertheless the case that
­people are prevented from becoming fully ­free by a po­liti­cal regime rooted
in an ­earlier, less equal state of society and hence from being fully equal. Such
a situation is what we find in China ­today, and we can say this situation is
marked by an equality of conditions that is not allowed to run its natu­ral
course ­because it is not permitted to be completed by a corresponding mea­
sure of freedom.
I am not talking h ­ ere about po­liti­cal liberty, which is part and parcel of
po­liti­cal democracy. The precise sense in which freedom is to be understood
in the pre­sent context is best captured in terms of what Immanuel Kant thinks
of as a certain intellectual and moral maturity, as already briefly described.
Taking some liberties for my own purposes with Kant’s classic text on the
meaning of enlightenment, and thus letting my case stand or fall entirely on
its own merit, I would say that such maturity is the condition for the com-
pletion of equality of conditions short of po­liti­cal democracy. Exercise in­de­
pen­dence of thought, seek such freedom as is necessary for the public use of
reason, and thereby give up self-­imposed immaturity, Kant enjoins, but do
so in such a way as is fully compatible with po­liti­cal obedience and hence
public order. The realization of freedom thus conceived and justified depends
on po­liti­cal power being able to say, with a ruler like Frederick II who “has
at hand a well-­disciplined and numerous army to guarantee public security,”
“Argue as much as you like and about what­ever you like, but obey!” If the
Demo­cratic Preparation 293

­ eople too are prepared to fulfill their part of the bargain, drawing a clear
p
line between the public and private uses of reason and keeping the public use
of reason (for the time being, as Kant hints at) from spilling over into po­
liti­cal action, they ­w ill have shown, to use Kant’s words, “how freedom may
exist without in the least jeopardizing public concord and the unity of the
commonwealth.”44 They w ­ ill have shown that they can usefully avail them-
selves of freedom for the sake of maturity without necessarily demanding
democracy.45
The context in which Kant thus reflected on the meaning of enlighten-
ment is dif­fer­ent from ours, and Kant’s reasons for not taking the leap from
freedom for the sake of maturity to freedom in the sense of po­liti­cal liberty,
with their intriguing ambiguity and openness, are not necessarily of a kind
one need endorse in the abstract.46 And, of course, no one is so naïve as to
­mistake ­today’s China for the Prus­sia of Kant’s time. But I see no reason why
we cannot draw valuable lessons from Kant’s line of thinking, and I find
nothing in the circumstances of China that would render such lessons
inapplicable.
By drawing on Kant’s reasoning, admittedly with some license, I believe
we ­w ill be able to identify a locus of freedom short of democracy and hence a
place where it is pos­si­ble to make a case for freedom as a condition for matu-
rity, as Kant does in his own scheme of ­things. On this basis we can then take
a step beyond Kant and construct an argument for freedom, along with the
maturity it makes pos­si­ble, as an essential second condition for democracy
standing next to the first one, equality of conditions. To appreciate and pre-
serve the usefulness of this argument, it is absolutely essential to understand
it as distinct from an argument for democracy itself. It is in­de­pen­dently
impor­tant to create this condition for democracy given equality of conditions,
­whether or not it is desirable, all ­t hings considered, to make an immediate
and comprehensive move from the readiness of conditions for democracy to
democracy itself.
Before proceeding further with this argument, I should hasten to preempt
a potential misunderstanding and distraction. By intellectual and moral
maturity I do not mean a h igh level of achievement but—in a somewhat
Kantian, regulative sense—­only what it takes to be a cognitive and moral
subject to the normal or minimal degree that is expected of a properly so-
cialized modern individual. Basic as it is, such maturity deserves its name in
294 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

a distinctive and impor­tant sense. It requires freedoms commensurate

with the responsibilities that modern individuals typically have to assume,
and thus it requires extensive freedoms, roughly speaking what Benjamin
Constant calls liberties of the moderns. Although one has no reason to
expect the exercise of such freedoms and the discharge of such responsi-
bilities to be occasions for the cultivation and display of excellences or ­g reat
virtues, one may count on them over time to produce citizens who have
what it takes to make democracy minimally workable. And it is for this reason
that I treat intellectual and moral maturity as an essential condition of
democracy.
What is of inestimable value is that once this essential condition of de-
mocracy is available, along with equality of conditions, democracy becomes
a live option that no longer undermines its own normative appeal with a
lack of po­liti­cal prudence. For once individual members of a s ociety have
become mature agents, cognitively and morally, the society constituted by
them ­w ill likewise become mature through their use of public reason in
thinking and acting together (in nonpo­liti­cal ways, at least initially). And it
­w ill come to be stable, in­de­pen­dently stable as a society as distinct from a
po­liti­cal entity, to the degree that it is mature. Once maturity is achieved
through freedom and its exercise in society, then, ­people ­will be able to take
care of themselves without tutelage e­ ither as individuals or as society. Thus,
what­ever ­else it may be and what­ever other purposes it may serve, the kind
of maturity Kant so eloquently pleads for is an essential condition for civil
society, a society capable of supporting itself as society. It is only as mature
individuals and members of society that ­people ­w ill have a reasonably good
chance of making a success of democracy, at least to the extent of rendering
democracy—­with its absence of absolute or near-­absolute power as a guarantee
of stability—­compatible with public order. Only then ­will a society be ready
for democracy, ­after the latter is rendered fitting and necessary by equality of
conditions. Individual and societal maturity as made pos­si­ble by liberty in
the exercise of public reason may thus be said to serve as the pivot of democ-
racy, linking equality of conditions and a po­liti­cal regime best befitting it, and
supporting a country’s orderly movement from the one to the other.
Thus I believe that the crucial place where the case, both prudential and
moral, can be most compellingly and consequentially made for democracy,
at least in China, is one step away from democracy. It directly concerns not
Demo­cratic Preparation 295

democracy itself but the second of its essential conditions—­t hat is, intellec-
tual and moral maturity. I say this not ­because the first essential condition
for democracy, equality of conditions, is less impor­tant but ­because this con-
dition, which is also a condition for the very need for and entitlement to
maturity, is one that pre­sents itself to members of modern socie­ties as already
more or less a fact of life that is neither pos­si­ble nor, on the ­whole, desirable
to change. ­Under the relative equality of conditions that surrounds us, then,
once the case for maturity is made, and once it is put into practice, I believe
the rest can be allowed to run its natu­ral course through the gradual expan-
sion of the public use of reason to include the public po­liti­cal use of reason47
and through the employment of the latter in response to the circumstances
of a society. At least this much w ­ ill have been accomplished: freedom, as an
even more impor­tant good than democracy ­under modern conditions of life,
is provided for, and the individual and societal maturity made pos­si­ble by
freedom ­w ill, in turn, put a society within reach of adopting democracy in a
way compatible with social stability. Should such freedom turn out to be
fragile without po­liti­cal rights as its best guarantee, the case for democracy
would only become stronger. And this too would be part of the natu­ral course
that a ­free society would run ­under the ­actual circumstances in which it finds
itself.
Given equality of conditions, then, the first order of business in getting a
society ready for democracy is to create conditions for individual and soci-
etal maturity, and chief among such conditions is an extensive set of
freedoms—­needless to say, not merely de facto freedoms but publicly valo-
rized ones. The prob­lem is that ­these freedoms can easily be exercised in such
a way as to pose a serious threat to a regime that has yet to become demo­
cratic, as is the case in China ­today. Predictably, the regime ­w ill not allow
such freedoms in anticipation of their subversive uses or, having allowed some
of them by design or default, w ­ ill withdraw them in response to such uses.
As a result, an emergent equality of conditions, even if well ­under way and
irreversible, is not allowed to be complemented by the introduction of free-
doms necessary for intellectual and moral maturity. A society is thus trapped
in a situation in which an advancing equality of conditions makes democ-
racy increasingly fitting and necessary and yet the regime understandably
cannot afford to facilitate the growth of maturity that is indispensable for the
orderly establishment of democracy.
296 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

China t­ oday finds itself exactly in this trap, and it badly needs to find a
way out of it. It is in this context that Kant provides an extremely valuable
clue for a way out when he shows how freedom in the public use of reason
can be made compatible with public order. From this clue it is only a short
step to entertaining the possibility that freedom as a condition for maturity
can be established in­de­pen­dently of and before freedom in the sense of po­
liti­cal liberty. And thus we can plausibly imagine meeting the two metacon-
ditions for democracy—­equality of conditions and individual and societal
maturity—­w ithout the immediate replacement of the regime presiding over
the achievement of such conditions by a fully demo­cratic one.
­There is no reason why the pre­sent Chinese leadership, the strongest in
more than two de­cades and almost impossible to duplicate in the f­ uture,
cannot in princi­ple undertake, gradually and prudently, the kind of reforms
a ruler like Frederick the ­Great was able to carry through—­w ith regard, say,
to censorship, freedom of expression, and religious tolerance.48 It w ­ ill be mo-
tivated to do so only if it is fully cognizant of the drastic worsening of the
legitimation crisis that looms in the foreseeable f­ uture and, on this basis,
makes the historic decision to choose a broadly demo­cratic solution as the
only one consistent with China’s already irreversible equality of conditions.
But this is not enough. For the citizenry, especially the po­liti­cally active, must
be prepared to abide by their part of the Kantian compromise, as it ­were. This
means drawing a reasonably clear line between freedom as a condition for
maturity and freedom in the sense of full-­fledged po­liti­cal liberty and, over
an extended period of time, carefully (even obediently, as Kant says) re-
fraining from the po­liti­cal, especially subversive, use of freedom.
­Under China’s special circumstances, some such compromise is what it
takes to make substantial yet prudent pro­gress ­toward democracy: given the
strong equality of conditions already pre­sent and irreversible in China, it is
in the rational interest of all Chinese, including the CCP no less than ­t hose
most ­eager to replace it with a demo­cratic regime, to promote individual and
societal maturity and, to this end, to support the prudent and gradual en-
largement of freedoms short of po­liti­cal liberty and democracy. For a long
time the CCP has governed China according to a logic that makes it impera-
tive to keep freedoms at bay and keep the vast majority of Chinese from
achieving the maturity they need and deserve u ­ nder an increasing equality
of conditions. It cannot go on ­doing so in­def­initely, ­because the unstoppable
Demo­cratic Preparation 297

pro­gress in equality of conditions w ­ ill make the country less and less gov-
ernable as it renders any regime other than one based on popu­lar consent
less and less fitting. China’s greatest danger is the per­sis­tence of a systemic
lack of individual and societal maturity if and when democracy comes insis-
tently knocking on the door and catches the country with no time left and
no strong central leadership available to prepare the citizenry for its orderly
arrival. The time for such preparation is now, and the leadership strong
enough to undertake it is the pre­sent one. But it is a delicate task that requires
steady and deft hands not only from the CCP but also from the populace,
not least the po­liti­cally active intellectuals.
While it would be too much to expect anything remotely like a smooth
and well-­coordinated execution even in the best of scenarios, it is not irra-
tional to hope that the most enlightened and power­ful within the CCP leader-
ship and the most enlightened and influential among the public ­w ill learn to
exercise the comprehensive po­liti­cal virtue that Weber aptly calls the ethic of
responsibility. ­Unless they do so, and soon, China may well be doomed to
the miserable choice between a barely governable authoritarian state and a
chaotic demo­cratic one, if not worse.

How the CCP Can Prepare Itself and the Country

for Democracy through Social Justice Reform

This is an eventuality the CCP has a rational interest in preventing for its
own sake and on behalf of China at large—­provided, of course, that it de-
velops a clear vision of the danger lurking just beyond the horizon. Few in
China would stand to benefit from ­either scenario. But this is only about
disaster prevention, and ­t here is no telling ­whether a successful strategy to
this end ­w ill, beyond averting the worst, also leave the party with a positive
­future in a demo­cratic China. I believe that ­there could be such a ­future and,
even more importantly, that this very possibility, if properly appreciated and
explored by the CCP, would stand China in good stead like nothing e­ lse in
its demo­cratic development in the crucial ten to twenty years to come.
The potential for this positive f­ uture lies in the CCP demonstrating its
willingness and ability to accomplish two ­t hings at the same time. The first
is to prepare the citizenry for democracy through moral and l­egal reforms
aimed at the gradual and prudent expansion of freedoms as a condition for
298 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

individual and societal maturity. The second, dependent on the first and, in
turn, supporting it, is to massively improve social justice—­none other than
what Karl Polanyi calls the self-­protection of society—so that all members
of Chinese society ­w ill more equitably benefit from economic and social de-
velopment than they have done so far in the reform era.49 It is difficult to
believe that success on t­ hese two fronts combined would not give the CCP a
positive role, even a sustained leading role, in a ­f uture demo­cratic China,
given also its unique mastery of the formidable art of governing a country as
large and complicated as China. Having already spelled out what the first
task involves, I w ­ ill now address the second.
It is a commonplace that, as a result of the economic reform in the past
four de­cades, China has become an oddly hybrid society, with an economy,
now the world’s second largest, well integrated into the global cap­i­tal­ist order
yet led by a po­liti­cal party that is still calling itself communist and shows no
sign of wanting to part with its ostensible socialist credentials. If one is not
dogmatic about it, ­t here is ­little doubt that the dynamic and ethos that make
China tick ­today—­t he do’s, as it ­were, as distinct from the ­don’ts, which boil
down to not undermining the rule of the CCP—­are informed by essentially
cap­i­tal­ist values and goals. This is especially the case with Chinese society in-
sofar as it is distinct from the po­liti­cal state. But even the po­liti­cal state, and
this means the party above all, is happily operating in a global cap­i­tal­ist order
whose core logic and orientation, as distinct from the current balance of
power and pecking order, it has shown ­little desire to resist or challenge. At
the same time, the CCP has reformed China’s domestic economy, and ­w ill
continue to do so, with a view to maximizing its competitiveness in just such
a cap­i­tal­ist order. It goes without saying that the CCP has another agenda
distinct from and even more impor­tant than success in its cap­i­tal­ist en-
deavors. It is determined to maintain its exclusive hold on state power, and
therefore it unsurprisingly adapts the structure and operation of China’s
economy to this supreme end, with the predictable result that China’s
economy and society are not cap­i­tal­ist in the same way Western or Western-­
style liberal demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist systems are. Hence, for example, the formal
distinction between the economic and po­liti­cal domains cannot be drawn
as strictly as ­under demo­cratic capitalism, and the state-­owned enterprises,
for all their prob­lems, ­will continue to play an indispensable role in the overall
po­liti­cal economy.
Demo­cratic Preparation 299

So we are talking about a hybrid China, and the CCP responsible for cre-
ating it could not be any less hybrid. It would be an understatement to say
that it ­w ill not be easy for the party as we now find it to make truly signifi-
cant pro­gress in social justice (beyond poverty reduction)—­a goal associated
with social democracy rather than communism—­and to live up to its puta-
tive socialist credentials. What are its socialist credentials anyway, other than
its orga­nizational continuity with Mao’s CCP?50 Is ­t here indeed still a com-
munist party to speak of, given the inextricable links of the higher levels of
its personnel and their relatives to the most power­f ul domestic capital and
cap­i­tal­ists, and given the way it has been treating working ­people in terms of
welfare provision, ­factor income distribution, and protection against the
worst ravages of cap­i­tal­ist exploitation? The CCP of ­today is not the CCP of
old, but if it is to have a ­f uture as a party with up-­to-­date socialist creden-
tials, it must find a way to promote social justice in a largely cap­i­tal­ist do-
mestic economy embedded in a global cap­i­tal­ist order still u ­ nder the sway of
neoliberalism.
It is worth noting that social justice is not only a ­matter of poverty reduc-
tion, social welfare, ­factor income distribution, the prevention of extreme
concentration of wealth, and the like but also a moral imperative stemming
from the supposedly public character of the state, particularly of a state that
considers itself socialist, as China does. Indeed, the latter, moral aspect of social
justice is more basic than the former, policy aspect and is what informs and
warrants it. It is in my view the lack of this animating moral impulse and its
institutional embodiment that pre­sents by far the deeper and more daunting
challenge to the CCP with re­spect to social justice reform. For, given its track
rec­ord in recent de­cades and its current practices, it is difficult not to view the
Chinese party-­state as, in no small part, a massive apparatus for private ap-
propriation. The principal basis for this view is not only, indeed not even
chiefly, systemic official corruption but also the perfectly ­legal entitlements
enjoyed by officialdom, especially at the higher levels, and a corresponding,
irrepressible sense of entitlement. Many of the privileges—­with re­spect to
such t­ hings as housing, medical care, and transportation—­benefit the offi-
cials’ immediate families as well, while the arrogance born of a culturally in-
grained sense of privilege unfailingly rubs off on the offspring of officials high
and low. It remains true ­today, for all the positive effects of the antigraft
campaign and of the re­introduction of the so-­called mass line (that is, better
300 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

communication with and ser­vice for ordinary ­people), that higher officialdom,
inclusive of immediate ­family and offspring, lives as a species apart. Unsur-
prisingly, po­liti­cally based and hence highly con­spic­u­ous privileges are in-
creasingly being converted into advantages associated with wealth and, in the
latter form, better hidden from scrutiny. Just consider how many of the sons
and d ­ aughters of the higher officials have, quietly and with freedom from public
oversight, enriched themselves in financial and other highly profitable sectors
or at least as highly paid employees of domestic or global capital.
­Whether or not the party-­state ­under Mao also worked in this way, at
least partly, is debatable, but t­ here can be no doubt that private appropria-
tion was severely constrained by scarcity and especially by the abolition of
private owner­ship of the means of production. Now that private property
rights have been reestablished, the operation of the party-­state as partly an
apparatus of private appropriation takes on dramatically new dimensions
and a new meaning. This is what po­liti­cal grievances against one-­party rule,
the moral hatred of official corruption, and social resentment of state-­owned
enterprises have in common: the under­lying perception of the extent to
which, and the hy­poc­risy with which, the public institutions of a n omi-
nally communist party-­state are used as an apparatus for private appropria-
tion. Correspondingly, the call for democracy is, at the deepest level, the
demand for an end to the sources of this perception, rather than the fe-
tishizing of the formal mechanisms of demo­cratic elections and decision-­
making. In this sense, the call for democracy and the demand for social
justice are one and the same.
Some may think, not without reason, that the CCP is too far gone, too
much prey to power­f ul vested interests within its own ranks, to attempt or
even think of attempting social justice reform thus understood, or even as
less ambitiously conceived.51 But this cannot be a completely foregone con-
clusion. What is both an exceptional strength and weakness of the CCP is
that ­there are times when it is pos­si­ble for a central leadership equipped with
authority and imbued with vision to turn the party and the country in a new
direction, good or bad. The pre­sent may well be among such times, and the
pre­sent leadership may well have it in them to undertake a major change of
direction. This would not be easy, to be sure, given the unholy alliance of
power­ful po­liti­cal and corporate interests enriching and aggrandizing them-
selves at the expense of the weak and vulnerable, which has been an impor­
Demo­cratic Preparation 301

tant part of the story of China’s economic reform. The difficulty is made all
the more acute by a global environment in which new growth and distri-
bution patterns, as ­shaped by the dominance of financial capital and infor-
mation technology, have dampened egalitarian aspirations throughout the
world. And, ­needless to say, with its heavy dependence on exports and its
ever-­expanding finance and IT industries, China has shown itself to be both
attracted and vulnerable to ­t hese patterns, not least in the wake of the 2008
financial crisis.
Such formidable odds against pro­gress in social justice are balanced by
the unusually large room for maneuver that China enjoys b ­ ecause of the size
of its economy, combined with a degree of bona fide po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence
(not least from American influence) available to few of the world’s leading
economic powers. This room affords the CCP the possibility of making sub-
stantial pro­gress in social justice if it is ­really determined to do so—­t he
more so if and as it increases its share of the global economy and elevates its
status in the global value chain. But considering that the global value chain
is itself a morally ambiguous arrangement at best, and that ­today’s finance-­
dominated, consumerism-­driven model of capitalism is bringing unpre­ce­
dented levels of risk and waste to economies, ­human lives, and the natu­ral
environment, must China single-­mindedly try to play the same game and,
indeed, aim to improve social justice only in terms determined by this
game? Constrained by the realism of a s elf-­imposed realistic utopia for
China, I ­w ill hold back from a confident “no.” But surely it is not too much
to expect a country with China’s economic and po­liti­cal possibilities to de-
mand of itself at least a serious effort to responsibly imagine better ­t hings
than ­today’s capitalism has to offer and to experiment accordingly where it
is feasible. Surely it is pos­si­ble to give the Chinese Dream a bit more dreami-
ness than is to be found in becoming as power­f ul and respected a g lobal
cap­i­tal­ist hegemon as it could be.
No one knows for sure ­whether the pre­sent CCP leadership ­will seize
such opportunities, afforded it by the size of China’s economy and its po­
liti­cal in­de­pen­dence, among other ­t hings. But what is not in doubt is that, as
­things stand in China, t­ here is a g­ reat deal of congruence between a moral
interest in promoting social justice and the CCP’s own prudential or rational
interest in readying China for democracy and readying itself for a leading role
within it. A proven track rec­ord in advancing the cause of social justice52—­say,
302 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

in education, health care, social security, and, not least, the ­house­hold regis-
tration (hukou) system involving the urban-­r ural divide, within the next
ten years or so—­combined with the successful execution of the moral and
­legal reforms, w ­ ill endear the CCP to the majority of Chinese even as it may
create new yet benign prob­lems by raising expectations and may alienate
power­ful vested interests, not least within the CCP’s own ranks. If the party
is able and motivated, as it should be, to establish a positive track rec­ord in
all-­around demo­cratic preparation while maintaining even a moderate level
of growth, it w ­ ill have ­every reason to be confident that it w
­ ill be rewarded
by a sizable part of the citizenry in a demo­cratic China it can proudly take
credit for having helped establish in the first place.
It is definitely not beyond the realm of feasibility that, if the CCP cares
about its own ­f uture and the ­f uture of China and acts with a proper combi-
nation of vision and prudence, it may succeed in creating a ­f uture for China
that is open to democracy and in bringing about positive conditions for a
well-­f unctioning democracy that is open to the party playing an impor­tant,
even leading, role in it. While democracy must mean the cessation of one-­
party rule, it need not entail the end of the CCP as a major, positive po­liti­cal
force—­with or without the prospect of one-­party democracy (as is essentially
the case, say, in demo­cratic Japan and somewhat less demo­cratic Singapore).
I would venture to suggest that this congruence of the CCP’s interest and the
country’s interest, with its objective basis in the present-­day real­ity of China,
is a far from negligible ground for rational hope.

Excursus on Confucianism with Regard to

Demo­cratic Preparation

I want to conclude this chapter on demo­cratic preparation with some

brief reflections on Confucianism to complement ­t hose made ­toward the
end of Chapter 3. It seems natu­ral to do so, as the CCP is showing signs that
it has some interest, however guarded, in drawing on Confucianism as a
source of ideological power. It is appropriate to do so in this chapter b
­ ecause
Confucianism could come to the aid of the CCP if and when the latter de-
cides to undertake demo­cratic change, not least at the stage of demo­cratic
preparation. And t­ here is a way to do so that is not too farfetched if we try
to identify potential links not so much between Confucianism and democ-
Demo­cratic Preparation 303

racy as between it and republicanism. For Confucianism seems substan-

tially closer to republicanism (on a certain understanding of it) than to de-
mocracy, while republicanism, in turn, is not too far removed from
democracy and could be conceived as a more elitist version of it. Thus I ­will
explore, in a b rief and schematic way, some potential affinities between
Confucianism and republicanism—­a ffinities that may serve as part of
China’s bridge to democracy.
Much of the argument for Confucianism in the modern setting seems to
rest on the belief that Confucianism has a certain flexibility with regard to
regime type. Traditionally, of course, Confucianism went together with mon-
archy and only with monarchy. Con­temporary proponents of Confucianism,
however, seldom ­favor monarchy, and some of them find Confucianism, duly
revised, eminently suitable for democracy. A blanket denial of Confucian-
ism’s claim to regime flexibility would obviously be premature. Yet t­ here is
­little doubt that Confucianism is more suited to some regime types than to
­others. If we approach this fact in terms of the distinction between Confu-
cianism playing a major, structural role and its playing only a relatively minor,
subsidiary role in a regime, it is plausible to advance the hypothesis that Con-
fucianism can play a major, structural role only in certain regime types.
Take liberal democracy as a regime type (to use regime in a loose sense to
be explained presently). In a liberal democracy the constitutional essentials
revolve around majority rule and the protection of individual rights and lib-
erties. Given such constitutional essentials, the most that Confucianism can
do is twofold: first, to keep alive Confucian ideals and values in civil society
and thereby serve as part of the informal background of a demo­cratic po­
liti­cal culture; and, second, to contribute one comprehensive doctrine to a
liberal society where no single comprehensive doctrine is supposed to hold
sway. Within a liberal democracy, then, ­t here is no room for Confucianism
to play more than a subsidiary, nonstructural role. It is not always clear what
con­temporary Confucians of a broadly liberal demo­cratic persuasion (as dis-
cussed in Chapter 3) are up to. Are they happy to accept a subsidiary role for
Confucianism within the structural par­ameters of liberal democracy? Or are
they, by virtue of the revisions they propose to liberal democracy, aiming for
a regime type that is no longer liberal democracy, strictly speaking? If so, what
exactly is the regime they prefer? More impor­tant, is such a regime pos­si­ble
­under modern conditions?
304 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

It is against this background that I want to raise the question of Confu-

cianism’s regime flexibility, but I can do no more than lay out some termi-
nological and conceptual preliminaries. First, by regime types I roughly mean
distinctive po­liti­cal arrangements differing in such ­factors as who rules, over
what kind of society, u ­ nder what princi­ples, and so on, and what results there-
from in terms of distinctive configurations and potential contradictions.
This deliberately loose and mixed characterization is meant to be neutral as
between, say, Aristotle’s and Montesquieu’s accounts and classifications
(though perhaps actually somewhat closer to the latter), and it allows me to
speak of liberal democracy as a regime as my purpose requires. Let me now
introduce a complication. It arises from the idea, as treated in Chapter 3, that
the socioeconomic condition of a community has an impor­tant bearing on
what regime is suitable for it. Instead of starting again with Protagoras, I w ­ ill
this time briefly invoke Aristotle, who too hinted that social conditions play
a role in the functioning of a po­liti­cal regime, saying, for example, that the
strong presence of what we would t­ oday call the ­middle class is conducive to
a stable democracy.53 This is an insight the likes of which we have come to
associate especially with Tocqueville when it comes to modern democracy,
as discussed at length in Chapter  3. For Tocqueville, as we have seen, de-
mocracy is not merely a regime type but, first and foremost, a certain type of
society marked by what he calls equality of conditions—­t hat is, equality of
social conditions. I am bringing in Tocqueville again ­because his under-
standing of democracy as covering both regime and society is a conceptual
innovation that is exceptionally useful for my pre­sent purposes. In the light
of this innovation, I must recast the question of what I ­earlier called Confu-
cianism’s regime flexibility. To be more precise, then, what is at issue is Con-
fucianism’s flexibility with regard not so much to regime types as to society
types—­especially if we pair a society type with its corresponding regime type,
in which case we can speak of a society-­regime type.
Tocqueville has a further value for my pre­sent exercise in that he has per-
formed an illuminating simplification by reducing all society-­regime types
into two. One of ­these is democracy, whose defining feature is equality of con-
ditions. The other is aristocracy, based as it is on in­equality of conditions.
Aristocracy in this deliberately broad sense covers all nondemo­cratic ways
of organ­izing social and po­liti­cal relations, including monarchy. This allows
Tocqueville to pit democracy in the broad sense against aristocracy in an
Demo­cratic Preparation 305

equally broad sense and to speak of them as marking “two distinct kinds of
humanity.”54
What are we to say of Confucianism if we try to place it in Tocqueville’s
binary scheme of society-­regime types, bearing in mind the distinction be-
tween a structural role and a subsidiary role? We can, I think, make three
fairly straightforward observations: first, that Confucianism can play a struc-
tural role only in an aristocracy; second, that it can at best play a subsidiary
role in a democracy; and, third, that since aristocracy is a ­t hing of the past,
the most that Confucianism can aspire to in the modern world is to play a
subsidiary role in a democracy if the latter happens to have a living Confu-
cian tradition.
This is plainly not good enough for t­ hose con­temporary Confucians who
entertain higher hopes for Confucianism. Small won­der, then, that their
thought contains traces, sometimes more than traces, of republicanism—­not
so much republicanism’s valorization of po­liti­cal liberty and nondomination
as its emphasis on checks and balances, on the common good, and on civic
virtue in both active and passive forms; in other words, on what seems a more
even balance between the good and virtue, on the one hand, and right and
freedom, on the other. Such traces seem to be informed by the intuition that,
if Confucianism is to play a structural role in a modern setting, ­t here must
be a third possibility in addition to aristocracy and democracy. This third
possibility is republicanism—as an intermediate type and, especially for our
purposes, as a transitional type.
I doubt that t­ hose Confucians who are drawn to republicanism think of
it as a society type—­t hat is, as more than just a regime type. It may indeed
appear odd to speak of republicanism as a society type at all. But t­ here need
be nothing incoherent about the idea of a republican society in the following
sense: a society whose conditions ­favor the establishment and flourishing of
a republican regime, which, in turn, promotes and helps give po­liti­cal shape
to ­t hose conditions. It so happens that this usage finds some support from
the American historian Gordon Wood, who conceives of the general condi-
tions surrounding the American Revolution in terms of the succession of
monarchy (before the revolution), republicanism (in the wake of the revolu-
tion), and democracy (two to three de­cades ­after the revolution).55 By mon-
archy, republicanism, and democracy, Wood clearly means what I am calling
society-­regime types.
306 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Two t­ hings are worth noting. The first is the affinity between the bur-
geoning Confucian republicanism of our time (in thought more than in
real­ity so far) and the po­liti­cal mentality of what Wood describes as the re-
publican phase of American history. The second is Wood’s observation that
by the early nineteenth ­century, republicanism was decisively and irrevocably
replaced by democracy. In this regard, Wood shows far greater sensitivity to
the intimate relation between society type and regime type than does the
common run of republicanism’s con­temporary advocates, who seem to have
less awareness that civic republicanism is rendered utopian by the thoroughly
demo­cratic character of American society ­today.
I am not implying that, by the same token, Confucian republicanism is
nothing but an unrealistically utopian doctrine. For societal conditions are
not uniform in the modern world. If republicanism has ­little chance in Amer­
i­ca, the same need not apply to China, at least t­ oday. The least one could say
on behalf of Confucian republicanism is that in republicanism Confucianism
finds an option that, while being normatively more congenial to it than de-
mocracy, is at the same time more realistic than aristocracy. For, on the one
hand, the Chinese social imaginary still contains substantial space for a rela-
tively thick conception of the common good, a relatively prominent place
for virtue on the part of leaders and citizens, and a residual hankering for
po­liti­cal meritocracy in terms of promotion of the common good led by ­those
with supposedly exceptional civic and instrumental virtues. On the other
hand, China is fast creating its own versions of atomistic individualism, value
pluralism, postmodern irony, and rampant capitalism. As long as this mixed
societal condition lasts, t­ here seems—­just seems—to be some room for a
mixed po­liti­cal regime comprising the Few (aristocracy, or what the Confu-
cians prefer to call meritocracy, emphasizing natu­ral aristocracy) and the
Many (democracy), if not—to judge by the more or less demo­cratically in-
clined Confucian theorists’ own pronouncements—­t he One, although the
latter perhaps should not be ruled out outright, if only to accommodate what
might become of the leading role of the CCP. Such room seems to exist in
the same way that the societal condition of Amer­i­ca in the de­cades immedi-
ately following 1776 permitted, indeed encouraged, its own distinctive brand
of mixed government.56
Thus Confucian republicans definitely have their work cut out for them,
with a mixture of daunting challenges and tantalizing possibilities. The chal-
Demo­cratic Preparation 307

lenges arise from the complex character of Chinese society ­today. The pos-
sibilities come from the more old-­fashioned part of Chinese society, as it ­were,
and, equally impor­tant, from the CCP’s urgent need for sources of ideolog-
ical power to augment its fast-­declining old, communist one. Th ­ ere are few
more obvious or promising candidates than Confucianism, and a suitably re-
vived and revised Confucianism could conceivably lend the CCP an ideo-
logical hand in its pos­si­ble attempt to set China on a demo­cratic course that
is not too fast or too radical. But before Confucianism could play such a role,
if and when the time comes, Confucian intellectuals active ­today must first
come up with some fully developed conception of Confucian republicanism
as a normative po­liti­cal doctrine. This conception, in turn, must be predi-
cated on a plausible demonstration that a Confucian republican (mixed) re-
gime is a realistic prospect on account of China’s pre­sent societal conditions.
Short of this, Confucianism ­will be caught between the binary options of ar-
istocracy and democracy. Of ­t hese, one (standing by itself) is a ­t hing of the
past, and the other—­more precisely called liberal democracy—­a llows only a
minor, subsidiary role for Confucianism.
PART THREE

The International and

Hong Kong Dimensions
CHAPTER SEVEN

Democracy at Home and Legitimacy

around the World

THE RISE OF CHINA in economic power and geopo­liti­cal influence has not
been matched by a c orresponding enhancement of its legitimacy on the
world stage. The resulting gap between China’s so-­called hard and soft power
is one of the most prominent features of this rise and the strongest proof, if
proof is needed, of its radical incompleteness. To the degree that China is
not yet respected, it is perceived as a threat and a source of destabilization in
proportion to its power. What­ever benefits China’s rising power may have
brought it, the lopsidedness of this power has become a liability—­a ral-
lying point against China whenever ­t here is a significant convergence of in-
terests, economic or geopo­liti­cal, uniting a group of nations. This explains
the ebb and flow of anti-­China (though not necessarily anti-­Chinese) senti-
ment in much of the world.
­W hether this sentiment is just or unjust, and what­ever the proportion,
­those who hold it are undoubtedly responding to the lopsidedness of China’s
rise and its resulting power. This is a m­ atter of perception, of course, but this
does not make it any less a psychological real­ity, a po­liti­cal and geopo­liti­cal
psychological real­ity. As such, it is in part a manufactured real­ity and lends
itself to constant, sometimes blatant manipulation by power­ful governments
and media in the context of international relations. That this is pos­si­ble is
enough to confirm the lopsidedness of China’s rise—­and its huge cost, geopo­
liti­cal and economic, alongside the gains brought by the rise itself. The Chinese
state has few true headaches involving geopo­liti­cal or international economic
relations that do not have an impor­tant part of their source in this lopsidedness,
312 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

in a rising China’s legitimacy deficit on the international stage. Th ­ ese head-

aches are not g­ oing away anytime soon, and exertions of hard power are
simply too blunt an instrument for ­handling them.
This is no less true of ­those domestic issues in which foreign powers happen
to take a special po­liti­cal or geopo­liti­cal interest. The intractability of sepa-
ratist tendencies in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan stands in a di-
rect causal relation to the Chinese state’s perceived lack of legitimacy, allowing
the internal separatists and their external supporters and sympathizers to
take the moral high ground. That high ground, varyingly articulated in terms
of ­human rights, religious freedom, democracy, or the rule of law, has the
miraculous effect of weakening the Chinese state’s perceived legitimacy and
thereby, subtly yet undeniably, weakening what­ever sovereignty claims the
state has against separatist challenges from within. Although this logic is
seldom made explicit, a legitimacy deficit has the distinct potential, in cases
of dispute, to turn into a sovereignty deficit that gives a morally plausible
opening to more or less tactful external meddling.
The Chinese leadership cannot but be painfully conscious of the head-
aches caused by the lopsidedness of the country’s rise. However, they under-
stand this lopsidedness in terms of a shortage of soft power rather than a le-
gitimacy deficit. This is a big ­mistake, in that what is involved is not a lack of
soft power as such but, above all, a lack of soft power of a par­tic­u­lar, po­liti­cal
kind. It is essential to think of this lack in terms of a legitimacy deficit
­because much of it has to do with democracy and ­because, when it comes to
the nation-­state as we know it ­today, nothing is more liable to create a cloud
over its legitimacy than a lack of democracy. China’s deficit in soft power is
a legitimacy deficit, which is, in turn, a democracy deficit.1
Not every­one ­w ill accept this conclusion, naturally, so let us take a step
back from democracy and treat as our point of departure the more easily ac-
ceptable idea that China cannot hope to enjoy full legitimacy abroad u ­ nless
it enjoys full legitimacy at home, leaving it open w ­ hether the latter legitimacy
is, in turn, dependent on democracy. I believe ­there are ­those who ­will readily
agree with this idea and yet think that domestic legitimacy can be achieved
while bypassing democracy and that once domestic legitimacy is secured,
with or without democracy, this ­ought to suffice for international legitimacy
as well. However one may approach the issue normatively, the fact of the
­matter is that given the way the global po­liti­cal value space is currently con-
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 313

stituted, no country can enjoy full legitimacy on the international stage

without being a democracy at home.
To decide how one ­ought to react to this fact, it is necessary to return to
the question of legitimacy at home, the question of w ­ hether democracy is an
essential condition of domestic legitimacy—as an empirical m ­ atter. An an-
swer is readily suggested by the fact, just noted, that the global po­liti­cal value
space is so constituted as to place democracy at the center of conditions for
international legitimacy. Obviously, it is impossible for this to be the case
without it also being the case for most domestic regimes. China is clearly not
an exception, and ­t here is no better proof than its own refusal to accept any
designation as a nondemocracy and then proceed to mount a self-­defense in
terms of such a designation. In fact, democracy is treated in China as—­and
in this crucial sense is—­a crucial condition of legitimacy at home. However,
since democracy is an essentially contested concept and what is at issue is
domestic legitimacy, we need an appropriately flexible concept of democracy
as a condition of legitimacy. It should be reasonable to suggest, then, that it
is a sufficient condition for domestic legitimacy that China is regarded (­under
appropriate conditions of freedom, equality, and information) by a majority
of its own citizens as a democracy. We can now revisit my ­earlier statement
about the relation between internal and external legitimacy and fill in the part
that was left open. Thus we have reason to hold that China cannot hope to
enjoy full legitimacy internationally u ­ nless it enjoys full legitimacy at home,
and that it cannot enjoy full legitimacy at home u ­ nless it is a democracy, in
the sense that it is perceived by a majority of its own citizens as reasonably
demo­cratic.
This way of viewing the m ­ atter has an extremely impor­tant consequence.
Suppose, hypothetically, that t­ hings are other­wise, that the external pressure
on China to enhance its legitimacy through democracy does not coincide
with an internal pressure for democracy. U ­ nder this supposition, it is a tricky
question w ­ hether China o ­ ught to respond to the external pressure—­tricky
­because t­ here is something both imprudent and undemo­cratic about bowing
to external pressure on an issue bearing on legitimacy when domestic public
opinion points in a dif­fer­ent direction. In other words, ex hypothesi what is
conducive to greater legitimacy abroad is detrimental to legitimacy at
home, and vice versa. Now lift the hy­po­thet­i­cal supposition and ­matters ­will
become much more straightforward, at least in princi­ple: China o ­ ught, for
314 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

both prudential and normative reasons, to respond to internal pressure for

legitimacy enhancement—if such pressure exists, as it clearly does—­t hrough
democ­ratization. In so d ­ oing, China ­w ill also be responding positively to
the external pressure, but, crucially, ­doing so for internal and hence better
reasons. Consistent with this reasoning, one might put the point differently
and say that China ­ought to respond to external pressure for democracy to the
degree that it coincides with an internal one.
The question that remains is w ­ hether the domestic legitimacy thus achieved
­w ill necessarily translate into legitimacy on the international stage—­a nd
­whether it o ­ ught to even if in real­ity it does not. Without even attempting to
answer this question, it is already clear that t­ here is no bypassing democracy
if China is to have any reasonable hope of gaining full legitimacy on the in-
ternational stage. Since the Chinese state has yet to develop a po­liti­cal form
that w ­ ill convince enough of its own citizens that it is demo­cratic, this much
at least is the task that it must accomplish for purposes of both domestic and
international legitimacy. ­W hether fulfillment of this task ­w ill be sufficient
to achieve international legitimacy is a question whose answer we w ­ ill know
only when this task is accomplished. By then China ­w ill at least be able to lay
a plausible claim to the essentially contested concept of democracy—­t hat is,
able not to bypass democracy but, as it w ­ ere, to bypass only a p ar­tic­u­lar,
hitherto hegemonic interpretation of it.
As ­things stand, the relation between internal and external legitimacy
also goes the other way, such that not only is it true that China cannot enjoy
full legitimacy abroad u ­ nless it enjoys full legitimacy at home, it also seems
true—to a degree and in ways not to be sneered at—­t hat, the countervailing
power of nationalism notwithstanding, the Chinese state cannot enjoy full
legitimacy at home u ­ nless it enjoys full legitimacy abroad. The latter is, for
example, at least partially the case with regard to large enough numbers of
­people in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong to cause ­great worry for the Chi-
nese state. If and when the Chinese state has successfully sorted out its do-
mestic democracy deficit, it w ­ ill also be in a much stronger moral position
vis-­à-­v is ­t hose of its citizens who defer to so-­called international standards
when ­t hese happen to differ from China’s own.
In the domestic case as in the global one, a further rise in China’s hard
power ­w ill undoubtedly help, as it always does, but the change that w ­ ill ulti-
mately m ­ atter is the one that happens to perceptions of legitimacy via per-
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 315

ceptions of democracy. To achieve the latter change, China ­w ill first have to
achieve full domestic legitimacy via democracy. Only then ­w ill it be able to
plausibly contest the meaning of democracy at home and, especially, abroad.
­There is no telling what form po­liti­cal and geopo­liti­cal confrontation ­will take
thereafter. What we know for sure is that u ­ ntil that point is reached, China
can count on one extra challenge from its power­f ul demo­cratic rivals, in the
form of what I w ­ ill call political-­system hostility.

A Magnet for Political-­System Hostility

I have argued that China’s need for international legitimacy and its need
for domestic legitimacy converge to make demo­cratic development desirable
and that this convergence gives China good reason to respond positively to
the external pressure for democracy. It does not follow, however, that ex-
ternal pressure is invariably a good ­t hing. It is one ­t hing for such pressure to
exist in the form of the logic that China ­w ill not gain full international le-
gitimacy u ­ ntil it gains full domestic legitimacy by becoming what is (at
least) internally regarded as a democracy. It is something ­else for this pres-
sure to manifest itself in the form of po­liti­cal hostility, sometimes intense
po­liti­cal hostility. Such hostility and the distinctive pressure that can go
with it may or may not be advisable from a prudential point of view and may
or may not be justified from a normative point of view. It is necessary to take
a step back in order to reflect on the wisdom and rightness of such hostility.
But, first, what does this hostility look like?
While the Cold War is officially over, one legacy of it that has proved es-
pecially potent and enduring for China is a widespread perception of its po­
liti­cal system as morally inferior and hence in need of fundamental change.
Such a perception is shared by all liberal demo­cratic states and by ­t hose in
China itself who wish to see their country become a liberal democracy. For
the most part only implicit and seldom fully spelled out even when explicit,
this perception is nevertheless extremely strong and consequential. It informs
in ways blunt and subtle almost all the dealings with China by states and indi-
viduals alike that involve an ele­ment of negative moral-­political judgment.
At the core of this perception is China’s lack of democracy, with its h ­ uman
rights rec­ord thrown in for good mea­sure. This lack is regarded as an incor-
rigible deficiency of China’s po­liti­cal system. At the same time, it is perceived,
316 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

sometimes with what seems a mixture of envy and revulsion, as a strength

that compounds the deficiency and turns it into a unique menace. For, on
the one hand, the disposition of power peculiar to China’s po­liti­cal system is
viewed as the source of the more serious of the country’s domestic prob­lems,
as well as of the more controversial aspects of its conduct in international af-
fairs. Yet, on the other, it is registered as a cause for alarm in view of its un-
deniably positive contribution to China’s spectacular rise as an economic, and
increasingly geopo­liti­cal, power.
Small won­der that Western democracies, especially the United States,
and domestic liberal critics of China alike are wont to hold China to liberal
demo­cratic standards and profess, or at least imply, the desire to see China
evolve into a polity more or less like the United States. (The true shock and
scandal of June 4, 1989, from this perspective, was that this evolution was
not g­ oing to happen smoothly or anytime soon.) This cannot but mean that
they want to see a China that is no longer ruled by the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) in a one-­party state. At least in this broad sense, they all desire
“regime change” in China; ­whether, and to what degree, they take positive
steps to help bring this about is another m ­ atter, a m
­ atter of prudence and
feasibility rather than sheer desirability. While the Eu­ro­pean Union, not it-
self an empire and lately overwhelmed by prob­lems of its own, is generally
less vocal in its po­liti­cal criticisms of China, it does not fundamentally di-
verge from the American stance and is happy, for the most part, to let the
leader of the ­free world do most of the moral-­political lecturing, whenever
so inclined. What is not in doubt, least of all from the Chinese perspective,
is that as long as China keeps its current po­liti­cal system, it w ­ ill not be left
alone to take care of its po­liti­cal business according to its own standards,
even ­under normal circumstances. In our increasingly globalized po­liti­cal
world, ­whether a state is demo­cratic seems to have become every­one’s legiti-
mate business and all states deemed nondemo­cratic are fair game, at least
when it comes to moral judgment and, where feasible, po­liti­cal pressure.
One has only to notice the almost complete absence of such judgment and
pressure in the opposite direction, except in feeble protest or discursive tit-­
for-­tat (such as China’s annual white paper on h ­ uman rights in the United
States), to have some sense of the dominant international po­liti­cal sentiment
that seems ever ready to be mobilized.
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 317

Against this background, China ­u nder the CCP naturally sees itself as
facing a distinctive threat. The sense of threat comes in no uncertain manner
from China’s perception of an unmistakable w ­ ill to democracy on the part
of power­f ul Western liberal democracies, as well as supporters of liberal
democracy at home. It is driven even more, not least ­because of the uncer-
tainty and opacity involved, by the fear that this w ­ ill to democracy is only
waiting for opportunities to translate it into subversive action—in the
form, say, of a “color revolution”—as it has done in not a few other parts of
the world. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the Chinese state
registers the negative perception of its po­liti­cal system not only as an injury
to its pride as an equal among the world’s po­liti­cal systems. More importantly,
it sees in this deep-­seated and widespread perception a p otentially lethal
threat to its very existence with its current po­liti­cal identity. ­There can be no
doubt, then, to the guardians of China’s po­liti­cal system—­indeed to the de-
tached observer—­that this system, if not China itself, is permanently u ­ nder
siege, warranting a permanent state of emergency. Even when the perceived
threat is neither grave nor imminent or is outweighed by economic coopera-
tion, t­ here is an unmistakable hostility that lurks barely beneath the surface.
We need a name for this sentiment, and I deem it appropriate to call it
political-­system hostility. It is worth adding that this hostility is essentially
one-­sided, with manifestations of hostility on China’s side being for the
most part reactive and defensive. ­There is ­little doubt that this distinctive
hostility, even when not particularly active, is sufficient to cause China to
act, both domestically and in international relations, in ways it would other­
wise not act. Likewise, ­those state and individual actors that deem China’s
po­liti­cal system hopelessly flawed are thereby disposed to treat China in
ways they would other­wise not. This tense reciprocity, though often well con-
tained in the interest of economic and other agendas, is a fundamental fact of
the po­liti­cal relationship between China and Western liberal democracies,
and between China and its liberal dissenters. And the two relations are in-
extricably intertwined—­recent po­liti­cal developments in Hong Kong being
a prominent case in point. It would be difficult to exaggerate the conse-
quences, intended or not, that such reciprocity is likely to have for the ac-
tion and reasoning of the Chinese state, which, in turn, ­will have impor­tant
consequences of their own, both domestic and international.
318 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

The Stakes of Political-­System Hostility

It is by no means a straightforward m ­ atter to determine what to make

of political-­system hostility in the context of advancing the cause of democ-
racy in China, ­unless one starts from a pregiven vested po­liti­cal interest or
from a purely moral position, itself prob­ably questionable. I do not propose
to start from e­ ither. What seems more worthwhile is an examination, in this
section, of the stakes involved, and then, in the two sections that follow, of
the ­factors that tend to render external involvement in China’s demo­cratic
pro­gress appropriate or other­w ise.
­There is l­ ittle doubt that this political-­system hostility has its principal
meaning and function ­today in the context of the rise of China and the re-
sulting rivalry between China and the United States. It is for this reason that
political-­system hostility ­toward China figures with much greater promi-
nence in the United States than in Eu­rope, at least at the level of govern-
ments. But the threat China may pose to American hegemony is by no means
only po­liti­cal, still less a ­matter exclusively of relations of hard power. When
Japan, Amer­i­ca’s ally and protégé, appeared to pre­sent what in some re­spects
was a similar threat not so long ago, around the time of the Plaza Accord,
the United States reacted with manifest hostility, ­going so far as to label Japan
an “adversary.”2 This was despite the fact that although Japan was an Asian
power, it was a liberal demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist state like the United States, in-
deed one it helped create on the debris of World War II. This time around,
China, in addition to being an Eastern civilization, possesses the singularly
provocative identity of a communist state, regardless of the amount of truth
in this identity. This is an identity to which China ­shall be chained, both for
its own purposes and in the eyes of the Western world, as long as it does not
signal in action and rhe­toric a fundamental shift to the liberal demo­cratic
system of government, its adoption of cap­i­tal­ist values and institutions not-
withstanding. In this context, the rise of China cannot but pre­sent a rather
unfamiliar challenge to the sense of comprehensive superiority that has long
been part of the po­liti­cal self-­understanding and self-­confidence of liberal de-
mocracies, ­whether or not the challenge also contains a c ivilizational di-
mension. It is easy to imagine that the United States, the hegemon that it is
and leader of the ­free world, must have felt this challenge most keenly.3 But
it is just as obvious that the identity from which, and on whose behalf, the
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 319

United States is reacting is one that Eu­ro­pean liberal democracies fully share.4
This common identity remains a potent source of transatlantic ideological
and po­liti­cal (not to mention military) unity, even as the inevitable divergence
of economic and other interests between the United States and Eu­rope,
­whether or not connected with China’s growing clout in the global economy,
has a far from negligible causality of its own. This state of affairs may be ex-
pected to keep political-­system hostility alive, although it is impossible to
predict how that hostility w ­ ill express itself and with what effect over time.
While the existence of political-­system hostility is not in doubt, it is by no
means obvious what the Western liberal democracies, especially the United
States, want from China or for China in professing or implying the desire for
it to undertake major po­liti­cal reform with a view to eventually adopting the
Western po­liti­cal model. It is one ­t hing for them to prefer China to already
be a liberal democracy—­say, to have successfully become one in the wake of
June 4, 1989, had events turned out differently. Such a preference is logically
built into the strategic and normative thinking of the American po­liti­cal es-
tablishment, in par­tic­u­lar, predicated as it is on the mostly correct assump-
tion that the governments and citizens of demo­cratic countries tend to be well
disposed t­ oward the world’s most power­f ul democracy (President Donald
Trump being a complicating ­factor rather than a game changer), just as a free-­
market economy anywhere in the world is more permeable to the im­mense
influence of corporate Amer­i­ca and global corporate power in general.
But it would be something very dif­fer­ent for the United States and its
demo­cratic allies to want to see China, ­under such circumstances as exist
­today, take concrete and irrevocable steps ­toward regime self-­transformation.
For they must know full well that demo­cratic change in China is a r isky
proposition, and they have no reason to count on China to succeed in such
change and to continue performing as well or even better in the role it has
been playing in the global cap­i­tal­ist economic order. ­After all, all the Western
liberal democracies are at the same time cap­i­tal­ist economies and, in that
capacity, have an extremely strong vested interest in China’s continuing po­
liti­cal stability and economic growth, even while, in their identity as liberal
democracies, they may also see themselves as being ­under the most discom-
forting of threats. A bungled experiment with democracy in China, without
adequate demo­cratic preparation, could well spell disaster for the global
cap­i­tal­ist economy, and possibly worse.
320 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Could it be, then, that the United States, let alone Eu­rope, is not ­really
keen to have China embark on what could turn out to be a destabilizing and
even dangerous path to democracy, at least for now? Perhaps, and if so, it
would not be entirely farfetched to suggest that the United States is en-
gaging in political-­system hostility ­toward China precisely in the com-
forting knowledge that China w ­ ill not listen or budge. This is, in other
words, just part of an ideological game to prevent China from cementing
its growth in hard power with a comparable rise in soft power, democracy
being an indispensable component of po­liti­cal prestige in the world ­today.
We cannot know for sure, however, and this is an aspect of the uncertainty
and opacity I spoke of ­earlier. In the absence of the certainty of intentions,
combined with the certainty of political-­system hostility itself, the Chinese
state must fear the worst and prepare for the worst. And it must, even in the
relatively benign scenario of largely peaceful confrontation, be tempted to
­counter American assertiveness with a d efensive assertiveness of its own,
the latter with the distinct potential to acquire a momentum of its own.
None of this would ­matter so much, of course, ­were it not for the fact that
the Chinese state is also beset by an internal vulnerability on account of its
po­liti­cal system. Such vulnerability has been entirely foreign to Eu­rope and
North Amer­i­ca since the end of the Cold War. In their mature liberal democ-
racies, while the approval rates of governments (in the person of the top
elected officials) may sometimes be embarrassingly low, popu­lar allegiance
to the liberal demo­cratic po­liti­cal system is generally so firm as to escape ev-
eryday notice—­even ­today. The po­liti­cal system (especially in the sense of
demo­cratic rule of law) simply is not a prob­lem, so decisive and durable has
been the victory of liberal democracy that ended the Cold War. In China
­t hings seem to be the other way around: the CCP and government may, on
the strength of their per­for­mance, combined from time to time with subtly
or not so subtly administered doses of nationalism, enjoy considerable popu­lar
support, and yet such support does not extend to the po­liti­cal system itself. It
certainly cannot be taken to reflect such approval. The vulnerability of China’s
po­liti­cal system was first driven home in 1989, and the basic facts of the ­matter,
along with the reactive sensibility of the CCP, have not changed since. That is
why the official verdict on June 4 has not been overturned and ­w ill not be
­until the CCP is able to feel safe on the issue of democracy, e­ ither by making
China so power­f ul as to be no longer afraid of democracy or by deciding to
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 321

join its ranks. What is still called China’s socialist system, which includes,
by definition, the permanent leadership of the party, is something to be jeal-
ously guarded in the face of an irremovable uncertainty of allegiance (at best)
or a patent lack of allegiance (at worst) on the part of China’s own citizens.
It is only in this context that the West’s political-­system hostility ­toward
China touches a permanently raw nerve and lends itself to the perception of
a foreign interference ever ready to pounce on a vulnerable po­liti­cal system
with a color revolution.
Beyond understandable vigilance against such a prospect, it is not im-
mediately obvious what it is that China is d ­ oing when it resists the pressure
to evolve into a liberal democracy. Having given up its erstwhile socialism of
sorts in f­ avor of some of the defining values and institutions of capitalism,
China no longer has the dictatorship of the proletariat and its vision of a com-
munist f­ uture to defend in trying to ward off the so-­called peaceful trans-
formation of its socialist identity. It is very telling, in this connection, that
none of the recent Chinese administrations seems to have been truly alarmed
by Hollywood’s massive conquest of the tastes and minds of the young, and
not just the young. Through the seemingly innocuous exposure to American
cultural and entertainment products, the peaceful transformation of China
is taking place slowly but surely and in the most instinctual and embodied
way pos­si­ble. No ­matter, it seems, ­because what is ­really at stake is no longer
the socialist system, with its own distinctive values and tastes, but only the
place of the CCP in a quasi-­capitalist China and China’s place in a world still
largely ­under American hegemony. The party ­w ill not relinquish its exclu-
sive leadership over the Chinese state, what­ever the latter’s true identity may
be, and it w ­ ill not ­settle for the role that, say, Japan has played in the cap­i­
tal­ist world-­system vis-­à-­vis American hegemony. To defend China’s current
po­liti­cal system is to defend ­t hese two paramount claims.

Why Political-­System Hostility Is Misguided

Turning to the normative pros and cons of external involvement, in-

cluding political-­system hostility, it seems unavoidable to use as one’s point
of reference some understanding of democracy’s intrinsic value. But what
exactly is this intrinsic value? In answering this question, the least we could
do is not to go back to the “classical doctrine of democracy” that Joseph
322 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Schumpeter has so effectively demolished. This means that we must give up

the naïve idea that the intrinsic value of democracy lies in the realization of
the common good through the faithful execution of the ­w ill of the ­people
by their elected representatives. Schumpeter replaces this conception of de-
mocracy with one that features “the demo­cratic method, viz., f­ ree competi-
tion among would-be leaders for the vote of the electorate. Now one aspect of
this may be expressed by saying that democracy is the rule of the politician.”5
The prob­lem is that “the rule of the politician,” once divorced from the
common good and the w ­ ill of the ­people (and this is the point of Schumpet-
er’s redefinition), cannot serve as a locus of the intrinsic value of democracy.
And what­ever substitute we find for Schumpeter’s view in order to capture
democracy’s intrinsic value must not fall into the romantic naïveté for which
the classical doctrine was substituted in the first place.
It seems to me that the best, if not the only, rationale for democracy that
both satisfies this requirement and brings out democracy’s intrinsic value is
to be found in the argument from fittingness. According to a view derivable
from this argument, democracy’s intrinsic value as a po­liti­cal regime lies in
its unique moral and psychological fittingness for an existing social situation—­
what Alexis de Tocqueville calls equality of conditions—­a situation that is
enduring ­because we affirm it and would be powerless to change it even if we
wanted to. Thus understood, democracy’s intrinsic value is at the same time
its ­great prudential or instrumental value. For, other ­t hings being equal, a
po­liti­cal regime (democracy) is more likely to be stable the more it is mor-
ally and psychologically fitting for the type of society in question (a society
marked by equality of conditions). To put it negatively (and this time drawing
on the argument from governability), ­t here ­w ill come a point in the devel-
opment of equality of conditions in a society at which any but a demo­cratic
po­liti­cal regime w­ ill be so lacking in moral and psychological fittingness that
it w
­ ill render the citizenry ungovernable.
Unlike the high-­flown classical doctrine rightly rejected by Schumpeter,
the modest view of democracy’s intrinsic value just outlined makes a strong
case for democracy and yet does not boast enough confidence in its own cor-
rectness, especially in practice, to place democracy on the moral high
ground vis-­à-­v is other regime types. ­After all, fittingness is a ­matter of de-
gree, in that equality of conditions is a m ­ atter of degree and so is democracy
itself, and ­these nuanced judgments are best left to the citizens of each country
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 323

themselves. Th ­ ese citizens are in the best position to make such judgments
­because they know the conditions of their country best and care most for its
stability, and they are in the best position to decide w ­ hether external help is
necessary or desirable. It is indeed their self-­regarding concern for the en-
during stability of their po­liti­cal order that alone is capable of producing that
combination of moral vision and prudence which gives demo­cratic change a
reasonable chance of success. In other words, it is only to a country’s own
citizens that the purely prudential argument for democracy (from govern-
ability) can m ­ atter as desperately as the partially moral argument (from fit-
tingness) does. In the real world, the ultimate test of w ­ hether a society is ripe
for democracy is ­whether it ­w ill be able to accomplish the passage from so-
cial equality to po­liti­cal democracy while preserving and, over time, en-
hancing stability. Such passage recommends itself ­under a s ubstantial
equality of conditions only when other favorable or enabling conditions are
pre­sent as well. That is why, as the reader ­w ill recall, having first argued for
democracy in China in terms of fittingness and governability, I went on to
make an equally insistent case for the view that demo­cratic preparation is
necessary before the passage from social equality to po­liti­cal democracy can
safely take place. H ­ ere again, it is a country’s own citizens who know best
­whether the other enabling conditions are met in addition to equality of con-
ditions and who alone can undertake demo­cratic preparation and judge
when enough such preparation has been made.
Given complications such as ­t hese, which arise naturally from the modest
conception of democracy’s intrinsic value, it is quite unbecoming to feel and
express political-­system hostility to other regime types purely and simply on
account of their not being demo­cratic. If democracy’s intrinsic value gives
rise to a categorical imperative, as it ­were, it is a categorical imperative of such
complexity that only a country’s own citizens can best decide when and how
to act on it—­when, indeed, their country finds itself ­under sufficient equality
of conditions to plausibly trigger the imperative in the first place. Democ-
racy’s prudential or instrumental value is, of course, even less a reason for
political-­system hostility, b
­ ecause it has the status only of a hy­po­thet­i­cal im-
perative, making it discretionary in the light of an agent’s desires.
When all is said and done, however, it may still appear odd that democ-
racy’s intrinsic value, as embodied in its unique fittingness—­moral
fittingness—­does not qualify it for the moral high ground. Well, it does,
324 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

and indeed this moral high ground is already implicit in my insistence

throughout that democracy’s intrinsic value does generate strong reasons
to act and yet a country’s own citizens are alone the qualified agents to assess
such reasons and act on them. The moral high ground, or higher ground,
exists unambiguously in democracy’s greater fittingness than nondemo­
cratic regimes can possibly achieve, ­under modern conditions of life. The
impor­tant ­thing, however, is that this comparison is meaningful, relatively
accurate, and usefully action guiding only when it is made among options
available to the same country, not with other countries—­t hat is, only when
it is an internal comparison. Thus, if we find in this way and in no uncer-
tain terms a moral high ground for democracy’s intrinsic value as based
on its fittingness, then just as surely this moral high ground is such that it
properly directs one’s normative gaze inward—to the goal of choosing the
best po­liti­cal regime for one’s own society given its distinctive and specific
conditions, as one, along with other citizens, understands them. ­There is
­little room for the other-­directed righ­teousness that leads to political-­system
hostility.
Political-­system hostility is all the more unbecoming in view of a further
consideration. As I have noted, in ­today’s world the equality of conditions I am
talking about finds its place—­and is put in its place—in a c ap­i­tal­ist order,
and hence the second-­most impor­tant raison d’être of democracy, a­ fter sta-
bility, is the self-­protection of society against capitalism. Part of this protec-
tion is none other than the protection of equality of conditions. For ­under
capitalism ­t here is an ever-­present possibility of (quantitative) economic in­
equality becoming so ­great that it undermines the (qualitative) equality of
conditions itself. Whenever this possibility becomes a real­ity, as it is ­doing
before our eyes in the leading democracies in the world t­ oday, it deprives
equality of conditions and the po­liti­cal democracy based on it of much of
their real­ity and spirit while leaving only their name and form intact. Given
modern democracy’s very (­actual, not necessarily inherent) embeddedness
in capitalism, the self-­protection of society in general and the protection of
equality of conditions in par­tic­u­lar are always uphill strug­gles. Th
­ ere is no
moral high ground that can be securely held. For the genuine egalitarian and
demo­crat, ­t here is simply no room for complacency and self-­righteousness
and hence no reason for the direction—­t hat is, misdirection—of moral en-
ergy into political-­system hostility.
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 325

One may go further and suggest that democracy is nothing but an uphill
strug­g le—­a two-­pronged strug­g le against imperium (domination by state
power) and dominium (in the modern world, domination by the cap­i­tal­ist
class) and, in our time, against the imbrication of imperium and dominium
in the form increasingly of capital’s capture of the state. As a state form or
regime type, democracy plays the crucial role of redressing the balance of
power between ruler and ruled by giving the latter the right to demand repre­
sen­ta­tion and give or withhold consent, and between capital and the rest of
society through social democracy and the welfare state. But when a society
is cap­i­tal­ist, even when it is also demo­cratic, hence demo­cratic cap­i­tal­ist, the
playing field can never be level. The cap­i­tal­ist class enjoys a huge advantage
vis-­à-­v is the rest of society not only in the social domain itself but also in its
ability to influence the actions and reasons of state power. Thus, while, as a
state form or regime type, democracy can play an impor­tant, if necessarily
severely l­ imited, role in mitigating the worst excesses of imperium and do-
minium, that state form or regime type itself is nothing to be hugely proud
of. ­There is something to be celebrated, but celebrated with a sense of pro-
portion, only when this state form is put to sustained good uses for the self-­
protection of society. This is not happening, or happening nearly enough,
anywhere in the world t­ oday. When this is the case, democracy as a state form
can degenerate into ­little more than an ideological cover for a distinctively
cap­i­tal­ist imperium-­dominium—­and the “opium of the ­people” in secular
po­liti­cal life. It ­w ill be a double travesty if such an eviscerated democracy,
instead of working to refill itself with demo­cratic substance, turns around to
channel what remains of its moral energy into political-­system hostility
against competitors or adversaries that happen to be nondemo­cratic.
It is worth emphasizing that the political-­system hostility I a m taking
issue with is an ideological-­strategic stance, which exists to motivate and
sanction pressure and potentially active mea­sures to bring about regime
change in other countries in conformity with one’s own interests and values.
As such, political-­system hostility in the name of democracy is distinct from
what may be called a p ersonal, instinctive (meaning not unreflective but
stronger and deeper than reflective) normative preference for democracy.
Such a preference, with its attendant moral discomfort in the presence of
nondemo­cratic regimes or even the very idea thereof, is all too natu­ral for
members of modern socie­t ies to have. Indeed, it is unimpeachable, for it
326 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

follows from the very fittingness of democracy ­under modern equality of

conditions. One cannot feel this fittingness of democracy without also
feeling the lack of fittingness of nondemocracy.
Thus I do not speak of the modern citizen’s instinctive normative prefer-
ence for democracy as something with ­little normative bearing, still less as
something to be overcome. This preference is not any less worthy for being
instinctive, for the instinct in question, instead of being purely subjective or
only intersubjective, has a solid basis in real­ity. That real­ity is the relative
equality of conditions in modern society that has put a definitive end in the
more progressive parts of the world to any public, po­liti­cal, qualitative rank-­
ordering of ­people and their conceptions of the good life. Thus it is that any
po­liti­cal power that behaves as if it had some title to rule that could bypass
popu­lar consent and any semblance of representativeness would come across
as an affront to the modern citizen’s moral and po­liti­cal sensibility. The same
offense is caused, if often to a lesser degree than is warranted, whenever pri-
vate, economic power visibly translates into public, po­liti­cal power. What
I call the instinctive normative preference for democracy is nothing but this
experientially and normatively well-­grounded psychological real­ity. And it
is a psychological real­ity that all members of modern socie­ties share to one
degree or another ­unless they fancy themselves belonging to the ruling class
rather than the “­people” or somehow identify with the ruling class.
­There cannot, therefore, be anything amiss with entertaining a norma-
tive preference for democracy, nor with this preference being instinctive, nor
with the consequent discomfort evoked by nondemocracy. But this natu­ral
instinctive preference and aversion is one ­t hing, and a considered po­liti­cal
stance ­toward other socie­ties of whose conditions one can claim no intimate
knowledge, still less knowledge attended by genuine solicitude, is quite an-
other. The impor­tant t­ hing is to keep this preference in a proper balance with
awareness of the complexity and risks involved in the passage from social
equality to po­liti­cal democracy. Moreover, since this passage is likely to pre­
sent itself as a daunting prob­lem precisely in the absence of as­suredly favor-
able or enabling conditions, as is true of China t­ oday, the right approach needs
to involve prudential considerations as much as normative ones. For a po­
liti­cal proj­ect that is fraught with risk and promise in equal mea­sure, it is im-
perative not to let one’s instinctive normative preference for democracy
serve as too automatic a substitute for the judicious weighing of values, the
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 327

careful consideration of facts, and, fi­nally, the making of what is bound to be

a very difficult choice where the line between the normative and the pruden-
tial is blurred. If all of ­these considerations are necessary even for a country’s
own citizens, how much greater the pause they should give to t­ hose who are
keen to make a p ositive contribution from the outside. Political-­system
hostility must be resisted lest it turn a complex po­liti­cal ­matter into a ­simple,
black-­and-­white moral judgment and, in so ­doing, risk becoming a ­recipe for
po­liti­cal tragedy, even po­liti­cal farce.

Appropriate and Inappropriate External Actions

It does not follow from my arguments against political-­system hostility

that all external actions and reactions designed to aid demo­cratic pro­g ress
in China are misguided, although the room for appropriate and construc-
tive interventions is indeed small. More needs to be said about what kind of
external involvement is conducive to China’s demo­cratic development and
consistent with the spirit of democracy, and what kind is likely to be coun-
terproductive and incompatible with the very nature of demo­cratic
development.
To this end, it is helpful to distinguish three stages in the pro­cess whereby
a country such as China evolves into a po­liti­cal democracy. The first stage is
the rise of equality of conditions in the social state, replacing a former in­
equality of conditions, as happened ­under Mao Zedong, or, broadening a
hitherto rather narrowly conceived equality, as during the reform era. The
second stage is the completion, itself a m ­ atter of degree, of equality of condi-
tions by freedom, where freedom serves as a condition for the intellectual and
moral maturity of individuals and of society as a w ­ hole, which, in turn, does
more than anything e­ lse to make a society ready for democracy. The third
and final stage is the adoption by such a society, a society properly readied
for self-­government, of a demo­cratic po­liti­cal system, with all its inherent lim-
itations and other, contingent imperfections.
It is fairly obvious that the first stage comes about, when it does, through
such complicated ­causes that it would be naïve and perhaps counterproduc-
tive to try to bring it about through outside involvement. In any reasonably
modern society, however, relative equality of conditions must already be a fact
of life. For such a society, and China is undoubtedly one, it seems entirely
328 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

appropriate for anyone, from within or without, to help make what is al-
ready relatively equal more fully equal, if they so desire. Such efforts need to
be carried out sensibly and with due re­spect for the agency and complexity of
the society in question, as well as in the spirit of mutual aid wherever appro-
priate. It is unlikely, therefore, that they ­w ill be marked by the urgency of
prob­lems and the moral superiority of the helping parties that typically jus-
tify talk of outside intervention.
The third and final stage, though obviously more amenable to outside
involvement, should also be left to members of the society itself, for two rea-
sons. Before I come to ­t hese reasons, however, I must first make something
of a digression in order to bring up the issue of weighing the goods of de-
mocracy against other goods. The latter goods include, on a commonsense
view, the secure provision of public order; social justice; economic develop-
ment; the creation of an environment, social and natu­ral, conducive to the
good life, however conceived; and, last but not least, freedom roughly in the
sense of what Benjamin Constant calls the liberties of the moderns. Of ­t hese
goods, freedom is in a class of its own, as defined by a standard (modern, lib-
eral demo­cratic) conception of its relationship to democracy.6 Next to
freedom, only social justice (that is, the self-­protection of society) arguably
stands in some intrinsic relationship to democracy, but only as a stipulated
requirement of democracy, which, however reasonable and indeed necessary,
can all too easily fail in practice.7 All the other goods are related to democ-
racy in a more or less contingent way. For example, public order may be better
provided for in a demo­cratic society but only if certain conditions are met,
and yet it is highly contingent ­whether t­ hese conditions are in fact met, and,
if not, how difficult it w
­ ill be to meet them (hence my argument for demo­
cratic preparation). It is also contingent ­whether economic development is
promoted by democracy. As to ­whether ­human life flourishes better ­under
demo­cratic conditions, the answer w ­ ill be widely open if the good life itself
is left widely open, or ­else it ­w ill ­favor democracy via a circular argument if
the good life is defined in terms that are themselves ­shaped by our modern
demo­cratic conditions.
In terms of relative importance, ­t here can be ­little doubt that public order
should carry no less weight than does democracy. The potential need for a
difficult tradeoff between democracy and public order can be real, not merely
ideological. As for social justice and economic development, their importance
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 329

relative to democracy is a m ­ atter for debate, especially when it happens to be

true of a society that democracy—­such democracy as is realistic in the so-
ciety at the time—­does not contribute to social justice or economic develop-
ment and may even stand in their way to one degree or another. When de-
mocracy is thus weighed against t­ hese other goods, what actually happens
is, strictly speaking, not the comparison of democracy and t­ hese other goods
in terms of urgency or importance but rather the assessment of democracy
vis-­à-­v is an alternative po­liti­cal arrangement, say a nondemo­cratic one, in
terms of which is better able to deliver t­ hese other goods. At least this is part
of what is ­going on when we speak of weighing democracy against other
goods. Regardless of how the weighing is conceived, however, the impor­tant
­thing is that some difficult weighing is necessary, and this necessity raises
the question of what kind of agents it takes to carry out the weighing and
who is in the morally and po­liti­cally appropriate position to do it.
This leads naturally, then, to the first of my reasons why the third stage of
demo­cratic evolution should be left entirely to members of a domestic society:
the good of a demo­cratic po­liti­cal system must be weighed against other
impor­tant goods, and this weighing can be done sensibly, indeed demo­
cratically, only by members of a society themselves once they have been al-
lowed to part with their immaturity and become equal to the task of such
weighing. Especially impor­tant in the case of China, for reasons discussed
­earlier, is the weighing of China’s growing need for democracy against de-
mocracy’s own need for stability in a country that relies so heavi­ly on a strong
central authority for the provision of national cohesion and social order. ­There
is a further reason for leaving the third stage to a society itself, and this reason
is internal to the very meaning of democracy. For we are h ­ ere talking about
pro­gress from the second to the third stage of democracy, and thus we as-
sume that members of the society in question, say, China (in due course), have
already acquired a sufficient mea­sure of maturity through the public use of
reason made pos­si­ble by individual liberty. Quite apart from prudential con-
siderations, the very meaning and spirit of democracy dictates a principled
deference to such cognitively and morally mature agents with regard to pro­
gress ­toward po­liti­cal democracy.
What about the second stage, the completion of equality of conditions
through the valorization and institutionalization of nonpo­liti­cal liberty in
the interest of moral maturity? Th ­ ere can be no doubt that, once this stage
330 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

is reached, the case for democracy ­w ill be significantly enhanced, other

­t hings being equal, in that the scale for weighing democracy against other
goods—or, more precisely, against an alternative po­liti­cal arrangement in
terms of how well it can deliver ­these goods—is no longer tipped against de-
mocracy by democracy’s internal lack of a pivotal condition (that is, indi-
vidual and societal maturity). Thus, as I have noted, the reasons for moving
from the first to the second stage are the most compelling along the entire
trajectory of a society’s demo­cratic evolution. They are well-­nigh morally ir-
resistible, provided that intellectual and moral maturity can be introduced
in a po­liti­cally prudent manner, and ­there is no reason to think that the latter
­will not be achievable, especially when viewed as a m­ atter of degree and hence
incremental pro­gress. Such reasons do not provide grounds for anything as
strong as outside intervention, however, for not only is intervention unlikely
to work but it is also contrary in spirit to the very aim of rendering p ­ eople
­free from tutelage and the need for tutelage. But moral support, intellectual
assistance, and transnational solidarity are entirely in order, although the
worthiness and even nobility of ­t hose who provide such goods do not in any
way dispense with the need to show moral modesty and po­liti­cal maturity.

A Positive External Influence That Is

Sorely Lacking

It has turned out that the room for appropriate constructive assistance
is indeed small, confined as it is for the most part to the second stage of
China’s journey to democracy. Intervention or tangible, practical aid is
one ­t hing, however, and influence quite another, and ­t here is much greater
room—­I would say unlimited room—­for positive external influence on
China’s demo­cratic development. The prevalence of what I e­ arlier called the
instinctive normative preference for democracy in many parts of the world,
especially in the advanced democracies, is itself an omnipresent source of
moral influence—­soft power of potentially the most bracing kind. But this
influence is positive and credible only if the advanced democracies them-
selves are shining examples of the checking of imperium and dominium,
and of the self-­protection of society, by effectively representative govern-
ment. This means that the most salutary and potent influence of all is posi-
tive example.
Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World 331

The example does not have to be perfect, or even nearly so, and it would
be naïve for Chinese to look to Eu­rope or North Amer­i­ca for impeccable ex-
emplars of democracy in the first place. But it needs to be uplifting enough
to give democracy a deservedly good name despite all of its ­human, all too
­human, flaws. And part of being uplifting enough consists precisely in seeing
and acknowledging ­t hese flaws and making such efforts to remedy them as
are worthy of socie­ties that claim to be founded on demo­cratic princi­ples and
to be instantiations of the best po­liti­cal regime in the world.8 New Deal Amer­
i­ca comes to mind as a positive example in this regard, if one is not too de-
manding (and one ­shouldn’t be), as does Western Eu­rope in the two de­cades
or so ­after the inauguration of the Marshall Plan.
Western democracies have not been acquitting themselves in any remotely
exemplary fashion since the Thatcher-­ and Reagan-­led neoliberal revolt
against democracy and equality—­unless one means by democracy precisely
the neoliberal taming of representative institutions into the handmaidens of
deregulated, finance-­dominated capitalism. ­There is no shortage of ­people
who think that way, but they are hardly champions of democracy. When
many Chinese, not least economists (by ideology as much as by profession),
still look to the United States for positive lessons of governance, it is obvious
that they are looking for ways of containing state power in ­favor of the market
rather than ways of checking imperium and corporate dominium for the sake
of democracy and the self-­protection of society.
While it would nevertheless be a gross exaggeration to conclude that de-
mocracy is dead, t­ here is l­ ittle doubt that shining examples of democracy are
hard to find. The United States of t­ oday is widely considered to have entered
a New Gilded Age—­a charge all the more credible when it comes from mod-
erate, liberal domestic commentators rather than the more astringent and
demanding radical Left.9 And Eu­rope has been plagued by its own worst
demo­cratic deficit, among other crises, since the formation of the Eu­ro­pean
Union and the eurozone, if not further back. Worse, the bad name that some
of the g­ reat powers have earned for democracy through warmongering and
the militarization of diplomacy aided and abetted by an unsupervised
military-­industrial complex ­will take its rightful place as one of the most in-
excusable crimes against both democracy and humanity.
It does not follow that China would be foolish and foolhardy even to con-
template having a go at democracy ­under such inauspicious global conditions.
332 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

For the reasons why China must attempt the passage from equality of condi-
tions to po­liti­cal democracy are internal, and t­ hese reasons are not only
normative but also, and especially, prudential, having to do, above all, with
China’s own need for enduring social and po­liti­cal stability.
To this end, China must wake up to the real­ity that, while democracy is
worthy of its best efforts, it must make such efforts without the inestimable
benefit of having shining examples to learn from and emulate. But no country
owes this benefit to China anyway. For their part, t­ hose who set g­ reat store
by democracy in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca need to form a more accurate,
and hence more sobering and more humbling, assessment of the state of de-
mocracy in their own countries or regions, if they have not done so already
and to a sufficient degree. Having done this, they w ­ ill realize that in order to
come to the effective aid of demo­cratic pro­gress in China (and other places),
they must first put their own demo­cratic ­house in order—­t hat ­t here is no
better way of spreading democracy than by having a worthy, truly recom-
mendable democracy to spread or, better still, to spread itself. Indeed, the
quest for such democracy—­for democracy as the unceasing and reasonably
effective countermovement to imperium and dominium alike, especially to
their symbiosis in the shape of neoliberal capitalism—is the common chal-
lenge of all countries in our time.
Almost all the themes just covered resonate in one way or another with
Hong Kong. Hong Kong is part of China yet also stands apart from it in ways,
cultural and po­liti­cal, that make it (in the shape of many of its citizens) look
and behave almost as if it w ­ ere part of the external, especially the Western
demo­cratic, world. This peculiarity of Hong Kong promises to shed much
light on the intricacies and, for the most part, the counterproductiveness of
political-­system hostility; on the nature of the difficulties that a nondemo­
cratic China is bound to face in its relations with the outside world; on the
inadvisability of an overly moralized approach to democracy and demo­cratic
pro­gress and on the corresponding need for normatively clear-­sighted realism
and prudence; and, above all, on the inextricable relation between China’s
legitimacy abroad and its legitimacy at home, as well as on democracy’s role
in this relation. So it is only fitting that I turn next to the topic of democracy
in Hong Kong.
CHAPTER EIGHT

Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future

DEMO­
C RATIC MOVEMENTS ARE seldom ­simple, and one complexity arises
when ­people who are trying to bring about democracy also have some other
ax to grind. Discerning this ulterior motive can be a useful, even indispens-
able way of understanding the par­t ic­u ­lar character and dynamic of a
demo­cratic movement. In the case of Hong Kong, the other ax to grind is to
preserve a certain Hong Kong identity or, if we are not to mince words, an
emphatic apartness from China. Apartness rather than (necessarily) in­de­
pen­dence, as the desire for apartness comes in many degrees, shading into
the aspiration to in­de­pen­dence only at the extreme. We ­w ill overlook what is
at stake in the fight for democracy in Hong Kong if we fail to understand its
relation to this broad and widespread desire for apartness. Every­one does
not think and feel alike in a city of over seven million ­people and much in-
ternal diversity, of course, but ­t here is ­little doubt that ­t hose who do set ­great
store by apartness and are giving po­liti­cal expression to it in the form of de-
mocracy have reached a critical mass. What has happened?
Capitalism is definitely not ­under threat in Hong Kong. Nor are civil lib-
erties and the rule of law, for the most part, as judged by real-­world rather
than textbook or i­ magined Western standards, although in jealously guarding
­these core values of Hong Kong, as they are now called, activists sometimes
understandably and usefully exaggerate the threat. Symptomatic of the lack
of a truly serious threat to civil liberties and the rule of law is the conspicu-
ously low level of fear of the government and law enforcement in Hong
Kong—­both for good and for ill in terms of consequences. This phenomenon
334 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

bears traces of the relative mildness of British colonial rule, but its continu-
ation to this day is attributable in no small part also to the strategic restraint
exercised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), although ­t here are signs
that this restraint is wearing thin. Equally intact is the Hong Kong way of
life in its familiar everydayness, involving work and ­career, commerce,
fashion and consumption, ­family and social life, enjoyment, and so on. The
one feature of that way of life that is in danger of being gradually yet irrevo-
cably eroded is Hong Kong’s apartness from the mainland, itself ever more
cap­i­tal­ist, consumerist, and fun-­loving, just like Hong Kong, if as yet less well
trained in middle-­class sophistication and orderliness except in its first-­tier
and other advanced cities and among the well-­to-do. It is in no small part as
a response to this menacing real­ity that so many in Hong Kong have rallied
around the banner of democracy.
This is not to imply that if Hong Kong w ­ ere an in­de­pen­dent jurisdiction,
its members would not care about democracy, only to suggest that they would
care about it in a dif­fer­ent way. As it is, we all know for a fact that ­t hose who
devote themselves to the cause of democracy in Hong Kong also set ­great store
by an inviolable apartness from China and seem to do so with even greater
passion.
This is not surprising, for apartness from China had been a defining fea-
ture of Hong Kong for a long time before the handover (that is, China’s re-
sumption of sovereignty) in 1997. The Hong Kong that was returned to the
­People’s Republic of China was not the Hong Kong that had ­under military
threats been ceded to Britain as a Crown Colony by the Qing dynasty over
one and half centuries before. In between, especially ­after 1949, Hong Kong
and its ­people had simply evolved apart from (mainland) China and its ­people.
By 1997, this apartness from China, both outer and inner, had simply hard-
ened into a fact about Hong Kong through no one’s design but rather as a
result of the initial severance and the ­great sweep of events thereafter.
But whence the desire to keep this apartness? Whence the passion in-
vested in this desire? In a nutshell, and not to put too fine a point on it for now,
China is not cool, the China that came to bring Hong Kong back into the
national fold. This seemingly flippant characterization is accurate enough as
a ­simple way of suggesting that China enjoys neither po­liti­cal legitimacy nor
general prestige among a very sizable portion of the Hong Kong population.
Mao Zedong’s China, red and poor, was understandably an anathema to
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 335

Hong Kong, given the backgrounds and life stories of so many Chinese set-
tlers in Hong Kong, and it still is. ­Today’s China, already the second-­largest
economy in the world and no longer genuinely red despite its remaining
­under the leadership of a n ominally communist party, has yet to turn its
undoubted hard power into the ability to win admiration and allegiance, to
bind with cultural spell and moral values rather than with sheer force or
material inducement alone. This is as true of China’s relation to Hong Kong,
more than two de­cades ­after the handover, as it is of China’s image in the in-
ternational arena. ­People in Hong Kong may grudgingly accept that the ter-
ritory is now part of China, but many of them lack the eagerness to belong,
the pride of belonging; instead they are more ­eager to retain their apartness,
prouder of being apart, despite China’s rise.
As a ­matter of fact, China’s rise is part of the prob­lem, and this has to do
with the nature and substance of Hong Kong’s apartness from China. For it
is an apartness that is at the same time defined against China and as supe-
rior to China. It is constructed and articulated as a multifaceted identity, a
Hong Kong identity that is po­liti­cal (civil liberties, rule of law, anticommu-
nism), economic (market capitalism with low taxes and a noninterventionist
government), and cultural-­linguistic (a mixture of the Cantonese and ele­
ments of the En­glish, with a modicum of the traditionally Chinese thrown
in for good mea­sure). What is essential to this Hong Kong identity is that it
is not simply a ­matter of horizontal uniqueness or diversity in relation to
China, of being dif­fer­ent but more or less equal. Rather, the Hong Kong iden-
tity is largely constituted by pitting itself against the mainland—­t hat from
which it constitutes an apartness—­w ith the result that Hong Kong, in being
dif­fer­ent from the mainland, is ­either better (for example, Hong Kong cul-
ture being more cosmopolitan or more open to the West, or Hong Kong’s av-
erage living standards being higher) or simply good where the mainland is
bad (for example, Hong Kong’s liberties and rule of law being good, while
the mainland’s lack of them is bad). For a considerable length of time, espe-
cially ­after Hong Kong’s anointment as one of Asia’s so-­called minidragons,
and stretching beyond the 1997 handover, this sense of superiority gave no
small ego boost to the Hong Kong population, individual and collective,
serving especially to reconcile the poor and downtrodden to their lot and to
soften both class conflict and the conflict between colonized and colonizer.
Memories of this period die hard, so constitutive have they been of the Hong
336 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Kong identity, and they can be passed on to the younger generations in the
form of a general Hong Kong consciousness of China. Even ­today the Hong
Kong identity has no other essential foothold than in its hierarchically and
largely antagonistically conceived apartness from China. This is the main
reason why Hong Kong lives in mortal fear of mainlandization but has never
had any comparable fear of Anglicization (which many instead treat as a
proud part of their legacy).
It is easy to appreciate that an identity fashioned around this morally and
hierarchically understood apartness is delicately poised and fragile and can
be maintained without stridency only when both its distinctness and its su-
periority are at least implicitly acknowledged by mainland China. This was
the case to one degree or another in the early years ­after the handover, when
China was busy becoming more like Hong Kong, in many re­spects, rather
than the other way around. In this pro­cess, mainland Chinese, including
­t hose in positions of power, wealth, and cultural prestige, naturally looked
up to Hong Kong as an eco­nom­ically and culturally more advanced exem-
plar. As the balance of power between Hong Kong and the mainland has in-
exorably shifted, however, the Hong Kong identity, with its integral sense of
superiority vis-­à-­v is China, has come ­under increasing strain. Although in
terms of per capita gross domestic product, average standard of living, and
much e­ lse, Hong Kong remains far ahead of China, as a locus of economic
and cultural power it has in the past de­cade or so been completely eclipsed
by mainland China.
In this context, one should not be surprised that China’s economic and
other achievements, in dwarfing Hong Kong’s importance and puncturing
its sense of superiority, are far from being a straightforward cause for cele­
bration in Hong Kong. In par­t ic­u ­lar, ­t hese achievements, led as they have
been by what is still thought of as a communist regime, are definitely not
worthy of reflected glory and unreserved identification in Hong Kong’s
densely anticommunist climate. As far as Hong Kong is concerned, it would
be an understatement to say that the “rise of China” is not an unmixed
blessing. “The g­ reat rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” has, for many, been
anything but rejuvenating when it comes to Hong Kong.
But even when this complication of the Hong Kong–­China relationship did
not exist, back in 1997, the prob­lem of Hong Kong’s alienation from China
was already challenging enough. For the main difficulty that China had with
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 337

Hong Kong back then, as it still does ­today, was its lack of legitimacy, po­
liti­cal and other­wise. Had China enjoyed much greater legitimacy from the
start or been able to acquire more legitimacy since, its growing importance
in the world would only have added to its appeal and prestige in the eyes of
the Hong Kong public. As it was, China’s glaring lack of legitimacy was the
single most impor­tant reason why the handover was so traumatic for so many
­people in Hong Kong. It does not seem implausible to ­hazard the guess that
most p ­ eople in Hong Kong would have preferred the handover not to happen,
and, since it was bound to happen, the next best ­thing would be to maintain
a high degree of apartness a­ fter and despite the handover. From the degree of
their traumatization (by no means an exaggerated description) can be in-
ferred the intensity of their fear of losing their apartness from China, what
the central government unilaterally and rather ineffectually calls Hong-
kongers’ motherland. T ­ oday, a­ fter the early years following the handover
turned out to be less traumatic than originally feared, the worst nightmare
for many Hongkongers—­that of losing their apartness—is belatedly coming
to pass and with a vengeance. It is sad to note that for many Hongkongers,
perhaps the worst scourge ­after war and starvation is mainlandization.
It has thus become much clearer, in retrospect, on what implicit under-
standing the promise of “one country, two systems” was able to serve for a
time as a palliative to the Hong Kong psyche. It is extremely impor­tant to
realize that this magic formula did its work not merely in the legalistic and
institutional sense of allowing Hong Kong to retain its cap­i­tal­ist economic
system and to exercise a high degree of po­liti­cal or administrative autonomy
but also in the much broader sense of making it pos­si­ble for Hong Kong to
remain comprehensively apart from China while being, as much as pos­si­ble,
only nominally a part of it. Apartness rather than in­de­pen­dence (except for
the recent rise of localism, especially among the young) to be sure, but apart-
ness of a profound and bona fide kind. To many ­people in Hong Kong, if
“one country, two systems” is to mean anything, it must be able to preserve
enough apartness from China to ensure that Hong Kong does not become
simply “another mainland city”—or, to be more precise, not another main-
land city but a mainland city, period. In the final analy­sis, a high degree of
po­liti­cal, ­legal, and economic autonomy is valued not so much for its own
sake as for the high degree of all-­around apartness, especially apartness of
identity, it is expected to sustain.
338 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Channeling the Desire for Apartness into the

Democracy Movement

Unfortunately, the depth of this desire for apartness, with its constitutive
animus against a supposedly still communist China, does not seem to have
been properly factored in by t­ hose, both in the central government and in
the Hong Kong administration, who have exerted the biggest po­liti­cal influ-
ence over the course of events in Hong Kong since the handover. But it must
have become painfully obvious in the wake of the 2014–2015 civil disobedi-
ence movement (known as Occupy Central) that an admittedly considerable
degree of po­liti­cal or administrative autonomy combined with the continu-
ation of Hong Kong’s distinctive kind of market capitalism—­t hat is, a purely
politico-­economic arrangement—­w ill not be enough to satisfy the desire for
apartness.
It is just this unrequited desire that has come to the fore as both the sub-
stance and the motive of the democracy movement in Hong Kong—­not the
only substance and motive, to be sure, but by far the most impor­tant. And
not surprisingly, it takes only half-­effective mobilization to bring the rousing
mixture—­t he desire for apartness and the passion for democracy—to the
boiling point. When the desire for apartness was better satisfied or when it
was milder ­because Hong Kong’s sense of superiority to China was more self-­
assured, it did not need a demo­cratic movement as its vehicle. Now that nei-
ther is any longer the case, the desire for apartness must take a new form and
find a new expression, and nothing fits the purpose more handily than de-
mocracy’s call to arms. With China hanging on to one-­party rule, what better
way is ­t here for Hong Kong to assert its apartness and superiority than via
the strug­gle for democracy? Where e­ lse could one find a more natu­ral po­
liti­cal affinity than between apartness and democracy: a demo­cratic cause of
apartness from a nondemo­cratic China?
It is not hard to imagine that had participants in the movement been pur-
suing democracy in a hy­po­thet­i­cal Hong Kong that resembled, say, Singa-
pore in its status as a city-­state, they would have been involved—­career poli-
ticians, ­those in the ­legal profession or the business sector, college students
and faculty, some disadvantaged members of society, and so on—­for very di-
vergent reasons, some of which might be linked only through f­ amily resem-
blance. In Hong Kong as we actually find it, a Hong Kong that is grudgingly
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 339

part of a power­ful country still weak in legitimacy, we see an altogether dif­

fer­ent scenario. ­Those in the democracy movement all desire one ­thing, what­
ever ­else they may severally desire, and that, as we have seen, is apartness
from China and from what China stands for. This gives the movement a spe-
cial kind of emotional and motivational unity or cohesion, differences of
opinion regarding strategy and much ­else notwithstanding, and, with it, a
distinct kind of moral fervor and, on the part of some, of quasi-­religious in-
transigence. The implacable desire for apartness from China may well be the
only reason that all members of the movement have in common for joining
the cause of what they call genuine democracy in Hong Kong. It may indeed
be said that the democracy movement in Hong Kong is, above all, a move-
ment for apartness, a d emo­cratic movement for demo­cratic apartness.1
Without the desire for apartness, it would be a totally dif­fer­ent movement
with a totally dif­fer­ent mass psy­chol­ogy and po­liti­cal dynamic.
Freedom from an unwelcome and, as it ­were, externally imposed sover-
eign, rather than domestic civic equality, is what ­people want first and fore-
most from democracy in Hong Kong—­a nd from the very experience of
striving for democracy. This peculiarity partly explains why the manifest fu-
tility of pursuing democracy in the antagonistic spirit of apartness has not
deterred the fighters from continuing the fight. For what is at stake is freedom
from China more than democracy in its own right, and part of this stake is
the very feeling of apartness as inner freedom. This is all the truer for t­ hose
who support in­de­pen­dence or at least self-­determination (with an open out-
come). It also explains why this fight, not least Occupy Central, looks less like
the typical domestic po­liti­cal agitation than it does a national liberation
movement. In this context, a component in the Hong Kong identity that had
always been impor­tant became even more pronounced and charged. This is
the political-­system hostility ­toward communist China that I addressed in
Chapter 7—in the case of Hong Kong, a deeply ingrained animosity t­ oward
post-1949 China, whose identity first as a totalitarian and then as an authori-
tarian communist regime has remained constant in the eyes of the Hong
Kong public ­because of the uninterrupted leadership of the CCP.
What­ever reservations one may have about the postcolonial discourse in
which a supposedly communist China figures as the new colonial power in
Hong Kong, t­ here is no doubting the psychological real­ity and ideological
perception that such discourse conveys. That dominant and assertive Chinese
340 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

other from which much of Hong Kong desperately seeks apartness comes
across, at least analogically, as a colonial power, an imposition from the out-
side. What ­matters most in this perception is not race, of course, but legiti-
macy, and, as I have noted, China has a huge legitimacy deficit in Hong Kong.
When some in Hong Kong call China a new colonial power, this is just an-
other, deliberately provocative way of saying that China’s sovereignty over
Hong Kong or its way of exercising this sovereignty is not welcome, and its
invocation of national identity and belonging does not help, ­either.
Much as in a national liberation movement, so in Hong Kong’s strug­gle
for democracy, the overwhelming concern is to f­ ree one’s community from
a dominant other, w ­ hether strictly colonial (as in the first case) or not (as in
the second). In Hong Kong this all-­consuming passion seems to have so
crowded out all other preoccupations that it can sometimes look as if ­t here
­were no other stake in the strug­gle for democracy, as if a citizenry famous
for its pragmatism wanted nothing ­else from democracy—as if utilitarian,
cap­i­tal­ist Hong Kong, of all places, had overturned Benjamin Constant’s
thesis regarding the priority, in our world, of the liberties of the moderns over
that of the ancients. The upsurge in independence-­seeking localism in the
wake of Occupy Central is but the latest mutation of a more general po­liti­cal
dynamic. And, not insignificantly, this happens to be a mutation that is not
particularly costly on the part of ­t hose, still in high school or college, who
do not yet have enough tangible material interests about which to exercise
po­liti­cal prudence.
Speaking of material interests, ­t here is ­little doubt that a huge amount of
the oppositional energy that has been poured into the democracy movement
stems from pent-up frustration, however unconscious or subconscious, with
the city’s scandalous level of in­equality and, in step with the rest of the ad-
vanced cap­i­tal­ist world, the worsening of ­career prospects and chances of up-
ward social mobility, especially for the young.2 In this regard, Hong Kong is
­doing much worse than mainland China in terms of so-­called per­for­mance
legitimacy, with the almost predictable result that masses of ordinary citi-
zens enjoying neither upward social mobility nor the (at least procedural)
chance to improve their lot through democracy must find some way of venting
their frustration. The objects of this frustration, in turn, must have a large
part of their cause in a local po­liti­cal economy known for favoring real es-
tate developers and big business in general and balking at more than the bare
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 341

minimum of social welfare for the worst off. But why ­hasn’t this frustration
been mobilized on a society-­w ide scale in the name of, and for the sake of,
greater social justice? Why ­hasn’t the coexistence of huge wealth for the rich
and manifestly undignified living conditions for the poor provoked much re-
flection on Hong Kong’s distinctive cap­i­tal­ist system, accompanied by a
public outcry to radically reform it? 3 Why, instead, is Hong Kong’s market
economy, often lauded as the “freest” in the world by neoliberal think tanks,
still so effectively serving for so many in Hong Kong as an object of pride
differentiating Hong Kong from China? And why has the central govern-
ment’s long-­standing (though now somewhat, but only somewhat, weak-
ened)4 oligarchic alliance with Hong Kong’s billionaire class seemed often
to be the least of local complaints against China? The answer is ­simple: none
of ­these descriptions of grievances or explanations of their ­causes has the re-
motest chance of resonating far and wide in ultraliberal, cap­i­tal­ist Hong
Kong. Even more importantly, none of them speaks explic­itly to the prob-
lematic of apartness and gives direct expression to the overwhelming desire
for apartness, and therefore none of them is capable of eliciting po­liti­cal pas-
sion in a city where the issue of identity has all along eclipsed that of class.
We are thus led to the inescapable conclusion that the democracy move-
ment in Hong Kong is not about the self-­protection of society against capi-
talism (Karl Polanyi’s rationale for democracy, as discussed in Chapter 4) but
about the self-­defense of Hong Kong’s identity against mainland China. It is
not about (distributive) social justice but about recognition; not about po­
liti­cal participation as an exercise in collective power in the spirit of (Eu­ro­
pean) social democracy but about po­liti­cal agitation as an expression of and
vehicle for a distinct and separate identity. For t­ hose who care about democ-
racy for the first reason in each of the foregoing distinctions, the most sa-
lient fact staring them in the face is the iron grip that the tycoon class has on
Hong Kong’s economy and society. This fact imposes a formidable constraint
on the extent of social justice and welfare pos­si­ble in Hong Kong and hence
on the scope for effective demo­cratic politics. Given this constraint, a demo­
cratic po­liti­cal structure of real substance would be a most improbable pros-
pect, regardless of what the CCP wants to see in Hong Kong. For democracy,
once formally instituted, would ­either be reduced to utter impotence, as long
as the constraint is in place, or e­ lse be revolutionary and destabilizing, if it
threatened to sweep away the constraint and, with it, what has so far given
342 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Hong Kong the only stability and (highly unequal) prosperity in its recent
experience.
If truth be told, the only semblance of democracy compatible with the
avoidance of potential social upheaval would be a mixed regime à la Aris-
totle or Polybius (with the central government, along with its partial repre-
sentative in Hong Kong in the person of the chief executive, being the One,
as it w ­ ere, the cap­i­tal­ist class or the tycoons the Few, and ordinary p
­ eople
the Many)—­openly acknowledged as such, of course—­leaving a more worthy
democracy to the fullness of time. But this is beside the point as t­ hings stand.
What the partisans of democracy want is “genuine democracy” right now,
and this has l­ ittle to do with protection against capitalism and every­t hing to
do with defense against China and its nominal communism. The Many whose
sympathies rest with the democracy movement have chosen to side with the
Few, the tycoon class, in defense of their shared Hong Kong identity, at least
to the extent of not targeting the Few as their chief po­liti­cal adversary. In
­doing so, they have left unexplored the option of siding with the One, the cen-
tral government in Beijing, in the interest of securing greater economic
equality and social welfare. Had they contemplated that option, at a time
when the central government badly needed their (moral) support for elec-
toral reform, they might well have succeeded in wresting substantial conces-
sions from the tycoon class—­and from its representatives in the po­liti­cal
establishment of the special administrative region (SAR)—­w ith the help of
pressure exerted by the central government. That nothing of the sort hap-
pened, or is likely to happen in the foreseeable f­ uture, speaks volumes about
the thoroughly cap­i­tal­ist character of Hong Kong society, the preeminent role
of identity politics in the democracy movement, and the resulting blind spots
and limitations of the other­w ise commendable demo­cratic strug­gles.
Thus Occupy Central is a m isleading name, ­because the movement was
not at all directed against capitalism, financial or real estate, as Occupy
Wall Street, its prototype, clearly had been. What the movement expressed
instead, above all, was many Hongkongers’ desire for apartness—­t he desire,
that is, not so much to create a new (demo­cratic) Hong Kong as to retain or
restore what was once true of old Hong Kong—­namely, its palpable and con­
spic­u­ous difference and separateness from China. It is a coincidence at once
understandable and potentially confusing that democracy thus presented
itself as the chief vehicle for satisfying this desire.
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 343

This, it seems, is the fundamental fact about politics and po­liti­cal conscious-
ness in Hong Kong t­ oday. Small won­der, then, that democracy—­democracy
for apartness and apartness as democracy—­has become the single biggest
public issue in Hong Kong. Politics, in other words, has come to revolve around
apartness, with po­liti­cal differences among citizens defined largely in terms
of how much apartness they want. Not every­one wants strong apartness, to
be sure, and not every­one wants apartness with passion. But a substantial
number want strong apartness and do so with passion, and it is they who
have given the strug­gle for democracy in Hong Kong the distinctive meaning
it has—­a spectrum of meaning that has now been stretched to include more
radical calls for in­de­pen­dence or self-­determination. Thanks to their im-
pact, the division of Left and Right on economic and social issues has been
almost entirely preempted, or displaced, by the politics of apartness. Even in
the case of the democracy activists, one senses that most of them have gotten
involved in the movement not so much ­because they care about specific
public issues and seek through democ­ratization a platform for pursuing them
as ­because they passionately desire apartness and ­because, ­under Hong
Kong’s pre­sent circumstances, ­t here is no more potent way of objectifying
and voicing this desire than through the fight for democracy. The historically
rather moderate desire for a comprehensive apartness has thus crystallized
and escalated into a highly charged passion for po­liti­cal apartness: for a demo­
cratic Hong Kong versus an undemo­cratic China. One is thus left in l­ ittle
doubt that the current strug­gle for democracy in Hong Kong is po­liti­cal in
a special sense—­t hat is, in Carl Schmitt’s sense of starkly and implacably
pitting “us” against “them,” “friends” against “enemies”—­quite beyond the
conflict of mere interests, or so it seems. 5 The unpre­ce­dentedly belligerent
rhe­toric that is often heard in the thick of Hong Kong’s democracy movement,
far from being merely juvenile or immature, mirrors the unpre­ce­dented po-
liticization of Hong Kong in just this sense.
This does not mean, however, that democracy is an excuse or pretext
merely playing the role of a polarizer. I have (in Chapter 3 and elsewhere)
discussed at length the rise of equality of conditions in China and its pro-
found impact on social and po­liti­cal psy­chol­ogy. Th ­ ere is a sense in which
the most decisive and far-­reaching transformation in Hong Kong brought
about by China’s resumption of sovereignty in 1997 was none other than the
establishment of equality of conditions. This was comparable in the nature
344 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

of its consequences for Hong Kong to the year of 1776 for Amer­i­ca, for in
Hong Kong ­until 1997, much as in Amer­i­ca u ­ ntil 1776, in­equality of condi-
tions had prevailed by virtue of colonial rule. Whereas Amer­i­ca established
itself ­after in­de­pen­dence as a republic and then a democracy,6 post-1997
Hong Kong has not been able to match its newfound equality of conditions
with a corresponding democracy. It is thus not surprising that Hong Kong
has become progressively more ungovernable—­after an initial period of rela-
tively patient waiting for democracy’s expected arrival. In this context, the
argument concerning China as a ­whole (as made in Chapter 3) seems to apply
to Hong Kong with special force, for the lifting of colonial rule and the ush-
ering in of equality of conditions in a society that was already liberal have
unleashed a dynamic t­ oward democracy that is well-­nigh impossible to argue
against and to completely frustrate with success. The only ­t hing standing
in the way of this dynamic r­ unning its natu­ral course is the fact that Hong
Kong is not a sovereign state, as Amer­i­ca was able to become with in­de­pen­
dence, while the sovereign state to whose jurisdiction it has returned is not a
democracy. Democracy can happen in Hong Kong only at the sovereign’s
plea­sure, yet Hong Kong’s lack of universal, ­wholehearted identification with
China naturally makes the sovereign balk at the prospect of a demo­cratic Hong
Kong asserting itself against the motherland.

Why Hong Kong Cannot Have a Separate

Po­liti­cal System

Hong Kong is part of China, and, as long as China is able to keep ­t hings
this way, any demo­cratic movement with strong apartness from China as its
twin objective is doomed to failure. It is precisely this desire for apartness,
especially for po­liti­cal apartness, that the central government does not want
to satisfy in any shape or form. What China with its sovereign’s prerogative
demands from Hong Kong is identification with, not apartness from, the
motherland, and, accordingly, a high degree of autonomy is designed to se-
cure such identification rather than an identity-­constituting apartness. The
limits imposed by this very sovereignty make up an even more fundamental
fact about Hong Kong than its desire for apartness—an iron fact, one might
say, that has framed a flesh-­and-­blood desire since the handover.
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 345

The bottom line is that Hong Kong cannot have a separate and in­de­pen­
dent po­liti­cal system and, ipso facto, a separate and in­de­pen­dent demo­cratic
po­liti­cal system. In this sense, the very idea of democracy in Hong Kong as
a po­liti­cal system, as a self-­authorizing regime, is an odd proposition. Strictly
speaking, it does not make sense, and, somewhat loosely construed, it could
make only ­a kind of limited sense that many in Hong Kong consider worth
very ­little. Yet this has not prevented democracy from becoming a h otly
contested concept among the three main parties concerned—­t he central
government in Beijing and, very broadly speaking, the two opposing sides
in Hong Kong, one of which is po­liti­cally very close to the central govern-
ment. It is not surprising that the contest has heaped confusion upon confu-
sion, yielding a lot of heat and almost no light. Yet plainly none of this is
simply obtuseness and the parties involved seem to know perfectly well what
they are ­doing, ­because each has studiously refused to be the first to utter the
po­liti­cally unutterable—­namely, that democracy in Hong Kong, in the all-­
important sense just noted, is not a meaningful proposition.
It is a c ommonplace that democracy is, above all, a d istinct type of
sovereignty—­namely, popu­lar sovereignty or sovereignty of the p ­ eople. What
is usually left unsaid, ­because unnecessary, but not misunderstood is that this
sovereignty is one that is exercised on itself. As far as Hong Kong is concerned,
however, t­ here is no getting around the fact that sovereignty resides not in
itself but in the P­ eople’s Republic of China. Hong Kong’s basic po­liti­cal struc-
ture is not authorized by its own, selfsame sovereignty, popu­lar or other­
wise, b ­ ecause it does not have any (and has never had any), and therefore the
idea of Hong Kong as a demo­cratic system or polity does not make sense,
strictly speaking. (By the same token, democracy in Hong Kong would have
made no more sense u ­ nder the British colonial government.) This has been
reinforced by its designation since 1997 as an SAR subject to the formula “one
country, two systems,” which is meant to serve as the fundamental guide-
line for Hong Kong’s affairs, including its relations with the central govern-
ment. “One country” means precisely that sovereignty rests with China, not
Hong Kong, and that what is imprecisely and misleadingly called Hong
Kong’s “system” must be authorized by China.
What the Chinese government has authorized for Hong Kong is a dif­fer­ent
way of conducting po­liti­cal and other affairs than applies to the mainland,
346 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

including the method of choosing the chief executive and members of the
legislature and, perhaps even more impor­tant, continuation of the colonial
legacy of the rule of law with an in­de­pen­dent judiciary. This dif­fer­ent way is of
sufficient in­de­pen­dence, especially by virtue of a l­egal system vastly dif­fer­ent
from the mainland’s, to be roughly called a separate “system”; and, with the
addition of periodic elections to select public officials, ele­ments of it can suf-
ficiently resemble certain features of demo­cratic sovereign states (or units of a
demo­cratic federal system) to be called “demo­cratic.” But what­ever democracy
is thereby made pos­si­ble does not have its source in a selfsame sovereignty, let
alone a selfsame popu­lar sovereignty, and, for this reason, it cannot strictly be
called a po­liti­cal system, any more than units of a demo­cratic federal ­union can.
This then is the ­limited sense that democracy in Hong Kong can have if loosely
construed: not as a po­liti­cal system, still less as the expression of popu­lar sover-
eignty, but only as a demo­cratic way of d ­ oing certain po­liti­cal ­things.
It is only understandable that in granting Hong Kong a demo­cratic way
of d­ oing t­ hings, the central government in Beijing wants to make sure,
above all ­else, that the election that is part of this arrangement ­w ill not pro-
duce a chief executive who is unfavorably disposed ­toward the central gov-
ernment and may act on this disposition in his or her official capacity. It is
this imperative, itself part of the CCP’s general habit of insuring against any
hint of po­liti­cal dissent, let alone instability, that lies b
­ ehind the framework
for the election of the chief executive laid down by the National ­People’s
Congress Standing Committee on August 31, 2014. We need not be detained
­here by the exact substance of this framework, as the proposal for electoral
reform tabled by the Hong Kong SAR government within the framework
was subsequently voted down in the legislature, so the framework itself is
now history. As far as electoral reform is concerned, Hong Kong is back to
square one—­although being back to square one in ­matters like this never
means exactly square one. The only ­t hing that is worth noting in the pre­sent
context is that u ­ nder any electoral rules compatible with this framework, it
would be next to impossible for the scenario feared by the central govern-
ment to happen, which is precisely the purpose.
It is equally understandable, however, that the so-­called pan-­democrats
cried foul upon hearing what they called the “restrictive” framework—­
understandable especially ­because the framework would effectively prevent
anyone within their ranks from even being nominated as a candidate, let
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 347

alone elected. Such complete disempowerment naturally left them unhappy

and protesting in the name of “genuine universal suffrage,” whose precise
meaning therefore can be grasped only in this context. The framework does
not allow genuine universal suffrage, according to their logic, b ­ ecause al-
though the chief executive is to be elected on the basis of one person, one
vote, and hence nominally universal suffrage, candidates of a certain po­liti­cal
persuasion would be screened out by a pro-­Beijing, unrepresentative nomi-
nating committee. This charge is no doubt correct and their reaction is com-
pletely understandable. But why, an observer might ask (in the interest of un-
derstanding what is ­going on), must they help bring about the restrictive
framework of the National ­People’s Congress by being so unfavorably dis-
posed t­ oward the central government in the first place?
The answer is ­simple and can be found in the mentality of apartness, es-
pecially po­liti­cal apartness, sketched ­earlier. They are staunch Western-­style
demo­crats (minus, in most cases, pronounced leanings ­toward social democ-
racy), strong believers in the Western liberal values as universal values, and
they cannot pretend to be other­wise. As such, they have trou­ble pledging un-
equivocal allegiance to the sovereignty of China b ­ ecause this sovereignty
happens to be embodied by what they see as a communist party-­state. In their
eyes, the P
­ eople’s Republic of China is inseparable from the CCP—so insep-
arable that to express allegiance to the former is to imply po­liti­cal and ideo-
logical endorsement of or at least acquiescence in the latter, and this they
cannot bring themselves to do as honest, conscientious liberal demo­crats.
Nor is this only a m ­ atter of conscience. Po­liti­cally, their firm ideological
stance raises the specter of divided loyalties. The pan-­democrats are openly
and uncompromisingly committed to Western-­style liberal demo­cratic
values, and it is by no means certain that this ideological commitment would
not translate into po­liti­cal ambivalence, which might even set them at log-
gerheads with the central government while making them unduly cozy with
Western governments, should they one day take the reins of power in Hong
Kong. Th­ ere is a foretaste of this very possibility in the way that pan-­democrats
of all persuasions have been seeking the support of Western media and poli-
ticians as if they w ­ ere part of an international demo­cratic alliance pitted
against the authoritarian Chinese state. Their attachment to Western-­style
democracy seems as instinctive as their animus against what they see as Chi-
nese communist authoritarianism is irresistible.
348 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

This fact alone is enough to make the Chinese government apprehensive,

in the same way that Western governments, not least the US po­liti­cal estab-
lishment during the McCarthy era, ­were worried about domestic communist
subversion during the Cold War. Just as the communists in Western coun-
tries back then wanted to replace the cap­i­tal­ist system at home, so it is no
secret that the pan-­democrats in Hong Kong ­today—at least ­those, especially
the older members of the camp, who still think of China as their motherland—­
harbor the fervent wish to see China turn into a Western-­style democracy,
and the sooner the better. How can they, given who they are, genuinely feel
and unreservedly express allegiance to a sovereignty that is bound up with a
po­liti­cal form to which they take the strongest exception? And yet, from the
point of view of the Chinese government, how can the pan-­democrats be
trusted with the ­running of Hong Kong, with all that this entails, when in
their hearts they desire regime change in China?
­There is thus an unbridgeable ideological and po­liti­cal divide between
the CCP in China and the pan-­democrats in Hong Kong. Short of China as a
­whole turning into a Western-­style democracy, the only way for Hong Kong,
now a part of China, to become such a democracy is for Hong Kong to be-
come in­de­pen­dent, to become po­liti­cally apart from China. It is a foregone
conclusion that the Chinese government ­w ill never allow this to happen,
which means that Hong Kong w ­ ill have no chance of “genuine universal suf-
frage” ­until China as a ­whole sees fit to embrace it.
In the light of this logic, one should not be surprised that the more un-
compromising members of the pan-­democratic camp, very loosely construed
(especially given the radicalization of ­those at its margins), want to see Hong
Kong tear itself away from China and become in­de­pen­dent. Although this
desire is not realistic, it makes some sense that it exists, if only b ­ ecause de-
mocracy is such an impor­tant vehicle for asserting Hong Kong’s apartness
from China and yet even in princi­ple ­t here is no other way for Hong Kong to
become a Western-­style democracy than by separating itself from China.
Even though mainstream members of the pan-­democratic camp, particularly
the ­career politicians, steer clear of any talk of in­de­pen­dence, what can often
be glimpsed beneath the po­liti­cally prudent surface is a deep antipathy t­ oward
the P­ eople’s Republic of China that is barely distinguishable from an indis-
criminate contempt for communism and, via communism, for the only China
that now exists.
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 349

Parochial as this hostility may seem, it is not incompatible with the demo­
cratic mentality, for democracy as one organ­izing princi­ple of a c ohesive,
bounded po­liti­cal group presupposes, unlike liberalism as an individualistic
and humanitarian-­cosmopolitan doctrine, the relative homogeneity of the
citizen body, and this homogeneity, however it may be conceived, is achieved
through the exclusion of whoever does not belong to it. Mainland China, seen
as an authoritarian communist party-­state, is what does not belong to this
demo­cratic homogeneity, now being constructed in Hong Kong, and what
must therefore be excluded. In this context, Hong Kong, or a big part of it,
has become more po­liti­cal than ever before—­political not only in the cus-
tomary sense but also, as noted ­earlier, in Schmitt’s distinctive sense. To be
po­liti­cal in the latter sense is to think and act in terms of the friend-­enemy
distinction, and many in the pan-­democratic camp have lived up to this un-
derstanding of the po­liti­cal by treating China / communism as the external
­enemy that helps define Hong Kong / democracy, which they sometimes, as
during Occupy Central, seem ready to defend to the death.
This mentality, which expresses itself in a variety of ways, is not quite the
same as the rejection of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong. It can be both
stronger and weaker than such rejection. But t­ here is one sense in which it
goes deeper: it is, on the part of some, the rejection of being Chinese—or, in
a more conditional and nuanced way, the rejection of being Chinese in the
monolithic manner that mainland China t­ oday is taken to stand for, or of
being Chinese as long as China remains ­under the leadership of the CCP. Yet
it is obvious that this is more than rejection merely of the CCP, for it takes as
its object, as fair game, mainland Chinese as such, regardless of their atti-
tude ­toward the CCP, and despite the fact that few mainland Chinese seri-
ously think of their society as communist.
It is difficult to know exactly what proportion of Hongkongers think and
feel this way, and the numbers keep changing anyway. But t­ here is no mis-
taking the profound transformation of the po­liti­cal mentality in Hong Kong
over the past few years. “One country, two systems” has completely lost its
consensus-­building power, even its effect as a palliative, however ­little it may
have had of ­either initially,7 and we are seeing an SAR of China in which a far
from negligible number of p ­ eople are unhappy with “one country” and would
not s­ ettle for “two systems” u­ nless the latter comes close to meaning two sov-
ereignties and two ideological and po­liti­cal allegiances.
350 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

In a way, the seeds of what is only now staring us in the face have been
­t here from the beginning, in the application of an overly harmonious-­
sounding formula to a r eal­ity full of intractable divisions. “One country,
two systems” may be an ingenious response to this real­ity, but its surface op-
timism makes light of a d ifficulty that is implicit in its very logic. For the
notion of “two systems” unequivocally assigns Hong Kong to the category
of the cap­i­tal­ist system, and yet, given the close po­liti­cal and ideological link
in recent history between capitalism and liberal democracy (in the case of
colonial Hong Kong, via the United Kingdom), this is almost tantamount to
placing Hong Kong on the side of liberal democracy as well. Once Hong Kong
was severed from the United Kingdom, its capitalism lost the semblance of
ideological integrity that used to rest, however tenuously, on the liberal demo­
cratic character of its former colonial master. To make itself w ­ hole (again), post-
1997 cap­i­tal­ist Hong Kong has naturally strained ­toward liberal democracy—
at least t­ oward liberalism and, democracy being liberty’s natu­ral guarantee,
­toward democracy via liberalism. (This is in addition to the strug­gle for
democracy as apartness, and to the demo­cratizing effect of the post-1997
equality of conditions, both discussed in the last section. All three f­ actors
must be taken into account in trying to understand the irrepressible pull of
democracy in Hong Kong t­ oday.) In this light, the notion of “one country”
turns out to be a lot more demanding than it is usually made out to be; for
it expects of Hong Kong’s citizens a patriotic loyalty—­loyalty to a (nomi-
nally) communist China—­that is at odds with their politico-­ideological
leanings t­ oward liberal democracy. If “one country, two systems” is unique
in its artful compromise, it is no less unique in its conflicting demands and in
the competing impulses (unintentionally) unleashed in the post-1997 Hong
Kong citizenry.8
One particularly ominous symptom of the inherently divisive character
of Hong Kong’s po­liti­cal situation has been the near impossibility of any chief
executive of the Hong Kong SAR being able to remotely please for long both
the populace and the central government. For “one country, two systems” to
be credible and stable, what Hong Kong needs is an effective po­liti­cal leader-
ship that is neither supplicant to the central government nor implacably op-
posed to it—­t hat can work with and be, as it ­were, on the same side as the
central government while having the integrity to disagree with it openly and,
when the (rare) occasion calls for it, even strongly, but always deferentially
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 351

and within the bounds of the Basic Law. If the room for such leadership has
been uncertain at best ever since 1997, it has now almost completely dis­
appeared, very visibly. The vassal-­like daily be­hav­ior of the Hong Kong lead-
ership vis-­à-­vis the central government sends an unmistakable message: when
­those who govern Hong Kong see their first imperative as that of not taking
even a moderate stand that might remotely contradict the wishes of the cen-
tral government, the ordinary citizens of Hong Kong can be forgiven for
thinking that they are dominated twice over.
This means that Hong Kong is in for a prolonged confrontation, w ­ hether
violent or relatively muted, ­until all the major tensions inherent in postcolo-
nial Hong Kong have had a chance to straighten themselves out. By its very
nature, and hence from its founding moment, post-1997 Hong Kong has not
­really lent itself to the harmony all too optimistically prefigured in “one
country, two systems.” The architects too must wake up to this real­ity and
reexamine their presuppositions and expectations—­a nd go back to the
drawing board (at an opportune moment).

Sovereignty without Identification

The “one country” part of “one country, two systems” is not just about
sovereignty—­t hat is, the sovereignty of the P ­ eople’s Republic of China over
the SAR of Hong Kong. It is also designed to achieve po­liti­cal integration: “one
country” means oneness of country, with sovereignty made concrete and se-
cure by integration. Since this integration is meant to accommodate “two
systems” and the two systems differ po­liti­cally (one supposedly socialist and
the other cap­i­tal­ist), it is only natu­ral that po­liti­cal integration must largely
take the form of prepo­liti­cal, or metapo­liti­cal, integration. Thus hopes for the
success of po­liti­cal integration are pinned on ethnic-­cultural identification
with China as a nation, an identification that was presumed to already exist
in Hong Kong to a substantial degree at the time of the handover and that
could be strengthened over time. In this context, “one country” means, more
precisely, “one nation” or “one nation-­state,” where the nation, resting on deep
ethnic and cultural bonds and a prepo­liti­cal national consciousness, is ex-
pected to transcend the shallower, po­liti­cal divide between “two systems.” The
result, if achieved, w ­ ill be the integration of the Hong Kong SAR into the
­People’s Republic of China, with the latter understood as a nation-­state rather
352 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

than a po­liti­cal system—­a nonpo­liti­cal po­liti­cal integration, if you w

­ ill, or
po­liti­cal integration resting on ethnic-­cultural rather than directly po­liti­cal
identification. To this integration are meant to be added supporting economic
mea­sures, so that the solidarity of shared descent and tradition ­w ill be rein-
forced by the material benefits of shared economic and social advancement.
It would be an understatement to say that this is not how ­things have
turned out. The strength of ethnic-­cultural identification was overesti-
mated, and what identification ­t here was has not been protected or tapped
effectively, in what may have been unfavorable circumstances to begin with.
China’s assertion of sovereignty over Hong Kong, to be successful, presup-
poses on the part of Hong Kong a Chinese identity supported in one way or
another. Alas, this identity was not ready-­made, at least for a v ery large
portion of the Cantonese-­speaking Hong Kong population (let alone the
residents of non-­Chinese origin), but had to be created. It could only be cre-
ated on the basis of China becoming an attractive proposition with which
Hongkongers would be ­eager or at least willing to identify. In this China has
signally failed in the two de­cades since the handover, what­ever the c­ auses.
The hoped-­for po­liti­cal integration has consequently not materialized, and
some of ­t hose who have not been adequately integrated are turning the de
facto separation into a cause of separatism. This does not exactly mean that
Chinese sovereignty is objectively ­under threat; far from it. But such sover-
eignty is increasingly reliant on power as distinct from authority. Insofar as
power, the con­spic­u­ous threat or exertion of superior force, invites re­sis­
tance, a cycle of mutual provocation has already been set in motion, with no
clear first cause and, if truth be told, with no end in sight. Thus, strictly
speaking, the crisis we are witnessing in Hong Kong is one of failed po­liti­cal
integration conceived in terms of ethnic-­cultural identification backed up
with economic support. Yet, ­because national sovereignty is also at stake, the
crisis has the potential to grow even bigger—to the point of inviting more
openly po­liti­cal integration as a last resort, or next-­to-­last resort. This ­w ill
not be good news, should it come to pass, for, u ­ nder Hong Kong’s pre­sent
circumstances, any attempt at openly po­liti­cal integration would only fur-
ther weaken ethnic-­cultural identification, leading to a vicious circle.
The key to integration, and hence to sovereignty taking root, lies in fos-
tering Hong Kong’s identification with China. Ethnic-­cultural identification
is not the only relevant form of identification, but we would do well to con-
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 353

sider it first. If we distinguish between ascribed identity and ­actual, active

identification, ­there is ­little doubt that the latter is what is needed in this con-
text and that all along t­ here has been less of it in Hong Kong in relation to
China than the central government must have hoped. This relative lack of ac-
tive identification is hardly surprising in view of the highly divergent trajec-
tories of mainland China and Hong Kong, not least since 1949. By the time
of the 1997 handover, Hong Kong had developed a distinctive Sino-­British
form of life, thanks to what was widely regarded as a relatively benign colo-
nial experience, hugely boosted by the city’s economic takeoff in the 1980s
and by its resulting superiority in wealth and prosperity to mainland China,
which it was able to maintain u ­ ntil the latter’s recent spectacular rise. It was
with this mixed form of life that most Hongkongers identified, rather than
with Chinese culture or tradition as such. If much of this hybrid form of ev-
eryday life was substantively more Chinese than British, especially for ordi-
nary ­people, the framing of this life came from the colonial power and hence
was more British than Chinese. This framing too—­not least the civil liber-
ties, rule of law, and small government—­had become part of Hong Kong’s
culture, indeed its po­liti­cal culture. If we break national identification down
into its ethnic and cultural components, it seems that culturally, especially
with regard to po­liti­cal culture, a very large number of ­people in Hong Kong
had developed a stronger identification with Britain, and the West at large,
than with China, and that this mattered no less to them than their ascribed
ethnic Chinese identity. When, ­a fter the handover, ­people describe them-
selves as Hongkongers rather than, or more than, Chinese, this is a way of
expressing the bifurcation of ethnic identity and cultural identification and
giving special weight to the latter, especially as far as po­liti­cal culture is con-
cerned. This bifurcation cuts even deeper if we add, on the side of cultural
identification, liberal cap­i­tal­ist Hong Kong’s almost total lack of conscious-
ness of a shared “historical destiny” with communist China. This legacy of
the Cold War has continued to this day, despite China’s profound transfor-
mation in the reform era. The writing was already on the wall in 1997, in-
deed much ­earlier when the anticipated handover had been greeted with more
apprehension than cele­bration, and with ­little sense of the unification, at long
last, of a nation torn apart through its former weakness.
With the passage of time, of course, the colonial experience has receded
into the background, and what is immediately constitutive of much of Hong
354 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Kong t­ oday is no longer identification with the United Kingdom but a dis-
identification, or negative identification, with China. In this regard, one of
the decisive events was undoubtedly June 4, 1989. What­ever dream of democ-
racy may have existed up to that point must have turned in a m ­ atter of days
or weeks into a desire at once moral and prudential and hence one to be ac-
tively pursued, as subsequent events have amply demonstrated. However ­else
democracy may have been viewed before June 4, it definitely came to be re-
garded thereafter as Hong Kong’s only antidote to the much-­feared excesses
of Chinese rule a­ fter the handover. Against this background, “one country,
two systems” came to be viewed, by a sizable part of the Hong Kong popula-
tion, not in terms of capitalism versus socialism, as meant by the Basic Law,
but more and more in terms of democracy versus its opposite. Anyone pon-
dering the implications of this change of po­liti­cal consciousness would be able
to see, especially with the extended hindsight now available, that the proj­ect
of po­liti­cal integration has been doomed from the start.
On the one hand, Hong Kong ­after the handover ­w ill not, a­ fter a period
of more or less patient re­orientation, be pacified ­until a b roadly credited
form of democracy is achieved. On the other hand, democracy in Hong
Kong does not promise to promote po­liti­cal integration u ­ nless and ­until
China as a ­whole embraces democracy as well. ­Until then, a H ong Kong
proud of its democracy as its new po­liti­cal identity (supposing, counterfac-
tually, it is granted its wish) would only grow further apart from a nondemo­
cratic China—­either through the gradual attenuation of concerns for the
nation or, as would be more likely, through agitation for demo­cratic change
on the mainland, or even for in­de­pen­dence. It is all but certain that, if
achieved, democracy in Hong Kong would not serve as an alternative ve-
hicle of identification with China where ethnic-­cultural bonds have failed. It
would perhaps be an exaggeration to suggest that the only Chinese patrio-
tism acceptable to most ­people in Hong Kong has to be one based on iden-
tification with a c onstitution enshrining the demo­cratic rule of law—­t he
so-­called constitutional patriotism.9 But t­ here can be ­little doubt that,
short of such a constitutional transformation in China, it would be difficult
to see Hongkongers as a w ­ hole brought back ­wholeheartedly into the na-
tional fold. Even in the best scenario (given the separatist tendencies to be
reckoned with), just too many Hongkongers would embrace the motherland
only in their capacity as citizens of a demo­cratic state, and ­until then they
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 355

would be increasingly unable and unwilling to make up for what is missing

by identifying with China as a community of common descent. As t­ hings
stand now, ethnic-­cultural identification is ­either attenuated by the combi-
nation of colonial hybridization and antipathy ­toward communist China as
the de facto center of Chinese ethnos or, where it is manifestly pre­sent, ren-
dered po­liti­cally impotent by a lack of civic identification.
­There is thus no easy fix: if democracy is a ­recipe for the pacification of
Hong Kong, it is no less a r­ ecipe for enhanced negative identification with
China as long as the latter remains nondemo­cratic. This incompatibility of
democracy in Hong Kong (even construed as only a demo­cratic way of ­doing
­things) with Hong Kong’s po­liti­cal integration with China is the most impor­
tant po­liti­cal fact about Hong Kong t­ oday, and about the relationship be-
tween Hong Kong and the central government. ­Until this fact is changed, and
it can only be changed or at least modified by tackling the deeper issue of
apartness, we are not g­ oing to see any fundamental change in Hong Kong’s
po­liti­cal crisis.

Apartness as a Greater Challenge Than Democracy

In a realpolitik sense, however, all is not lost, for what appears to have
been lost was never Hong Kong’s to enjoy or to successfully strug­gle for in
the first place. A chief executive who might be ideologically and po­liti­cally ill
disposed ­toward the central government in Beijing was never in the cards,
therefore a method of election that might lead to such a result was never in
the cards, and therefore so-­called genuine universal suffrage, by which the
pan-­democrats mean precisely such a method, was never in the cards. ­Those
Hongkongers who thought other­w ise and thought unrealistically must, if
they care to promote democracy with enough prudence to be effective, come
to terms with the facts of the m ­ atter, which ­were ­t here from the start and
which recent events have served only to make explicit.
It is only when t­ hese facts of the ­matter have sunk in and are accepted
po­liti­cally, if not fully affirmed morally, that Hong Kong ­w ill be ready to
make the best of the ­limited democracy that is realistic ­under “one country,
two systems”—­namely, a demo­cratic (or more demo­cratic) way of ­doing cer-
tain po­liti­cal ­t hings. Chief among the ­t hings that most Hongkongers prize
and that can belong to this demo­cratic way of ­doing ­t hings without giving
356 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

the central government good reason to stand in the way are civil liberties
and the rule of law. Indeed, such t­ hings are already well established in Hong
Kong, and the central government would be foolish to try to undercut them
if Hongkongers show themselves ready to exercise a correlative restraint (on
which more l­ ater).
Ultimately, two concerns take pre­ce­dence over every­thing ­else as far as
the Chinese government is concerned in relation to Hong Kong. The first is
China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong, valued in its own right and as an ex-
ample for Taiwan, and the second Hong Kong’s stability, followed by a third
that is of course very impor­tant but by no means absolutely essential in
itself—­that is, Hong Kong’s continuing prosperity. As long as the first concern
is fully satisfied and the second largely satisfied, and the third sufficiently
satisfied not to affect the first two, the rest is negotiable. The realpolitik con-
straints thus leave substantial room for exploring and gradually improving
the demo­cratic way of ­doing ­things in Hong Kong—­subject, one must hasten
to add, to what normally are not (but should be) thought of as realpolitik
constraints as well, the limits set by Hong Kong’s tycoon-­dominated cap­i­tal­ist
system, which more than anything e­ lse is what is meant by “system” in “one
country, two systems.” How well this room is used, and how much the ty-
coon constraint can be loosened, is a test for the po­liti­cal realism and wisdom
pre­sent in Hong Kong; how securely and unambiguously the room is guaran-
teed is a test for the confidence and prudence of the central government in
Beijing.
It is another ­matter, however, ­whether the vast majority of Hong Kong’s
citizens ­w ill see enough value in this room, in what I have called the demo­
cratic way of d ­ oing certain po­liti­cal ­t hings, in the first place. In other words,
it is a separate question ­whether they are motivated enough to be realistic.
A fast-­shifting balance of power between two parties long separated and
then re­united, with much reluctance on one side and with nothing less than
identity and self-­esteem at stake, cannot but pre­sent a nearly intractable
prob­lem. If the prob­lem is to be overcome or even merely contained, it must
be recognized for what it is: it goes beyond democracy, is larger than democ-
racy, and must itself be resolved or at least brought ­under control if signifi-
cant pro­gress is to be made in democ­ratization, rather than the other way
around. What is decisive, then, is what w ­ ill happen to Hong Kong’s identity-­
constituting apartness from China, and hence the h ­ andling of this apartness
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 357

is the biggest and toughest test for both Hong Kong and China. This apart-
ness, deeper and wider even than the po­liti­cal divide, is the fundamental fact
about Hong Kong in its relation to China, and bespeaks a stubborn psycho-
logical real­ity that borders on the instinct for (identity) survival, both indi-
vidual and collective.
It would be foolish to moralize this fact, ­either pro or con, for the fact has
­behind it a complex genealogy comprising layer upon layer of estrangement
laced with a strange, one might even say estranged, closeness. Estranged
closeness, as it happens, inasmuch as Hong Kong has come to depend for its
identity and self-­esteem on comparison with a larger yet inferior China—­a
China that it neither can do without nor wants to be part of. Yet China, while
looming as large as before, is no longer so inferior, and, as a collectivity, not
at all, with the further complication that, while no longer inferior, China has
not risen enough to be fully legitimate. Leaving aside this further complica-
tion for now, ­there is no denying that the old balance of economic and cul-
tural power between Hong Kong and China once (and still somewhat) con-
stitutive of the Hong Kong identity is receding irrevocably into the past, and
the new balance of power created by the so-­called rise of China requires
drastic adjustment on the part of Hong Kong as well as China.
Over and above its strug­gle to achieve democracy, Hong Kong needs to
fundamentally rethink its apartness from China and develop a dif­fer­ent kind
of apartness that is in keeping with the new real­ity on the ground and hence
has to be more equal and less zero-­sum, more composed and less hostile, even
perhaps more self-­referential and more truly self-­reliant and less parasitic on
comparative advantage. This is an extremely tall order, of course. But t­ here
is l­ ittle doubt that a belligerent insistence on radical apartness, or any varia-
tion on the old apartness that is no longer ­viable, ­will not work for Hong Kong
and ­w ill only provoke overreaction from China.
In addition to its concern with sovereignty, China for its part must un-
derstand Hong Kong’s apartness and find ways of lessening its estrangement
and antagonism over time. To this end, it must refrain from trying to reduce
this apartness through useless, indeed counterproductive, propaganda. It
must also learn how to make Hongkongers feel ­free, equal, and respected
instead of laboring u ­ nder the illusion that showering economic f­ avors on
Hong Kong from time to time, especially when they do not have broad and
tangible effects on the lower social strata, ­w ill on its own do much to weaken
358 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

a desire for apartness that goes far deeper than material benefits. Treating
Hong Kong with miscomprehension and the haughtiness of a master, if only
reactively, w ­ ill not work and ­w ill only cause Hong Kong to grow even fur-
ther apart.
In alluding to the in­effec­tive­ness of economic mea­sures, however, I do
not mean to suggest that such mea­sures per se are unimportant or are bound
to be in­effec­tive. This is true only of economic mea­sures conceived with re-
active short-­termism instead of po­liti­cal imagination and not designed to
produce reasonably equitable and widespread benefits. If anything, ambi-
tious and wise economic mea­sures have never been more indispensable to
po­liti­cal integration than ­under Hong Kong’s pre­sent circumstances. It is far
from inconceivable that the much-­needed pro­gress in po­liti­cal integration
that has failed to materialize on the basis of ethnic-­cultural identification
may take place with the help of equitable and prudent economic mea­sures.
Such mea­sures must be so conceived as to help bring about two scenarios:
first, the mainland interacting with Hong Kong’s economy in ways that
better benefit ordinary Hongkongers, and especially benefit them more
widely and equitably, than has been the case so far; and, second, a gradual
yet major restructuring and rebalancing of Hong Kong’s economy in f­ avor
of the less advantaged, giving them a plausible basis for hope once this pro­
cess is seen to be ­under way.
What is happening in Hong Kong ­today is not only stalled democ­ratization
but, si­mul­ta­neously and even more consequentially, economic disenfran-
chisement. I have heard it said that Occupy Central is Hong Kong’s version
of Brexit—­before Brexit, of course—­and I think ­t here is a more than a grain
of truth to this analogy. What Hongkongers need is greater enfranchisement,
both po­liti­cal and economic. Since po­liti­cal enfranchisement is not ­going to
happen anytime soon (and in any case, given the current level of alienation
from China, would be counterproductive with regard to po­liti­cal integration
­until China itself embarks on demo­cratic transformation), economic enfran-
chisement alone is what may help ease the prevalent resentment and frustra-
tion u
­ ntil a more propitious time arrives for po­liti­cal empowerment.
The unyielding militancy of Hong Kong’s democracy movement that is so
uncharacteristic of Hong Kong’s other­wise inveterate pragmatism is to a large
extent a sublimation of two crises—an identity / identification crisis, occa-
sioned by the handover and exacerbated by June 4, and a crisis of economic
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 359

disenfranchisement. This sublimation is already showing signs of hardening

into a po­liti­cal movement that does not care to understand itself in anything
but purely po­liti­cal terms and that displaces onto democracy frustrations and
hopes for which democracy is extremely unlikely to be an effective vehicle in
­today’s world. If anything can begin to slow down and even undo this hard-
ening in the absence of significant po­liti­cal pro­gress, it is economic enfran-
chisement. If even such partial enfranchisement does not happen, if large
numbers of ­people, especially young p ­ eople, feel comprehensively left out or
unintegrated—­that is, both po­liti­cally and economically—­then we ­will have
no excuse for being surprised if pop­u­lism increases and Hong Kong sinks
deeper into crisis.
And, of course, pro­gress in economic enfranchisement can aid po­liti­cal
integration only if both Hong Kong and the central government, especially
the latter as the more power­ful party, find the incentive and ability to develop
a less reactive and confrontational approach to the deeper issue of apartness.
Both sides acting artlessly and with excessive self-­righteousness on this emo-
tionally charged issue, as they have been ­doing much of the time, ­w ill only
reinforce the vicious circle that already seems to require near po­liti­cal genius
to break. If Hong Kong and China do not find their way out of this vicious
circle soon enough, the years leading up to 2047 could well see the breaking
of the camel’s back, which means e­ ither driving Hong Kong’s desire for apart-
ness to truly explosive proportions or crushing that desire by crushing the
very fact of Hong Kong’s apartness. In ­either case, the Hong Kong that is
prized by Hongkongers and Chinese at large alike, and many ­others as well,
would be no more, and that, rather than the events of 1997, would mean the
veritable “disappearance of Hong Kong” as Hong Kong.

Legitimacy Is the Key, Not Economic Power

The two disastrous scenarios just mentioned, if e­ ither comes to pass, w­ ill
have as their cause not merely the ineptitude of Hong Kong and China in
dealing with the challenge of apartness. ­Whether Hong Kong is willing to bend
for its own good, as it ­were, and ­whether China is able to act with sufficient
deftness not to break Hong Kong are ­matters not merely of po­liti­cal realism
and skill but, fundamentally, of legitimacy—­t hat is, of Hong Kong’s percep-
tion of China’s legitimacy. In other words, if Hong Kong is to successfully
360 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

recalibrate its identity in response to the changing balance of power between

it and China (in addition to its changed status a­ fter the handover), China for
its part must match its rising power with a comparable enhancement of its le-
gitimacy. In the world as we find it ­today, ­there is no way that China would be
able to win over Hong Kong and dissolve the hostility animating its estrange-
ment without sharply raising its legitimacy internationally. Further, t­ here is
no way that China could bring about this enhancement on the international
stage without first noticeably improving its legitimacy at home. And, last,
­there is no way that China could greatly enhance its domestic legitimacy—as
distinct from silencing and deactivating all dissent and opposition—­without
making significant strides in its demo­cratic development.
My point is not that China lacks legitimacy in absolute terms, although it
does in the eyes of many, but rather that it lacks the legitimacy to go with the
undoubted rise in its economic and, to an increasingly con­spic­u­ous degree,
its military power. Despite its status as the world’s second-­largest economy,
and its corresponding impact on the global economy, China has yet to com-
mand true (as distinct from opportunistic) approval and admiration, and it
­will have achieved this only when ­others, including Hong Kong, want to be-
come like it instead of merely taking from it and, in the case of Hong Kong,
value the fact of being part of it. Th
­ ere is no shortage of countries in the world
that are all too e­ ager to benefit from China’s rise as an economic power­house
through trade and investment, but t­ here are few whose populations are un-
reservedly drawn to what China is and what it stands for. Many in Hong Kong
do not even seem to care to benefit from China in this way, as the latter’s in-
ternational business and trading partners (not least the US high-­tech and
financial elite) are so ­eager to do, and while this may be partly an illusion,
­t here is no doubt that few in Hong Kong are exactly keen to have their city
become like China. Small won­der, then, that no overwhelming majority in
Hong Kong takes unqualified pride in a sense of belonging to China. Insofar
as what is involved is identification rather than mere obedience, this is a b­ attle
that China has definitely lost so far, and t­ here is no prospect of t­ hings be-
coming significantly better ­until China finds an effective way of improving
its legitimacy.
If we leave aside the more intangible f­ actors such as culture and tradition,
we are left with a rough explanation of prestige in the world ­today in terms
of the combination of economic prowess and po­liti­cal democracy. While de-
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 361

mocracy is less and less seen as the panacea it was once mistaken for and, in
our current neoliberal order, is showing alarming vulnerability to oligarchic
appropriation, its status as the paramount source of legitimacy remains
largely intact, both within nations and internationally. To borrow Antonio
Gramsci’s terms for our purposes,10 we can say that democracy alone is ca-
pable of elevating domination to the normative status called hegemony—­that
is, authority based on willingly accepted leadership—­and it does so through
the integrating force of consent rather than the use of vio­lence or coercion.11
It is worth noting that Gramsci uses the term hegemony in a largely descrip-
tive sense, which allows him to speak of socialist as well as cap­i­tal­ist hege-
mony. What­ever one may think of democracy or, more precisely, represen-
tative democracy, one must concede to it, as perhaps both a sincere and a
backhanded compliment, the unique ideological ability to produce consent in
a modern setting, although not all of this consent is warranted on close in-
tellectual scrutiny. This is the secret or not-­so-­secret key to liberal demo­cratic
cap­i­tal­ist hegemony for which so-­called communist regimes, including China’s,
have yet to invent an equivalent in their quest for legitimacy. As Michel Foucault
has observed, socialism lacks a governmental reason or governmentality of
its own.12 We can take this to mean, especially, that socialism has not been
able to develop its own way of forming moral-­political subjects who willingly
identify with their government (hence known as self-­government) in their
capacity as citizens and willingly govern themselves in their private life. In-
sofar as Gramsci’s notion of hegemony corresponds to what Michael Mann
calls ideological (as distinct from po­liti­cal) power,13 it might be said that
communist regimes, though themselves a modern phenomenon, have not
learned how to use ideological power in the modern way.
It is the governmental rationality inherent in liberal democracy—­rather
than, or more than, the role of so-­called f­ ree and fair elections to produce a
government—­t hat China must learn if it is to enhance its legitimacy in the
world at large and with re­spect to Hong Kong in par­tic­u­lar. This means that
the CCP, before learning how to bring demo­cratic governmentality to the
mainland, must first figure out how to deal with Hong Kong in ways that offer
the reasonable prospect of consent from Hong Kong’s populace. It must, that
is, aim to achieve hegemony (in Gramsci’s descriptive sense) in Hong Kong
according to laws that govern the production of legitimacy as distinct from
coerced obedience or opportunistic acquiescence.
362 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Hegemony, as distinct from domination, is to be achieved through what

Louis Althusser, carry­i ng further Gramsci’s insights, calls the Ideological
State Apparatuses (ISAs), as distinct from the Repressive State Apparatus
(RSA).14 For my more ­limited purposes, it is especially worth emphasizing
that the ISAs do not rely on what we commonsensically mean by indoctrina-
tion and propaganda. Instead of denying that indoctrination and propaganda
are among ideology’s stock-­in-­trade, let us grant, at least for the sake of ar-
gument, that this is indeed the case. What is useful in the pre­sent context,
though, is not to pass moral judgment on indoctrination and propaganda but
to reveal their distinct mode of operation, which constitutes their distinct in-
tegrity as ideology. Thus, when indoctrination and propaganda operate as
they should—­t hat is, as tools of the ISAs as distinct from the RSA—­t hey ­w ill
be treated in the pre­sent context as unproblematic; other­w ise they are prob-
lematic, but that is only ­because they cease to operate in the manner of ide-
ology and become barely distinguishable from the coercive methods of the
RSA. How do we know when this happens? The answer is very s­ imple: when
indoctrination and propaganda are seen, or seen through, as such. This is
­because when they are brought to light as such, they become e­ ither useless
as ideology or useful only as barely disguised vio­lence.
What this shows is that the defining feature of ideology in a modern set-
ting marked by equality of conditions has to be the (apparent) re­spect for the
agency of ­those at the receiving end. ­After all, indoctrination and propaganda
find their mode of operation and integrity in being directed at subjects worthy
of persuasion, rather than mere objects fit for brute force, which is how h ­ uman
beings are treated by the RSA left to itself. Therefore, they have to come across
as plausible—as true, right, good, and so on, as the case may be—­and it must
be left to ­t hose at whom they are aimed to decide ­whether they are plausible.
This means, in turn, that all ­t hose subjected to the ISAs must nevertheless
be treated as, or credibly as if they ­were, equal, ­free, and intelligent (hence
deserving not to be lied to). The state cannot shape their subjectivity except
by approaching them, in their adulthood or even e­ arlier, as equal subjects—­a
necessary condition of successful ideology u ­ nder modern equality of condi-
tions. And the state cannot procure their consent and acquire legitimacy in
their eyes if it does not leave them f­ ree to dissent as well as assent, to with-
hold as well as give consent, or if it is perceived as insulting their intelligence
(by telling them lies, for example), in which case indoctrination and propa-
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 363

ganda cease to be what they are supposed to be—­persuasion or communica-

tion rather than just another, milder form of coercion or manipulation—­and
at once lose their ideological power. They lose this power ­because they are
no longer properly addressed to subjects qua subjects and thus fail to satisfy
the first and foremost condition of modern ideology—­namely, the credible
semblance of re­spect for agency. This happens whenever the ISAs are used
clumsily, against their own distinct character and integrity, thereby becoming
no dif­fer­ent from the RSA.
Ideology’s required re­spect for agency is not a ­matter of discourse and
discursive attitude only. For the state cannot credibly treat ­people as equal,
­free, and intelligent at the level of discourse without backing up this treat-
ment, and the very content of the discourse itself, with concrete mea­sures to
improve the ­people’s standing and condition. Thus talk of social justice is
made (more) credible by the welfare state, talk of freedom by the codifica-
tion and protection of concrete liberties, talk of popu­lar sovereignty by ­free
and fair elections and universal suffrage, talk of (bourgeois) universalism by
the introduction of formal or l­egal equality, and so on. This means that
“real” concessions have to go with other­w ise merely discursive gestures to
make the latter credible. Universal suffrage and the welfare state are text-
book examples of concessions made by the liberal cap­i­tal­ist state to the
working class to bring the latter ­under the sway of the ISAs. Members of the
working class ­were not simply duped by bourgeois indoctrination and pro-
paganda; they ­were co-­opted by a heightened level of discursive re­spect for
their agency that was, in turn, made acceptably credible by concrete conces-
sions in the shape of very considerable improvements. In this way modern
ideology’s mandatory re­spect for agency makes itself felt not only in a dis-
cursive but also in a material form.
Neither the discursive re­spect for agency nor the matching material con-
cessions, however, change the fundamental character of the cap­i­tal­ist rela-
tions of production (in Marxist parlance) or of the unequal relations of power
(in generic leftist terminology). Thus, even at its “best,” ideology remains rep-
rehensible in the sense of helping reproduce such relations by misrepre-
senting them and by creating moral-­political subjects custom-­designed for
them. The sharper-­eyed ­will always be able to peep into the workshop of ide-
ology, where consent is “educated” and invariably “or­ga­nized,” as Gramsci
says,15 or other­w ise manufactured. In the pre­sent context, though, I must
364 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

resist the temptation to do this myself, for my aim is not to pre­sent the CCP
with (misappropriated) reasons to stick to its current ways but rather to show
what positive lessons the central government has to learn from demo­cratic
governmentality—­which is surely not without merits—in its dealings espe-
cially with Hong Kong.
To this end, I w
­ ill suggest that an extremely large number of Hong Kong’s
citizens ­today have a very strong sense of agency—­especially by Chinese
standards—­t hat must be respected by the central government if it is to make
any headway in raising Hong Kong’s level of identification with the mother-
land. This sense of agency, with its possessors’ demand for treatment as ­free
and equal citizens, is sufficiently entrenched and widespread to constitute an
impor­tant new addition to Hong Kong’s po­liti­cal culture. It has come about
in part on the basis of the liberal values carried over from British colonial
rule; in part from the spontaneous upsurge in the demand for po­liti­cal
equality stimulated by decolonization; in part from the intensification of self-­
consciousness caused by the identity / identification crisis surrounding, and
lasting well beyond, the handover; in part from the politicization of apart-
ness by the democracy movement; and, fi­nally, to no small degree from the
experience of demo­cratic strug­gle itself, with, as it ­were, its own indoctrina-
tion and propaganda.
However this enhanced sense of agency may have made its irrepressible
way into Hong Kong’s po­liti­cal culture, ­t here is no turning back the clock.
Recognizing this fact is of the highest importance for the central government.
­Doing so means that, if identification rather than obedience is the object, then
the central government must see to it that its ISAs work as they should, rather
than as a barely disguised appendage of the RSA. The ISAs, that is, must stu-
diously address themselves to the ­people of Hong Kong as equal, ­free, and
intelligent citizens and, on top of this, back up the right kind of discourse
with material—­t hat is, real—­concessions.
At this point I must make an impor­tant correction,16 for it is inaccurate
to refer to the central government’s ISAs in the plural. I have borrowed the
term from Althusser, of course, and, as is well known, he always speaks of
the ISAs in the plural form. As he explains, “While t­ here is one Repressive
State Apparatus, t­ here are several Ideological State Apparatuses. This differ-
ence is impor­tant.”17 But this is true only of a liberal state, such as France,
which Althusser uses as the main empirical basis for his analy­sis. In France,
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 365

as in liberal states in general, the ISAs (the church, schools, trade u ­ nions, the
­family, culture, entertainment, the media, and so on), being (mostly) private
institutions and scattered in civil society, “are objectively distinct, relatively
autonomous, and do not form an or­ga­nized, centralized corps with a single,
conscious leadership.”18 Unlike France or any other liberal state, China has
not several ISAs but only one, for all the dif­fer­ent institutions that perform
an ideological function are centrally controlled and possess not even relative
in­de­pen­dence or autonomy. No won­der that China’s ISA—­now correctly re-
ferred to in the singular, with the result that it becomes a contradiction in
terms by Althusser’s entirely appropriate definition—­finds it so hard to op-
erate in ways that set it clearly apart from the RSA.
As ­t hings stand, then, the central government is not availing itself of any
ISAs in its relation to Hong Kong, and, interestingly, this is so in a dif­fer­ent
sense from what is true of the situation on the mainland. For, on the one hand,
all the media and cultural institutions in Hong Kong that are firmly and con-
sistently supportive of the central government—­t hat is, the Chinese
state—­are deemed the propaganda tools of the RSA, and correctly so. Hence
they do not perform an ideological function: their support, however un-
swerving, makes no contribution to the central government (or the Hong
Kong SAR government, for that ­matter) that is distinctively and properly ide-
ological. On the other hand, ­t here undoubtedly exist in Hong Kong’s civil
society a wide variety of institutions—­media, cultural, educational, religious,
and so on—­t hat operate with sufficient autonomy from the RSA to count as
ideological. Yet by and large they do not function as Ideological State Ap-
paratuses, for they do not serve to procure consensus or consent on behalf of
the Chinese state. If anything, almost all the ideological institutions in Hong
Kong are, as it ­were, Ideological Antistate Apparatuses, to one degree or an-
other. In­de­pen­dent of the RSA—­that is, of the Chinese state—­and in this (Al-
thusserian) sense ideological, they are nevertheless not so in­de­pen­dent in
another sense, propagating as they do values that mostly originate in the ISAs
of Western states. The result is truly peculiar and puts the Chinese state in
an extremely awkward position. It would not be true to say that this is en-
tirely of the Chinese state’s own making. But as long as China features the
ISA in the singular, which is to say that it is actually devoid of ISAs altogether,
­ ill be inadvertently leaving the state-­ideological vacuum in Hong Kong,
it w
as long as the SAR retains its liberties, to be filled by ideologies originating
366 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

elsewhere, and thereby undermining itself in ways that only the Chinese state
itself is capable of d
­ oing. ­There is no stronger proof of such self-­undermining
than precisely the central government’s difficulty in procuring true identifi-
cation rather than mere obedience.

Implications of Hong Kong’s Development for China

I have for obvious reasons focused on China’s impact on Hong Kong, but
this is not to imply that the influence goes only one way. For what happens
to Hong Kong’s demo­cratic development is bound to have a strong impact
on the dynamic of China’s po­liti­cal evolution. It would in my view not be an
exaggeration to say that, po­liti­cally, Hong Kong and China ­w ill sink or swim
together. It is therefore entirely pertinent to consider the question of democ-
racy in Hong Kong not only in its own right but also in terms of what is con-
ducive to positive po­liti­cal development, including democracy, in China as a
w
­ hole.
Recent events, as I have noted, have highlighted Hong Kong’s long-­standing
political-­system hostility t­ oward Chinese communism. This hostility is un-
derstandable, even if somewhat un­balanced, in view of the ­family histories
of a substantial part of the Hong Kong population. Traditionally somewhat
low-­key and devoid of effective mobilization (except at special times such as
June 4, 1989), this political-­system hostility has seen a dramatic escalation
in the past few years. Although the exact consequences of this escalation are
hard to predict, it is quite obvious that, generally speaking, political-­system
hostility ­toward the Chinese state ­will not help the demo­cratic cause in Hong
Kong. It ­w ill do so even less when it is seen to be supported, if only morally,
by Western media and influential Western politicians. It is a po­liti­cal fact in­
de­pen­dent of anyone’s normative preference that what­ever po­liti­cal pro­gress
is to be made in Hong Kong must have the blessing or at least the acquies-
cence of the central government in Beijing. The appearance of an interna-
tional demo­cratic alliance directed at the Chinese government, however soft
and informal, can almost be counted on to produce the opposite effect. It can
only give the CCP ideas or reinforce ideas it already has.19 Such ideas point
in one clear direction: Chinese sovereignty is not fully respected; it is not fully
respected on account of political-­system hostility; and such hostility contains
within it the unmistakable desire, as distinct from any concrete plan (all but
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 367

ruled out by the continuing rise of China), for regime change. Against such
hostility, with all that it entails, the Chinese government has no choice but
to stand firm, or so it believes, and this means that it must not yield an inch
to the pan-­democrats in Hong Kong, lest it ­will create a slippery slope ­toward
regime change.
One does not need much po­liti­cal astuteness to see that political-­system
hostility ­toward the Chinese government ­w ill not serve any useful purpose
for Hong Kong. As expressed by the pan-­democrats, it ­will serve only to mar-
ginalize them and undermine the central government’s minimal trust. As
expressed by Western governments, it w ­ ill only lend credence to the idea that
foreign forces are ­behind the demo­cracy movement and that they ­w ill not
let pass any opportunity to weaken the po­liti­cal respectability of the Chinese
government. As expressed by Western media, it w ­ ill only strengthen an al-
ready widespread political-­system hostility ­toward China in some Western
countries and put greater pressure on their governments and politicians to
speak and even act accordingly. If the Chinese state happens to be extremely
weak, it may well cave in to ideological and po­liti­cal pressure based on
political-­system hostility, but then this would have happened for other rea-
sons, with or without such pressure. When the Chinese state is strong, as it
is now, although it is far from invulnerable, it can be counted on to take the
pressure as a reminder that it must act even more strongly and do all it can
to reduce its vulnerability. This is happening right now.
This chain of c­ auses and effects applies on the mainland as well, in its
own right, except that t­ here the stakes are much higher and the authorities
react to perceived threats with a corresponding highhandedness. B ­ ecause the
same logic is at work in Hong Kong and yet Hong Kong is, deep down, a
milder society compared with the mainland, what is happening in Hong
Kong may acquire the importance of an ominous pre­ce­dent. It may have done
so already. If political-­system hostility is so hard to contain in Hong Kong,
how much more irresistibly must a similar hostility give vent to itself on the
mainland if allowed half a chance? If Hongkongers, already blessed as they
are with plentiful liberties, have so many among them who w ­ ill not ­settle
for the enjoyment of such liberties combined with a more demo­cratic way
of ­doing ­things, what reason is t­ here to think that mainlanders, once granted
the same liberties, ­will not immediately demand po­liti­cal democracy and
thereby challenge the leadership of the CCP?
368 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

Fortunately, this is still an open question. Yet the answer to it that ­w ill be
provided by ­f uture developments in Hong Kong may have an extremely
impor­tant bearing on how the party thinks and acts in the rest of China. I
sometimes won­der ­whether t­ here ­isn’t something we can learn from what Im-
manuel Kant has to say about nonpo­liti­cal freedom, on the one hand, and
po­liti­cal obedience, on the other. I have already had occasion to explain and
use Kant’s insights in Chapter 6, but some of t­ hese insights bear repeating
briefly ­here, especially ­because they have a dif­fer­ent twist given Hong Kong’s
specific context. Exercise in­de­pen­dence of thought, seek such freedom as is
necessary for the public use of reason, and thereby give up self-­imposed im-
maturity, Kant pleads, but do so in such a way as is fully compatible with po­
liti­cal obedience and hence public order. The realization of freedom thus
conceived and justified depends on ­t hose in power being able to say, with a
ruler like Frederick II, “Argue as much as you like and about what­ever you
like, but obey!” b ­ ecause he “has at hand a well-­disciplined and numerous army
to guarantee public security.”20 One could be forgiven for wishing that the
CCP, which is even more mightily equipped, w ­ ere able to say something like
this—­and, of course, act accordingly, as Frederick did. And one might hope
the p ­ eople of Hong Kong could treat po­liti­cal restraint, short of po­liti­cal obe-
dience, as a temporarily acceptable price to pay for the liberties they enjoy
and, not least, for the numerous ­t hings, both public and private, that such
liberties allow them to do if they make good and ample use of them.
Po­liti­cal restraint means, in Hong Kong’s context, taking advantage of
civil liberties and of the demo­cratic way of ­doing ­t hings, l­ imited as it is, in
such a way as to show a reasonable mea­sure of re­spect for the sovereignty of
the Chinese state, and to show such re­spect by refraining from actions that
can reasonably be perceived as stemming from political-­system hostility.
Think what you ­w ill about China’s po­liti­cal system, and discuss it freely and,
if pos­si­ble, without overzealous prejudice, but do not oppose it, do not try to
subvert it, and do not work for regime change. If the p ­ eople of Hong Kong
can do this, they ­w ill have shown, to use Kant’s words, “how freedom may
exist without in the least jeopardizing public concord and the unity of the
commonwealth.”21
This does not mean that the use of freedom ­w ill be public only in Kant’s
sense and hence entirely apo­liti­cal, and that is why I distinguish po­liti­cal re-
straint from po­liti­cal obedience and argue only for the former. For the argu-
Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future 369

ment for po­liti­cal restraint is itself po­liti­cal, and po­liti­cal restraint is meant
precisely to make pos­si­ble the most effective use of the ­limited democracy
available to Hong Kong to safeguard civil liberties and the rule of law and to
improve social justice.22 ­These are worthy po­liti­cal purposes, and the last one
in par­tic­u­lar is as difficult to achieve as it is worthy. Rather than discourage
such purposes, po­liti­cal restraint serves only to concentrate po­liti­cal energy
on achieving them or preserving their achievement, uncompromisingly if
necessary, and to caution against the futile and especially destructive pur-
suit of po­liti­cal goals—­such as democracy as a po­liti­cal system (in the sense
explained)—­t hat are ruled out by “one country, two systems.” Subject to the
same proviso, civil liberties, too, can be put to po­liti­cal uses, just as they can
serve as the training ground for the moral and intellectual in­de­pen­dence that
is presupposed by all effective demo­cratic participation.
By exercising po­liti­cal restraint, then, and ­doing so in keeping with the
real­ity of Hong Kong’s relation to China, the p ­ eople of Hong Kong w ­ ill have
shown, beyond the Kantian compatibility between nonpo­liti­cal liberty and
po­liti­cal order, that they care about democracy and, being realistic, care just
as much about the effective, just, and progressive uses of the l­ imited yet con-
siderable democracy that is in princi­ple available to Hong Kong—­that is, they
care about democracy as a demo­cratic way of ­doing ­things short of a po­liti­cal
system. They w ­ ill have shown, too, that valuing as they dearly do their his-
torically given apartness and the individual and collective identity based on
it, they are nevertheless prepared not to let their identity strug­gles escalate
into defiance of China’s po­liti­cal system and its sovereignty over Hong Kong.
If and when such a change of heart happens, and t­ hings n ­ eedn’t (and
­wouldn’t) be perfect thereafter, Hong Kong w ­ ill have created an invaluable
pre­ce­dent by making pos­si­ble a better way of ­doing ­t hings, both freer and
more demo­cratic, without undermining the authority of the CCP and the sov-
ereignty of the Chinese state. If this is shown to be pos­si­ble in Hong Kong,
in time it may also start to happen on the mainland—­and further po­liti­cal
evolution may follow that ­w ill gradually but surely take China, and Hong
Kong with it, in an even more demo­cratic direction. Other­wise, Hong Kong’s
failure ­today would be China’s loss tomorrow.
 Concluding Reflections

IF I ­W ERE TO NAME ONE ­T HING as the most formidable challenge to my pru-

dential argument for democracy in China, it would have to be the poten-
tially power­f ul countervailing pull of the Chinese Dream. To properly as-
sess this challenge, one would need a closer look at the Chinese Dream than
I have been able to provide. Since in the pre­sent context I am interested in
the Chinese Dream not for its own sake but only in relation to democracy, I
should note that the crucial question that needs to be answered is ­whether
the Chinese Dream can do without democracy, w ­ hether the Chinese Dream
can be considered complete, and felt as complete, in the absence of marked
pro­gress in meaningful democracy.

Democracy and the Chinese Dream

While the rise of China, as the core of the Chinese Dream, is not in doubt
as event, its meaning is contentious and its f­ uture course uncertain. Key to
fathoming its meaning and tracking its ­f uture course is the notion of uni-
versality. For China’s rise has supposedly created a m odel—­t he China
model, or the China approach (zhongguo fang’an), as Xi Jinping calls it—­that
is ­either ser­v iceable only to China itself and at most also to developing coun-
tries or exemplary for the world as a w ­ hole. A qualitative difference exists
between the two scenarios: only the latter is of potentially world-­historical
significance and ­w ill, if it comes to pass, give Amer­i­ca, and the West as a
­whole, cause for worry about its place in so-­called universal history.
Concluding Reflections 371

For this latter scenario to materialize, China must first show itself capable
of escaping the so-­called middle-­income trap and surmounting other daunting
challenges, including that of regime stability and perpetuation. But already
China u ­ nder Xi has shed much of its modesty about claiming universal impact
and significance for what would other­w ise be seen as only its own parochial
achievements, however impressive on their own terms. The latter cannot be
what “the g­ reat rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (zhonghua minzhu de
weida fuxing) is about. For Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
China’s rise is obviously meant to occur as part of universal history; the rise
itself is a rise to the level of universality.
This departure from Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of “hiding one’s light and
biding one’s time” (taoguang yanghui) may be tentative at this stage, yet its
intent is unmistakable. We are witnessing China’s rise, and hence its rise in
universality, at its initial stage. While drawing from time to time on the uni-
versalist discourses of the Enlightenment and Marxism and of the Chinese
tradition, the last with its time-­honored concept of All u ­ nder Heaven, the
CCP is allowing its newfound zeal for universality to take largely the para-
doxical form of a heightened confidence in exceptionalism. Chinese excep-
tionalism may be viewed as the initial stage (to borrow a standard CCP term)
of universalism—­a way of carving out a politico-­economic space for China
while subverting the West’s mono­poly on universal history.
Xi’s eponymous thought—­“socialism with Chinese characteristics for a
new era”—is a c ase in point. If in the post–­Cold War era (Marxian) so-
cialism itself has been decisively relegated to the realm of the par­tic­u­lar, in-
deed to the marginal and residual, “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is
the further particularization of the par­tic­u­lar. But what about “for a new era”?
It turns out, upon a modicum of reflection, that what is new is precisely
the dawning of China’s newly recovered confidence in claiming its share of
universal history. This reclaimed universality sets the Xi era apart from the
entire “old” reform era stretching all the way from Deng through Jiang
Zemin to Hu Jintao, the latter era marked by the plain loss of communist nerve
and the veiled and somewhat hesitant and ambiguous desire to join Western
cap­i­tal­ist universality while maintaining nominally communist one-­party
rule. No more blind worshiping of Western universality, no more naïve trust
in the West’s spurious assertion of universal values, Xi is saying or im-
plying, and it is time for China to stake out its own claims to universality.
372 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

What is new about Xi’s “new era” is thus the beginning of the end of all at-
tempts to join Western universality. The new era is the era of China’s reas-
serted universality.
­There remains, however, a readily noticeable ambivalence between excep-
tionalism (as a challenge to universalism and hence to Western universalism)
and universalism (in the guise of exceptionalism). Thus while China is no
longer “hiding its light,” it is still “biding its time,” in that the time to couch
China’s new claims in the unabashed language of universality has not yet
come. The result is an accentuated form of Chinese particularism reinforced
by the universalization of particularism, by the insistence that Western claims
to universality are no less particularistic for all their hegemonic status. At the
same time, more or less explicit appeals to universality—­for example, Xi’s sug-
gestion that the Chinese Dream has a c lose affinity with the dreams of all
nations, and his proposal for building a shared f­ uture for all of humanity—­are
increasingly creeping into official CCP discourse.
What all this suggests is that, if ­t hings go well, it is only a ­matter of time
before China feels self-­assured enough to shed its particularism and lay ex-
plicit claims to universality. Indeed it is only then that we ­w ill know that
China believes its rise to have been completed—but only provided that the
validity of this belief is ungrudgingly accepted by other nations of the world.
­W hether this condition can be met ­w ill no doubt depend on how eco­nom­
ically consequential, and, more generally, how materially power­ful, China has
become. For material power, or hard power, is a necessary vehicle of global
influence, although it defies the unalloyed moral sense that this is how it is.
Yet ideas and values are what make up the substance of all claims to univer-
sality. This is b­ ecause in ideas and values alone can be found the highest and
most inclusive common denominator among all ­humans qua ­humans, which
is what we mean by universality. Universality is humanity, itself (as we know
it t­ oday) an invention of the Eu­ro­pean Enlightenment, however complicated
its subsequent uses and abuses. Since the rise of China is nothing but the as-
cendance to universality thus conceived (via Karl Marx’s debts to the En-
lightenment), it cannot be merely material but must also be, indeed chiefly
be, ideational and moral. The Chinese Dream is the dream of such a rise of
China, or the rise of such a China.
Hence arises the question, Can this happen without China finding its
own path to meaningful democracy? I very much doubt it, for I find it al-
Concluding Reflections 373

most inconceivable that any claim to universality ­w ill be found credible and
worthy of ac­cep­tance if it does not plausibly and amply provide for that
which lies at the core of humanity’s highest common denominator—­namely,
freedom, or what Marx calls the “­f ree, conscious activity [that] is man’s
species character.”1 I am invoking Marx ­here not only ­because I believe he is
right but also in order to leave room for the objection that cap­i­tal­ist freedom
is not real freedom and bourgeois democracy accomplishes only—to use
Marx’s terms2—­political emancipation short of ­human emancipation. The
point is that if the CCP takes exception to freedom and democracy as prac-
ticed in cap­i­tal­ist socie­t ies, it has its work cut out for it to create real
freedom and real democracy. Simply rejecting Western instantiations of
freedom and democracy is not enough. ­Doing that without offering mean-
ingful alternatives of its own is not an option if China is to complete its rise
as a rise to universality. And what w ­ ill count as meaningful alternatives
must be left to the ­free judgment of the international court of public opinion,
and thus they must go substantially above the level of plausibility and cred-
ibility that China is ­today capable of achieving in such ­matters. Marxism
provides no refuge, for, accurately understood, Marx is a thinker in the En-
lightenment tradition who seeks to move beyond the bourgeois demo­cratic
revolution rather than block its pro­gress and who attempts to complete what
he calls po­liti­cal emancipation through ­human emancipation rather than
take humanity back to the condition preceding po­liti­cal emancipation.
Even for Marx, the founder of historical materialism, freedom has to be the
goal of universal history3 —­freedom in the sense of nonalienated life ac-
tivity of the species, and in the sense of a social arrangement that is sup-
posed to make this pos­si­ble, which Marx calls democracy, “democracy [as]
the solved riddle of all constitutions.”4 For without some such postulation,
historical materialism would lose its ethical point and cease to be the eman-
cipatory proj­ect it claims to be.
Absent freedom and democracy, the Chinese Dream would be left of-
fering only prosperity (albeit prosperity that is meant to become ever more
civilized, harmonious, and beautiful—­a ll adjectives used by the CCP), the
de facto freedom to produce and enjoy the fruits of such prosperity, and the
construction of a peaceful global politico-­economic order (called the com-
munity of the shared f­ uture of humankind, renlei mingyun gongtongti)
based on this conception of the good life. This vision is clearly not without
374 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

its attractions, especially when it contains a well-­tested formula for efficient

execution, which China is perfecting as an exemplar to developing countries
and, in some cases, perhaps even beyond. The China model is none other
than this conception of the good life plus the formula for carry­ing it out. In
a way it is not so dif­fer­ent from Benjamin Constant’s picture of the liberties
of the moderns, although it is impor­tant for Constant that ­t hese liberties
be guaranteed, the best guarantee being some form of the liberty of the
ancients—­t hat is, democracy.5 But Constant’s proviso makes a huge differ-
ence, and some may find even this view of liberties, equipped with the pro-
viso, too earthbound, too much oriented to what Constant calls enterprises
and pleasures, and lacking a spiritual dimension. Be that as it may, what is
all but certain is that without Constant’s proviso, the China model’s concep-
tion of the good life ­w ill be found wanting even by the Chinese themselves
as they become more prosperous and more used to prosperity and start to
demand more.
I began this book with the observation that one crucial ele­ment is
missing from the CCP’s impressive list of recent achievements: a w ay to
provide for—­a long with economic development—an ever-­rising sense of
agency among the Chinese ­people as individuals (freedom) and as citizens
(democracy). That is, development as freedom, to borrow an expression
from Amartya Sen, rather than development only as rising living stan-
dards.6 To this kind of observation I have often encountered the response
that a sense of agency—as realized through freedom and democracy—­may
not be so necessary if ­people have every­thing ­else they want—­that is, indi-
vidual prosperity, national power and prestige, and so on. My rejoinder is,
Wait ­until they have gotten over the first excitement of “every­thing ­else.”
Chinese society as we find it ­today is populated by an ever-­growing ­middle
class—­t he bourgeois—­a nd by even greater numbers animated by middle-­
class aspirations. I just cannot imagine, for reasons supported by Marx as
much as by Alexis de Tocqueville, that the bourgeois ­w ill not desire bour-
geois freedoms and bourgeois democracy and seek to obtain them, given
the chance. So wait also ­until the po­liti­cal system and culture become
milder and less repressive, as they are bound to become over time (if eco-
nomic development continues), so that fear ­w ill no longer prevent ­actual
preferences from being expressed and the lack of opportunity for fulfill-
ment ­w ill no longer produce massively adaptive preferences.7
Concluding Reflections 375

I believe this is exactly the kind of ­t hing the CCP must be thinking (and
worrying about), or e­ lse it would not be devoting such a superabundance of
po­liti­cal energy and financial resources to the seamless monitoring and con-
trol of society. In this ­matter as in so many ­others of the same kind, one can
do no better than defer to the (implicit) judgment of the party itself—­not what
it says but what it does. The dead serious mea­sures taken to maintain social
order, the extraordinary lengths gone to and the enormous costs incurred,
both material and psychological, all point to one conclusion: the CCP is a
good reader of the nature of the bourgeois and of bourgeois society, and the
only reason it is not acting on this insight positively is that it wants to main-
tain its exclusive hold on power. All the repression aimed at arresting the
moral-­political evolution of Chinese bourgeois society only goes to prove the
irrepressible desire for agency in bourgeois society, such that if the state re-
presses this desire, then it must also repress all the expressions of frustration
about and protest against the original repression. This is a costly proj­ect al-
most certain to fail at some point.
For now, ­t hings are held together by a combination of fear, displacement,
and sublimation. The fear needs no further explanation. Displacement means
that the desire for agency, thwarted in the moral and po­liti­cal domains, finds
a compensating outlet in making money, seeking ­career advancement and
social status, and chasing pleasures, especially that of consumption. This is
the individualistic dimension of the Chinese Dream: a good life for oneself
made pos­si­ble by material abundance and enjoyed in the com­pany of one’s
­family and friends. If this is not satisfying enough—­and it definitely is not
in the absence of the greater sense of agency afforded by reasonably guaran-
teed freedoms and democracy—­t here is also the collective dimension of the
Chinese Dream: the ­great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The mecha-
nism at work ­here is also displacement or compensation, with one big differ-
ence, however—­the intoxicating effect of being and feeling part of the largest
cohesively or­ga­nized ­human crowd, the nation. Insofar as members of this
crowd feel uplifted, above their purely individual concerns and fortunes, by
the shared glory of a rising fatherland, they undergo a sublimation of their
everyday desires and aspirations, from the purely individual to the collective,
from the merely exciting to the inspiring.
I do not intend to pass judgment, positive or negative, on the collective di-
mension of the Chinese Dream, or on sublimation as its correlate in collective
376 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

psy­chol­ogy. What requires comment is only ­whether such sublimation can

long serve as a displacement of the desire for democracy. I have already ar-
gued for the view that the bourgeois ­will be bourgeois—­w ill act like the
bourgeois—­over time, given the chance. Since this view already covers the
displacement of the desire both for individual freedom and for democracy,
all I need to add is a s­ imple thought pertaining to democracy. For an increas-
ingly middle-­class society, it would be hard to imagine collective, national
pride being long sustained on the basis of the collective (and individual)
indignity of not having the right to plausible and meaningful po­l iti­c al
participation—­t hat is, democracy. Being long sustained means lasting much
beyond the Xi era. Objectively speaking, Xi is an extraordinary leader and
his era an extraordinary era—­extraordinary, in both cases, in the descriptive
sense that contradictions that ­under ordinary circumstances and ordinary
leadership would produce an irresistible momentum t­ oward fundamental
change, or collapse, are being effectively kept in check. ­There is no reason to
believe, however, that Xi ­will be followed by a successor equally extraordinary
and therefore no reason to believe that ­t hings ­w ill not resume their ordinary
course in a post-­X i China.
What ordinary course must mean is, above all, the appearance or reap-
pearance of freedom and democracy (with plausible, meaningful, not merely
Chinese, characteristics) on the list of normative ­things that the Chinese ­people
can openly and knowingly care about. Only in this way can the Chinese Dream
be achieved and be worthy of being a dream come true—­and prove potentially
attractive enough to win the ­free recognition of other ­peoples of the world and
thereby ascend to the level of credible universality.
The most impor­tant question, then, is ­whether Xi ­w ill see fit and be able
to get China ready, boldly yet prudently, for a return to the ordinary course
of individual and national life before he leaves the po­liti­cal stage. The answer
to this question ­w ill truly determine the ­f uture and fate of China.

Democracy in China, Democracy in Amer­i­ca

I could not have written this book, then, dispassionate and analytical as I
have tried to make it, without a certain trepidation. I fear that the looming
legitimation crisis is not taken seriously enough, that China’s urgent need
for democracy is not sufficiently recognized, and that demo­cratic prepara-
Concluding Reflections 377

tion ­w ill not take place u ­ ntil it is too late. Too late b
­ ecause by then, with the
crisis visibly brewing and t­ hose in power unable to keep it u ­ nder control in
a calm and peaceful way, and with no other seasoned po­liti­cal force to step
into the breach, the country could descend into paralysis and even chaos.
Should this happen, the ­earlier need for democracy could mutate into an
emergent need for draconian mea­sures, ­adopted by whoever is charge, just
to keep a semblance of order and normality.
I have this fear ­because, for one ­thing, ­those ­running the country are un-
derstandably absorbed in the endless challenges of the moment—­economic,
technological, po­liti­cal, military, international, and so on—­which are enough
to create at the very top the mentality of emergency and make statesmanlike
foresight into rainy days ahead all but a luxury. This overwhelmingly dis-
tracting preoccupation with the pre­sent (and with the ­f uture largely as a
continuation of, hopefully, the positive ­t hings of the pre­sent) is, equally un-
derstandably, compounded by the force of habit, in this case the CCP’s habit
formed over seven de­cades of ruling the country by taking only its own
counsel and without the incon­ve­nience of having to deal with the demos. It
is easy to imagine how prohibitively difficult it would be to give up such a
habit—­t he more so if, as seems to be the case, the current leadership has
ambitious national goals to achieve to which democracy’s inefficacies seem
ill suited. Then, with or without such ambitious goals, ­t here is the sheer
confidence, arrogance, and blindness unfailingly fostered in ­those at the top
by possession of ­g reat and barely challenged power, especially power still
on the rise.
For ­these reasons among ­others, I do not think that mine is an ungrounded
fear. Yet, given what is at stake, I cannot but hope that I ­w ill turn out to be
wrong—­wrong, that is, even if ­t hose who have the power to act now, when
­there is still time, fail to do so. Even in the event of their failure to act, I would
not wish my prognosis to be proved true, and thus, by the same token, I must,
even now, wish my diagnosis to be incorrect.
­There is ­little point in imagining purely hy­po­t het­i­cal circumstances that
would fulfill my wish. I can imagine, however, two scenarios, neither totally
unrealistic, in which t­ hings would turn out differently from what my pre­sent
analy­sis leads me to expect. Unsurprisingly, both scenarios involve China’s
relationship and balance of power with the United States. As it happens,
what is special about China vis-­à-­v is the United States is its dual status as
378 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

the world’s second-­largest economy and the most power­ful (nominally) com-
munist country, the latter giving China a politico-­ideological identity that,
in turn, imparts an especially unsettling meaning to China’s new economic
might. This doubly tense relationship affects both China and the United States
deeply, in dif­fer­ent ways. For China’s part, other ­things being equal, the demo­
cratic challenge confronting it is likely to wax and wane in response, first, to
its balance of power, especially hard power, with the United States, and,
second, as far as soft power is concerned, to Amer­i­ca’s per­for­mance and image
as the world’s leading democracy.
The first of the two scenarios, then, is one in which China catches up with
or even surpasses the United States in economic power, and approaches the
United States in military might, sooner than it is hit by the paralyzing legiti-
mation crisis sketched in this book. It is almost as if t­ here ­were a race be-
tween China’s economic and military advance, on the one hand, and the
CCP’s progressively decreasing legitimacy, on the other. It is just pos­si­ble that
the very fact of such a race, as it ­were, and of its being registered by the CCP
and the public at large, ­w ill by itself give the party more time. Should ­t hings
turn out in China’s ­favor in this regard, they could complicate the po­liti­cal
dynamic in China—­both positively, in ways I ­shall speculate on shortly, and
negatively, if China ­were to acquire the ambitions of empire. I just do not see,
however, the CCP succeeding in such ambitions, even if it ­were to entertain
them, before it runs into domestic legitimation prob­lems of a sufficient se-
verity to overshadow every­t hing ­else. If I am right, then, the complications
resulting from China’s relatively rapid further rise would by themselves be
more likely to f­ avor the cause of democracy than not, as I s­ hall argue.
The second scenario bears some relation to the first, in that Amer­i­ca’s
per­for­mance and image as a democracy are profoundly affected by its status
as an empire (all but in name). W ­ hether one likes it or not, the fortunes and
reputation of democracy in the world t­ oday rise or fall largely (though by no
means only) with the fortunes and reputation of democracy in Amer­i­ca.
­There can be no doubt that Amer­i­ca’s per­for­mance as a democracy and as
an empire is keenly watched in China, by democracy’s supporters as much
as by its detractors and skeptics. This is the single most impor­tant interna-
tional ­factor affecting the prospect of democracy in China. American democ-
racy, instead of offering a fixed formula fit to serve as an unquestioned
model, has always been a proj­ect in the making. It makes a world of differ-
Concluding Reflections 379

ence ­whether we are talking about American democracy in the Gilded Age
or in the Progressive Era—or, closer to our time, American democracy in the
de­cades of the New Deal or in the New Gilded Age, which has coincided with
the unpre­ce­dented ambition and reach of the American empire, declining or
not. And it is not too farfetched to hypothesize that if the New Gilded Age
roars on domestically and in the form of new military misadventures abroad
in the mode of the (second) Iraq War and the Libya intervention, this may
well cause at least temporarily irreparable damage to the reputation of de-
mocracy and, in so d ­ oing, dramatically alter the perception, and hence the
prospect, of democracy in China.
What if the first scenario materializes but the second does not—­with China
succeeding in the nationalist dimension of the Chinese Dream (short of su-
perseding the United States as the new global hegemon) and Amer­i­ca
somehow thriving as a democracy? Well, at least this much would be rela-
tively certain: first, that China would be better able to accomplish an orderly
passage to democracy, given its enhanced self-­confidence and its greatly re-
duced vulnerability to potential interference from foreign powers in the
demo­cratizing pro­cess; and, second, that Amer­i­ca’s very success (at that point)
in its ongoing demo­cratic proj­ect would in and of itself constitute enormous
moral and ideological pressure on China, however other­wise power­ful, to ac-
quire the ultimate legitimacy that only democracy could confer in the
modern setting of equality of conditions. This pressure, in turn, would be re-
inforced by what is almost certain to be a third fact—­namely, that China it-
self would have advanced much further in its pro­gress ­toward equality of con-
ditions, the most power­f ul domestic cause of demo­cratic transformation.
Taking t­ hese three f­ actors together, I cannot see how, or why, China would
long find it ­either necessary or pos­si­ble to resist the pressure, both domestic
and international, to take the final step ­toward democracy. Indeed I c an
well imagine that pressure becoming rather a temptation, ­because only by
taking this (for itself) unpre­ce­dented step could China fully accomplish its
rejuvenation—in the modern world—­a nd acquire the legitimacy at home
and abroad that is commensurate with its new capabilities and its better
ambitions.
The moral of this speculative exercise is that what w ­ ill stand in the way of
China’s demo­cratic pro­gress is not its further rise but rather this fact con-
joined with democracy’s further decline, especially in the United States. By
380 DEMOCRACY IN CHINA

itself, China’s further rise, if (a big “if”) reasonably smooth and rapid, could
conceivably give the CCP more time, but it would not change China’s basic
sociopo­liti­cal dynamic. If anything, it would help rather than hinder China’s
demo­cratic pro­g ress. It is only given the combination of the two scenarios—­
China’s further rise and democracy’s further decline—­t hat all bets would
be off. But in that case, all bets would be off with regard to Amer­i­ca as well, and
the world at large.
Absent this conjunction of scenarios, I cannot quite bring myself to be-
lieve (as opposed to wishing) that my diagnosis is incorrect in its essentials.
Let it, then, along with the prognosis based on it, stand as a warning that w ­ ill
do no harm if it turns out to be wrong and that could do some good if it is
credited with a reasonable chance of being right.
Notes
Index
 Notes

Introduction
1. See Manuel Castells, ἀ e Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture,
vol. 2, ἀ e Power of Identity, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2010), chap. 6.
2. Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological
State Apparatuses, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 2014), 135–36, emphasis
in original.
3. Ibid., 137.
4. Ibid.
5. As used, say, by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the news conference immedi-
ately ­a fter the nineteenth party congress.
6. This notion was first proposed by W. B. Gallie in two articles, one of them
being “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56
(1956): 167–98. Democracy is among the examples given in this article of an essen-
tially contested concept—­a concept of something totally or largely positive yet with
its best interpretation subject to contestation. Robert A. Dahl recognizes a similar
status for democracy when he writes, “­Today, this idea of democracy is universally
popu­lar. Most regimes stake out some sort of claim to the title of ‘democracy’; and
­t hose that do not often insist that their par­t ic­u ­lar instance of nondemo­cratic rule
is a necessary stage along the road to ultimate ‘democracy.’ In our times, even dicta-
tors appear to believe that an indispensable ingredient for their legitimacy is a dash
or two of the language of democracy.” Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 2.
7. John Dunn does as good a job as anyone of pinpointing what is deeply good
and attractive about democracy without being misled by its surface charms; see his
Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), 130–47, 164, 174,
185. Another judicious account of the strengths and limits of democracy is Adam
Przeworski, Democracy and the Limits of Self-­Government (New York: Cambridge
384 Notes to Pages 12–14

University Press, 2014). Przeworski sees the test for democracy in its ability to rise
to four challenges: “(1) the incapacity to generate equality in the socioeconomic
realm, (2) the incapacity to make ­people feel that their po­liti­cal participation is ef-
fective, (3) the incapacity to ensure that governments do what they are supposed to
do and not do what they are not mandated to do, and (4) the incapacity to balance
order and liberty” (1–2). Przeworski makes a plausible case against holding democ-
racy to unreasonable standards in ­t hese four regards, and for believing that even
when democracy is not at its pos­si­ble best, it tends ­under relatively favorable condi-
tions to do better than nondemo­cratic regimes. ­There is ­little doubt that, even by
Przeworski’s sober standard for democracy, the typical advanced democracies in
the world ­today fall a long way short, with regard to all four challenges.
8. There is an academic and journalistic industry devoted to showing the dis-
contents of democracy in our time. See, for example, Christopher  H. Achen and
Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive
Government, rev. ed. (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2017); and Jacob S.
Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-­Take-­All Politics: How Washington Made the
Rich Richer—­and Turned Its Back on the ­Middle Class (New York: Simon and Schuster,
2011). In many ways, C. B. Macpherson’s ἀ e Life and Times of Liberal Democracy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), in outlining the normative credentials and
vicissitudes of four models of democracy, remains a g ood conceptual basis for
forming a sober assessment of democracy’s moral potential and the prospect of its
coming to fruition. That the “developmental model” has dropped out of mainstream
discussion altogether since Macpherson and the “participatory model” has turned
out to be more utopian than ever is enough to dent any high-­flown normative case
for democracy.
9. John Dunn, preface to Democracy: ἀ e Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD
1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), ed. John Dunn, vii, emphasis added.
10. I have in mind, for example, Jason Stanley, How Propaganda Works (Prince­ton,
NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2015); and Jason Brennan, Against Democracy
(Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2016)—­both other­w ise highly salutary
in their warnings about the ideological distortion (Stanley) and even ethical-­
psychological harms (Brennan) of democracy.
11. Niccolò Machiavelli, ἀe Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1998): “But since my intent is to write something useful to
whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the ef-
fectual truth of the t­ hing than to the imagination of it. And many have i­ magined
republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth; for
it is so far from how one lives to how one should that he who lets go of what is done
for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation” (61).
12. John Dunn makes a s trong case for “placing the value of prudence at the
center of modern po­liti­cal theory” (198) in “Reconceiving the Content and Char-
acter of Modern Po­l iti­cal Community,” in Interpreting Po­liti­cal Responsibility
(Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1990), 193–215. Although not specifically
Notes to Pages 17–26 385

related to China, Dunn’s argument is especially salutary in urging “a large mea­sure

of objectivity: a deliberate distancing from the contingencies of our own desires and
sentiments” (193) and the special importance for po­liti­cal theory of “the causally ad-
equate analy­sis of the h­ uman world in terms of its openness to h ­ uman betterment
(or even ­human preservation)” (196). Dunn writes, “History, if anything, can tell
us how we have come hither; moral philosophy, perhaps, what to make of the fact
that this is where we now are. But po­liti­cal theory has no choice but to tell us how to
act, given that this indeed is where we now are” (196).
13. See John Dunn, Breaking Democracy’s Spell (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2014).
14. See, for example, Max Tegmark, Life 3.0: Being H ­ uman in the Age of Artificial
Intelligence (New York: Knopf, 2017).
15. I k now of no more impressive snapshot of such per­for­mance than Graham
Allison’s racy account of the rise of China in his Destined for War: Can Amer­i­ca and
China Escape ἀ ucydides’s Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017),
chap. 1. All positives, no negatives, which is understandable given the author’s pur-
pose in this part of his book. One can imagine the Chinese leaders being (before the
trade war) intoxicated by just some such account, as much as their American
counter­parts would, as Allison presumably hoped, be alarmed by it. It is striking
that an astute scholar and experienced national security expert such as Allison
should find the idea of per­for­mance legitimacy plausible (143), although even he
cautions that such legitimacy depends, empirically, on “sustaining the unsustain-
able” (123).
16. Charles S. Maier, “Democracy since the French Revolution,” in Dunn, Democ-
racy, 125–53, at 126–27, emphasis added.
17. What I am calling demo­cratic epistemology receives perhaps the most influen-
tial account in our day in Jürgen Habermas, ἀ e ἀ eory of Communicative Action,
trans. Thomas McCarthy, 2 vols. (Boston: Beacon, 1984, 1987). It can indeed be said
that Habermas pre­sents democracy as first and foremost a ­matter of demo­cratic epis-
temology, as in Jürgen Habermas, “Legitimation Prob­lems in the Modern State,” in
Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon,
1979), 178–205. One representative formulation is as follows: “I can imagine the at-
tempt to arrange a society demo­cratically only as a self-­controlled learning pro­cess. It is
a question of finding arrangements which can ground the presumption that the basic
institutions of the society and the basic po­liti­cal decisions would meet with the un-
forced agreement of all t­ hose involved, if they could participate, as ­f ree and equal, in
discursive will-­formation. Democ­ratization cannot mean an a priori preference for a
specific type of organ­ization, for example, for so-­called direct democracy” (186). See
also Jürgen Habermas, “Popu­lar Sovereignty as Procedure,” appendix 1 of Between
Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse ἀ eory of Law and Democracy, trans.
William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 463–90.
18. As t­ hese are variously documented in, say, Franҫois Guizot, ἀe History
of  the Origins of Representative Government in Eu­rope, trans. Andrew  R. Scoble
386 Notes to Pages 28–42

(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002); Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dicta-

torship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston:
Beacon, 1993); Dunn, Democracy; and Pierre Manent, Metamorphoses of the City:
ἀe Western Dynamic, trans. Marc LePain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2013).
19. As distressingly documented in the Oxfam reports, among ­others.

1. Legitimacy and Per­for­mance

1. This time frame allows for the impact of such contingent f­ actors as President
Xi Jinping’s health, his ability to maintain his currently unchallenged grip on
power, potential major setbacks in the Chinese economy, and unpredictable events
on the international scene.
2. To call this type of legitimacy communist teleological-­revolutionary is to sug-
gest that its form is teleological, its teleological substance is communism, and its
means of execution is revolution. For simplicity and con­ve­nience, I w ­ ill for the most
part refer to this type of legitimacy as teleological-­revolutionary, or communist
revolutionary, or, simply, revolutionary—in all cases as a s tand-in for all three
features.
3. For reasonably comprehensive analyses of the multiple vulnerabilities faced
by China as part of the global cap­i­tal­ist order, see Ho-­fung Hung, ἀe China Boom:
Why China ­Will Not Rule the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016);
and George Magnus, Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2018). For equally solid assessments by foreign observers who seem
somewhat more positively disposed ­toward China, or more detached, see William H.
Overholt, China’s Crisis of Success (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018);
and Arthur R. Kroeber, China’s Economy: What Every­one Needs to Know (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016).
4. “The Chinese Dream” is a translation of Zhongguo meng, which is sometimes
rendered as “the China Dream.” Th ­ ere is a subtle, or perhaps not-so-subtle, differ-
ence between ­t hese two renderings, with the China Dream hinting at some collec-
tive proj­ect (e.g., national rejuvenation) as the dream’s main object. The Chinese
Dream, on the other hand, is more neutral, as it is also open to a more generic and
mundane interpretation in terms of prosperity and happiness as ordinary ­people
understand such t­ hings. Such an interpretation makes the Chinese Dream rather
similar to the American Dream, as no less an authority than Xi Jinping once sug-
gested, in his speech at the press conference a­ fter his meeting with President Barack
Obama at the former Annenberg Estate in California in 2013. This speech is in-
cluded, ­under the title “Goujian Zhongmei xinxing daguo guanxi” [Build a n ew
type of major-­country relationship between China and the United States], in
Shibada yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [Se­lections of impor­tant documents
since the eigh­teenth party congress] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe,
2014), 305–6. The reference to the comparability of the Chinese Dream and the
Notes to Pages 45–51 387

American Dream is on 305. It is also worth noting that the meaning of the Chinese
Dream has evolved since 2013, recently (as in Xi’s speech at the CCP’s nineteenth
national congress, on October 18, 2017) seeing a much stronger emphasis placed on
the collective, national dimension, but never to the exclusion of the ­earlier, more
generic meaning. Thus “the Chinese Dream” remains a more suitable translation
for its elasticity, although “the China Dream” is clearly more apt when applied to
“the g­ reat rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” It is surely significant that Xi’s
speech at the CCP’s nineteenth national congress ends with the juxtaposition of
­these two dimensions of the Chinese Dream. See Xi Jinping, Juesheng quanmian ji-
ancheng xiaokang shehui duoqu xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehui zhuyi weida shengli
[Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all re­spects
and strive for the g­ reat success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New
Era] (Hong Kong: Sinminchu, 2017), 71.
5. To borrow a concise formulation from Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and
Norms: Contributions to a Discourse ἀ eory of Law and Democracy, trans. William
Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 441.
6. See ibid., 333; and Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas
McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1975), pt. 2.
7. “When we speak, in the pre­sent day, of a public power, of that which we call
the rights of sovereignty, the right of giving laws, taxing, and punishing, we all
think that t­ hose rights belong to no one, that no one has, on his own account, a right
to punish o ­ thers, and to impose upon them a charge, a law. Th ­ ose are rights which
belong only to society in the mass, rights which are exercised in its name. . . . ​Thus,
when an individual comes before the powers invested with ­t hese rights, the senti-
ment which, perhaps without his consciousness, reigns in him is, that he is in the
presence of a p ublic and legitimate power, which possesses a m ission for com-
manding him, and he is submissive beforehand and internally.” François Guizot,
ἀ e History of Civilization in Eu­rope, trans. William Hazlitt (Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund, 1997), 84.
8. The goal for the first one hundred years, by 2020, is a “moderately prosperous
society” (xiaokang shehui)—­still a developing country in per capita terms but one
that is comprehensively f­ ree from poverty—­and the goal for the second, by 2050, a
society affluent enough to join the ranks of the developed nations while supposedly
retaining its socialist identity.
9. Something like this was consciously at work, for example, as far back as in
the ancient Roman Republic. Cicero seems to mean something very close to per­for­
mance legitimacy when he writes of “the methods by which we can acquire the
ability to embrace and retain the support of other men.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, On
Duties, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 2.19. ­Those methods closest to per­for­mance legitimacy ­today involve “liber-
ality by ser­vice to the community at large” (heading in the synopsis for 2.72–85),
such as “to increase the republic in power, in land and in revenues,” with the result
that “men who pursue t­ hese kinds of duties w ­ ill win, along with the utmost benefit
388 Notes to Pages 52–85

to the republic, both g­ reat gratitude and ­great glory for themselves” (2.85). For what
is ser­v ice but per­for­mance and what is gratitude and glory earned by ser­v ice (and
honor) but per­for­mance legitimacy?
10. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed.
Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1978), 1:31, emphasis added. In the well-­k nown passage from which the quote is
taken, Weber also identifies an order based on custom or habit, which lies between
the other two in terms of stability.
11. See Daniel A. Bell, ἀ e China Model: Po­liti­cal Meritocracy and the Limits of
Democracy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2015).
12. Ibid., 8.
13. The fundamental relation between legitimacy and the realization of a society’s
ends and values is well expressed by Habermas: “By legitimacy I understand the
worthiness of a po­liti­cal order to be recognized. The claim to legitimacy is related to
the social-­integrative preservation of a normatively determined social identity. Le-
gitimations serve to make good this claim, that is, to show how and why existing (or
recommended) institutions are fit to employ po­liti­cal power in such a way that the
values constitutive for the identity of the society ­w ill be realized.” Jürgen
Habermas, “Legitimation Prob­lems in the Modern State,” in Communication and
the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1979), 178–205, at
182–83, emphasis in original.
14. I chart the unfolding of this legitimation crisis in Dialectic of the Chinese Rev-
olution: From Utopianism to Hedonism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1994).
15. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 441.
16. John Dunn, Democracy: A H istory (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press,
2005), 19.

2. The Question of Regime Perpetuation

1. I am using “June 4” as shorthand for a major outbreak of social or po­liti­cal
unrest, not necessarily one spearheaded by students, which seems much less likely
­today.
2. On ­t hese concepts of power (along with economic and military power), see
Michael Mann, ἀ e Sources of Social Power, vol. 1, History of Power from the Begin-
ning to AD 1760, new ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chap. 1.
Following Mann, I am h ­ ere using the term ideology in a sense that is dif­fer­ent from
and broader than Althusser’s, as invoked in the Introduction and Chapter 1.
3. On this Machiavelli remains pertinent: “One should take it as a general rule
that rarely, if ever, does it happen that a state, w
­ hether it be a republic or a kingdom,
is ­either well-­ordered at the outset or radically transformed vis-­à-­vis its old institu-
tions u ­ nless this be done by one person. It is likewise essential that t­ here should be
but one person upon whose mind and method depends any similar pro­cess of
Notes to Pages 94–105 389

organ­ization. Wherefore the prudent or­ga­nizer of a s tate whose intention it is to

govern not in his own interests but for the common good, and not in the interest of
his successors but for the sake of that fatherland which is common to all, should
contrive to be alone in his authority.” Niccolò Machiavelli, ἀ e Discourses, trans.
Leslie Walker with revisions by Brian Richardson (London: Penguin, 2003), 1.9,
p. 132.
4. As Machiavelli says (almost immediately ­a fter the passage quoted in the pre-
vious note), “Though but one person suffices for the purpose of organ­ization, what
he has or­ga­nized ­w ill not last long if it continues to rest on the shoulders of one
man, but may well last if many remain in charge and many look to its maintenance”
(ibid.).

3. The Case for Democracy

1. See Edward Schiappa, Protagoras and Log­os: A Study in Greek Philosophy and
Rhe­toric, 2nd ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 13. See also
ibid., chap. 9.
2. The pragmatists arguably have their more immediate precursor in the anti-­
Federalists, philosophically if not po­liti­cally. Gordon S. Wood, in ἀ e Radicalism of
the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 256–59, provides an in-
triguing reading of the anti-­Federalists (in the person of William Findley rather
than the better-­k nown “Brutus”) that puts one in mind of Protagoras. In contrast
with Findley, the Federalists almost come across as following in the footsteps of
Socrates. Wood does not make this comparison, but he draws, in the context of the
American Revolution, a very apt distinction between republicanism and democracy,
placing the Federalists in the category of republicanism, with a tinge of aristocracy
thrown in for good mea­sure, and only the anti-­Federalists in that of democracy.
3. I single out Dewey and Rorty h ­ ere in large part ­because they pre­sent, among
other t­ hings, third-­person, observer accounts that capture well the spirit and ethos
of our demo­cratic age, ­whether or not one likes the spirit and ethos in question. The
first-­person, participant perspective is equally impor­tant, however, and always un-
avoidable. For the latter, we would do w ell to turn not to Rorty but to Jürgen
Habermas, as detailed in note 17 in the Introduction; T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to
Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Bernard Wil-
liams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton
University Press, 2002).
4. See Plato, Protagoras, trans. C.  C.  W. Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976),
321d–23a.
5. My treatment of Protagoras is much indebted to the bold and illuminating
discussion in Ellen Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords: A S ocial History of Western
Po­liti­cal ἀ ought from Antiquity to the Late ­Middle Ages (London: Verso, 2011),
chap. 2. See also the translator’s helpful commentary on Protagoras in ἀ e First Phi­
los­o­phers: ἀ e Presocratics and the Sophists, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford:
390 Notes to Pages 107–112

Oxford University Press, 2000), 205–20; and Laurence Lampert, How Philosophy
Became Socratic: A Study of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2010), 50–55, 68–69. Given how l­ ittle is known about
Protagoras, my discussion aims only to convey the drift of Protagoras’s thought
and, especially, to tease out from it a distinctive way of thinking about democracy
that proceeds from the character of a society to the type of regime befitting it.
6. Niccolò Machiavelli, ἀ e Discourses, trans. Leslie Walker with revisions by
Brian Richardson (London: Penguin, 2003), 1.55, p. 248.
7. Aristocracy in a broad sense, as contrasted with democracy in an equally broad
sense. With aristocracy and democracy thus understood, all (Western) po­liti­cal
thought may be considered an endless refutation or defense of (the Socratic / Pla-
tonic view of) aristocracy as against democracy, plus the equally endless search for
compromise formulas in between. Since the fall of the Qing dynasty, Chinese po­
liti­cal thought has increasingly joined this history, bringing with it its Marxist and
Confucian influences.
8. “Xi Leads Top Leadership to Meet Press,” China Daily, November 15, 2012,
http://­w ww​.­chinadaily​.­com​.c­ n​/v­ ideo​/­2012​-­11​/­15​/c­ ontent​_­15933043​.­htm.
9. That is why all such traces have migrated into certain reconstructions of Con-
fucianism, which the CCP has so far been reluctant to fully and openly endorse.
10. The “rectification of names” (zhengming) is an idea proposed by Confucius,
according to whom, “If names are not rectified, then language ­w ill not be in accord
with truth. If language is not in accord with truth, then ­t hings cannot be accom-
plished.” ἀe Analects, 13.3, trans. Wing-­Tsit Chan, in A Source Book in Chinese
Philosophy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1963), 40.
11. See Ronald Coase and Ning Wang, How China Became Cap­i­tal­ist (New York:
Palgrave, 2013). This book makes a good case for calling t­ oday’s China cap­i­tal­ist by
giving an account of the process—­a complex and fraught one—­whereby China has
moved further and further away from its socialist past even if it still falls some way
short of the textbook version of capitalism.
12. See Jiwei Ci, Moral China in the Age of Reform (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2014), 165–66.
13. One must not overemphasize the nationalist dimension of the Chinese
Dream. This is how President Xi explains the connection between the two dimen-
sions: “History tells us that the f­ uture and fate of e­ very individual is closely bound
up with the f­ uture and fate of the country and the nation. Only if the country does
well and the nation does well can all the individuals [dajia] do well” (my transla-
tion). This is from a speech titled “Shixian zhonghua minzu weida fuxing shi zhon-
ghua minzu jindai yilai zuiweida de mengxiang” [Accomplishing the rejuvena-
tion of the Chinese nation is the greatest dream of the Chinese nation in modern
times], in Xi Jinping tan zhiguo lizheng [Xi Jinping on governing the country and
­handling public affairs] (Beijing: Waiwen chubanshe, 2014), 35–37, at 36. This is
the most authoritative official statement of the connection. Nowhere in it, nor in
the speech as a ­whole, can be found any suggestion that the well-­being of the
Notes to Pages 113–114 391

nation is the be-­a ll and end-­a ll of the well-­being of individuals. If anything, the
well-­being of individuals—­every individual or all individuals (dajia)—­a lmost
comes across as the main goal, with the well-­being of the nation treated as a nec-
essary condition, though not reduced to a mere means. Unlike in the communist
proj­ect ­u nder Mao, it is as an individual person pursuing his or her own pros-
perity and happiness, not only as a proud member of a collective, that the average
Chinese is able to respond positively to “the ­g reat rejuvenation of the Chinese
nation.” How much difference in this regard is ­t here between the Chinese and,
say, the Americans?
14. All the more so in that Chinese society ­today, thanks to the profound effects
of its reform, shows a s ignificant resemblance to Amer­i­ca in the early, demo­
cratizing de­cades ­a fter the revolution, and Tocqueville bore the most illuminating
witness to the culmination of ­t hese de­cades in a demo­cratic society.
15. Also worth noting is François Guizot’s profound influence on Tocqueville’s
approach to democracy. It suffices to quote one impor­tant passage on method from
Guizot’s History of France: “It would have been wiser to study first the society itself
in order to understand its po­liti­cal institutions. Before becoming a cause, po­liti­cal
institutions are an effect; a society produces them before being modified by them.
Thus, instead of looking to the system or forms of government in order to under-
stand the state of the p ­ eople, it is the state of the p
­ eople that must be examined first
in order to know what must have been, what could have been its government. . . . ​
Society, its composition, the manner of life of individuals according to their social
position, the relations of the dif­fer­ent classes, the condition [l’état] of persons
especially—­that is the first question which demands attention from . . . ​the inquirer
who seeks to understand how a ­people are governed. . . . ​In order to understand the
po­liti­cal institutions, it is necessary to understand the dif­fer­ent social conditions
(classes) and their relations.” Quoted in Larry Siedentop, introduction to François
Guizot, ἀ e History of Civilization in Eu­rope, trans. William Hazlitt (Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund, 1997), xxi.
16. That the equality of conditions in question is social, in the first instance,
rather than (necessarily) po­l iti­cal is clear from passages such as the following:
“Equality can take root in civil society without having any sway in the world of poli-
tics. A man may have the right to enjoy the same pleasures, enter the same profes-
sions, meet in the same places; in a word, to live in the same way and to seek wealth
by the same means, without all men taking the same part in the government.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, trans. Gerald  E. Bevan (London:
Penguin, 2003), 584.
17. Ibid., 704.
18. As Tocqueville wrote, “­There are just as many wealthy ­people in the United
States as elsewhere; I am not even aware of a country where the love of money has a
larger place in men’s hearts or where they express a deeper scorn for the theory of
permanent equality of possessions” (ibid., 64). Admittedly, Tocqueville was, or
would ­today be, on less firm ground when he immediately went on to say, “But
392 Notes to Pages 114–118

wealth circulates with an astonishing speed and experience shows that rarely do
two succeeding generations benefit from its ­favors” (ibid.).
19. For an interpretation of equality in terms of a shared fundamental status—
an interpretation that is continuous with Tocqueville’s notion of equality of con-
ditions—­see Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A R eading of the Declaration of
In­de­pen­dence in Defense of Equality (New York: Liveright, 2014), esp. chaps. 29–
31, 49.
20. In terms of historical sociology, the formation and institutionalization of
equality of conditions thus understood took place through a pro­cess involving
competition; mono­poly formation, especially in the form of nationalization (re-
sponsible for the modern nation-­state); and the central regulation of the drive
economy and the superego—­from social constraint to self-­constraint. See Norbert
Elias, ἀ e Civilizing Pro­cess, vol. 2, Power and Civility, trans. Edmund Jephcott
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1982). For Elias’s illuminating discussion of democ-
racy in par­tic­u ­lar, see 316, 332.
21. Norbert Elias, What Is Sociology?, trans. Stephen Mennell and Grace Mor-
rissey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 68, emphasis added.
22. Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, 66. Tocqueville also writes in the same
book, “The condition of society is normally the result of circumstances, sometimes
of laws, more often than not a combination of ­t hese two ­causes; but once it is estab-
lished, we can consider it as the fundamental source of most of the laws, customs,
and ideas which regulate the conduct of nations; what­ever it does not produce, it
modifies” (58).
23. See Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse
ἀ eory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1998).
24. Although not concerned with po­liti­cal ­matters per se in general or democracy
in par­t ic­u ­lar, Scanlon’s contractualist account of morality can serve as the basis for
an even more power­ful, ­because more substantive, reason in ­favor of democracy—a
moral reason in f­ avor of democracy. See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, esp.
introduction and chap. 4. On Scanlon’s contractualist view—­according to which
morality (or a part thereof) consists in “the reason we have to live with ­others on
terms that they could not reasonably reject” (154)—it is difficult to conceive how
democracy, understood as po­liti­cal participation by ­f ree and equal citizens, can be
morally denied. Scanlon is right to claim that contractualism is “phenomenologi-
cally accurate” (155). I would add, for my purposes, that empirically the contractu-
alist account becomes all the more phenomenologically compelling ­u nder modern
equality of conditions—­resulting, in the case of democracy’s preferability, for ex-
ample, in an extremely high probability of coincidence of hy­po­t het­i­cal and a­ ctual
agreement.
25. See Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2008), chaps. 12–13.
26. See Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, 775–76.
Notes to Pages 119–127 393

27. Elias, What Is Sociology?, 67.

28. “ἀ e normative fault line that appears with this ability to say no marks the
finite freedom of persons who have to be convinced whenever sheer force is not
supposed to intervene.” Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 324, emphasis in
original.
29. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Po­liti­cal Economy, in ἀ e Marx-­
Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), 4, emphasis
added.
30. Friedrich Engels’s preface to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ἀ e Communist
Manifesto, in Tucker, Marx-­Engels Reader, 472, emphasis added.
31. See, for example, G.  A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s ἀ eory of History: A D efence
(Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1978); and Jürgen Habermas, Communi-
cation and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1979),
chaps. 3–4.
32. Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, in Tucker, Marx-­Engels
Reader, 683–717, at 702.
33. Jon Elster, Po­liti­cal Psy­chol­ogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), 3.
34. Ibid., 184; see also 188.
35. Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, 66.
36. Elster, Po­liti­cal Psy­chol­ogy, 184; see also 188.
37. Ibid., 184.
38. Another ­factor working against demo­cratic pride is the lingering timidity of
citizens who view themselves more as subjects than as masters—­like the burghers
in twelfth-­century Eu­rope as described by Guizot: “I mean the prodigious timidity
of the citizens, their humility, the excessive modesty of their pretensions as to the
government of the country, and the fa­cil­i­t y with which they contented themselves.
Nothing is seen among them of the true po­liti­cal spirit, which aspires to influence,
reform, and govern; nothing which gives proof of boldness of thought, or grandeur of
ambition: one might call them sensible-­minded, honest, freed men.” History of Civi-
lization in Eu­rope, 145–46.
39. See Xi Jinping, “Goujian Zhongmei xinxing daguo guanxi” [Build a new type of
major-­country relationship between China and the United States], in Shibada yilai
zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [Se­lections of impor­tant documents since the eigh­
teenth party congress] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2014), 305–6, at
305; and “Shixian zhongguomeng bujin zaofu zhongguo renmin erqie zaofu shijie
renmin” [Realizing the Chinese Dream promotes not only the well-­being of the
Chinese ­people but also the well-­being of ­people the world over], in Xi Jinping tan
zhiguo lizheng, 56–57. The idea of a “community of the shared ­f uture of human-
kind” appears in Xi’s speech at the CCP’s nineteenth national congress, Juesheng
quanmian jiancheng xiaokang shehui duoqu xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehui
zhuyi weida shengli [Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous
society in all re­spects and strive for the ­g reat success of socialism with Chinese
394 Notes to Pages 128–145

characteristics for a New Era] (Hong Kong: Sinminchu, 2017), 25. In spelling out
this idea, Xi reiterates the affinity of the Chinese Dream with the dreams of other
nations (25).
40. The first crucial impetus was provided by the New Culture Movement of the
mid-1910s to 1920s and the May 4 Movement of 1919. But ­t here is no denying the
radical nature and enduring effects of Mao’s antipatriarchal efforts.
41. See Jean Hampton, Po­liti­cal Philosophy (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997),
94–97.
42. Ibid., 109, emphasis in original.
43. Norbert Elias, ἀ e Society of Individuals, ed. Michael Schröter, trans. Edmund
Jephcott (New York: Continuum, 2001), 15. On the formation of self-­constraint, as
distinct from social constraint, see Elias, Power and Civility, pt. 2.
44. See Michael  J. Glennon, National Security and Double Government (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Mike Lofgren, ἀ e Deep State: ἀ e Fall of
the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (New York: Penguin, 2016).
45. W­ hether or not one continues to call it endorsement consent despite its
falling short of justice. For con­ve­n ience, I ­w ill, as this serves my purposes well
enough.
46. See John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press,
2005), 19.
47. Ibid.
48. See Jiwei Ci, “Po­liti­cal Agency in Liberal Democracy,” Journal of Po­liti­cal Phi-
losophy 14 (2006): 144–62.
49. For one promising approach to addressing this prob­lem that combines re-
alism and normative ambition, see Mark  E. Warren and Jane Mansbridge, et  al.,
“Deliberative Negotiation,” chap. 5 of Po­liti­cal Negotiation: A Handbook, ed. Jane
Mansbridge and Cathie Jo Martin (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2015),
141–96. The entire volume is highly relevant.
50. One useful common denominator for comparing China (e.g., the National
­People’s Congress and the Chinese ­People’s Po­l iti­cal Consultative Conference)
with, say, the United States (e.g., Congress) is Warren and Mansbridge’s notion of
“deliberative negotiation” cited in the preceding note. While ­t hese authors do not
reject elections, their focus is on a realistic yet normatively suitably demanding no-
tion of deliberative negotiation, and this raises the possibility that China could in
princi­ple do better than, say, the United States with regard to representativeness via
deliberative negotiation even if, short of ­free and fair elections, it ­w ill always do less
well than the United States in terms of ­actual consent. Should China be able to make
good use of the normative potential of deliberative negotiation, an in­ter­est­i ng ques-
tion would arise as to w ­ hether the lack of ­actual consent would still m ­ atter, and, if
so, how much. Another, related question is ­whether the achievement of a high degree
of representativeness through deliberative negotiation can realistically happen
without the pressure of an electorate—­t hat is, w ­ hether f­ ree and fair elections may be
an enabling, if not strictly necessary, condition of well-­functioning deliberative
Notes to Pages 145–153 395

negotiation. The answer to ­t hese questions may depend, in turn, on how flexibly the
normative notion of deliberative negotiation is conceived in the first place. A com-
parison between China and the United States in terms of Warren and Mansbridge’s
standard may help make that standard itself more general or abstract in an appro-
priate way.
51. At least one that is good enough to dispel a s uspicion well expressed by
Guizot: “The introduction of an elective, that is, moveable ele­ment, into govern-
ment, is as necessary as a division of forces to prevent the sovereignty from degener-
ating in the hands of t­ hose who exercise it into a full and permanent sovereignty of
inherent right. It is therefore the necessary result of a representative government, and
one of its principal characteristics. Accordingly we see that a­ ctual governments which
have aimed at becoming absolute, have always endeavoured to destroy the elective
princi­ple.” ἀ e History of the Origins of Representative Government in Eu­rope, trans.
Andrew R. Scoble (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 69.
52. See Baogang He and Mark E. Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation: The De-
liberative Turn in Chinese Po­liti­cal Development,” Perspectives on Politics 9 (2011):
269–89. Especially in­ter­est­i ng is the authors’ idea of “deliberation-­led democ­
ratization” as one pos­si­ble trajectory of the developmental logic of authoritarian
deliberation; the other, less positive trajectory being “deliberative authoritari-
anism.” Events since the publication of this article seem to have favored the latter
trajectory, although this does not mean that ­t hings cannot change in the ­f uture.
53. See Sungmoon Kim, Confucian Democracy in East Asia (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2014), chap. 8 and 280–84; and Sungmoon Kim, Public
Reason Confucianism: Demo­cratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), chaps. 3–4.
54. See Sungmoon Kim, Democracy ­after Virtue: ­Toward Pragmatic Confucian
Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
55. On Confucian democracy, see Kim, Confucian Democracy. For Confucian
po­liti­cal perfectionism, see Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Po­liti­cal Philos-
ophy for Modern Times (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2014). See also
Jiwei Ci, “Review of Confucian Perfectionism: A Po­liti­cal Philosophy for Modern
Times,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 14 (2015): 289–93.
56. It is worth noting an in­ter­est­ing twist to the original demise of tian, as in-
triguingly discussed in the work of Billy K. L. So (Su Jilang) with reference to the
fate of the idea of rule of law in modern China. So has noted an impor­tant twofold
development in this regard. On the one hand, the traditional Chinese notion of tian
had been largely discredited and, where tian continued to make an occasional ap-
pearance, it did so as an evolutionary concept that was at best amoral and, from the
traditional Chinese point of view, even immoral. This evolutionary turn was due
less to Darwin’s influence than to that of Yan Fu, who, as translator of Thomas Hux-
ley’s Evolution and Ethics, played fast and loose with the text, including its title. On
the other hand, when Chinese l­egal thinkers brought the idea of rule of law to China
from the West, they—­partly u ­ nder the impact of Yan’s enormously influential
396 Notes to Pages 153–155

dissolution of the notion of tian as a source of justice—­did so without due cogni-

zance of the natu­ral law tradition ­behind it and of the Christian theological back-
ground at large. So argues that the traditional Chinese tian has a greater affinity with
the Western rule of law, the latter with its original transcendent underpinning, than
is commonly appreciated, including among l­egal scholars. ­Matters are complicated,
however, by the fact that the original Christian, transcendent foundation for the
Western rule of law has since receded so much from view that the rule of law has
acquired a secular, (at least seemingly) in­de­pen­dent identity. By contrast, nothing
like this has happened with the Chinese notion of tian, which has simply been elimi-
nated, resulting in a net loss. See Su Jilang, “Yan Fu yi Tianyan lun dui ershi shijichu
Zhongguo falü de yingxiang” [The influence of Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution
and Ethics on Chinese law at the beginning of the twentieth ­century], Tsing­hua
Law Journal 6 (2012): 1–24; and Su Jilang and Sushou Fumei [Sufumi So], “Wu
Jingxiong de xianfa ziran zhuyi—­jianlun qi yu jiateng hongzhi de yitong” [John
Ching-­hsiung Wu’s constitutional naturalism—­w ith comparative reflections on
Katō Hiroyuki], in Guojia jiangou yu falü wenming [Nation-­building and ­legal civi-
lization], ed. Xu Zhangrun, Tu Kai, and Li Yida (Beijing: Falü chubanshe, 2016),
256–79.
57. See Daniel A. Bell, ἀ e China Model: Po­liti­cal Meritocracy and the Limits of
Democracy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2015).
58. See Jiang Qing, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past
Can Shape Its Po­liti­cal ­Future, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan, trans. Edmund
Ryden (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2013), chap. 1.
59. See, for an example, Cao Jinqing, “Bainian fuxing: Zhongguo gongchandang
de shidai xushi yu lishi shiming” [One-­hundred-­year-long rejuvenation: The
con­temporary narrative and historical mission of the Chinese Communist
Party], in Daolu zixin: Zhongguo weishenme neng [Confidence in one’s own
chosen path: Why China can], ed. Ma Ya (Beijing: Beijing lianhe chubanshe,
2013), 338–68, at 350.
60. Interestingly, Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of Singapore, did not make such a
claim e­ ither yet came close to making the admission. See Haig Patapan, “Modern
Phi­los­o­pher Kings: Lee Kuan Yew and the Limits of Confucian ‘Idealistic’ Leader-
ship,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of East Asian Studies 12 (2013): 217–41. Two complemen-
tary lessons emerge from this illuminating case study: that per­for­mance legitimacy
is not enough, and that a modern state whose original founding was unconnected
to Confucianism is unlikely to subsequently succeed in resting legitimacy proper
on Confucian foundations.
61. Democracy figured even more prominently in the CCP’s agenda and ideology
when it sought to drive the Kuomintang from power before 1949. See Lü X iaobo,
Jindai Zhongguo minzhu guannian zhi shengcheng yu liubian: Yixiang guan-
nianshi de kaocha [The rise and evolution of the idea of democracy in modern
China: An exercise in the history of ideas] (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe,
2012), chap. 10.
Notes to Pages 157–160 397

4. Democracy and the Self-­Protection of Society

1. As Tocqueville puts it, in his typical dialectical fashion, “I think that the in-
dustrial aristocracy which we see rising before our eyes is one of the most harsh ever
to appear on the earth; but at the same time, it is one of the most restrained and least
dangerous.” He then immediately goes on to write, “However, this is the direction in
which the friends of democracy should constantly fix their anxious gaze; for if ever
aristocracy and the permanent in­equality of social conditions ­were to infiltrate the
world once again, it is predictable that this is the door by which they would enter.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, trans. Gerald  E. Bevan (London:
Penguin, 2003), 648, emphasis added. How right he was!
2. Tocqueville’s ideological preferences in this regard become very clear in com-
parison with, say, Gracchus Babeuf’s or Filippo Buonarroti’s radically dif­fer­ent in-
terpretation of equality of conditions. See John Dunn, Democracy: A H istory
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), 126.
3. Ellen Meiksins Wood, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical
Materialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
4. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper
Perennial, 2008), 296–97.
5. Ibid., 297.
6. Or “cap­i­tal­ist democracy,” of which John Dunn offers a sobering analy­sis in
“Cap­i­tal­ist Democracy: Elective Affinity or Beguiling Illusion? ,” Daedalus 136
(2007): 5–13. Especially worth noting is Dunn’s distinction between “po­liti­cal au-
thorization” and “the formatting of public deliberation” (12), along with the ten-
dency within cap­i­tal­ist democracy to treat the market as a “perfect proxy for delib-
erative rationality all on its own” (13).
7. Karl Polanyi, ἀ e ­Great Transformation: ἀ e Po­liti­cal and Economic Origins
of Our Time (Boston: Beacon, 2001), 234, emphasis added.
8. Ibid., 242.
9. Ibid.
10. It is utopian in an extra, distinctive sense with re­spect to China, in that China,
despite the “republican” overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the “commu-
nist” victory in 1949, cannot r­ eally be said to have accomplished the bourgeois
demo­cratic revolution—­a ny more than, say, Soviet Rus­sia did. Far ahead of the
bourgeois demo­cratic revolution in its own rhe­toric and apparent self-­
understanding, and arguably even in some aspects of real­ity, China ­under the Chi-
nese Communist Party nevertheless has the source of its main po­liti­cal difficulties
precisely in the general lack of such a revolution combined with its inability to ac-
knowledge this fact and to make up for lost time. The reform of the past four de­
cades is a cap­i­tal­ist market revolution more than a bourgeois demo­cratic one. U ­ nder
­t hese confused circumstances, it is perhaps small won­der that many on the Left
turn a blind eye to China’s missed bourgeois demo­cratic revolution while ­those on
the Right look to such a revolution as nothing short of a panacea, with ­little inkling
398 Notes to Pages 161–168

of its limitations. So much for the influence of Marx in a country supposedly guided
by his ideas!
11. Polanyi, ­Great Transformation, 76–77, emphasis in original.
12. Ibid., 233.
13. Ibid., 234.
14. In this regard, Jacques Rancière goes even further than Polanyi, insisting that
democracy is an always necessary, b ­ ecause never fully successful, countermove-
ment against the oligarchic constitution of society and its infiltration into the polity,
democracy included. In our time, of course, the oligarchy takes the form of the cap­
i­tal­ist class’s conquest of po­liti­cal power. See Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democ-
racy, trans. Steve Corcoran (London: Verso, 2006), esp. chaps. 3–4.
15. See Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: ἀ e Delayed Crisis of Demo­cratic Capi-
talism, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Verso, 2014), 20–26.
16. Th
­ ere is a sense in which China is less advanced in terms of what is diagnosed
as “colonization of the lifeworld” by Jürgen Habermas, ἀ e ἀ eory of Communica-
tive Action, vol. 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans.
Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1987). Some may object that colonization of
the lifeworld only takes a special form in China—­more po­liti­cally than legally engi-
neered compared with Western socie­ties—­but produces most of the ill effects on the
lifeworld nevertheless.
17. For no better model exists in real­ity. Just as no actually existing socialism has
succeeded in aligning itself with democracy, thereby producing “liberal demo­cratic
socialism,” so no actually existing capitalism has found a way to evolve into a higher
form than the demo­cratic welfare state, thereby giving rise to, say, “property-­
owning democracy” as advocated by James ­Meade and John Rawls. On the concepts
of “liberal (demo­cratic) socialism” and “property-­owning democracy,” see John Rawls,
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001), pt. 4. M­ eade’s proposal on “property-­owning democracy” is developed
in James ­Meade, Efficiency, Equality and the Owner­ship of Property (London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1964).
18. The so-­called tripartite social pact in Eu­rope also existed in the United States,
during what Reich calls “the Not Quite Golden Age.” See Robert B. Reich, Super-
capitalism: ἀ e Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (New
York: Vintage Books, 2007), 6, 46–49.
19. Wolfgang Streeck, How W ­ ill Capitalism End? (London: Verso, 2016), 2.
20. Streeck, Buying Time, 23, emphasis in original.
21. Ibid., 21, emphasis in original.
22. Ibid., 61, emphasis in original.
23. Ibid., 4–5; Streeck, How W ­ ill Capitalism End?, 20.
24. Streeck, Buying Time, 19, emphasis added.
25. Wolfgang Streeck, “The Crisis in Context: Demo­c ratic Capitalism and
Its Contradictions,” in Politics in the Age of Austerity, ed. Armin Schӓfer and
Wolfgang Streeck (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013), 262–86, at 263. The precise
Notes to Pages 168–171 399

meaning of ­t hese brief quotes becomes clear in the context of Streeck’s chapter
as a w ­ hole.
26. See Streeck, Buying Time, chap. 1; Streeck, How ­Will Capitalism End?, chap. 2;
and Streeck, “Crisis in Context.” Writing with par­tic­u­lar reference to the United
States, Reich charts the replacement of demo­cratic capitalism by supercapitalism
(Supercapitalism, 7).
27. Walter Scheidel, ἀ e ­Great Leveler: Vio­lence and the History of In­equality from
the Stone Age to the Twenty-­First ­Century (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University
Press, 2017), 365. See also Streeck, How W ­ ill Capitalism End?, 74.
28. Streeck, Buying Time, 5.
29. Jacob  S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-­Take-­All Politics: How Wash-
ington Made the Rich Richer—­and Turned Its Back on the ­Middle Class (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 2011). The book has the g­ reat merit, however, of capturing the
pro­cess of the oligarchic shift on the level of what the authors call the politics of or­
ga­nized combat.
30. “[To the question] w ­ hether democracy can be made compatible with con­
temporary capitalism, my answer is: only by building a Chinese Wall between the
two—by sterilizing the redistributive potential of demo­cratic politics while con-
tinuing to rely on electoral competition to produce legitimacy for the outcomes of
­free markets shielded from egalitarian distortion. Hayekian democracy serves the
function of making a c ap­i­tal­ist market society appear to be ‘the p ­ eople’s choice’
even though it has long been removed from demo­cratic control.” Streeck, How ­Will
Capitalism End?, 188, emphasis in original.
31. To be sure, all of this still adds up to a state of crisis, not least in the form of the
so-­called demo­cratic deficit of an increasingly fragile-­looking Eu­ro­pean Union. See
Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: ἀ e Hollowing of Western Democracy (London: Verso,
2013), chap. 4; Yanis Varoufakis, And the Weak Suffer What ἀ ey Must? Eu­rope’s
Crisis and Amer­i­ca’s Economic ­Future (New York: Nation Books, 2016); and An-
dreas Follesdal and Simon Hix, “Why ­There Is a Demo­cratic Deficit in the EU: Re-
sponse to Majone and Moravcsik,” Journal of Common Market Studies 44 (2006):
533–62. For all the prob­lems detailed in accounts such as ­t hese, however, it looks as
if this is ­going to be a protracted yet only simmering crisis, especially if the Eu­ro­
pean Union is able to hold itself together.
32. See Ernst Bloch, ἀ e Princi­ple of Hope, 3 vols., trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen
Plaice, and Paul Knight (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), vol. 1, 75–76.
33. See André Gorz, ἀ e Immaterial: Knowledge, Value and Capital, trans. Chris
Turner (London: Seagull Books, 2010); and David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions
and the End of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), chap.12.
34. See Steve Fraser, ἀ e Age of Acquiescence: ἀ e Life and Death of American Re­
sis­tance to Or­ga­nized Wealth and Power (New York: Basic Books, 2015), chap. 12;
Hacker and Pierson, Winner-­Take-­All Politics, 56–61, 127–32, 139–43; and Paul Mason,
Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our F ­ uture (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015),
91–94.
400 Notes to Pages 171–187

35. See Streeck, How W ­ ill Capitalism End?, 15–17, 79.

36. Mason, Postcapitalism, 73.
37. F. A. Hayek being the outstanding example; see his ἀ e Constitution of Liberty
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). As Hayek once said, “Personally I
prefer a l iberal dictator to demo­cratic government lacking liberalism.” Quoted in
Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, ἀ e New Way of the World: On Neo-­liberal So-
ciety, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2013), 142. Obviously, “demo­cratic
government lacking liberalism” means, chiefly, a demo­cratic government that does
not balk at pursuing goals of social justice.
38. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and
Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1993), 418.
39. An apt phrase taken from Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contri-
butions to a Discourse ἀ eory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 483.
40. See Streeck, How W ­ ill Capitalism End?, 17.
41. Armin Schӓfer and Wolfgang Streeck, “Introduction: Politics in the Age of
Austerity,” in Schӓfer and Streeck, Politics in the Age of Austerity, 1–25, at 9.
42. See the sobering account in Shoshana Zuboff, ἀ e Age of Surveillance Capi-
talism: ἀ e Fight for a H ­ uman ­Future at the New Frontier of Power (London: Profile
Books, 2019).
43. See Streeck, How ­Will Capitalism End?; and Immanuel Wallerstein et al., Does
Capitalism Have a F ­ uture? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
44. Colin Crouch, ἀ e Strange Non-­death of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, UK:
Polity, 2011), 7.
45. Mason, Postcapitalism, 91–92; see also 93–94, 105.
46. On Marktvolk versus Staatsvolk, see Streeck, Buying Time, 81.
47. It is revealing, in this connection, that President Xi Jinping has gone out of his
way to dispel a c onfusion of China’s current supply-­side structural reform
(gongjice jiegouxing gaige) with the supply-­side economics of neoliberalism. Xi de-
scribes China’s current reform as focused on structural adjustment and reduction
of overcapacity and emphasizes that it has nothing to do with neoliberalism, which
he mentions and rejects by name.
48. Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston:
Beacon, 1975), 22.
49. Pace Stein Ringen, ἀ e Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st ­Century (Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016), 3, 136.
50. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, 22.
51. Unlike during the ­Great Depression, when communism was a ­v iable threat.
52. Streeck, Buying Time, 61, emphasis added.
53. This revolt is illuminatingly analyzed in Streeck, Buying Time.
54. On American-­style crony capitalism, see Hacker and Pierson, Winner-­
Take-­All Politics; and Luigi Zingales, A Capitalism for the ­People: Recapturing the
Lost Genius of American Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 2012), chaps. 3–4.
Notes to Pages 188–202 401

55. See Colin Crouch, Post-­democracy (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004); and Schӓfer
and Streeck, Politics in the Age of Austerity. In their introduction to the volume,
Schӓfer and Streeck go so far as to speak of “rich democratic-­capitalist countries co-­
governed by global capital markets” (23). Streeck, in chap. 10 of the same volume, de-
scribes the Eurozone as the site of “the drama of demo­cratic states being turned into
debt-­collecting agencies on behalf of a global oligarchy of investors” (“Crisis in Con-
text,” 284). In both cases, it would be difficult to argue against the authors.
56. See Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in
ἀ e Marx-­Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978),
16–25.
57. See ibid., 21.
58. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Tucker, Marx-­Engels Reader, 26–52,
at 32, emphasis in original.
59. See Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:
Introduction,” in Tucker, Marx-­Engels Reader, 53–65; and Marx, “On the Jewish
Question.”
60. Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 35, emphasis in original.
61. If one has reason to abandon belief in the prospect of “­human emancipation”
yet to maintain the ethical impulses informing such emancipation (while also re-
jecting the logic of Marxist science with its division between the knowing and the
ignorant), one ­w ill end up with a view on democracy best set out by Jacques Ran-
cière in, say, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999). On this view, democracy is the permanent
and never completely successful strug­g le to pit the po­l iti­cal method of equality
against the inherently oligarchic character of society.
62. As reflected in improvements in society, in the enhanced credibility of the
Ideological State Apparatuses and hence the rise in ideological legitimacy, and in
the relatively enduring appearance of consensus and consent.
63. Demo­cratic pride too is both expressed and thwarted by this fundamental
ambivalence of the bourgeois demo­cratic state form. It is thus bound to fall short of
full demo­cratic agency, and yet it ­w ill not ­settle for mere bourgeois prosperity.

5. Contradictions and Arrested Transitions

1. As expounded, for example, in John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement,
ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 44–45.
2. Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the
Moderns,” in Po­liti­cal Writings, trans. and ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 309–28, at 316.
3. Ibid., 317, emphasis added.
4. Ibid., 323.
5. John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005),
146.
402 Notes to Pages 202–219

6. As subtly described, for example, in terms of certain religious institutions and

activities being neither permitted nor banned (i.e., l­ imited and fragile de facto liber-
ties), in Ian Johnson, ἀ e Souls of China: ἀ e Return of Religion ­after Mao (New
York: Pantheon Books, 2017), chap. 4.
7. See Jiwei Ci, Moral China in the Age of Reform (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2014). The moral vacuum takes an additional, distinctive form in the
countryside. See Wu Chongqing, Wu zhuti shuren shehui ji shehui chongjian [De-
centered society of acquaintances and social reconstruction] (Beijing: Shehui kexue
wenxian chubanshe, 2014).
8. See Zygmunt Bauman, Consuming Life (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007).
9. See Jiwei Ci, “Liberty Rights and the Limits of Liberal Democracy,” in Philo-
sophical Foundations of ­Human Rights, ed. Rowan Cruft, Matthew Liao, and Mas-
simo Renzo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 588–607, at 596–98.
10. See Bernard Williams, “Internal and External Reasons,” in Moral Luck (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 101–13. Readers with a philosophical back-
ground w ­ ill readily see that I am using Williams’s term internal reasons in a loose and
suggestive sense. On a more precise level, I am more than happy to have the sense of
internal stretched in the way suggested by T. M. Scanlon in “Appendix: Williams on
Internal and External Reasons,” in What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1998), 363–73, at 368–69. Obviously, my concerns in the
pre­sent context, unlike ­those of Williams and Scanlon, are in general more so­cio­log­
i­cal than philosophical, but Scanlon’s discussion of Williams prompts me to consider
the relation between the in­de­pen­dent soundness of moral reasons and their durable
internalizability. In examining this relation with special reference to the peculiarities
of the Chinese moral scene, it strikes me that the durable internalizability of a moral
reason as a moral reason may be a mark or symptom of its reasonableness, both in an
empirical sense and possibly in Scanlon’s deeper, hy­po­t het­i­cal sense. Empirically,
what China’s moral culture lacks ­today is a system of moral reasons that lend them-
selves to durable internalization in the new, postcommunist society.
11. When Guizot speaks of freedom as a crucial part of morality, his reasoning
applies especially to modern morality. As far as the latter is concerned, he states the
rationale for freedom with exceptional eloquence: “This [religions] have often over-
looked; they have considered liberty as an obstacle, not as a means; they have for-
gotten the nature of the force to which they address themselves, and have treated the
­human soul as they would a material force. It is in following this error that they have
almost always been led to range themselves on the side of power and despotism
against ­human liberty, regarding it only as an adversary, and taking more pains to
subdue than to secure it. . . . ​It is necessary to guarantee liberty in order to regulate
it morally.” François Guizot, ἀ e History of Civilization in Eu­rope, trans. William
Hazlitt (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997), 123.
12. In Tocqueville’s sense, as set out in Chapter 3.
13. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, trans. Gerald  E. Bevan
(London: Penguin, 2003), 66.
Notes to Pages 219–231 403

14. The converse is also the case—­namely, formal po­l iti­cal equality cannot
be fully substantive as long as domination persists in the social or private sphere.
See the last section of Chapter 4; and Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in
The Marx-­Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978),
26–52.
15. ἀ e Book of Mencius, 7B.14, translation by Wing-­Tsit Chan, A Source Book in
Chinese Philosophy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1963), 81.
16. This situation of social equality without po­liti­cal equality could be alterna-
tively described as (not yet valorized) private autonomy without public autonomy, as
the latter terms are used in Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contribu-
tions to a Discourse ἀ eory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1998).
17. Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, 502. This idea of demo­cratic social
power is found especially in what Tocqueville has to say about the power of the ma-
jority over thought (297–300) and is distinct from what he means by the tendency
for po­liti­cal power to expand ­under equality of conditions (vol. 2, pt. 4, chaps. 6–7). For
an illuminating discussion of demo­cratic social power, see Pierre Manent, Tocqueville
and the Nature of Democracy, trans. John Waggoner (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1996), chap. 4.
18. Manuel Castells, ἀ e Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business,
and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1.
19. See John Rawls, A ἀ eory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1999), 441–47.
20. See Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, trans. Steve Corcoran (London:
Verso, 2006). What Rancière has to say on this subject is highly salutary, even if one
does not entirely agree with him. Oligarchy, or what may be called pure oligarchy, is
marked by the “logic of indistinction of the public and the private” (55). From this
Rancière distinguishes what he calls “oligarchic State of law” (74), which features the
carving out of a public sphere and hence the constant opposition between the pri-
vate and the public. Such a state, usually called a democracy, is prone to reprivatize
the public, and it does so in two ways: first through the public-­private distinction,
whereby wealth dominates through the liberties of all in the private sphere, and
second through the effective mono­poly of the public sphere by the wealthy. For
Rancière, democracy is nothing but the constant strug­gle against both of ­t hese
tendencies.
21. Long-­term incumbency is one prima facie indication of in­equality of influ-
ence, or oligarchy. For a l ist of criteria for long-­term incumbencies that conform
more or less to demo­cratic norms, see Mark E. Warren and Jane Mansbridge, et al.,
“Deliberative Negotiation,” chap. 5 of Po­liti­cal Negotiation: A Handbook, ed. Jane
Mansbridge and Cathie Jo Martin (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2015),
141–96, at 173–74. The question is how often such criteria are met, especially ­today.
22. See Maurizio Lazzarato, ἀ e Making of the Indebted Man (Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e), 2012).
404 Notes to Pages 232–244

23. See Pierre Manent, A World beyond Politics? A D efense of the Nation-­State,
trans. Marc LePain (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2006), 13.
24. Ibid., 16.
25. Ibid., 16–17, emphasis in original. This is essentially Montesquieu’s idea of
liberty, as Manent makes clear in An Intellectual History of Liberalism, trans. Re-
becca Balinski (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1995), 60.
26. See Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropo-
logical Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 106–7; and Ellen
Meiksins Wood, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chap. 1.
27. See Manent, World beyond Politics?, 13.
28. Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London: Verso,
2013), 148.
29. See Zhang Fentian, Zhongguo diwang guannian [The idea of the imperial
ruler in China] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2004), 129–44.
30. On the concepts of ideological and po­liti­cal power, see Michael Mann, ἀ e
Sources of Social Power, vol. 1, History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760, new
ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chap. 1.
31. See Chenyang Li, ἀ e Confucian Philosophy of Harmony (London: Routledge,
2014), 72–73.
32. As Fairbank rightly says, “The sequence of dynasties was due to the inveterate
Chinese impulse during a d ynastic interregnum ­toward po­liti­cal reunification.
Unity was so strong an ideal ­because it promised stability, peace, and prosperity.”
John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History, 2nd enlarged ed.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 47.
33. Immanuel Kant, ἀ e Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 146, emphasis in original.
34. See Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying: ‘This May Be True in Theory,
but It Does Not Apply in Practice,’ ” in Kant: Po­liti­cal Writings, ed. H.  S. Reiss,
trans. H.  B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 61–92, at
73–74.
35. See John Rawls, Po­liti­cal Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1996).
36. Pierre Manent, “The Modern State,” in New French ἀ ought: Po­liti­cal Philos-
ophy, ed. Mark Lilla (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1994), 123–33, at
131. See also Pierre Manent, ἀ e City of Man, trans. Marc A. LePain (Prince­ton, NJ:
Prince­ton University Press, 1998), 180–81.
37. See Iris Murdoch, ἀ e Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 2013). In
her only reference to “po­l iti­c al liberalism,” she writes, “It must be said in its fa-
vour that this image of h ­ uman nature [in terms of sovereignty of the concept of
freedom] has been the inspiration of po­l iti­cal liberalism. However, as Hume once
wisely observed, good po­l iti­cal philosophy is not necessarily good moral philos-
ophy” (79).
Notes to Pages 244–262 405

38. See John Skorupski, Ethical Explorations (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), chaps. 9–11. The discussion of permissive and persuasive neutrality is in
chap. 10.
39. See Guizot, History of Civilization in Eu­rope; and Ellen Meiksins Wood, Lib-
erty and Property: A Social History of Western Po­liti­cal ἀ ought from Re­nais­sance to
Enlightenment (London: Verso, 2012).

6. Demo­cratic Preparation
1. For an illuminating account of the ­factors that necessitated this form of social
and po­liti­cal organ­ization—­with its distinctive centralization and family-­state ho-
mology—­and gave Confucianism a c entral place in it, see Ray Huang, China: A
Macro History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), chap. 3.
2. ἀe Analects, 1.2, with the translation h ­ ere and hereafter taken from Wing-­tsit
Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University
Press, 1963), 20.
3. Mencius, 4A.27, translation by Chan, Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 76.
4. Mencius, 3A.5, in Chan, Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 71.
5. Dong Zhongshu [Tung Chung-­shu], Chunqiu Fanlu [Luxuriant gems of the
Spring and Autumn Annals], chap. 42, translation by Chan, Source Book in Chinese
Philosophy, 279.
6. Strictly speaking, although the goal of harmony (within the ranks of the pro-
letariat and its allies) was actively pursued, the term itself was dropped for a long
period of time ­because of its perceived inconsistency with the idea of class
strug­g le. The term regained its positive status in official discourse only during the
reform era.
7. As Fei Xiaotong observes, in traditional China the tendency t­ oward zhuanzhi
(despotism) was balanced by the emperor’s ­actual wuwei (hands-­off) approach. See
his Xiangtu Zhongguo [From the soil: The foundations of Chinese society] (Beijing:
Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1998), chap. 10.
8. This partly explains its greater strength and durability compared with the fate of
the same formula in other­w ise similar regimes in the former Soviet Bloc.
9. On the importance for democ­ratization of “a liberal po­l iti­cal culture sup-
ported by corresponding patterns of po­liti­cal socialization,” see Jürgen Habermas,
Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse ἀ eory of Law and Democ-
racy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 316–17.
10. Mark Elvin, ἀ e Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1973), chap. 1.
11. See Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng, Xingsheng yu weiji: Lun Zhongguo shehui
chao wending jiegou [The cycle of growth and decline: On the ultrastable structure
of Chinese society] (Shatin, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1992), chap. 2; and
Dingxin Zhao, ἀ e Confucian-­Legalist State: A New ἀ eory of Chinese History (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2015), chap. 9.
406 Notes to Pages 262–271

12. John Dunn, Breaking Democracy’s Spell (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2014), 73.
13. See Baogang He, Governing Taiwan and Tibet: Demo­cratic Approaches (Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), chap. 3, for an excellent discussion of
the “empire thesis,” and for the author’s own counterproposal—­t he “anti-­empire
thesis”—­suggesting that democ­ratization need not threaten China’s national unity
and territorial integrity.
14. In this regard, it is even pos­si­ble to partly concur with Samuel Huntington’s
view that “the most impor­tant po­liti­cal distinction among countries concerns not
their form of government but their degree of government. The differences between
democracy and dictatorship are less than differences between ­t hose countries
whose politics embodies consensus, community, legitimacy, organ­ization, effective-
ness, stability, and ­those countries whose politics is deficient in ­these qualities.” Po­
liti­cal Order in Changing Socie­ties (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 1.
Where I differ with Huntington is in thinking that democracy m ­ atters more than he
allows for, inasmuch as democracy may be indispensable, though not sufficient by
itself, precisely for achieving or maintaining the positive qualities he speaks of, as in
­today’s China. But Huntington is surely correct in his useful reminder that demo­
cratic change has l­ ittle to be said for it if it fails to be consistent with t­ hose positive
qualities associated with a proper degree of government.
15. Norbert Elias, ἀ e Civilizing Pro­cess, vol. 2, Power and Civility, trans. Ed-
mund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 114–15.
16. Ibid., 115.
17. Ibid., 165.
18. As noted in Chapter 3, representativeness and consent can diverge. Consid-
ering this, it makes sense to define democracy in terms of a regime’s credible claim
to representativeness and / or consent. ­There is also the option of insisting on both
representativeness and consent. Although I prefer the first, weaker option, I want to
leave the ­matter open.
19. As John Dunn writes, “Democracy in itself . . . ​does not specify any clear and
definite structure of rule.” Democracy: A H istory (New York: Atlantic Monthly
Press, 2005), 149.
20. This fact is well recognized by sober and perceptive Western observers. John
Dunn, for example, puts it this way: other than the CCP now ruling China, “­there is no
in­de­pen­dent surviving source of order and no external basis on which they or anyone
­else could readily set out to construct one. To choose to jeopardize that already highly
imperfect and conspicuously vulnerable order would be, in the classic phrase of Ed-
mund Burke, ‘to play a most desperate game.’ ” Breaking Democracy’s Spell, 81.
21. See Jane J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983), pt. 1.
22. Ibid., 288–89.
23. See Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1971); and Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New
Notes to Pages 271–280 407

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), pt. 5. Dahl sounds only mildly defensive
in comparison with the utterly unabashed apologia that only a nineteenth-­century
thinker such as James Mill was capable of: “Our opinion, therefore, is that the
business of government is properly the business of the rich, and that they ­w ill
always obtain it, e­ ither by bad means, or good. Upon this e­ very ­t hing depends. If
they obtain it by bad means, the government is bad. If they obtain it by good
means, the government is sure to be good. The only good means of obtaining it
are, the f­ ree suffrage of the p­ eople.” James Mill, “On the Ballot,” as quoted in C. B.
Macpherson, ἀ e Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977), 42.
24. Leo Strauss puts it well when he says, encapsulating the view of Machiavelli,
“­Every so-­called democracy is in fact an oligarchy ­unless it verges on anarchy.” Leo
Strauss, ἀ oughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 127,
emphasis added.
25. This is increasingly reflected in “gold-­plating.” See Richard Sennett, ἀ e Cul-
ture of the New Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 164–68.
26. ­There are signs that the elite cohesion that has served as a condition for the
relatively smooth functioning of democracy in the United States and Eu­rope is
being significantly weakened by the ending of the Cold War and the subsequent glo-
balization. One result, unsurprisingly, is a weakening of democracy itself and a turn
­toward a species of authoritarianism. See Wendy Brown, Peter E. Gordon, and Max
Pensky, Authoritarianism: ἀr ee Inquiries in Critical ἀ eory (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2018); and Cass R. Sunstein, ed., Can It Happen ­Here?: Authoritari-
anism in Amer­i­ca (New York: Dey Street Books, 2018).
27. On the c­ auses of demo­cratic breakdown, see Bao Shenggang, Minzhu bengkui
de zhengzhixue [The politics of demo­cratic breakdown] (Beijing: Shangwu yinshu-
guan, 2014).
28. On the idea of liberal demo­cratic socialism (and the kindred notion of
property-­owning democracy), see John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A R estatement,
ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pt. 4.
29. As Tocqueville famously says, only a ­great genius has any chance of pulling off
this kind of reform. See Alexis de Tocqueville, ἀ e Ancien Régime and the Revolu-
tion, trans. Gerald Bevan (London: Penguin, 2008), 175. It is no accident that this
book was not very long ago recommended reading within the CCP. Elsewhere, Toc-
queville reminds us that “­t here can be no doubt that the moment of granting po­
liti­cal rights to a nation hitherto deprived of them is a time of crisis, one that is often
necessary but always perilous.” Democracy in Amer­i­ca, trans. Gerald  E. Bevan
(London: Penguin, 2003), 280.
30. Jiwei Ci, Moral China in the Age of Reform (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2014).
31. Thus the anticorruption campaign has been more effective in changing be­
hav­ior than in improving morality—­i.e., moral subjectivity. This is not to underes-
timate the effectiveness of the campaign but only to suggest that, given the very
408 Notes to Pages 281–293

nature of its effectiveness, no inner, moral transformation has taken place, ­either
within the CCP or in the country at large. For such a t ransformation, something
else—­a true moral reform—is needed.
32. What Tocqueville says of France at the point of the revolution—­“A nation so
poorly prepared to act in­de­pen­dently could not attempt a total reform without
total destruction. An absolute monarch would have been a less dangerous inno-
vator” (Ancien Régime, 166; see also 201–2)—is not without applicability to China
­today. In terms of the tightness of po­liti­cal control and its likely consequences,
China’s situation t­ oday definitely bears greater resemblance to the absolute monar-
chical rule in prerevolutionary France than to, say, En­g lish po­liti­cal life during the
same period.
33. See Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, trans. Jose Harris and
Margaret Hollis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), bk. 1, sec. 2; the
quotes are from p. 52.
34. Indeed, Tocqueville speaks of a “demo­cratic despotism.” See Tocqueville, An-
cien Régime, 162–63. See also Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, 591–92.
35. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 369, emphasis in original.
36. For an illuminating attempt to make sense of this development, see Liang
Zhiping, “Lun fazhi yu dezhi: Dui Zhongguo dangdai fazhi de yige neizai guancha”
[On rule of law and rule of virtue: An immanent reading of rule of law in con­
temporary China], Zhongguo wenhua 41 (Spring 2015): 23–43.
37. Ronald Coase and Ning Wang, in How China Became Cap­i­tal­ist (New York:
Palgrave, 2013), 102, are right to regard even rule by law as a significant improvement.
38. See Michel Foucault, ἀ e Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France,
ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2004), 168–69.
39. F.  A. Hayek, ἀ e Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978).
40. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms.
41. ­These three phrases ­were joined together, as forming an “organic unity” (youji
tongyi), by Xi Jinping at the CCP’s nineteenth national congress. See Xi Jinping,
Juesheng quanmian jiancheng xiaokang shehui duoqu xinshidai Zhongguo tese
shehui zhuyi weida shengli [Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately pros-
perous society in all re­spects and strive for the g­ reat success of socialism with Chi-
nese characteristics for a New Era] (Hong Kong: Sinminchu, 2017), 36.
42. On the evolution of the CCP’s understanding of democracy, see Lü X iaobo,
Jindai Zhongguo minzhu guannian zhi shengcheng yu liubian [The formation and
transformation of the idea of democracy in modern China] (Nanjing: Jiangsu
renmin chubanshe, 2012), chap. 10.
43. Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, 583.
44. Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?,’ ” in
Kant: Po­liti­cal Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 54–60, at 59, emphasis in original. Kant published this
essay in 1784, when Frederick the G ­ reat was still alive and king of Prus­sia.
Notes to Pages 293–299 409

45. It is worth noting, however, that Kant by no means rules out the po­liti­cal
consequences of intellectual enlightenment, for he says, “Once the germ on which
nature has lavished most care—­man’s inclination and vocation to think freely—­has
developed within this hard shell, it gradually reacts upon the mentality of the
­people, who thus gradually become increasingly able to act freely. Eventually, it even
influences the princi­ples of governments, which find that they can themselves profit
by treating man, who is more than a machine, in a manner appropriate to his dig-
nity.” “Answer to the Question,” 59–60, emphasis in original. It is clear from the text
immediately before the quote that Kant even sees this as a paradoxical advantage that
an enlightened monarchy has over a republic.
46. For the larger historical context that helps explain what might other­wise appear
baffling in Kant’s approach to liberty of thought, see François Guizot, ἀ e History of
Civilization in Eu­rope, trans. William Hazlitt (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997),
twelfth lecture. In this context, Kant has a ­great forerunner in Spinoza, who claimed
to have shown in chapter 20 of his ἀ eologico-­Political Treatise, “I. That it is impos-
sible to deprive men of the liberty of saying what they think. II. That such liberty can
be conceded to e­ very man without injury to the rights and authority of the sovereign
power, and that e­ very man may retain it without injury to such rights, provided that
he does not presume upon it to the extent of introducing any new rights into the
state, or acting in any way contrary to the existing laws. III. That e­ very man may
enjoy this liberty without detriment to the public peace, and that no incon­ve­niences
arise therefrom which cannot easily be checked. IV. That ­every man may enjoy it
without injury to his allegiance. V. That laws dealing with speculative prob­lems are
entirely useless. VI. Lastly, that not only may such liberty be granted without preju-
dice to the public peace, to loyalty, and to the rights of rulers, but that it is even neces-
sary for their preservation.” Benedict de Spinoza, A ἀ eologico-­Political Treatise and
A Po­liti­cal Treatise, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 2004), 264–65.
47. ­Today this typically goes by the name of public reason.
48. The rationale for religious freedom and tolerance is well expressed by Fred-
erick the ­Great himself, along lines not so dif­fer­ent from Kant’s. See the se­lection
from Frederick’s Essay on Forms of Government in ἀ e Portable Enlightenment
Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1995), 452–59, at 457. The same
rationale is largely applicable to censorship and freedom of expression.
49. One of the clearest calls for China to shift its emphasis from economic success
to social justice goals comes from Sun Liping, “Cong gaige dao jianshe gongping
zhengyi shehui” [From reform to building a fair and just society], Jingji guancha
bao, March 1, 2013.
50. It is food for thought, in this connection, that even the first-­generation revo-
lutionaries, ­t hose who outlived Mao, failed to be disappointed with how China
turned cap­i­tal­ist in the era of reform—in comparison with, say, Amer­i­ca’s founding
­fathers. On the latter’s reactions to the upshot of the American Revolution within
their lifetime, see Gordon  S. Wood, ἀ e Radicalism of the American Revolution
(New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 365–68.
410 Notes to Pages 300–328

51. On the obstacles to any potential social justice reform posed by power­ful in-
terest groups, see William H. Overholt, China’s Crisis of Success (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2018).
52. As outlined, for example, in Xi Jinping’s speech at the CCP’s nineteenth na-
tional congress, Xi, Juesheng quanmian jiancheng xiaokang shehui. Much of sec-
tion  8 of this speech—­points 1–4 (pp.  45–48)—is devoted to ­matters of social
justice.
53. Aristotle, ἀ e Politics, trans. Carnes Lord, 2nd  ed. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2013), 1295b25–29, 1295b35–96a6.
54. Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca, 704.
55. Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution.
56. See Gordon S. Wood, “Democracy and the American Revolution,” in Democ-
racy: ἀ e Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993, ed. John Dunn (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 91–105.

7. Democracy at Home and Legitimacy around the World

1. I use the term democracy deficit to mean a deficit caused by nondemocracy, not
a relative lack of democracy in what is already a demo­cratic polity. For the latter, the
term is demo­cratic deficit.
2. See Peter Gowan, ἀ e Global ­Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World
Dominance (London: Verso, 1999), 69, 100.
3. See Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can Amer­i­ca and China Escape
ἀ ucydides’s Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 139–40.
4. On Eu­rope’s attitude ­toward China, see Martin Jacques, When China Rules the
World: ἀ e End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, 2nd ed.
(New York: Penguin, 2012), 450–58.
5. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper
Perennial, 2008), 285.
6. In this standard conception ­t here is ­little doubt that freedom takes pre­ce­dence
over democracy, and the liberties of the moderns over that of the ancients. Con-
stant is essentially correct about this, although the details of the balance vary from
one liberal demo­cratic society to another. In addition to this relationship of pri-
ority, Constant is also largely correct in taking democracy to offer the best protec-
tion for freedom. Having pronounced “individual liberty” to be “the true modern
liberty,” he famously goes on to emphasize that “po­l iti­cal liberty is its guarantee,
consequently po­l iti­c al liberty is indispensable,” before cautioning, “But to ask
­people of our day to sacrifice, like ­t hose of the past, the ­whole of their individual
liberty to po­l iti­cal liberty, is the surest means of detaching them from the former
and, once this result has been achieved, it would be only too easy to deprive them
of the latter.” Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with
That of the Moderns,” in Po­liti­cal Writings, trans. and ed. Biancamaria Fontana
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 309–28, at 323. It may be added,
Notes to Pages 328–344 411

in the light of the discussion of maturity and freedom in Chapter 6, that freedom
is an essential condition for any reasonably well-­f unctioning democracy. More im-
portantly, once we realize that freedom, via its promotion of maturity, is one of
democracy’s essential conditions, this suggests an additional reason why, and an
additional sense in which, freedom must take pre­ce­dence over democracy. It is for
­t hese reasons that, among all the goods against which democracy needs to be
weighed, freedom may be thought to stand in a relatively easy and straightforward
relationship to it.
7. John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005),
149: “Even as an idea (let alone as a practical expedient) it wholly fails to ensure any
regular and reassuring relation to just outcomes over any issue at all. As a structure of
rule, within any ­actual society at any time, it makes it overwhelmingly probable
that many par­tic­u ­lar outcomes ­w ill turn out flagrantly unjust. The idea of justice
and the idea of democracy fit very precariously together.” See also 182–83.
8. The idea of democracy being the least bad regime, often associated with Win-
ston Churchill, is simply not good enough for this purpose. Interestingly, this idea,
­whether correct or not, is also too modest to justify strong outside intervention.
9. It is, for example, part of the subtitle of an influential book, Larry M. Bartels,
Unequal Democracy: ἀ e Po­liti­cal Economy of the New Gilded Age (Prince­ton, NJ:
Prince­ton University Press, 2008). See also Joseph E. Stiglitz, ἀ e Price of In­equality:
How T ­ oday’s Divided Society Endangers Our ­Future (New York: Norton, 2013).

8. Two Systems, One Demo­cratic ­Future

1. This is also one reason why the mainstream pan-­democrats are still sometimes
lumped together with the independence-­seeking localists (dupai) and ­t hose favoring
self-­determination (zijuepai) as one broad po­liti­cal camp, despite g­ reat differences
among them in aim, philosophy, and strategy.
2. See Leo F. Goodstadt, Poverty in the Midst of Affluence: How Hong Kong Mis-
managed Its Prosperity, rev. ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014).
3. On the high level of (conscious) tolerance of in­equality and lack of social jus-
tice, even on the part of the less well off in Hong Kong, see ibid., 78–79, 82. Such
conscious tolerance is perfectly compatible with the more or less unconscious ac-
cumulation of negative energy.
4. Thanks to the decisively altered balance of power between the mainland and
Hong Kong, and to the po­liti­cal liability—­which a more power­f ul Beijing can now
afford to take proper notice of and do something about—of the central government
having visibly cozy ties with the local tycoon class.
5. See Carl Schmitt, ἀ e Concept of the Po­liti­cal, trans. George Schwab (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007), 26–27.
6. See Gordon S. Wood, ἀ e Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York:
Vintage Books, 1991), for the difference between republic and democracy in this
context.
412 Notes to Pages 349–366

7. On the contestation over democracy before 1997, see Alvin Y. So, “The Tian­
anmen Incident, Patten’s Electoral Reforms, and the Roots of Contested Democracy
in Hong Kong,” in ἀ e Challenge of Hong Kong’s Reintegration with China, ed.
Ming K. Chan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997), 49–83.
8. ­Under normal circumstances, “the loyalty demanded from ­every citizen is not
mere loyalty to the bare country, to the country irrespective of the regime, but to the
country informed by the regime, by the Constitution.” Leo Strauss, ἀ e City and
Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 47–48.
9. See Jürgen Habermas, “Citizenship and National Identity,” appendix 2 of Be-
tween Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse ἀ eory of Law and Democracy,
trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 491–515.
10. Though not his exact idea, ­because Gramsci associates the exercise of leader-
ship and the production of consent with civil society rather than the state, of
which democracy is a feature.
11. See Antonio Gramsci, Se­lections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans.
Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers,
1971), 12, 57–58, 80f, 239, 263.
12. See Michel Foucault, ἀ e Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de
France, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2004),
91–92.
13. Michael Mann, ἀ e Sources of Social Power: Volume 1: History of Power from
the Beginning to AD 1760, new ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),
chap. 1.
14. See Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” appendix
2 of On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,
trans. G. M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 2014), 232–72. It is a ­matter of some theo-
retical importance that, in a major departure from Gramsci, Althusser rejects the
notion of civil society, preferring to see ideology too as part of the bourgeois state
rather than as part of a distinct and in­de­pen­dent civil society. On this, see Perry
Anderson, ἀ e Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci (London: Verso, 2017), 77–79. Al-
though Althusser may well be mistaken with regard to bourgeois democracy, at
least partly, it is not by accident that his view of the ­matter lends itself particularly
well to understanding how ideology operates, or fails to operate, in CCP-­led China.
­A fter all, China is not a l iberal democracy and does not feature a s trong civil
society.
15. Gramsci, Se­lections from the Prison Notebooks, 259.
16. Which is unnecessary, of course, if the reader recalls what was said on this
subject in the Introduction.
17. Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism, 135, emphasis in original.
18. Ibid., 137.
19. See John Dunn, Breaking Democracy’s Spell (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2014), 73.
Notes to Pages 368–374 413

20. Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?,’ ” in

Kant: Po­liti­cal Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 54–60, at 59, emphasis in original.
21. Ibid., 59.
22. Unsurprisingly, the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s so-­called miniconstitution, is
tilted in f­ avor of business interests, seen as essential to Hong Kong’s prosperity and
stability. Thus it gives less priority to social justice than is desirable—­less, presum-
ably, than might be the case had the Basic Law been enacted in the rather dif­fer­ent
ethos prevailing in China ­today on ­matters of social welfare and economic in­
equality. Even so, the Basic Law leaves substantial scope for improvements in social
justice. Article 145, for example, although a far cry from social democracy, is suffi-
ciently ambiguous and flexible in this regard—if ­there is enough public interest in
pursuing such improvements.

Concluding Reflections
1. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in ἀ e Marx-­
Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), 66–125, at 76.
2. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Tucker, Marx-­Engels Reader, 26–52.
3. If history is to have a goal.
4. Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in
Tucker, Marx-­Engels Reader, 16–25, at 20, emphasis in original.
5. See Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of
the Moderns,” in Po­liti­cal Writings, trans. and ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 309–28.
6. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 2000).
7. When wanting what the party does not let you want is not a live or actionable
option, and when continuing nevertheless to maintain the useless wants, even in
the sheltered space of one’s consciousness, would tend only to worsen one’s state of
mind, all surveys of preferences (and approval ratings) must be taken with an even
larger grain of salt than normal.
 Index

Adaptive preference, 131, 373 distinctively modern dream, 199–200; as

All ­u nder Heaven, 147, 150, 234, 236, 371 ideology, 153; individualistic dimension of,
Althusser, Louis, 4–5, 65, 68, 69, 362, 375; as new telos, 41–42, 60, 61, 76; relation
364–365 to freedom and democracy, 370, 373, 376;
Altruism, 207, 208, 210 and universalism, 208, 372
American Dream, 127, 208, 217 Chinese ­People’s Po­liti­cal Consultative
Analects, 257 Conference, 220
Ancien régime, 226, 235 Chris­t ian­ity, 73, 150
Anquangan, 7 Citizens United, 138
Anticorruption campaign, 44, 80, 84–87, 89, Civil society: compatible with Communist
90; as purge, 86–87, 89, 92 Party’s po­liti­cal leadership, 246; Confu-
Arendt, Hannah, 106 cianism in, 303; expanded u ­ nder Jiang
Aristocracy, as defined by Tocqueville, 114, Zemin, 89; and functioning of ideology in
149, 152, 216, 304 Hong Kong, 365; Gramsci on, 68; as locus
Aristotle, 57, 105, 121, 304, 342 of freedom and agency, 8, 25; as locus of
Asceticism, 207, 210 ideology, 365; Marx on, 122; necessary for
demo­cratic transition, 273, 282; po­liti­cal
Beijing, 199 consequences of presence or absence of,
Bell, Daniel A., 55–58 280, 283–284; requiring maturity, 294;
Blake, William, 163 requiring moral in­de­pen­dence from state,
Bloch, Ernst, 170 237–240, 241; silenced, 4; as source of
Bo, Xilai, 78 moral leadership, 239; views of Marx and
Bourgeois demo­cratic revolution, 8, 35, Tocqueville compared, 188–192
123, 373 Color revolution, 96–97, 317, 321
Buwang chuxin, 42, 77 Command-­obedience relation, 232, 233,
257, 258
Chartist movement, 162, 163 Communicative action, 104, 117, 288
China model, 3, 55, 370, 374 Communism: absence of from Chinese
Chinese Dream: affinity with American Dream, 82–83; compared with Chinese
Dream, 127, 208; affinity with dreams of all Dream, 200; hostility t­ oward in Hong
nations, 127, 372; apo­liti­cal content of, 112; Kong, 348, 366; and morality, 207–208,
collective, nationalist dimension of, 375, 209; no longer effective as ideology, 111;
379; and communism, 82, 83, 217; as no longer plausible as discourse, 75–76;
416 Index

Communism (continued) societal maturity as essential condition

nominal, 199, 342; as original aspiration, 77; for, 294–295; intrinsic value of, 321–322,
as part of revolutionary legitimation 323–324; legitimation crisis of, 2, 164,
discourse, 72; and per­for­mance legitimacy, 170, 172–173; Marx and Tocqueville
61; as substitute for tian as basis of rule, 148 compared, 121–123, 188–194; and need
Community of shared ­f uture of humankind, for strong central authority in China,
127, 372, 373 260–265, 268, 269, 270, 272; in society
Compensation effect, 124, 125, 126 as distinct from polity, 1, 20–21, 113–117,
Conformism, 229, 230, 231, 234 120–121, 134, 135; in United States,
Confucian democracy, 150, 152 144–145, 223–224, 378–379
Confucianism: as cosmology, 150, 151, 153, Democracy, arguments for: argument for
154, 155; flexibility with regard to regime equality of conditions, 119–120; argument
and society types, 303, 304; as ideological from fittingness, 22, 116–117; argument
power, 236, 261, 302; and republicanism, from governability, 22, 117–119; prudential
302–307; role in aristocracy, 303; role in argument for, 11–17, 101–121, 253–254,
democracy, 149, 150, 152–153, 303, 305; 255, 291–297; as self-­protection of society,
role in republican regime, 306–307 156, 161–162, 164
Confucian-­Legalist state, 151, 235, 261 Demo­cratic centralism, 290–291
Confucian tradition, 3, 128, 149, 305 Demo­cratic conception of virtue, 21, 103,
Consent. See Endorsement consent 104–105
Constant, Benjamin, 106, 200–201, 205, Demo­cratic culture, 248; demo­cratic po­liti­cal
294, 328, 374 culture, 248, 250, 251; demo­cratic societal
Constitutional amendment removing culture, 248, 249–250, 251
presidential term limits, 91, 92, 95 Demo­cratic epistemology, 21, 103, 104–105
Constitutional patriotism, 154, 354 Demo­cratic preparation, 25, 26, 29, 251, 260,
Consultative democracy, 220 319, 323, 328; components of, 273–274;
Consumerism, 66, 67, 163, 207, 301 ­legal reform as component of, 274, 285–291;
Convention consent, 136–137 moral reform as component of, 273, 274,
Creditor-­debtor relation, 221–223 277–285; social justice reform as compo-
Crisis of revolutionary spirit, 75–78 nent of, 274, 297–302
Crony capitalism, 89, 187, 188 Demo­cratic pride, 125–126
Crouch, Colin, 175 Demo­cratic rule of law, 138, 140, 142,
Crowding-­out effect, 124, 125, 126 146, 147
Cultural Revolution, 87, 154, 221 Demo­cratic social power, 223–231, 234
Demo­cratic social state, 113, 114, 115
Dahl, Robert, 271 Democ­ratization, functional, 115
Datong, 236 Deng, Xiaoping, 39, 40, 61, 71, 76, 88–89, 111,
Dayitong, 235 175, 217, 371
Death of God, 154. See also Nihilism Depoliticization, 82, 180–181
Democracy: appropriate external involve- Dewey, John, 104
ment supporting, 328, 330; and capi- Dominium, 157, 162, 188, 325, 330, 331, 332
talism, 2, 27–28, 157–165, 324, 325; Dunn, John, 12, 17, 262
challenges regarding in China, 22–29;
China and West compared, 248–251; Economic in­equality, 129, 193, 217, 324
China’s lack of cultural resources for, 26; Economy, party-­state’s role in, 110, 298
con­temporary condition of in West, 1–2, Elections, ­f ree and fair, 64, 141, 270;
165–174, 330–331; devaluation of, 1–2; conducive to credibility of democracy,
as essentially contested concept, 11, 12, 144, 146, 363; ideological function of, 142;
155, 313, 314; flexibility as regards form, liberal demo­cratic governmentality deeper
265–270; goods to be weighed against, than, 361; not to be fetishized, 145;
328–329; inappropriate external involve- rationale for, 118; as vehicle of ­actual
ment supporting, 328, 329; individual and consent, 144
Index 417

Elias, Norbert, 115, 118–119, 139, 257, Harmony, 236, 258–259, 270, 351
263–265, 267 Hayek, Friedrich von, 173, 176, 288
Elster, Jon, 124 Heavenly reign, 147, 148, 150
Elvin, Mark, 261 Hegemony, 13, 160, 164, 318, 321, 361, 362
Emerging markets, 163 Historical materialism, 121, 373
End of history, 194, 242, 243, 244 Historical nihilism, 111
Endorsement consent, 137–140, 143, 267–268; Hobbes, Thomas, 125, 250
abstract, 141, 142, 146; ­actual, 143, 144, Hollywood, 321
145; credibility of, 143–145, 266; hy­po­t het­ Hong Kong: anticommunism, 335, 336, 339,
i­cal, 143 348, 355, 366; apartness from China, 333,
Engels, Friedrich, 122–123 334, 336, 356–359; Basic Law, 351, 354; and
Equality, passion for, 129, 218–219 capitalism, 333, 335, 338, 341–342, 350;
Equality, qualitative versus quantitative, China’s legitimacy in, 334, 337, 340,
217–218 359–366; citizens’ strong sense of agency,
Equality of conditions, defined, 114–115 364; civil liberties, 333, 335, 353, 356, 368,
Equality of opportunity, 115, 129, 218, 226, 369; democracy movement, 338–344, 358,
230, 231 364, 367; demo­cratic system ruled out by
Essentially contested concept. See fact of sovereignty, 344–346; desire for
Democracy apartness, 334, 337, 338–344, 347, 358, 359;
identification with China, low, 351–355;
Factionalism, 20, 42, 76, 80 impact of equality of conditions in,
­Family, as site of authority in China, 128 343–344; impact on China’s demo­cratic
Fear, role of in politics, 94–95 development, 366–369; June 4, 1989,
Filial piety, 128, 257 reaction to, 354, 358, 366; localism, 337,
First Emperor, 90, 234 340; mainlandization, fear of, 336, 337;
Foucault, Michel, 361 Occupy Central, 338, 339, 340, 342, 349,
Frederick II, 292, 296, 368 358; Occupy Central compared to Brexit,
Freedom: as condition for individual and 358; one country, two systems, 337, 345,
societal maturity, as distinct from its use 349, 350, 351, 354, 355, 356, 369;
for po­liti­cal purposes, 291, 292; as pan-­democrats, 346–347, 348, 355, 367;
condition for moral subjectivity, 203–205; po­liti­cal culture, 353, 364; po­liti­cal
de facto, 130, 202, 205–207, 283–284; integration with China, 351–355, 358; rise
priority of, 241, 245, 246; as value, 203, of China as prob­lem for, 335, 336; rule of
205–207, 283–284 law, 333, 335, 346, 353, 354, 356, 369; sense
Freedom of press, 259, 276 of superiority to China, 335–336, 338;
Freedom of speech, 201, 259, 276 ungovernable, progressively, 344
French Revolution, 114, 148 Hu, Jintao, 84, 85, 87, 89, 280, 371
Friedman, Milton, 176 Hu, Yaobang, 38
Huodegan, 7, 82
Globalization, 2, 12, 163, 174
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 275 Ideological power, 307, 361, 363; working in
Governmentality, 361, 364 tandem with po­l iti­cal power in commu-
Gramsci, Antonio, 68–69, 361, 363 nist China, 83–84; working in tandem
­Great rejuvenation of Chinese nation, 8, 37, with po­l iti­cal power in Confucian China,
41, 50, 51, 77, 82, 178, 336, 371, 375 236, 261
Guizot, François, 106, 121 Ideological State Apparatuses, 4–5, 65–69, 94,
Guo, Boxiong, 85 211–212, 362–363, 364–365
Ideology critique, 65, 288
Habermas, Jürgen, 45, 117, 139, 283, 288 Imperium, 157, 162, 188, 325, 330, 331, 332
Hacker, Jacob, 169 Industrial / manufacturing aristocracy, 157
Hampton, Jean, 136–137, 138–139 In­equality of conditions, 114, 118, 119–120,
Han dynasty, 151, 235 216, 304, 327
418 Index

Internal reasons, 213 Maier, Charles, 21

Iraq War, 2, 379 Mandate of Heaven, 18, 36, 147, 151, 155, 235
Manent, Pierre, 232–233, 243, 244
Japan, 302, 318 Mann, Michael, 361
Jiang, Qing, 154 Mansbridge, Jane, 270–271
Jiang, Zemin, 84, 85, 89, 280 Mao Zedong, 18, 49, 61, 72, 88, 108, 258,
June 4, 1989, 38, 40, 42, 316, 320, 354, 358 283, 327
Market, autonomous, 177, 178, 181, 182, 184,
Kant, Immanuel, 204, 292–293, 294, 296, 186
368, 369 Marx, Karl, 8, 35, 106, 108, 158, 373; compared
Kuomintang, 149 with Tocqueville, 121–123, 188–194
Marxism, 49, 72, 155, 160, 371
Leadership succession, 20, 70, 88, 90, 96 Mason, Paul, 176
Legalism, 150 McCutcheon, 138
­Legal reform. See Demo­cratic preparation Mencius, 220, 250, 257
Legitimacy, conceptual analy­sis of: in de Meritocracy, 3, 4, 153, 306; Daniel A. Bell on,
facto sense, 13; demo­cratic inclusive, 55–58; not to be confused with legitimacy,
64–65; exclusive, 63–65; ideological, 56–57
65–69; inclusive, 52, 59, 62; input versus Mi­g rant crisis, 2
output, 41; relation to per­for­mance, 49–55, Mi­g rant workers, 218
59–62. See also Right to rule Mill, J. S., 244
Legitimacy, empirical analy­sis of: China’s Mixed regime, 154, 220, 306, 307
international, 311–312; democracy as Montesquieu, 304
condition for China’s domestic and Moore, Barrington, Jr., 172
international, 313, 314, 315; interaction Moral crisis, 24, 25, 212, 215–216, 237–238,
between China’s international and 277–279; po­liti­cal dimension of, 278–284
domestic, 313–315; intraparty, 39, 42–43, Moral culture: communist, 207–208; current
76, 78, 79–81; revolutionary, 19, 36, 37, 40, need for bourgeois, 208–210; outmoded-
41, 42, 49, 70, 72–73, 93, 115, 129–130 ness of communist, 208–212; Western
Legitimation crisis: due to mismatch between influence on China’s, 211
society and polity, 17–22, 115–119; due to Morality, types of: morality based on
per­for­mance prob­lems, 36–38, 60–62, freedom, 215; morality based on identifica-
182–184; due to waning revolutionary tion, 214
legacy, 20, 36, 54–55, 70–71, 75–81, 95–96, Moral reform. See Demo­cratic preparation
110–112; identity crisis as part of, 81–84; Moral subject / subjectivity, nature and
plausibility crisis as part of, 72–75 structure of, 213–215
Liberal demo­cratic socialism, 272–273 Murdoch, Iris, 243, 244
Liberalism: classical, 244, 245; po­liti­cal,
244, 245 Nationalism, 154, 320
Liberalization, 89, 90 Neoliberalism, 1, 28, 169, 171, 175, 176,
Liberties of moderns, 105, 130, 172, 374; as 177, 299
common denominator for comparing China Neopragmatism, 104
and United States, 196–197, 198–200, 201 Network society, 2, 225
Liberty, de facto. See Freedom: de facto Neutrality: permissive, 244, 246; persuasive,
Liberty of ancients, 105, 130, 374 244, 246
Liberty of conscience, 202 New Deal, 28, 165, 166, 331, 379
Ling, Jihua, 85 New Gilded Age, 331, 379
Louis XVI, 275 Nihilism, 154, 243
Lukács, Georg, 193 Noble lie, 151

Ma, Jack, 165 Obama, Barack, 208

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 13, 106–107 Oligarchy, 2, 230, 271
Index 419

One country, two systems. See Hong Kong Reagan, Ronald, 176, 331
Opium War, 73, 258 Realistic utopia, 242, 253, 255, 273
Or­ga­nized ­labor, 160, 171 Regime change, 316, 325, 348, 367, 368
Orientalism, po­liti­cal, 6 Regime continuation. See Regime
perpetuation
Patriotism, 69, 154, 354. See also Constitu- Regime perpetuation, 55, 70, 88, 136, 142, 194
tional patriotism Relativism, 103, 151
Per­for­mance legitimacy, 18, 19, 38–43; as Religion, 202, 203, 212
amelioration of lack of legitimacy, 19, Religious freedom, 202–203
53–54, 56, 58–59, 71, 74; contrary to Repre­sen­ta­t ion, 140–146, 268; credibility of,
publicness, 266–267; as enhancement of 143–145, 266, 267
legitimacy, 19, 53–54, 56, 58–59, 71, 74. Representativeness. See Repre­sen­ta­t ion
See also Legitimacy, conceptual analy­sis of Repression, 89, 90, 201, 203, 281, 375
Personality cult, 90 Repressive State Apparatus, 4–5, 6, 7, 65–69,
Perspectivism, 151 211, 212, 362–363, 364–365
Pierson, Paul, 169 Right to rule, 18, 44–49, 50, 51, 53, 62–63, 76,
Plato, 103, 105, 107 77–78, 81, 234. See also Legitimacy,
Pluralism, 103, 151, 236, 306; reasonable, 203, conceptual analy­sis of
209, 242, 244 Rise of China, 112, 318, 336, 357, 367, 370,
Polanyi, Karl, 159, 160, 161–164, 168, 372; lopsided in terms of hard and soft
169–170, 173, 193 power, 311–312
Po­liti­cal agency, 142, 144–146, 250, 260 Rorty, Richard, 104
Po­liti­cal in­equality, 219–220, 223, 228, Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 106, 201
258, 276 Rule of law, 199, 201, 285, 312; corruption as
Po­liti­cal reform, 4, 97, 254, 273, 274–276, 277 obstacle to, 289; in Hong Kong, 333, 335,
Political-­system hostility, 317, 318–321, 346, 353, 356, 369; in modern Western sense,
323–325, 327, 366–367, 368 288; need for flexible understanding of, 288;
Polyarchy, 271 publicness as defining feature of, 288–289,
Polybius, 57, 342 290. See also Demo­cratic rule of law
Pop­u ­lism, 2, 359. See also Substantive
pop­u ­lism Scheidel, Walter, 168, 169, 172–173
Pragmatism: as manifested by Deng Schmitt, Carl, 343, 349
Xiaoping, 128; as school of thought in Schumpeter, Joseph, 13, 158–159, 321–322
Amer­i­ca, 104; as trait of Hong Kong, Scientific socialism, 72, 237
340, 358 Separation of church and state, 232, 237, 239
Princi­ple of Heaven, 147 Separation of powers, 232, 235, 237, 238,
Priority of good, 240, 243, 245, 246, 247 239, 247
Priority of right, 241, 271 Shanghai, 199, 201
Private law, 288 Singapore, 302, 338
Privileges, official, 299–300 Skorupski, John, 244, 245, 246
Proletariat, 73. See also Working class Social democracy, 28, 165, 166, 168–173, 193,
Propaganda, 82, 85, 176, 206, 209, 357; as 299, 325, 341
distinct from ideology, 5, 69, 211, 362–365 Social integration, 179, 180
Protagoras, 21, 103–105, 106, 107, 108 Socialism with Chinese characteristics for
Publicness, 266–268, 286–287, 288; new era, 50, 237, 371
credibility of, 266, 268 Socialist core values, 155
Socialist market economy, 42, 59, 180, 181
Qing dynasty, 148, 272 Social justice: and demo­cratic preparation,
29, 274, 297–302; and Hong Kong’s
Rancière, Jacques, 2 democracy movement, 341, 369; relation to
Rationalization of lifeworld, 117 democracy, 328–329; in social democracy,
Rawls, John, 203 164, 166–173, 185, 267
420 Index

Social justice reform. See Demo­cratic 223–224; effects on China’s demo­cratic

preparation development, 377–379; endorsement
Social unrest, 81 consent in, 137–140; Karl Polanyi on, 159;
Socrates, 103, 107 need for enemies, 6; New Gilded Age, 331;
Son of Heaven, 147, 150, 151, 236 political-­system hostility ­toward China,
Sophists, 102, 103, 104 316, 318–320; pushback against China’s
South ­Korea, 149, 150 rise, 43; separation of economic and
Sovereign debt crisis, 168 po­liti­cal spheres, 163
Spillover effect, 124 Unity, vertical, 256–260
State-­owned enterprises, 109, 110, 165, 176, Universalism, 127, 150, 208, 368, 371, 372
180, 185, 298, 300 Urban-­r ural divide, 127, 217, 218, 302
Streeck, Wolfgang, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169
Substantive pop­u ­lism, 112, 153 Vanguard, 56, 72, 108, 153, 200, 258
Surveillance capitalism, 174
System integration, 180 Warring States, 234
Way of Heaven, 147, 151, 257
Taiwan, 149, 262, 312, 356 Weber, Max, 13, 72, 292, 297
Territorial integrity, 26, 261, 263 Weiwen, 22
Thatcher, Margaret, 2, 176, 331 Welfare state, 158, 160, 163, 167, 170, 171, 190,
Ti, 152, 153 250, 325, 363
Tian, 147–155 Western Zhou, 151
Tibet, 262, 312, 314 Williams, Bernard, 213
Tocqueville, Alexi de: argument for Working class, 163. See also Proletariat
democracy, 105, 106, 219; argument for World Trade Organ­ization, 181, 248
equality of conditions, 119–120;
compared with Habermas, 117; compared Xi, Jinping, 28, 47, 78, 80, 84, 85, 88–97, 108,
with Marx, 121–122, 188–193; democracy 208, 217, 371, 376
and capitalism, 157; on democracy versus Xidan Democracy Wall, 113
aristocracy, 114, 149, 152, 304; on Xingfugan, 7, 66, 82
demo­cratic social power, 223–224, 227; on Xinjiang, 262, 312, 314
equality of conditions, 21, 114–115, 216, 230; Xu, Caihou, 85
on equality’s connection to freedom, 292
Tönnies, Ferdinand, 281 Yifa zhiguo, 285, 289
Trickle-­down economics, 179 Yong, 152, 153
Trump, Donald, 319 Yuan dynasty, 272

United States, the: compared with China, Zhou, Enlai, 108

196, 198–200, 201–202, 206; conformism Zhou, Yongkang, 85
in, 227, 231; and demo­cratic social power, Zhutigan, 8