Andrew J. Nathan - Chinese Democracy

ALSO BY ANDREW J. NATHAN

Modern China, 18401972: An Introduction to Sources and Research Aids (1973)

Peking Politics, 19181923: Factionalism and the Failure of Constitutionalism (1976)

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (co-edited with David Johnson and Evelyn S. Rawski, 1985)

Human Rights in Contemporary China (with R. Randle Edwards and Louis Henkin, 1986)

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC .

Copyright 1985 by Andrew J. Nathan
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint from previously published materials:

Columbia University Press: condensed version of two chapters from Human Rights in Contemporary China by Andrew Nathan, R. Randle Edwards, and Louis Henkin. Copyright 1985 by Columbia University Press. By permission.

University of California Press: condensed version of The Beginnings of Mass Culture: Journalism and Fiction in the Late Ching and Beyond, from Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, Johnson, Nathan, and Rawski, eds., University of California Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Nathan, Andrew J. (Andrew James)
Chinese democracy.
1. Political participationChinaHistory. 2. Political rightsChinaHistory. 3. ChinaPolitics and government20th century. I. Title.
JQ1516.N38 1985 323.0420951 85-40163
eISBN: 978-0-307-82812-5

v3.1

It is presumptuous for a non-Chinese to write on a subject as broad as democracy in China, but those inside China who could do the job better do not have the freedom of inquiry it requires. Fortunately, I have had the help of many Chinese. Some talked with me informally and some granted interviews for the media portion of the study. At each meeting I was reminded of the difficulty of generalizing about a subject as complex as China, but also of how important it is for both Westerners and Chinese to think about the issues of power and freedom there. My first expression of gratitude is to my informants, although they remain nameless.

For financial support since 1973, I wish to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council; the Luce Fund for Asian Studies of the Henry Luce Foundation; and the East Asian Institute of Columbia University.

For comments and suggestions, I am grateful to members of the Workshop on Communications and Publics, the Modern China Seminar, and the Seminar on Neo-Confucianism, all at Columbia; to members of my classes there; and to participants at other gatherings at which parts of the book were presented as papers, as specified in the source notes. I also wish to thank Richard Bernstein, Thomas P. Bernstein, Chang Peng-yuan, Chou Yangshan, Wm. Theodore deBary, R. Randle Edwards, Fu Po-shek, Gong Xiangrui, Charles W. Hayford, Louis Henkin, Huan Guocang, Steven I. Levine, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Liang Heng, Perry Link, David Mamo, Thomas A. Metzger, Barrett L. McCormick, William L. Parish, James Polachek, Mary Rankin, Stanley Rosen, James D. Seymour, Anne Thurston, Tu Nien-chung, Sondra Venable, Andrew Walder, Ralph Wang, Claude Widor, Roxane Witke, and Zhang Eping. I received materials or assistance from some of them and also from John Burns, Jocelyn Charles, Leonard L. Chu, Madelyn Ross, Robert Weick, and others who cannot be named.

I am not a believer in the kind of analysis of other societies that tries to avoid value issues on the grounds that different societies values are not the same. Discussing another societys values seriously is a sign of respect, not cultural arrogance. Not to do so means either pretending that differences do not exist ordisrespectfully to our own valuesacting as if we do not consider them important. Here we have the freedom and facilities to think about subjects that are important everywhere. For encouraging me to do so, I want to thank my wife, Roxane Witke, and my father, Paul S. Nathan.

A NDREW J. N ATHAN

January 1985

Note on Romanization

I have used the pinyin system, except for a few place and personal names that are well known in other forms.

A.J.N.

We live in the age of democracy. Military and one-party regimes hold plebiscites and elections to show that they rule by consent. The few remaining monarchs claim to exist only to serve the interests of their people. Yet, however governments may strive to look as similar as possible, at root they are profoundly different. Only by comparing one anothers versions of democracy can we see what kind of sense each set of values makes in theory and what it leads to in practice. We must get behind the international faade of verbal similarity if we wish to understand more fully where we and other cultures fundamentally agree and disagree. Such inquiry also allows us to reconsider what is distinctive about our own values and whether we still believe in them. For these purposes, this book explores the meaning of democracy in Chinaa nation that considers itself and is widely viewed as a model of democracyviewing it implicitly against the contrasting background of American ideas.

Seen in a world perspective, the American version of democracy is more unusual than the Chinese. Our emphasis on individual rights, our tolerance for the expression of conflict and antagonism in politics, our acknowledgment that the political process can legitimately be used by individuals and groups to try to force the state to serve their selfish interests, and our system of judicial review are among the ways in which our system differs from most others in the world. The Chinese system, by contrast, belongs to a large family of socialist and other states that share a philosophy of politics as a realm of harmony rather than antagonism between the citizen and the state, of one-party leadership, of the supremacy of the public interest over citizens rights, and of the power of the state to make any laws it deems necessary without judicial contradiction. Such states consider their systems superior to the bourgeois democracies of the West. They aim, in the words of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, to create a democracy which is at a higher level and more substantial than that of the capitalist countries.

At the same time, Chinese democracy is not just a copy of a socialist type. The Chinese have aspired to democracy as they understood it for a hundred years, have claimed to have it for seventy, and for the last thirty-five years have lived in one of the most participatory societies in history. Marxism has been interpreted in China in ways that are compatible with a century-old tradition of democratic thought. Part of this book is devoted to exploring that tradition.

The beginning of Chinese democracy can be dated, as nearly as any such large event can be, to the year 1895. Until then Chinese politics had been closed to people outside the bureaucracy. Memorials aimed at influencing policy flowed through a system of official posts to the court of Peking. The emperor went through piles of documents each day, marking his comments in vermilion ink. His decisions were put into the form of edicts, recopied, registered, and sent back to the bureaucracy through the posts. Normally only high-ranking officials could memorialize, and then only on matters that directly concerned them.