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Democracy movements of China
Series of political movements in China From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Democracy movements in the People's Republic of China are a series of organized political movements, inside and outside of the country, addressing a variety of grievances, including objections to socialist bureaucratism and objections to the continuation of the one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself. The Democracy Wall movement of November 1978 to spring 1981 is typically regarded as the beginning of contemporary Chinese democracy movement. In addition to the Democracy Wall movement, the events of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre are among the notable examples of Chinese democracy movements.
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History
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Origin
The beginning of China's democracy movements is usually regarded as the Democracy Wall movement of November 1978 to spring 1981.[1] The Democracy Wall movement framed the key issue as the elimination of bureaucratism and the bureaucratic class.[1] Former Red Guards from both rebel and conservative factions were the core of the movement.[1] Democracy Wall participants agreed that "democracy" was the means to resolve the conflict between the bureaucratic class and the people, the nature of the proposed democratic institutions was a major source of disagreement.[1] A majority of participants in the movement favored viewed the movement as part of a struggle between correct and incorrect notions of Marxism.[1] Many participants advocated classical Marxist views that drew on the Paris Commune for inspiration.[1] The Democracy Wall movement also included non-Marxists and anti-Marxists, although these participants were a minority.[1] Demands for "democracy" were frequent but without an agreed-upon meaning.[2] Participants in the movement variously associated the concept of democracy with socialism, communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and Christianity.[2] They drew on a diverse range of intellectual resources "ranging from classical Marxist and socialist traditions to Enlightenment philosophers, [socialist] experiments in Yugoslavia, and Western liberal democracy."[2]
Significant documents of the Democracy Wall Movement include The Fifth Modernization manifesto by Wei Jingsheng, who was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for authoring the document. In it, Wei argued that political liberalization and the empowerment of the laboring masses was essential for modernization, that the CCP was controlled by reactionaries and that the people must struggle to overthrow the reactionaries via a long and possibly bloody fight.[citation needed]
Development
Throughout the 1980s, these ideas increased in popularity among college-educated Chinese, through the "New Enlightenment movement" led by intellectuals.[3][4] Overseas pro-democracy organizations including the Chinese Alliance for Democracy were founded by Chinese activists. Student protests inspired by intellectuals broke out in 1986.[5]
In the wake of growing corruption and economic dislocation, the Tiananmen Square protests erupted in 1989, which culminated in a military crackdown in June.
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Government's response
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Ideologically, the government's first reaction to the democracy movement was an effort to focus on the personal behavior of individual dissidents and argue that they were tools of foreign powers. In the mid-1990s, the government began using more effective arguments which were influenced by Chinese Neo-Conservatism and Western authors such as Edmund Burke. The main argument was that China's main priority was economic growth, and economic growth required political stability. The democracy movement was flawed because it promoted radicalism and revolution which put the gains that China had made into jeopardy. In contrast to Wei's argument that democracy was essential to economic growth, the government argued that economic growth must come before political liberalization, comparable to what happened in the Four Asian Tigers.[citation needed]
With regard to political dissent engendered by the movement, the government has taken a three-pronged approach. First, dissidents who are widely known in the West such as Wei Jingsheng, Fang Lizhi, and Wang Dan are deported. Although Chinese criminal law does not contain any provisions for exiling citizens, these deportations are conducted by giving the dissident a severe jail sentence and then granting medical parole. Second, the less well-known leaders of a dissident movement are identified and given severe jail sentences. Generally, the government targets a relatively small number of organizers who are crucial in coordinating a movement and who are then charged with endangering state security or revealing official secrets. Thirdly, the government attempts to address the grievances of possible supporters of the movement. This is intended to isolate the leadership of the movement, and prevent disconnected protests from combining into a general organized protest that can threaten the CCP's hold on power.[citation needed]
Chinese socialist democracy
CCP leaders assert there are already elements of democracy; they dubbed the term "Chinese socialist democracy" for what they describe as a participatory representative government.[6]
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Academic interpretations
Academic Lin Chun criticizes the phrase "democracy movement" as typically used in the scholarly and media discourse on China, noting that the term is often used exclusively to refer to the "demands and activism of an urban, educated group of people seeking liberal more than democratic values."[7] She notes, for example, that the political turbulence in universities over the period 1986 to 1989 had specific flash points ranging from anger at the government's "too soft" position on China–Japan relations to poor management of student welfare.[7]
The Impossibility Debate of China’s Democratization
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As China continues to rise without democratizing, discourse has emerged suggesting that democratization of China may be impossible forever. Makoto Mogi explains the reasons why democratization of China is difficult by touching on geopolitics, An Ecological View of History, and Oriental despotism of Karl Wittfogel in his YouTube videos and books.[8][9] Similarly, based on the interpretation of An Ecological View of History, Yang Haiying states, “Democratization does not arise from Chinese civilization.”[10]
Sekihei explains in his book Why China Cannot Democratize Even if It Wants To: Understanding the Essence of “Imperial Politics” Reveals the Core of Modern China that Chinese people have a sentiment desiring a moderate emperor, which is why democratization cannot occur.[11][12]
Tanaka Sakai cites the decline of the democratization movement was due to the chaos caused by democratization and market economy reforms in Russia, the spread of nationalism[13] the promotion of consumer society culture, and tolerance of criticism limited to corruption without rejecting the system itself.[14] He also quoted an Australian think tank's analysis that “Democratic China is unpredictable,” warning that domestically internal conflicts and abroad patriotic politicians who stir nationalism would rise, posing danger.[15][16]
Among commentators outside Japan, Hong Kong commentator Chip Tsao said, “China’s territory is large, like the United States, Canada, Russia, and Australia, and governing a large country is difficult. Moreover, Chinese people want to immigrate to the United States or Canada. China has an imperial culture, and for China’s democratization, federalism is difficult, so the only option is to break China into small countries.”[17]
Lee Teng-hui stated in a speech at the Diet members’ office building, “Both the current Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are merely continuations of China’s 5,000 years of history, and China is still a regime that constantly repeats progress and regression. China’s 5,000-year history is a history connected from one dynasty to the next within a certain space and time; even a new dynasty is only an extension of the previous one.”[18][19]
In his Hong Kong city-state theory, Chin Wan cites some misconduct by certain mainland Chinese.[20]: 43–46 Furthermore, he speculates that if China were to rapidly democratize, nine factors — "international humiliation, victim mentality, pressure on living space, anger over territorial loss, distrust of international morality, an industrially disciplined society, the spiritual narrowness of the middle class, patriotic impulses of large entrepreneurs, and the rapid increase in corporate productivity coupled with employment difficulties for the youth" — could easily become a breeding ground for totalitarianism similar to Nazism.[20]: 51–52
Comparison with the Democratization of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
A political thinker and historian, Liu Zhongjing, compared the democracy and history of Japan, South Korea, and China, stating the following.[21]
As far as he knows about the entire course of world history, whether in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or East Asia, the basic process was the same: the so-called democratic constitution was a form of governance formed in the process of the emergence of the nation-state. He concluded that it could not be applied to the multi-ethnic, multicultural great empires that existed prior to the nation-state—not only in China.
It did not apply to the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East or to the Holy Roman Empire in Europe. In Europe, democracy succeeded only after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and in the Middle East, only after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk dismantled the Ottoman Empire. Why was Japan able to achieve it? The answer, he says, is that Japan was the Britain of Asia and withdrew from the imperial system.
Why did South Korea succeed? Although Korea had also belonged to the Ming and Qing empires, its success came after it withdrew from the Chinese imperial order.
He also analyzes that the Republic of China on Taiwan and Taiwan independence are not the same: the Republic of China on Taiwan is a political weapon, while Taiwan independence is the invention of a standard European-type state—that is, the emergence of a culturally Taiwanese nationalism-based nation-state.[21] Furthermore, he states that the factor behind Taiwan's democratization was its departure from the Great Unity Sinocentrism, and that if Taiwan had been operating within the Sinocentrism, democratization would have been absolutely impossible.[22]
Democratization of Taiwan and the Challenges of Democratizing China
Lee Teng-hui reflected on the historical process of Taiwan's democratization while discussing why democratizing China is difficult. Under the influence of two foreign regimes—the long period of Japanese rule and, subsequently, the Republic of China (Kuomintang) rule—Taiwan developed its own sense of agency and identity. In particular, following the February 28 Incident of 1947, the Taiwanese recognized the need for autonomous governance independent of foreign rule, culminating in the first-ever direct presidential election in 1996.[18][19]
Lee pointed out that, considering China's historical governance system (the "Fǎtǒng"), regimes have traditionally been extensions of imperial authority based on the emperor, and there are few successful examples of political reform. Institutional changes, known as “reform by invoking the past” (託古改制), remained largely formal and did not achieve substantive democratization. Furthermore, Lee noted that regarding the Kuomintang and Communist Party governance in China, while their forms and ideologies differed, both maintained centralized control as foreign-imposed authorities, making it essentially equally difficult for the people of mainland China to achieve autonomous democratic societies.[18][19]
As Lu Xun pointed out, Chinese society has a cultural tendency that makes it hard for reform pioneers or trailblazers to emerge, which acts as an obstacle to democratization. In contrast, Taiwan embraced the concept of “breaking from the old and creating the new” (脱古改新), breaking away from traditional Asian values and Chinese-style Fǎtǒng, successfully building a society as a self-directed democratic nation. The first wave of democratic reform achieved the collapse of the authoritarian regime, democratization of legislative and executive branches, and the establishment of a Taiwanese identity. However, in recent years, party conflicts and institutional limitations have shown signs of democratic fatigue, highlighting the need for a second wave of reform involving constitutional amendments and clearer separation of powers[18]
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