Is China Democratizing? Ignorance and Reality

Minxin Pei

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 1998

Article preview: first 500 of 4,912 words total.

Summary:  Critics of the Clinton administration's engagement policy toward China are largely unaware of the last two decades' profound political changes in the Middle Kingdom. Deng Xiaoping received his due for his economic reforms, but not for the kinder, gentler politics that helped reduce elite backstabbing, broaden the backgrounds and outlook of government officials, strengthen the legislature, and improve the legal system. But even if the pace picks up, Washington should not expect a rapid expansion of democratic participation.

Minxin Pei is Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University and author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union.

A key factor influencing America's China policy and dividing American opinions is the evolution of the Chinese political system. Critics of the Clinton administration's China policy argue that, despite two decades of market reforms, the Chinese political system has not only remained repressive and undemocratic but has become a threat to the world's democracies. Pointing to Beijing's political repression, religious persecution, alleged proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, and unfair trade practices, they call for a hard-line response.

China's refusal to make substantive concessions on human rights has made it difficult for the administration to defend its stance. Clinton has been unable to offer evidence that engagement has yielded results on human rights, nor has he made a persuasive case that the Chinese political system is evolving in a more open direction. The administration's defense that current China policy is in the United States' long-term strategic interests has proved a poor match for ideological and passionate attacks from members of Congress and the media. Daily headlines and routine allegations of Beijing's misdeeds have battered the policy.

A major cause of the raging debate on U.S. China policy is lack of understanding of the profound political changes in China over the last two decades. In the past, ignorance of Chinese political realities has led to erroneous assessments of China's prospects, and it is now endangering China policy in Clinton's second term. As Beijing's third-generation leaders, exemplified by President Jiang Zemin, have fully assumed power, the United States must reexamine the Chinese political system and develop a more realistic evaluation of its potential for progress.

In American public discourse, political reform has a narrow meaning: democratization. American politicians and news media measure the progress of political reform in other countries against a single yardstick-the holding of free and open elections. But while democratization may be one element of reform, it is not the only one, especially in countries lacking the most rudimentary institutions of governance.

Both in the West and in developing countries, history shows that political reform has three essential components: establishment of norms governing elite politics; restructuring of basic institutions governing relations among parts of the state, such as the division of power among the government's different branches; and strengthening of the institutions of political participation. Countries that follow that sequence are also better bets to consolidate reform and to experience less instability because the success of one reform makes the next more likely.

The Chinese political system Deng Xiaoping inherited in 1978 resembled a Hobbesian world. No norms governed elite politics. Its key governmental institutions, especially the legal system and the bureaucracy, had been seriously damaged by the economic and political turmoil of the Great Leap Forward of 1958 and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. There were no institutions of political participation; under Mao Zedong, mass political campaigns and mob violence had been the main forms of participation. Deng was faced with rebuilding China's wrecked political system and reforming its backward economy at the same time.

KINDER AND GENTLER POLITICS

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