Growth With or Without Democracy?

In two highly unusual public challenges to core tenets of Communist rule in China, an academic has announced the launch of a democratic opposition party and farmers in four provinces have claimed ownership of land seized by local authorities.

Read more about challenges to China’s orthodoxy here.

There is another interesting piece in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, on the future of democracy in China by John Thornton.  Its a very interesting article and a good summary of some political trends and changes taking place in China.  Here are just some interesting points:

• the political leadership of China is increasingly open to talking about democracy
• many elections of local leaders are not really elections – it is more of a system that provides greater transparency in their selection/nomination
• there is greater competition for talent among CCP members – and this “intra-party democracy” seems to be gaining momentum
• if this process continues, there are possibilities that factions of interest groups will begin to form within CPP
• the growing number of public uprisings in China is partly linked to the population’s lack of confidence in the court system, which may pursue the government to stop interfering in judicial decisions
• corruption remains a serious problem despite numerous oversight mechanisms available
• commercialization of the press is actually leading to more press freedoms
• implementing democracy as a concept is discussed increasingly in the political circles in China, although the understanding of democracy may differ from how established democracies see it
• one of the greatest challenges lies in graduating from discussing democracy to implementing some concrete ideas…and judging from the following quote, albeit possible, it may not be that easy:

A senior Communist Party official I know marveled privately that ten years ago it would have been unimaginable for someone in his position to even be having an open discussion about democracy with an American. Now, the debate in China is no longer about whether to have democracy, he said, but about when and how. One thing the party should do immediately, he felt, was reform the National People’s Congress so that it does not become a “retirement home” for former officials; the National People’s Congress should be populated by competent professionals and eventually become a true legislative body. The government should also implement direct elections up to the provincial level, he argued, not Western-style multiparty elections but at least a contest involving a real choice of candidates.