03/01/2024 No. 201
 
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From diehard old practices to the right track – the political system with Chinese characteristics
By Binghe Shui Translator Sheng-Wei Wang
November 1, 2014


After departing my homeland as a child, in August 1978 I returned to it as a middle-aged man. Altogether, I stayed in the mainland for forty days and travelled to more than ten cities to visit relatives whom I had not seen for a few decades or had never seen before. What I saw was a country with mass impoverishment, public apathy and no vitality. There were only a few shops and the department store carried only a single brand of each merchandise. When recalling the three decades of revolution and some dramatic changes the country had to go through to get to this point, a shiver ran from my neck down to the tail of my spine. I went there excitedly, but came back thoroughly disappointed. Upon leaving I thought: "China is over". Under its doctrine and a one-man dictatorship for a full three decades, even with the help of God the bad old practices could not be reversed.

 

Of course, no one would have thought that Deng Xiaoping had such a strong perseverance and determination, and so thoughtful a wisdom to actually make the country come back to life. Against countless resistance, he bluntly reversed the one-billion-population country on the brink of collapse in a 180 degree turn from diehard old practices to the right track. Such exploits, to be honest, whether they were to immortalize his name in every part of the country or to place his body in a crystal coffin, cannot be overstated. But he would rather ask for his ashes to be spread in the sea. What a great man he was!

 

After a gradual transition to a market economy and after another thirty years, the influx of wealth came to China like the tide; it has been truly overwhelming. This has provided the "rent-seeking" opportunities to numerous cadres and officials at all ranks. The higher the rank, the more rents were collected. Power entitles wealth and wealth entitles luxury mansions, beautiful women and party time every night. When these people in the party and in the state-owned enterprises formed cliques of huge interest groups, their power to block social progress was unmatched. China is said to be a socialist country, in fact, the degree of extravagance and profligacy of some Chinese officials in just thirty years has gone beyond the capitalist countries. As a result, China has reached another diehard moment.

 

No one would have thought that Xi Jinping, a veteran’s child who grew up under the party umbrella and ascended step by step from the grass roots, would not have been corrupted by power. He and Wang Qishan, and a number of like-minded officials know well the harm of corruption on top of grabbing all the power. They actually showed great determination, perseverance, wisdom and foresight to declare war against corrupt cadres of all ranks. We cheer that China can be saved again! China is again playing an active role in returning to the right track!

 

There exist many differences between the one-party autocracy and democracy. The one extremely important difference is that the democratic system has a party alternation mechanism. When a political party does not do a good job, voters will vote for other parties, so that another party can make corrections. If a political party does a good job, it can be re-elected and continue to stay in power. We see the current chaos in the Middle East, the fundamental reason is due to dictators.  Whether it is in Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya or Syria, under the current electoral system which has little true meaning, the dictators can be in power for up to forty years. Their rigid society finally was unable to cope with the changing world and domestic accumulation of grievances which eventually inspired violent revolutions. In fact, violent revolutions are always caused by those in power applying diehard bad practices and there is no other way to reverse it except by being forced to the extreme. But the consequences are often worse. Chaos in the Middle East highlights the commendable return to the right track.

 

Deng Xiaoping's vision under the one-party autocracy was the creation of a tenure system for cadres. This was not an ordinary merit. If this were not a merit lasting forever, at least it laid the foundation of China's one-party autocratic system. This was a great merit. The cadres tenure system enables a society to make changes without waiting for the old man’s death. It is indeed a major feature of the Chinese system.

 

Of course, in comparison with democracy, the one party autocratic system also has some advantages. First, most of America's big companies are set up by the Selection Committee of the Board of Directors, which identifies the most outstanding talents (this committee has far superior ability to identify talents than the majority of shareholders, unless they engage in nepotism or form a clique; but this will adversely affect the performance of the enterprise). The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party is like a selection committee, its members know more clearly than ordinary party members about who fits the position of the party general secretary. Likewise, a party member knows better than an ordinary citizen. So, from the perspective of governance, it should be a better institutional arrangement for the party to elect leaders with long-term experience in governance. Second, with concentration of power it is easier to get things done. The advantage of a one-party autocracy is that once a decision is made, it can be executed much more efficiently than in a democratic system. The current US political opposition shows serious differences not only in handling domestic issues like illegal immigration, health care, government budget and deficit ceiling, but also is deadlocked on international issues. Democracy requires political leaders and the people to have a basic consensus. When the consensus does not exist or fades out, the democracy lacks the main conditions for a policy to be executed.

 

Here is an example of lacking a consensus. In 1860, when the American South refused to abolish slavery and the North resolutely decided to repeal it, the South mulled over declaring independence. This was a contradiction for which a democracy could not offer a peaceful solution, so the only way was to resort to war. This example illustrates some of the problems that democracy cannot solve. Similarly, if China now implements a democratic system, there is no doubt that we will see several factions of power emerging to demand independence, and they will certainly ignite the flames of civil war.

 

For a developing country which has to catch up from a low level or has domestic ethnic conflicts, democracy will bring clashes, and its ruling efficiency will be poor. So we can understand this as follows: democracy was a system designed two hundred years ago when the European and American countries did not have to face the serious ethnic conflicts in the Middle East or Africa, also the demand for ruling efficiency was not high. So countries could practice democracy. For the societies at that time, it was the ideal system, because it used the constitution to safeguard the interests of the people. But today, whether democratic or authoritarian, governments have to quickly resolve issues hundred and thousand times more complicated than those of two hundred years ago and administrative efficiency becomes extremely important. In this case, democracy is very likely, especially for emerging countries, to have gradually become out of date.

 

This is not to say that China has found a better system than democracy. Till today, the Chinese regime has carried out two major corrective actions. If in the future there are no leaders like Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping, and China still requires major actions to return to the right track once every thirty years, then shouldn’t we worry about the prospects for China? In the end, will the currently promoted "deepening reform" bring long-term stability to the system? We shall see.

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Binghe Shui was born in Lanzhou City of the Gansu Province of China in 1942. He moved with his parents and all other family members to Taiwan in 1949 and settled in Hsinchu. After graduating from the Hydraulic Engineering Department of Chung Yuan Christian University, he went to the United States to study and changed his major to politics. He passed the qualifying examination as a Ph.D. candidate in political science in the University of Michigan, then entered the United Nations services until retirement. For over thirty years, his commentaries appeared throughout the Hong Kong, Taiwan and U.S. press. For a long time, he used the pseudonym Peng Wenyi (彭文逸) to write commentaries for the column "Beneath the Statue of Liberty" of The Nineties, a Hong Kong-based magazine. He has done editorial work for two U.S.-based magazines, The New Earth and Intellectuals, and for the Hong Kong-based bimonthly magazine Dousou (Stir Up《抖擻》). He now lives in Las Vegas. E-mail: b.h.shui @ gmail.com
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