Democracy through Chinese eyes .. Why does Beijing reject the rule of the majority?

In October 2013, an anonymous animated video went viral, providing a picture of the inconsistency in the methods for selecting leaders in many countries. Of course, American democracy topped the video, as the rise of US President Barack Obama was filmed through a huge advertising campaign worth millions of dollars, a campaign in which “Obama” appeared more like a movie star, in which he employed his rhetorical and personal abilities, and was crowned with success when he won a relatively comfortable majority. of the American electorate. On the other hand, the video presented the story of the rise of Chinese President “Xi Jinping” to power in his country through a monotonous march that lasted for decades, as he rose from the level of local leadership to the level of the city, then the province, and several administrative levels, until he finally became a minister at the regional level. Member of the Central Committee of the Party, then the Politburo, and from there to the leadership position in the Central Committee of the Politburo. At each stage of his promotion, Xi underwent a serious and competitive assessment process to gauge his capabilities and qualifications for political leadership.

The video clip is not without its wit and lightness that suits social media platforms, but cultural products often reflect a specific philosophical and ethical vision, and indicate perhaps deeper ideas than what their consumers see on social media platforms. But with a deeper look, we find ourselves in front of a political philosophical vision about the standards of moral authority, the source of its legitimacy, and the nature of political representation between rulers and the ruled.

Here we try to present some of the features that make up the American and Chinese systems in comparison, focusing on the Chinese vision of Western democracy, and how China tries to present its political model in governance as the best, most ethical and efficient model at the same time. While elections and majority rule are the most important foundations of democracy, Beijing sees the world from a different perspective. How does China see the election polls? And how was its stable political system shaped to represent the divergent interests of the country’s political and social elite without electoral voting or rule by majority?

Chinese criticism.. the limits of the political majority

It goes without saying that Western societies are pluralistic societies, and in that they are superior to all contemporary societies. In Western societies, we can discuss almost everything without limits, provided that one principle remains not subject to discussion or review, which is the electoral democratic rule itself, meaning that there is a voice One electoral law for each citizen, which leads to the formation of a government that represents the electoral majority at the end. Despite its sanctity, the West has in fact benefited from one criticism of the idea of ​​majority rule, a criticism that came from within the Western context itself, where majority rule can lead to the oppression of minorities, and Western philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to the liberal philosophers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment is full of criticism The principle of majority rule in defense of the individual as a political unit independent of the group. Therefore, Western democracies, in their latest version, developed into a mixture of democracy and liberalism, and imposed constitutional restrictions on the rule of the majority that protected minorities, individuals, and those with dissenting and unpopular tendencies.

Here comes the Chinese tradition with structural criticisms of the principle of reliance on majority rule. Although Chinese elites acknowledge that rich and well-established liberal democracies better protect the rights of opponents, the first problem from the Chinese point of view is that the majority of voters do not perform well in choosing political leaders with the ability to set policies Wise in many economic and scientific fields. Today, China is proud of comparing its record of performance in trapping the first and second waves of the Corona virus with the disastrous performance of then US President “Donald Trump”, whose popularity declined with the arrival of virus victims in America to record rates.

Using Chinese terminology, the problem here lies in the percentage of “low-quality voters”, who do not act rationally and scientifically in interacting with the facts of reality, and thus negatively affect the political community and undermine its ability to confront crises efficiently. The Chinese academic, “Bai Tongdong” has argued that in the current capitalist era, most citizens do not have enough time to understand all the details of reality. Discussing ancient Greek democracy, Tongdong argues that the use of slaves freed the citizens of Athens from the burdens of daily labor and enabled them to participate fully in the democratic political sphere, but even with this exceptional situation their competence remained in doubt. Tongdong here refers to the difference between Athens and contemporary Western democracies, which live under capitalist constraints, and whose citizens spend most of their time working hard to maintain their standard of living.

Continuing with the Chinese perspective, Canadian academic Daniel Bell, professor at Tsinghua University in China, suggests that Chinese society is not fully assimilated into the mechanisms and ethics of the market, and its citizens enjoy an effective and strong system of welfare and social solidarity; In it, there is a shared responsibility on the government and citizens to qualify the majority to be voters of high quality, knowledgeable in economics and science, and trained in rational, scientific thinking.

Here the Chinese elite moves to a more abstract model in its critique of the idea of ​​the electoral majority, which is that the electoral procedure is intrinsically fair, but does not necessarily lead to fair results. The American economist “Brian Kaplan” has shown that common beliefs about economics, for example, are full of systematic errors, which explains, for example, the irrationality of voters during the electoral campaign period. As a result, after their election, politicians usually abandon their promises, realizing that voters elected them on the basis of unscientific biases, and then deal with the facts of reality in the latter in a systematic and scientific way, relying on bureaucratic competencies within the state. Therefore, the majority in itself does not have a moral advantage, but more importantly, according to the Chinese vision, the merit of the ruling political elite.

Political merit or expert judgment?

Proceeding from this criticism of the political majority as a reference, the Chinese concept of political merit emerges as a moral basis for the ruling political elite. community and gradually gaining the confidence of the people through a long journey of learning wisdom and virtue.”

Over the past few decades, China and Singapore have developed a rigorous and complex method for recruiting and promoting political leaders, beginning with the search for talent in the early school years, after which promising students are selected and trained for leadership roles. National examinations are held at key stages in a student’s life, followed by the selection of the best performing students to determine their abilities, psychological discipline, commitment and availability of leadership skills. Government scholarships are allocated to outstanding students to study at prestigious universities abroad, with the signing of a contract obligating them to return to the country. After graduation, the top performers work in administrative service and in government and political positions.

Likewise, the selection process for ministers is carried out in a systematic and rigorous manner, with persons eligible for the post, which they are expected to serve for a term of no more than five years, are determined. According to Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, a political public servant needs two terms in his job to be able to qualify for the next stage in the administration and state structure. As a result, China and Singapore have a high proportion of cadres trained in economics, management, science, and international politics, who can be employed within government and decision-making circles.

The political merit-examination model has gained traction because of the economic success of China and Singapore in the past decades. The meritocracy model proceeds from the assumption that well-trained political leaders have a better sense of the common good in the long and medium term than any supposed electoral majority. Lifted out of poverty, they would rally around populist leaders.

On the other hand, the American academic “Francis Fukuyama” believes that the Chinese model cannot become a serious alternative to liberal democracy outside East Asia, as the Chinese government derives the legitimacy of its system from a long tradition based on merit and the famous civil job exams in China, which are rooted in the history of This quasi-traditional system has gained the confidence of the Chinese people for logical reasons, as well as consensus among intellectuals and politicians, although it is not an official declared ideology.

More than a century and a half ago, former US President Abraham Lincoln described democracy in the simplest term for the common man: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” However, the Chinese academic Eric Lee claims that the current Chinese government is superior to America in these three areas without elections, as its government in his eyes is the government of the people, and represents the people’s reality and their diverse interests, and works for the people, as demonstrated by China’s successes and the expansion of its wealthy and middle classes over the course of the year. Indeed, the Chinese people already believe that their government represents them just like the democratic system; in fact, the vast majority of political leaders in China come from ordinary backgrounds due to considerations of competence and the current system of personnel and leadership selection. Captivated by the financial interests and networks of political elites in the big cities.

Over the past decade, the model of holding democratic elections has prevailed in the West as the ideal political model for creating a state of popular representation between the rulers and the ruled, expanding the margin of freedom to the largest possible degree while protecting the rights of the individual, and changing those in power first-hand to force them to provide the best performance for their voters, or else they will lose. The next elections, a model that seemed to be in harmony with the nature of the society created by capitalism, and was characterized by the competition of different social strata for political and economic opportunities in general. As for China, although it is following the same path of capitalism, albeit at its beginning, with “some socialist characteristics,” as its ruling regime says, it makes another suggestion that historical credibility requires the recognition that electoral democracy is only one type of democracy, and that China It has a “democracy” but of another kind that creates a more effective state.

The question remains whether that Chinese “democracy” is really real in its representation of the people, and is able to develop with the development of Chinese capitalism, or whether the capitalist society in China will soon go through the same twists and turns that the West went through over time, and weaknesses will quickly appear in the model. merit” at the expense of “direct representation,” as China preaches. In the end, this model remains closely linked to the history of China and East Asia, and its generalization outside this region seems difficult, and perhaps this in itself is the most prominent weakness of the Chinese model, as it lacks the “global” feature, unlike democracy that is applied in many places across the continents of the world It also lacks the centrality of the concepts of “justice” and “freedom” as opposites to tyranny, which makes it difficult to erupt an uprising or revolution demanding the Chinese model, while protests erupt annually in various parts of the world calling for freedoms, democracy and the expansion of political rights.

______________________________________________

Sources

1. The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, Daniel A. Pell.
2. Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class?, Francis Fukuyama.
3. Eric Li on the failure of liberal democracy and the rise of China’s way, Eric li.