“New Authoritarianism” in China:
Political Reform in the One-Party State
Kerstin Klein
Introduction
At the 4th Plenum of the Communist Party of China (CPC), held in September 2004, the CCP set out on a new self-declared path to establish itself
as a permanent “governing party” (zhizheng dang) instead of remaining a
“revolutionary” party. The 36-page resolution on the Enhancement of the
Party’s Governance Capability says that China’s reform and development
have reached a critical stage in which new situations and new problems are
mushrooming. The CPC concedes that it needs to enhance its governance
capability to consolidate its ruling status and meet domestic and global
challenges. A new course of reform was brought to a new level, when at the
17th National Party Congress in 2007 the party further declared its ambition to deepen the reform process and “to expand people’s democracy.”
In his report to the congress, Hu Jintao emphasized Chinese people’s
role as “masters of the country.” To become masters of the country, the
president promised that citizens will “directly exercise their democratic
rights in accordance with the law to manage public affairs . . . and exercise
. In contrast to top-down government, the image of a governing or “ruling” party
evokes a more horizontal relationship between society and the state. Jude Howell, “Governance Matters: Key Challenges and Emerging Tendencies,” in Howell, ed., Governance in
China (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), pp. 1–19.
. “CPC Issues Document on Ruling Capacity,” China Daily, September 27, 2004.
. 17th National Party Congress of China’s Communist Party, “Full text of Constitution of Communist Party of China,” available online at the China Internet Information
Center, http://www.china.org.cn/english/congress/229722.htm.
. Hu Jintao, “Full Text of Hu Jintao’s Report at 17th Party Congress,” People’s
Daily, October 15, 2007.
Kerstin Klein
democratic oversight over cadres.” He also said that people will “enjoy
democratic rights in a more extensive and practical way” and that they will
have the right “to be informed, to participate, to be heard, and to oversee.”
His report further laid out plans “to improve institutions for democracy,
diversify its forms, and expand its channels” and “to carry out democratic
election, decision-making, administration, and oversight in accordance
with the law.”
The intentions of an authoritarian state to implement democratization
and citizen participation provide us with a puzzle. The use by Hu Jintao
of the language of “democratic rights” and “citizen participation” fundamentally contradicts our expectations of a one-party state, because the
idea that those affected by political decision-making should also be able
to participate in it is typically associated with Western liberal democracy.
According to conventional political theory, only representative democracies let political leaders and parties compete for electoral votes and let
citizens participate in processes by which political leaders are elected and
government policies are formed and implemented. For Robert Dahl, for
instance, political participation and competition are the two single most
essential dimensions only of modern democracy, while authoritarian
states are everything democracy is not. Illustrative of the dilemma that we
face when trying to make sense of political reforms in China is Alexander
de Tocqueville’s distinction of political regimes into those where power is
external to society (despotism or absolutism) and those where society “acts
by itself on itself” and “there is no power except for what emanates from
within” (democracy). How is it possible then to throw light on these new
developments in the context of political reform in China? If we take the
current administration’s ambitions seriously, as some native and Western
scholars in the field of China Studies have started to do, and if we accept
. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT: Yale UP,
1971), p. 4.
. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and
Delba Winthrop (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 141.
. See, for example, Baogang Guo, “Political Legitimacy and China’s Transition,”
Journal of Chinese Political Science 8, nos. 1/2 (2003); Doug Guthrie, China and Globalization: the Social, Economic and Political Transformation of Chinese Society (New York:
Routledge, 2006); Yu Keping, “Toward an Incremental Democracy and Governance: Chinese Theories and Assessment Criteria,” New Political Science 24, no. 2 (2002): 181–99;
Gunther Schubert, “One-Party Rule and the Question of Legitimacy in Contemporary
China: Preliminary Thoughts on Setting Up a New Research Agenda,” Journal of Contem-
“New Authoritarianism” in China from these accounts Keping’s notion of “incremental democracy” and
citizen participation in the authoritarian state, this challenges our familiar
diagnoses of authoritarianism and the future of liberal modernity.
Contradictory to a widespread pessimistic debate among political
scientists about the rise of China as an authoritarian great power is the
fact that all leadership generations after Mao have never denied many of
the problems created by the economic reform process. While it is established wisdom among the pessimists that the Communist regime has so far
rejected any meaningful reforms of the political system, all leaders after
Mao have in fact responded to these challenges and also acknowledged a
need for gradual political reform. In the Western mainstream literature, the
party is usually depicted as suffering from a fundamental legitimacy crisis.
This is not only so because its hold on power is illegitimate but, perhaps
even more so, because marketization and economic liberalism since the
late 1970s have brought about tremendous social and economic changes
and inequalities. The regime is also often seen to be facing greater legitimacy problems if rural and urban unrest against corruption, pollution, land
grabs, and other grievances continue to increase, which, ultimately, may
even inflict regime change. In contrast to this pessimism, however, Beijing
has shown remarkable adaptability to China’s changing social and political
environment. In large parts, reform has been a controlled and intentional
process, but unintended effects have occurred and continue to occur too.
The central government already faces far greater difficulties in compelling
lower levels of the government hierarchy to implement national policies
and obey official rules, and in keeping growing social unrest at bay.
This article will look at the implementation of a new structural and
normative framework for governance in the context of political reforms in
the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It will look at the capacity of the
Communist state to “invent” democracy and to generate legitimacy, rather
than focusing on the structural weaknesses and failures of the authoriporary China 17, no. 54 (2008): 191–204; Gary Sigley, “Liberal Despotism: Population
Planning, Government and Subjectivity in Contemporary China,” Alternatives 29, no. 5
(2004): 557–75; Brantley Womack, “Democracy and the Governing Party,” Journal of
Chinese Political Science 10, no. 1 (2005): 23–42.
. On this debate, see Azar Gat, “The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers, Foreign
Affairs 86, no.4 (2007): 59–69; Will Hutton, The Writing on the Wall: China and the West
in the 21st Century (London: Little Brown Group, 2006); Slavoj Žižek, “China’s Valley of
Tears? Is Authoritarian Capitalism the Future?” In These Times 31, no. 12 (2007).
. See Guthrie, China and Globalization, p. 227.
Kerstin Klein
tarian regime. The article is divided into three sections. The first section
revisits conventional political theory and examines what it tells us about
democratic and authoritarian systems. We shall see that they cannot make
sense of “new authoritarianism” due to dichotomies at their core.10 The
second section will look at the implementation of a new normative and
structural framework for governance and the course of political reforms in
the post-Mao state to the present. In order to analyze these processes, the
third section will follow a new wave of scholarly attention to the possibility of “hybrid” or “dual” configurations of political regimes. The last part
draws on contemporary literature and new developments in three areas of
scholarly enquiry: political theory, China Studies, and governmentality.
I. Democracy and Authoritarianism Revisited
Democracy, in its most original sense and as a normative ideal, means “rule
by the people.” It is a system of government in which political sovereignty
is retained by the people. In Greek city-states, members of the population
who were considered “citizens” held the right to political participation
and to make political decisions by direct votes on issues. Between two
alternative definitions of democracy as “minimalist” or “maximalist,”
“minimalists” stress democratic “procedures” like the election of political
leaders. The critic Joseph Schumpeter, for instance, defines democracy in
a minimalist sense as an “institutional arrangement for arriving at political
decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of
a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.”11 In contrast, maximalists
emphasize performance and the substance of policies or other outcomes of
the political process.
Pure democracy, however, is different from the system of representative government that has emerged over the past two centuries in the West.
When we speak about democracy today, what we actually have in mind
is “liberal democracy,” which as a political system is based on two different and sometimes conflicting elements: democracy and liberalism. John
Locke first introduced this association when he argued that a legislative
process based on majority rule is necessary to control and displace the
10. For the nature and problems of dichotomies, see Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Hybridity, So What?” Theory, Culture & Society 18, no. 2 (2001): 219–45.
11. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper
and Row, 1976), p. 269.
“New Authoritarianism” in China abuse of privileges by the monarch or nobility.12 Political liberalism is
thus equivalent to “constitutional liberalism.” The dual term emphasizes
“individual liberty,” and it is constitutional because it rests on the tradition of the “rule of law.” In order to protect individual autonomy from
coercion by whatever source, state, church, or society, liberalism focuses
on constitutional measures like representative government, the separation
of powers, “rule of law,” and checks on the power of each branch of government. Instead of emphasizing people’s rule or free and fair elections,
liberalism is primarily concerned with individual rights and liberties,
e.g., freedom of thought and expression, freedom of religion, freedom of
information, freedom of assembly and demonstration, freedom to form
and join organizations, and freedom from terror and unjustified imprisonment. For Michel Foucault, for instance, liberalism is therefore an internal
limitation of or critique against excessive government.13 The fundamental
liberal principle holds that any restriction on individual liberty by political
authority or by the law must be justified. Philosophically, this is associated
with figures like John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith,
John Stuart Mill, and Isaiah Berlin.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Robert Dahl developed an influential comparative theory of modern democracy based on the characteristics of
liberal democracy.14 According to Dahl, a procedural minimal condition
for modern democracy is the “continuing responsiveness of governments”
to the preferences and concerns of their citizens. Institutions that bring
about these opportunities are elected officials, free and fair elections, equal
rights to run for office, freedom of expression, the right to and availability
of alternative information, and association autonomy. The governed hold
their representatives accountable in two ways: through their participation
in the decision-making process and, afterward, in the electoral process.
The main forms that political participation can take are voting in local
and national elections or in referendums; campaigning in elections; active
membership in a political party and in political pressure groups; political
action (demonstrations, industrial strikes, etc.); membership in interestbased or consumer councils; and other forms of community action.
12. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. Crawford B. McPherson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980), pp. 52–64.
13. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France
1978–79, ed. Michel Senellart (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 37. See also
Sigley, “Liberal Despotism,” p. 562.
14. Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 35–37.
Kerstin Klein
Based on the liberal element that seeks to limit the scope and reach
of government in the name of preserving individual freedoms and the
democratic element based on the idea of “majority rule” expressed
through the electoral process, liberal democracy is an uneasy coupling of
two sometimes opposed components. Constitutional liberalism argues for
the limitation of state power, while democracy is about its accumulation
and use. For paradigmatic liberals, democracy is a force that threatens to
undermine individual liberties, and de Tocqueville for instance therefore
warned of the “tyranny of the majority,” when “the very essence of democratic government consists in the absolute sovereignty of the majority.”15
Philippe Schmitter has therefore pointed out that “liberalism, either as
a conception of political liberty or as a doctrine about economic policy,
may have coincided in some countries with the rise of democracy, but has
never been immutably or unambiguously linked to its practice.”16 While
constitutional liberalism often leads to democracy, democracy does not
necessarily bring about constitutional liberalism.17
At the opposite end of the spectrum are despotic states. Despotism in
the orient is a familiar image. Wittfogel delineated oriental despotism as
a major type of political system, which he contrasted with the feudalisms
of medieval Europe and Japan as well as the modern democracies of the
Western world.18 While the latter are multi-centered in the sense that the
state is checked and restrained by other strong and competing organizations (e.g., the church, craft and merchant guilds, or the private owners of
land and capital), oriental despotic states are stronger than society and citizens outside the ruling apparatus are essentially slaves of the state. While
the former systems offer greater protection for the individual, in despotism
all others outside of the leadership are subjects to sovereign power and
must be governed through force and coercion. In these systems, authorities
enhance sovereign power by limiting or violating the autonomy, rights,
and freedom of their citizens. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt describes the mechanisms of totalitarian power, focusing on
15. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, pp. 246–48.
16. Philippe Schmitter, “More Liberal, Preliberal, or Postliberal?” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 16
17. This argument has been made by Fareed Zakaria in “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (1997): 28.
18. Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: a Comparative Study of Total Power
(New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1957).
“New Authoritarianism” in China Nazism in Germany and Stalinism in Russia.19 The techniques of power
that totalitarian governments employ are the transformation of classes into
masses, the role of propaganda, and the use of terror essential to this form
of government.
Totalitarian movements differ from mere autocratic regimes in that the
latter seek to gain absolute political power by outlawing opposition, while
totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of the life of individuals as a prelude to world domination.20 In the post-Mao era, there is some
agreement that the Communist state has undergone a transformation from
a totalitarian monolithic bloc to an authoritarian system.21 In a single-party
authoritarian state, the lack of legitimate political competition guarantees the continued rule of the party in power, and in the Chinese state no
legitimate opposition is allowed to challenge the leadership.22 Those in
power are not elected in free, fair, and regularly held democratic elections,
and without formal elections the CPC has stayed in power since 1949. In
contrast to a system of checks and balances of power, China’s authoritarian system of government is top-down and rests on centralized executive
control. The ruling party monopolizes power, and access to power is
only granted through the party organization. Citizens are “silenced” and
excluded from participation in the formal political process.23 The following section will examine how the implementation of a new ideological and
structural framework for governance in the context of political reforms in
China has transformed the old authoritarian regime into a new kind.
II. Political Reforms in China
In order to distinguish themselves from their predecessor, all leaders after
Mao have put considerable effort into political reforms to prevent the
recurrence of a similar kind of abuse of power. All post-Mao leaders have
also acknowledged that economic reforms can only be pursued further
if they are also complemented by political reforms. Although China has
19. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1968).
20. Ibid.
21. See, for example, Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin A. Winckler, Governing China’s
Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2005):
p. 310.
22. Wenfang Tang, Public Opinion and Political Change in China (Stanford, CA:
Stanford UP, 2005), p. 14.
23. Nie Jing-Bao, Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005).
Kerstin Klein
borrowed strength from capitalism and is eager to accept Western technology, science, investment, and trade, it is much more reserved toward
Western political systems. When Beijing talks about political reforms and
“people’s democracy,” it does not refer to Western-style liberal democracy
and its institutions, such as the separation of power, a multi-party system,
and parliamentary democracy, as outlined earlier. “Chinese democracy”
as the system of People’s Congresses is seen as the only viable option
for the nation. Despite their willingness to conduct political reforms, all
party leaders agree that the continued leadership by the party is the only
pathway to modernity, for only the CPC is seen as able to guarantee political stability and prevent society from falling into chaos. At a meeting of
the National People’s Congress (NPC) in early 2009, China’s top legislator, Wu Bangguo, who is the NPC’s current chairman and second highest
ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee, reasserted that
“Western models of democracy, which emphasize multi-party competition
for power, the separation of three branches of government, and bicameralism, is not suitable for China.”24
New Structural Framework for Governance
Since the start of economic reforms in the late 1970s, all administrations
have worked hard to find new ways to align the market-oriented reforms
with one-party rule. The implementation of structural changes started
under Deng, who took a strictly instrumental approach to political reforms.
In a speech held in March 1979, Deng launched a new course of socialist
reforms, following the “four cardinal principles” for keeping to the socialist road: uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, uphold the leadership
of the Communist Party, and uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong
Thought.25
Local State and People’s Congress System
The local state has become a key site of political reform in the Dengist era.
In 1979, new election law amended original legislation from 1953. The
“Election Law of the Representatives of the National People’s Congress
24. “Highlights of NPC Chairman Wu Bangguo’s Work Report,” China Daily,
March 9, 2009.
25. Deng Xiaopeng “Speech on March 30 1979: Uphold the Four Cardinal Principles,” in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, 1975–1982, vol. 2, ed. Editorial Committee for
Party Literature, Central Committee of the CPC (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1983).
“New Authoritarianism” in China (NPC) and the Local People’s Congress at All Levels” stipulated that delegates of the People’s Congresses at and below the county level must be
elected directly by the voters. The NPC and its local branches, the Local
People’s Congresses, form the legislative branch of the government.26 For
Brantley Womack, one indicator of democratization in China would be
the greater autonomy of government organizations.27 Whereas in the past,
the NPC has been a pro-forma institution, passing whatever law had been
brought forward by the party, there is an observable trend since the 1990s of
the NPC operating more independently and sometimes even in opposition
to the party. There is a tendency for deputies and congress sub-committees
to seek more independence. Debate has become so common in the operation of the body that it indicates a newly forming independent identity of
the NPC similar to legislatures in liberal democratic systems.28 However,
the lack of free elections at the highest level of the administration continues to be the most important distinction between China’s political system
and parliamentary democracies.
Villager’s Self-Governance
The proposal to have political reforms started in earnest after a meeting of
the Politburo on August 18, 1980, where Deng delivered a speech “On the
Reform of the System of the Party and State Leadership.”29 Following his
speech, the climate for political debate about democracy gradually began
to open up. In 1986, Deng set up a working group to examine the possibilities of political reforms. Many of Deng’s proposals on party-state relations,
tenure of cadres, leadership, bureaucratic styles, and other problems were
discussed by reform-minded officials, most notably then Premier Zhao
Ziyang.30 While Deng himself was cautious and opted for a very limited
and strictly instrumental approach to reforms, general secretary Zhao
Ziyang sympathized with the reformist cause. Ambitions were also discussed to separate the party from the state, to introduce some checks and
balances, to establish democracy within the party, and to gradually build
26. In a liberal democracy of checks and balances, the legislative body operates
independently from the executive body. This defines the balance of power between the
executive, judiciary, and legislative branches.
27. Womack, “Democracy and the Governing Party,” p. 34.
28. Schubert, “One-Party Rule,” p. 197.
29. Deng, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, 1975–1982.
30. Barry Sautmann, “Sirens of the Strongman: Neo-Authoritarianism in Recent Chinese Political Theory,” China Quarterly 129 (1992): 77.
10 Kerstin Klein
grassroots democracy with greater protection of civil rights and liberties.
However, the debate that took place remained within the limits of “neoauthoritarianism,” a doctrine new to the PRC. Inspired by conservative
development theory31 and the experiences of other East Asian economies,
notably the “Four Small Dragons” (as the Chinese call their successful
neighbors, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong), reformers argued in the direction of an “enlightened autocracy.”32 Among two
schools of neo-authoritarians, one viewed the doctrine as a reaction to the
failures of parliamentary democracy in developing countries in the early
stages of modernization, and the other saw in it a stage that all countries
have to pass through in their transition from an old authoritarian system
to modern democracy. What was characteristic for the neo-authoritarian
reform debate in the mid-1980s was that after a decade of Deng Xiaoping–inspired reforms, Marxist doctrine had been removed from political
discourse.
The initiative of the working group led to a formal proposal, at the
13th National Party Congress in 1987, to have political reforms. In October of the same year, the Central Committee approved the reform plan,
and one month later the Standing Committee also agreed to the proposal
of an experimental law, the Organic Law on Villagers’ Committees, which
stipulated villagers self-rule (cunmin zizhi) and the idea that villagers
govern their own affairs. As China’s rural areas were particularly affected
by economic development, the fast pace of modernization created severe
ruptures in local power arrangements and drastic changes in the daily
interaction between party cadres and local villagers. The reformers promoted the idea of villager’s self-rule in order to be able to manage these
collusions.33 The law stipulated “democratic elections” (minzhu xuanju) of
the villagers’ committee and “democratic supervision” (minzhu jiandu),
and it prohibited upper government bodies or local branches of the party
31. The debate was centred on the idea of the role of centralized power in the process
of modernization. Samuel Huntington at Harvard University emphasized the need to institutionalize politics in developing countries by creating authoritative sources of leadership.
See, for instance, Samuel Huntington, Political Order in a Changing Society (New Haven,
CT: Yale UP, 1968).
32. The relative prosperity, stability, and longevity of the Dragon regimes stipulated
a neo-authoritarian solution also in China. A key reason to adopt this model is the interventionist role of the state.
33. This argument has been made by Linda Jakobson, “Local Governance: Village
and Township Direct Elections,” in Howell, Governance in China, pp. 97–120.
“New Authoritarianism” in China 11
to interfere in villagers’ own affairs.34 The “villagers’ committee” (cunmin
weiyuanhui) as a grassroots innovation has been made permanent by Jiang
Zemin in November 1998.35
There is no central database for village elections, and it is unclear
how many of China’s 930,000 villages have already held competitive and
free elections in which villagers have nominated candidates among themselves and elected their representatives.36 Judging by procedures alone,
balloting has been carried out in every province, with Guangdong, Hainan,
and Yunnan finally conducting their first elections in 1999 and Tibet in
2002.37 For Yu Keping, a leader of a Chinese government think tank, the
fact that approximately 800 million Chinese people are local peasants
makes the democratic impact of villagers’ self-governance significant.38
In many parts of the country, the institutionalization of village elections
has not been free of obstacles. These include tensions between elected
village committees and village branches of the party, the interference of
upper authorities in the electoral process and village governance, and local
cadres sometimes ignoring and even violating peasants’ democratic rights.
According to these authors, the procedures of village elections in rural
China improved greatly over the past twenty years, and a good number of
reasonably free and fair elections have been held.
Rule of Law
At the structural level, legal reforms have probably done the most to create
legitimacy. The implementation of a socialist “rule of law” in China is a
gradual, long-term process that started in the aftermath of the “Cultural
Revolution” (1966–76), when many in the Party acknowledged that the
main reason for its tragedies was the fact that there existed no “rule of law”
34. Village self-governance has four key elements: first, village leaders and the
members of village committees are directly elected by villagers; second, it grants villagers
the right to assembly, in order for major decisions on plans and projects to be approved
and decided by the villagers’ assembly; third, it stipulates the regular publication of village political and financial affairs; and fourth, it foresees that village affairs are managed
according to villagers’ own rules and regulations.
35. Jakobson, “Local Governance,” p. 98.
36. Ibid., p. 99.
37. Kevin J. O’Brien and Han Rongbin, “Path to Democracy? Assessing Village
Elections in China,” Journal of Contemporary China 18, no. 60 (2009): 359–60.
38. Keping, “Toward an Incremental Democracy and Governance,” p. 187.
12 Kerstin Klein
but a “rule of men.”39 Deng started to implement a basic system of rule of
law. Initial laws in the early reform era aimed at combatting criminality
and the development of property laws, but in the 1990s two important
legal acts were passed. In 1990, the Administrative Litigation Act and, in
1995, the National Compensation Law now effectively granted Chinese
citizens new rights to take legal action against the government, individuals, or other bodies and to claim compensation for grievances. William
Alford has noted that these acts were significant for legal development
in China.40 Whereas the participants in the Tiananmen Square movement
were still operating outside the framework of institutionalized law and
branded as the “enemies of the state,” today political victims have legal
instruments at hand by which they can criticize the state. As a result of the
enforcement of these two acts, political victims now have at least some
instruments at their disposal that they can use to criticize the state and
to make their opinion public. Citizens can and do make use of their new
options to bring complaints to higher levels in the bureaucracy in order
to resolve cases of corruption, forced settlement, land grabs, and other
miscarriages of justice. For Alford, the mere act of filing a complaint also
“enables litigants to juxtapose publicly the gap between the state’s professed ideals and lived reality with a rare drama, clarity and moral force.”41
When this happens, the local media regularly report about cases in which
Chinese citizens have brought suit against injustice.
Inner-Party Democracy
Recognizing that one-party rule competed with other political models, the
17th National Party Congress in 2007 brought the structural implementation of a new framework for governance to a new level by introducing the
principle of inner-party democracy.42 Inner-party democracy means that
ordinary party members can exert more influence on the election of leading cadres and thus the formulation of party politics and public policies.
It is also intended to make inner-party decision-making more transparent
and accountable. The NPC for the first time made use of the secret ballot at
the 17th Party Congress in 2007 in the election of the Central Committee
39. Ibid., p. 188.
40. William P. Alford, “Double-edged Swords Cut Both Ways: Law and Legitimacy
in the People’s Republic of China,” Daedalus 122, no. 2 (1993): 58.
41. Ibid.
42. 17th National Party Congress, “Full text of Constitution of Communist Party of
China.”
“New Authoritarianism” in China 13
of the Party (around 300 members). However, inner-party democracy is
also a limited concept with regard to the Central Committee continuing
to elect—without competitive elections and among itself only—the Politburo and the Standing Committee, the highest decision-making bodies
in China. When in the late 1980s the climate for political debate further
loosened, the situation imploded when students began to protest and lead
public demonstrations on Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. The
pro-democracy movement threatened the status quo of the party and was
crushed by the military. For years to come, the bloody events on June 4,
1989, squashed any further attempts by the Chinese people to call for
political reform.
New Normative Debate about Governance
Based on the structural implementation of political reforms initiated by
Deng, Jiang Zemin endorsed groundbreaking ideological changes and
initiated a new normative debate about governance in China. Jiang Zemin
came to power in the wake of the student protests, replacing Zhao Ziyang,
who was purged for being too conciliatory toward the protestors, and he
became the new paramount leader after Deng’s death in 1997. At the 80th
anniversary of the CPC in July 2001, Jiang Zemin delivered a groundbreaking speech, in which he made a number of innovative proposals for
the political “modernization of the nation.”43 Although Jiang’s proposals
initially were perceived with much skepticism, in the following years
many of his controversial proposals gradually started to become embraced
by party members and significantly influenced the development of the
constitution of the party in the course of the 16th and 17th National Party
Congresses in 2002 and 2007.
Three Representations
At the center of Jiang’s speech has been the idea that privatization and
market reform created new social factors in Chinese society. Jiang Zemin
therefore proposed a new social campaign of the “Three Representations”
(san ge daibiao).44 The official definition of the concept is as follows:
43. Jiang Zemin, “Full Text of Jiang Zemin’s Speech at CPC Anniversary Gathering,” Xinhua News Agency July 1, 2001.
44. Womack, “Democracy and the Governing Party,” pp. 23–24. See also Joseph
Fewsmith, “Studying the Three Represents,” China Leadership Monitor, no. 8 (2003).
14 Kerstin Klein
“Three Representations”: on the importance of the communist party in
modernizing the nation—representing the demands for the development
of advanced social productive forces, the direction of advanced culture,
and the fundamental interests of the greatest majority of the people.45
The first “Represent,” the new advanced social productive force,
refers to China’s new private sector elite. The second Represent, advanced
culture, possibly means a commitment to cultural diversity, but it can also
be interpreted as the inoculation of socialist morality and Marxist ideology. The third Represent, the fundamental interests of the majority of the
people, calls on a democratic principle. The Three Represents symbolized a profound ideological shift because, as formulated in Jiang Zemin’s
speech, the “greatest majority of the people” comprises in particular
entrepreneurs and technical personnel employed by scientific and technical enterprises of the non-public sector, managerial and technical staff
employed by foreign-funded enterprises, the self-employed, private entrepreneurs, employees in intermediaries, and freelance professionals.46
New Party Members: the Private Sector Elite
The new guiding ideology of the Three Represents made it possible for the
CPC to officially admit people from the new private sector as new members of the party.47 Whereas in the past, only workers and soldiers were
allowed to become new party members, while capitalists and the owners
of the means of production were considered to be class enemies, the “new
private sector” specifically comprises the new private owners and capitalists. In order to justify this highly controversial ideological rift, Jiang
Zemin had to make the boundaries between the categories of “capitalist”
and “proletarian” more vague. An important passage in his anniversary
speech demonstrates his innovative reformulation of the “working class”:
Now, we have adopted the basic economic system under which public
ownership plays a dominant role in the national economy while other
forms of ownership develop side by side. . . . Consequently some work45. “The ‘Three Represents’ Theory,” Xinhua, June 25, 2001.
46. Zemin, “Full Text of Jiang Zemin’s Speech.”
47. Heike Holbig, “Ideological Reform and Political Legitimacy in China: Challenges in the Post-Jiang Era,” GIGA Working Paper Series, no.18 (2006).
“New Authoritarianism” in China 15
ers have changed their jobs. But this has not changed the status of the
Chinese working class. On the contrary, this will serve to improve the
overall quality of the working class and give play to its advantages as a
group in the long run.48
The move was possible by rendering entrepreneurs and the new occupational group of private business owners into “workers who have changed
their jobs” (yixie gongren qunzhong de gongzuo gangwei fasheng
bianhua).
Traditionalists inside and outside of the party initially were highly dissatisfied with Jiang’s proposals and pointed at the irony of the situation that
the former targets of the Communist dictatorship, the capitalists, were now
being recruited into the party. In order to legitimize the campaign of the
Three Represents, the new president Hu Jintao, who took office in 2002,
maintained the slogan but subtly modified it by shifting its emphasis from
the first to the third Represent—that is, from the emphasis to represent the
new private industrial sector to a greater emphasis on the representation of
the fundamental interests of the greater majority of the people. By doing
so, Hu created a more “people-centered” version of the Three Represents
and officially endorsed the new guiding ideology as part of the party constitution at the 16th National Party Congress in 2002.49 According to the
new constitution, the party is now “devoted to the public interest and to
governing for the people” and declares that it “must exercise its power for
the people, have passion for the people, and seek benefits for the people.”
At the same time, however, it can recruit businessmen, intellectuals, and
professionals into the party and acknowledges that the new private sector
elite has become an important social factor in Chinese society.
Harmonious Society
In the implementation of a new normative framework for governance, the
Hu administration put in place another campaign, the harmonious society
(shehuizhuyi hexie shehui), which sought to prevent the deepening of new
social conflicts from the rising social inequalities in Chinese society. It
envisioned a society in which all people will do their best, each individual
will have his or her proper place, and everybody will get along in harmony
48. Zemin, “Full Text of Jiang Zemin’s Speech.”
49. 16th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, “Full Text of
Constitution of Communist Party of China,” People’s Daily, November 18, 2002.
16 Kerstin Klein
with each other. The concept of the harmonious society was first mentioned
in the resolution of the 16th Party Congress in November 2002, but the 4th
Plenary Session in September 2004 defined it as “a society built on democracy and rule of law, justice and equality, trust and truthfulness, amity and
vitality, order and stability, and a harmonious relation with nature.”50
Although appearing “liberal,” ideologically the campaign is interlinked in a peculiar way with a traditional Confucian moral of governance.
On the one side, Chinese citizens are stipulated to play their part in the
nation’s economic development, but on the other hand they are expected
to subscribe to the paternalistic ethics of Confucian morality.51 The idea
of social harmony originally was promoted by Confucius, for whom
hierarchies in human society were natural and symbiotic. According to
Confucius’s teachings, if each member of society would be content to do
its duty according to its particular place in society and with an accepting
state of mind, everyone would benefit and society would move toward a
higher state of civilization.
Today’s campaign of the “harmonious Socialist society” also calls on
everyone to accept his or her place in the new society, despite the new
social imbalances and stratifications that were created by marketization
and economic liberalization. By doing so, as Heike Holbig points out,
the leadership attempts to solve potential conflicts from new rising social
inequalities right at their roots.52 The campaign seeks to bridge the gap
between those now standing on opposite sides of the new market economy,
the new private sector elite of high-salaried modern professionals, on the
one side, and workers, the migrant population, and peasants, on the other
side. Although the campaign may seem opportunistic from a Western point
of view, Gunther Schubert argues that the Communist regime’s new focus
on social equality may indeed help the party to regain a critical level of
support from those it alienated since the start of reforms.53
Governing Party
The party has taken further remarkable steps in implementing a new normative and ideological framework for governance in China. At the 4th
Plenary Session of the CPC in September 2004, the party issued a new
50. “Premier Wen Stresses Building of a Harmonious Society,” Sina, March 15, 2005.
51. Holbig, “Ideological Reform and Political Legitimacy in China,” p. 29.
52. Ibid., p. 30.
53. Schubert, “One-Party Rule and the Question of Legitimacy,” p. 196.
“New Authoritarianism” in China 17
Resolution on Developing the Party’s Governing Capacity (zhong gong
zhongyang guanyu jiaqiang dang de zhizheng nengli jianshe), in which
it outlined a new vision to become a “governing party” (zhizheng dang),
sometimes also translated as “ruling party.”54 The new idea is meant to
underline that the Communist regime no longer understands itself as a
“revolutionary party,” but that it seeks to adjust its ideology, wherever
necessary, and to make the party-state structure, created by the revolution,
more adaptable to a changed, new and more complex social environment.
However, this does not mean that the party seeks to adjust the government
structure similar to other modern governments. Aware that the CPC competes with other modern systems of government, it serves as an attempt
to preserve the party structure under modern conditions. The Resolution
stresses that the fate of Chinese socialism, the fate of the Chinese people,
and the fate of the Communist Party of China hang upon the successful adaptation of the leadership to the challenges of the new prosperous
country.55
The Right “to Know” and “to Participate”
In the new vein of “putting people first” and becoming a “governing party,”
the 17th National Party Congress instituted a new concept of citizenship
that pushes forward the notion that people will “enjoy democratic rights in
a more extensive way.”56 It promises citizens the “right to know” and also
alludes to the idea that Chinese people have new rights “to participate [in
politics], to express their views and to supervise the administration.” In
his report to the congress, Hu Jintao expressed his willingness to deepen
the reform process by gradually increasing citizen participation in politics
at the grassroots level and under the rule of law.57 Taking effect on May 1,
2008, the State Council released a new set of Regulations of the Disclosure
of Government Information, which requires government departments at all
levels to disclose government information and to provide the public free
access to this information. Information required for disclosure includes the
department structure, administrative function, official work, and administrative documents. The deputy minister of finance, Yuan Guangrui,
54. “CPC Issues Document on Ruling Capacity,” China Daily, September 27, 2004.
55. Womack, “Democracy and the Governing Party,” p. 23.
56. 17th National Party Congress, “Full Text of Constitution of Communist Party of
China.”
57. Hu Jintao, “Full Text of Hu Jintao’s Report to the 17th Party Congress.”
18 Kerstin Klein
commented on the new decree that it is designed to “improve transparency
and protect the right to know and public scrutiny of officials.”58
In fact, the act means that government transparency has now become
a statutory obligation that can be overseen by the courts. The scope of
the disclosure of government information remains limited by a catch-all
phrase of exemptions. Government bureaus are prohibited from releasing
information involving “state secrets, confidential commercial information, and individual’s privacy,” which provides a major loophole because
bureaucrats remain able to conceal information that otherwise should have
been legitimately disseminated. Given China’s culture of secrecy and the
habit of the bureaucracy to withhold information that could embarrass the
government, the new legal act is in principle a leap forward.
Further efforts include the enhancement of the autonomy and democratic
surveillance of the People’s Congresses through the institutionalization
of public hearing systems to provide congresses with more independent
input on draft policies. In March 2000, the 3rd Plenary Session of the
9th NPC passed a Legislation Law (zhonghua renmin gongheguo lifa fa)
that consolidates the authority of the NPC over other lawmaking bodies
and makes possible a more open and consultative legislative process.59
The law authorizes but does not require public legislative hearings (lifa
tingzheng) that incorporate citizen participation in the policy process. It
does not mandate its use, but local people’s congresses and administrative
bodies at all levels already have started to make use of this new legislative
mechanism for draft policies.60
This is as far as a new framework for governance has been debated
and implemented to date. The new normative debate about the “Three
Represents” and the party as a “governing party” has directly contributed
to a greater emphasis on laws and their administration, as the makeover of
a former revolutionary and workers party into a modern governing party
requires the institutionalization of procedural regularities. Hence, the new
normative framework for governance has put further pressure on the insti58. “China Urges Free Government Information Disclosure,” China Daily, July 23,
2008.
59. National People Congress, “Legislation Law of the People’s Republic of China
(Order of the President No. 31),” March 15, 2000, available online at the Chinese Government’s Official Web Portal, http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-08/20/content_29724.
htm.
60. See Schubert, “One-Party Rule and the Question of Legitimacy,” p. 197.
“New Authoritarianism” in China 19
tutionalization and structural implementation of the rule of law and its
oversight.
III. Conceptualizing “New Authoritarianism” in China
Political reforms, as far as they have been implemented to date, have
made the Communist regime neither democratic nor fully accountable to
its citizens, but there is nevertheless some agreement that China’s political
regime has gradually become more open, more accountable, and even,
if only incrementally, more democratic. A new wave of scholarly attention in the field of China Studies has looked into the possibility that the
regime’s past efforts to re-invent the one-party state have gone to some
lengths in reconciling party rule with some new rights and liberties of
its citizens. Although a one-party state is profoundly illegitimate, if one
means by “legitimacy” Dahl’s notion of the representative right to rule as
the outcome of the electoral process, this does not sufficiently take into
account the intentions of the Chinese illiberal state to increase “democratization” and “citizen participation.” In order to be able to capture the
formation of a new form of authoritarian statehood, the following draws
on new debates at the margins of China studies, political theory and governmentality studies, which open up new perspectives on political systems
as dual or hybrid.
Political Theory
In the past, political theory has mainly looked at differences “between”
political systems, but some political scientists have started to probe
important new questions about differences “within” political systems as
well. What about political systems that are astride or between categories,
and what about those that combine characteristics? In other words, how
can we make sense of difference “within” a single political system, and
what if a system is “between” categories or if it combines characteristics?
Since the late 1970s, China has maintained a policy of authoritarianism
and economic liberalism, but the implementation of a new normative and
structural framework for governance in the context of political reforms
provides us with an even more puzzling question about how exclusionary
democracy really is with respect to authoritarian techniques of government, and vice versa.
In Thinking about Hybrid Regimes, Larry Diamond offers one answer
to this puzzle. For him, political systems often combine different ele-
20 Kerstin Klein
ments, and a combination of both democratic and authoritarian elements
in a singular political system is a more widespread phenomenon than
acknowledged by contemporary political theory.61 If regime classification
once was a simple question, today’s empirical reality in many countries,
Diamond contends, is a lot messier. Even if we apply a minimalist definition of democracy, the electoral standard, then questions remain as to what
constitutes “fair and free” elections and how we can know that parties
have had a fair chance to campaign, e.g., in countries like Russia, Nigeria,
and Indonesia. In many instances, political theorists are unable to classify
systems that are more ambiguous or “hybrid.” For Diamond, we are still
far away from even agreeing on what constitutes “democracy,” and what
it is not, and therefore we struggle to classify regimes that fall through
this distinction.62 As comparative politics now returns with new concepts
and data to some of the same old questions about the form and dynamic
of authoritarianism, more attention needs to be paid to the various and
“new” types of authoritarian rule. As political regimes are often mixed to
one degree or another, Diamond proposes that every step toward political
liberalism has to be taken into account in order to better understand mixed
regimes. Even if liberal democracy is the most stable form of democracy,
the continued liberalization of the party-state and the implementation of
new constitutional rights still results in a “soft” form of authoritarianism
that is preferable to the older one.
In The Rise of Illiberal Democracy, Fareed Zakaria points at the
paradox of “illiberal” or “pseudo-democracy”: because governments are
elected in free and fair democratic elections does not necessarily mean
that they also respect constitutional limits of their power.63 Occasionally,
“illiberal democratic” regimes may deprive citizens of their constitutional
rights and freedoms. Popular leaders in Russia and Argentina, for example,
regularly bypass their parliaments to rule by presidential decree, thereby
eroding the basic rights and liberties of their citizens. Although Iran has
the freest electoral system among the whole of the Middle East, it imposes
harsh restrictions on speech, assembly, and many other basic rights and
liberties. As an empirical reality, “illiberal democracy” has long been
unrecognized, as Zakaria notes, because democracy and liberal democracy
61. Larry Diamond. “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 13,
no. 2 (2002): 22.
62. Ibid., p. 21.
63. Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” p. 23.
“New Authoritarianism” in China 21
usually are equated.64 The latter is not only characterized by free and fair
elections but also by constitutional liberalism, which implies a rule of law,
separation of powers, checks and balances of power, and the protection
of individual rights and liberties like speech, assembly, religion, property,
etc. While it is easy to implement democratic elections, Zakaria points out
that countries do not always also necessarily move to constitutionalism,
so that problems of governance in the twenty-first century will be those
“within” democracy.65
At the same time, the absence of free and fair elections in China does
not also necessarily entail evidence of tyranny. While democratic elections are an important virtue of a political system, as Zakaria points out, a
regime also needs to be judged on the basis of whether and to what extent
it grants and respects constitutional liberties.66 Although China lacks
competitive multi-party elections at any significant level of the formal
political system, the Communist regime has taken some significant steps
toward constitutional reform, as in the implementation of a basic rule of
law and, most importantly, in the new constitutional acts of litigation and
compensation, the right of villagers to govern their own affairs, the right
of citizens to elect congress members at the county level, and the new
right of citizens to the disclosure of government information. Even though
there is no doubt that the Communist state remains a repressive regime
with a deeply troubling record in terms of human rights and the treatment
of political dissidents, citizens are granted more autonomy and liberties
today than they have had in generations.
China Studies
Many in the field of China studies agree that the Chinese system has
dramatically opened up and that it has become far more pluralistic, in
comparison for instance with the 1970s, most of the 1980s, after the
Tiananmen Square incident, and the first years of the 1990s. There is no
longer a rigid system of grassroots control that oversaw the lives of each
and every member of society at the level of work units or neighborhood
committees. In the reform era, managers and bureaucrats no longer require
their workers to attend meetings to disseminate party ideology and initiate
mass campaigns. Gone, too, is the mass terror of the Mao era. The transi64. Ibid., p. 22.
65. Ibid., p. 42.
66. Ibid., pp. 40–41.
22 Kerstin Klein
tion from a Maoist totalitarianism to an authoritarian system in the Dengist
era has been further complemented by the implementation of democratization and participation in certain sectors of society.
Native as well as Western China scholars have started to capture these
developments in more nuanced accounts. In One-Party Rule and the Question of Legitimacy in Contemporary China, Gunter Schubert for instance
argues that there is mounting evidence that three decades of economic
and gradual political reforms have created qualitative changes of governance in China.67 Far from observing a legitimacy crisis for the current
administration, Schubert argues that the new framework for governance
has engendered a critical degree of legitimacy at the micro-political level,
which could aide the regime to sustain, if not even increase, its hold on
power for a longer time. Implicit in his proposition is the rationale that
under the non-negotiable condition of a single-party state, a “people’s”
party is perceived to be more legitimate to rule than a class-based party.68
Similarly, a party that has social concerns and seeks to integrate the interests of all members of society by creating a “harmonious society” is also
regarded as more legitimate than a party that declares that it is fine for
some to get rich first.
In Democracy and the Governing Party, Bobby Womack makes a
much more radical proposition. For Womack, the campaign of the “Three
Represents” and the notion of the “governing party” directly contribute to
the further institutionalization of the rule of law and the need for rules and
legal mechanisms in China, which make the one-party state increasingly
similar to what he terms “party-state democracy.”69 The goal of party-state
democracy is the achievement of the effective power of the people within
the framework of a single political party that cannot be challenged by
other political parties. According to Womack, this type of democracy has
two main characteristics: the CPC has the privilege to hold power, and the
state is the administrative organ of public affairs.70 Although party-state
democracy is fundamentally different from liberal democracy, Womack
asserts that it is not possible to deny that Hu Jintao’s ambition to turn the
party into a long-term governing party and to improve the relationship
between society and the state will make China more rather than less demo67. Schubert, “One-Party Rule and the Question of Legitimacy,” p. 204.
68. Ibid., p. 196.
69. Womack, “Democracy and the Governing Party,” p. 25.
70. Ibid., p. 36.
“New Authoritarianism” in China 23
cratic.71 Womack argues that, following the fulfilment of these promises,
China’s political path could increasingly parallel that of modern legislative democracies: representative institutions and the rule of law would
be strengthened; citizen participation would be increasingly encouraged,
particularly at the grassroots level; religious freedom would be respected;
and people would likely be satisfied with their government, which in turn
would increase the legitimacy of the party. In the last few years, there is
also a growing pattern of the government being more responsive to and
showing greater concern for public opinion and the media. This happened,
for example, in the later stages of the SARS epidemic in 2003 and again in
the 2008 earthquake disaster in Sichuan Province.
Although political reforms in China have widely been neglected, there
have been indications of a gradual and measured transformation for more
than a decade now. In China and Globalization: the Social, Economic and
Political Transformation of Chinese Society, Doug Guthrie argues that
the institutions that support democracy are much more complex than the
simplistic democratic ideal of the right to freely elect political leaders in
a competitive multi-party system.72 While for some the creation of new
institutions and the implementation of democracy at the grassroots level
in China are merely a pro forma process, for Guthrie they are significant
improvements that have set the Communist regime on an inevitable path
to gradual democratization. One effect of this process is that the party is
now more limited in the extent to which it can control citizens. While economic liberalization and marketization were the preconditions for these
changes, they have moved Chinese society toward greater autonomy from
party control. In the new market society, alternative career paths are now
possible and independent from party or ideological conformity. New economic and organizational actors also have made it possible for information
to flow more freely.
Governmentality Studies
Parts of a different government literature that builds on the work of Michel
Foucault have made some significant points about liberal governance itself.
In Despotism and Ethical Liberal Governance, Marianna Valverde has
suggestively pointed out that Anglo-Saxon theorizations of liberal governance, by avoiding ontological presuppositions about either individuals
71. Ibid.
72. Guthrie, China and Globalization, pp. 257–304.
24 Kerstin Klein
or collectivities, run the danger of ontologizing liberal governance as a
quasi “liberal ethos.”73 Instead, according to Valverde, liberal governance
can never be coherent or identical to its own premises. This is due to a
persistent duality of different modes of governance that occurs at two levels: at the level of government, because “ethical despotism” is essentially
imbued in all attempts by states to “improve” or manage the habits of the
population and the individual; and at the level of the paradigmatic liberal
subject itself, which seeks to govern itself and control its “passions” (e.g.,
alcohol or smoking addictions) by means of non-liberal restrictive forms
of self-regimentation.
Liberal systems of governance therefore also have at their core contradictory and dual modes of governmental reasoning. Illiberal and despotic
measures are constitutive and not contradictory for liberal governance,
because liberal governments manage their populations by dividing them
into those individuals or sub-populations considered to be able to govern
themselves self-responsibly and freely, as opposed to others regarded as in
need of help or guidance. In The Liberal Government of Unfreedom, Barry
Hindess points out that citizens as subjects requiring “improvement” may
become the legitimate targets of coercive, restrictive, and oppressive measures of allegedly liberal governments.74 For instance, the provision of
social services to immigrant or poor communities is sometimes associated
with decidedly illiberal and coercive practices of interventions into the
lives of individuals.
In Liberal Despotism: Population Planning, Government and Subjectivity in Contemporary China, Gary Sigley applies this new debate in
the field of governmentality studies in China. According to Sigley, from
the ways in which authoritarian and illiberal measures are constitutive to
the ways that liberal government operates, authoritarian states are as despotic toward their entire population as ostensibly liberal governments are
toward certain sections or spaces of society.75 While Sigley argues that this
way of understanding illiberal measures challenges our understanding of
what is inherently wrong with authoritarianism, since it appears that such
measures are entirely acceptable when it comes to securing the “optimal”
73. Marianna Valverde, “‘Despotism’ and Ethical Liberal Governance,” Economy
and Society 25, no. 3 (1996): 357–72.
74. Barry Hindess, “The Liberal Government of Unfreedom,” Alternatives 26, no. 2
(2001): 93–111.
75. Sigley, “Liberal Despotism,” p. 563.
“New Authoritarianism” in China 25
conditions for the governance of liberal societies, it also raises the question of whether authoritarian governments may also then draw on liberal
measures in order to manage or “improve” their populations. Is it also possible that there are liberal moments in authoritarian population control?
Conclusions
Since 1978, the CPC has reshaped the PRC into a market-based and
globally integrated economy, society, and culture, and it has labeled this
project “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” After three decades of
government-initiated market and gradual political reform, the regime
remains a centralized, hierarchical, one-party state committed to building
socialism, but the PRC is now being run with a number of core political
and economic contradictions. This article has sought to contribute to a
rethinking of political regimes as hybrid or dual, even in the case of liberal
governance itself.
In reality, the scope of political reforms is smaller than party propaganda and official discourse make it seem. In terms of the structural
implementation of democracy and participation, the regime has identified “safe” sectors in the political system that either are not part of the
formal levels of the government system (e.g., villagers’ self-rule) or do
not threaten the status quo of the party (e.g., inner-party democracy).76
In reality, litigants often also do not attain their stated objectives and in
some cases may be sent back home, where furious local officials seek to
revenge their humiliation. One must also not overlook China’s bad record
on human rights. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment affirms long-standing allegations of such practices.77 Also not encouraging is the fact that most of the
76. The five formal levels of government are the central government (zhong yang),
provincial governments (sheng), district/city governments (dishi), county governments
(xian), and township governments (xiang). Each of these levels comprises two parallel
governing bodies, a Central Committee of the CCP and an administration. The Central
Committee normally has the highest authority and makes decisions on matters of strategic or political importance, e.g., the appointment of officials, promotions, etc. Rui Wang,
“Travelling Uncharted Waters: The Exchange of Government Information between the US
and China,” Journal of Government Information 25, no. 4 (1998): 353–58.
77. Office of the UN High Commission on Human Rights, “Mission to China,” Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment
(E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6), March 10, 2006, available online at http://www.universalhumanrightsindex.org/documents/844/813/document/en/pdf/text.pdf.
26 Kerstin Klein
issues about which people can voice their opinions and hope to see some
resolution involve parochial or lower-level political issues, ranging from
personal welfare to public policy concerns like inflation, the environment,
and public services.78 There is not much evidence that the higher levels of
the party are responsive to broader political issues and challenges.
Despite the implementation of a new framework for governance, the
central government still does not tolerate citizen participation in discussions about the people’s form of government. On December 25, 2009, a
Chinese intellectual and human rights activist was sentenced to eleven
years in prison following one year of pre-trial detention over his involvement in the drafting of Charta 08, a blueprint for fundamental political
change in China.79 The Charta criticizes the gradualist reforms of the government and demands an end to some of its essential features, such as
one-party rule, and its replacement with a system based on human rights
and parliamentary democracy. According to Amnesty International, Liu
Xiaobo’s sentence was the harshest of thirty-five dissident cases since
2003.80 His sentence shows the limits of “Chinese democracy” and the
promise of the citizens’ new rights to voice their opinions.
One cannot point out too strongly that the political reforms are only a
gradual process. Much more needs to change before China’s government
could even be described as a form liberal authoritarianism, but the important point to note is that one should also not overlook what has already
changed. Alongside the regime’s harsh treatment of regime critics and
political dissidents, one must also take into account the greater degree of
freedom that Chinese citizens enjoy today in managing their own lives.81
The implementation of a new framework for governance already spans
over two decades, and the aggregate effect of political reform is dramatic.
As the government promises people new rights “to know” and “to par78. Wefang Tang, Public Opinion and Political Change in China. (Stanford, CA
Stanford UP, 2005), pp. 191–99.
79. On December 10, 2008, the date of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, the Charta was signed by more than 2,000 Chinese citizens declaring
their support for a movement toward democracy and human rights. Signatories from both
outside and inside the government included well-known dissidents and intellectuals, midlevel officials, and rural leaders, as well as a large number of ordinary Chinese citizens.
80. “Chinese Human Rights Activists Liu Xiaobo Sentenced to 11 Years in Jail,” The
Guardian, December 25, 2009.
81. Thomas Gold, “Countries at the Crossroads 2007: Nation Report China,”
available online at the Freedom House website, http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/
ccr/country-7155-8.pdf.
“New Authoritarianism” in China 27
ticipate,” Chinese citizens have also started to claim these “rights.” As
the vast expansion of large-scale scientific, technological, and industrial
projects has measurable impacts on Chinese people’s lives, security, and
well-being, Chinese citizens have begun to demand to know more about
the science behind them. This is, for instance, what happened in a public
protest against a chemical plant in Xiamen, Fujian Province, where the
local population spontaneously organized a mass protest and demanded
that the city government conduct a hearing with experts in order to inform
people about the impact of the plant on their health and safety. Under
continuing public pressure, the local government held a public hearing in
December 2007 and, due to the recommendations of a citizen jury, eventually suspended the plans.82
A democratic system in China is not in sight for the foreseeable
future, and democratic reform may also not result from all areas of political reform; but the party is at a turning point where it cannot retreat from
further political reform. If political reforms and their aggregate effects
continue to proceed as they have in the last decade, a greater opening of
the party-state may ultimately challenge us to ask whether authoritarianism may also be able to do what, in our familiar diagnoses, only liberal
democracy was believed to be capable of. The central difference, however, is that although laws, the constitution, and the system of the People’s
Congress may play a more significant role in the PRC today, they do not
occupy the central position that they enjoy in liberal democracies, where
they also operate in a competitive multi-party system. It is also questionable whether a socialist rule of law can attain the significance of a liberal
democratic rule of law. Yet, at the same time, this does not diminish the
importance of the institutionalization of a legal system and the fact that
new laws and regulations have made officials more accountable and have
granted Chinese citizens rights that they had not enjoyed in generations.
82. On these points, see Li Duagong, “China’s top-down science communication
fails its people,” Science & Development Network, July 25, 2008; and Jane Qiu, “China
Bows to Public over Chemical Plant,” Nature 451, no. 117 (2008).