Chinese Democracy

For quite some time there’s been discussion within the sphere of political thinkers over the possibility of Chinese Democracy, as more than just another Guns n’ Roses album.  Caught in the current of this wave of political unrest washing through the Middle East, the leadership of the CCP has once again started to speak of a unique Chinese approach to democracy.  Amid government crackdowns in response to the relatively small “jasmine revolution” movement, there are continued signs of democratic growth in the nation’s system of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

While there is no reason to expect that some of the universal principles of democracy will be accepted by China’s government any time in the near future, elections on a municipal level offer building blocks for future development of representative government.  It’s been the standard argument of the government that a rapid transition to “western style democracy” would lead rapidly to chaos and an unraveling of social order in China.  Though I’m hardly one to take for granted the party line of authoritarian regimes, perhaps there’s something to the government’s approach to gradual and controlled social change.

To a degree I tend to understand and agree with the late Samuel Huntington, and the sea of political “realists” before him in recognizing the value of stability.  There has been no shortage of examples of the harsh impacts of rapid political, social and economic change in the last two decades so perhaps there’s some value in this more managed transition.  Particularly in the area of economics, China’s managed transition has evaded some of the rather harsh impacts of a suddenly liberalized market that other areas have suffered, impacts which could have been devastating given the size of the state’s population.  Unfortunately in any discussion of “managed change” there’s always the difficulty of whether or not transition will ever occur so long as some benefit from the status quo.