Democracy and Chinese Political Discourses

Abstract

Will the current economic success of China eventually lead to democratization of the political system? Or will China succeed in introducing a market economy without a move toward democracy-thus denying the universality of the East European and Russian model by which market reform and democratization go hand in hand?More fundamentally, how is democracy understood by Chinese in the Chinese context? Democratic political theory has been more concerned with transhistorical and universal models than with understanding of the common people-perhaps paradoxically, given that democracy involves, at base, rule by the people. The common people are the essential constituent elements of and participants in democratic governance, but that is understood. Democratic political theory, to be coherent, must in some way build from the people &dquo;out there&dquo; in the real world. On the other hand, a theory of authoritarian rule is not subject to the same requirement simply because it is not democratic. As Dryzek and Berejikian ( 1993: 57) put it, &dquo;A theory of democracy is viable to the extent that there is a discourse or combination of discourses to which it can relate. The absence of any such relation undermines the model of democracy at hand precisely because the model AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to thank John Dryzek for his intellectual inspiration in the use of Q methodology.