Participatory democracy crucial

By Xiong Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-28 07:25

For years, free elections have seemingly been used as the only yardstick to measure a country's democracy. So long as a country has general suffrage, it is considered democratic.

Suffrage, or the right to vote, is certainly an important political and human right, and it is often hard won in any society.

But, two elements are essential to this matter: One, it must be based on the nature of power, which is required to be independent of external coercion and internal inequity as a prerequisite for democracy. Two, it is only one of the many aspects of democracy and attention to electoral democracy should not detract from attention to other aspects of democracy, such as public participation.

Take China's case, for example. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Before the People's Republic was founded in October 1949, Chinese people suffered either from imperialist aggression or from civil wars.

China was threatened with partition by imperialist powers, and the ruling government then suppressed any attempt to mobilize the masses. So, there was no chance for a suffrage at all.

With the founding of the People's Republic of China, people stood up, and became masters of their own destiny, enjoying unprecedented rights. Ordinary farmers and workers, who had no right at all in old China were elected deputies to the National People's Congress, the top legislature, for the first time in history.

The people's congress is one of the major channels through which the people participate in State affairs and politics. This electoral democracy, however, is not all mighty, nor is it the only form of democracy.

Election is a means to vote someone to represent a group of people to a body with power. Once the person is voted into that body, it is up to him or her to execute the power. His or her decision can be beyond the control of those who have elected the person into that position.

For instance, George W Bush was elected as the US president. But, was the decision to invade Iraq representative of any democracy? I should say not. And, the process of decision-making on that matter was not democratic at all.

On the other hand, the election campaign, in typical Western style, can well be manipulated by people with money and power. Individuals without due resources are unlikely to get anywhere in the power echelon unless they are well established among the political elites with considerable financial backing.

Therefore it is misleading to pin democracy on free elections. More importance, instead, should be attached to a popular form of democracy - participatory democracy featuring public participation. Without full and democratic public participation, free election can be superficial and showy.

Participatory democracy is concerned more about fairness in the process of decision-making. And such processes can be more relevant to people's daily life.

For instance, a planned hydropower project on a river in Southwest China will compensate the to-be-displaced local farmers 200 yuan ($29) for each mango tree that will be inundated.

Yet, from each mango tree the local farmers could earn 400 to 500 yuan a year. Such compensation would hardly sustain the displaced farmers' currently living standards. That is the reason for the conflict between local farmers and hydropower developers, which could lead to social unrest, or even riots.

Here, public participation in the process of decision-making would be essential to guaranteeing equity for all the stakeholders, and prevent possible social unrest.

In fact, participatory democracy is nothing new to the Communist Party of China (CPC). It managed to grow from just dozens of members in the early 1920s to leading the people in overthrowing the seemingly much more powerful reactionary regime and became the ruling party of China within merely 28 years of its birth because of the democracy it tried to execute within its organization and army.

One of the winning tricks of the CPC over the far better armed enemy were the Three Democracies it had resolved to implement since the Red Army days in the 1920s, namely political democracy featuring equality between officers and men and soldiers' capacity to criticize the officers; military democracy embodied in every soldier being encouraged to make proposals or suggestions on tactics to win a battle; and economic democracy which allowed soldiers to have a say in the economic management of the company.

Before Chairman Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People's Republic on Oct 1, 1949, he was challenged by Huang Yanpei, a well-known non-Communist educator. Huang asked Mao: Throughout Chinese history, no dynasty could survive the historical cycle, in that every dynasty was vigorous in its initial years and became prosperous, but then declined and finally collapsed. Can you Chinese Communists manage to move beyond this cycle?

Mao was confident and told Huang, "Yes". Because, "We have an advanced political regiment, we have democracy which allows the people to supervise the government," Mao said.

There have been zigzags in the exploration to realize this democracy in Mao's mind, and there were even deviations from that goal when efficiency was emphasized. But democracy has become the commonly accepted value of younger generations of CPC leaders.

In 2006, the 6th Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China summarized the participatory democracy into the following four rights: Right to know, right to participate, right to expression and right to monitor or supervise. These four rights can be regarded as the cornerstone of China's participatory democracy.

Of course, there have been obstacles in the course of people's enjoyment of these rights. There have been cases of abuses of power. But we have been moving to improve our system to honor these rights, and we also see encouraging signs that ordinary people and individuals are acting to practice these rights.

By all means, more and more people in China have come to realize the significance of participatory democracy. Extensive participatory democracy can benefit individuals and society at large better than free elections.

The author is a guest professor of journalism with the Beijing Foreign Studies University.

(China Daily 11/28/2009 page4)