Chronicle of political reform foretold

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By Yao Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-23 08:39

Grassroots democracy can have a bottom-up effect in shaping higher-level democracy. For example, a village affairs committee in Guizhou province has designed a five-part seal, one each held by a member of the committee. Any village expenditure can be approved only if three or more members stamp their agreement. The village committee gives us an idea of how people's affairs can be managed by the people instead of for the people.

This is just one example of the role civil society has been playing of late (and can play) in the overall development of the country, says Yu Keping, director of China Center for Comparative Politics & Economics (CCCPE), a renown think tank in China.

Yu refutes the idea that democracy reduces efficiency, which is what we need in governance, especially in dealing with big events that require huge collective efforts such as the Sichuan earthquake relief, flood aids and the Beijing Olympic Games.

Government measures have been efficient and effective. Indeed, they helped the country recover from the economic downturn. But Yu, who wrote Democracy is a Good Thing in 2006, translated into and published in English in 2009, creating repercussions among academics and the public, insists democracy is the best political system for humankind.

Yu has been criticized both by leftists, who accuse him of following the Western path, and rightists, who blame him for applying the label of democracy for practices that are anything but democratic. But he says that he knows the drawbacks of democracy that involves complicated procedures and sometimes offers "opportunities to certain sweet-talking political fraudsters to mislead the people". He is forthright in its approval: "Among all the political systems that have been invented and implemented, democracy is the one with the least number of flaws."

We will come to the complicated procedures of democracy later. First let's see what Yu says about the role of civil society in the political development of the country.

Fighting corruption was high on the agenda of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held recently. The removal and punishment of an increasing number of high-ranking officials also shows the resolve of the CPC and the government to weed out corruption from public life. But we cannot rely only on self-supervision within the system to fight corruption, Yu says.

Talking with China Daily, he says not many officials would furnish the truth when asked to declare their real incomes. As a key government adviser and a political scientist pushing for political reform from within the system, Yu believes external oversight is indispensable and civil society organizations (CSOs) can play an important role in this area because they are public-interest groups relatively independent of the government. People's orderly participation in political affairs is crucial to the country's political democracy, as it is to the development of civil society.

Yu says that in the early 1990s, when he began research in this area, few scholars, let alone government officials, would concede civil society existed in the country because they considered it exclusive to capitalist countries.

But civil society has grown rapidly in China with the development of market economy and political reform. The figures speak for themselves: registered new CSOs, including NGOs, industrial and community organizations, exceed 410,000, and their number will continue to grow between 10 and 15 percent a year. In fact, some academics put the actual number of CSOs at more than 3 million, for most of them have not been registered.

The development of civil society in China, however, is different from that in Western countries because it has been and is being directed by the government, Yu says. "I call it government-led civil society in the same sense as the government-led market economy many scholars don't agree with me. They question how can civil society be led by the government."

But China's market economy is indeed led by the government, he says. It seems contradictory in the academic sense but that is what actually works in China. This is a fact, but it is not a kind of despotism because the flourishing civil society has put paid to all forms of autocracy.

After the 16th CPC Congress, the central authorities began paying more attention to the functions of social organizations, emphasizing reform of the country's social management system. It indicated that the CPC and the government regarded civil society's functions as a reference point when making important decisions.

That the government is helping civil society does not mean their relationship is one of master and slave. The two should maintain cooperative relations based on equality, mutual trust and benefit. To cooperate is not to follow blindly what the government says and does. It is natural for social organizations to have opinions different from the government. Problems can be solved through discussions and consultations. But when it comes to the collective interest of the country a consensus should be reached. Although a majority of the CSOs are willing to cooperate with the government for public interest, there are also those that act in self-interest or even harbor hidden agenda.

More importantly, cooperation includes criticism and supervision, too, between the two entities, Yu says. Social organizations should be encouraged to participate in and manage social affairs alongside the government. Shenzhen, the southern city that pioneered the country's reform and opening up, is blazing a trail in this area, too. Pilot projects are being carried out by the Shenzhen municipal civil affairs administration to let CSOs share part of the government's social management work. This will allow the government to concentrate on raising its competency and efficiency levels, delivering high-quality public services and facilitating fair redistribution of social resources and wealth.

But China's civil society is far from being mature. Hence, a favorable environment should be created for its growth, he says. China is yet to pass a law on social organizations. Plus, there is excessive control on and management of social organizations in some places. Some organizations do not know who their administrators are and surrender their registration after several failed attempts. Others find it difficult to seek government funds. Some grassroots organizations in Beijing received funds only from Western countries and thus became estranged from the local government.

Let's return to the complicated procedures of democracy. In China, Yu says, some laws and regulations were passed quickly, without proper public consultations. The result: many of them proved either impractical or debatable. That's exactly why he pushed for public hearings on bills. "A good political system isn't judged by efficiency alone, and some procedures shouldn't be simplified China should have the confidence to seek a new political model to combine efficiency and social equity, and efficiency and democracy. I think the Chinese model will be a huge contribution to the world of democracy."

Take mass incidents in recent years for example, Yu says. Some minor incidents develop into big problems because local officials handle them recklessly in order to see it off quickly.

Pointing out of his office window in the CCCPE toward a Ministry of Land Resources office, 50 meters away, which receives complaints and visitation, he says there's a long queue of people outside the ministry's office before it opens every morning. The complaints are mainly related to land-use disputes and judicial justice. These have to be listened to carefully and handled through proper procedures. Any attempt to clear off a case quickly, without due consideration, or muffle people's voices in the name of maintaining social stability would be doing a disserve to the country.

Social stability is what China truly needs to continue with its social and economic development, Yu says. And that is precisely why he says China should progress toward democracy, without breaking away from its historical past.

But social stability is not something static for Yu that can be maintained by suppressing people's voices. Instead, what we want is "dynamic stability", he says, wherein we let people express their ideas and air their grievances. This is how we can listen to people's grievances, get to their roots and ultimately redress them, and thus let off public pressure regularly before it builds up to a point of explosion. In other words, social justice and good governance are the foundation of a harmonious society. Politicians and the common people both should have the knowledge and wisdom to derive the greatest benefit from democracy by paying the lowest political and social costs.

(China Daily 10/23/2009 page9)