Democracy Is A Good Thing

The following essay was excerpted from the foreword to the book of the same name and
published in Beijing Daily News on October 23, 2006.  The essay has since then been
discussed widely inside and outside of China.  The essay is featured on the front page of this
week's Asia Weekly (Yazhou Zhoukan) with a photo of the author.  The author Yu Keping is
the deputy director of the Central Translation Bureau and is a member of the think-tank for
the Hu-Wen administration.

(ChineseNewsNet)  民主是个好东西 Democracy Is A Good Thing.  By Yu Keping (俞可平).

[in translation]

Democracy is a good thing, and this is not just for specific persons or certain officials; this is
for the entire nation and its broad masses of people.  Simply put, for those officials who
care more about their own interests, democracy is not only not a good thing; in fact, it is a
troublesome thing, even a bad thing.  Just think, under conditions of democratic rule,
officials must be elected by the citizens and they must gain the endorsement and support of
the majority of the people; their powers will be curtailed by the citizens, they cannot do
whatever they want, they have to sit down across the people and negotiate.  Just these two
points alone already make many people dislike it.  Therefore, democratic politics will not
operate on its own; it requires the people themselves and the government officials who
represent the interests of the people to promote and implement.

Democracy is a good thing, but that does not mean that everything about democracy is
good.  Democracy is definitely not 100% perfect; it has many internal inadequacies. 
Democracy can make the citizens go into the streets, hold assemblies and then cause
political instability; democracy can make certain very simple matters become complicated
and frivolous under undemocratic conditions, thereby increasing the political and
administrative costs; democracy often involves repeated negotiations and discussions,
causing certain decisions that should have been made in a time manner become suspended
without resolution, thereby decreasing administrative efficiency; democracy often affords
opportunities for certain sweet-talking political fraudsters to mislead the people, and so on. 
But among all the political systems that have been invented and implemented, democracy is
the one with the least number of flaws.  That is to say, relatively speaking, democracy is the
best political system for humankind.
Democracy is a good thing, but that does not mean that democracy can do everything and
solve every problem.  Democracy is a political system that guarantees that sovereignty
belonged to the people, but it is only one of many systems that people have; it mainly
regulates the political lives of people and it cannot replace the other systems and it cannot
regulate everything in people's lives.  Democracy has its internal limitations, it is not a cure-
all miracle medicine and it cannot solve all of humankind's problems.  But democracy
guarantees basic human rights, it offers equal opportunity to people and it is a basic human
value.  Democracy is not only a means to solve people's livelihood issues, but it is a goal of
human development; it is not only a tool to achieve other goals, but it is in accord with
human nature.  Even if there is the best food and housing available, the human character is
incomplete without democratic rights.

Democracy is a good thing, but that does not mean that democracy does not come with a
painful price.  Democracy can destroy the legal system, cause the social and political order
to go out of control occasionally and even prevent economic development during certain
periods; democracy can also disrupt international peace and cause political divisions within
the nation; the democratic process can also propel certain dictators onto the political stage. 
All of these have already occurred in actual human life, and they will likely continue to
recur.  Therefore, the price of democracy is sometimes high to the point of unacceptability. 
But at the root, this is not the fault of democracy; it is the fault of the politicians and
statesmen.  Certain politicians do not understand the objective rules of democratic
government, they ignore the social and historical conditions, they go beyond the stage of
historical development and promote democracy in an impractical manner, and therefore
they end up with the opposite consequences.  Certain politicians treat democracy as their
tool for seizing power, they use the name of "democracy" to clamor for popularity and
mislead the people.  With them, democracy is the name and dictatorship is the truth;
democracy is the façade and power is the substance.

Democracy is a good thing, but that is not to say that democracy comes unconditionally. 
Implementing democracy requires the corresponding economic, cultural and political
conditions; to promote democracy unconditionally will bring disastrous consequences to the
nation and its people.  Political democracy is the wave of history; it is the inevitable trend
for all nations of the world to move towards democracy.  But the timing and speed of the
development of democracy and the choice of the form and system of democracy are
conditional.  An ideal democratic system must not only be related to the economic state and
level of development of society, the regional politics and international environment, it must
also be intimately related to the national tradition of political culture, the quality of the
politicians and the people, and the daily customs of the people.  It requires the wisdom of
the politicians and the people to determine how to pay the minimum political and social
price in order the attain the maximum democratic effects.  In that sense, democratic politics
is a political art.  To promote democratic politics, it is necessary to have an elaborate
system design and excellent political techniques.

Democracy is a good thing, but that does not mean that democracy can force the people to
do things.  The most concrete meaning of democracy is that it is government by the people
who get to make choices.  Even though democracy is a good thing, no person or political
organization has the right to regard themselves as the embodiment of democracy itself and
therefore force the people to do this but not that in the name of democracy.  Democracy
requires enlightenment, it requires the rule of law, it requires authority and it also requires
violence to maintain the normal social order.  The basic approach to developing democracy
is not a forceful imposition by the government but the people should give consent.  Since
democracy is rule by the people, it should respect the people's own choice.  In terms of
national politics, if the government employs forceful means to make the people accept a
system that they did not choose, then this is national autocracy and this is national tyranny;
when one country uses mostly violent methods to force the people in other countries to
accept their so-called democratic system, then this is international autocracy and this is
international tyranny.  National tyranny and international tyranny are both contrary to the
nature of democracy.

We are presently building a modernized strong socialist nation with unique Chinese
characteristics.  For us, democracy is all the more so a good thing, and it is all the more so
essential.  The classical authors of Marxism said: "There is no socialism without
democracy."  Recently, Chairman Hu Jintao pointed out further: "There is no modernization
without democracy."  Of course, we are building a socialist democracy with unique Chinese
characteristics.  On one hand, we want to absorb all the excellent results from the political
culture of all mankind, including all the excellent results of democratic politics; but on the
other hand, we will not import an overseas political model.  Our construction of political
democracy must be closely integrated with the history, culture, tradition and existing social
conditions in our nation.  Only in this way can the people of China truly enjoy the sweet
fruits of political democracy.
government of china and political culture:

imperialism (monarchal) before 1912

Communism. China is a single-party republic ruled by the Communist Party.

Other opinions:

•They are not communist. Communism does not have a centralized government. They are closer
to socialism than communism. I would say a mixture of totalitarian and socialism.
•China was never Communist, it was Socialist (Marxism), but now it's basically a single party,
part socialist, part capitalist, authoritarian/ totalitarian oligarchy with figurehead leaders.
•Functionally, it is a highly bureaucratic, multi-level, single-party republic. Starting at the very
lowest levels, the Chinese elect a representative to serve on a local council. These councils elect
a representative to the city council, which elects a member to a regional council, etc. The current
system requires everyone to be a member of the same political party. The system can be called
communist, however, it is a relatively unique system in which an established bureaucracy is
interwoven into a republican structure with marxist overtones (philosophy). Frankly, it's a bit of
puzzle to classify.
•The People's Republic of China is a single-party republic. The only political party is the
Communist Party so even though there are "elections" in China, they are all members of the
same political party. And even then, the Chinese people have a lot less say in who their leaders
are than in a western-style democracy or republic