Featured Review Symposium 895

To view epistemological judiciousness within a religious or spiritual tra-

dition is not novel. For long, the skill of discernment has been closely con-
nected to the divine or supernatural. Already, Bell gestures at the
connection between Confucian characteristics and this kind of ability,
quoting the Tang Court, and writing, “the Classics are subtle pointers of
the most intelligent men and the affairs that were possible for the
sages…they show how to benefit everything in the world… [and]
contain behaviours for being good as a person” (102). On this account,
we might well think that a leader’s political shrewdness can be influenced
by knowledge of these texts; certainly, Bell points out, this was widely
believed in Chinese history, “when [the ruler] sees the larger picture
and can think ahead, it is thanks to the teaching of the Documents” (102).
The China Model’s central claim, that states can employ a criteria-based
meritocracy to select and promote qualified leaders, is attractive, not least
in light of the capricious results produced by democracies worldwide. But
Bell’s menu of leadership qualities may require amendment, particularly
in its focus on interpersonal competence. In doing so, Bell may do well
to look toward traditional Chinese classics for a replacement.

Making Sense of Bell’s Political Meritocracy

doi:10.1017/S1755048318000688

Jiwei Ci
University of Hong Kong

I am going to devote most of my discussion to making the best sense of

Daniel Bell’s argument as I see it. This is not because Bell’s argument is
not clear but because something is missing from it. Bell says, in the intro-
duction to his book, that he is arguing for political meritocracy as distinct
from what may be called administrative meritocracy. I do not see anything
really or sufficiently political about it. And that is because, first, Bell
passes over the fact that the legitimacy of the Communist Party is
bound up with the communist revolution stretching back to the two
crucial years of 1921 and 1949. No matter how much things have
changed since the start of the reform four decades ago, the CCP itself
has not given up its communist revolutionary legacy. I believe Bell’s

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 896 Featured Review Symposium

argument for political meritocracy as a matter of legitimacy is seriously

skewed by taking this foundational element of the CCP’s legitimacy out
of the equation.
There is a second reason why Bell’s argument is insufficiently political
and that is that he proceeds on the assumption that China’s one-party polit-
ical system is, in his words, “not about to collapse” (8). Bell says one can
simply make this assumption. I think this is less prudent than a political
argument should be. If (a big “if”) this assumption is correct, Bell’s
entire argument becomes very plausible and persuasive, which makes
this a crucial assumption. I have my own reasons for considering this
assumption vulnerable. But here I must defer to the CCP itself, because
the CCP is obviously conducting its business on an assumption very dif-
ferent from Bell’s, and we must take this fact very seriously. The CCP’s
own assumption is seldom named but is implicit in the scale and intensity
of its current measures to strengthen its “political security,” from which it
is not too difficult to catch a glimpse of a corresponding lack of certainty
regarding regime perpetuation.
Let me try, then, to bring politics, or more politics, into Bell’s argument
and see what results from this change. I undertake this reconstruction in
order to make better sense—better political sense—of Bell’s argument
so the reconstruction is not in itself critical, although I will then make
one criticism in the light of this reconstruction.
It is helpful to pin down what it is that we, including Bell, must be
talking about when we speak of meritocracy in the present Chinese
context. Now the CCP was not set up, in 1921, as a meritocratic organi-
zation in the sense we are using the term “meritocracy” today. Nor even
did it come to power, as the founder of the People’s Republic of China
in 1949, as a meritocratic organization. It was a Leninist vanguard
party, but that is totally different from what Bell means by meritocracy.
According to Bell’s understanding of meritocracy, the CCP mutated into
a meritocracy only in the reform era, especially after the reform got its
second lease on life after Deng’s famous southern tour in 1992 to
revive the economy and the sinking fortunes of the CCP in the wake of
June 4th. What happened? The answer: from that point on, the CCP
started to pursue economic growth with unprecedented determination
and, some would say, at all cost. The result was not only rapid economic
growth culminating in China’s rise as the world’s second-largest economy
but, more importantly for our purposes, a renewed legitimacy for the
Communist Party. Since this rejuvenated legitimacy has a lot to do with
economic growth and with efficient performance in general, it is

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 Featured Review Symposium 897

thought by many to be a brand-new kind of legitimacy. Some call it per-

formance legitimacy; Bell gives it the name “meritocracy.”
I need at this point to introduce a distinction that I hope is sufficiently
clear without further elaboration. It is the distinction between enhance-
ment of legitimacy through good performance and amelioration of lack
of legitimacy through good performance. I think what Bell means when
he talks about CCP-style meritocracy is best understood as what I am
calling legitimacy enhancement through good performance. The matter
becomes clearer still if we make a slight terminological adjustment and
call it legitimacy enhancement through meritocracy, meritocracy being a
matter of good performance.
The point of making this translation of Bell’s notion of meritocracy is to
show that meritocracy is not self-sufficient. Meritocracy finds its precon-
dition in some already more or less legitimate political arrangement and it
has its usefulness in contributing to the enhancement of the legitimacy in
question. We misunderstand meritocracy, as meant by Bell, if we think it
is self-sufficient or that it is legitimacy itself. Meritocracy is nothing but a
way of doing things—involving institutions and personnel—that reliably
produces good performance, however good performance is understood
in the legitimate political order in the first place. Thus meritocracy is
only of secondary importance—because it is parasitic on legitimacy.
By the same token, meritocracy is not on the same level as democracy. It
is not fit to be pitted against democracy, or mixed with democracy. After all,
democracy is first and foremost a principle of government—a way of con-
ferring legitimacy on government, not merely a method of producing the
personnel who administer a unit at whatever level. The village-level elec-
tions Bell talks about have nothing to do with legitimacy: they merely
produce administrative personnel at the grassroots level and derive their
legitimacy from endorsement higher up the chain of command, ultimately
from the CCP’s authorization. Bell is definitely not talking about a
mixed regime in the manner of Aristotle or Machiavelli.
This, then, is I think what Bell means—or must mean if he is to make
good sense: namely, that the real alternatives, in the Chinese context, are
not democracy versus meritocracy but democracy (as a basis of legiti-
macy) versus communist one-party rule (as a basis of legitimacy).
When Bell argues for meritocracy in China, therefore, he is actually
pitting communist one-party rule against democracy and favoring the
former. This does not make him an apologist for the CCP, however, but
rather a defender of a kind of meritocracy that is made possible by the
party.

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 898 Featured Review Symposium

Bell favors communist one-party rule for a particular reason—it delivers

better performance than democracy would, at least in the Chinese context.
(This is why Bell is indifferent between the current CCP and another CCP,
with the second C in the latter standing for Confucian, as the guarantor of
meritocracy and would probably favor the latter, other things being equal.)
Bell’s reasoning may be spelled out thus: in the current Chinese arrange-
ment, meritocracy (as a matter of performance) helps enhance communist
one-party rule (as a basis of legitimacy), and the latter in turn is good at
producing and maintaining a meritocracy—in a virtuous circle. It is this
combination of two elements that Bell is actually pitting against its alter-
native, which consists of democracy (as a basis of legitimacy) plus the
(supposed) relative absence of meritocracy and hence a lower level of per-
formance. One upshot, among others, is that it does not pay to initiate
democratic change in China to fix a system that isn’t broken and is in
fact working reasonably well, though not perfectly.
Now to my critical comment. To put it simply, Bell’s argument for
political meritocracy is vitiated by two assumptions. The first assumption,
already noted, is that the CCP is not going to face a potentially fatal legit-
imation crisis. The second assumption, an unspoken one, is that perfor-
mance matters more than anything else, forgetting that performance is
not legitimacy and legitimacy matters even more. Let me briefly indicate
what is wrong with these assumptions, and the connection between them.
Recall my point that China’s meritocracy is parasitic on legitimate
communist rule. I have earlier first translated Bell’s notion of meritocracy
into legitimacy enhancement through meritocracy and then shown the
enhancement to be reciprocal, in that communist one-party rule also
enhances meritocracy. Now, it may be that Bell does not care that much
about legitimacy enhancement through meritocracy. For he seems to
care more about meritocracy enhancement through communist one-party
rule. Whatever the case may be, it remains true that meritocracy is parasitic
on legitimacy, that is, on the legitimacy of communist one-party rule.
Given this, and given that it would not be prudent to rule out the possibil-
ity of a legitimation crisis, we must be open to the scenario in which the
legitimacy of one-party rule will drastically weaken or even disappear,
leaving meritocracy with little or nothing to be parasitic on.
What then? Bell, in the second appendix to his book, gives a very
shrewd account, in dialogue form, of meritocracy in a Communist form
and a Confucian form that are so seamlessly continuous that in the end,
to paraphrase Bell, it is not clear which is which. In so doing, Bell is
betraying, ever so subtly, a lack of confidence in his assumption that

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 Featured Review Symposium 899

China’s one-party rule is rock-solid. Whether the hidden substitute

combination—Confucianism as a new basis of legitimacy plus meritoc-
racy—will work is a matter beyond the scope of the present discussion.

Towards Democracy and Meritocracy in China: A Response to Critics

doi:10.1017/S175504831800069X

Daniel A. Bell
Shandong University

I am grateful for the penetrating critiques of the four commentators. I do

not agree with all the argumentation, but I have learned from all four cri-
tiques. Let me respond to the main points and suggest how we might move
forward from here.

WHY LIBERALS NEED NOT OBJECT TO VERTICAL

DEMOCRACY MERITOCRACY

My book defends an ideal of vertical democratic meritocracy: democracy

at the lower levels of government and political meritocracy at higher levels
of government, with political experimentation in between. I argue that
there is a large gap between the ideal and the reality, but that the ideal
should be used to evaluate what counts as political progress for reasons
that are particular to the Chinese context, such as the size of the
country, the long history of political meritocracy in China, the recent expe-
rience with meritocratic reform, as well as the fact that the ideal is favored
by the large majority of Chinese people according to survey data. From a
liberal perspective, the most worrisome aspect of the ideal is the defense
of political meritocracy at higher levels of government because it seems to
require, as Macedo puts it, “political repression.” It is true that Chinese-
style political meritocracy in traditional China often relied on heavy-
handed repression and inhumane punishments such as public torture.
But today—partly due to the influence of liberal values—China endorses
basic human rights and the idea that all citizens should be equal before the
law in criminal cases. Nobody officially questions prohibitions against
slavery, genocide, murder, torture, prolonged arbitrary discrimination,

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