By Venkatesan Vembu
HONG KONG: Among the reasons that Chinese leaders and intellectuals cite most often to claim that China isn’t “ready” for democracy, four stand out. But these four pillars were knocked down with solid empirical evidence, at a recent seminar in Beijing, by Dr XL Ding, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Professor in the Social Sciences Division of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The first point that Ding, an indophile, made was about the organic relationship between economic development and political progress. A widely held political economic theory holds that a country should not embark on the road to parliamentary democracy till it had achieved a high level of economic development. Ding recalls that India’s experience negates that theory. As for China, it was all along better placed than India on socio-economic development parameters.
The second aspect related to another theory that holds that the general education level and access to information is crucial in determining the course of a country’s political development and that in countries with high illiteracy levels, democracy stood no chance. On almost every aspect of socio-economic development, China is better placed than India. Yet, India has had regular elections.
In fact, Ding even makes a radical proposition that India’s nascent democracy was nurtured by the fact that literacy levels at the time of independence were low. He contrasts this with Taiwan, which opened up its political system in the late 1980s, but by then its literacy level was comparable with France. Such high levels of education have, in Ding’s view, translated into an excess of democracy. “You have elections at every level. Even within universities, deans and department heads are elected through a popular vote,” says Ding. His point: because political openness came too late in Taiwan, “everyone wants to be a master.” He therefore asserts that for large Third World countries, democratisation should not be delayed till a time when the general population is very highly educated.
The third reason that Chinese leaders cite is that Chinese society is far too heterogenous and that democracy will open up linguistic, ethnic and religious fissures. Again, Ding points to India’s experience in politically managing a far more multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic society. Lastly, the past decade and more, when India’s economic growth has nearly matched China’s belies the argument that while democracy may be desirable in itself, it does not make for good economic results.
“If India’s scholars neglect the lessons and good experiences of China’s development merely because China does not have a democracy, they do a great disservice to their country. But if China’s intellectuals look look down on India’s experiences because of India’s relatively poorer performance in the economic and social developmental spheres, they will be doing an even bigger disservice to their country,” notes Ding.
