China releases white paper on whole-process democracy
Global Times
By GT staff reporters Published: Dec 04, 2021 10:03 AM
China on Saturday released a white paper on its democratic model, elaborating with details and examples on how the whole-process democracy with people's full participation works in China.
The white paper was released before the US' "democracy summit," which was scheduled to be held on December 9 and 10, and criticized for promoting democratic hegemony under the banner of democracy and dividing the world by ideology.
The white paper, titled China: "Democracy That Works," was released by the State Council Information Office on Saturday. It introduces China's whole-process people's democracy under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the sound institutional framework, the concrete and pragmatic practices of China's democracy, and the new model of democracy that China has developed.
"Democracy is a concrete phenomenon that is constantly evolving. Rooted in history, culture and tradition, it takes diverse forms and develops along the paths by different peoples based on their experiments and innovation... in China, the people's status as masters of the country is the bedrock of all systems of the country, and underlines the operation of all the systems for state governance," the white paper said.
It noted that the Chinese people exercise state power effectively through people's congresses and people's congresses exercise state power collectively on behalf of the people. The people's congresses have legislation, appointment and removal of officials, decision-making and supervision, said the while paper.
China's whole-process democracy integrates two major democratic models - electoral democracy and consultative democracy to ensure people's full participation not only in voting, but also in the national governance, Chang Jian, director of the Research Center for Human Rights at Tianjin-based Nankai University, told the Global Times.
Chang said that Chinese people can fully exercise their rights on voting for candidates to the people's congresses, and participate in legislation especially during the process of soliciting public opinions, make decisions related to the country's development, and supervise law enforcement and implementation policies. China's democracy has also attached great importance on increasing people's sense of gain when they fully participate in the country's construction.
The system of multiparty cooperation and political consultations under the CPC leadership, broad patriotic united front, the system of regional autonomy and the system of community-level self-governance are also important parts of China's whole-process democracy, according to the white paper.
Democracy's core is of people's status as masters of the country, and has various forms. China's democracy is developed from its own culture and draws experiences from other civilizations and is still evolving, experts said.
Kenneth Hammond, professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State University, thinks that China's process is very different. "In China, you don't make a big display. But instead, that process goes on, and then once decisions are reached, once a kind of consensus emerges, then the question is put into practice."
"What you need is people who are committed to the public good and are going to work, not to advance their individual or even their group interest, but to find the things that work best for society as a whole. I think it's a democratic process in China. It's not the same kind of process that we have here. But it is a process that leads to the articulation and the effective management of social concern," Hammond told the Global Times.
China's political system today is as different from Western democracy as Chinese characters from Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. But it does not make this system inferior or less attractive, Yury Tavrovsky, head of the "Russian Dream-Chinese Dream" analytic center of the Izborsk Club, told the Global Times.
Tavrovsky noted that China's democracy and political system has gained remarkable and globally eye-catching social and economic achievements. They have developed an efficient market economy, the second biggest in the world. In the past 10 years they have rapidly improved the livelihood of Chinese people and eliminated poverty for the first time in history.
China's democracy model looks as harmonious in the Chinese political landscape as a beautiful pagoda. "To challenge it with a rather shaky and dilapidated Western skyscraper is not wise and may be even dangerous," Tavrovsky said.
Various forms
China's white paper on democracy was released against the backdrop that the US is trying to pull an alliance against China by drawing lines between so-called "democratic nations" and so-called "authoritarian nations," and the Biden administration is promoting the "democratic summit" to burnish the US image as a "democratic beacon."
However, analysts said the flaws of US democracy are too obvious to hide, casting a heavy shadow on the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
"One Person, One Vote" is a democratic principle, but it is by no means the only principle, nor does it create democracy. However, it has long been misinterpreted and its meaning distorted by a small number of countries," said the white paper.
The US has criticized China for not having a similar democratic pattern, and has smeared and attacked China's own exploration of democracy and turned a blind eye to China's development and achievements of democracy and human rights. But it is the US that distorted the core of democracy and promoted democratic hegemony globally, Chang said.
Oleg Ivanov, Deputy Head of the International and National Security Department, Diplomatic Academy, Moscow, cited US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's remarks that the erosion of democracy is also happening in the US with rampant disinformation, structural racism and inequality.
"Indeed, BLM, the storming of the US Capitol, the vehement exchange of insults between Democrats and Republicans, and the severe polarization of American society clearly indicates that US democracy is seriously sick. I do not mean to say that it is doomed to collapse tomorrow, but it is questionable that a sick society can be a beacon of democracy," Ivanov said
"American democracy may be attractive for other nations only if it gets rid of its flaws. So far, one can hardly predict it is going to happen soon," Ivanov noted.
US democracy has fundamental flaws, according to experts. Qian Jinyu, director of the Human Rights Research Center of Northwest University of Political Science and Law, said that during its development, Western democracy had turned the idea of everyone sharing the right to govern into electing representatives, which defined democratic politics as "the rule of politicians."
Western democracy is not the governance by the people but the governance by elites. The elites' political participation has replaced the people's political participation, and such democracy no longer cares about the political cultivation of individual citizens. The participation of the people in the democracy is limited to their vote during the election, Qian told the Global Times.
Qian noted that US democracy attaches importance to process but overlooks the effects and results. But China's whole-process democracy has fixed the flaws while admitting the various forms of democracy, which is a unique contribution to human exploration of democracy and enriches the global theories on democracy.
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