Since the implementation of the "reform and opening up" policies, the evolution of China's politics is not only obviously different from the traditional political ideology and system, but also from the Western political model. A unique politic model with its own characteristics is forming in China now, which is called socialist democracy with the Chinese characteristics. Its ideal is the realization of the organic integration among the leadership of the Communist Party of China, people as the master of the country and rule of law. The most distinctive feature of the political model is to gradually promote China's democratic governance and increase the citizen's political interest through incremental reform. The model has eight features, listed below. From other angle, these eight features will become major development trends toward future democracy in China.
1. The development of China's democracy is considered "incremental". The reform of China's democracy is based on "storage", which means that it has sufficient political and democratic experience for a foundation and regards the already obtained politic and democratic achievement as precondition to add speed and strength for democracy development that is in line with the targeted social economic system and the level of economic development. According to the theory of incremental development, it must hold realistic political force and get support from a majority of people and political elite as well as from a wide social foundation. Meanwhile, the reform should be in line with existing politics and legal reform within the maximum limit while not contradicting the existing Constitution and other basic laws.
2. China's democracy will make certain breakthroughs while developing gradually. The development of China's politics is a gradual and slow process, achieving breakthrough reforms from time to time. One kind of "path dependence" can be formed through the gradual-change-style reform or democracy, which must certainly be an extension of China’s historic development and does not leave the previous history track. In China future democratic reform and political construction must achieve new breakthroughs based upon a previous foundation. Development moves from quantitative change to qualitative change, resulting in long-term accumulative reform.
3. The essence of the incremental democracy is to greatly increase new political interests without harming the existing political interests of the general public. The next stage of the political reform will focus on adjusting the distribution pattern of social interests and narrowing the interest gap between members of society and the social community. The priority will go to making more people, particularly ordinary workers, farmers and those experiencing difficulties share in any and all benefits brought about by reforms made in the name of fairness and justice.
4. The static politic would be gradually replaced by a dynamic politic. All kinds of political reform must serve to maintain political stability. However, the target of incremental democracy is the modern "dynamic politic stability" instead of the traditional "static stability". The essences of dynamic politic do not reflect the disorderly conditions experienced during the “cultural revolution”, but rather would make the order change from a static state to a process state, so that social and political stability is realized during the reform and development and reform is promoted through politic stability.
5. Political reform continuously promotes citizen participation in politics, thus forming kind of orderly democracy. The core issue of democracy is people's participation in politics: this process is the fundamental path to realizing true democracy. Therefore, this thread winds throughout all of China's political reforms. However, citizen's participation in politics must be legal and organized. The basic path needed to develop incremental democracy is devotion to constantly expanding the citizen's orderly participation in politics and channeling citizen's spontaneous, scattered and non-organized political activities into the political framework led by the Party and the government.
6. Promoting democracy and strengthening rule of law are two different aspects of the same process. Since the era of Deng Xiaoping, Chinese leaders have always believed that democracy and the rule of law are closely related to each other and that rule of law is indispensable for democracy. To realize the transformation from rule by people to rule of law is the foundation for establishment of the high degree of the socialist democracy. Therefore, in China, the degree of realizing the rule of law is almost equivalent to the degree of realizing democracy.
7. Cultivating civil society and promoting the reform of social management system. Democratic governance should be developed towards more participation of NGOs in social and political life, more active government cooperation with NGOs in joint management of social and political life, and expansion of the scope of citizen's self governance to increase the degree of social autonomy. China’s future political restructuring includes reforming the existing social security system, public security system, household registration system and community governance system, as well as a need to support and cultivate non-government organizations.
8. Incremental democracy will be promoted in all aspects via three paths. China's democracy will steadily move forward along the following three routes:
First, inner-party democracy will give impetus to the social democracy. The Communist Party is the exclusive ruling party in China. It is the center of political power in contemporary China, with a 70 million membership composed of a vast social and political elite. The present democracy would be only a slogan without inner-party democracy in China.
Second, gradually pushing grass-roots level democracy towards higher level democracy. Grass-roots level democracy is the priority and the breakthrough point of China's democracy at the present stage. A number of significant democracy reforms will be gradually pushed forward to a higher level through experiment at the grass-roots level.
Third, from less competition to more competition. All types of democracy rely on the people's free choice of the government's leadership and decisions. In a sense, the process of democracy development is namely the process of constantly enlarging the scope of the people's political choices as well as the process of transformation from fewer to more competitive choices. The development of China's democracy will also comply with this law.
In the final analysis, vigorously developing socialist democracy and constantly promoting incremental democracy is fully in line with its own long-term interests and fundamental values of the CPC. It will be the unchangeable direct objective of China's politic reform and development.
(To be continued...)
(China.org.cn, 17thcongress.org.cn October 20, 2007)
