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JanThe Chinese theory is the theoretical basis and ideological guarantee of the Chinese system which in turn embodies and serves as the practical basis of the Chinese theory. In the meeting in celebration of the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Comrade Xi Jinping solemnly declared that the Chinese communists and people were fully confident in providing China Program to exploration of a better social system for humans. The Chinese system has not only enriched the world’s political civilization, but also improved human development mode. Research and elucidation of the political and economic significance of the Chinese system for the world play a key role in building our firm theoretical and institutional confidence and actively constructing philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics.
Comparative advantages of the Chinese system
Contributions of the Chinese system to world politics are made clear in the comparison between Chinese and western political systems.
Since the modern times, democratic political systems constructed by humans consist mainly of two categories, i.e., liberal democracy (essentially capitalist democracy) and people's democracy (essentially socialism democracy). In the development course of world politics over the past 300 years, western developed capitalist countries, which have been dominating the world politics, have established a world system led by capital power, namely, the imperialist colonial system. Socialist movements for founding a new state and national and democratic movements for libration in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the mid-20th Century revolted against capitalist globalization and broke up the colonial system led by western countries. After the naked economic plunder fell flat, western capital power wrapped itself in the flexible cover of “cultural imperialism”, captured bigwigs in some developing countries, won the ideological “white war” in these countries and brought about the so-called “the third wave of democratization”. In the abrupt wave, however, China has pulled through in virtue of its strong national independence, held fast to the ground of people's democracy, uplifted the value of people's democracy and become the world’s largest people’s democratic country.
The Chinese system of people’s democracy reflects the dialectical unity between democracy and centralization. Democratic centralism is not only the organizational principle of the Communist Party of China as the ruling party, but also the organizational principle of national institutions. It is not only reflected in the relationship between people’s congresses and “people’s governments, courts and procuratorates” and between central and local governments as set forth in the Constitution, but also in the relationship between the government and market and between the government and society. For example, socialist market economy advocates the organic unity between macro-control by the government (centralization) and independent management by enterprises (democracy); while socialist social governance advocates the organic unity betweengovernment leadership (centralization) and co-governance by multiple social subjects (democracy). A main characteristic of modern politics is democratic politics, so democracy is indeed important. Nevertheless, without centralization or authority, a country, especially a populous country like China, will surely run into chaos. Therefore, democracy cannot be divorced from centralization. Moreover, centralization also safeguards democracy, as democracy will ultimately die out if there is no centralization but acting as one pleases. In this sense, democratic centralism is a comparative advantage of the Chinese system, which effectively avoids the phenomenon of ineffective democracy in many countries practicing western democracy.
Democratic centralism in the political system represents “governable democracy” in the practice of democratic politics. The structure of such “governable democracy” is “democratic participation--autonomous response of the government--responsible governance”. First of all, democratic participation has diversified forms, such as electoral democracy, participatory democracy and consultative democracy. Secondly, autonomousresponse of the government is an important way in which the Chinese system is different from other systems. Response is an important process of democracy and is advocated in various democratic theories, but the response in western democracy is passive or irresponsible in most cases, for example, Brexit vote and US Government’s failure to respond to the claim of its common people against guns. The response of the Chinese Government under democratic centralism is powerful, timely and autonomous, not kidnapped by interest groups. Thirdly, the interaction between democratic participation and autonomous response of the government results in politics of responsibility or responsible governance. Democratic politics featuring effective participation and response must be “effective democracy”, i.e., “governable democracy”.
The Chinese system has enriched the world’s political civilization
The “west-centered theory” is a main way of thinking in western society. In western theory of political civilization, the most typical example is “the theory of the end of history”, which, actually the theory of the end of political civilization, means that there can be only western democracy, as a form of political civilization, in the world and those inconsistent with western democracy are “non-democratic” or “authoritarian” and will inevitably be converted into western democracy. The theory ignores the reality of diversified political civilizations in the world and gene and historical inheritance of political civilizations and systems. Admittedly, in form, modern politics show certain identity as they all have social organizations, party politics, electoral politics, representative systems, etc. However, why countries that both pursue western democratic, such as India and Britain, the Philippines and the USA, are quite different in terms of governance level? In a sense, this can be owed to social structure and civilization gene of a country. In other words, identity in the form of politics cannot change cultural diversity based on civilization genes and different civilization genes and social structures directly influence actual effects of a political system.
Following the WWII, there were about 150 developing countries in the world, but no one became a developed one by implementing western liberal democracy. The reason is quite simple: party struggle democracy, as the core of western democracy, aims at “dividing a cake”, but if the cake is divided when it is small (i.e., when a country is poor), one can get only a small piece. More importantly, liberal democracy is actually premised on rule of law and democracy without rule of law is doomed to failure, which is also an important reason for poor performance of most developing countries that pursue liberal democracy. Furthermore, some countries and regions that ever made brilliant achievements in economy have suffered from “reverse development” due to party struggle democracy, with ready examples includingArgentina in South America, Greece in Europe andChina Taiwan. Additionally, after the external security pressure of the Cold War was relieved, party struggle democracy in European and American countries evolved into immoderate internal struggles, with party politics going extreme and representativedemocracy becoming “veto-oriented regime”, often disabling the government to move a single step. Moreover, Brexit vote in Britain is actually a result of excessive development of electoral democracy, of which the result not only directly harms vital interests of “the minority”, actually not a few, in the form of “tyranny of the majority”, but also directly threatens national identity of Britain. Party struggle democracy is evolving into a system that splits a country.
In view of the actual development of world politics over the past 20 years, Francis Fukuyama, the proposer of “the theory of the end of history”, asked lately: is (western) democracy the solution to problems or the root of problems? Comparative political studies have given the answer. Human cannot stop at difficulties forever, but should look for a way out. An alternative scheme is the Chinese system, which is the prospect of world politics depicted by Fukuyama. We are confident that China’s political system has enriched the world’s political civilization, of which the foundation is exactly the political road we have found based on our own civilization gene. The governance system and capability of a country are closely related to its historical inheritanceandcultural tradition. Having experienced the financial crisis, debt crisis and crisis of confidence, western countries have begun introspection and publicly or secretly studied China’s political system, economic system and development road. From the perspective of system comparison, contributions of China’s political system to the world’s political civilization are embodied as “practically preventing”six phenomena: practically preventing the phenomenon of absence of a leader in a group and disunity, practically preventing the phenomenon of boundless promises in election but indifference after election, practically preventing the phenomenon of party struggles and jostles, practically preventing the phenomenon of national misunderstanding andethnic conflicts, practically preventing the phenomenon of people having rights in form but not in practice, and practically preventing the phenomenon of mutual impediment, serious internecine struggles. Those practically prevented by China’s political system are common phenomena in countries pursuing western democracy.
The Chinese system has improved human development mode
From the perspective of basic orientation of value, human choose a better system for better development and a better life. In today’s world, some developing countries copy “good systems” and “good policies” from western countries, which not only fail to solve development problems, but also get trapped. On the contrary, China is enjoying a bright view by sticking to and perfecting the socialism with Chinese characteristics. Why? What is its significance to improving human development mode?
Over the 300 years since the Industrial Revolution, human beings have undergone four waves of social development. As foregoers of modernization, western countries always seek to package their own successful experience as development modes, so that they can be learned and even imitated by late-comers. However, Prof.Schurz, winner of the Nobel Economics Prize, found that in world economic history of more than 300 years, no country succeeded by copying the then mainstream development mode, since a lot of social conditions were taken away from the packaged development modes. For example, after Britain, the origin of the Industrial Revolution, got developed (the first wave), the mid-19th century witnessed the prevalence of the laissez-faire theory based on British experience, with free market asthe core. But the German found it a theory that prevented the development of the late-comers and that covered the actual role of state. Consequently, Germany rejected following the mainstream, but pursued the development mode of state-centrism and succeeded (the second wave), with strengthening the role of state asthe core. In the mid-20th century, western countries proposed the development scheme of import substitution, but none of the developing countries in Latin America and Africa that pursued the strategy succeeded while the four East Asian “tigers” (including Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong) succeeded by implementing the export-oriented strategy (the third wave), with policy orientation asthe core of the development mode. After the Cold War, western countries advocated the development mode of political democratization, economic marketization and governance socialization, aiming at de-nationalization. However, what developing countries required at that time was to strengthen national strength, so the result of de-nationalization could be imaged. On the contrary, China has become the world’s second largest economy by following its own development road, sticking to andimprovingits own system (the fourth wave).
It can be said that the development of China is a result of drawing experience from the previous three waves, including the combined action of the government, market and society; the top-level design harmonizing these three is the Chinese system. Development subjects of a country include the government, market and society. If the government has excessive power, the market and society will lose vitality and even die; otherwise, in case of too strong capital power in the market or social fragmentation, even the best government policies may fail. Therefore, only when the three are organically harmonized can sustained and healthy development of a country be facilitated. The Chinese system has achieved this, reflecting strong capacities of system absorption, system integration and policy execution. The capacity of system absorption means that the government satisfies social needs through policy supply and obtains social identification and support, so as to realize the harmony between the government and society; the capacity of system integration means that all forces and relations in the government, market and society are effectively integrated based on the organizational principle of democratic centralism to realize the above-mentioned “practically preventing “target; the capacity of policy execution means the ability to authoritatively make and effectively implement policies. Without doubt, successful practices and experience of China in the three capacities have positive significance in improving human development mode.
China has been advocating that different countries should choose development roads and system models on their own according to their respective national conditions and realities. Therefore, we are not aiming at popularizing our own experience or system. But objectively, the current Chinese system has caught the eyes of a great many developing countries, even developed countries. Some countries measure whether their system designs are good or bad and the development speed on the scale of China, some political parties begin to learn training systems in CPC party schools, while some countries start to learn Chinese experience in economic development. All these facts are sufficient to further firm our confidence in the Chinese system, arouse our faith and enthusiasm for sticking to and improving socialist system with Chinese characteristics and providing more and better China Programs for human development.
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