The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy

THE CHINA MODEL

THE CHINA MODEL

Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy

DANIEL A. BELL

With a new preface by the author

  Princeton and Oxford

Copyright © 2015 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,

Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

Cover photograph: A general view of the closing session of the

National People’s Congress, at the Great Hall of the People on March 16, 2007.

Photograph © Andrew Wong/Getty Images.

All Rights Reserved

Fourth printing, and first paperback printing with a new preface by the author, 2016

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-17304-7

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:

Bell, Daniel (Daniel A.), 1964–

The China model : political meritocracy and the

limits of democracy / Daniel A. Bell.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-16645-2 (hardback)

1. Political culture—China. 2. Merit (Ethics)—Political aspects—China. 3. Political leadership—China. 4. Elite (Social sciences)—Political activity—China. 5. Democracy—China. 6. China—Politics and government—1976–2002. 7. China—Politics and government—2002– I. Title.

JQ1516.B45 2015

306.20951—dc23 2014044502

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Electra LT Std

Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

Printed in the United States of America

5 7 9 10 8 6 4

To my Chinese mother and father

CONTENTS

Preface to the Paperback Edition

ix

Acknowledgments

xxxi

INTRODUCTION

1

CHAPTER 1

Is Democracy the Least Bad Political System?

14

CHAPTER 2

On the Selection of Good Leaders in a Political Meritocracy

63

CHAPTER 3

What’s Wrong with Political Meritocracy

110

CHAPTER 4

Three Models of Democratic Meritocracy

151

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: REALIZING THE CHINA MODEL

179

Notes

199

Selected Bibliography

283

Index

307

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

Troubles for the China Model?

The China Model has been more widely reviewed and discussed than any of my previous books, all within a few months. Of course I feel honored and gratified that the book has had an impact on public discourse. I confess, however, that it has also drawn its fair share of critical fire. Although I deliberately refrained from polemics and one-third of the book consists of boring endnotes, the book seems to have triggered some raw political emotions. The main thrust of my book should not be too controversial: it’s an argument for taking Chinese political theory and institutions seriously and for the view that Chinese political culture and history should serve as the main standards for judging political progress (and regress) in China. It would seem odd to defend an argument for, say, reforming American political institutions according to Confucian values, and it should seem equally odd to argue for reforming the Chinese political system according to the values of the American founding fathers or Kantian liberals. Why the opposition? One reason may be reflexive attachment to the view that liberal democracy is the only defensible form of government (the end of history): more precisely, one person, one vote is the only morally legitimate way of selecting political rulers and it is morally perverse to suggest otherwise. So why bother drawing upon different political ideals in China’s own culture and institutions? Another reason may be dogmatic attachment to the view that nothing good can come out of the Chinese political system: it is similar in nature to other evil communist regimes such as the Soviet Union and North Korea, and the sooner it collapses, the better. I cannot respond to such views beyond what I’ve already written in the book. But more open-minded readers may be willing to engage with what I say. Let me respond to some of the main criticisms, while updating some of my views in response to new political developments in China.

Is Democracy a Bad Thing?

My book has been perceived as an attack on democracy. Stein Ringen, for example, claims that the book is meant to persuade those of us who are defenders of democracy that we are wrong.¹ My attempt to denigrate democracy as such … turns the book nasty: Bell is an admirer of the Chinese system for whom it is not enough that the friend succeeds, also foes must fail.

But my aim is not to denigrate democracy as such. Quite the opposite: I strongly support electoral democracy in countries that have implemented such a system. I hope democracy can be improved by drawing on the best meritocratic practices, but any such improvements need to be built on a foundation of electoral democracy, if only because the practical alternatives tend to be military dictatorship or authoritarian populism. Once people get the vote, they don’t want to give it up, and supporters of the political alternatives need to rely on force to change the system. And those alternatives are almost always worse than electoral democracy: think of Thailand or Egypt (my heart sank when military dictators supported by a minority of wealthy liberals overthrew the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt). So when countries implement a system of one person, one vote to select leaders, it’s usually too late to change (except by force), regardless of the case against it. But electoral democracies can and should learn from the best of meritocratic practices compatible with electoral democracy, such as building up a competent, professional civil service and empowering experts in narrow domains.²

So why do I open with a chapter that discusses four typical problems associated with democratic systems? My aim is simply to desacralize the ideal of one person, one vote by showing that electoral democracies do not necessarily perform better than political meritocracies according to widely shared standards of good government, with the hope that readers could join my quest for a more balanced assessment of China’s political system in the rest of the book. But I now realize that it’s not easy to set aside a political value that has come to have almost religious overtones. I was brought up in the political culture of a Western society, and it took decades of shocks to my own moral system to get me to question the universal value of democratic commitments I learned as a child. Perhaps it was unrealistic to think that Westerners would question those commitments simply by reading one chapter in a book, and I now realize that the opening chapter may have had the unintended effect of closing rather than opening minds.

But isn’t there something deeply problematic about an argument that democracy is suitable for some countries but not for China? Shouldn’t we be wary of Orientalism that seems to harken back to John Stuart Mill’s arguments against democracy in barbarian countries such as India? If so, similar accusations can be raised against Chinese intellectuals who often argue that the quality (素质) of Chinese people is too low for electoral democracy. But my argument is different: based on solid empirical evidence (see chapter 1), I argue that the quality of voters is also low in countries such as the United States,³ and there is no reason to believe that Chinese voters will become any more rational or public-spirited than voters anywhere else. And since China has evolved and implemented—in highly imperfect form—meritocratic mechanisms to select and promote political leaders with superior intellectual, social, and moral qualities, shouldn’t any improvements be built on such a system? Isn’t it important to ask how political meritocracy can be improved, and its disadvantages minimized, in a political context where the ideal has a long history, has inspired political reform over the past three decades, and is widely supported by the people according to reliable political surveys?

I’ve given many book talks over the past year, and I’m often asked: if electoral democracy can work in Taiwan, why can’t it work in mainland China? My reply is that the political context is radically different. For one thing, Taiwan is a moderately well-off society and its problems pale in comparison with those of mainland China (environmental degradation, the huge gap between rich and poor, tens of millions of people living in dire poverty, etc.). So if Taiwanese politics degenerates into political paralysis,⁴ it’s not the end of the world. But such outcomes would be disastrous for mainland China and could well mean the end of the world. Size matters. Small political communities can afford populism and small-minded navel-gazing even at the cost of neglecting long-term planning or political concern for future generations and the rest of the world. But China is a huge political community and its policies shape the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese now and in the future, as well as the rest of the world. Mainland China cannot afford the downside of Taiwan-style electoral democracy.

That said, there is much that mainland China can learn from Taiwan and other political communities that have gone down the liberal democratic road. Taiwan implemented affirmative-action schemes that successfully increased the proportion of women in government:⁵ the lessons for China’s male-dominated politics are clear.

And there is nothing incompatible between the quest to improve political meritocracy and other features of democratic societies short of one person, one vote: the freedom of speech, the freedom of association short of the right to form political parties to compete for power at the top, the rule of law, and various democratic innovations such as the use of referenda and deliberative polls. As we will see, China will need to open up to such democratic values and practices as it continues to modernize in the future.

A Defense of the Status Quo?

A friend told me that I should feel honored that my book has joined the ranks of those books people talk about without having read. I’m not sure about that: it’s difficult to challenge misconceptions once they’re out there.⁶ The most common complaint is that I am an apologist for the Chinese government. But nobody who has actually read the book can come to that conclusion. I defend an ideal, not the political reality.

To the extent labels matter, I’m a political theorist and my method is contextual political theory: I try to provide a coherent and rationally defensible account of the leading political ideas of a society’s public culture. Since I’ve been living and working in Beijing for more than a decade, naturally this method is applied to the leading political debates in contemporary China. There’s no way I could or would have written this book had I been based in a Western country (or even Hong Kong, where political debates center on the desirability of electoral democracy). Academics and political reformers in Beijing argue about which qualities matter for political leaders and how best to select leaders with those qualities. They also argue about how best to limit the power of meritocratically selected leaders and how to reconcile democracy and meritocracy. These questions are not typically asked in Western political debates, but they are hugely important in China. My book is an effort to think about those questions in a systematic way.

The leading political ideal in China—widely shared by government officials, reformers, intellectuals, and the people at large—is what I call vertical democratic meritocracy, meaning democracy at lower levels of government, with the political system becoming progressively more meritocratic at higher levels of government. The country was primed for rule at the top by meritocratically selected officials following a disastrous experience with radical populism and arbitrary dictatorship in the Cultural Revolution, and China’s leaders could reestablish elements of its meritocratic tradition, such as the selection of leaders based on examination and promotion based on performance evaluations at lower levels of government, without much controversy. This idea of vertical democratic meritocracy has inspired political reform over the past three decades, but there remains a large gap between the ideal and the reality. Hence, my book provides a critical perspective on political reality; it is not a defense of the political status quo. But I argue for change on the basis of ideals widely shared in China, not ideals imported from abroad that do not resonate widely with Chinese history, recent efforts at political reform, and what most people think now.⁷

Contextual political theory is widely deployed as a method by theorists living and working in Western societies: they typically try to provide interpretations of widely shared democratic ideals, which are then used to critically evaluate the political reality. I realize this method is rarely deployed in nondemocratic societies, meaning societies that do not even pretend to show that leaders are chosen by the people. In fact, I can’t think of a single book-length effort by a contemporary political theorist that tries to do so.

The main reason that theorists have been reluctant to defend nondemocratic political systems, of course, is that the main alternatives to democracy in the twentieth century—Nazism, Soviet-style communism, and Maoism—have imposed untold suffering on tens of millions of people. Some Western intellectuals did attempt to defend those political systems, but their efforts have been rightly consigned to the dustbin of history. To be fair, those theorists did not have good understanding of the political systems they tried to defend, and they imposed theoretical constructs that did not correspond to what those systems were really about. Some reviewers claim that my book falls into that earlier tradition of misguided, if not immoral, political thinking. But there is one important difference. Those thinkers were basically shut out from the societies they wrote about: they projected ideals onto opaque and mysterious societies, like North Korea today. To the extent they were guilty of anything, they should have been more cautious and realized that it is extremely difficult to access reliable information in closed societies.

Contemporary China is a different political animal. It is a big, complex country, and we all know about censorship, restrictions on civil liberties, and lack of political transparency. But it is possible to access sufficient information to make an informed judgment about the political system and the values underlying it. Anyone who speaks the language, travels within the country and outside, speaks to diverse groups of people (including political leaders at different levels of government), reads widely in Chinese and English, and subscribes to websites and WeChat groups with diverse political outlooks can make an effort to provide a plausible interpretation of the society’s leading political ideas. It is fine to disagree with my interpretation, but it is not fine to compare my efforts to those of earlier thinkers who unknowingly defended totally closed political systems ruled by tyrants who murdered tens of millions of people.

Method matters because the question of which ideals should be used to evaluate the political reality is a political choice. My critics argue that liberal democracy should serve as the standard for evaluating political progress and regress in China, and they don’t show any interest in drawing on political ideals in China’s own political traditions. Here they follow in the footsteps of Western thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, Hegel, and even Marx himself. Not coincidentally, such views were most common when Western colonialism was in its heyday.

Today, China is not a colonized country; it is a proud and increasingly powerful country with a rich and diverse political tradition, and its leaders, reformers, intellectuals, and people at large are increasingly turning to tradition for inspiration.⁸ Naturally, there is resistance to Western thinkers who seek to evaluate China’s political reality strictly according to ideals that owe nothing to China’s own traditions, just as Westerners would resist efforts by Chinese thinkers to evaluate actually existing democracy in Western countries strictly according to, say, Confucian ideals. However pure the intentions of Western democrats, they will poison relations with China if they do not make an effort to understand and (to a certain extent) sympathize with the leading ideals of Chinese political culture when they engage with China. Of course, this is easier said than done. But there is no alternative if we are to live peacefully with a rising China.

A Utopian Tract?

Other criticisms come from the opposite direction: the problem is not that I’m too close to China’s political reality but rather that I’m too detached from it. Andrew Nathan has published three reviews arguing that my book is fiction. Although I’ve been living and working in Beijing for more than twelve years, engaging with a wide range of intellectuals and political officials, and teaching at a university that has produced many of China’s top leaders, I’ve somehow managed to write a book that is not an account of the real China.⁹ The problem is not so much my account of electoral democracy at lower levels or policy experimentation at intermediate levels of government—it’s hard to deny the reality of such phenomena—but rather my defense of the ideal of political meritocracy at the top. In theory, perhaps, the method of selecting political leaders in meritocracies via examinations and decades-long performance evaluations at lower levels of government has advantages compared to democratic systems that elect leaders in regular competitive elections: only those with excellent records of past performance at lower levels of government are likely to make it to the highest levels of government, meritocratically selected leaders are less likely to make beginner’s mistakes, they can engage in long-term planning that considers the interests of future generations without worrying about the next election, they can carry out experiments at lower levels of government that take years, if not decades, to bear fruit secure in the knowledge that there will be stability at the top, and they have more time to think about sensible policies rather than wasting time raising funds and giving the same campaign speech over and over again.

But the meritocratic ideal, the critics say, has nothing, or very little, to do with China’s political reality.¹⁰ The cynicism comes from the view that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committed first and foremost to perfecting the power of control. But if all that can be said of the CCP is that it’s no different in essence than in Mao’s day and that the Chinese political system is similar in nature to that of other autocratic systems, we are missing central parts of China’s political story. Of course the CCP is not likely to enact political reforms that lead to its demise, but the fact that it has decided to (re)establish a political meritocracy distinguishes China from other nondemocratic political systems and is central to its success over the past three decades.

How can we tell whether political meritocracy exists? Admittedly, it’s a complicated question. Political meritocracy is the idea that the political system should aim to select and promote leaders with superior qualities, but what counts as merit varies from context to context (see chapter 2). I focus on the question of what constitutes political merit for officials at the city level and above in a large, modernizing, and relatively peaceful country that aspires to be a political meritocracy, and then apply my findings to the case of China. I argue that the political system should aim to select and promote political leaders with superior intelligence, social skills, and virtue, and I suggest mechanisms most likely to increase the likelihood that leaders are selected and promoted on the basis of those qualities. I recognize, however, that it’s difficult to implement a political meritocracy. Unlike free and fair democratic elections that can be implemented (for better or worse) even in poor and chaotic societies such as Iraq and Afghanistan, it takes decades, if not longer, to establish a fair and reliable system that selects and promotes leaders with superior qualities.

So on what basis can we say that China has made meritocratic progress over the past three decades? Of course there is large gap between the ideal and reality:¹¹ patronage and social networks, not to mention power struggles hidden from public view, help to explain who gets where. The workings of the Department of Organization, which sets the standards for the selection and promotion of officials, are slightly more open than a few years ago but remain largely opaque to outsiders.

But it is hard to deny that China’s political system is much more meritocratic than in Mao’s day. Education and examinations have played an increasingly important role in the selection and promotion of political leaders. My book draws on empirical evidence to show that officials were often promoted on the basis of good performance at lower levels of government, and good performance was typically measured by economic growth.¹² The general conclusion from these studies is that success at delivering economic growth usually plays a role in the selection and promotion of government officials somewhere along the way—few, if any, officials get anywhere near the top without a comparatively good economic record—but patronage networks matter most at the highest levels of government. Put more positively, most of the top leaders in China have an unusually high level of economic understanding and competence (compared to leaders in electoral democracies, not to mention countries such as North Korea), and then social skills are particularly helpful in securing deeper and richer social networks at the highest levels of government, which can be useful for the implementation of policy.

Some critics cast doubt on the idea that China’s rulers are responsible in any way for China’s success at lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. We should praise the hard work of the Chinese people rather than the government. But the people operate within a policy context favorable to economic improvement. Here’s the connection between China’s actually existing political meritocracy and the country’s poverty-reduction miracle: officials were often promoted on the basis of good performance at low to middle levels of government, and good performance was typically measured by economic growth, and since economic growth is key to reducing poverty, then the incentive system for cadre promotion played an important role in poverty reduction. Land reform and experimentation under hierarchy that also underpin economic growth were implemented by public officials selected and promoted at least partly on the basis of economic expertise.

It is true that economic competence is not the only factor that explains who gets promoted even when it has a measurable impact on career prospects of public officials. Ringen asserts that the most important criterion by which lower level officials are passed for promotion is their performance in the maintenance of stability. But stability matters more in the negative sense that officials are not likely to be promoted if their districts are plagued by instability. The same is true of loyalty to the party: it’s when party officials are manifestly disloyal that they run into trouble. Maintenance of political stability and loyalty to the party are not the only, or even the main, reasons that officials get promoted.

The burden of proof should be on those who want to argue (counterfactually) that poverty reduction on this scale could have been possible with a different political system. It is true, as Ringen notes, that South Korea and Taiwan have grown to high-income countries under a democratic political framework. But if the standard is numbers of people lifted out of poverty, then China’s poverty alleviation is far more impressive (South Korea’s population is less than half of Guangdong province’s). Moreover, much of the economic growth in South Korea and Taiwan took place under less-than-democratic conditions, and growth has slowed since the advent of democratization.

Some critics contest the very idea of superiority in politics and hence reject the whole idea of selecting and promoting leaders with superior qualities. Nathan claims that the biggest problem with Bell’s theory of meritocracy is that the idea of getting quality leaders to make high-performance decisions is based on the notion that there are right and wrong decisions.¹³ I agree that decisions cannot be free of controversy, but some decisions are better than others: at least, we expect political leaders not to make disastrous decisions when it comes to dealing with climate change, invading other countries, and promoting sustainable growth. Is it not fortunate that China has selected and promoted leaders with enough good sense to focus the country’s energies on poverty reduction over the past three decades and without going to war with other countries? There will be new political challenges in the future, but it seems obvious that improvements in the political system need to build on, rather than undermine, meritocratic mechanisms for the selection and promotion of rulers.

Of course, the power of meritocratically selected political leaders needs to be constrained, as I argue in chapter 3. Any decent political system needs to both empower leaders to do good things and limit their power to do bad things. But there can be justifiable disagreements about how to balance the two desiderata. Given differences in political culture and what Chinese call national conditions, I expect Chinese to typically draw the line closer to empowering leaders to do good, and Americans closer to limiting their power to do bad things. There may also be good normative reasons to draw the line closer to empowerment in modern times when unexpected financial and environmental shocks require strong and effective government responses.¹⁴ That said, there’s a worry that the CCP shows signs of age and may not be able to guide the country in the future.

The End of the China Model?

Just a few years ago, China was widely seen as an almost unstoppable economic powerhouse governed by able and committed leaders, and well on its way to challenging the United States on the global stage.¹⁵ Today, the great worry is that China’s economy is imploding and will take the rest of the world down with it.

The China pessimists are right to be concerned but their fears are overblown. Strong economic performance did become an important measure of political legitimacy in China, which is why today’s economic problems have generated such waves. But does it follow—as many analysts in the West seem to think—that poor economic performance means the government will lose the support of the people, hence endangering the political system?

Not necessarily. Clearly the government has made mistakes, most obviously by inflating the stock market bubble. Encouraged by state-owned media, individual investors piled in the Shanghai stock market, sending shares to record highs. By 21 April 2015, shares had risen by more than 80 percent in less than four months, but an online commentary in the People’s Daily still encouraged readers to place their savings in the market, assuring them that continued gains would enjoy the full support from China’s development strategy and economic reforms.¹⁶

The bubble popped on 12 June 2015, with the Shanghai market losing 30 percent of its value by 8 July and falling an additional 8.5 percent on 27 July. The government responded with administrative and punitive measures that were widely condemned by outside observers as haphazard and ineffective. And few could take seriously the government’s official commitment to let the market play a decisive role in the allocation of resources.

What could have been going through the minds of the Chinese leaders supposedly selected on the basis of economic competence? The most charitable interpretation is that they were talking up the market to facilitate difficult market reforms, including the state-owned enterprise reform and IPO (initial public offering) registration reform that could otherwise put downward pressure on share prices. But clearly the government was playing with fire. It was bound to be held responsible when the bubble burst, whatever we think of its response.

Still, the question is whether the government learns from its mistakes and makes key adjustments. Any government (or person), no matter how competent, is bound to make mistakes, and China’s political system has mechanisms in place that allow for improvement. China’s central government can change its policies, such as carrying out market reforms in a more consistent way. It can hold government officials responsible for their mistakes in a more transparent and public way. It can carry out experiments at lower levels of government, see what works and what doesn’t, and then generalize the successful experiments to the rest of the country: experiments in market reform were successfully carried out in special economic zones such as Shenzhen, and further liberalization of markets can proceed in this cautious vein so long as expert assessment rather that political support determines the success or failure of such reforms. The political system can change the incentive structure for the selection and promotion of government officials to reward officials who react well not just during boom times but also during economic downturns. And it can expand mechanisms for consultation and deliberation before decisions are made. None of these measures require an overhaul of the political system.

So the real test for the government’s legitimacy is not whether it occasionally mismanages the economy. If it can correct its mistakes, it will be OK. The stock market bungle is not a make-or-break issue for the legitimacy of CCP rule because only a small percentage of Chinese invest in the stock market. Even a serious economic downturn does not necessarily spell doom for the government. When Singapore’s economy crashed following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the government’s support—mainly a function of its good economic performance in the past—actually increased because it wasn’t held responsible for the downturn and the government leaders were still viewed as competent economic managers.¹⁷ In fact, there may be even less appetite for risky political experiments during economic downturns.

But if China’s economic downturn is prolonged, and if the Chinese people hold the government responsible for the downturn and lose faith in its ability to correct the situation, then the China model will indeed be under threat. However, this kind of scenario is unlikely anytime soon. The days of 10 percent growth are over, but a lower rate of economic growth is to be expected as China becomes wealthier and transitions to a more service-based economy. Even a modest 5 to 6 percent growth rate would still mean rapid progress for an economy that in purchasing-power-parity terms is already the world’s largest.¹⁸ Plus, the Chinese people have had a good run for thirty-five years, and they won’t jump ship so easily. There is no evidence that they think a different political system is more likely to provide the conditions for what matters to most people: an improved standard of living, more plentiful job opportunities, and hope for their children.

The more serious threat to the Chinese political system is that economic growth will lose its status as the main source of legitimacy. Over the past three decades, there was a widespread consensus that the government should strive for high growth rates because growth was seen as key to poverty reduction. Hence, government officials could be promoted based on economic performance above all else without much controversy.

Today, however, the problems are much more diverse, some directly attributable to the lopsided emphasis on economic growth: rampant pollution, a huge gap between rich and poor, precarious social welfare, and an explosion of government debt, not to mention massive corruption. In the future, the government will lose support if it doesn’t deal with these problems, whatever the rate of economic growth.

Here things become more complicated for a political system that prides itself on meritocratic mechanisms for the selection and promotion of leaders. Should government officials be assessed according to their ability to deliver economic growth, to improve social welfare, to reduce corruption, to protect the environment, to reduce the gap between rich and poor, to reduce government debt, or to achieve some combination of these goals? It is impossible to resolve these issues in a noncontroversial way, and there are bound to be many winners and losers no matter the decision. Hence, the government needs more input from the people, not just to help decide on priorities, but also to take the heat off when large constituencies are unhappy with some policies.

In short, the China model can be saved only if the government opens up the political system, with more deliberation and participation at lower levels of government. There is already a degree of consultation in the political system—for example, it took nine years for the property law to pass the National People’s Congress following almost endless rounds of expert advice and public debate¹⁹—but nonexperts will need to argue about what works in a wide range of domains and to have a greater say. Such openness is necessary not just to improve decision making but also to diffuse the sense of responsibility for those decisions. This will entail more freedom of speech and association and more mechanisms for consultation and deliberation within and outside the party, as well as transparent mechanisms to remove public officials who perform badly. Electoral democracy needs to be improved at the lower level, extended to townships, and institutionalized within the party. All the innovations of modern democratic societies, such as open public hearings, deliberative polling, and referenda on key issues, could help to stabilize the political system. And more firmly establishing the rule of law is necessary to protect basic individual rights.²⁰

Would such developments mean an inevitable march to one person, one vote at the highest levels of government, as many Western analysts suggest? Not necessarily. The worry remains among many Chinese, and not just those in positions of power, that fully democratic elections could bring China back to its chaotic days of civil war and weakness vis-à-vis outside powers. Even the more optimistic scenarios of democratic transition may be bad in the sense that electoral democracy at the top might wreck the advantages of the current political model. To the extent the Chinese political system has worked well, it is because the top leaders have been groomed over decades and can avoid beginner’s mistakes. Chinese leaders can take a long-term view in policy making. Consider President Xi’s pledges to combat climate change by 2030; we can assume the Chinese government will stick to what it says, but we are less sure about similar pledges from the U.S. government because a different party in power has an interest in distinguishing itself from its predecessor. A steady hand at the top is also required to carry out experiments at lower levels of government that may take years to bear fruit.

If China were to become an electoral democracy, the CCP might still be in power, but any demagogue without political experience could become leader: a Communist Donald Trump who threatens to expropriate the rich, declare war against Japan, and roll back measures to deal with climate change might become the next Chinese president. Even able and moral leaders need to worry about the next election and make decisions influenced by short-term political considerations that bear on their chances of getting reelected. Elected leaders would need to spend time raising funds and hone their skills at delivering the same speech over and over again instead of upgrading their policy-making skills and learning from best practices abroad.

Can the Chinese government bolster the meritocratic elements in the country’s political system while selectively adopting democratic ideas and practices without electoral democracy at the top? Current trends are far from promising. Over the past couple of years, the government has increased censorship and clamped down on civil society. If the China model has such promise, what explains the government’s need to resort to political repression?

The more immediate reason is President Xi’s anticorruption campaign, the longest and most systematic in recent Chinese history. The stake in the heart of the China model is corruption. In a meritocratic system, corruption—the abuse of public office for private gain—is particularly toxic because leaders derive their legitimacy in part from being seen as virtuous and public-spirited. In a democracy, the people can vote corrupt officials out of power, but there’s no such safety valve in a meritocracy. The overall level of corruption in China has exploded over the past three decades, and it has become a more visible political problem in the past few years due to the glare of social media and more conspicuous consumption by political elites. Recognizing this grave threat, Xi has made combating corruption the government’s top priority.²¹

Whatever the abuses and political biases of the campaign, it is necessary to cleanse the system. But those leading the initiative have relied on instilling fear within the party—the best way, arguably, of achieving quick results—and have made real enemies, which makes the leaders even more paranoid than usual and leads them to curb civil and political rights more aggressively. There have been baby steps toward the methods needed for long-term success in reducing corruption—more independent supervisory institutions, more separation of economic and political power, higher salaries for public officials, and education for public officials informed by Confucian ethics—but these will take years, if not decades, to implement.²²

The other explanation for increased repression derives from the experience of neighboring political communities. The government is fully aware that the kind of economic modernization it has embraced was followed in South Korea and Taiwan by electoral democracy, and recent prodemocracy protests in Hong Kong only exacerbated worries in official circles that mainland China will be next. Hence, it represses those who organize, or talk about, such democratic alternatives for mainland China.

I think these fears are exaggerated. For one thing, smaller East Asian political communities were more subject to American ideological pressure in favor of democratic change. More important, political meritocracy has deep roots in China, and surveys consistently show majorities in support of guardianship discourse, or empowering capable politicians who will assume responsibility for the good of society, over liberal democratic discourse that privileges procedural arrangements to secure people’s rights to participate in politics and choose their leaders (see chapter 3). One might respond that such political preferences will change with education, but my own students at Tsinghua University—one of China’s most selective universities—usually come out in favor of meritocracy following extensive deliberation about the pros and cons of elections for top leaders versus mechanisms such as examinations and assessments of past performance.²³

That said, there is an equally strong demand in China for Western values such as freedom of speech, government transparency, and rule of law, and these demands will only grow stronger as China modernizes. How can the government open up without establishing the kind of electoral democracy that would threaten to wreck its carefully constructed meritocratic system? One solution is for the government to call a referendum and ask the people to vote yes in favor of the China model with more freedom of speech and association but without the right to vote for top leaders or to form political parties that explicitly challenge one-party rule (see chapter 3). If the government wins the referendum, it will have increased legitimacy and can open up without worrying as much about challenges to its rule.

Of course, there are more pessimistic scenarios, such as rule by a populist strongman backed by elements of the country’s security and military forces. Stability could be maintained by Tiananmen Square–style repression, and the new ruler might seek to buttress his legitimacy by launching military adventures abroad. President Xi would look tame by comparison. But China’s own history suggests that ruthless Legalist approaches to rule can provide only short-term success.²⁴

For the long term, the choice is clear. If China can open its political system while maintaining its commitment to political meritocracy, its own distinctive model of governance may get a new lease on life. But China’s political model can best thrive if it is welcomed, not undermined, by the rest of the world.

One World, Two Systems

Here is my hope for the political world. Democracies use elections to select rulers at all levels of government, and meritocracies select rulers at higher levels of government by means of examinations and decades-long training. Both political systems recognize that they are flawed and compete with each other to do the things governments are supposed to do: serve the people, including all those affected by the policies of government. Democracies aim to improve their democratic system while learning from the best of meritocratic practices, and meritocracies aim to improve their meritocratic system while learning from the best of democratic practices. There is no more talk about which system is superior: both political systems recognize each other as morally legitimate even though they are built on different foundations. The United States is the dominant power in the West, China in East Asia,²⁵ but they strive to cooperate in areas of common concerns. Diversity of values is a good thing, and surely