12 { China’s Quest
profound implications for PRC foreign relations. Not least, the regime needed
to look strong and avoid any appearance of weakness.
The great historic and philosophical alternative to both Marxism and illib-
eral forms of nationalism as political legitimization arises from a liberal tradi-
tion tracing to Socrates, Aristotle, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, and G. W. F. Hegel. According to liberalism, individuals should
be able to direct their own lives. They should be secure in their ability to
reach their own conclusions about many aspects of life and to live in accord
with those conclusions with due regard for the comparable rights of others.
Individual freedom is the core of liberal thought. From this perspective, gov-
ernment becomes an act of collective self-direction by citizens participating
in the process of constituting political authority via legally protected free-
doms. Citizens come together and debate issues in a public space with effec-
tive legal protection, and resolve through a process of competing ideas and
proposals how to constitute and wield the public power. One manifestation
of this process is democracy, defined by Joseph Schumpeter as the ability of
the citizenry to routinely choose and change their rulers. Democracy in the
liberal tradition is the collective self-direction of free individuals.
One of the great strengths of liberal democracy is that its very processes
legitimize the exercise of state power. Although liberal democracy may be
very difficult to make work well, when that is accomplished, the ability of citi-
zens to freely express their views and advocate for their interests, plus making
decisions on the basis of one person one vote and majority rule, legitimizes
the outcome, almost regardless of what that outcome might be. The belief
that the political process is open and fair leads to acceptance by citizens. Such
legitimate democratic stability is not limited to Europe, North America, and
South America. Across East, Southeast and South Asia, nations have reached
this modern condition. In China, however, this path to political legitimacy is
precluded by the CCP’s perpetual one-party rule.
The history of the past century, including China’s history, indicates that
liberal ideas of individual freedom have proved extremely attractive. Liberal
ideas have not prevailed in any of the epic political upheavals of China, but
those ideas keep reappearing, often with great power. The Chinese people may
not endorse liberal ideals, but CCP leaders seem to fear that they will, perhaps
suddenly and with great force, as in spring 1989. Again, the point here is not
that liberal democracy will work in China—although this author believes it
someday will. The point, rather, is that the old and still formal legitimization
of the CCP’s Leninist dictatorship, Marxism-Leninism, no longer serves well
to legitimize CCP state power. Liberal ideas which might effectively relegiti-
mize CCP rule are anathematized as leading to the slippery slope of regime
change. The regime is left with aggrieved nationalism, a ruling strategy that,
as this book will show, exercises a significant influence on China’s foreign
relations.