The Economist December 4th 2021 China 61WhyChinasaysitisa democracy
T
he leadersof China’s Communist Party have spent a long
time waiting for liberal democracy to look as fragile as it does
today. Now, filled with scorn for a dysfunctional West, they think
that their moment has come. Angered, specifically, by President
Joe Biden’s summoning of over 100 countries to a virtual Summit
for Democracy on December 9th and 10th—including Taiwan, an
island that China claims as its territory—China is responding with
fighting talk. Officials are seizing every chance to explain why
their alwayscontrolling, sometimesruthless political system is
not just a good fit for a large country trying to become prosperous
and strong: the party’s defensive line for four decades. Increas
ingly, they are on the offensive. They insist that China’s political
model is so effective, and so responsive to the people’s wishes,
that it is more perfectly democratic than America’s.
In the words of a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Amer
ican democracy is in a “disastrous state”, calling into doubt that
country’s legitimacy as host of such a summit. In a video call, Chi
na’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, commiserated with his counter
part from Hungary, whose increasingly autocratic government is
also not invited. Mr Wang condemned America for excluding
some countries, adding that the yardstick of a democracy should
be whether a government “meets the people’s needs, and gives
them enough of a sense of participation, satisfaction and gain”.
The free world—meaning, broadly, societies in which govern
ments can lose elections, and in which even the rich and powerful
are (sometimes) held to account by independent judges, uncen
sored news outlets, opposition politicians and civic groups—
should not underestimate this Chinese challenge.
Chinese talking points about oneparty rule hold some appeal
in more countries than Mr Biden may care to admit. That is not
just true in states wooed with Chinese money or diplomatic back
ing for local despots. Lots of countries feel little nostalgia for the
post1945 era dominated by the Americanled world order, and are
eager for alternatives. In an online address to African leaders on
November 29th, President Xi Jinping blended promises to send
covid19 vaccines and further open Chinese markets to African ex
ports with talk of “true multilateralism” that delivers freedom,
justice, democracy and development. He also criticised “interven
tion in domestic affairs, racial discrimination and unilateral sanc
tions”. Mr Xi’s audience will have heard a coded reference to Chi
na’s willingness to block or water down Americanled attempts to
put pressure on rights abusers or kleptocrats in such forums as the
un. In an article attacking Mr Biden’s summit, cowritten with
Russia’s ambassador to America, China’s man in Washington, Qin
Gang, went further. The pair called it a breach of the unCharter for
any power to interfere in other countries’ affairs in the name of
fighting corruption or protecting human rights.
It is not new for autocrats to coopt benignsounding labels.
During the cold war a quick route to a labour camp was to express
dissent in a country with “democratic” in its official name, from
North Korea to East Germany. Contrary to Mr Qin’s statecentric
description of the un Charter, tensions between state sovereignty
and the protection of individual freedoms have lurked, unre
solved, in that body’s founding documents from the start. China’s
version of multilateralism ignores those tensions. But the swagger
that lies behind China’s claims to be “an extensive, wholeprocess
socialist democracy”, to quote Mr Qin’s clunky phrase, is growing.
That confident talk of Chinesestyle democracy rests on some ten
dentious claims about the extent to which the public is consulted
about new policies, and about the legitimacy that the party draws
from muchvaunted successes, from controlling covid within
China’s borders to managing decades of economic growth.
Describing how governments earn mandates to rule, political
scientists distinguish between input legitimacy (eg, an election
victory), and output or performance legitimacy (ie, successful
policies). China’s rulers claim to enjoy input legitimacy based on
public consultation, overseen by local and national “people’s con
gresses”. Yet the party does not permit elections that it could lose.
Journalists who report errors hidden by state media are silenced
or imprisoned, making it hard to talk of informed public consent.
In Hong Kong, which formerly enjoyed many Westernstyle free
doms, the government is busy crushing a semidemocratic parlia
ment and local councils with laws requiring members to be pro
government “patriots”, while opposition politicians are jailed. When the people’s democratic dictatorship doesn’t work
If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, rigged elections
are a dictator’s homage to real democracy: an admission that pop
ular mandates offer moral authority. Bold claims for performance
legitimacy are risky, too. If controlling covid gives Mr Xi a man
date, were his predecessors illegitimate when officials spent
months mishandling an earlier deadly disease, sars? If the econ
omy slows will the party, by its own logic, still deserve to rule?
The China Public Diplomacy Association held a “dialogue on
democracy” in Beijing on December 2nd about what democracy is
and who defines it. “China’s democracy is not for the few, it is for
the whole people,” Lu Yucheng, a deputy foreign minister, told at
tendees. Alas, the system he described practices majoritarianism,
not democracy. It is a form of tyranny in which individuals are
crushed for displeasing the party, whether feminists, human
rights lawyers, gay activists, creators of art deemed “unhealthy”,
underground Christians or Uyghurs.
China is creating a zerosum contest between autocracy and
democracy. The timing is odd, for China still needs foreign know
howto complete its rise. If countries know that Chinese success
will be called proof of their decline, some may ask whythey
should help. Liberal democracies are in trouble. But as theypon
der how to engage with an assertive China, they have a vote.nChaguan
Dysfunction in the West tempts the party to make risky boasts