China’s Long Quest for Democracy: A Historical Institutional Perspective by Lin Gang (review)

This book by Lin Gang provides a multifaceted overview of the origins and development of democracy in China during the twentieth century. Dr. Lin Gang is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Academic Committee Chair at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he is also Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies and Vice President of the Shanghai Society for Taiwan Studies. Democracy has had its ups and downs since its advent in ancient Athens and the Roman Republic. Following a halcyon “third wave” in the wake of the collapse of European communism in the early 1990s, democracy has experienced a secular decline, particularly since the global financial crisis and the currently ongoing disintegration of the European Union. Nowhere is this more so than in the eyes of the People’s Republic of China, home of the world’s largest population and economy (by some measures), where in April 2013 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issued “Document No. 9” stipulating that “Western Constitutional Democracy” (inter alia) should no longer be publicly mentioned. In view of its currently endangered status, this book displays academic courage on the part of Lin, who received his Ph.D. in Pennsylvania and embarked upon a promising scholarly career in the United States before returning to his homeland. This is however no partisan screed but a remarkably evenhanded and scholarly analysis of China’s long, ambivalent relationship to this vague but powerful ideal.

Lin begins his book with an interesting and thorough review of the Western literature on democracy (and China’s prospects for democratization), followed in Chapter 3 by an equally informative discussion of the Chinese conceptualization of and experience with democracy. As indicated in his subtitle, his framework of analysis is “historical institutionalism,” which seeks to understand how institutions emerge from and are embedded in concrete sociopolitical contexts and how they then evolve over time. In terms of the categorical distinction between “structural” and “agency” (or strategic choice) explanations of democratic transition, this means Lin tends to focus on the former, including not only geopolitical and macroeconomic variables but previous governmental structures and ideological patterns.

China’s quest for democracy emerged explosively in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution establishing the Republic of China, which had only a brief honeymoon before succumbing to warlordism, civil war, and Japanese imperialism. Yet democracy survived, not only structurally in the Republic of China that lasted until the communist victory in October 1949 but spiritually in the May Fourth Movement and in the minds of China’s young intelligentsia, ever searching for new ideas to inspire and “save” their country. Indeed, it is embodied in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, which claims to be a “people’s democratic dictatorship.”

Where did democracy come from? Lin Gang finds little in China’s rich ideological heritage to support the notion of indigenous roots for democracy as it is understood in the West. The democratic ideal came from the West, via Japan, and remains tainted by its exogenous origins. To be sure historians can point to tangential ideals, such as the notion that the “people” are most important and should be served by their leaders, norms of adherence to rules of basic civility, a vague egalitarianism embodied in such Chinese slogans as “all men are brothers,” or the imperative that good rulers (wang dao 王道 as opposed to ba dao 霸道) rule for the people (indeed, tyrants may be assassinated). But there is no concept of rule by the people (or their selected representatives). At bottom Chinese tradition is authoritarian, Lin finds, based on “rule by virtue, state centralism, intellectual elitism, and political hierarchy.” And this authoritarian tradition according to Lin has had a very powerful impact on the subsequent Chinese experience with democracy by virtue of “path dependency,” or the notion that once well established an institution tends to reproduce itself and resist change. Despite the Chinese Communist Revolution...