HR: Baogang He reading assignment
I feel that to often we in America to often look at China as a singular entity, more of a monolith or star trek style ‘Borg’ then a collection of more than 1.5 billion individuals spread out across an area roughly the size of the US. Even I personally am guilty of this, and often find myself having to remind myself China is a federal entity with probably even greater authority delegated down the chain then the United States. Not one singular government can hope to enforce direct rule across that many people in that big of an area.
Keeping this in mind, He’s writing on deliberative democracy in rural China piqued my interest. Most of these areas are neigh-impossible for the state government to reach and often to small to be of any tangible interest to the state government; many of the issues facing the villagers as well (namely property rights, halting corruption and avoiding social conflict) are nearly identical to the driving issues John Locke wrote about in his Treatsies of Government, the bedrock of western liberal thought, so to see it appear naturally in China is interesting.
He’s findings show (as he states) “contained some practices, ideas and principles of deliberative democracy, such as mutual respect, participation, public deliberation, equality of opportunity, and empowerment in terms of the impact on policy making.” Homegrown small-scale democracy seems to be a good way of laying a groundwork of a more pure democratic thought in China and in places unlikely for it to attract to much attention, possibly serving as a means of checking growing authoritarian tendencies in Beijing. The institutions described by He, involving outside mediators, efforts to curb the ‘cadre’ and establish a sense of ‘equality under the law’ are not ideas and phrases one often hears when reading or discussing Chinese politics and internal affairs.