BEIJING: When King John of England agreed to the Magna Carta in 1215 to make peace with the rebellious barons, the royal charter was meant to protect the nobles’ property rights. The primacy of the privileged has since become a hallmark of Western democracy.
When Austrian-American political economist Joseph Schumpeter espoused an elitist model in 1942, he argued that given the incapacity of ordinary people to make intelligent decisions in politics, it is necessary to leave governance to politicians chosen through competitive elections, and his theory has gained broad acceptance in the West.
However, from a Chinese point of view, this kind of democracy is at best a procedural democracy, which may be a far cry from substantial democracy or real democracy. The Western democracy today faces multiple challenges, ranging from stagnant living standards, a divided society and monetized politics to rising populism, and needs serious reform to live up to the expectations of the people.
In contrast, China has long been exploring what is called people’s democracy with varying degrees of success. The defeat in the Opium War (1840-42) waged against China by Britain ushered in a period of prolonged instability. Colonial powers invaded China and forced it to pay huge reparations. Things did not change for the better even after the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In the absence of a strong central authority, the warlords, each supported by imperialist powers, fought one another for dominance. The country descended into civil war and millions of lives were lost.
Most patriots who were exploring the road to national rejuvenation shared the belief that the Chinese should be the masters of their country but a solution to the problems did not emerge until the late 1910s, when the October Revolution in Russia, in which revolutionaries seized power and established the Soviet republic, awakened Chinese progressives to Marxism-Leninism. They realized that the working class and peasants should be mobilized to fight the warlords and imperialist powers in order to achieve national unity and independence.
When the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded in 1921, most of its members were Marxist intellectuals. Three years later, it formed an alliance with the Nationalist Party (KMT) against the warlords. There were two leanings within the CPC, with some cozying up to the KMT and others prioritizing urban workers’ movement while ignoring the peasantry. This alliance collapsed after a KMT coup in 1927. Based on research in the rural areas in Hunan, his home province, Mao Zedong asserted that the CPC should rely not only on workers but also, more importantly, on peasants, who constituted the vast majority of the population. He called on the Party to reach out to the peasants, understand their needs and help improve their material conditions.
– The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News exchange item
