{"title":"Confucian Rule in China: In the House of Virtue and Talent","authors":"B. Gilley","doi":"10.29654/TJD.200707.0008","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"It is the best of times for scholars and policy analysts who propose alternative visions of China’s political future. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in the midst of a far-reaching process of identifying exactly how it might remain in power for many decades to come. Chinese society is experiencing rapid value changes that may, from today’s vantage point, support any number of forms of political organization. Last but not least, democracy itself, which enjoyed a brief heyday in the 1990s as the only feasible form of political organization, has come under attack from both the left and the right (as it did following its previous heyday in the 1950s), thus relegitimating discussions of nondemocratic forms of government. The new alternative modernities of left and right share a disdain for electoral democracy. But they differ substantially in their proposed remedies. Those on the right typically emphasize elite rule, political stability, and the imposition of traditional values. Those on the left typically emphasize direct participation, economic redistribution, and the imposition of progressive values. In the Chinese case, the eruption of competing left and right visions for the future owes in part to the signals given by the CCP. Since the failure of communism in China and elsewhere in 1989 and the beginning of the 1990s, the CCP has been groping to redefine its future. Official phrases such as “political civilization” and “harmonious socialist society” have been proffered as alternative modernities, but without any clear institutional content. A State Council White Paper on democracy issued in 2005 called for left-wing democratic centralism and right-wing rule by “experts” both at the same time. It is no wonder that the future seems a wide open field, and that many thinkers have rushed in to fill the void. Daniel Bell is the most prolific, well-read, and high-profile advocate of one type of right-wing alternative modernity, which he calls “Confucian democracy.” The outlines, contained in his new book, Beyond Liberal","PeriodicalId":403398,"journal":{"name":"Taiwan journal of democracy","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2007-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Taiwan journal of democracy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.29654/TJD.200707.0008","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
It is the best of times for scholars and policy analysts who propose alternative visions of China’s political future. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in the midst of a far-reaching process of identifying exactly how it might remain in power for many decades to come. Chinese society is experiencing rapid value changes that may, from today’s vantage point, support any number of forms of political organization. Last but not least, democracy itself, which enjoyed a brief heyday in the 1990s as the only feasible form of political organization, has come under attack from both the left and the right (as it did following its previous heyday in the 1950s), thus relegitimating discussions of nondemocratic forms of government. The new alternative modernities of left and right share a disdain for electoral democracy. But they differ substantially in their proposed remedies. Those on the right typically emphasize elite rule, political stability, and the imposition of traditional values. Those on the left typically emphasize direct participation, economic redistribution, and the imposition of progressive values. In the Chinese case, the eruption of competing left and right visions for the future owes in part to the signals given by the CCP. Since the failure of communism in China and elsewhere in 1989 and the beginning of the 1990s, the CCP has been groping to redefine its future. Official phrases such as “political civilization” and “harmonious socialist society” have been proffered as alternative modernities, but without any clear institutional content. A State Council White Paper on democracy issued in 2005 called for left-wing democratic centralism and right-wing rule by “experts” both at the same time. It is no wonder that the future seems a wide open field, and that many thinkers have rushed in to fill the void. Daniel Bell is the most prolific, well-read, and high-profile advocate of one type of right-wing alternative modernity, which he calls “Confucian democracy.” The outlines, contained in his new book, Beyond Liberal