By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
When asked about having the right amount of democracy, the citizens of Taiwan, South Korea, and China Vietnam topped the list! To Americans, the Democracy Perception Index 2021 data released earlier this month was a surprise. South Korea and Taiwan are recognized as having forms of democracy, but why do mainland Chinese also think that they also have the “right amount” of democracy?
The Alliance of Democracies that commissions this worldwide survey realizes that there is not a pure democracy today—where all people come together to vote on every governmental decision. There are a variety of systems of representative government, some with two parties and some with many more. Some are unicameral (one decision-making body); others are bicameral or otherwise. Some have established terms of turnover; others trigger elections every time a coalition falls apart.
Therefore the survey asked: “Which of the following statements comes closest to your view?”
-I think there is not enough democracy in my country.
-I think there is the right amount of democracy in my country.
-I think there is too much democracy in my country.
They found “The only country to see a significant decline in the desire for more democracy is Hong Kong” that dropped ten percentage points over the prior survey. This reflects a public fed up with the demonstrations that shut down much of Hong Kong before the pandemic.
So where is there any “democracy” in China?
Over a decade ago, I was lecturing to college biology teacher candidates at a series of China normal universities about using more questioning and less memorization, when I got a request to visit with a prior biology dean who had risen to vice president of his university. I arrived to find that we had limited time to visit because he was now a member of the People’s National Congress (PNC) and they were having subcommittee meetings at the hotel where I was staying. We ate at the hotel restaurant. Everyone else around me in the restaurant were PNC committee members on lunch break.
“So what business are they discussing in meetings?” I asked my colleague.
“It is a business issue,” he explained. “Years before, the PNC had passed legislation that encouraged businesses to set up along a corridor across the Yellow River. But it was not successful. So we are debating where to re-establish the business corridor.” Years later, I would learn that a new corridor had been established forming a continuous city from Tianjin to Beijing down to Shijiazhuang instead of adding another “ring road” to Beijing.
Despite the Western portrayal of China as monolithically top-down autocratic, it actually uses committees to decide details of policies. It would be similar to our having only one major political party in power; there would still be disagreements to be hammered out and details of proposals to be decided upon.
If a young person in China wants to seek a position in government, they will choose to join the Youth League in high school and later apply to join the Communist Party. However, if you only wanted to gain a local office in a city, you could also choose from among any of eight very small parties: the China Democratic League, China Zhi Gong Party, Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party, the Jiusan Society, the China National Democratic Construction Association, China Association for Promoting Democracy, the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, or the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang. Six are headed by professors. Members from these parties can and do win in some local elections. But other parties are illegal, for much the same reason the Nazi Party is illegal in Germany.
This last Kuomintang Party is to some extent a returning remnant of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. As I toured through one of eleven new high schools in Shanghai with state-of-the-art technology, I was told that these schools were built by an elderly man who had fled to Taiwan with the Nationalists when they lost back in 1949. Many such elderly were now coming back home to rejoin their extended family.
China’s National People’s Congress allots a percentage of seats for non-Communist Party members.
But as long as the government manages the schools, transportation and other government duties well, most of the population is happy to spend 99 percent of their time going on living a peaceful life.
Meanwhile in America, 42 percent of survey respondents indicated that the U.S. had too little democracy (the same percent as in Russia). And this survey suggests that many Americans are in constant debate about politics—and spend far less time living life.
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NOTE:
Readers can access The Democracy Perception Index online at:
https://f.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/7049607/The%20Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202021.pdf
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.