Yearning for Change, Not Democracy : It’s Not a Search for Free Institutions, but for Better Leaders

Americans would be ill-advised to interpret the demonstrations in China as demands for--or even as being directly inspired by--any concept of democracy borrowed from ourselves.

Rather, the Chinese students who set the spark and who are insisting on keeping it burning conceive and present their claims in the light of traditional Chinese views of government, and not with reference to any Western-style political system.

Watch our nightly newscasts and read our press reports from China carefully. There you will find next to nothing that bespeaks even a familiarity with the institutional trappings that mean democracy in the West--no clamor for genuine elections, fair political representation through a legalized opposition party, better laws that are really enforced in a reliable court system, any balance of authority between equally powered branches of government. Indeed, as reported by our press, at best there has been an isolated cry for delivering more power to the National People’s Congress, but not even any words in criticism of the Communist Party-dominated manner of composing that body. How then can we label this a call for “democracy” as we know it?

What we see instead is a very Chinese yearning for an improved “government of men,” but not, at this stage anyway, for a government of law or a government by regularized, predictable institutions. This proclivity of the Chinese to believe that their government will work better simply by resting its rule on better leaders--but not to expect that those leaders be accountable or that they ground their power in a dependable, constitutional framework--traces back to the time of Confucius (whose ideas have shaped Chinese political culture for more than 2,000 years now). Ironically, it is just this bent that has been the bane of political reformers throughout the last century; even some of the top Chinese leaders and intellectuals of today have criticized their own system for this weakness.

The fascinating point is that the students in the square have not yet stepped outside this pattern. Their chief complaints are exceedingly personalistic: First they demanded to meet with leaders at the highest level; later they lashed out at two top politicians, Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng, whom they perceive as standing at the source of their grievances. Psychologically speaking, these are highly frustrated people who see the way to their satisfaction in terribly simple terms--either by confronting or, better yet, by unseating a few highly powerful men.

But the issues that have so riled up these protesters are ones that cannot be solved just by changing several elites. Even though the movement has drawn in just about every sort of element in the cities, all of these people share a small but extremely compelling set of fundamental concerns. Essentially, the vast majority of the Chinese population is sick of the mix of sorry but logical outcomes of partial economic reform. Since 1979 some, but not all, prices have been market-driven; some, but not many, powers have been granted to enterprises and their management.

Behind it all, though, most officials have held on to their ability to command the loopholes between plan and market and the loot lying there, while the inflation, bureaucratic corruption and unfair income distribution that inevitably accompany such halfway measures are readily apparent to the average person. At the same time, the opening to the world and the notion of a loosening of controls, coupled with the stark decline in party prestige and legitimacy that began at least as long ago as the Cultural Revolution have encouraged the people to complain in the open. Everyone seems to know, too, that these conditions--partial reform, a weakened regime--have made it much more difficult for the political elite to retaliate.

Anyone who has been listening and looking closely for the past two weeks will have heard the students singing the Communist anthem, the Internationale, will have noted scattered placards aloft bearing the picture of Mao Tse-tung. These students--and their fellow citizens as well--are dreaming of ideals: a purer party, morally upright leaders, a reign of socio-economic fairness and for a chance to meet, write and speak about these things without restrictions. Their grabbing that very chance from their weakened leaders in recent weeks is what we have been watching and applauding.

One of the leaders of the new Chinese Independent Assn. of University Students, when queried by the French newspaper Liberation summed up quite neatly:

“Democracy means that the people’s opinions and complaints can be expressed and rapidly examined. Western-style democracy has good aspects but also bad aspects. The majority can be wrong and the minority right.”