Cai Xia, “Advancing Constitutional Democracy Should be the Mission of the Chinese Communist Party—a discussion with Professor Yang Xiaoqing

Articles from the Liberal and revisionist theoreticians of China

2021, Cai Xia published a long report at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University, titled "China-US Relations in the Eyes of the CCP: An Insider's View". A Marxist turned bourgeois lackey.
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Translation by Timothy Cheek, Joshua A. Fogel, and David Ownby

Cai Xia 蔡霞, a retired professor from the Central Party School in Beijing, offers a robust defense of liberal democratic values and institutions, but does so in the language of the Chinese Communist Party. ..Cai Xia presents liberal democracy, which she calls constitutional democracy, not as the repudiation of the Communist Party and its revolution but as its fulfillment. In the language of forces of production, class structure, and ideology she argues that this is the task for the CCP in the current period..

The full text of the 2011 article follows:

If a country hopes to advance toward modern civilization, the modernization of politics must be an important part of the project. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has created a new China through a victorious revolution over the ruins of despotism, thus bequeathing to the CCP a multi-faceted historical mission. One of these is to take the lead in the construction of modern state institutions, and to use socialist constitutional democracy to shore up and guarantee the great revival of the Chinese people. For a fairly long time, the people thought that the victory of the revolution would mean that the people would be masters of their own lives. However, the CCP has held power for sixty years, and the rapid changes that have accompanied the reform and opening of the past thirty years throw particular light on the fact that we still have a long row to hoe in our strenuous efforts to establish a state system of modern constitutional democracy.

Revolution Can Overturn a Despotic Regime, And Still Find it Difficult to Establish New Institutions of Political Democracy

Three-quarters of China’s twentieth century has been engulfed in blood and shaken by the great tide of the Chinese revolution. The 1911 Republican Revolution, the New Democratic Revolution (1919-49), and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s are fundamentally different in nature, but all had democracy as a rallying cry.[3] From the time of its birth, the CCP has written into the guiding principles for which it struggles the achievement of the people’s democracy, and took initial steps toward democratic practice in the Anti-Japanese base areas during World War II. After taking power in 1949, the Party engaged in difficult efforts to bring about popular democracy. To this day, however, how China will finally implement constitutional democracy remains a mystery. The paradox of history is that revolution can overthrow an old regime, but it cannot exorcize the ghosts of despotic government. Revolution can shatter a world, but has difficulty establishing a new, modern democratic state.

In Chinese culture, revolution has a sacred quality. In ancient Chinese texts, we find the term “Tang-Wu ‘revolution 汤武革命”[4] and in the early twentieth century there was the 1911 Revolution. Democracy is the mainstream of twentieth-century human political civilization and it, too, has a sacred quality in terms of political legitimacy. Finding the link between revolution and democracy was a necessary requirement in the Chinese people’s search for a way forward in the early twentieth century. The influence of the October Revolution in the Soviet Union drove progressive Chinese intellectuals to accept Marxism. In Marxist theory, revolution is class warfare, and democracy is the most important goal to achieve in class struggle. In the Communist Manifesto, we read: “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”[5] Under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Chinese Communists now take democracy as the core discourse of revolutionary ideology, and revolution as the necessary path to the realization of democracy.

Democracy is the core language of revolutionary ideology. The CCP wrote the idea of the realization of people’s democracy into the political program of the revolution, so that democracy became a political weapon in the struggle for legitimacy between irreconcilable class enemies. During the period of the revolutionary war, the CCP used all means to expose the one-party despotic rule of the Guomindang, and publications like the New China Daily 新华日报 and others in Yan’an published large numbers of editorials and criticisms advocating constitutional democracy, even affirming and praising American democracy.[6] In the anti-Japanese base areas under their control, they carried out democratic constitutional measures, such as universal suffrage and the “three-thirds system 三三制.”[7] In 1940 Mao Zedong stated explicitly: “What is constitutional government? It is democratic government.”[8] When talking about people’s democracy in the anti-Japanese base areas, he pointed out that: “freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, political conviction and religious belief, and freedom of the person are the people's most important freedoms. In China only the Liberated Areas have given full effect to these freedoms.”[9] In 1949 new China was established, and CCP members proclaimed that the revolution’s victory and the establishment of the CCP regime were the realization of the people’s democracy: “The Chinese people have stood up.”

Revolution was the only path to realize democracy. Old China was a society under despotic rule, in which the Chinese people had no democratic rights to speak of. This compelled the Communists to carry out a violent revolution to realize democracy. The revolution brought the Communists to political power, and once in power, the Communists similarly resolved all difficult problems “in the name of the revolution.” This included resolving ideological differences on socialist construction both within the Party and without, overcoming the problem of the minority of party cadres who were divorced from the masses, the phenomenon of bureaucratic privilege, and the so-called “spontaneous trend toward capitalism” among the peasantry.

During the Cultural Revolution, which used Mao Zedong’s “theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat” as a guide to mobilization and development, slogans like “great democracy 大民主” and “mass dictatorship 群众专政” were all the rage for a time. In fact, these amounted to a Chinese-style “tyranny of the majority,” and they dragged the country into a decade of chaos and caused the people untold catastrophes.

History makes clear that revolution takes shattering the old regime as a condition for the establishment of people’s democracy. However, revolution most certainly is not the natural “midwife” of democracy. Before 1949, the revolution promoted progress in Chinese society, but after 1949, what we call the “revolution” has moved in the opposite direction from democracy.

Why did Revolution in the “New” China Go Against Constitutional Democracy?

The Chinese Communist Party established New China through violent revolution on the ruins of autocracy, and guiding the construction of the new China has been the basic mission of the CCP as the ruling party. However, the “construction” that New China needs is not only economic and cultural but at a more basic level is the construction of a modern political community which will put New China into the category of modern democratic countries. But if we look squarely at reality and take seriously the lessons of the history since the Party took on this mission as the ruling party, we have to admit that even today this mission has not been fully accomplished. The reasons why this mission has still not been completed, despite sixty years as the ruling party, reflect the complex interaction of objective factors from China’s social history and current realities, as well as the limitations of the Party’s understanding of national construction and the influence of the Soviet Communist Party’s ruling system.

(1) Long-term negation of the market economy inhibited the conditions for constitutional democracy

Generally speaking, democracy is first of all the expression of the form of a country’s political life, which is safeguarded by the modern state system. Marx pointed out: “Democracy is a categorical concept of state systems.”[10] When the Chinese Communist Party established a new political community after taking power, this was actually a step in the transformation of the traditional autocratic state, leading in the direction of a modern democratic state. From the perspective of political civilization, we can say that the establishment of a sound constitutional democratic state system has been the fundamental trend of human political development in modern times. Even though each state’s historical path to constitutional democracy has differed according to the national characteristics of each, all of them at least needed an economic base in the form of some kind of modern market economy.

For a long time, the Chinese Communist Party only understood democratic politics in terms of class struggle, and for a relatively long time did not recognize that a market economy is the indispensable basis for developing democratic politics. Instead it suppressed and rejected elements of a market economy because it identified market economies with capitalism.

In Europe it was on the basis of the full development of the market economy that civil society arose and promoted modern politics, while progressively strengthening the democratic system. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels vividly described the economic processes of city dwellers’ becoming the earliest members of the bourgeois class, the discovery of North America, which stimulated the rise of commerce, trans-Atlantic shipping and industry, and the expansion of market demands leading modern industry to replace artisanal production, and pointed out that the bourgeoisie, at each step of economic development, also made corresponding political achievements.

The bourgeoisie concentrated population in cities, centralised the means of production, and concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, were lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs and tariff policy.[11]

This economy established the basis for the modern political community, and also provided its needed social resources. Constitutional democracies created on the basis of national market economies now had their fundamental meaning and practical contents: the rational separation of state powers under a constitution, likewise the prevention of the monopolization of productive forces through a constitutionally mandated rational separation of powers, the limitation of the powers of the state through the power of society, and the protection of the individual rights of the citizen and property rights from harassment or expropriation by state power.

The realization of plural democracy and social harmony, mutual understanding and cooperation were thus achieved through the recognition of free will and equal rights on the basis of a plurality of interests and the protection of citizen rights by law. It is clear that a market economy is the indispensable economic foundation of constitutional democracy and the constitutional democratic system is the necessary political arrangement for a market economy society.

The historical starting point of China’s transition from an autocratic state to a modern political community is not the same as in European society. The economy did not give rise to our politics; politics produced our politics. China made the transition from a traditional autocracy to a modern democracy in the context of the savage invasion of foreign capital and the danger of national extinction. During the half century from 1898 to 1949, the Hundred Days Reform, the 1911 Revolution, and even the New Democratic Revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party, all embodied the search for a modern political order. Yet political progress could not rely solely on politics, but needed the support of genuine economic and social strength. However, due to the tragic history of the Chinese nation in modern times, Communists could not self-consciously face this question, which meant that Chinese society failed to build a modern market system and the conditions surrounding this system.

Due to the resistance of its highly developed autocratic political system, it was difficult for Chinese society to develop a market economy in the modern sense until the middle of the 19th century. And the market economy in Chinese society before 1949 was a deformed market economy that bore the marks of the colonial economics of a savage and heartless invasion and penetration of foreign capital. The elimination of this deformed market economy in the socialist transformation undertaken after the Communists came to power was completely correct.

However, the Communists had a dogmatic understanding of the Marxist discourse on commodity economy in which they mistakenly equated the market economy with capitalism, and so they used state power to impose a planned economy that restricted and eliminated the market elements in society. The fundamental laws of the development of political civilization clearly show that a market economy is the necessary basis for constitutional democracy. In a certain sense, without a market economy there can be no pluralization of social interests, nor the requirements for the respect and protection of rights, nor the growth of civil society, nor the checks and balances of power necessary for the realization of constitutional democracy. When the establishment of the modern state system is divorced from the growth of actual society, democratic politics can only be propaganda for a political ideology.

Precisely because we lacked the fertile soil of the market economy in which to grow democratic politics, even though the constitution declares that the people are the masters of the nation, in fact in actual political life it has been difficult for the political rights of people’s democracy to manifest themselves or for individual members of society to live out those rights. Furthermore, the political ideal of a pluralistic “people’s republic 人民共和” has been displaced by “majoritarian democracy 多数民主” because of the partial nature of constitutional government which has been subsumed by the “representational 代表” role of the ruling party, to the point that the leadership alters or ignores citizen rights for political reasons. And society can do nothing but submit. Going a step further, “majoritarian democracy” can easily in the name of the revolution become “majority tyranny 多数暴政.”

(2) There has been insufficient recognition by the Party since taking power of the arduous nature of establishing a modern state system

Ruling parties promote the political development of society under the constraints of specific conditions, such as the political ecosystem of the society in which the ruling party operates, a country’s political traditions, and the structure of the state political system, etc. Developed countries in the West have gone through several centuries of bourgeois democracy and have already established a set of relatively complete modern state institutions. The ruling parties of these states wield power within an established national democratic system, restrained by the mechanisms of that system. But the Chinese Communist Party first led the revolution to overthrow the old autocratic system and then became the ruling party leading the establishment of a new state power.

The difference between Old and New China is not solely limited to differences in their class nature, but also that Old China was one of the traditional autocracies and New China ought to be counted among the ranks of modern democratic politics. Democratic state systems and autocratic state systems have essential differences. Marx, when comparing monarchy with democracy, particularly pointed out that: “In monarchy the whole, the people, is subsumed under one of its modes of existence, the political constitution; in democracy the constitution itself appears only as one determination, and indeed as the self-determination of the people. In monarchy we have the people of the constitution, in democracy the constitution of the people.… only the specific difference of democracy is that here the constitution is in general only one moment of the people’s existence, that is to say the political constitution does not form the state for itself.”[12]

According to Marx’s theory of the state, the new style state system which is “only one moment of the people’s existence” needs the constitutional form to elaborate the people’s democratic rights and to formulate and implement a legal system to protect people’s rights and freedoms. Thus, it is a great historical responsibility of China’s ruling party to use the constitutional democratic system to establish and advance the progress of China’s political civilization.

However, the Chinese Communist Party’s heightened insistence on the class domination of people’s democracy comes at the cost of an insufficient concern for concretely establishing a democratic system. Communists typically understand the overthrow of the previous rulers in terms of violent revolution, smashing old China’s state apparatus, and assume that the day of revolutionary victory is the same as the achievement of democracy. Actually, this is not the case. Due to the profound influence of millennia of autocracy, even though the previous rulers have been overthrown, autocracy has been dismantled in “form” but not in “spirit.”

At the same time, the high concentration of power in the planned economy, the political control of class struggle as the guiding principle, and the hierarchical system of the administration, etc., all have caused the old imperial politics, status consciousness, and the belief that privileges go with position to seep into the new political system. Their actual operation in the new system is hidden, but their influence is profound and makes the establishment of the new state system of people’s democracy imperfect in “form” and causes its “spirit” to gradually dissipate.

Deng Xiaoping pointed out that: “From old China we inherited a strong tradition of feudal autocracy and a weak tradition of democratic laws. Moreover, in the post-Liberation years we did not consciously draw up systematic rules and regulations to safeguard the people's democratic rights. Our legal system is far from perfect and has not received anywhere near the attention it deserves.”[13] Consequently, even though after taking power we erected the institutional framework for people’s democracy, we still lack a constitutional arrangement with a reasonable separation and limitation of powers, nor have we been able to institute a system with sufficient concern for the procedural side of state operations.

This is not only because the difficulty in effectively operating democratic institutions has reduced democracy to a formulaic slogan, but also because the creation of the new, overly centralized state power, the cult of the personality and the systemization of status privileges, have allowed autocratic traditions to deeply influence the political life of the Party and the state. This made it difficult for the Party, after taking power, to resolve the many complicated contradictions in political and economic development, finally ending in the Cultural Revolution—the great crisis of Chinese society. Because of this, Deng Xiaoping reflected deeply on the years before reform and opening, saying: “we should have mustered all our resources to develop the economy and, second, we should have substantially extended democracy.”[14] He argued that “Now it is essential to state clearly that we must continue to eliminate the influence of feudal remnants in our ideology and politics and that we must carry out a series of effective reforms in our institutions. Otherwise, our country and people will suffer further losses.”[15]

(3) The Profound Influence of the Former Soviet Communist System of Governance on the CCP

As indicated in the above citations, classic Marxist writers in their research on different state systems have used logic to identify the fundamental differences between monarchy and democracy, but they have not clearly delineated a concrete model for a “people’s state system.” They later just relied on the great attempt of the Paris Commune to create a workers’ government and put forth a number of important principles.[16] After the October Revolution, Lenin carried out an innovative exploration with regard to establishing a socialist state regime and for the first time concretized the theoretical abstraction of the “people’s state system” in actual political operations. Looking back on that now, the form of the Bolshevik government that took shape under Lenin’s leadership was in part the accidental result of special historical circumstances, in part the fruit of immature ideological viewpoints, and in part the result of a betrayal of the thinking of classic Marxist authors to suit the political needs of the moment.

All of this is understandable. New inventions are never flawless, to say nothing of the great historical innovations pursued by the Soviet Communist Party. However, Stalin later rendered permanent and absolutized Lenin’s provisional measures as universal Marxist principles. By the same token, he dispensed with Lenin’s correct thinking, deviated from the basic principles of Marxism as concerns the people’s state system, and suppressed and struck out at different views inside and outside of the Party, thus transforming the Soviet Communist Party into a one-man dictatorship. Not only did this inflict extreme harm to the reputation of the socialist state, leading to its being labelled as totalitarian , but it also seriously compromised the construction of democratic legal institutions in other socialist states.

For example, around the time of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks had a different attitude toward holding a constitutional congress and participating in a multi-party governing coalition. In the 1903 Party platform, the Bolsheviks clearly advocated implementation of a constitutional congress with universal suffrage, but after the organization of the Soviets created by the Russian revolutionary masses, Lenin considered it a kind of regime the same at the Paris Commune of 1871, and said: “We do not want a parliamentary republic.”

After the October Revolution, Lenin contemplated having the Bolsheviks lead a multi-party coalition, and initially the highest organ of the Soviets was to bring such a multi-party system into existence. The Bolsheviks had hoped to use the Soviet representative assembly to supersede the results of a constitutional congress. But, the actual strength of the domestic Russian parties meant that the Bolsheviks unable to forestall the election of a constitutional congress, and in the subsequent elections, they were even unable to gain a majority of seats.

With the backing of the armed might of workers and soldiers, the Bolsheviks overruled the election of the constitutional congress, and finally dissolved it. Afterward, in a series of serious conflicts, the contradictions between the Bolsheviks and the political parties grew ever more intense, and ultimately led to a thorough rupture in the multi-party coalition, and the Bolsheviks established one-party rule.[17] In a reprisal, Lenin denounced the opposition parties who had criticized the Bolsheviks as “one-party dictatorship,” saying: “Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position.”[18] The aim of persevering with “one-party dictatorship,” of which Lenin spoke here, was the principle of the party retaining leadership of the Soviet regime. However, the complicated political situation at the time in Russia ultimately brought about “one party rule.” This was a fierce course of action under special conditions, and certainly was not the same as the principle of maintaining party leadership. Stalin regularized this in practice and propagandized it as the realization of Marxism’s basic principles, and this had a profound impact on the Chinese people.

In China, we equate the principle of upholding party leadership with the form of “one party rule 一党执政.” This establishes a monopoly on power and a system of governance in which the party rules the state. After taking power, there developed high-level inter-party differences in the execution of the socialist transformation of industry, large-scale People’s Communes, and the Great Leap Forward, while at the same time, the design of the post-1954 state political system failed to provide a legal avenue by which the highest leaders of the CCP could engage in the decision-making process for important national affairs, so that demands by the highest Party leaders to increase Party leadership over the state took the form of calls to revive the “unified 一元化” leadership of the war period, with no separation between party and state, in which the party replaced the state in a “unified” leadership system and exercise of power.

At the same time, because the party’s top leadership was viewed as the personification of the Party, strengthening the power of individual leaders also increased their political control over the party and state. Moreover, under the direction of “leftist” thought such as “take class struggle as the key link 以阶级斗争为纲,” beginning in the second half of the 1950s, the construction of our country’s democratic and legal systems stagnated and even retreated. This not only led to the demise of the National People's Congress, the ruling party directly commanded the government, directly exercised state functions, influenced the normal operation of the country's political life and social governance, and alienated the ruling party itself: in other words, the ruling party was nationalized [i.e., became the country], Party organization took over the administration, Party leadership took on ever greater power, and leading cadres gained ever greater centralized powers and special privileges.

Construction of a modern political community must be protected by a constitutional system, and only the identification of all of society with the constitution will give the state the legal guarantee for long-term peace and stability. For a long time, however, we have ignored the construction of constitutional democracy and relied on political achievements and the leadership’s charisma to consolidate the legitimacy of the ruling power. This meant that the base of the regime had a political fragility that was difficult to overcome, which it hid under the shadow of a supposed “crisis of the party and state 亡党亡国危机.”

Following rapid social changes and the accumulation of contradictions and conflicts, the anxiety of the ruling party with respect to this grew increasingly profound, which ironically led the ruling party to strengthen individual authority and the degree of political control, which further magnified the flaws of “rule by men 人治,” which in turn weakened constitutional and legal authority. Objectively speaking, it is clear that continuing in this manner led state politics into a vicious cycle that betrayed trends toward democracy, and ultimately may well have led to even greater political dangers.

Deng Xiaoping had a crystal-clear understanding of the serious consequences caused by institutional issues. As he put it: “It is true that the errors we made in the past were partly attributable to the way of thinking and style of work of some leaders. But they were even more attributable to the problems in our organizational and working systems. If these systems are sound, they can place restraints on the actions of bad people; if they are unsound, they may hamper the efforts of good people or indeed, in certain cases, may push them in the wrong direction. Even so great a man as Comrade Mao Zedong was influenced to a serious degree by certain unsound systems and institutions, which resulted in grave misfortunes for the Party, the state and himself. ... the problems in the leadership and organizational systems are more fundamental, widespread and long-lasting, and they have a greater effect on the overall interests of our country. This is a question that has a close bearing on whether our Party and state will change political coloration and should therefore command the attention of the entire Party.”[19]

Marx once explained: “It was most difficult to form the political state, the constitution, out of the various moments of the life of the people.”[20] Without a doubt, Marx’s viewpoint here is correct. Having experienced the bumpy road of national construction under conditions of the planned economy and the bitter lessons of ten years of the Cultural Revolution, at the outset of the period of reform and opening, Comrade Deng Xiaoping raised the issue of reforming the Party and state leadership system: “Since the Third Plenary Session of its Eleventh Central Committee (in December 1978), the Party has stressed that there can be no socialist modernisation without democracy, that democracy must be institutionalised and codified in law and the Party must conduct its activities with the limits permitted by the Constitution and the laws of the state.”[21] "To eliminate remaining feudal influences, we must stress the need to effectively restructure and improve the systems of the Party and state in such a way as to ensure institutionally the practice of democracy in political life, in economic management and in all other aspects of social activity and thus to promote the smooth progress of modernization.”[22]

In sum, although New China is already more than sixty years old, we still have yet to fulfill our duty to complete the construction of state institutions. When today we talk about the reform of political institutions and about building a socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics, its essential content will be to carry out this historical task that should have been carried out long ago—building a modern political community, so that with the support and protection of constitutional democratic institutions, the Chinese people will continue the historical path toward modern civilization. This, then, is the historical dimension of the mission of Party rule, a heavy historical duty that Communist Party members cannot shirk.

Promoting the Governing Ideology Required for Constitutional Democracy[23]

The process of constructing a modern political community is the process by which the ruling party carries out the integration of society. In all of this, furthering the construction of constitutional democracy is the key and the guarantee. If we want to complete this historical mission well, then the ideology of the ruling party must make a profound change, a change from social revolution to building democratic governance.

(1) Completing the Ideological Transformation of a Political Party from Revolutionary to Democratic

There is a major difference between revolutionary thought and democratic thought. Building a modern political community requires that the ruling party self-consciously carry out profound changes in its ideas about governance, leave behand the ideological stereotype of violent revolution, and establish proper intellectual conditions for modern state institutions. The CCP led the revolution to eradicate despotic rule and pursue people’s democracy. However, for quite a long time, the ruling party has been in the habit of using revolutionary thought to deal with problems and has been unable to firmly establish the fundamental type of thought needed for a democratic politics.

In the process of political development of human society, revolution is an intense social conflict in which various social forces engage in conflicts over competing interests, while democracy is the trend of political development, the mechanism by which social contradictions are peacefully managed and social conflicts reconciled. In the course of social conflict, revolution is a “zero-sum game,” a struggle that usually results in a fight to the death or common ruin. Democracy, then, is a “win-win game” played without harming the bottom-line interests of both sides and in which each side can accept the result. The nature of these games is completely different, so the characteristic modes of thought concerning revolution and democracy are clearly distinguishable.

For example, revolution emphasizes “Either the East Wind prevails over the West Wind or the West Wind prevails over the East Wind,” refusing to accept any compromise or middle path and persistently rejecting the adversary. Democracy, on the other hand, advocates “live and let live,” forgiving, agreeing, yielding and insisting on mutual benefit. Or for example, revolution does not recognize the human rights of political opponents, and even takes the physical extermination of an adversary as a basic revolutionary demand .

Democracy, on the other hand, recognizes that political opponents should have the same human rights guarantees, and the power struggle to achieve individual interests is carried out on the basis of the legal system. Similarly, revolution places its hopes in the fundamental subversion of the social system in order to bring about a just society. Revolution is a revolt that seeks to wreck all legal institutions; but democracy stresses legal standards to ameliorate the social order and to promote social justice, etc.

If we complete a profound transformation of the political thinking of the ruling party, will we then be able to open the ideological space for moderate understanding and a suitable context in which to deal with problems. Then we may bravely forge new paths for resolving various contradictions and guide popular participation in politics, with dialogue and consultation, compromise and collaboration, all in an orderly fashion, while exploring how to deepen reform and bring about flexibility and stability which will facilitate the peaceful promotion of democratic politics.

(2) Overcome the influence of traditional political culture; establish the point of view of modern democratic political authority

The Chinese Communist Party was born in China and so it bears the weight of traditional political culture. In terms of how the ruling authority views power, these influences are relatively complex. For example, to whom does power belong? Modern democratic politics has always stressed that “sovereignty resides in the people.” However, within the Party some have been deeply influenced by the ideas from China’s traditional culture that “those who conquer the land rule the land.” When they talk of upholding the Party’s ruling position they always stress the twenty-eight years of armed revolution that achieved it.

But in fact, the Party has already ruled for sixty years and during that time the Communists who fought those bloody battles have nearly all passed from the scene. If today’s Party cadres simply rely on the blood of revolutionary martyrs to justify their inherited positions, it will be difficult for many people in society to identify with them. Moreover, the rapid infestation of inner-Party corruption has eroded the political authority of the ruling party and government creditability. Some leaders within the ruling party have noted social dissatisfaction, and so they frequently cite “the dynastic cycle” to admonish Party cadres.[24] In fact, “the dynastic cycle” is a rule governing society and political power in agricultural civilizations. To use this to admonish Party cadres really reflects the deep influence of traditional political culture on the ruling party.

First, the notion of “the dynastic cycle” implies that “authority is in the hands of those in control” and not authority in the hands of the masses. This is contrary to the idea that “sovereignty resides in the people.” According to the logic of democratic politics in which “sovereignty resides in the people,” the idea that state power resides in the people is fundamental. The constitutional system stipulates and guarantees that the citizens produce the government by regular elections, and through this the government exercises state power in the service of the interests of the people and democratic supervision of the government is exercised by the masses, thus establishing a rough equality between state authority and citizen rights. Thus, those in power dare not act willfully and society operates in an orderly fashion. For this reason, the change of governments in modern democratic politics and the transfer of power is different from “the rise and fall of political regimes” and even less “the dynastic cycle.”

Next, in traditional agricultural society every cycle of the rise or fall of a “regime” was the result of human action, and every cycle of the “rise and fall of regimes” was the result of large scale social unrest and collapse that plunged the people into the abyss of misery. By way of contrast, the more modern democratic politics is strengthened, the more changes in government and the increase or decline of a particular ruling authority do not bring on social unrest or collapse, and society continues to live and work in peace. The people are not affected by the advance or retreat of government officials or the ruling authority but are protected by the constitutional order.

Furthermore, how do Party cadres in the ruling party treat their personal use of power? General Secretary Hu Jintao has repeatedly stressed that we must “exercise power for the people, identify ourselves with them and work for their interests.”[25] This is, of course, correct. But, if we do not discuss who possesses power or where power comes from it will be likely that we will fail to throw off the influence of China’s traditional culture of enlightened monarchs and upright officials, whereupon the idea of “exercising power for the people, identifying ourselves with them and working for their interests” can become “gifts to” the people and not rights or powers that the people have. In a speech presented in 2010, Comrade Xi Jinping clearly proposed the premise that “power is bestowed by the people.” This places the Party’s view of governing power squarely within the meaning of modern democratic politics.

Thus, one of the logical starting points of modern political states is “sovereignty resides in the people” and the basic form of democratic conferral of power is the general election. The two most basic points for establishing a state democratic constitutional system are: genuine general elections and the separation of powers with checks and balances. Without general elections, the separation of powers is false and cannot produce true checks and balances. Elections without a separation of powers merely result in the transfer of power centers: whoever has power can use that power to profit themselves.

The separation of powers has three layers: first, the separation of the ruling party and the state, second, the separation of state and society, and third, the separation of the center and localities. Genuine elections have two aspects: competitive elections within the Party and national democratic general elections. Because there have not been true general elections or the separation of powers for a long time, there are some people within the ruling party who have changed. They mouth the platitude that "power is the people’s" but in their hearts, they think “power is mine.”

Because of this, to establish a modern political community according to the ideas of democratic politics we must conform to the development of society’s political civilization and put our efforts into constitutional reform. We must use the strengthening of constitutional government and its effective operation to regulate the ruling party and government and the relation between the ruling party and society, to guarantee the orderly progression of democratic politics, and in this process to find new space for the political development of the ruling party. This will not only put the ruling authority of the CCP on the legal footing of modern democratic political principles, but also gain it more political leeway and strengthen the ruling party’s leadership initiative.

(3) Working to get rid of the traditional consciousness of having people serve as tools, showing a high level of respect for people, and preserving human rights

Treating people as human beings is a prerequisite for recognizing the value of constitutional democracy and building a modern political community. Traditional Chinese culture took the idea of “wholism 整体主义” as its core ideal, with each individual serving merely as a tool or a means for realizing the goals of the whole community—people had no independent existential value. Under the particular historical conditions of the Chinese revolution, the existential circumstances facing all ethnicities and classes of that time directly determined the individual’s living conditions. Ethnic interests, class interests, and individual interests were united in a particular whole, and this justified making individuals serve as the means or the tools to implement the goals of the collective. To a certain extent, this strengthened traditional culture’s influence over us, and it made thinking of people as a means to an end clear and concrete, while the notion of people as an end in themselves remained vague and indistinct.

Precisely because despotic political culture uses people as a means to achieve its objectives and does not respect or protect the value of human beings or basic rights, and even less acknowledges that both sides in a political competition should have their rights protected, then when the CCP was leading the revolution and was confronted with the cruelty, repression, and carnage of a despotic regime, they had no choice but to adopt an armed struggle. In the face of bloody massacres, it used violent slaughter to resolve social contradictions. As a result, when we now reminisce about the revolution, we are necessarily drenched in violence and blood, and over time, the extreme idea of life or death struggle has become sanctified.

The core of politics contains options, and in its search for values, politics constructs the modern political community using both instrumental rationality and value rationality. To speak of democracy, we must first treat people as “people,” honor the life and existence of each and every individual, as well as the rights and interests that every person should have. However, even today, some local governments only treat the “people” as political symbols, accounting figures, and instrumental tools, for the sake of GDP and official achievements. This reliance on the coercive power of public authority, the forced requisition of land, and forced demolition of housing among the masses, have triggered numerous bloody incidents.

From the perspective of society, the most basic difference between the modern political community and the traditional political community is the distinction between subjects and citizens. Subjects are the tools of power, while citizens are the masters of power. Citizenship in a democracy is the manifestation of their status as masters. One of the most important and most cherished of civil rights is the right of free speech. Freedom of thought is the most fundamental manifestation of a human being’s life and existence, while speech is the expression of thought. Democratic governance must realize and safeguard freedom of speech, and through the right of free speech it will promote participation in public decision-making and public authority through social supervision.

After all, democracy can be understood as an institutional system that allows people to control public power and peacefully manage social conflicts for the sake of living with dignity and for the promotion of human freedom and overall development. As Marx once said, only when we arrive at communist society—that is, what he thought of as mankind’s beautiful, ideal society—will we truly have advanced to a historical moment in which man is truly man. Before then, everything is human prehistory.

The fundamental purpose of constitutional democracy is to create the necessary political conditions for human freedom and overall development. The reason that after a century of republican rule and constitutional government, China’s road to democracy remains so bumpy stems from the failure to genuinely establish the conditions for this way of thinking. If the ruling party is to guide the construction of a modern political community, it must create a consciousness that respects people and guarantees their basic rights, and through institutional reform, make constitutional democracy into the political way of life of the Chinese people.

(4) Abandon the constraints of ideological thinking about democracy, strive to absorb the best of humanity’s political civilization

As the political life of human society progresses from barbarism and ignorance toward civilization, the essential question to answer is how to make it possible for all people throughout the world to live and to live well. The progress of democratic politics in practice is a process of exploring the full capacities of humanity in political life, a process of the continual enrichment of democratic practice, a process of continual improvement of individual political life and the civility of society. Thus, we can divide humanity’s explorations in democratic politics into three periods of democratic theory and practice: ancient, modern, and contemporary. Terms like bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy are reflections of the practice of democratic politics in the class structure and social conditions from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

But now, with the fundamental transformation of the hierarchical class structure and the expansion of democratic politics brought on by the progress of productive forces, to persist in understanding and handling the question of democracy in terms of a life and death struggle of class antagonisms and absolute opposition patently shows historical limitations. We must abandon stereotypical ideological thinking about democracy. Only then can we truly open up the ideological space to absorb the experiences and lessons offered by the democratic practice of the people of various countries around the world, and so be able to develop China’s democratic politics more reasonably and with fewer twists and turns.

Just as the economic life of mankind has its rules, so does political life. Democratic theory sums up and generalizes the laws that have emerged in the course of democratic practice. This is why, throughout history, most democratic theory is not scholarship produced by academics silently meditating in their studies, but has instead been formulated through the practice of political life itself. For example, from the perspective of instrumental rationality, democratic politics is the political mechanism for peacefully managing political conflict and for reconciling social contradictions. Thus, democracy needs a legal system. From the perspective of value rationality, democratic politics is the ultimate embodiment of the values that support human rights. Thus, democracy needs the rule of law. Today, democracy is a complex concept, and it needs to be integrated with the constitutional rule of law.

Democratic politics is itself a process of unceasing exploration and improvement, and in the process of using current democratic theory to resolve problems, new problems are created even as old ones are resolved. To resolve new problems, new theory is created. From the classical theory of direct democracy to representative elite democracy, to Robert Dahl’s plural democracy, to participatory democracy, to consultative democracy and even Takis Fotopoulos’s inclusive democracy, all these schools of democratic thought have been produced in the process of advancing democratic practice and have, in turn, influenced democratic practice.

To maintain a scientific attitude, to treat democratic theory and practice in a scientific spirit, we must acknowledge the universal laws of democratic politics. The objectivity and the universality of these laws illustrate that in democratic politics there are things that are surnamed neither "Mr. Capitalism" nor "Mr. Socialism," and instead what we find are different developmental phases of the social histories of different countries, and the particular features of the concrete problems they faced. I believe we can advance along the road to constitutional democracy in China by recognizing and respecting the law’s preconditions as we absorb and study the experience and lessons of democratic practice in various countries, and rationally engage the contradictions and conflicts in contemporary Chinese society.

In sum, the construction of a modern political community requires a profound transformation in the governing ideas of the Chinese Communist Party, moving away from the blinkered thinking of violent revolution and the influence of traditional political culture, and boldly advancing ideological rejuvenation and creation to fully absorb and gain from the beneficial experience of political civilization from all of humanity, so as to advance on the road of developing socialist democratic politics with Chinese characteristics. 　

Notes

[1] 蔡霞：推进宪政民主应该是中国共产党的执政使命——与杨小青教授商榷, 爱思想网,” published online on March 30, 2013 and available at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/64416.html . October 2022 update: Cai Xia's page on the Aisixiang website was removed following her expulsion from the Party and her exile in the United States. You can find the Chinese version of her text here.

[2] Translator’s note: Cai Xia is referring to Yang Xiaoqing’s 杨晓青 contribution to the heated debate in early 2013 on the issue of constitutionalism following the well-known case of the censoring of the New Year’s editorial on the topic in Southern Weekend. See, Yang Xiaoqing, “Comparative study of constitutional government and the people’s democratic system 宪政与人民民主制度之比较研究,” May, 22, 2013, available online here. For the context, see Joseph Fewsmith, “Debating Constitutional Government,” China Leadership Monitor, No. 42 (2013) .

[3] Translator’s note. All Chinese would recognize the use here of nahan 呐喊 for “rallying cry” (also rendered “call to arms”) as the title of Lu Xun (1881-1936), China’s most famous writer of the twentieth century, first collection of essays.

[4] Translator’s note. The expression “Tang-Wu geming” refers to the first ruler (Tang) of the Shang dynasty, who overthrew the Xia dynasty and to the first ruler (Wu) of the Zhou, who overthrew the Shang. The term geming only acquired the meaning “revolution” at the turn of the last century.

[5] 马克思恩格斯选集 (Beijing: Peoples Press, 1972), vol. 1: 272. [Standard English translation used here from: The Communist Manifesto (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, p. 91.]

[6] Cai says “Yan’an de Xinhua ribao 延安的新华日报”, though the New China Daily was published in Chongqing by the Communists during the War, while in Yan’an the core Party paper was the Liberation Daily 解放日报.

[7] Translator’s note. The “three-thirds system” was a United Front policy of the Yan’an era. Elected government personnel were to be one-third each: Communists, non-Communist party members, and unaffiliated.

[8] 毛泽东选集, vol. 2: 732 [We have taken the official translations for Mao quotations in this essay from Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Peking Foreign Languages Press, 1965), and in this case, vol. 2: 408].

[9] 毛泽东选集, vol. 3: 1070 [Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 3: 243.]

[10] “马克思 ‘黑格尔法哲学批判,” 马克思恩格斯选集 (Beijing: Remnin, 1956), vol. 1: 316. Translators’ note: This quote comes from a long section in Marx’s critique of Hegel that discusses the idea of democracy in contrast to monarchy. The standard translation gives this quote as “Democracy is the generic constitution” followed by “monarchy is a species, and indeed a poor one.” See, Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843), trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 29, available online here.

[11] 马克思恩格斯选集 (Beijing: Peoples Press, 1972), vol. 1: 255. [The Communist Manifesto, p. 78].

[12] “马克思 ‘黑格尔法哲学批判,” 马克思恩格斯选集 (Beijing: Remnin, 1956), vol. 1: 280-81 [Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’, pp. 29-30].

[13] 邓小平文选 (Beijing: Renmin, 1994), vol. 2: 332 [English translation from: Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, trans. The Bureau for the Compilation and Translation of Works of Marx, Engel, Lenin, and Stalin, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1984), vol. 2: 315].

[14] 马克思，恩格斯，列宁，毛泽东，邓小平，江泽民论民主, The Democracy Research Center, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, ed., (Beijing: CASS Press, 2002), p. 245 [English translation from: “Resolution of the CCP Central Committee on the Guiding Principles for Building a Socialist Society with an Advanced Culture and Ideology” (Sept. 12, 1986), in China Report, 23:2 (1987), p. 259].

[15] 邓小平文集 (Beijing: Renmin, 1994), vol. 2: 335 [Translation adapted from Deng Xiaoping, “On the Reform of the System of Party and State Leadership” (Aug. 18, 1980).

[16] In The Civil War in France, Marx summarizes the basic practices of the workers’ government of the Paris Commune and points out that the important principles of the new style people’s regime. For example, with the system of universal suffrage, fusion of powers, representatives selected by the electorate with responsibility and can be replaced. Government employees are public servants of society, and they can only receive a worker’s salary. Such employees are under the conscientious supervision of the people, etc.

[17] See 李永全, 俄国政党史 (Beijing : Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 1999), pp. 220-96, for a comparatively detailed discussion and analysis of the changes before and after the Bolsheviks thought to seize power.

[18] 列宁全集 (Beijing: Remin, 1984-90), 2nd ed., vol. 37: 125 [Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, p. 533, available online here.

[19] 邓小平文选, vol. 2: 333 [English translation from: Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping p. 316].

[20] “马克思 ‘黑格尔法哲学批判,” 马克思恩格斯选集, vol. 1: 283 [Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’, p. 31].

[21] 马克思，恩格斯，列宁，毛泽东，邓小平，江泽民论民主, p. 245 [English translation from: “Resolution” in China Report, 23:2 (1987), p. 259].

[22] 邓小平文集 (Beijing: Renmin, 1994), vol. 2: 336 [Translation adapted from Deng Xiaoping, “On the Reform of the System of Party and State Leadership” (Aug. 18, 1980).

[23] Trans. note: Cai uses 执政思维 which we have translated as “ruling power thinking,” though it literally means “governance thinking” or “ideas on governance”, a term much mentioned in the work of Xi Jinping.

[24] Trans. Note: Cai is using a phrase loaded with historical weight 政权兴衰周期律 (the cycle of rise and fall of regimes), though for clarity we render it as “the dynastic cycle.” This refers to the repeated rise and fall of dynasties in traditional China and was famous discussed by Mao Zedong and the noted democratic intellectual, Huang Yanpei 黄炎培 (1878-1965), when Huang visited Mao in Yan’an in July 1945. Mao suggested that the CCP could escape the rise and fall of regimes that had hampered earlier Chinese regimes by implementing constitutional democracy.

[25] Translators note: Hu Jintao made this pronouncement in a speech on July 1, 2011 commemorating the 90th anniversary of the founding of the CCP.

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