(image of Saddam Hussein statue being toppled)
(image of Lenin statue being toppled)
and…….?
(image of Mao statue taken by author in Chengu)
In the seminar on East Asian Political Economy I attend, we are in the China phase of the course. For the past the past few weeks, we have read Mary Gallagher Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (2005); Kellee Tsai Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (2007); and Yang Dali Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (2004). I do not intend to provide a summary, book review, or comparison of the above-mentioned titles. I simply recommend reading each of them on their own terms, as they offer distinctive insights into China’s contemporary political economic landscape. However, my reason for mentioning these monographs is that they provide unique, and differing, accounts of why China has failed to democratize. While our seminar debated which political scientist provides a more persuasive account for China’s absent democratization, a simple but striking incongruence occurred to me – why are we even asking the question ‘when will China’s government collapse’?; do we devote entire seminars and endless heated discussions to the question ‘when will the United States government collapse?’ Clearly, the latter question is politically unthinkable and, if it were asked, would be most likely greeted with derision. However, this is not the first nor will it be the last seminar, conference, book, or article in which Western political scientists will predict, speculate, and debate the exact moment and cause of death of China’s Communist Party.
Moreover, this incongruence belies social science’s pretense to analytic objectivity and political impartiality. Instead, it casts light upon two deeply engrained desires and anxieties, which structure the debates and discourses within political science departments in the United States.
First, despite the fact that certain political scientists have distanced themselves from, and critically deconstructed, teleological accounts of democratization (for example: see the work of Lisa Wedeen; Levitsky and Way; Andreas Schedler; and Thomas Carothers), the teleological fantasy that all regimes will at some point (no matter how glacially slow they move) become liberal-democracies modeled after the West remains at the core of our political imaginations. For example, how else can we interpret the fact that US AID described the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa) as engaged in a “transition to a democratic, free market society” other than as a desperate fantasy? Regimes are not measured on their own terms but are “automatically analyzed in terms of their movement toward or away from democracy” (Thomas Carothers). This hidden normative investment can have life-or-death consequences when a country’s democratic status determines what kind of aid package, or mode of diplomacy, it receives or is denied. Also, it can blind us to the persistent violence and abuses exercised by Western liberal-democracies (US drone attacks in Afghanistan resulting in ongoing civilian casualties; Italy’s abominable treatment of African immigrants; and so on).
Secondly, when I was in the car today with my friend Pete – he mentioned that this desire to see China democratize and become like us dates back to 1949 when China’s Communist Party defeated the Kuomintang and claimed victory on the mainland … At that time, the rhetoric in the United States was dominated by the sentiment “We lost China.” The powerful desire/fantasy in the West to witness the collapse of China’s Communist Party is a continuation of the Cold War trope, lamenting China’s recalcitrant disappearance from the orbit of US hegemony.
I want to be clear that I am NOT claiming that any of the books I mentioned at the beginning of this post are guilty of indulging in this desire (they are brilliant analyses disproving the inevitability of democratization)– my argument points to a pervasiveness within our political language and imagination that is deeper than the content of any monograph. The question ‘when will China democratize’ reveals a smoldering fantasy at the heart of our ‘impartial’ research projects and analyses – a consoling dream that the world is exactly like us, which easily slides into aggression when the resemblance is shattered.
A word of caution: this desire for the Mao statues to be toppled and the Party-State to come undone might not have the best interests of the Chinese people at heart (even though it often clothes itself in a humanitarian costume) – and we should not be shocked if, in the future, a democratizing China does not even remotely conform to Western blueprints.
{ 5 } Comments
Beneath all lies “The Fantasy” upon which is constructed all that is. Why is it unnatural for societies, governments, political scientists, and philosophers to measure the other as moving toward or away from their fantasy?
“We lost China” because “we lost” Poland, Hungary Czechoslovakia , all of East Europe, and half of Germany to an openly anti-democratic and despotic regime. It was partisan political propaganda and extreme in its intensity, particularly in the United States. Whether or to what degree China will democratize or rather should democratize is up to the Chinese – obviously. But, if I understand, your point is well taken. The question that comes to my mind is this: Is the question “why China has failed to democratize” descriptive or a wish, or a validation of an underlying fantasy.
Here, you’re pointing at an emanating Western/American/liberal democracies’ desire to see China collapse, or more specifically, its Communist “utopia” (in but not limited to the Western eyes ) and the political regimen that has ensued. What you have described as “a teleological fantasy” of the collapse for the West, as it seems to me, shares the same teat as what was “the enduring fantasy of the twentieth century, the pseudoreligion-cum-pseudoscience of Marxism-Leninism” described by historian Martin Malia until its own emblematic collapse in the Soviet Union.
I want to stray, however, from perhaps the more interesting discussion about the validity of socialist or democratic principles as they pertain to our understandings of human nature which then inform our beliefs of what the ideal construction of the social, economic and political apparatus ought to be. Instead, I want to suggest why this watch or hunt for communist-turned-democratic success stories are not just fantasies in pragmatic, calculating policy. Let’s say, the notion of “a democratic peace”? It helps–kind of–when you can expect–kind of–that others play by the same rules–kind of.
An irrelevant sidenote: It is the same babbling talk when it comes to development. There is an institutional structure and world order dominated by power-players who have set out to define countries’ agenda to be “developed” and exactly how. Expectantly, it may also be that the same institutional structure and dominant players who harp on [fill in the blank] are those who provide the same mechanisms to maintain the status-quo. Similarly, in other words, the “fantasy” is actually less about promoting the freedom to choose, opportunity, or capacity for democracy for China and the values that the people of China may identify and desire in a democracy, but instead more about the grasp of control, recruit, in some extreme cases, to colonize, imperialize for a democratic project for unrealized interests? This ought to not necessarily raise questions about the values of democratic principles, but rather the maladies of institutions and politics that no regime has ever been immune to. (Really? Wow, good news.)
Severely off-topic, but I was wondering if you’d be interested in a project I’m aiming at a number of the blog authors in the continental philosophy blogosphere. Specifically, I’m interested in developing a mailing list that would act as a “back channel” for discussion across a range of minds, the virtue of which is on-going, long-form discussion that bridges the gap between blog comments sections and email. If this interests you, let me know at what[dot]is[dot]ground[at]gmail[dot]com.
Beneath all lies “The Fantasy” upon which is constructed all that is. Why is it unnatural for societies, governments, political scientists, and philosophers to measure the other as moving toward or away from their fantasy?
“We lost China” because “we lost” Poland, Hungary Czechoslovakia , all of East Europe, and half of Germany to an openly anti-democratic and despotic regime. It was partisan political propaganda and extreme in its intensity, particularly in the United States. Whether or to what degree China will democratize or rather should democratize is up to the Chinese – obviously. But, if I understand, your point is well taken. The question that comes to my mind is this: Is the question “why China has failed to democratize” descriptive or a wish, or a validation of an underlying fantasy.
Here, you’re pointing at an emanating Western/American/liberal democracies’ desire to see China collapse, or more specifically, its Communist “utopia” (in but not limited to the Western eyes ) and the political regimen that has ensued. What you have described as “a teleological fantasy” of the collapse for the West, as it seems to me, shares the same teat as what was “the enduring fantasy of the twentieth century, the pseudoreligion-cum-pseudoscience of Marxism-Leninism” described by historian Martin Malia until its own emblematic collapse in the Soviet Union.
I want to stray, however, from perhaps the more interesting discussion about the validity of socialist or democratic principles as they pertain to our understandings of human nature which then inform our beliefs of what the ideal construction of the social, economic and political apparatus ought to be. Instead, I want to suggest why this watch or hunt for communist-turned-democratic success stories are not just fantasies in pragmatic, calculating policy. Let’s say, the notion of “a democratic peace”? It helps–kind of–when you can expect–kind of–that others play by the same rules–kind of.
An irrelevant sidenote: It is the same babbling talk when it comes to development. There is an institutional structure and world order dominated by power-players who have set out to define countries’ agenda to be “developed” and exactly how. Expectantly, it may also be that the same institutional structure and dominant players who harp on [fill in the blank] are those who provide the same mechanisms to maintain the status-quo. Similarly, in other words, the “fantasy” is actually less about promoting the freedom to choose, opportunity, or capacity for democracy for China and the values that the people of China may identify and desire in a democracy, but instead more about the grasp of control, recruit, in some extreme cases, to colonize, imperialize for a democratic project for unrealized interests? This ought to not necessarily raise questions about the values of democratic principles, but rather the maladies of institutions and politics that no regime has ever been immune to. (Really? Wow, good news.)
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