DEMOCRACY v DICTATORSHIP.
TOO SIMPLISTIC?
The UK narrative starts with the Magna Carta in 1215 when powerful feudal nobles clipped the wings of the autocratic King John. A long journey ensued with the Civil War in the 1640’s becoming a key turning point with the defeat of King Charles 1 by Parliament headed by Oliver Cromwell. Jump forward to the 1832 Great Reform Act which extended the right to vote and crystallised the Westminster Model of Democracy based on One Man One Vote and the Separation of Powers as between the Executive (The Cabinet), The Legislature (Parliament) and the Judicary (the Supreme Court).
Modern China’s journey to the present day is quite different. The era of Warlords and Dynasties ended in 1911 with the downfall of the Qing dynasty and the inauguration of the Republic of China and its Provisional President Sun Yatsen. His Revolutionary Alliance was renamed – the Kuomintang – and yielded in 1912 to the short lived Republic of China which collapsed following the premature death of Sun Yatsen in 1925. Civil War commenced in 1927 between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party (CPC). The West underestimated the popularity of Mao Tsetung’s rural base and the CPC prevailed in 1949 when the remnants of Chiang Kaishek’s KMT forces fled in disarray to Formosa (now Taiwan).
China was destitute. Weakened by 20+ years of Civil War and 8 years of Patriotic War against Japan (1937-1945), the 600 million population was widely known as “The Sick Man of Asia”. Notwithstanding the failures of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, both of which damaged China severely, China, today, is buoyant, prosperous, and confident. It is about to become the largest economy in the world.
There are negatives about China. It has crime, drugs and prostitution. It has unemployment and a hard core of the “uneducated unemployable” who can get left behind as the country makes big progress with robotic technology and artificial intelligence. But there are significant positives which give purpose to its plans for the future and for 2049 in particular. TV coverage of China’s meeting last week of the National People’s Congress underlines China’s confident embrace of the future.
The UK is a representative democracy underwritten by the Rule of Law and China is a consultative democracy underwritten by the leading role of the Party. The two systems are quite different. The assumption in the UK is that China is authoritarian, oppressive and intolerant and critics of China are quick to convey the impression that China is a Police State which has carried out genocide on the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. This narrative is at odds with the relaxed, carefree tv coverage of the Chinese at play in the parks and restaurants of all the main cities.
Just two oft repeated statistics – first, in the last year before Covid 137 million Chinese nationals travelled overseas and all returned home – there was no reports in the Western media that any of the 137 million had used their time abroad to apply for political asylum. Second in the period that China is alleged to have committed genocide the population of the Uighurs increased from 10 million to 12 million.
We bad mouth China at our risk. We mislead ourselves into believing that China’s days are numbered and that it will soon implode. And if we are wrong how will the future unfold?
GRAHAM PERRY
