China's Democratic Prospects: A Dissenting View.

• Author: Crane, George T.

China today is roiling with turbulent economic and social change. As a result, Chinese politics is transforming as well. The Communist Party (CCP) struggles to maintain its authority in the countryside, where peasants have given up on corrupt officials and seek community in clan organizations and new religions. In the cities, persistent nationwide efforts to establish a formal opposition party have left communist leaders scrambling to shore up their control. Information, once easily monopolized by the state, now flows through cell phones and computer networks, enabling communication and organization among those disaffected with failed Leninism. The territorial integrity of the state is being challenged by the separatist aspirations of Uighurs and Tibetans. At no time in its fifty years of power has the CCP faced such a wide array of potentially disastrous problems.

How the People's Republic of China manages these various perils, and in what condition the country emerges, is a matter of great moment for the world at large. If growing domestic frustration is deflected into a more aggressively nationalistic foreign policy by a desperate ccp, a catalogue of international issues could be adversely affected, from Taiwan to trade balances to thermonuclear weapons. Conversely, the long-standing U.S. policy of engagement looks forward to a gradual transition to capitalism and a subsequent democratization that is expected to moderate Chinese diplomacy. It would seem that, for American policymakers, nationalism is the enemy and capitalism the hero of China's tumultuous reformation.

Two recent articles in The National Interest challenge both of these formulations.(1) John Fitzgerald argues that the discourse on dignity inherent in any nationalist narrative may lay the conceptual groundwork for democratization in China. And David Zweig demonstrates that Chinese economic reform may work against the more optimistic hopes of engagement supporters. Is nationalism, then, really the hero and capitalism the enemy of Chinese democratization? Not quite. Each of these respected authors is only partially correct in his analysis. Indeed, the ineluctable logic of nationalism and economic reform may turn out to be less a determinant of China's future than the simple will of Chinese democrats and their oppressors.

Nationalism

John Fitzgerald, an accomplished historian of Republican-era China (1911-49), makes a convincing argument that national identity is rooted in a struggle for human dignity. Politics, he says, cannot simply be reduced to a calculated clash of material interests; it is driven by seemingly "irrational" aspirations and desires. People yearn for recognition and dignity, which are often found in the "imagined community" of the nation, and they will kill and die for the sense of solidarity that nationality imparts.

But what happens, Fitzgerald asks, when the state, in the name of the nation, tramples upon personal dignity? In China, momentous political disasters such as the Cultural Revolution, institutionalized corruption and official repression have robbed many individuals of their self-respect. When instructed by state leaders in the glories of the nation and the need to sacrifice for the collective, disillusioned individuals hesitate to identify with the common cause. The subsequent resentment produces the belief that national dignity must be built upon the personal dignity of the members of the nation. And here, Fitzgerald argues, is an opening for a move toward liberal democracy. In emphasizing communal dignity, nationalist rhetoric indirectly supports the ideal of individual dignity, the starting point for the defense of individual rights and the institutions that protect them. In his own words: "The politics of individual dignity, far from being antithetical, appears to be parasitical on the idea of national dignity."

Nationalism, by this reckoning, is a prerequisite for democracy. Indeed, Fitzgerald is willing to suggest that even chauvinistic arguments, such as those expounded by the authors of the various China Can Say No books, may inadvertently contribute to democratization. Although they blame foreigners for China's economic and political troubles, the resentment of the Say No nationalists also reflects their shame for a regime that denies its citizens their personal dignity. Their desire to invigorate China's national greatness will, therefore, set them on a path that "leads inevitably to challenging head-on existing constraints on thought, speech and assembly." Ironically, some of the most pointed Chinese nationalist critics of the 1989 democracy movement implicitly share the goals of that movement.

But there is a problem here. Nationalism is an obstacle to democracy - at least to liberal democracy. While Fitzgerald may be right in pointing out that the discourse of national dignity can enliven an appreciation of personal dignity, it is also true that state managers and jingoistic commentators regularly and powerfully assert a need to sacrifice individuals to protect the nation. This is especially true of nationalisms that are not explicitly built upon individualistic-libertarian ideals, which is to say most nationalisms. Liah Greenfeld points to the authoritarian tendencies of various European nationalisms:

Originally nationalism developed as democracy. . . . But as nationalism spread in different countries and the emphasis in the...