In Search of Chinese Democracy

In Search of Chinese Democracy PDF Author: Edmund S. K. Fung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521771242
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Why modern China has been unable to institutionalize democracy is a long-standing topic of debate and the ultimate subject of this book. The greatest momentum for democracy, Edmund Fung contends, emerged between 1929 and 1949 with civil opposition to the one-party rule of the Guomindang. This analysis of China's liberal intellectuals and political activists who pursued democracy in the 1930s and 1940s, fills a gap in the historical literature on the period between May Fourth Radicalism and the Chinese Communists' accession to power. Fung argues that the reasons the growth of democracy was thwarted during this period were ultimately more political than cultural. The Nationalist era contained the germs of a reformist, liberal order, which was prevented from growing by party politics, a lack of regime leadership, and bad strategic decisions. The legacy of China's liberal thinkers can be seen, however, in the pro-democracy movement of the post-Mao period.

In Search of Chinese Democracy

In Search of Chinese Democracy PDF Author: Edmund S. K. Fung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521771242
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Why modern China has been unable to institutionalize democracy is a long-standing topic of debate and the ultimate subject of this book. The greatest momentum for democracy, Edmund Fung contends, emerged between 1929 and 1949 with civil opposition to the one-party rule of the Guomindang. This analysis of China's liberal intellectuals and political activists who pursued democracy in the 1930s and 1940s, fills a gap in the historical literature on the period between May Fourth Radicalism and the Chinese Communists' accession to power. Fung argues that the reasons the growth of democracy was thwarted during this period were ultimately more political than cultural. The Nationalist era contained the germs of a reformist, liberal order, which was prevented from growing by party politics, a lack of regime leadership, and bad strategic decisions. The legacy of China's liberal thinkers can be seen, however, in the pro-democracy movement of the post-Mao period.

The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China

The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China PDF Author: Ethan J. Leib
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This book investigates whether the theory of “deliberative democracy”--developed in the West to focus democratic theory on the legitimization that deliberation can afford--has any application to Chinese processes of democratization. It discovers pockets of theory especially useful to guide Chinese practices and pockets of Chinese practice that can, in turn, educate the West on possibilities for innovative uses of deliberative democratic theory.

Chinese Democracy

Chinese Democracy PDF Author: Andrew J. Nathan
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307828123
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
A highly original and convincing book by one of our best-informed China specialists, offering an entirely new perspective on the nature of democracy as the Chinese practice it—and, incidentally, as we practice it too. What do the Chinese mean by the word “democracy”? When they say that their political system is “democratic,” does this mean that they share our ideas about liberty, civil rights, and self government? With the recent improvement in relations between China and the West, such questions are no longer merely academic. They are basic to an understanding of the Chinese people and their state, both now and in the future. In Chinese Democracy, Andrew J. Nathan tackles these in issues in depth, drawing upon much fresh and unfamiliar material. He begins with a vivid history of the short-lived democracy movement of 1978-81, where groups of young people in a number of Chinese cities started issuing outspoken publications and putting up posters detailing their complaints and opinions. Apparently condoned at first by the post-Mao regime, the movement flourished; then it was crushed, its leaders tried and jailed. With quotes from many of the participants and their works, Nathan constructs—for the first time—a poignant picture of the burst of liberal activity, at the same time showing how distinctly Chinese it was and how the roots of its failure lay as much in history as in current political necessity. To demonstrate this, Nathan investigates the nature of the democratic tradition in China, tracing it back to the close of the imperial era at the end of the nineteenth century and the works of Liang Qichao, the country’s most brilliant journalist and most influential modern political thinker. We see how Liang deeply influenced Mao Zedong, and how conflicts between party dictatorship and popular participation, between bureaucratic authority and individual rights, between Mao’s harsh version of democracy and Deng Xiaoping’s more liberal one, remain to this day unresolved and potentially dangerous. For example, as Nathan shows, there was apparently a serious move toward liberalization projected on the highest government levels in the years after Mao’s death, yet the move failed. In a tour de force of scholarship, Nathan shows through an extended study of the many Chinese constitutions put force since the 1911 Revolution that individual rights have always been forced to give away to the needs and ambitions of the state. Democracy in China has traditionally been admired mainly for what it can help accomplish, not for any human rights it may embody. Finally, making use of scores of interviews with émigrés from the mainland, the author analyzes the extraordinary role played by the press in forming public attitudes in China, and then goes on to show what happened in 1980 when the authorities for the first time conducted direct elections to the county-level people’s congresses. It was a splendid shambles. Much of this story has never been told before.

Conceptions of Chinese Democracy

Conceptions of Chinese Democracy PDF Author: David J. Lorenzo
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421409178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Close attention to the writings of the founding fathers of the Republic of China on Taiwan shows that democracy is indeed compatible with Chinese culture. Conceptions of Chinese Democracy provides a coherent and critical introduction to the democratic thought of three fathers of modern Taiwan—Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Ching-kuo—in a way that is accessible and grounded in broader traditions of political theory. David J. Lorenzo’s comparative study allows the reader to understand the leaders’ democratic conceptions and highlights important contradictions, strengths, and weaknesses that are central to any discussion of Chinese culture and democratic theory. Lorenzo further considers the influence of their writings on political theorists, democracy advocates, and activists on mainland China. Students of political science and theory, democratization, and Chinese culture and history will benefit from the book's substantive discussions of democracy, and scholars and specialists will appreciate the larger arguments about the influence of these ideas and their transmission through time.

The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong

The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong PDF Author: Andreas Fulda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138328341
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The question at the heart of this book is to what extent have political activists in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong made progress in their quest to liberalise and democratise their respective polities. The book compares and contrasts the political development in the three regions from the early 1970s.

Democracy in China

Democracy in China PDF Author: Jiwei Ci
Publisher:
ISBN: 0674238184
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Four decades of reform fostered a democratic mentality in China. Now citizens are waiting for the government to catch up. Jiwei Ci argues that the tensions between a largely democratic society and an undemocratic political system will trigger a crisis of legitimacy, compelling the Communist Party to become agents of democratic change--or collapse.

Inklings of Democracy in China

Inklings of Democracy in China PDF Author: Suzanne Ogden
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 168417368X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
"Since 1979 China’s leaders have introduced economic and political reforms that have lessened the state’s hold over the lives of ordinary citizens. By examining the growth in individual rights, the public sphere, democratic processes, and pluralization, the author seeks to answer questions concerning the relevance of liberal democratic ideas for China and the relationship between a democratic political culture and a democratic political system. The author also looks at the contradictory impulses and negative consequences for democracy generated by economic liberalism. Unresolved issues concerning the relationships among culture, democracy, and socioeconomic development are at the heart of the analysis. Nonideological criteria are used to assess the success of the Chinese approach to building a fair, just, and decent society."

The First Chinese Democracy

The First Chinese Democracy PDF Author: Linda Chao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This work looks at the first Chinese democracy in Taiwan and Taiwan's political transformation from an authoritarian regime based on martial law to a democracy based on a constitution created in mainland China· Ìt follows the Kuomintang's reform and the four patterns of political development·

China's Search for Democracy

China's Search for Democracy PDF Author: Suzanne Ogden
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780873327237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Presents a view from the grassroots of the 1989 student and mass movement in China and its tragic consequences. Here are eyewitness and participant accounts expressed through wall posters, students speeches, movement declarations, handbills, and other documents.

Keeping Democracy at Bay

Keeping Democracy at Bay PDF Author: Suzanne Pepper
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742508774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
This thoroughly researched study provides an invaluable account of Hong Kong's political evolution from its founding as a British colony to the present. Exploring the interplay between colonial, capitalist, communist, and democratic forces in shaping Hong Kong's political institutions and culture, Suzanne Pepper offers a fresh perspective on the territory's development and a gripping account of the transition from British to Chinese rule. The author carries her narrative forward through the lives of significant figures, capturing the personalities and issues central to understanding Hong Kong's political history. Bringing a balanced view to her often contentious subject, she places Hong Kong's current partisan debates between democrats and their opponents within the context of China's ongoing search for a viable political form. The book considers Beijing's increasing intervention in local affairs and focuses on the challenge for Hong Kong's democratic reformers in an environment where ultimate political power resides with the communist-led mainland government and its appointees.