Affluence and Democracy in China: A Complicated Relationship

The Financial Times reported in 2013 that there was “no great clamour in China for western democracy.”[1] The assumption in the West that prosperity in China will someday inevitably usher in democracy may unduly privilege Western political values in an exogenous context. The newspaper suggested that prosperity can be the source of rising pressure for political change rather than an antidote to it. In other words, the power shift between the state and individual that is unleashed by rising incomes does not necessary privilege the individual. Time and again, China’s leaders have refused to shift power to the individual at the expense of the state; social harmony, and power, are just too important. To be sure, cronyism and corruption, while endemic in China, are not esteemed cultural values, and the rising middle-class may demand that the state clamp down on the unfairness of government officials “wetting their beaks.” This would be particularly problematic if the growing upper-middle-class demand more transparency in government and more rule-of-law to instill fairness over the personal aggrandizement of government officials. However, President Xi, at least publically, would hardly object, as he set out to come down hard on corruption even in the state. At the very least, the matter of increasing wealth and democracy in China can only be complex, yet we can come to some conclusions based on Chinese history and the Chinese view of democracy being Western.

The relationship between economic development and political democracy in China is more complex than is typically presumed in the West. Put another way, the rest of the world is not made in the West’s image. That the newly affluent in China (except for in Hong Kong) would not necessarily demand democracy would strike most Westerners as bizarre. Why would not enhanced choice given the greater buying-power translate into choice in politics too? It is very possible that the Chinese newly rich would want a breed of change in government that does not reflect Western democracy. Certainly the extant ruling elite would favor such a force over one that is pro-democracy.Rather than a change of system, rising incomes may fuel a power struggle between different power-centers—one being the old and the other(s) being the new. This sort of thing happened in the Salem witch trials in seventeenth-century New England. Newly-propertied women were literally burned-to-death by city officials who favored the established landed gentry. The religious subterfuge belied the more earthly battle between old and new centers of power based at least in part on economic change.
Similarly, contending centers of power held within the Communist Party widen to include the rich and professional classes (i.e., upper and upper-middle). With the exception of the two short-lived republics attempted at the end of the Qing dynasty in the early twentieth century, China has no history of democracy, so it would not be likely that the ruling party expands to include a democratic faction.

Because the two brief republics occurred just after the Qing dynasty fell, and, moreover, because the history of China contains cycle after cycle of dynasties rising and falling, real change that includes a democratic system would most likely be possible only after the fall of the Communist Party dynasty. Considering that the Qing dynasty went from 1644 to 1910, I wouldn't look for this kind of change any time soon. Yet within the current dynasty, more pockets of limited democracy, perhaps similar to Hong Kong's, may be established, or, more to the point, allowed by the power in the status quo.

1. Philip Stephens, “Political Cracks Imperil China’s Power,” The Financial Times, January 24, 2013.