China's "vertical democracy"ensures stability
- Source: Global Times
- [21:33 October 28 2009]
- Comments
Editor's Note:
The rise of China has been the topic of many publications, including China's Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of A New Society (September 2009), the newest book by best-selling American author and leading futurist John Naisbitt and his wife Doris Naisbitt.
The following is an interview by China Newsweek (CN) with John Naisbitt (John) and Doris Naisbitt (Doris), on their controversial views over what they perceive to be an apparent crisis in Western political values, and how China's political system is representative of a new type of democracy.
CN: In your book, you consider China's political system as one of the eight pillars supporting the rise of China. Are you concerned about possible criticism from the West for your stance?
John: Somebody is going to criticize us, but inevitably they will criticize what they can't understand.
Westerners think they are the judges of democracy. They believe that democracy is about elections, and if a system is different from their model, it is not democracy.
But Athenians, who were credited with inventing democracy, had slaves who couldn't vote. India often boasts that it is the largest democracy in the world, but it also has a caste system, and no country with a caste system should be called a democracy.
Democracy is what people decide, and different nations can have different procedures and arrangements of democracy. China is building a democracy that is different from the typical Western way. If they don't buy it, it's their own problem.
Doris: Under China's political system, the government can say "stop," and you cannot set up a new political party to overthrow it.
But one should note that the Chinese system is sustainable. We support freedom of speech, and we do not support suppression of people. But what is more important for the Chinese people now is social stability. If there were multiple political parties, China might return to chaos.
John: The West says the Chinese political system is authoritarian, but it is actually a new type of democracy. The essence of it is that it is vertical. We call it a vertical democracy, while Western democracy is horizontal.
In the West, everybody has equal status, and there will be an election every few years. Somebody votes and others get voted in.
In China's vertical democracy, there are leaders at the top and then there are people at the bottom. The leaders may command, but people can make proposals too.
Within this system, sometimes, the leaders are more important, while at other times the people are more important, depending on differing situations. It continues to change, being both top-down and bottom-up. That's why we call it a "vertical democracy."
Doris: I think it poses a change to the model of the West. The Western model was the only one in the world, but now there is another model, and it is a highly efficient one.
In the US, the Democrats and Republicans may say, "Let us put aside our political differences and do something good for the country," but what can Americans achieve? They still quarrel with each other.
Now the Republicans are trying to stop US President Barack Obama on everything.
John: Western democracy is now in crisis, and cannot achieve anything. Aside from President Obama, all the other Western countries have weak leadership.
In Europe, those who engage in politics are not the smartest people, because the smartest people have chosen better things to do. In China, the smartest people are in the national leadership.
Doris: I think the challenge for China is to have more capable leaders at the local government levels. The leaders of the local governments are far less capable than those in the central government.
