Healthy debate helps China weather crises

• Source: Global Times
• [23:17 September 05 2010]
• Comments

Wang Hui

Breaking the system

In fact, the gradual disintegration of the polarized power structure during the Cold War is related to China's continuous criticism toward it. Without China's intervention, there would have been a bigger possibility of direct confrontation of the Soviet Union and the US.

In the economic, political and cultural fi elds, there have been various deviations, problems and even tragic results during China's exploration of socialism.

However, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, China's ruling party continued to adjust its policies, which had signifi cant e ects on the establishment of China's political and economic policies during the Cold War.

Theoretical debate, particularly open theoretical debate, which is an error correction mechanism for a political party, plays an important role in the selfadjustment and self-reform of political parties and the nation.

Due to the lack of Western democratic institutions, theoretical debates and di erences within the Communist Party once led to brutal power struggles. But these factors should not obscure the signifi cant historical infl uence of debate over both political theory and practical policy.

It is certainly correct to express that there is no ready-made model or policy for reform, but in fact, the lack of a ready-made model is characteristic of the whole Chinese revolution.

What do we rely on when there is no existing model? The answer is theoretical debate, political struggle and social practice. Theoretical debate has played a signifi cant role in Chinese revolution and reform.

Constant debate

On the intellectual level, the discussion of socialism, democratic socialism, and humanitarian values never stopped. The reform has its theoretical sources from both inside and outside of the system.

The debate about the path of development is not limited within the CPC. And theoretical debate is still crucial for policy adjustment.

Without the external criticism or resistance toward a development model simply focused on GDP growth, there would be no exploration of the new scientifi c development model. In the 1990s, together with the change of China's political structure, open intellectual debate partly replaced the previous internal debate, which contributed a lot to the adjustment of national policies, including attention to agricultural issues in 1990s, the refl ection on healthcare reform after 2003, the attention to the reform of the Stateowned enterprises and the concern for labor rights in 2005, and the theoretical advocacy of ecological environment protection and social movements.

Therefore, theoretical debate plays an indispensable role in guiding the direction of reform.

The democracy that we currently talk about is an error correction mechanism for a political party. In the history of the 20th century, debate inside the party was often violent and arbitrary. As a result, in-depth and long-term refl ection is necessary. But the criticism of violent struggle within the party cannot be equated to the denial of debate. In fact, the latter is the means and mechanism for us to get out of arbitration and achieve self-correction. With the changes in social structure, theoretical debate is no longer limited within political parties and the government, but also occurs or even mainly occurs in a wider community.

Therefore, it is critical to fi nd out how to create an ideological space favorable for public discussion in order to explore China's development and avoid the infl uence of special interests on public policies.

The author is a professor of Chinese language and literature at Tsinghua University. This article is an excerpt from the essay entitled "The Experience of the rise of China and its challenges."