The keys to China's success
- By Yang Guangbin
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail China Daily, September 30, 2014
The third group contains those developing countries that were colonized for a long time, such as Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Representative democracy is the bottleneck for most of these countries' development and their people's welfare because of strong social forces and weak national power. The political organizations and family forces behind representative democracy make local social forces in these countries ever stronger, while national power is often too weak to turn national will into reality in this political system.
Some Western people compare India with China and expect India, the largest democracy according to the West's definition, to surpass China someday because they believe that representative democracy is the biggest advantage of India.
Yet in the Human Development Index, China has risen from the rank of 101 in 2001 to the rank of 91 in 2014, while India has dropped from 122 in 2001 to 135 in 2014. In the Poverty Population Index, 11.8 percent of China's population is below the international poverty line, while the percentage of India is 32.68. In the Corruption Perceptions Index, China ranks 80th while India ranks 96th. In the Ease of Business Index, China ranks 90th while India ranks 134th. In 2013, China's per capita GDP was $6,629, which is more than four times the $1,592 of India. The gap of per capita GDP between China and India is larger than two decades ago.
Why has the gap between China and India become larger? India is a democratic society but still has some feudal legacies, and the unfairness under feudalism can hardly accelerate market economy development. As to its "superior" political system, Indian-American political commentator Fareed Zakaria describes it as "bandit democracy". That means, a candidate who committed a crime yesterday may be elected today. India has about 2,000 parties. The country's high degree of fragmentation means it fails to propel public policies that benefit its citizens. The representative democracy of India is fragmented democracy that lacks authoritative policy execution.
Compared with the major developing countries that practice representative democracy, China's centralized democracy guarantees freedom, autonomy, a market economy and also authoritative governmental organizations. China has a lead in governance compared with other major developing countries mainly because of democratic centralism.
Democratic centralism has gone through the first stage during the revolutionary period, the second stage during the first three decades after the founding of New China, and the third stage during the three decades after reform and opening-up. From history and reality we can clearly see the advantages of this political system.
The author is a professor of political studies with Renmin University of China.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)