“…Modern states and a diversity of the democratic experience. I think most people will probably read this as diversity of experience within and related to the model of the well-established Western democracy. I want to take a larger view. Diversity of democratic experience is not only possible within this Western model, it’s also possible with the creation of another model. A model that follows the principle and meaning of democracy, the role of the people, the rule of the people, the reign of the people; but using different structures through which the people rule.
I will describe the emergence in today’s world of a new democratic model. There is a lot of talk today about the shift of economic importance from the West to the East, and that certainly is taking place. But increasingly we read about the crisis in Western democracy. Parliaments in the West are in many regards paralyzed. They are paralyzed by putting more effort in improving each other’s role than in solving challenges. Different slogans and strategies are dividing people. Governments are becoming dysfunctional, the European Union is floundering, brilliantly floundering. Preoccupied by its own problems, the West has not yet realized that hand-in-hand with the economic rise of China a countermodel to Western democracy is being created.
We all know that in the last 30 years of reforming and opening up China changed from a poor country to become this year the third largest economy in the world. And next year will pass to become the second largest economy in the world. All in 30 years. How did they do that? For the West the logical conclusion is that all the economic growth and stability of Japan is connected with its step by step moving in the direction of adopting Western democracy. Over the last 30 years China has brought about 400 million people out of poverty and created models of wealth for most of its people. With its politics of “crossing rivers by filling them with stones”, China is in the process of creating its own version of democracy. We call it vertical democracy in contrast to the Western horizontal democracy.
What’s the difference between horizontal democracy and vertical democracy? In Western democracies, all the people are equally empowered to periodically elected leaders, choosing between different parties and different candidates for determined political positions. The structure is horizontal. Everyone is equal with periodical elections to create the leaders. Jurisdiction for governing, justification for governing is won through elections, if you win an election, then you have the justification.
China’s model of leadership is constancy; the structure is a vertical process, a top-down/bottom-up interplay between the bottom and the top, a very dynamic interplay of setting general goals, of framing basic conditions by the leadership and the response and initiatives by the people. We call this “framing in the forest and letting the trees grow”. And justification of governing in China is achieved by results. Modern Western democracy is a model fitting, of course, to Western history and values. In 1969 for the first time in the United States black people got vote. In many countries all over the West women couldn’t vote until quite recently. What kind of democracy is that? So, it’s maturing. The only justification for governing leads to strong election term thinking. Party A wants to prove party B is wrong and party B wants to prove party A is wrong and that’s the game. Even if nothing else is happening much of this can be observed today in the current American Congress despite the efforts of its new leader.
China, a vertical democracy, is still in a very evolutionary process and it’s shaped by China’s history and values. In this model the decision making process takes place in a comprehensive top-down/bottom-up interplay, and close attention to the needs and initiatives of the people and long-term goals are combined with flexibility in single steps and adaptation to changing conditions. And the success of the system lies in the quality of the leadership. Let me give you two quick examples of the bottom-up/top-down phenomenon. In late 1978 after Deng Xiaoping became leader, a group of 18 farmers broke the collective agricultural system, the collective farms, and they said to the authorities that they were going to divide their farms and give them to 18 families to farm as they want. As it turned out they had support of local leaders. In a very short time Deng Xiaoping learned about the experience and just a few months later the collective farming system in China was changed to individual farms on a national level. A powerful initiative coming from the bottom was recognized.
Very recently this year China’s government changed its policy about negotiating with foreign companies and foreign countries. They recognized this because it had been going on for a long time. China is the most centralized country in the world. This is something we all acknowledge. But people had been making direct deals not through Beijing but directly with foreign governments, directly with foreign companies for some years. This year the central government recognized this bottom-up initiative and said – from now on any projects under a hundred million dollars a year needn’t go through Beijing, you can negotiate and make these deals directly with other countries and other companies.
In the past 30 years China’s model has increased wealth and sustained political stability for a quarter of the world’s population. If capitalism is the key to economic success is it possible big government and capitalism can fit together in a better way than the West has ever considered? Emancipation of the minds is the most important pillar in social change. I tend to numerate 8 pillars of the new society. And the basic pillar is the emancipation of the minds. The first thing Deng Xiaoping said was we have to move from indoctrination to the emancipation of minds. And everything results from that. And it is so important for entrepreneurs. It’s not only the economic growth in China, it’s this extraordinary intellectual and artistic phenomenon. I have been going to China for 42 years, I went there first in 1967 and I’ve been there a hundred times. And it is just amazing this explosion of artistic and intellectual phenomenon. And the energy that you feel from this. I think that this new model of vertical democracy will become a challenge to the world throughout the first half of this XXI century…”
