2b. Selected Presentation: Social Basis for Transformation Toward Democracy
(Thomas A. METZGER)
[Editor’s Note: The following is an expanded abstract of Professor Thomas A. Metzger’s
presentation for the panel on “Social Basis for Transformation toward Democracy” at the Fifth
Annual Meeting of the Overseas Young Chinese Forum (May 23-26, 2003).]
I would like to start by holding that the idea of democracy is vague as a concept of the goal of
political development. For instance, many Chinese would not identify the goal of political
development with Taiwan’s democracy or with U.S. democracy. Yet both these societies are
democracies according to the definition of democracy largely accepted by political scientists.
Because of such definitional problems, the goal of political development can be uncontroversially
viewed as the concrete improvement of political life, which arguably can require democratization
in the sense of legal procedures like free and fair elections, changes in the informal power
structure reducing the domination of vested interests, and the realization of appropriate civic
norms.
How then can people improve China’s political life today? A common answer is to start with
legal democratization. But many think democratization can come only gradually and depends on
realizing the prerequisites Seymour Martin Lipset spelled out in his famous 1994 American
Sociological Review article.1 If so, the improvement of political life has to occur for the time
being under a progressive dictatorship.
Another answer is that, if democratization is not immediately feasible, the focus should be on
maximally building up the civil society. Like the idea of democracy, however, the idea of the
civil society is ambiguous, as can be seen in Sudipta Kaviraj, Sunil Khilnani, eds., Civil Society:
History and Possibilities (Cambridge University Press, 2001). A prevalent definition of it today
is “that part of society outside not only the direct control of the state but also the most intimate
personal relations.” If, however, prompt democratization is not feasible, maximally reducing the
state’s intervention in organizations would be a simplistic goal. The degree of state intervention
would have to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Certainly it is desirable that citizens learn how to pursue their diverse interests and discuss public
issues by actively building up their own organizations. Whether under a democracy or a
progressive dictatorship, however, such organizations should operate within the parameters of
what Max Weber called “an ethic of responsibility.”
The idea of such normative parameters coincides with the classic meaning of “civil society”
(societas civilis) going back to Cicero’s (106-43 B.C.) writings. As such, however, the classic
idea of “civil society” is merely one of many ways of conceptualizing these parameters. Most
basic is the Greek idea of paideia, which, as analyzed by Werner Jaeger, in his book with that
name, refers to all the influences in a society, not just education in schools, shaping the character
and intellect of all the citizens, not only those citizens making up the state but also those outside
the state. Zhang Zhi-dong at the end of the Qing Dynasty, following the similar Confucian idea
of jiao (teaching) as the basis of government, was especially insightful not when he made his
famous point about “Chinese learning as the basis of society, Western learning for dealing with
instrumental problems” (ti-yong), but when he used the old Chinese distinction between “the
1
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1994. “The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited: 1993 Presidential Address.”
American Sociological Review, 59(1):1-22.
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inner” and the “outer” dimension of public life (nei-wai). True, when he said that the “inner”
should be based on Confucian culture, many disagreed. Few, however, disagreed with his point
that the flourishing of a society depends on not only modern institutions and technology in the
“outer” world but also the “inner” character of the citizens. Thus his influential contemporaries
Yan Fu and Liang Qi-chao both emphasized building up the “virtue,” “understanding,” and
physical capabilities of the citizens (min-de, min-zhi, min-li). F. A. Hayek is famous for his
emphasis on individual freedom, not only in the economic sphere. Yet even he believed that a
modern society could not flourish unless its citizens shared a proper “ethos.” In his thought as
well as that of his friend and fellow-liberal, Karl R. Popper, one can see a belief that what I call
“the three marketplaces” (free enterprise, the free marketplace of ideas, and free electoral
competition between politically diverse groups) require normative parameters respected by
everyone: respect for the law, for scientific knowledge, and for basic moral principles. A similar
point has been made in recent theories about “civility,” “trust,” “social capital,” and “the modern
personality.” (See e.g. the writings of Alex Inkeles.)
What then are the normative problems in China that need attention? This is a question requiring
much debate. First, I would argue that familism and the idea of gong-de, emphasized by Liang
Qi-chao, are both valuable parts of Chinese culture but, unrevised, do not easily accord with the
norm of civility as developed in the Anglo-American world. On the one hand, Chinese familism
weakens the development of cordial, trustful, cooperative relations between citizens who are not
kinsmen. On the other hand, civility emphasizes norms like truthfulness and respect for the law,
not the elimination of selfish interests. Thus civility is not gong-de. One could call it xiangyuan-de dao-de (respect for conventional norms combined with the pursuit of selfish interests) or
zhong-ren-de dao-de (the morality of those only partly guided by their consciences). Second, the
latter kind of “mediocre morality” is connected to Professor Zhang Hao’s concept of you-huan yishi (awareness of the permanently dark side of political life). Trust in political life cannot be built
up if politicians and their critics all claim to be saints without biases and selfish interests and then
denounce each other for jia-gong ji-si (pursuing selfish interests under the guise of a public
cause). In other words, when Chinese intellectuals continue to define themselves as “the
conscience of society” (she-hui-de liang-xin), they misleadingly present themselves as
“incarnations of virtue” (dao-de-de hua-shen), moral virtuosi not susceptible like other people to
intellectual confusion and moral weakness. This outlook at the very least is foreign to the
Western liberal tradition, as Zhang Hao has made so clear. I believe it guarantees perpetuation of
that vicious circle of distrust between government and the intellectuals which has undermined
Chinese political development in the 20th century. Third, John Rawls sees political pluralism as
depending on a shared belief that all political outlooks (“comprehensive doctrines”) are ultimately
based only on articles of faith, not propositions susceptible to being judged as true or false. Yet
in China today, intellectual circles, not to mention political ones, have not made the
epistemological shift toward the concept of pluralism illustrated by John Rawls’ liberalism. I
believe effective political cooperation is undermined when each leading group sees itself as
grasping the one truth and serving as the “conscience of society.” Fourth, there is the Western
concept of legality, according to which not all laws are moral and rational but it is moral and
rational to obey all laws (except those of an extreme tyrant like Hitler). This idea too, however, is
little understood in China, where people usually insist that only moral and rational laws should be
obeyed and deny that “even a bad law is still the law” (e-fa yi-fa). Because any law can be seen
as immoral or irrational by anyone, respect for law, basic to modernity, has to be differentiated
from the ideals of morality and rationality.
Whether or not the above remarks about needed changes in Chinese normative thinking are
correct, one can ask: how can changes in the norms, whatever they should be, be practicably
effected? The only answer is the old one going back to China’s first modernizers, like Yan Fu and
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Liang Qi-chao: intellectuals must form a new way of thought about these problems (si-xiang).
Thinking in the ivory tower eventually influences education, journalism, the common sense
norms of political life, etc. There is plenty of historical evidence showing that intellectuals have
little influence on institutions and policy in the short term, but much in the long term.
In my opinion, therefore, the improvement of Chinese political life has to start with the creation
by Chinese intellectuals of a new understanding about the changes needed in the norms governing
Chinese social and public life. They can do this not only while abroad but also while living in
China, where the intellectual freedom needed to discuss this question is entirely sufficient. This
question is far more important than the problems Chinese intellectuals usually like to discuss,
such as reducing corruption, democratizing, and increasing the political autonomy of civic
organizations outside the state.
If Chinese intellectuals do not succeed in analyzing this question about norms, Chinese political
life, I believe, cannot be improved much, whether or not democracy as a legal form is realized,
whether or not there is an expansion of the civil society in the form of autonomous social
activities outside state control. And if Chinese political life is not improved, the modern
organization of Chinese life will continue to suffer, and China will always fail to match the West
as a model of modernity for the world. Many Chinese will then live happily in the modern West
and accept the failure of their culture. Obviously, however, that is no solution for a true Chinese
intellectual.
(The author is a Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution.)
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