Democracy in China
Ideological debate over democracy in China has existed in Chinese politics since the 19th century. Chinese scholars, thinkers, and policy-makers have debated about democracy, an idea which was first imported by Western colonial powers but which some argue also has connections to classic Chinese thinking. Starting in the mid-eighteenth century, many Chinese argued about how to deal with Western culture. Though Chinese Confucians were initially opposed to Western modes of thinking, it became clear that aspects of the West were appealing. Industrialization gave the West an economic and military advantage. The Qing dynasty's defeats in the Opium Wars compelled a segment of Chinese politicians and intellectuals to rethink their notion of cultural and political superiority.
Democracy entered the Chinese consciousness because it was the form of government used in the West, potentially responsible for its industrial, economic and military advancements. A segment of Chinese scholars and politicians became persuaded that democratization and industrialization were imperative for a competitive China. In response, a number of scholars resisted the idea, saying democracy and Westernization had no place in traditional Chinese culture. Liang Shuming's opinion was most popular, holding that democracy and traditional Chinese society were completely incompatible, hence China's only choice was either wholesale Westernization or complete rejection of the West. The debate centered on the philosophical compatibility of traditional Chinese Confucian beliefs and the technologies of the West.
The People's Republic of China is not a liberal or representative democracy. The state constitution and the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party state that the PRC's form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship". Under Xi Jinping's general secretaryship, China is also termed a "whole-process people's democracy." The state constitution also holds that China is a one-party state that is governed by the CCP. This gives the CCP a total monopoly of political power. All political opposition is illegal. Currently, there are eight minor political parties in China other than the CCP that are legal, but all have to accept CCP primacy to exist. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are severely restricted by the government. Censorship in China is widespread and dissent is harshly punished in the country. Many foreign and some domestic observers categorize China as an authoritarian one-party state, with some saying it has shifted to neoauthoritarianism. Some characterize it as a dictatorship.
Translation
The most common modern translation for the English words democracy and democratic in East Asian languages is. However, in classical Chinese, the compound could be interpreted as either a genitive noun phrase which would translate to "people's lord;" or a subject–verb phrase which would translate to "the people govern." The genitive-noun-phrase interpretation was well known in China as a way to refer to the reigning emperor, and was synonymous with another classical word,.The first use of mínzhǔ that deviated from the two above interpretations was found in William Alexander Parsons Martin's seminal 1863 translated book,. In order to translate the phrase "whether monarchical or republican," Martin made use of the contrast between and. The genitive-noun-phrase interpretation would render such translation meaningless, therefore, it has been argued that the subject–verb interpretation was intended here. Furthermore, Martin also translated "democratic republic" as, meaning mínzhǔ actually encapsulated both "republic" and "democratic." The word mínzhǔ went on to be a popular translation for republic in multiple bilingual dictionaries. On the other hand, given that republicanism and democracy were completely foreign to the Chinese under monarchical Qing rule, authors often employed the "people's lord" meaning analogously. 19th-century newspapers in China often equated America's head of state, the President, to China's head of state, the Emperor. An 1874 issue of the paper used the phrases, and. An 1896 issue of even used the specific phrase in reference to an American election. George Carter Stent reinforced this usage in the third edition of his dictionary Chinese and English Vocabulary in the Pekinese Dialect, with translated as "President of a Republic," and as "a Republic." At this point during the late 19th century, four meanings of mínzhǔ coexisted: "people's lord", "the people govern", "the people govern" and "people's lord". There was no distinction between democracy and republicanism.
Meanwhile, in Japan, the word, modernized by Mitsukuri Shōgo in 1845 and reinforced by Fukuzawa Yukichi in 1866, became popular as a translation for republic. Kyōka also came from classical Chinese, specifically from an account of the non-monarchical Gònghé Regency. During the exchange of translated materials, including Martin's Wànguó Gōngfǎ and various translations of Rousseau's Du contrat social, between Qing China and Meiji Japan, mínzhǔ and kyōka were often used interchangeably. The neat distinction of today between these two words as respectively meaning "democracy" and "republic" happened gradually.
The first recorded example of the Chinese loanword used to translate specifically the English word democracy was in an 1870 lecture by the philosopher Nishi Amane, who used. In his 1877 translation of Du contrat social entitled, Hattori Toku used for the French word démocratie. Minshu came to be associated more with an ideology, institution or spirit rather than a specific form of government that had been linked to kyōka. In a 1916 issue of the magazine Chūō Kōron, the Taishō political scientist Sakuzō Yoshino distinguished the two senses of the English loanword : he associated with a legal form of government that did not exist in Japan, and his own coinage with a political ideology that could be implemented as constitutional monarchy in Japan. In other words, some Taishō authors started to give minshu shugi the form-of-government meaning of kyōka, while pushing for minpon shugi with the ideology meaning. However, minpon shugi did not quite catch on, and minshu shugi was used for both meanings of democracy by subsequent bilingual dictionaries.
On the other hand, the Japanese loanword saw a rise in popularity in 20th-century China. The defeat of the Russian absolute monarchy by the Japanese constitutional monarchy contributed to its 1906 peak in published materials by Qing aristocrats. Usage of gònghé among these constitutional monarchists continued to trump that of mínzhǔ during the following years. Some aristocrats, priding themselves as more virtuous and qualified to govern, had already attempted to distinguish mínzhǔ as democratic government by the people, and gònghé as government by a select few wise men like the republics of old. In this regard, gònghé was reinterpreted as "cooperative and harmonious" government between the monarch and his subjects, not true republicanism. Opposing the constitutional monarchists were the revolutionaries, who aimed to abolish the monarchy altogether. Chief among these actual republicans was Sun Yat-sen, who thought it was the people who were qualified to govern, and who went on to develop the Three Principles of the People. In this regard, gònghé was a stand-in for mínzhǔ as democratic government by the people. Although the victorious Xinhai Revolution and the founding of the seemed to show promise at first, Yuan Shikai's attempt to restore constitutional monarchy and the subsequent turmoil proved that it was the duplicity of the constitutional monarchists that helped realize the revolutionaries' gònghé aspirations, which turned out to be merely nominal and illusory. The failure and eventual downfall of the Republic resulted in the later negative connotation of gònghé and the revival of mínzhǔ.
Among the 19th-century translations of democracy in China, was frequently found. This word traditionally meant "popular/civil administration," or administration dealing with people. Contemporary foreign lexicographers intended it to mean "people's administration," or administration by the people, instead. During the 20th century, while also regaining its traditional meaning of "civil administration", mínzhèng started to lose ground to mínzhǔ, likely because the Chinese were increasingly aware of "democracy" as a something fundamentally opposite to traditional Chinese government. Constitutional monarchists, such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, viewed mínzhǔ as dangerous, prone to chaos, and may result in the tyranny of a strongman "people's lord." They even used loaded phrases like and. Despite that, the fall of the Republic of China helped reinvigorate mínzhǔ during the New Culture Movement, whose members were disaffected by the failed implementation of gònghé. For example, CCP co-founder Chen Duxiu criticized constitutional monarchists for nominally claiming to support gònghé, yet worshipping antiquated Confucian ideas that are inextricably tied to monarchy and thus antithetical to gònghé. Mínzhǔ then signified a rejection of the failed gònghé model, a rejection of monarchical Confucian thinking, and an embrace of actual democracy and other Western thoughts. Occasional transcriptions like and were also used to distinguish from mínzhǔ as a form of government. Of the new concepts under the umbrella of mínzhǔ, the Marxist-Leninist idea of proletarian dictatorship, represented by such terms as, and, became the foundational thought of the CCP. In his 1918 speech entitled, CCP founder Li Dazhao used the phrase previously popularized by the Japanese near the end of the 19th century. In terms of meaning and connotation, this new idea of democratic dictatorship among communists was intended to be different from the idea of democratic autocracy warned of by earlier constitutional monarchists, as well as from imperial autocracy ; yet, the brutal reality of the Cultural Revolution proved they were not so different after all.