Context for understanding
As I was reading this article from the New York Times, I identified the following bits of context that helped me understand the complicated topics:- democratic centralism
- 100 Flowers Campaign
Bai hua qi fang, bai jia zheng ming: A hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend - Chiang Kai-shek
- Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party
- Democracy Wall
- Tiananmen protests (1989)
- Gorbachev's demokratizatsiya and glasnost
- Deng's "Four Modernizations"
Shixian sige xiandaihua : Achieve the Four Modernisations - Hu's "harmonious society"
- Party Congress
You could assign your students the task of describing how these "things" relate to the news article.
Caution: this article was written by Joseph Kahn, whose take on judicial politics awhile ago was, according to well-informed legal experts practicing in China, really off base. Perhaps your students could identify the reporter's assertions that are open to question.
In China, Talk of Democracy Is Simply That
"Like the spring showers that give the parched landscape a veneer of green, China’s authoritarian leaders, approaching the end of their five-year terms in office, have suggested that they would like to see their country become more democratic...
"Top leaders have authorized the publication of the pro-democratic political reflections of Lu Dingyi, a Long March veteran who advocated political change before his death a decade ago, two party officials said...
"China is not embracing Western-style democracy, even in theory. But by permitting a relatively open round of political discussion, President Hu Jintao and other top leaders have sought to cast themselves publicly as progressives who are open-minded about ways to improve government practices and reduce corruption...
"Mr. Hu may also be trying to rally support among younger party members and intellectuals ahead of an important party congress in the fall...
"At a minimum, the recent flurry of articles suggests that the terms democracy and freedom have lost the taboo they had after the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989, after which Deng Xiaoping squelched talk of any democratic-style political change.
"'What we’re seeing is a repudiation of Deng Xiaoping’s edict that the party should focus exclusively on economic development,' said Lu De, an influential economist who has pushed for greater political pluralism...
"Many political analysts are more guarded. Big political events like party congresses, which are held once every five years, can sometimes give rise to relatively unfettered debate that officials stop tolerating after the congress settles on a new slate of leaders. Mr. Hu stirred up expectations of imminent political change around the time he became Communist Party chief in 2002. But since then, they say, he has pursued repeated crackdowns on journalists, lawyers and rights advocates, leading many to conclude that the space for divergent political views in China has shrunk on his watch...
"The essays in party journals do not endorse multiparty democracy. Most of the authors argue that democracy can be functionally consistent with single-party rule. But they say it is necessary to enliven intellectual life and creativity, and to curtail official corruption...
"One of the most passionate calls came from another party elder, Xie Tao, a former vice dean of People’s University in Beijing... Mr. Xie warned... 'If we pursue only economic reform, to say it straight, we’re headed toward the path of bureaucratic capitalism that destroyed Chiang Kai-shek’s rule on the mainland'..."
Labels: China, democratization, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:18 AM
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