Can only such regimes deliver quick economic growth?
Conversely, does democracy inhibit rapid economic growth because of the obligations it willingly shoulders, such as catering to the needs of various and often antagonistic constituencies?
In short, could China have created the world’s second largest economy in just thirty years had it not been led by an authoritarian and repressive regime which denied its citizens all of their fundamental rights in order to produce the desired outcome, economic prosperity?
Should China therefore, heed the advice of the west and launch its Fifth Modernization, democratization, or wait until the nation’s economy is robust enough to satisfy the material needs of most, if not all, Chinese?
Some in Asia, such as Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, in a recent NYT op-ed, accuse the West of being shortsighted on the issue of democratization.
The notion that by recognizing and encouraging Chinese dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo the West can help foster a democratic movement in China is a delusion, a counterproductive one, which can only lead to instability not democracy, he claims.
Infatuated with its ideals of justice and democracy, the West refuses to entertain the notion that there may exist what Mr. Mahbubani calls an alternative point of view, presumably embodied by the regime.
If, as Mr. Mahbubani noticed, few Chinese did indeed publicly celebrate Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize, it is because they feared enduring the wrath of those enforcing this alternative point of view.
Nevertheless, some actually had the courage to do so, and were promptly arrested and have been harassed by that alternative point of view’s security apparatus ever since.
No one denies the great benefits that Deng Xiaoping’s modernization program based on opening up the country to outside and particularly Western influence unleashed.
That is indeed an unparalleled achievement and worthy of praise.
Many foreigners came to China to invest, and thousands of young Chinese went abroad to study…
If Western values are so pernicious, why did Deng allow them to go?
Surely, Mr. Deng must have evaluated the potential consequences of exposing thousands of youths to the Western, democratic model.
Those brazen enough to believe that not only socialism (another Western import) could have Chinese characteristics, but democracy as well, and brought those ideas home, were maimed and killed by the thousands on June 4, 1989 at Tiananmen.
MM. Deng and Li actually unleashed the PLA on China’s youth…
It is reassuring to note that Mr. Mahbubani brands the autocratic regime’s reaction a mistake.
Most observers around the world saw an authoritarian regime commit, not a mistake, but a great crime in order to preserve its monopoly on power.
What in the end was more destabilizing and traumatic, the call for democracy, or the violent repression of the democracy movement?
How many were killed on that fateful day?
The great leaders in Beijing never divulged the figure, to preserve stability no doubt…
Yet, the values of justice and democracy are not Western, Eastern or Central, they are universal.
La Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen was not bestowed by the French revolutionaries on the French alone, but on all of humanity.
No doubt, no doubt, we are told, but these foreign values would be too destabilizing for a country like China.
Better to keep over a billion people shackled to ensure that they do not destabilize a system now able to feed them properly.
That is the argument the apologists of tyranny always invoke to justify depriving human beings of their fundamental rights.
Democracy activists are thus dismissed as selfish, vain and irresponsible stooges of foreign powers, unwittingly undermining the nation and impeding its progress.
Furthermore, this argument goes, democracy is the central element in a Western plot designed to overthrow the regime. Those converted to Western values are thus either fools or traitors.
Only the autocrats know what is good for China, certainly not those foreigners who did such great harm to China in a not-so-distant past and even less those criminals or fools who parrot their justice-and-democracy propaganda.
Leave China alone, the admirers of the Chinese leadership argue.
Only a regime ruthlessly imposing order and discipline could have achieved such remarkable growth in the span of a generation, these apologists claim.
As such, China’s leaders should be commended for their achievements, not condemned for their human rights abuses, mere collateral damage on the road to prosperity.
Mr. Mahbubani does have a point however, when he emphasizes that the West does have a double standard on the human rights question.
The US has indeed much to answer for: not only Guantanamo but also Abu Ghraib, Bagram, secret prisons, ghost detainees, extraordinary renditions, warrantless wiretapping, enhanced interrogation techniques (what Bush administration lawyers call torture), and the list goes on...
Those blatant and flagrant human rights abuses tarnished America’s reputation, which it will take decades of virtuous behavior to restore.
These abuses also undermined its moral authority and left it in no position to criticize anyone’s human rights record.
Alas, President Obama has elected to preserve Guantanamo, military commissions, extraordinary renditions, indefinite detention and so on, thus betraying the great faith placed in him by human rights activists in the US and throughout the world.
MM. Bush and Cheney must feel vindicated indeed…
The UK is also currently grappling with its own version of Abu Ghraib.
Nevertheless, do these human rights abuses justify Tiananmen, the jailing of a non-violent pro-democracy literature professor, and the systematic repression of democracy activists?
No, and nothing ever will.
One can measure the level a civilization has reached by the way it treats its own people.
Feeding and providing for a nation of over one billion people is indeed an extraordinary feat and Deng’s contribution in this effort is evident.
Yet, what is the point of providing for them if the price is persecution?
What choice does the regime allow its citizens, or rather, subjects?
Live decently, but without any rights.
Demand to live decently without forfeiting those rights and you are deprived of both the former and the latter.
The autocrats have been able to deliver a measure of prosperity but only by negating all those fundamental rights China vowed to respect (e.g., Article 35 of its constitution, and the international covenants that it signed ).
Do material progress and prosperity justify tyranny?
Should we condone the crimes committed by the thugs who rule in Beijing because they have succeeded in erecting the planet’s second largest economy?
Does the end, relative prosperity, justify the means, systematic repression of all pro-democracy activism?
Are we to understand that, if Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to eleven years in jail, it is for a good cause, for the well-being of the Chinese people?
Presumably, his revolutionary ideas (simply demanding that the autocrats respect the country’s constitution) could prove contagious and infect other Chinese citizens, leading them to demand that their rights be also respected.
Where would that leave the regime?
What the autocrats are in facts trying to preserve is not stability, but their monopoly on power.
If the regime were truly interested in stability, than it would start a dialogue with such moderates as Liu Xiaobo, and negotiate a path conciliating both economic growth and democratic rights.
India faces many of the challenges confronting China today: a huge population whose material needs must be met; ethnic, and religious tensions; massive pockets of poverty and underdevelopment, particularly in the countryside; huge inequality-inducing income variations, for instance.
Yet, it has attempted to confront these daunting issues with the help of its people, not in spite of or against them.
It is the Indians who elect their rulers, not a miniscule minority of apparatchiks in secret meetings, behind closed doors.
Has democracy in India led to unrest?
Sometimes, but to instability and anarchy?
No!
Only the Chinese can compel the regime to give back what it has extorted, their fundamental democratic and human rights. Few in the West have any doubt about that.
A Nobel Peace Prize will do little to overthrow an authoritarian regime, but perhaps it can help call attention to the fate of a brave man the autocrats in Beijing have tried so resolutely to humiliate and destroy.
This Nobel Peace Prize is trying to convey to them the following message: do not try to fool your people or us; Liu is no criminal, only a man whose ambition is to live like one, in dignity and freedom.
The world is watching and admiring China’s rise, but also the fortitude and resilience of Liu Xiaobo and his fellow dissidents
The resurrection of the Chinese nation cannot come at the price of the dignity and fundamental rights of its people.
The regime will be held accountable for the way its treats them, and its crimes, all its crimes exposed and denounced.
Hence, contrary to what Mr. Mahbubani maliciously claims, it is not Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize that is ignoble, but the ruling clique’s fanatical persecution of a man who only believes that we should end the practice of viewing words as crimes…
(the photograph of Chinese President Hu Jintao unveiling a statue of Deng Xiaoping in 2004 is by Xinhua)
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