China's Political Meritocracy - What The West Gets Wrong About China | Professor Daniel Bell
https://youtu.be/irBs3hp-Ygk?t=247
China as we know is a huge country and yes at the very top it's supposed to be more meritocratic but at lower levels of government there are some democratic mechanisms including ele elections to select leaders and to certain extent mechanisms for deliberation and even a certain extent of freedom of speech not as much as we would like um that that is that that is involved in the selection and promotion of leaders so um
so basically we have to set aside this prejudice there's only two kinds of governments one is democratic, one is authoritarian. not a useful framework because we have to distinguish between China and those other so countries that are labeled in the authoritarian camp and then we have to understand China it own terms what exactly is it of course it's a highly imperfect mechanism right just like democracy in you know Australia or Canada or or US is highly imperfect but this is the standard that's used to think about Chinese political system and how to evaluate its progress and regress and we have and this is so the language of political metocracy is really essential to understand China
https://youtu.be/irBs3hp-Ygk?t=442
in fact it's
more dangerous you have somebody who's
smart who has
high emotional intelligence who
works hard and if they're
a bad person if they're
corrupt that's even more dangerous so you have to address that
virtue part that's really a really
key pillar for the whole political system
https://youtu.be/irBs3hp-Ygk?t=705
But on issues like how to organize your economy or how to select leaders, they say we should allow for variation based on the size of the country, you know, based on the dominant political culture, based on the history and based on the current national conditions. So that's why China has no China's will willing to set a good example. If others want to learn, fine. But there's no effort.
China would never invade another country to promote its legal system. Impossible to imagine, right? Whereas you think of US invading Iraq and so on to promote democracy. I mean that that's is very different mindset. There's not this kind of long history of missionary kind of this missionary impulse that we have in the West. Maybe it comes from Christianity. Um that's just not there in China.
https://youtu.be/irBs3hp-Ygk?t=810
Yeah. So, so Taiwan is viewed as part of China, right? Whether it's by the leaders or the huge majority of people. Um, and if China, if Taiwan were to promote formal independence from the rest of China, I mean, that would be a disaster from the Chinese point of view because it would it would undermine the for one thing the legitimacy of the current ruling organization and it might lead to independence systems elsewhere and it might lead to a chaotic and and and civil war situation which you have had in China's past. So, this is a red line. But, China wants Taiwan to be part of China.
But it won't export its system up beyond that to like you know Kore that's why this there's this domino theory in the west that you hear sometimes if we let Taiwan go then the next step is South Korea and Japan that's not going to happen if Taiwan is back into the Chinese orbit that's going to end there the polit the effort to let's call it but that said I mean China allows for different variations of political systems so long as there's some commitment to political unity so China is not going to want to export its ex in its current political to ch to Taiwan, you know, so long as Taiwan pays, we can even say lip service to kind of Chinese unity, that's that's okay, right? Um, and I mean, I'm in in Hong Kong now.
Hong Kong, yeah, we hear there's it's one country, two systems, and we hear about threats, but still very different in Hong Kong. We have common law system, you know, we have much more freedom of speech. You know, there's no restrictions on the internet, for example. The Hong Kong currency is tied to the US dollar. I mean it's still hugely different system that more or less would be the case if if Taiwan is part of of in a formal way part of China again. But um if there is this pushing of like the declaration of formal independence or the US more more forcefully says that we're going to defend Taiwan that would put huge pressure on China to use military means to promote unification. But China doesn't do that. It hasn't gone to war since 1979. is fully aware that we need peace here to have a a sustainable form of development. If there's a war, it would be a huge disaster. The only pressure would come, but China's not in a huge hurry to have more formal unification with Taiwan, right? Could be 10, 20, 30 years from now, it doesn't matter. China has this long-term horizon.
But if Taiwan or with US pressure pushes for more formal independence, then the you know, it's really would be very dangerous time.
https://youtu.be/irBs3hp-Ygk?t=1063
So if we want to understand China, we have to understand the dominant political culture which has been mainly Confucian.
But you also have had these as you say these ultra hardcore realists and they're more hardcore realist than like anybody in the West like they make Machiavellian look like a real softy you know liberal. So and and the first Chinese uh emperor who successfully unified China after the Warring States period did it according to legalist principles but that dynasty only lasted 15 years because it it was viewed as too cruel and since then liberal the Legalist tradition has been in the background but it comes back in times of chaos because how do you deal with that chaos it's very hard to the Confucian's favor what we call today soft power like persuasion unifying people through moral example having beautiful music that makes people feel a sense of community. Um having rituals that unite people and and and pro and promotes a sense of caring that doesn't work very well in times of huge chaos, right?
So in the 20th century the Legalist tradition came back full force, right? And and and and actually the the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao was explicitly Legalist at some point and anti-Confucian. Today we can see this in the in the anti-corruption campaign. You have these Legalists who arguing we have to have harsh punishments uniformly applied. No mercy and only fear works if we want to deal with corruption.
But Confucian say look if you want to eliminate corruption in the long term you have to make you have to have people internalize morality and make them feel a sense of shame when they do something bad. And and that's is the only long-term solution for dealing with corruption. So these debates are still very much alive in China today. You know, and if you if you want to understand China, the Marxist tradition has nothing to offer about dealing with corruption. Neither does the liberal or democratic tradition. Hardly anything. But these debates between Legalists and and Confucians on dealing with corruption go way back in Chinese history.
