This paper examines the prospects for democratic governance in China through the lens of Robert Dahl's five criteria for ideal democracy. Beginning with a survey of China's feudal history and the rise of Communist rule in 1949, the paper analyzes the major structural, historical, and political barriers to democratization—including the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the impracticality of equal participation among 1.2 billion citizens, and the implausibility of military-led regime change. The paper ultimately argues that gradual economic liberalization, driven by China's desire to participate in the global economy, represents the most realistic path toward democratic reform.
The paper demonstrates effective comparative reasoning: the author draws analogies to the French Revolution, American Revolution, Soviet collapse, Greek democracy, and U.S. foreign interventions to contextualize China's unique situation. Each comparison is used not to equate China with those cases but to rule out paths that worked elsewhere, ultimately strengthening the paper's central claim that economic liberalization is the only realistic route to democratization in China.
The essay opens by establishing democratic theory, then moves chronologically through Chinese history to the present political situation. The middle sections evaluate and reject alternative democratization strategies (revolution, foreign military intervention) before pivoting to the economic argument. The paper closes with a cautionary note about China's isolationist tendencies, balancing optimism with realism. This funnel structure — from broad theory to specific historical context to a targeted policy recommendation — is well suited to a political science argument paper.
Any democratic system for governing a group of people, small or large, must maintain the best interests of all the individuals involved. This general criterion must be upheld regardless of whether the specific nature of those best interests can be unanimously agreed upon. Ideally, a democracy allows everyone involved an equal voice and vote regarding every decision that concerns the organization. Robert Dahl identifies the five primary components of the ideal democracy: "1. Effective participation. 2. Equality in voting. 3. Gaining enlightened understanding. 4. Exercising final control over the agenda. 5. Inclusion of adults" (Dahl 38). Essentially, at every step of the decision-making process, each member of the association must have an equal opportunity to voice their opinions, vote, learn about the issues, choose what matters are to be considered, and participate — provided they are of legal age.
These somewhat rigid requirements can be difficult for even small organizations to uphold, and are nearly impossible to satisfy for something as large as a country. The unavoidable deviations from the ideological dream of a democratic state are one of the major barriers preventing nations from adopting this form of government.
China is a country with a five-thousand-year-old history and over 1.2 billion people. Its people have dominated the landscape and history of Asia for millennia (Green 90). "China's geography played a central role in the development of its antique civilization. For most of its history China was cut off from other civilizations by the Pacific Ocean to the east, the barren steppes of central Asia to the west, and the mighty Himalaya Mountains to the southwest. The result was that China developed in relative isolation" (Green 6). Because of its unique geographic position, China has rarely risked outright defeat from outside civilizations, and has thus maintained its individuality as a people and as a nation.
At the risk of doing a great injustice to thousands of years of ancient Chinese history, it can be summarized as follows: for the past two millennia, the geographic region we now call China has been fought over by a handful of powerful families and tribes trying to gain the strongest hold on the nation's economy. Dynasty upon dynasty has formed, risen to power, decayed, and been overthrown throughout the course of history. This could, of course, describe any feudal state anywhere in the world, and until very recently China could be categorized as such.
China became modern in a very short amount of time. "From the end of the empire in 1911 to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China jumped from a nearly feudal agrarian state to a contender for world power with a furiously modern outlook" (Green 49). This change was sparked by the gradual decline of the Qing dynasty. The eventual incursion of Western powers and the subsequent Opium Wars spelled the end of the feudal order in China and the dawn of a Western-backed government.
Following World War II, the two competing political parties in China — the Nationalists and the Communists — scrambled to gain control of the lands formerly occupied by Japan. A civil war followed, and in 1949 the Communists were victorious. Although the Communists professed a commitment to Marxist ideals of socialism, it soon became clear that they intended to remain in power through military might. "China adopted a Stalinist strategy for economic development.... The Soviet model was regarded as a blueprint for the creation of a socialist economy" (Roberts 225).
This method of rule, however, was less concerned with building a truly socialist state than with self-preservation. At no time in recent history did this become more apparent than during the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Thousands of Chinese college students took to the streets for thirteen days, demonstrating to the world that they wanted a more democratic society. Instead, Deng Xiaoping ordered the participants to be run down by tanks. Harrison Salisbury recounts, "It is a situation pleasing to the army. The military has demonstrated to Deng that without it he cannot retain power. The commanders have demonstrated to themselves that they are more powerful than Deng or the party" (Salisbury 174).
"The violence at Tiananmen Square in 1989 showed the Communist Party's unwillingness to relax political control. Yet, in other arenas, Chinese society is undergoing changes that are sometimes described as a second revolution" (Green 76). China was beginning to open its doors more fully to Western society — its ways of life, values, standards of living, and, most importantly, its economic prospects.
In 1997, President Jiang Zemin attempted to join the World Trade Organization despite vocal objections from the United States. In 1998, President Bill Clinton visited Beijing in an effort to expand trade and to pressure the Chinese government to cease human rights abuses. Yet Zemin defended the government's actions in June 1989. Clearly, "The Communist Party is just as determined to play a greater role in the global economy as it is to hold onto power" (Green 94).
China is a nation deeply steeped in history and tradition, possessing a government that resembles a military dictatorship operating under a formal communist doctrine. It is reasonable to ask: what are such a nation's options on the path to democracy? Some modern democracies were formed following revolutions and bloody wars — the French Revolution and the American Revolution being prime examples. Yet neither of those revolutions occurred under a strongly centralized military dictatorship like that of modern China. An overt civil rebellion in China seems unlikely in the near future; the government appears to hold all the cards militarily.
Another option is outside military intervention. However, considering the United States' track record for installing democratic governments in countries it has invaded, the trend is discouraging. Among Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Japan, only Japan has anything resembling a functioning democracy — and this came at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Since China is an emerging superpower, both militarily and economically, it is unlikely that any nation would risk direct military action regardless of ideological differences.
A further limitation to democratization is linked to the sheer size of China's population. With so many citizens, it may not be apparent to all of them that they could ever achieve an equal voice in government. This is one of the fundamental flaws inherent in any democracy with a large population: it is impractical for every citizen to participate equally, so officials must be elected who generalize the opinions of those who voted for them. With over 1.2 billion Chinese people, many issues essential to the livelihood of some citizens may be improperly handled or completely ignored even by a democratic government. This is not to say that the current Chinese government addresses all of its citizens' problems — only that a democracy might ignore the same ones.
Greek democracy offered perhaps the greatest direct voice to its members; however, that was possible precisely because it was limited in size. Athens had only a few hundred thousand inhabitants, and of those, only a select few were granted official citizenship. A more morally grounded democracy would require every person of legal age to be given the right to vote and equal participation at every stage of the governmental process. Realistically, the best democratic model that could be applied to China resembles those of European nations, in which every government official is elected by the populace and a wide variety of political parties represent the diverse needs of citizens.
Salisbury, Harrison E. Tiananmen Diary: Thirteen Days in June. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1989.
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