China’s chance for democracy missed, West to be blamed? How US made China ” the Demon”?

• The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China states that its form of government is ” people’s democratic dictatorship”. The constitution also holds that China is a one-party state that is governed by the Chinese Communist Party(CCP).
• This gives CCP a total monopoly of political power which it frequently exercises. All political oppositions are illegal.
• Currently there are 8 political parties in China other than CCP that are legal, but all have to accept CCP primacy to exist, and are indirectly controlled by CCP.
• During a visit to Europe, Xi Jinping said that a multi-party system would not work for China. He said China had experimented in the past with various political systems, including multi-party democracy, warning that copying political or development models could be catastrophic.

China’s steps towards Dictatorship –

• The first introduction of the concept of modern democracy into China is credited to writer Liang Qichao.In 1895, he participated in protests in Beijing which increases popular participation during the late Qing Dynasty, the last ruling dynasty.
• San Yat-Sen, the nationalist revolutionary known as the father of the Chinese Republic – to whom the Chinese Communists too find their lineage- was so imbued with American values that he was known to his comrades as ” the American”. His speeches were peppered with refrences to American heroes such as Franklin, Washington; he frequently invoked Lincoln’s slogan, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.
• When the 1911 Republican revolution broke out, Sun was rushed toward fund raising mission He asked his principal deputy, Homer Lea to go to London and plead with the British for their assistance for the new China. None maong the British, French or American administration came forward with aid.

Role of USA in China’s Dictatorship

• US officials help in rewriting China’s democratic Constitution with the help of Frank Goodnow(rising legal scholar and professor at Columbia University). Goodnow felt that Asiatic people always had an autocratic government deserved such a constitution.
• When nationalist forces rebelled against (Provincial President) Yuan Shikai’s power grab, American military officers advised his Belyang army against the rebels. Sun fled to Japan after this.When Sun died, the august New York Times editorialised that reunification (of China) may be hastened by the disappearance of his militant personality.
• American view that China is infertile soil for democracy. Against that, prominent Chinese liberals such as Hu Shih argued,”the only way to have democracy is to have democracy. Government is an art, as such it needs practice.
• In 1989, when millions of students and workers demanded democracy across China, and erected in Tiananmen Square a 33 -feet plaster statue they called the Goddess of Democracy, modelled on the Statue of Liberty. The US backed Chinese tyrannical government to supress the protest even though they were demanding democracy and freedom.
• Bush went ahead and supplied arms to China and rejected broader Economic sanctions on them and also kept ignoring China’s human rights violence.
• Bush sent secret diplomatic missions to Beijing by National Adviser Brent Scowcroft reassuring Deng Xiaoping of U.S. support.

Had China become democratic during Sum-Yatsen’s time, it would have been respecting Human Right, Constitution, Rule of Law and Freedom of speech – just like India. Infact there would have been peace between China and Taiwan.