Xi Jinping's Version of Democracy

Is there really a Beijing Model of governance: authoritarian politics steering economic growth, diluting the appeal of the West's democracy and freedom? The ruler of China thinks so. He's focused on sticking around and seeing it triumph.

Xi Jinping is the first Chinese Communist leader to have been born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He did not study or spend early years abroad like most predecessors. Deng Xiaoping, who ruled in the 1980s, studied in France and the Soviet Union after World War I; Jiang Zemin, who ruled in the 1990s, studied in Philadelphia. Only Mao Zedong, prior to Xi, reached maturity before glimpsing the foreign world. For Mao, that meant Moscow; for Xi, born in 1953, it was a 1985 trip to the cornfields of Iowa. Is he then a nationalist, like some other recently installed world leaders?

Very much so. Xi knows grassroots China, county-level China, and province-level China. He lived in Henan, Fujian, and Zhe­jiang provinces as a local official, and in Shaanxi as a "family victim" of the zealous Cultural Revolution. Beijing, as well as the non-Chinese world, was a late stop for Xi. He's a local politician, newly endowed with global vision, now essential for a Beijing leader in light of China's rise. Unlike his brilliant premier, Li Keqiang, who is left to languish these days, Xi condescends to the West and thinks "small" countries in Asia should defer to "big" China.


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Scroll down for next storyXi Jinping's Version of DemocracyFrom the February 20, 2017, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.7:45 AM, Feb 13, 2017 | By Ross Terrill

Art credit: Gary Locke

Is there really a Beijing Model of governance: authoritarian politics steering economic growth, diluting the appeal of the West's democracy and freedom? The ruler of China thinks so. He's focused on sticking around and seeing it triumph.

Xi Jinping is the first Chinese Communist leader to have been born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He did not study or spend early years abroad like most predecessors. Deng Xiaoping, who ruled in the 1980s, studied in France and the Soviet Union after World War I; Jiang Zemin, who ruled in the 1990s, studied in Philadelphia. Only Mao Zedong, prior to Xi, reached maturity before glimpsing the foreign world. For Mao, that meant Moscow; for Xi, born in 1953, it was a 1985 trip to the cornfields of Iowa. Is he then a nationalist, like some other recently installed world leaders?

Very much so. Xi knows grassroots China, county-level China, and province-level China. He lived in Henan, Fujian, and Zhe­jiang provinces as a local official, and in Shaanxi as a "family victim" of the zealous Cultural Revolution. Beijing, as well as the non-Chinese world, was a late stop for Xi. He's a local politician, newly endowed with global vision, now essential for a Beijing leader in light of China's rise. Unlike his brilliant premier, Li Keqiang, who is left to languish these days, Xi condescends to the West and thinks "small" countries in Asia should defer to "big" China.

Xi wants to reclaim the East China Sea (from Japan) and the South China Sea (from Vietnam, Philippines, and others) and push into Africa. He says the European Union, home of ancient Western civilization, is a natural partner for China, core of ancient Eastern civilization. This East-West pairing will shape "global govern­ance," he implies. Never mind Uncle Sam.

The Chinese president and his advisers assert an intriguing interrelation between their internal politics and global trends. Besides challenging the West on Asia's oceans and in Africa's infrastructure, Xi has started a skirmish on its sacred home ground of democracy. A choice exists, he suggests, between election democracy (the West) and evaluation democracy (China and a growing list of others). The "China Dream" of Beijing's evaluation democracy will become the world's leading pattern of governance, he seems to believe, for it avoids chaos and corruption.