The danger facing Chinese elites

I follow Guo Kai's Chinese blog closely, but his recent post worries me. There hides a real danger for the young Chinese elites in his thoughts. His post reflects his unease of seeing the turmoil in Kenya and Pakistan. Guo thinks as long as the regime is democratically elected, the country has democracy, be it in the U.S or in Kenya. He then deducts that democracy is irrelevant. The success of America makes him and many other Chinese to overrate democracy. The underlying reason for the U.S. to succeed is the people. Because Americans are rather homogeneous, disputes are easy to resolve. Therefore, if the U.S. is under some dictatorships, it will still enjoy the super power status it has now. Chinese are pretty homogeneous, too. China will be successful no matter what kind of regime it has.

Well, I don't see the homogeneity in either the U.S. or China. You can call Japan or Korea a homogeneous society, but never the U.S. Just walk around downtown in any big city in America and you won't call the U.S. a homogeneous society. I have never been to China, but heard about Tibet quite often. Homogeneous in Tibet? Yes, it will be when the Han people drive out all the native Tibetans.

As someone from a country in transition to democracy, I can assure you that the democracy in the U.S. and the one in Kenya are very different. To have a fully functioning democracy, you need to have many complementing institutions and a fairly educated and wealthy people. We don't see those ingredients in those so-called third world democracies. In fact, I don't dare to say Taiwan has a fully functioning democracy, either.

The real issue that gets on my nerves is the success of Chinese communists' propaganda. A well educated elite like Guo buying into the democracy irrelevancy theory peddled by the communists really worries me. I suspect the economic success of China has blurred the Chinese elites' vision. There is a silver lining in his post, though. He puts up a disclaimer on top of the post. Guo himself does not 100% endorse the idea he writes. It is just a brain exercise for him. I sincerely hope all the Chinese elites can also just treat it as a brain exercise because when the economy slows down and the real test for the communists comes, they will need more understanding of how a democratic society works.

(Picture: bbc.co.uk)