Journal of Contemporary China (2010), 19(65), June, 419–436

The China Model: can it replace the

Western model of modernization?
SUISHENG ZHAO*

China’s economic success under an authoritarian political system in the past 30 years has
raised a question about whether the China model will replace the Western model of
modernization. This paper seeks answers to this question by exploring to what extent China
offers a distinctive model of economic and political development and whether the China
model represents a successful co-existence of a free market and an authoritarian state in
order to maintain economic growth and political stability, as well as discussing what the
appeals and limitations of the China model are.

China’s rapid economic growth in the past 30 years has stood out as one eye-catching
exception to the general pattern of modernization in the West and provided an
example for some developing countries to follow suit. As one observer indicated,
‘from Vietnam to Syria, from Burma to Venezuela, and all across Africa, leaders of
developing countries are admiring and emulating what might be called the China
Model’. According to this observer, the China model has two components. The first is
to copy successful elements of liberal economic policy by opening up much of the
economy to foreign and domestic investment, allowing labor flexibility, keeping the
tax and regulatory burden low, and creating a first-class infrastructure through a
combination of private sector and state spending. The second component is to permit
the ruling party to retain a firm grip on government, the courts, the army, the internal
security apparatus, and the free flow of information.1
Indeed, China has tried to strike a balance between economic growth and political
stability and between a market-oriented economy and an authoritarian state to sustain
its continued economic growth in its modernization efforts. China’s success has
raised a question about whether the China model will replace the American-style

* Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Executive Director of the Center for China–US Cooperation at Josef Korbel
School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary
China, a member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia
Pacific (USCSCAP), and honorary jianzhi professor at Beijing University, Renmin University, Fudan University and
Shanghai Foreign Studies University. A Campbell National Fellow at Hoover Institution of Stanford University, he is
the author and editor of ten books. His most recent books are: China and the United States, Cooperation and
Competition in Northeast Asia, China–US Relations Transformed: Perspectives and Strategic Interactions, Debating
Political Reform in China: Rule of Law versus Democratization, and A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of
Modern Chinese Nationalism.
1. Rowan Callick, ‘How long can economic freedom and political repression coexist? Rowan Callick examines
Beijing’s sinister policy formulation’, The American, The Journal of American Enterprise Institute,
(November/December 2007), available at: http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-
contents/the-china-model.

ISSN 1067-0564 print/ 1469-9400 online/10/650419–18 q 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/10670561003666061
SUISHENG ZHAO

of capitalism or Western model of modernization because ‘what China has achieved

in the last couple of decades legitimately lays siege to many of our most deeply held
notions about the realities of government and economics’.2 It is from this perspective
that one observer asserts that China has become the ‘biggest potential ideological
competitor to liberal democratic capitalism since the end of communism’.3
Indeed, the China model has posed a serious challenge to the dominance of the
Western modernization model that attempts to impose free-market and liberal
democracy simultaneously on non-Western and developing societies. But the
questions remain. To what extent does the China model represent a successful
co-existence of a free market and an authoritarian state? Is China’s economic system
truly free and China’s political system truly authoritarian? How successfully has the
Chinese leadership balanced economic freedom and political control to maintain
economic growth and political stability? What are the appeals and limitations of the
China model? This paper seeks answers to these questions by exploring to what
extent China offers a distinctive model of economic and political development and if
the so-called China model can be sustained.

From the Beijing Consensus to the China model

The debate over the China model started largely from the publication of John Cooper
Ramo’s 2004 article that used ‘the Beijing Consensus’ to describe China’s unique
development approach as distinct from ‘the Washington Consensus’ that connotes a
more conventional approach by John Williamson in a 1989 paper. Williamson listed a
set of ten neo-liberal policy prescriptions for economic reform in Latin America that
he thought more or less everyone in Washington would agree upon, including: fiscal
discipline; reduction of public subsidies; tax reform; market-determined interest
rates; competitive exchange rates; trade liberalization; free flow of foreign direct
investment; privatization of state enterprises; deregulation; and legal protection for
property rights.4 These policies stressed the primacy of the market and the limited
role of the state and were later presented as one size fits all for Latin American
and other developing states facing economic crisis.5 Although Williamson’s list
focused only on economic policy, the Washington Consensus was expanded to
include liberal democracy, together with free market, as the indispensable destination
of modernization and became the basis of the ‘shock therapy’ applied to the
former Soviet Union and East European countries after the collapse of communism in
these countries.
Countries that adopted the Washington Consensus wholesale, however, did not
perform particularly well. Beginning in 1998, political leaders in Latin America
2. Howard W. French, ‘A China model, what if Beijing is right?’, International Herald Tribune, (2 November
2007).
3. Timothy Garton Ash, ‘China, Russia and the new world disorder’, The Los Angeles Times, (11 September
2008), available at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ash11-2008sep11,0,5312908.story.
4. John Williamson, ‘What Washington means by policy reform’, in John Williamson, ed., Latin American
Adjustment: How Much Has Happened (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990).
5. Ching Cheong, ‘Rise of the Beijing Consensus?’, The Strait Times, (23 October 2008).

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have criticized both the philosophy and implementation of the Washington consensus.
They argue not only that it failed to achieve its goals but also that it may actually have
made the social and economic conditions of many of the region’s citizens worse . . . the
World Bank and the IMF, two institutions in which the United States is the major
decision-maker, are accused of adopting Washington consensus policies to benefit US
economic and financial interests.6
According to one study, one of failures of the Washington Consensus came from
its misinterpretation of the success of the East Asian newly industrialized countries
as due to neo-liberal economic policy against the excessive state intervention in
Latin America.7 Due to the failure of Washington Consensus policies, the term
‘post-Washington Consensus’ became popular among scholarly works. In a 2005
article entitled the ‘Post Washington Consensus Consensus’, Joseph Stiglitz
argued that the Washington Consensus ignored market failures and viewed
government as the problem. Instead the focus should be on which measures
are necessary to improve both market and government. The Washington Consensus
had proved neither necessary nor sufficient for successful development and any
future consensus could not be made just in Washington. Any new framework must
provide better and greater adaptation to the circumstances of the countries involved.8
It was in this context that Ramo proposed the provocative ‘Beijing Consensus’ as an
alternative to the Washington Consensus. According to Ramo, the Beijing Consensus
has three features: a commitment to innovation and constant experimentation in
reforms; an emphasis on sustainability and equality instead of per capita GDP as the
only measure of progress; and a commitment to self-determination. Ramo asserts that
the Beijing Consensus represents opposition to the status quo represented by US
hegemony because China has succeeded in its development through a willingness to
innovate, taking account of quality of life as well as economic growth, and providing
enough equality to avoid unrest; and by valuing independence and self-determination
and refusing to let other Western powers impose their will, and, therefore, provides
less developed countries an example to ensure their own financial integrity and keep
great powers in check.9
Ramo’s provocative argument aroused a debate about whether China really offered
a new model. The supporters praised that it ‘does explain how, for the first time since
decolonization, the countries of the South are able to follow their own political
direction, and find partners, states as well as businesses, not aligned with the US
vision’.10 The critics questioned the validity of the Beijing Consensus. One scholar
sees the Beijing Consensus as a myth because China has not strictly followed its tenets.
First, the Chinese are not innovation leaders and there is nothing inherently innovative
6. Riodan Roett and Guadalupe Paz, ‘Introduction’, in Riodan Roett and Guadalupe Paz, eds, China’s Expansion
into the Western Hemisphere, Implications for Latin America and the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2008), p. 10.
7. Ziya Onis and Fikret Senses, ‘Rethinking the emerging post-Washington Consensus: a critical appraisal’,
ERC Working Paper (Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, November 2003), pp. 4–5.
8. Joseph E. Stiglitz, ‘Post Washington Consensus Consensus’, PowerPoint presentation, Sao Paolo, 22 August
2005.
9. Joshua Cooper Ramo, Beijing Consensus: Notes on the New Physics of Chinese Power (London: Foreign
Policy Center, 2004).
10. Alain Gresh, ‘The world turned upside down, understanding the Beijing Consensus’, Le Monde diplomatique,
(November 2008).

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SUISHENG ZHAO

in China’s technological and policy initiatives. For the most part, Chinese enterprises
make products and provide services that were designed or invented outside China and
Chinese economic policy is more imitative than innovative. Second, the evidence that
China is pursuing sustainable and equitable development is highly limited. While
China has taken significant steps to create a regulatory infrastructure for environmental
protection, whenever there is a tradeoff between the environment and growth, the latter
wins. In the meantime, inequality in China is growing. Third, China’s economic
development strategy is not unique because China’s policies and trajectory share
similarities and differences with a wide range of countries, including those with more
liberal capitalist governance regimes and those with developmental states.11
Clearly there is no more of a Beijing Consensus than a Washington Consensus and
the term is used by different people in different ways. While there are various
elements to Ramo’s sense of it, many people have used the concept to refer to various
aspects of China’s unique approach to economic and political reform, such as
pragmatism, gradualism, the significant role of the Chinese state in economic
development, markets before democracy, and a two track legal system where civil
and politic rights are limited in the name of stability and economic growth and more
progress in other areas, particularly commercial law. In this case, more and more
people have simply used the China model to describe China’s approach toward
development, in which a high level of economic growth is achieved without
fundamentally changing the communist one-party rule, in contrast to the Western
model of modernization that demands a free market system going hand in hand with
liberal democracy. The China model, in this case, is often in a shorthand way
described as a combination of economic freedom and political oppression.
This description, however, is not accurate. Economically, China has indeed
established in significant part a free-market economy, called by Chinese leaders a
socialist market economy, in which labor, capital and commodities flow increasingly
freely. Private sectors have played an increasingly important role in the national
economy and employment. Stock markets are established and farmers are given
control over their own land. China has also engaged with global markets to attract
foreign capital, technology and management skills, and participated in the global
economic division of labor by taking advantage of its cheap labor and huge domestic
market. The Chinese economy, however, is only selectively free. The state still keeps
ultimate control over strategic sectors of the economy and a large range of core
industries, including utilities, transportation, telecommunications, finance, and the
media. The People’s Bank of China remains a tool of government rather than an
autonomous institution, as most Western central banks are. Many of China’s global
partners require transparent governance, independent courts, enforceable property
rights, and free information. Almost none of them are present in China today.

A variant of the East Asian model

The ‘illiberal’ aspects of China’s socialist market economy, however, have not
prevented China from achieving a high rate of economic growth and lifting the living
11. Scott Kennedy, ‘The myth of the Beijing Consensus’, Journal of Contemporary China 19(65), (June 2010).

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standards of the Chinese people. As a matter of fact, the selective state control over
the economy has made China less vulnerable to outside shocks, evident in the fact
that China weathered the 2008 – 2009 global economic crisis better than many
Western countries. As one observer pointed out,
the big attraction of China to capital from overseas has been that the political setting is
stable, that there will be no populist campaign to nationalize foreign assets, that the labor
force is both flexible and disciplined, and that policy changes are rational and are signaled
well ahead.12
Another observer confirmed that
businessmen, media moguls and architects all flock there. Could there be a better place to
do business, build stadiums and skyscrapers, or sell information technology and media
networks than a country without independent trade unions or any form of organized
protest that could lower profits? Meanwhile, concern for human or civic rights is
denigrated as outmoded, or an arrogant expression of Western imperialism.13
China’s market economy, in many aspects, is similar to the East Asian newly
industrialized economies (NIEs) of Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea in the
1970s and 1980s when neo-liberal economic policy and political authoritarianism
coincided with historical opportunities for export-led development and led to rapid
modernization. From this perspective, the China model is a twenty-first century
variant of the East Asian model with the following three features.14
First, China’s modernization is driven not by any ideological doctrine or principles
but by pragmatism, vividly expressed by the famous Chinese saying, ‘a cat, whether it
is white or black, is a good one as long as it is able to catch mice’, and the encomium to
‘cross the river by feeling for stones’. Taking a pragmatic and experimental approach,
the reform has been piecemeal and gradual, implemented in selected sectors and
regions and began with the easier and less controversial issue areas. The Chinese
leadership has worked through the existing economic and political institutions while
gradually reforming them and reorienting them to serve the modernization goals.
Second, China’s modernization is led by a strong and pro-development state, capable
of shaping national consensus and ensuring overall political and macroeconomic
stability in which to pursue wide-ranging reforms. Emphasizing economic growth as an
overarching national goal and political stability as a pre-condition for modernization,
the Chinese developmental state bureaucrats have the ability to implement and execute
strategic planning ‘forthrightly and without the distractions and abrupt course changes
brought about by that inherently unstable system known as democracy, with its fixation
on rival parties and alternation’.15 The developmental state is the explanation for the
extraordinary marshaling of resources in China to create world-class infrastructure,
majestic cities, airports, highways and dams rising during the reform years. It also
12. Callick, ‘How long can economic freedom and political repression coexist?’.
13. Ian Buruma, ‘The year of the China model’, The Nation (Bangkok), (9 January 2008).
14. The discussion of the features is based on Randy Peerenboom, China Modernizes: Threat to the West or
Model for the Rest? (Oxford University Press, February 2007); and Wei-wei Zhang, ‘The allure of the Chinese
model’, International Herald Tribune, (1 November 2006).
15. French, ‘A China model, what if Beijing is right?’.

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SUISHENG ZHAO

explained how the rapid economic growth has occurred while the communist one-party
rule remains.
Third, China’s approach toward modernization has involved selective learning
from the liberal Western models, including the American model. What makes the
Chinese model unique is that the communist regime has safeguarded its own policy
space as to when, where and how to adopt Western ideas. In particular, while the
Chinese state has adopted most of the basic principles of the Washington Consensus,
especially its emphasis on the role of the market, entrepreneurship, globalization and
international trade, it rejected or modified the liberal aspects that would greatly
reduce the role of the state. For example, while the state gradually opened the
domestic economy to international competition, it has maintained protection to key
sectors and infant industries.

Political reform and the China model

On the political aspect of the China model, it is also not accurate to simply characterize
it as ‘oppressive’. As a matter of fact, the pressure for political reform has been built up
since China began revamping its economy in the late 1970s. As it has become more and
more difficult for the communist regime to sustain a growing disconnection between a
market-oriented economy and a dynamic society, on the one hand, and an anachronistic
and authoritarian state on the other, Chinese intellectuals and government officials
have been hotly debating how and if the single party rule can adequately facilitate
China’s transition or if a multi-party electoral democracy is required.
Democracy has always been on China’s political reform agenda although the
concept is interpreted ‘with Chinese characteristics’. An important component of the
Chinese political discourse since the concept was introduced from the West to China
in the early twentieth century, the Chinese elite has interpreted democracy from a
pragmatic perspective. The enlightened Chinese intellectuals argued that democracy
could be a means of communication between government and people to achieve
harmony in society as it brings the solidarity of the group and offers the means of
national survival in a world of fierce competition. Popular participation is a sign of
civilization, an attribute of modernity, and a road to wealth and power and would
unleash energies and contribute to the collective welfare. This assumption makes
Chinese understanding of democracy very different from that in the West, which
assumes that individuals have particular interest contrary to the general interest of the
state. Individuals pursue selfish ends and an invisible hand turns these efforts into a
general increase in welfare. Chinese elites, however, simply don’t want to see private
interests antagonistic to public interests as a serious problem for politics and look for
a harmony of interest.16
The current Chinese official discussion of political reform has emphasized the
instrumental aspect of democracy to maintain social order and achieve social
harmony. As a result, while many Western observers and Chinese liberal intellectuals
have pushed China’s political reform toward a multi-party democracy, Chinese
government officials and some Chinese scholars have proposed political reform
16. Andrew Nathan, Chinese Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985).

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to uphold and improve communist party leadership by increasing political

participation and public supervision, making the single party system more efficient
and providing it with a legal base. Pan Wei, a Berkeley trained Chinese scholar at
Peking University, proposed a consultative rule-of-law regime, which is a ‘mixed’
regime derived from the Chinese tradition of civil service via examination and the
Western tradition of legalism and liberalism via the separation of power to form
checks and balances.17 Advocating the consultative rule of law regime as a feasible
path for China to fundamentally improve the rule of the CCP within the single party
system, Pan believes this direction of political reform is a logical development in
light of China’s particular social setting and the political culture.
Ruling out Western-style democracy as not a fit to China’s particular circumstances,
political reform in China has thus been undertaken mostly in the following four
aspects, which have defined the political part of the China model: institutionalization
of the leadership system; the effort to make the government more responsive to an
increasingly plural society; the improvement to citizen’s constitutional rights; and
transformation of the CCP from a revolutionary party to a ruling party.

1. Institutionalization of decision-making system and intra-party democracy

Institutionalization of China’s leadership system started in the 1980s when Deng
Xiaoping realized that ‘the lack of effective institutions and checks on arbitrary
authority had helped bring about disasters in the Mao years’.18 Significant reform
measures include regular Party and state body meetings according to constitutional
schedules; and a constitutionally mandated two-term limit for the premier and
president and mandatory retirement age for all party and government posts. These
reforms enhanced formal institutional authority, which derives from and is
constrained by impersonal organizational rules and rests on a formal position in an
institutional setting, and weakened informal personal authority of top leaders, which
revolves around individual personage and supersedes impersonal organization in
eliciting the personal loyalty of followers.
For many years in PRC history, personal authority was more important than
institutional authority in top-level politics. Institutional authority advanced to take a
more important position during the transition of the Chinese leadership from
revolutionary to post-revolutionary generations after the rise of the Jiang Zemin
leadership in the 1990s. Completing the transition toward the post-revolutionary
generation, the Hu leadership has moved further along the direction of
institutionalization of the leadership system with an emphasis on expanding intra-
party democracy, which refers to the efforts to promote internal transparency and
consultation in policy making, strengthen internal supervision and introduce more
competition inside the ruling hierarchy. The idea of intra-party democracy was
17. Pan’s paper was initially published in a 1999 issue of Zhanlie yu Guanli [Strategy and Management ]. A
revised English version was published in the Journal of Contemporary China 12(34), (February 2003) and collected
into an edited book, Suisheng Zhao, ed., Debating Political Reform in China, the Rule of Law versus Democratization
(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006).
18. Frederick C. Teiwes, ‘Normal politics with Chinese characteristics’, The China Journal no. 45,
(January 2001), p. 74.

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officially promoted in the political report of the 16th National Congress in 2002.
The party’s Central Committee endorsed the reform at the 2005 plenum with the
statement that ‘the development of intra-party democracy plays an important
exemplary and guiding role in pushing forward people’s democracy’.19
Expanding intra-party democracy requires preserving the normative rules and
procedures of collective leadership in the decision-making process. Hu hopes that
making rules clear and exposing officials to scrutiny would help stem widespread
corruption, abuse of power and other wrongdoings that threatened the party’s rule.
In a move to institutionalize the decision-making system in the State Council, upon
coming to office, Premier Wen Jiabao stopped making decisions at premier work
meetings (zhongli bangong huiyi), which did not have any legal status but were held
regularly by his predecessors, Premier Li Peng and Premier Zhu Rongji, because it
gave them a lot of discretionary power in the decision-making process. Instead, Wen
has made decisions at the State Council Executive meetings (guowuyuan changwu
huiyi) and State Council Plenary meetings (guowuyuan qianti huiyi) stipulated by the
constitution and State Council Organic Law. According to one report, the change
reflects the institutionalization of the State Council decision-making system, avoided the
rule of man in decision-making process. This is a major method toward ruling the country
according to the constitution and laws. The reform was a step toward legalization,
institutionalization, and regularization in the operation of the State Council.20
Another significant move was the decision in July 2003 to abolish the annual series
of informal central work conferences at the summer resort of Beidaihe. Although their
existence and jurisdiction were never stipulated in the CCP or PRC constitutions, the
central work conference for many years ‘served as a forum for consensus building in
which important members of the political elites make bargains with each other’.21
Major policy and personnel decisions were made at the month-long Beidaihe
conferences. Vacationing and participating in these informal meetings, retired elders
exercised undue influence. The decision to abolish the informal conference and to rely
upon formal meetings of the Politburo and its Standing Committee is a major advance
toward institutionalization of decision making at the top. A Hong Kong reporter
described the decision as an ‘effort to regularize [government] procedures and
institutions’ and a ‘testimony to Hu’s determination to curtail rule of personality and
to run the party and country according to law and institutions’.22
Another reform is to subject the supreme Politburo to the scrutiny and supervision
of the Central Committee. Starting from the Third Plenum of the 16th Central
Committee in October 2004, the Politburo submitted an annual report to the full
Central Committee, which nominally elected the Politburo. This reform was written
into the resolution on constitutional amendments passed at the 17th Party Congress
19. Cary Huang, ‘Political reform remains core focus for party, stronger “intra-party democracy” will be high on
next week’s agenda’, South China Moring Post, (10 October 2007).
20. ‘Wen Jiabao quxiao zhongli bangong huiyi ruhua gaochen renzhi shecai’ [‘Wen Jiabao abolishes the premier
work meeting to weaken the rule of man at the top’], Chinesenewsnet.com, (10 February 2004).
21. Suisheng Zhao, ‘The feeble political capacity of a strong one party regime: an institutional approach toward
the formulation and implementation of economic policy in post-Mao China’, Issues & Studies 26(1), (January 1990),
p. 76.
22. Willy Wo-lap Lam, ‘China: breaking with the past?’, CNN.com, (23 July 2003).

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in October 2007, which requires that party leaders at all levels be subject to oversight
by sitting committees. This means that the Political Bureau is expected to report
regularly to the Central Committee at plenary sessions and accept its supervision,
while local standing committees are to do the same to local party committees.23
In addition, the Party has attempted to institutionalize a voting system on important
personnel decisions. The Chinese official media reported that about 8% of nominees
were eliminated in the primary elections of members and alternate members of the
17th CCP Central Committee in 2007. The margins are bigger than those at the 16th
National Congress in 2002, indicating a sign of progress. At the 16th Congress, ten, or
5.1%, of the nominees lost in the primary vote for candidates of Central Committee
members. Another seven people, or 5.8%, lost in the vote for candidates of members
of the Central Discipline Commission. The proportion of the dropouts in the primary
election of alternate members of the Central Committee was 5.7% in 2002, which
translates into nine people.24
As a result of these incremental steps towards institutionalization of the leadership
system, the top CCP leaders have possessed less and less personal authority. Hu
Jintao, no matter how capable he is, would be less likely to become a strongman after
his retirement. The lack of a strongman in the leadership would at least make
members of the CCP leadership more willing to follow normative rules and
procedures in decision-making.

2. Cadre accountability
Another aspect of political reform is to make government officials/cadres more
responsive to the demands of society and more accountable for their bad performance.
A number of institutions have been established for this purpose, including legislative
oversight committees, supervision committees, Party discipline committees, internal
administration reconsideration procedures, a system of letters and visits, adminis-
trative law, and judicial review. The most important one is the cadre accountability
system (ganbu wenze zhi), through which officials found unable to prevent mishaps
ranging from epidemic to labor unrest would face tough penalties or dismissal.
Although the beginning of the accountability system may be traced to a decision
made by the State Council to investigate administrative responsibility of officials for
major safety accidents in 2001, the system was triggered primarily by the SARS
(severe acute respiratory syndrome) crisis in 2003. After a whistleblower exposed lies
about the outbreak, Chinese people began demanding basic rights to information and
the World Health Organization and foreign media clamored for accountability.
Unlike in the past, the drama was chronicled in real time on the Internet. Realizing the
danger that SARS could pose to the country and the state, Hu made an unusual move
to acknowledge that the government had lied about the disease and fired nearly 1,000
government officials, including Beijing’s mayor and the country’s health minister,
for covering up the actual number of SARS patients.25
23. Goh Sui Noi, ‘Beijing takes small steps to greater transparency, moves by ruling party include more
participation for congress delegates’, Straits Times, (28 October 2007).
24. Chen Xia, ‘Understanding Hu’s hot new terms’, China.org.cn, (16 October 2007).
25. Zhao Huanxin, ‘Tightened reins make gov’t accountable’, China Daily, (14 March 2004).

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In response to the media exposure and domestic and international pressure, a cadre
responsibility system was set up whereby leading officials were demanded to take
greater accountability and required to report truthfully on the epidemic situation. In
April 2004, the CCP Central Committee issued a ‘Provisional Regulation on the Party
and Government Resignation’, which prescribes that officials who, through make
serious mistake or neglect in their work cause major damage or produce serious
consequences and who have a leadership responsibility for deadly catastrophes
should take responsibilities and resign from their posts. This regulation for the first
time provided a legal base for the accountability system and brought resignation due
to responsibility (yingju cizhi) as part of the accountability system. The PRC Civil
Service Law that became effective in January 2006 made further stipulation about the
responsibility and resignation of government officials. In addition, the cadre
responsibility and resignation system was written into many other laws and
regulations, such as the ‘CCP Inner Party Supervision Regulation’, ‘PRC National
People’s Congress Standing Committee Supervision Law’, ‘PRC Administrative
Supervision Law’, the ‘CCP Disciplinary Punishment Regulation’, ‘Civil Servant
Administrative Punishment Regulation’ and the ‘PRC Criminal Law’.
As a result, the behavior of China’s usually docile media began to change. Since the
adoption of the accountability system, major accidents such as bird flu and mine
explosions have been routinely exposed in the media and the responsible officials have
been routinely removed or even punished. A ‘punishment storm’ was unleashed after
the Sanlu milk formula contamination scandal, which left several infants dead and
thousands hospitalized, was revealed in August 2008. Many officials responsible for
the scandal were removed from office and some of them were criminally charged. Li
Changjang, the minister in charge of the General Administration of Quality
Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine—China’s top product quality watchdog—
stepped down over the scandal. The party chief and several senior officials from
Shijiazhuang city, where the Sanlu Group is based, were sacked in the purge.26 When a
fatal mudslide was triggered by the collapse of an illegal iron-ore waste reservoir in
northern Shanxi province on 8 September, the governor of Shanxi province, Meng
Xuenong, resigned and the vice governor and other provincial and city officials were
dismissed.27 This was Meng’s second resignation from a ministerial level position
after his first removal from the position of mayor of Beijing during the SARS outbreak.
Although the reform has made the Hu– Wen administration more responsive to
popular demands than its predecessors, these changes do not indicate a conviction of
acceptance of liberal democratic principles or entail the building of institutions and
systems of governance that would guarantee effective supervision of the rulers.
Making the cadres more responsive to societal demands, the way in which the cadre
accountability system has worked is actually to make the cadres responsive mostly to
their hierarchical superiors. This is not what is perceived as accountability in a
genuine sense of democracy.
26. ‘China’s chief quality supervisor resigns amid public grumbles over tainted milk’, Xinhua, (22 September
2008).
27. ‘Shanxi governor resigns, acting governor appointed’, Xinhua, (14 September 2008), available at: http://
english.sina.com/china/2008/0914/186199.html.

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3. Constitutional reform
Building a legal system, or ‘fazhi’, a Chinese word which means both ‘rule of law’
and ‘rule by law’, is the third most important aspect of political reform. In addition to
making many laws and training legal professionals, constitutional reform has become
a hotly contested issue in China’s political reform agendas.
The PRC has adopted four constitutions. The first constitution in 1954 detailed the
state structure of the new People’s Republic but its normal function became obsolete
when the Cultural Revolution resulted in the disruption of an established institutional
arrangement. The second constitution, known as ‘the Cultural Revolution
Constitution’ (wenge xianfa), was produced in 1975. After the inception of
economic reform, the third constitution, known as the ‘Four Modernization
Constitution’ (sige xiandaihua xianfa), was adopted in 1978, marking initial attempts
to restore the pre-Cultural Revolution political system and the re-orientation of party
policy toward economic development. The formal structures governing the Chinese
political system barely gained legitimacy with the 1978 constitution, and the fourth
constitution, known as the ‘Reform and Opening-up Constitution’ (Gaige kaifang
xianfa), was passed in 1982. Among many changes in the 1982 constitution, the most
important ones are a downgrade to the importance of class struggle in Chinese
society; a stipulation that ‘no organization or individual is privileged to be beyond the
Constitution or law’; and an emphasis on the equality of all citizens before the law.
Functioning to regularize frameworks for political life in China, the 1982
constitution was amended four times in 1988, 1993, 1999 and 2004 in response to
the policy adjustments at the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th CCP National Congresses.
The fact that it was amended, rather than replaced by new constitutions, suggests an
important development in Chinese politics and a move toward international norms on
legal issues. In addition, these amendments have made the constitution more like a
legal document to provide protection to citizen’s rights. For example, the 1988
amendment introduced provisions on private economy while the 1993 one replaced
the concept of a ‘socialist market economy’ with the concept of a ‘planned economy
on the basis of socialist public ownership’. In the 1999 amendment, the role of the
private sector was elevated from ‘a complement to the socialist public economy’ to
‘an important component of the socialist market economy’. The phrase ‘counter-
revolutionary activities’ was changed to ‘crime jeopardizing state security’.
Significantly, ‘the constitutional amendments explicitly avow, for the first time in
the constitutional history of the People’s Republic, to “govern the state according to
law” (Yifa Zhiguo) and “establish the socialist state of rule of law”’.28 The 2004
amendment added that ‘Citizens’ legal private property is not to be violated . . . the
state protects citizens’ private property rights and inheritance rights according to
law’. This change puts private assets of Chinese citizens on an equal footing with
public property, both of which are ‘not to be violated’.29
While the top-down approach toward constitutional reform has set limitations
to the scope of the amendments, Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese political dissident known for
28. Qianfan Zhang, ‘The people’s court in transition: the prospects of the Chinese judicial reform’, Journal of
Contemporary China 12(24), pp. 69–70.
29. ‘Constitution to clarify private rights’, Xinhua Newsagency, (5 January 2004), available at: www.china.org.cn.

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SUISHENG ZHAO

his role in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy demonstrations, acknowledges that

‘a constitution for the party authority (dangquan xianfa) has been transformed into a
constitution to limit the party authority (xianquan xianfa)’. Evidence of the
transformation, according to him, is that the emphasis of legal education has shifted
from educating citizens to obey the law to educating officials to follow the law.30
Indeed, protection of constitutional rights has become a hot topic in China, as ordinary
Chinese have developed an understanding of the legal rights they are supposed to
enjoy and try to make them real. This development has produced a movement of rights
consciousness and activism (weiquan yundong), which has brought about many new
concepts among Chinese people, such as ‘yimin weiban’ (people are the original
source of political authority), ‘yixian ziguo’ (to rule the country according to
the constitution), ‘zhiqing qiuan’ (the rights for information), ‘zhunzhong minyi’
(Respect people’s will), and ‘lianjia zhengfu’ (low cost government).31

4. Reform of the Communist Party rule

The reform of the CCP is the fourth significant aspect of political reform. Founded as
a revolutionary party, the CCP was a vanguard of the working class and followed the
communist ideological lines to capture state power and transform society during the
Mao years. After Deng Xiaoping launched the market-oriented economic reform,
the party found it imperative to adapt to all sorts of thorny problems of governing an
increasingly complicated society. As a result, the CCP has had to face the challenge
of transformation from a revolutionary mass party into a conservative ruling party.
This transformation has entailed two aspects. The first was to abandon the mass
mobilization and social transformation goals in favor of political stability and
economic development. The second was to change the vanguard nature into a more
inclusive social democratic party. Jiang’s ‘three representatives’ (sange daibiao)
campaign in the early 2000s was one of the major efforts made in this direction. The key
theme of the campaign was that the CCP should no longer just represent workers but
should be representative of the development of advanced productive forces, the
orientation of advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the broadest masses.
In effect, the party’s responsibility became to lead China towards the wealth and
power that give it the right to rule. As a Western reporter interpreted, ‘That is, the party
can be all things to all people, promoting the interests not just of workers and farmers
but of wealthy entrepreneurs as well’.32 The primary goal of this effort was to re-brand
the Communist Party and make it more inclusive and less intrusive.
Since Hu took over the leadership position, he has focused his efforts on
‘strengthening the party’s ability to govern’. In practice, that means a sustained
campaign to curb the abuse of power, strengthen the party’s internal discipline and
auditing agencies, and issue new rules governing the behavior of party members.
A Party resolution warned that continued Communist rule could not be taken for
granted unless the party’s 68 million members improved their ability to govern and
30. Liu Xiabo, ‘Zhonggong Xianfa guan de chubu bianhua’ [‘The preliminary changes in the CCP’s constitutional
outlook’], Chinesenewsnet.com, (14 January 2004).
31. Nanfeng Chuang [South Wind Window ], (15 December 2003), pp. 47–52.
32. Elisabeth Rosenthal, ‘China’s communists try to decide what they stand for’, New York Times, (1 May 2002).

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gained more support among the public.33 Hu put forward two new concepts—
scientific development and harmonious society—to guide the campaign of
strengthening the party’s governing ability. These new concepts are aimed at
restructuring China’s development model by balancing the different aspects of the
economy and social life, including the balance between economic growth and
allocating resources to improve people’s livelihood; between urban and rural growth;
between coastal and the hinterland economic growth; and between development and
the environment. The emphasis is on reducing regional economic disparity,
narrowing the income gap, promoting the efficiency of energy usage, curbing
environmental degradation, and building social welfare programs, a more stable
social order, and a stronger sense of social morality. These are pragmatic policy
objectives that may help the CCP to stay in power as a typical ruling party.
The transformation from a revolutionary party to a ruling party has led to the
decline of doctrinal approaches to policy debate and helped mitigate political
struggles in the top echelon. If ideological correctness is no longer the objective in
power struggles, differences at the policy level are more likely to be tolerated. As one
observer indicates, in this case, ‘the life-or-death factional politics that had not been
uncommon during the Mao era is unlikely to re-emerge. This in turn gives collective
leadership a better chance’.34

The appeals and limitations of the China model

These political reform measures have aimed at finding a ‘China’s Road’ or a
‘Third Road’ of political transformation. The ‘First Road’ is to adopt Western-style
competitive elections and party politics and transform the CCP into a social
democratic party to compete in parliamentary and electoral politics, much like what
has happened in South Korea, Taiwan and some other East Asian countries.
The ‘Second Road’ is to embrace democratic ideals through the so-called
‘shock therapy’ of rapid change, including overthrowing communist party rule. In the
eyes of the CCP elite, China is not ready for the first road and the result of the second
road would be unacceptable turmoil and instability. They argue, sincerely in many
cases, that China’s different political history and culture require a third way to retain
the single party rule and gradually expand political participation from society if
China is to evolve in a unified and peaceful manner.35
The ‘Third Road’ of transformation is the essence of the China model. Because it is
a non-ideological, pragmatic, and experimental approach to spur both social stability
and economic growth while not compromising the party’s authority to rule, the China
model has not only gained ground among leaders of some developing countries.
The appeal of the China model has come largely due to the following three
developments in the past decade.
33. Edward Cody, ‘Chinese officials seek to pump up the party’, Washington Post, (3 December 2004), p. A16.
34. Li Mingjiang, ‘The 17th CPC Congress: the transition that the world missed’, RSIS Commentaries,
(31 October 2007).
35. Willy Wo-lap Lam, ‘Appealing to modern comrades’, South China Morning Post (electronic version),
(1 November 2000).

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SUISHENG ZHAO

First, China has been successful in boasting the world’s fastest-growing economy
under the one-party rule. The China model is thus presented as a fast track for
economic growth without visible social and political disorder that often comes as a
by-product of democratization. As one observer indicates,
Today’s China demonstrates that a regime can suppress organized opposition and need
not establish its legitimacy through elections. It shows that a ruling party can maintain
considerable control over information and the Internet without slowing economic growth.
And it indicates that a nation’s elite can be bought off with comfortable apartments,
the chance to make money, and advances in personal, non-political freedoms
(clothes, entertainment, sex, travel abroad).36
Comparing the appeal of Islam and the China model, another observer points out that
radical Islamism may appeal to millions of Muslims, but it cannot reach beyond the
faithful, except by conversion. More important, it cannot plausibly claim to be associated
with economic, technological or cultural modernity. By contrast, the opening ceremony of
the Beijing Olympics, like the skyscrapers of Shanghai, shows us authoritarian capitalism
already staking that claim. In the Bird’s Nest stadium, the latest audiovisual high-tech was
placed at the service of a hyper-disciplined collectivist fantasy, made possible by financial
resources that no democracy would have dared devote to such a purpose.37
It is from this perspective that Joseph Nye holds that the success of China’s
political economy has made it attractive to many developing countries. In parts of
Asia, Africa and Latin America, the so-called ‘Beijing Consensus’ on authoritarian
government plus a market economy has become more popular than the previously
dominant ‘Washington Consensus’ of market economics with democratic
government.38 Only three decades ago, China was as poor as some of the poorest
third world countries. While most of the latter remains among the poorest in the
world, China’s economy has expanded rapidly. Given the many problems confronting
developing countries, China seems to offer a new model on how to fight poverty and
ensure good governance, albeit one that challenges the conventional wisdom offered
by Western countries and the international financial institutions they control.
The second development is the declining attractiveness of the Western model of
modernization due to the US economic, political and foreign policy failures in the
recent decade. Economically, the US is now deeply in debt to China and its very
solvency is put in question. In particular, the financial meltdown sweeping across the
globe in 2008– 2009 to a great extent raised serious questions about some important
aspects of the neo-classic economic approach toward development and confirmed
some aspects of the China model. As one observer said, ‘While there have been
vigorous debates in academic circles about their respective efficacy, the ongoing
financial turmoil seems to favor the Beijing approach’.39 Politically and
diplomatically, the American model treats less developed non-Western countries
as developed societies in which Western institutions could automatically take root.
It imposed liberalization before safety nets are set up; privatization before regulatory
36. James Mann, ‘China’s dangerous model of power’, Washington Post, (20 May 2007).
37. Garton Ash, ‘China, Russia and the new world disorder’.
38. Joseph S. Nye, ‘The rise of China’s soft power’, The Wall Street Journal Asia, (29 December 2005).
39. Ching Cheong, ‘Rise of the Beijing Consensus?’.

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frameworks are put in place; and democratization before a culture of political

tolerance and rule of law is established. The result has often been discouraging or
even devastating. In a 2008 book on the struggle to build democracies in the world,
Larry Diamond blamed the US policy of trying to accomplish democratization by
international coercion as partial responsible for what he called ‘democratic recession’
in many parts of the world.40 Another study also attributed the failed US policy
for the trend ‘underlying the erosion of democracy and Western influence in the
post-communist region’.41
Indeed, the failure of US foreign policy, symbolized by the war in Iraq, damaged
the Western model of modernization. As James Mann points out, ‘US foreign policy
. . . has tied the spread of democracy to the use of force. This has not only failed but
also undermined support for democracy’.42 As a result, many developing nations
have been increasingly fed up with the doctrinaire Western model of democratic
promotion and increasingly impressed by a Chinese model that emphasized
pragmatism, economic growth and political stability.
The third development is China’s ‘value-free’ diplomacy toward many developing
countries. Unlike Western diplomacy that sets moral principles such as good
governance, democracy, transparency, rule of law, and respect for human rights as
one of several foreign policy objectives, China’s diplomacy is guided mostly by
economic and strategic interests. Consequently, China has developed friendly
relations with many developing countries without any preconditions. For example, in
its global search for energy resources, China has pursued deals with countries that are
off-limits to Western companies because of sanctions and the threat of bad publicity.
Beijing has justified this policy on the grounds of non-interference in domestic
affairs. With such ‘value-free’ diplomacy, China awarded Zimbabwe’s dictator
Robert Mugabe an honorary professorship at the China Foreign Affairs University in
Beijing in 2005 and signed economic-cooperation agreements with Uzbekistan a few
days after the country’s Interior Ministry fired into the crowd of peaceful
demonstrators in May 2005.43 Given China’s rising power status, political leaders in
these countries may readily use Beijing as a hedge against American power. As a
result, many political leaders in third world countries have welcomed the Chinese
development model together with its value-free diplomacy as an alternative to the
European and US versions of both. China has reinforced this attraction by economic
aid and access to its growing market. Offering no-strings-attached financial aid and
economic assistance to Africa and to Southeast, South, and Central Asia has become
a central part of China’s foreign and trade policies.
It is due to the above three developments that the China model has become
an alternative model of development by default. History has been ruthless. Less than
two decades after Francis Fukuyama announced the ‘end of history’, more and
more observers now see a ‘post American world’ in which many political leaders
40. Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (New York,
NY: Times Books, 2008), pp. 56–87 and 123.
41. Adrian A. Basora and Jean F. Boone, ‘The Georgia crisis and continuing democratic erosion in
Europe/Eurasia’, Foreign Policy Research Institute, E-Notes, (3 October 2008).
42. Mann, ‘China’s dangerous model of power’.
43. Alex Berkofsky, ‘The hard facts on soft power’, PacNet 26, (31 May 2007).

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SUISHENG ZHAO

in developing countries favor China’s approach of state-led economic reforms with

limited political reforms and also take heed of China’s pragmatic approach to reforms.
A Chinese analyst cites the Chinese – African summit that gathered about 50
African heads of states in Beijing in the fall of 2006 as an example to suggest that
‘many of the African leaders coming here for the Chinese– African summit meeting
are attracted not only by opportunities for aid and trade, but also by the Chinese model
of development’. According to him, what they usually need is not a liberal democratic
government, but a good government capable of fighting poverty and delivering basic
services and basic security because the paramount task for most developing countries
is how to eradicate poverty, a root cause of conflicts and various forms of extremism.
So long as the American model remains unable to deliver the desired outcome, the
Chinese model will become more appealing to the world’s poor.44
The China model, however, has some clear fault lines. First, it lacks moral appeal
because it is guided entirely by pragmatism, which, by definition, is behavior
disciplined by neither a set of values nor established principles. The attraction of many
developing countries to the China model has come almost entirely due to the tangible
economic and political benefits rather than intangible moral appeals. That is why after
the idea of a Beijing Consensus gained ground, Ramo returned to the fray with some
dissonant data. In a pamphlet called Brand China, he takes a much less optimistic
view of China’s image. Using a global opinion research survey conducted by Young
& Rubicam, Ramo finds a China’s image emergency and concludes that China’s
brand is weak and the country is not trusted overseas.45 Citing Ramo’s changing view,
one observer indicates that the Chinese may get on famously with the governments of
Sudan and Zimbabwe, but such relationships are only likely to confirm the damaging
impression that China is a country that will always put profits above human rights
and other moral principles. Seen in this light, ‘China’s growing influence in Africa
and even Southeast Asia has little to do with a new Beijing Consensus; it is
simply old-fashioned power politics’.46 Joseph Nye also argues that while the
‘Beijing Consensus is attractive in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian developing
countries, it undercuts China’s soft power in the West because China suffers from
corruption, inequality, and a lack of democracy, human rights and the rule of law’.47
Second, the Beijing Consensus has not been effective in dealing with many
important dimensions of human development at home and abroad. Chinese economic
growth, while undeniably impressive, is widely associated in the West with political
oppression and environmental pollution. A New York Times editorial comments that
although the ‘Chinese miracle’ has been the biggest economic story for several years
now, a tale of a nation rising from the ashes of a Stalinist command economy to
become the world’s premier trading partner, China reminds us with distressing
regularity that the progress has been selective. It cited the reports of slave labor in
Chinese factories and the discovery that some of the popular Thomas the Tank
Engine toys manufactured in China have lead in their paint. It also pointed to the
44. Wei-wei Zhang, ‘The allure of the Chinese model’.
45. Joshua Cooper Ramo, Brand China (London, UK: The Foreign Policy Center, 2007), pp. 12– 19.
46. Gideon Rachman, ‘The hard evidence that China’s soft power policy is working’, FT.com, (19 February
2007).
47. Nye, ‘The rise of China’s soft power’.

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earlier reports about the contaminated dog food, the stubborn support of Sudan for its
oil, the regular reports of human rights abuses, the huge economic disparities between
city and country, and the controls on the media. According to this editorial, China’s
unreformed political system fosters corruption and an undue focus on short-term
economic gains, which will lead to more internal inequities and injustices and more
tainted exports.48 As a matter of fact, China’s economic performance improvement
came mostly when China became less brutal and allowed greater personal and
economic freedoms.
Third, the success of the Chinese model is very short. It is hard to claim the
universality of their model because no economy keeps growing at the same pace
forever. China’s economic growth, just like other emerging economies in history,
could come to a pause or even a setback or crisis. In addition, the gap between rich
and poor in China has been growing in the past decade and this trend has become a
serious threat to the political stability that has helped maintain economic growth and
the legitimacy of the CCP. In this case, although the China model has sustained the
economic growth and the regime legitimacy so far, how long that will persist is still
anybody’s guess. From a historical perspective, the current China model is only a
transitional model of development. It may have to go from a value-free to a value-
added transition involving the sequencing of economic growth, legal reforms,
democratization, and constitutionalism, with different aspects of the development
being emphasized at different times in the process in order to continue its political
stability and economic growth, as demonstrated by the evolution of several East
Asian NIEs. After achieving high levels of economic growth, these NIEs not only
implemented rule of law but also eventually democratized and protected the full
range of human rights through some form of constitutionalism. One scholarly study
argues that this is the direction of the logic transition of the China model.49

Conclusion
China indeed presents a successful model of rapid economic growth and relative
political stability. Economic growth has produced more wealth in society, steadily
improved the living standards of the Chinese people, and therefore retained the
performance legitimacy of the CCP regime. A Pew Global Attitudes Survey
published on 23 July 2008 ranked the Chinese people among the most satisfied with
their governments among 24 nations. More than 80% of respondents told the Pew
Research Center that they were satisfied with China’s economy and overall direction,
and 65% thought the government was doing a good job.50 In this case, a large portion
of the Chinese people, including the emerging middle class, is pretty well co-opted
into the economic and political system, as demonstrated by the studies of Kellee Tsai
and Bruce Dickson.51
48. Editorial, ‘The China puzzle’, New York Times, (22 June 2007).
49. Peerenboom, China Modernizes.
50. John Garnaut, ‘East does not meet West on China’s self-image’, Sydney Morning Herald, (24 July 2008).
51. Kellee S. Tsai, Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2007); Bruce J. Dickson, Red Capitalism in China, The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and
Prospects for Political Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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However, this does not necessarily mean that the China model will be durable and
even displace the Western model of modernization in the long run as the appeals
of the China model come with the peculiar historical developments of the recent
decade. In addition, the US may learn from its mistakes and strike at the cores of its
economic, political and diplomatic policies. As a matter of fact, the transition from
the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration in 2009 has already brought
about many significant changes in US economic, political and diplomatic fronts.
From this perspective, it is too early to assert that the China model will replace the
Western model of modernization.

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