Book Reviews, China and Inner Asia Volume 91 – No. 1
Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015. xii, 318 pp. US$29.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-691-16645-2.
A genre-bending combination of Western and Confucian political philosophy, analysis of contemporary and historical China, and comparison across political systems, The China Model has already been widely reviewed in terms both glowing and disparaging. Written by a Canadian-born scholar well-travelled in Asia and North America, now a professor at Tsinghua University and the dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University, the book has rightly been described as thought provoking, insightful, illuminating, and infuriating.
Bell is a gadfly in the best sense of the word: here probing, preening, and promoting the concept of meritocracy in a way that certainly hits a nerve with liberals inside and outside China who have an unshakeable faith in the superiority of electoral democracy. Based on reviews of the Chinese translation, it has also hit a nerve in official China.
At the heart of the book is a sophisticated analysis of some enduring and fundamental political questions central to the Western experience since Plato: what makes for good leadership, how should leaders be selected, and how should inept ones be replaced?
Bell’s main focus is meritocracy as both an ideal and a reality in the Chinese political system, past and present. He starts from the premise (a) that China is doing some things very right in large part because of how it selects its leaders; and (b) that China can and should improve its system of selection and promotion that nevertheless has “a clear advantage over electoral democracies that leave the whole thing up to the whims of the people unconstrained by lessons of philosophy, history, and social science” (108).
While both admiring and intrigued by the Chinese philosophy and practices of merit, he does not shy away from problems in the Chinese political system including abuse of power, rising inequality and reduced social mobility, factional in-fighting, and harsh treatment of the CCP’s domestic critics and minority groups. Most importantly, he underlines the growing threat to its legitimacy that will require more participation, more democracy, freer speech, and more independent social organizations. Without this, it is “difficult for defenders of political meritocracy to counter the criticism that coercion lies at the heart of its political system” (197).
Rather than seeing these flaws as fatal to regime survival or prescribing a one-person, one-vote system, he makes the case for political reform involving more democracy at the bottom, experimentation in the middle, and strengthened meritocracy at the top. Teaser: he recommends that the Chinese Communist Party rename itself “The Union of Democratic Meritocrats,” (Minzhu xianneng lianmeng) (198), one of the ideas removed from the Chinese-language edition.
It is not necessary to agree with his analysis or sensibilities to appreciate a lucid discussion of the defects of both electoral democracy and the current Chinese system, his effort to find in Chinese traditions and philosophy a durable playbook for domestic rule, and an informed account of the practice and philosophy of such devices as the examination system.
As several critics have emphasized, the book moves back and forth between political philosophy and history, on the one hand, and political science on the other. As Andrew Nathan and others have pointed out, it is perplexing whether the book is about the myth, aspiration, and ideal of the Chinese system—an imaginary China—or its very different reality.
Looking beyond China, Bell identifies a crisis of governance in Western political systems “that has undermined blind faith in electoral democracy and opened the normative space for political alternatives” (3). It is worth noting that he wrote this even before the political rise of Donald Trump. This crisis may be worse in American-style presidential systems than Westminster-style parliamentary systems (the Canadian Senate and House of Lords are appointed, not elected). Singapore is high on his list of effective alternatives.
Whatever the durability and strengths of the distinctive blend of animating forces and specific practices of the Chinese system, it is very unlikely to serve as a model outside of China’s immediate neighbourhood even for a generation of millennials in Europe, North America, and elsewhere disillusioned by the performance of their own regimes.
Rather, Bell’s book is a sophisticated and sincerely empathetic corrective to the absolutism and triumphalism of an unquestioned faith in American-style electoral democracy. And in the Trump era it may even suggest some useful insights on how and why inept leaders can be replaced as well as a reminder of the damage they can do. We used to ask, “Would the world be a better place if China acted more like the United States?” For at least the moment, the answer is empathetically more negative.
I’ve thus placed The China Model on the list of twenty contemporary books that I recommend to senior students for provocative insights into contemporary China, books that raise fundamental questions about its internal dynamics and global significance. Bell’s book speaks to the possibilities and limits of understanding China from the inside out while using universal concepts and standards subject to incessant and informed debate. Also provided by the publisher are two appendices to the book, available free of charge at the publisher’s website. These are “Harmony in the World 2013: The Ideal and the Reality” (http://press.princeton.edu/releases/m10418-1.pdf) and “A Conversation between a Communist and a Confucian” (http://press.princeton.edu/releases/m10418-2.pdf).
