On Han Han: Impact of Qualities in Democratic Change

By Bridgeduan (Visiting scholar at Pennsylvania State University) Translated from: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_56fc0caa0100zber.html Some days earlier Han Han published three essays, On Revolution, On Democracy, and Wanting Freedom, much in those articles was about characters of the Chinese people. This essay, written by @Bridgeduan, aimed to dissect and deliberate on the quality of democracy. Given that this topic involved too much content for a blog post to carry, this article would be more about viewpoints and conclusions, and less about reasoning.

One: Why are Han Han's articles receiving much attention?

First, Han Han is very popular, and he presents himself as a youth opinion leader discussing politics; second, those articles were not Han Han's personal opinion, rather, they expressed the attitude of the mainstream middle class: while not having much hope with the progress of democratic reform, they are very worried about the outcome of a revolution led by the bottom of society; and moreover, in the coming few years China would be at the crossroads of its future, discussion on the the topic would heat up gradually. From the content of the three articles, the ideas expressed were nothing new, what Han Han mainly presented was attitudes of the current conservative factions of Left- and Right-wing. Many are very familiar with the present day disagreements between Left and Right in China, yet they have little idea the differences between the conservatives and the radicals, nor have they any understanding of the stance of the conservative Rightists of Southern newspapers, and they were therefore surprised to learn that both editors at Global Times and chief-writers of Southern newspapers agreed with Han Han. Those who criticized Han Han's articles were from the radical end. And sure enough, because of his influence, all parties deliberately misread them to expand the base plate of their respective sides, I'll skip the detailed reasoning here.

Two: Why were Han Han's articles criticized?

1. In those articles there were mistakes in logic, in content, and in concept. Since Han Han is a writer and not an academic in politics, it would be quite enough just to point out the problems and express one's comments, no in-depth argumentation would be needed. What needs to be discussed would be the origin of these thoughts. 2. The Internet is an equal platform, although there is difference in how much power of discourse one may enjoy on it, no one can be exempted from criticism, the tall, handsome, and rich Han Han is no exception. The reasons behind this is understood by all and yet to accept this reality is a bit difficult. 3. The average level of intelligence of Internet users has increased as they continue serving the Internet and became aware of opposing viewpoints 4. Han Han's articles are like description of and expectation for the reality, they reflected his conservative viewpoints. Whether or not these would be applauded depend very much on the situation of the time. If this article were written five or six years earlier, perhaps many, including myself, would deeply agree with it. But in the past few years, reform to the political system has been a complete standstill or even retrogression; little by little, optimism in the people subsided, pessimistic and violent sentiments are gradually on the rise, it would be no wonder that his articles attracted a lot more criticism then before.

Three: What characters would democracy need?

There is a difference between what Han Han wrote on qualities and the so-called argument of the quality of the Chinese people is low and hence unfit for democracy. His arguments were mainly about whether the qualities of the people would affect the quality of democracy, and the focus was primarily on two types of qualities: the first of which was that drivers would turn off the high beam when they come into close range with cars in the opposite direction; the second being that the people would feel satisfied if the government give them enough compensation [for their losses]. I would add two more types which Han Han did not mention but people are talking about quite often, the third: the quality of peoples representatives and those pursuing democracy, and the fourth: the quality of decision-making of the people regarding public policy. 1. Is the quality of drivers turning off the high beam when coming into close range with cars in the opposite direction needed? This first type of quality pointed to the moral domain. When coming into close range with cars in the opposite direction, whether or not a driver would turn off the high beamwhich would glare in the eyes of drivers on the opposite laneis an indication of whether or not that person respect others. Yet this quality has little impact on the democratic system. Democratic system is a model of exercising

the people have of this system, and how they behave in operating this system that people should pay attention to as qualities. There is no obvious relations between other qualities and whether or not a democratic system is functioning soundly. 2. What to do with a people that have the quality of feeling satisfied when they are adequately compensated? The second type of quality pointed to values. Han Han wrote that, They pick up the vocabulary about democracy and freedom only when ill luck befell them and they need to petition their causes. If the government pays them enough, they will be satisfied. What this line meant was that when the Chinese people oppose this political system, they are usually driven by interests. When interests equate values, they would appear to be agreeing with such values as democracy, freedom, and justice. And when their interests are satisfied, they would stop pursuing those values; and if the existing political system can

satisfy their interests, they would switch their position and defend it. Under this circumstance, it would be difficult to achieve democracy by means of revolution; and even if democracy is achieved, its quality would be poor. Many celebrities in China had expressed similar opinions. For instance, Hu Shih said, it takes more than a bunch of lackeys to bring about a free and equal nation. And Lung Ying-tai asked, Chinese people, why are you not angry? in a direct criticism of cowardice and selfishness of the Taiwanese people when it came to defending their values.
Yet interesting enough, intellectuals of other countries also expressed, in the midst of democratization process, viewpoints that bore much resemblance to the opinions mentioned above. George Washington complained to Congress that when the Continental army rest during the Independence War, the newly-released currency depreciated three times in three years due to too much military spending. And as a result, food could not be bought with the dollar, and farmers of all places sold food to the British soldiers for pounds. American citizens, have you no other pursuit than money? All are betraying America. This is too low a quality isnt it?1 And as for the comments Alexis de Tocqueville, the most renowned democracy theorist in studying American politics, made of the French people, citation would not be necessaryhe was literally Han Han of two centuries ago.

But, before countries democratized and in their initial stages of democracy, it was very commonplace that the general public didnt have much interest in democratic values, or they might have the attitude of not willing to pay a price in pursuit of it. The Declaration of Independence, the most significant text from the time when United States was founded, contained some famous words that every one knows: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.But if present day social critics were to born in that era, they would poke fun with that passage, Look, women, the Black, Indians, and salves, some of them have no suffrage, some of them dont even have political rights at all. And among the already small proportion of citizens, only less than half have the right to vote, and the proletariat cannot vote. Some of the authors drafting the Declaration kept slaves themselves, and yet American citizens accept all this openly. Isnt hypocritical and funny to dream of realizing democracy and equality under such circumstances? Indeed, without these social concepts as foundation, democracy would be superficial and unstable. But basically no country could have a solid foundation before a democratic system is established. Dictators would not let all this happen. Sense of democracy would become deeply rooted in the people only after democratization. Before that, quite often there would only be a few individuals who have the basic democratic concepts, and among them only a very small percentage would be willing to pay a higher price to bring about democracy. Fortunately, this is not an insurmountable obstacle, so long as the path is correct, a small group of people would still be enough to shake foundation of a dictatorship. During the change of the power structure, the majority of the people are only passengersthey do not oppose democracy, they may even yearn for it, only that they are not willing to pay the price; or, they are coercedthey do not aspire for democracy and freedom, but since the society they live in collapse with the old political system, they have no choice but to shift to the new one. What Han Han said raised an interesting question: for people who pursue democracy under a dictatorship, which path of pursuit would make it easier to reach the goal? In the process of pursuing democracy, we could divide into three categories people whose interests are infringed upon under the
1 Not certain of the exact wordings George Washington used--Translator note.

old political system: The first category is the leaders. They are willing to pay a larger price for social transformation, including the loss of a large amount of their assets or their personal safety. We could assume that the ratio of this group to be one-thousandth. The second is the followers. These people accept and aspire to democratic system, but they are only willing to pay a smaller price, including some losses in their assets or harassment. We could assume that these people account for 5%. The third is the onlookers. They may not be aware of the infringement upon their interests, or perhaps they do, but are not willing to pay any price for changing the social situation. We could assume this type of people make up for 90% of the general public. The remainder is the privileged group or those who profit from the old political system. A reasonable inference would be, under current social conditions, if the required cost for performing or pursuing certain kinds of democratic rights is bearable to people in the second category, the followers, then that would more likely be a suitable path. Otherwise, if excessive expectation is placed on the small group of the leaders, or the general public, then quite often the efforts would be less effective and difficult to advance. For instance, a lot of buzz has been created by independent candidates who stand for local elections recently. Many promoters said in frustration that if a portion of those vocal Internet critics would stand forward as candidates, and each and every citizen in China takes the ballot seriously, then even under this totally unfair election system, democracy would be gradually become reality. Without doubt, the reason for failure is that the people have no sense of suffrage, and the democratic quality is too low. But then you have to ask: does the prerequisite for democracy to be realized through this path exist? Based on the analysis of the categories of people, you would find that it would be difficult or even unworkable to bring about democracy by means of standing for election as independent candidates. It would require a large enough group from the vocal Internet criticsthe followersto perform the duty of the leaders and become independent candidates, spending huge amount of time and money to create election posters, carrying out promotion campaign household to household, withstanding bureaucratic harassment and risking their personal safety and future. It would require an even larger group of people from the general publicthe onlookersto act as followers, and become responsible voters, understanding the candidates, casting their ballots at the risk of getting reprimand from their bosses or leaders. The number of people required for this path to succeed is contrary to objective laws and could never be guaranteed. Thats why it is not surprising that for three decades the independent candidate movement has made no headway or even regressed. 3. The quality of the representatives of the people and the democratic camp? Another notion is that people who are elected representatives, public representatives and democrats should have high quality. If the democrats themselves are throwing abuses at each other and have not the slightest bit of the "democratic attitude", then when they come to power they would become even more autocratic, even worse then the current autocracy. Please note that the last sentence is the main point of the common point of many similar arguments. I'm breaking the notion down into details as follows: Whether it is the democrats, the public representatives or the despot, their overall average quality is determined by their compatriots. The basis for comparing low quality democracy with high quality autocracy in the same country does not exist. Eroded by power, the despot and those in the bottom of

the bureaucracy would have a quality that is even low than the people. Their positive image is created by lies from the propaganda department. If they wish that high quality autocracy exist in a low quality country, then logically the conclusion is bound to be that they would have to hire from high quality countries some high quality autocrats and the country would have to become a colony for three centuries first. The qualities relevant to the democratic process refer to the representativeness of the representatives, the respect they have of the democratic agenda, and not to their private morality. Martin Luther King Jr liked to patronize prostitutes, and plagiarize in his speeches. These bore no impact on him as a public opinion leader. And the quality of these representatives could hardly be high in the early stage of the implementation of democracy or prior to democratization. When parliaments of different countries came into initial operation, brawls were a common scene. Taiwanese lawmakers fought so hard that some had to be admitted to hospital. And year after year CCTV stations would televise their fighting scenes. No country is without this fighting tradition, back in the early days of the British Parliament in the 18th century duels were so prevalent that seats of opposition parties had to be separated and welded to the floor to prevent them from throwing chairs at each other. In 1798, Connecticut representative Roger Griswold and his Vermont counterpart, Matthew Lyon, fought a duel using walking stick and tongs inside Congress. And sure enough, fighting scenes of Korean parliament were even more dramatic: more than a mouth ago, Korean opposition party members blasted tear gas at their rivals. The Japanese were relatively more restrained, they only let Goto Mai, a famed romance and action film actress, get 3,600 votes in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election. Perfectionists would sigh: the democrats of these countries are so hypocritical. They are real dictators at heart and would only become even more autocratic when they have power. They couldn't even hear different opinions and would resort to fighting. But in the end you would realize that while these low-quality behaviors did indeed lower the quality and efficiency of democracy, they didn't lead to dictatorship. The probability of low quality behaviors leading to dictatorship lies only in 1) some group or someone attempts to monopolize power, and 2) deprive the people of their rights and Congressional Pugilists, a 1798 political cartoon depicting the fight between Griswold and Lyon.(Text & Image Wikipedia) freedom. Whoever did this two thingseven if those carrying out the action and the advocates appeared as high-quality saviorswould send the people on the path to serfdom. 4. What qualities do the people need to have? The democratic system is model for distribution of interests. The basis for it to work is the assumption that every normal adult has the understanding of where his or her basic interests lie. Therefore, the democratic system has a very low requirement for the public: they would be fit for it so long as they are not retarded. And of course, the deeper the citizens understand the democratic system, and the deeper they are involved in it, the better. In his article, Han Han mentioned that by giving out Q coins, Ma Huateng would get hundreds of millions of votes and become a major rival of candidates picked by the CPC in an election. Thats just a metaphor. It would be extremely rare that this would occur in welldesigned systems because with the supervision of power, even if candidates get elected through largescale bribery, it would be difficult for them to recoup. Rather, it would be very likely that administrative power still function in an authoritarian fashion. If there is no supervision of power,

democracy could not be achieved. On its own, an electoral process would only be able to let every Chinese citizen gets some extra Q coins. Anyway, this would be the minimum benefit of primary democracy vis--vis pure autocracy. Some said, all candidates speak persuasively and movingly, if the honest voters are not wise enough, they would be deceived easily. Autocracy would be better after all. This view overlooks the most basic benefit of the democratic system: as a correction procedure, voting serves to remove from office politicians who are known to be crappy; it is not designed to elect the best and most capable candidates to run the country. Under an autocratic system, however, even if the whole city knows how corrupted a group of officials is, and the public sent in complaint letters which quantity is massive enough to light a fireplace throughout the entire winter, the officials would still get promoted, and you could do nothing. Before officials assume office, or candidates become representatives, or a policy is implemented, you need to make judgment with your knowledge and experience. But after that, it would be obvious whether or not the outcome is good, whether or not you get represented, and whether or not your interests are infringed upon, provided that you are not an idiot. Hence it is very easy for you to remove bad officials from their positions. It takes gradual learning in a functioning democratic system to be able to choose officials and lawmakers who you are satisfied with, who would fight for policies that are in your interests. The ability to make right decisions and the quality of the people are interrelated.

Four: Revolution, reform, and fighting for freedom

1. Revolution would come if it should Revolution has thousands of years history in China; it doesnt need the public to have courage or qualities whatsoever. It would come when the time is ripe. Revolution is a sudden change to and the shift in the power structure that happen simultaneously when the old society and the old political system collapse. The question Is a revolution needed is rather pointless. To determine whether revolution is good or bad has little meaning in stopping it from happening. At normal times you might consider to eat meat or vegetables; but when youre starving, you would have to eat anything, even if it is dirty. Whether revolution is violent or bloody depends on multiple factors, such as the spirit of resistance of the old political system and of the autocrat, the goal of the revolutionaries themselves, their organization structure and quality and so on. There is a popular saying, the race between reform and revolution. Actually, reform is only racing against social conditions. When the several pillars that supported social stability became rotten, like when there is an economic crisis, a social crisis, or an ecological crisis, the old political system would fall, and a revolution would break out. The feature of the current Chinese political system is that there exists a self-serving bureaucracy who incessantly extract from society wealth and resources to enrich themselves. As the time of looting lengthens, the crisis deepens; this status quo could not last. Mass incidents are, in essence, the atomic stage of revolution at its beginning. If the number of mass incidents keeps growing, it would increase explosively after reaching beyond the maximum [government] capacity of maintaining stability. Things would be out of control. That is what people usually refer to as revolution. I think that Han Hans fear of a mob revolution is a continuation of opinions of some intellectuals, which originated from the interpretation of the contemporary history of China. Many Right- and Leftwing conservatives defined the tragedy of 1949 as: a certain group of people pledged benefits to the peasants by instigating land revolution; they then turned those peasants into mobs and seized power. Decades of turmoil and tragedies ensued. This interpretation, however, must not be taken in lightly.

Project it to the larger environment of the world at that time: the Soviet Union infiltrated dozens of geographically related countries and set up organizations similar to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but the way they took power was different from the CCP. In many countries, land Revolution did not take place and yet they all managed to establish their rule with no exception. Unlike China, after the Communists established their regimes in those countries, they didnt organize Red Guards to engage in the Cultural Revolution like China, yet similar tragedies happened. It looks more likely that the secrets of their victories lied in the organization model, the combat capability and the ideological influence of the totalitarianism created by the Soviet Union. And, rather than the so-called mob politics, it was nature of this totalitarianism that caused tragedies like cleansing inside the ruling party, and the widespread loss of freedom in the general public. Will revolution give rise to vicious cycles? That depends on whether the revolutionaries (or revolution groups) could, though their own ideology and organization model, limit the revolution to the smashing of the shackles of the original power structure that restricted their own freedom, and not using the power obtained through revolution to create new shackles that restrict the freedom of others. Revolutions that manage to do this would not give birth to continual revolution; those that fail to achieve this, or those that set out to deprive the rights and freedom of others would, regardless of whether the revolution process is violent, give rise to vicious cycle. 2. The costs for maintaining the status quo and for reform Many would laugh at revolutionaries: talk about revolution? Do you have guns? But very few would mock reformists: talk about reform? You arent even an official at the department level. Reform? In fact these are both sides of a coin. To talk about revolution or reform, it would work better if you start by treating them as knowledge areas and not social movements. If so, you wouldn't feel anxious or powerless during discussion. Quite often a status quo is maintained not because the public wish so, more likely they are waiting as they cannot bring about change. What you need to know is that it costs to maintain an unfair status quo. The reasons many people accept things as they are because they expect that, after democratization, the corrupt officials would be punished and they could get back the wealth that was taken from them. But in reality, much of wealth loss is irreversible. Under an unfair political system, countless assets were lost, transferred, laundered each year. After a long enough time, it would become impossible to determine whether the source of this wealth is a legitimate business profit or power-looting, and that means a fair compensation model could not be found. Resort to violence and instigate indiscriminate exploitation at this time? That would be useless. Han Han's prediction would just be fulfilled: the most cunning and sinister would get the most in this redistribution process. Reform, too, has a cost. If it is said that revolution is an abrupt process of change to and shift of the power structure, then reform is a slow and gradual adjustment process on the basis of recognizing vested interests, a process that would test the people's tolerance. If one day, to reduce resistance to reform, all officials who took fewer than 10 million in would be pardoned. Could you accept that? Most likely you would ask: Why? I rent a tiny flat and they live in a villa; I starve and they feast; and they pay for those with my tax money. They took in 10 million, but some parents who couldn't fork out a few thousands for college tuition fee and hanged themselves because they felt ashamed in front of their children. How can these officials be pardoned? You could they are unforgivable, and the interest group would say they requests are already quite meager. Even if the reform does go smoothly which is basically impossible judging from the current situationthe process itself and the decisions that have to be made are much tougher and way more painful that you would imagine.

3. Path of Reform If we see political system reform as our current goal of improvement, then the followings are things that need to be understood. (1). Reformists often portray political system reform as a win-win solution. The public enjoy their rights and freedom, and the original group in power have their safety, and they try to convince the leaders to take the initiative to reform. But think it simply, if there is no possibility of a revolution, the latter would be a lie. The rational decision for the rulers to maximize their own benefits would be maintaining stability and not reform to the political system. The win-win situation does not exist. For those in power, they would lose their legitimate interests like their privileges, free transportation, and medical care, not to mention the loss of illegitimate interestscorruption under a democratic system. Even if they feel alright losing these interests, they may feel differently about not having the pleasure of being escorted and roads closed for them wherever they go. People who got used to receiving gifts and other things from the public find themselves having to visit household by household to exhaustion to secure their votes. A change so drastic, who would be able to take it? Just this factor alone is enough to stop the entire group in power from carrying out a reform. Even if some individuals inside the government have this wish, they could not do anything about it. The benefits those in power could get from political system reform would only be reduction in chaotic struggle and corruption inspection, something that would rarely occur to ordinary officials. Currently the risk of getting caught is minimal, so long as they play by the hidden rules, exercise constraint when taking in bribery and share it with their colleagues. (2) The price protesters pay corresponds the likelihood of a successful reform. For a very long time many yearn for bloodless revolution and reform like Glorious Revolution, Velvet Revolution and the transition in Taiwan, yet very few realize the fruits of Glorious Revolution were obtained through aristocrat-led offensives at London and continual civil wars. In order to force the current king to abdicate, the would-be successor backed by the parliament brought with him more than ten thousand troops. What appeared to be a change of power without any cost was only a moment of the process. The same can be applied to Velvet revolution. It was peaceful indeed. But what happened before it took place? It is all the more important to ask about transition in Taiwan: why did Chiang Ching-kuo lift the bans on political parties and media, was it because he was great? (3) The keywords of reform are to take the initiative How does reform take place? Many thought that it is through teaching the rulers and people the benefits of democracy continuously, and then the leaders actively start a reform; or the public stage a petition and the leaders give in, thereby forming a positive interaction, and then the reform to the political system would begin. (Over twenty years ago, people referred to the simplified version of this path as suicide to save the country: convince the ruling interest group to commit suicide and the country would be saved.) There is probability, albeit a small one, that this would happen. But looking back in Chinese history, whatever that carried a probability would always be in line with the Murphy's Law and head for the worst case scenario. Therefore I suggest people not to place too much hope in this model of change. It would not be unexpected that nothing is changed with this. And if there is, that's a pleasant surprise. How does reform in reality take place? We may look back at the law against speculation and profiteering in 1980s. A law passed on from the planned economy era, it intended to curb illegal

speculation, but virtually all normal business activities could be convicted, and the highest penalty was death sentence. That law was abolished only at around 1997, after it had long existed in name only. The reason was simple: driven by interests, people ignored it, risking death penalty together in a number greater than the law could stand to be effective. The source of power is obedience, when a large enough number of people disobey, the power would no longer exist. Think about it, if we were Taiwanese in those years, we wanted to crush the media ban of the KMT, we wanted freedom of speech. What should we do? Should we make a suggestion to President Chiang? No. What needed to be done were the followings: a. To realize this goal, you should start with pursuing your personal freedom of speech. Whatever you want to speak, find a way to speak it. b. The regime would surely come to stop you. Work out ways to get around it. If it bans the newspaper your articles are published in, you print your own newspaper; if it bans the sale of your books, you sell them yourselves; if it blocks your internet accounts, you go out to places where there are lots of people and wave your placards. And of course, be sure to keep the risk of all this within the scope you can take. c. Find others like-minded people to practice a and b together with you. When the number of people doing these is large enough, the cost of speech control would become unbearable for the regime. By that time, because of everyone's disobedience, whether or not the media ban is lifted makes no difference. And for President Chiang, lifting it would leave him some good reputation; even if he keeps it, he could no longer tell another lie by means of information monopoly, no one would believe him anyway. And so, the media ban is naturally lifted. But if that ban is still useful for him, then no matter how you ask, it won't work. The same goes for Taiwan's ban on politcal party.

Concise Conclusion:
1. A democratic system is a model of participation and operation of power, qualities that are irrelevant are of no importance. The qualities of public representatives are their representativeness, their respect for the agenda. Representatives who love to fight, who do not obey the rules and who are opinionated would affect the quality of democracy, but they would not lead to dictatorship. It is the attempt to monopolize power that would lead to dictatorship. The lowest required quality for the public to participate in is not being able to choose a good official; rather, it is that they can vote a bad official out of office. This is what normal people can do. 2. People who talk about reform but with no official title themselves are just talking empty talk, which serves no other purpose then the quest for knowledge. To maintain the status quo under an unfair political system also has a cost, some people imagine that some day after democratization, they could get the wealth that was taken from them. That's not possible. Reform is, on the basis of recognizing vested interests, a process of adjustment to the power structure. It is just as painful and it tests the tolerance of those who suffered. 3. Reformists tend to say in their publicity that reform to the political system is a win-win process. The people get their rights and freedom, and the rulers are safethis is not true. The reform to the political system that China needs is a process that the rulers would lose their enjoyments. For them, it is the system of maintaining stability that would maximize their benefits. Those who explore the path of reform must first acknowledge this fact and then come up with solutions.