China's efficiency beats India's democracy

By Wu Jiaxiang
Guest Commentary

Published: May 21, 2009

http://www.upiasia.com/Politics/2009/05/20/chinas_efficiency_beats_indias_democracy/3800/

Beijing, China — An article titled, “Chinese efficiency surpasses Indian democracy” appeared Friday as the second story on the front page of the Huanqiu Shibao, or Global Times, a state-run newspaper which has both an English and a Chinese website.

The article described a debate on the topic, “The future belongs to India, not China,” at the Royal Geographical Society in London on May 12. At the end of the debate, only 261 people in the audience voted for the motion, while 421 voted against it, in effect voting for China. Moreover, the Huanqiu Shibao quoted the conclusion of the Indo-Asian News Service in its statement that “Indian democracy loses to Chinese efficiency.”

For Chinese, in spite of this delightful outcome, the conclusion by the IANS may serve as an anesthetic, uplifting the Chinese people to cloud nine, but gradually leading us to self-destruction.

I recall an encounter with the renowned U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs, who gave a speech on China’s economic outlook while I was visiting Harvard University in the United States a few years ago. His optimistic attitude toward China’s future economy incurred the displeasure of an Indian student at the Harvard Business School who attended the speech.

The Indian student asked Professor Sachs whether India could keep up with China. Sachs smiled and took a leisurely sip of water before replying, “There is only one thing I can be sure of – India’s population will catch up with China’s before too long.” The rest of the audience burst into laughter.

Everyone was clear about Sachs’ meaning; his comment was not based on a comparison of the political systems of the two countries, but on their current and future economic performances.

Differences in economic performance between countries result from various factors. Although the system is sometimes fundamental, the samples drawn should be comparable. For example, in the cases of North and South Korea, and formerly East and West Germany, where two countries are similar with regard to race and geography, their different economic performances can be attributed to their different systems.

On the other hand, there may be other factors contributing to differences in economic performance among countries that are less similar. For instance, one cannot state that Singapore’s authoritarian regime excels the democratic regimes in other parts of the world just because of its good economic performance, which has been ranked top in terms of global competitiveness.

After all, economic performance correlates not to political systems, but to economic systems. Everyone is aware and basically in agreement that China’s rapid economic growth in the past 30 years was related to the establishment of a market economy.

However, China’s economic performance is also affected by both its political system and its ethnic characteristics. By comparison, most Latin American countries cannot build up a strong economy like China’s, whether or not they operate under a similar system, with a market economy and an authoritarian government. They cannot even be compared to democratic India.

Hence, one cannot conclude that China’s quicker economic development infers a lack of efficiency in India’s democracy. Comparisons of economic efficiency do not equal comparisons between democracy and authoritarianism.

In fact, a market economy mainly aims to solve the issue of efficiency, while democratic politics are designed to settle the issue of social equity. Therefore, if a given country attains better economic growth in the course of its development, before it transforms to a democracy, it is not strange. But this only holds true if the authoritarian leadership promotes economic development.

One of the major arguments of those who deprecate democracy is that democracy lacks efficiency. But this is actually a misunderstanding.

Certainly, democracy in itself will not yield economic or military efficiency. However, it generates desirable and expected efficiency in political and social affairs.

For instance, a recent segment on the official China Central Television program “Interview in Focus” disclosed that a factory in Hebei province, producing monosodium glutamate, polluted several thousand square kilometers of farmland with its toxic discharge. If this had occurred in a democracy, local people would merely telephone the local councilor, who would arrive at the spot immediately. If the councilor didn’t do his or her duty and investigate the matter, the media would publicize the fact. As a result, the voters might refuse to vote for that person in the next election.

Further, the councilor would question the local administration and request a solution. If the local authority failed to solve the problem in time, the councilor might move to impeach the responsible official or remove the head of the responsible agency.

But in China today, if rural villagers cannot gain the attention of the media, they will have to face the head of the local administration themselves. In the case broadcast by CCTV, the peasants went to the town head to explain that the farmland was being polluted. But the town head cut them short coldly, saying, “It’s not polluted by the town government anyway!” That was basically the end of the case.

Authoritarianism often reaches its highest efficiency in those areas that benefit the interests of the rulers. Take China’s Three Gorges Dam project, for example. If the project was discussed under a democratic system, the negotiations could take three to five years, or even longer. Possibly no agreement could be achieved. But as this project was undertaken within a totalitarian context, it only required one individual rapping the gavel.

Unfortunately, in other areas that require efficiency – like preventing officials from colluding with merchants and harming the interests of the people – 100 years would not be enough to resolve such issues.

In brief, efficiency is not an excuse for the denial of democracy.

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(Wu Jiaxiang is a senior researcher at the China Research Center for Public Policy of the China Society of Economic Reform. He is a renowned economic and political scholar and a former visiting scholar at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. His research areas include economics, domestic and international politics, business strategy and Chinese traditional strategy and thought. This article is translated and edited from the Chinese by UPI Asia.com; the original can be found at http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4c062a780100dznh.html ©Copyright Wu Jiaxiang.)