Democratizing Oriental Despotism: China from 4 May 1919 to 4 June 1989 and Taiwan from 28 February 1947 to 28 June 1990

192 Pages·1995·17.452 MB·English

by  C. L. Chiou (auth.)

DEMOCRATIZING ORIENTAL DESPOTISM
By the same author
ASIAN POLITICAL CULTURE (in Chinese)
CHINA AND TAIWAN: Towards Separate Political Roads (in Chinese)
DEMOCRACY AND THE FUTURE OF TAIWAN (in Chinese)
DEMOCRATIC TAIWAN AND CHINA (in Chinese)
DEMOCRATIZING CHINA AND TAIWAN: Cultural and Institutional
Paradigms
MAOISM IN ACTION: The Cultural Revolution
Democratizing Oriental
Despotism
China from 4 May 1919 to 4 June 1989
and Taiwan from 28 February 1947 to
28 June 1990
C. L. Chiou
Reader in Politics, University of Queensland
Visiting Research Professor, National Science Council, Taiwan
M
St. Martin's Press
© C. L. Chiou 1995
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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claims for damages.
First published in Great Britain 1995 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and l,..ondon
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-39342-8 ISBN 978-0-230-38968-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230389687
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95
First published in the United States of America 1995 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
175 Fifth A venue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-12871-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chiou, Ch' ui-liang.
Democratizing oriental despotism: China from 4 May 1919 to 4 June
1989 and Taiwan from 28 February 1947 to 28 June 1990 I C. L. Chiou.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and indeJI..
ISBN 978-0-312-12871-5
1. Despotism-China-History-20th century. 2. DesJXllism-Taiwan
-History-20th century. 3. Authoritarianism-China-History-20th
century. 4. Authoritarianism-Taiwan-History-20th century.
5. Democracy-China-History-20th century. 6. Democracy-Taiwan
History-20th century. I. Title.
JC375.C48 1995
320.451' 09 '04-dc20 95-17858
CIP
For my family and my friends who have fought for democracy in
Taiwan and China
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
1 Introduction
2 The May Fourth Movement, the KMT and the CCP 7
Economic and Cultural Determinisms 7
Culturalist Democratization 16
The May Fourth Movement 17
The "Abortive Revolution" 20
Qu Yuan and Chinese Remonstrators 23
The Mao-Deng Dynasty 27
Liu Binyan' s "Second Kind of Loyalty" 29
3 Fang Lizhi and Yan Jiaqi 36
"China's Sakharov" 36
Political Structural Reform 40
Failure of "Socialist Democracy" 43
Yan Jiaqi's Pre-4 June Institutionalist Reform 45
4 The "River Elegy" and the 4 June Tiananmen Massacre 52
The Yellow River and Yellow Earth 52
Neo-Authoritarianism and "Guan Dao" 57
The Tiananmen Tragedy 61
Radicalization of the Movement 65
Culturalist Bondage 69
5 The 28 February Uprising and the Opposition Movement 73
The Bloodbath 73
The Free China Affair 75
Parties and Elections 78
Elections and Democracy 84
6 Institutionalizing the Tangwai: The DPP 90
Reform to Protect Taiwan 90
The Tangwai (Nonpartisan Movement) 92
vii
viii Contents
Formosa and the Institutionalist Opposition 93
The "Dialogues" 96
The DPP and the Emerging Two-Party System 99
7 The National Affairs Conference 105
Crises and Melting of Snow 105
Student Demonstrations and Constitutional Crises 108
NAC and Party Politics 112
The Direct Presidential Election System 115
The First Step toward Institutionalist Democratization 119
Scholarly Views 123
The Great Transformation 128
Institutionalist Democratizers 135
8 Two Diverging Political Systems 139
Asian Democracies 139
Confucius and Lenin 141
Theory and Practice 147
Same Confucian Culture but Diverging Societies 151
9 Conclusion: Democratic Technology 156
Notes 159
References 165
Index 171
Preface
As a political scientist who was born, raised and educated to the university
level in the beautiful isiand-state of Taiwan, then went to the United States
to carry out graduate studies, and finally came to teach here in Australia
for the past twenty-two years, I have been very lucky to be deeply con
cerned with and able to follow closely and study, even occasionally par
ticipate in, political developments, especially democracy movements, in
China and Taiwan. From 1980 to 1988, during the post-Mao reform pe
riod, I made ten research-lecture tours in China. I met and talked with
many Chinese intellectual political elites, such as Zhao Fusan, former
vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Su
Shaozhi, former director of CASS' s institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao
Zedong Thought, Ya n Jiaqi, former director of CASS' s institute of political
science, and their staff, Zhao Baoxi, former head of the department of
international politics, Beijing University, and his staff, and the professors
and lecturers of political science at the Chinese People's, Fudan, Hangzhou
and other universities. I held two long discussion sessions with Yan Jiaqi
when he was advising former premier and party general secretary Zhao
Ziyang on political structural reform. I had come to know well Professor
Fang Lizhi, the most famous Chinese human-rights fighter, and discussed
with him his struggle for democracy in China, and spent many days and
hours talking reform and democratization with young students, particu
larly postgraduate students, in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Hangzhou.
Just six months before the 4 June incident, I held lengthy discussions
with Bao Zunxin, Wang Luxiang, Yuan Zhiming and their group of
culturalist reformers who wrote and produced the soul-searching and
thought-provoking television series, the River Elegy (He Shang), and with
Zhang Bingjiu, Yang Baikui, Wang Juntao and other young scholars who
advocated nco-authoritarianism. I learnt a great deal from them and came
to understand better the problems and difficulties, successes and failures,
of China's political reform and democratization, not just in the last ten, but
over the last seventy years.
In October 1991, attending a conference on human rights and the legal
system in China at the University of California, Berkeley, I spent seven
days and nights (we were room-mates in a motel) with Yan Jiaqi and
many hours with Chen Yizi, former reformist adviser to Zhao Ziyang, and
was able to meet Liu Binyan, Ruan Ming, Hu Ping, and other Chinese pro
democracy activists. We talked about nothing but democratization in China
ix