China and Great Britain, two misleading comparisons

I have been following the instructive debates held under the name Intelligence squared, in which two teams of experts and academics argue for and against a proposition. The public votes both before and after the debate and the questions. A number of those debates have been dedicated to the advantages and disadvantages of democracy. There was one that questioned whether Democracy is India's Achille's heel. Another debate was, One size doesn't fit all: Democracy is not always the best form of government. Yet another one under the title Democracy, even the best ideas may fail. There was a very heated exchange when the issue was, Better elected Islamists than dictators.

In one way or another, all these debates were about democracy, and in particular, its pros and cons for developing countries. Unfortunately, in most of them the idea and the value of the rule of law have been neglected or confused with the advantages of having a democratic government. That was clear in a debate about whether Western liberal democracy would be wrong for China.

First misleading comparison: development in 19^th century Britain vs 21^st century China

Arguing against democracy for China, one of the panelists said that in our time China has far surpassed the speed (the annual rate) of the economic development achieved by Britain in the 19^th century. That was said by Martin Jacques, senior research fellow at the London School of Economics, former editor of the journal Marxism Today, and author of a book about (or rather against) Margaret Thatcher. More recently he has written a best-seller book which in its title gleefully announces The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, a world ruled by China. Right from the beginning professor Jacques extolled China's spectacular growth, which he linked to the wise direction of the Communist Party. He has seconded in more moderate tones by Zhang Weiwei, a writer and a member of a Chinese think tank who, perhaps not very consistently, acknowledged that he prefers to live in Paris.

The point about the growth rate came in answer to another Chinese panelist (on the other team), Anson Chan, former Chief Secretary of Hong Kong and campaigner for democracy. She had said that, after all, China wasn't the only country that achieved fast economic development, and she mentioned the case of Great Britain in the 19^th century. Her argument was in turn answered by Martin Jacques -already mentioned against democracy- who corrected her and said that the rate of growth was different, much faster in the case of 21^st century China.

It is a pity that nobody pointed out to him that comparing rates without comparing times and circumstances is absolutely flawed.

People in Great Britain had to develop techniques, improve steam engines, experiment with turbines, design more efficient steel furnaces and mines. They had to apply new inventions to ships, making them bigger, faster, and safer. They have to design locomotives. They had to establish telegraph lines, build railways, and learn how to control electric power. Of course, there was trial and error, inventions that never worked, and wasted effort. In the background we have the miraculous development of science, the study that went from Chemistry to the movements of the stars.

In the late 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century, China didn't have to go through the same process. They can always make use of the latest turbine, they don't have start with the steam engine. Then can make use of modern chips, they don't have start with Babbage's wheels. They don't need to create the mathematics and the physics that help to establish the best designs. They can transfer all that in one go. Moreover, they had at their disposal the the know-how, and sometimes even the capital of Western entrepreneurs. To say triumphantly that in those conditions their rate of growth was faster than that of those who had to create and try everything from zero shows a lack of historical perspective that is alarming, but perhaps not surprising, in a scholar from the London School of Economics. Certainly there has been remarkable economic growth in China in the last three decades, but even if it had been twice as fast it could not reasonably be compared to the industrial revolution.

Second misleading comparison: limited democracy in 19^th century Great Britain

Professor Jacques pointed out that not everyone could vote in 19^th century Great Britain. As with the rate of growth, that is true but very misleading. Apart from that fact that at least there were different parties contending for the vote, the argument leaves out the rule of law.

In Great Britain, long before the franchise was extended to everyone, there was habeas corpus, property was safe from expropriation, disputes were decided by independent judges according to non retroactive rules, and there was freedom of speech.
      The team against democracy argued that China would collapse under multiparty democracy (what is one-party democracy?). But what about the rule of law? Would China collapse without censorship? And if so, why?

It is very sad that so many debates focus on the vote, and mention the rule of law only as a complement that more or less comes together with democracy. Indeed, if one had to find a ground, a link to something that would explain the extraordinary improvements and creativity that flourished in 19^th century Britain, it would be the rule of law. Because of it, though not everyone could vote, the government could do very little damage, it could not thwart a man's attempt to improve his life and that of his family, and it had very limited means to direct what an entrepreneur would do.

Very often in these and other debates, the rule of law is conflated with democracy, thus making it true by definition that establishing the vote is a sure means to establishing the rule of law. Of course, it is not. Indeed, as Friedrick Hayek has pointed out, the modern idea that “the law” is whatever the majority passes as such, derives its convincing power from democracy and majority rule. By the way, constitutions make very little difference on this issue because they only require a qualified majority. Witness Latin America and its ever changing constitutions. Whenever the notion that majorities can make and remake laws and constitutions at their pleasure spreads, when it is held that right is only what a majority recognizes as such, then the rule of law is dead.

So perhaps a better argument for the panelists who argued against the assertion that “Western liberal democracy would be wrong for China”, would have been that apart from not establishing democracy (i.e. free elections), China has made very little progress towards the rule of law. That is a major difference with 19^th century Great Britain.

I would say that the question itself chosen for the debate was framed in a misleading way. It might imply that more than the vote was meant. But it also implies that “Western”democracy is merely one of the many varieties of democracy. It implies that there is some “Oriental” variety, with contours that are best kept vague. Such has been the claim of many enemies of democracy: Oh yes, we have democracy, except that we understand it differently. Such was the claim of the leaders of the “socialist democratic republics” of the former Eastern bloc and of many of their fellow travelers in the West. We shouldn't hear the same argument again without answering it.

The cultural argument

As an aside, it is interesting to mention that the British academic -who argued against democracy for China- played the argument of respect for a different culture, and said that we have to “think out the box”, that we don't understand Chinese history and attitudes, that we must not judge others from the point of view of “our Western jail”, etc. This kind of argument almost always wins among Western audiences, in which the call to suppress judgment about different cultures seems to activate a Pavlovian reflex. Nevertheless, in this debate the argument failed because there was actually a Chinese woman in the team arguing for democracy. Probably it seemed odd that a British academic would tell her that she doesn't understand Chinese attitudes.