SWE
27 Jan 93
FE/1597 B2/4
Therefore, in my view, we must seriously study and discuss the issue of democracy in China and thus establish a more correct and reasonable theory about China's democracy. I stress the need to establish the theory about China's democracy, because I deeply feel that casual and perfunctory talk will achieve no meaningful and useful result in understanding and resolving the issue of China's democracy; only by making a great effort, proceeding from the high plane of theory and giving a comprehensive account to and making comprehensive analysis of China's democracy from the past to the present, from culture to nature, from the political field to the economic field, from the material world to the mental world, from China to
foreign countries, can we reach a cogent, solidly grounded and convincing conclusion...
[THE EMANCIPATION OF THE NATION]
By saying this, I do not mean that democracy is anything unattainable, but I do believe that only the theory about China's democracy can help the Chinese people understand the nature, tendency and future of China's social changes in the past more than 100 years and understand the role and significance of democracy in such changes. Since the collapse of the autocratic imperial power, China has been undergoing a process of being freed from the state of enslavement. The nature of overthrowing the autocratic imperial power, smashing the feudal ethics, resisting the foreign enemies' aggression and plunder, eliminating class oppression, abolishing the personality cult of a leader; and carrying out reform and opening up are the same that is, to smash the original situation in which the population was enslaved and manipulated by some people and to strive for the emancipation of all people and the whole nation.
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Emancipation not only means the breaking of the shackles imposed on the people by the old cultural and social structure, it also means that the people have begun to act consciously on their own to establish a sense of seeking, selecting and fixing new values and to establish a new cultural and social structure. Not all people now respect and defer to the sole traditional values in society without exception; instead, more and more people have been acting on their own to select, adopt, create and fulfill new values in order to satisfy their own needs and the needs in society. This thus provides the most reliable driving force for social progress and development.
ĮSYSTEMS OF VALUES]
However, in the course of changes over the past more than 100 years, people have not only realized that a society which only recognizes and allows the existence of one single system of values (that is, a certain system of values accepted sometimes by the great majority of people) is not a reasonable and promising form of society and in a normal and reasonable society, all citizens should have the right to adopt and fulfill their own values; they have also realized that certain common points must still be upheld by all members of society in the values they cherish, otherwise it will be hard to establish an orderly condition conducive to the normal existence and development of the society.
Moreover, not every system of values is reasonable and acceptable. For example, the values of traditional autocracy
that only stubbornly maintain a certain system of values and do not recognize other people's right to select and adopt their own values, or even try to interfere in such a right, may be something unacceptable to most people.
Obviously, China's changes and progress require the establishment of such an ethos and such a new social norm and order; that is, ensuring that every citizen enjoys the right to adopt and fulfill certain values on his own while not infringing upon other people's legitimate rights. Obviously, this is the social norm and order affirmed by the system of democracy and it is exactly the values of democracy. In the course of changes over the past more than 100 years, various contradictions, struggles and twists and turns occurred. In the final analysis, they were caused by the different options and approaches in selecting and adopting different values. It seemed that people did not concentrate their energy and effort on fulfilling the values they selected; instead, they wasted their energy in the endless and exhausting struggle against each other. They did not find a method and did not establish a norm or a system to enable everyone to fulfill his or her values in a condition of not disturbing other people, or even in a condition of carrying out better cooperation with other people. In fact, democracy is precisely such a norm and such a system.
In my view, if the system of democracy is not established, it will be hard for any people to fulfill their values, no matter how perfect the values are, as the advocates claim, and it will also be impossible to reasonably and satisfactorily fulfill the value of man's life; instead, man's life will only be worn down by the meaningless and exhausting internal strife.
[CHINA'S CURRENT NEEDS]
Hence, we can be certain that democracy is the objective requirement for China's continual progress and development. Not only does China need democracy in the future, China also needs it now. Without realizing democracy, China will not have a bright future. The reason we are fully confident of realizing democracy is that we believe that an overwhelming majority of people will ultimately identify with the value of democracy, because democracy does not reject other value orientations; on the contrary, its existence helps guarantee the realization of other value orientations and ensure that everyone can be in pursuit of and realize his own insatiable and unlimited creation. Democracy only rejects one kind of value orientation, that is, autocracy...
{A HUNDRED FLOWERS]
Of course, my understanding of democracy is imperfect, but the only right thing is that there should be many kinds of theories about China's democracy. I even wish for the emergence of a theory which completely denies democracy in China, because I believe that some in China still disapprove, in their heart of hearts, of democracy and support autocracy. If these people, according to their subjective views, still hold that their own proposition is correct, or even in the interests of the party and the country, they should frankly speak out their own grounds. Moreover, they should also allow others to express different viewpoints of democracy to create a new situation which truly "lets a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred 'schools of thought contend". I still stress: The creation and
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