By Suzanne Ogden

Ask a group of Americans what comes to mind when they think of China, and most will say Tiananmen Square.

It’s not a surprising response. The 1989 Beijing demonstrations and the Chinese government’s crackdown, much of it vividly captured by television cameras, helped crystallize popular opinion in America about China. In the years since, a steady drumbeat of negative stories from human rights groups and the international press have only solidified the disapproving view.

At best, China is portrayed as a vigorous economy. Yet even this is turned into a negative, with some observers suggesting China’s strength could ultimately threaten the U.S. position in the world economy. Others worry China could convert its economic power into military might, and use it offensively.

Then there’s the ideology problem. China is ruled by the Communist Party, and most Americans, with anti-Communism anxieties still running deep, assume the government in China is a replica of the former Soviet Union’s.

As a China specialist who travels to that country regularly, I believed that Americans’ misconceptions and fears were preventing them from understanding what a vibrant society China has become over the last twenty years, and that critics were comparing China to an “ideal” legal and political system, a standard even liberal democracies fail to live up to.

So I wrote Inklings of Democracy in China (Harvard University Press, 2002) to examine emerging surfaces within the country: Its expansion of social, economic, civil, and political rights. The competing ideas and values held by its citizens. The proliferation of associations and interest groups. The increasingly autonomous and assertive national legislature. The growing number of truly democratic elections in the country’s 930,000 villages. The development of a more equitable legal system. And the broad progress China has made toward providing a better life for its people.

Clearly, China is a more complex and pluralistic society than most Americans realize. But when we think about China’s present and future, are we right to see its authoritarian rule as a “problem,” and greater democratization the surest “cure”?

To evaluate the effectiveness of any form of government fairly, we need consistent standards that help us get beyond the potentially misleading labels “authoritarian” and “democratic.” The Human Development Index (HDI), developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), offers one method of assessing a government’s success.

Simply stated, the HDI looks at quality of life within a country, and the willingness and ability of a government to address the developmental needs of its citizens. According to the index’s goals, it measures “average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development—a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.” Out of the 175 countries ranked by the HDI in 2003, the United States placed 7th, and China 104th.

But if we compare China with, say, India, we see that development may depend far more on a government’s objectives, values, and competence than its form. Like China, India is a developing country with a population of more than a billion people, and it achieved independence from the British around the same time China came under Communist Party rule. Yet India, which has had a democratic system since 1947, ranks only 127th in the 2003 HDI.

To date, democratic India hasn’t produced a government willing to address the problems of its people. Indian officials encourage grain production through hefty subsidies to farmers, but the surplus grain rots in the fields, and malnutrition among Indian citizens remains at unconscionably high levels. Nor has India done anything to control its soaring population growth or abolish the caste system in practice.

According to UNDP data, as of 1998 the adult (age fifteen and over) illiteracy rate was 44.3 percent in India, 17.2 percent in China. The mortality rate (per 1,000 live births) for those under age five was 105 in India, 47 in China. Can we say with any certainty that Indian democracy has fulfilled the social and economic rights of its people better than China’s authoritarianism? Does the average Indian citizen have more human dignity or legal protection than the average Chinese citizen?

In reality, meaningful reforms can occur under any form of government, and democratic governments may be no more willing to undertake reform than authoritarian ones (as the Japanese government’s reluctance to make financial reforms demonstrates all too clearly).

Ironically, as China moves toward democratic reforms—allowing its citizens greater freedom and political participation—it may be moving too quickly, not too slowly, undermining conditions that have created a civil society for the Chinese people.

Likewise, socioeconomic forces that enhance democratic progress in China have had negative effects, especially for a significant percentage of peasants and workers—the very groups for whom the Communist revolution was fought in 1949. Unemployment, the loss of a social safety net, and the polarization of wealth have been the high costs of promoting a market economy.

China’s democratic development, then, will depend on whether the state can maintain social and economic stability by finding the proper balance between granting autonomy and maintaining control. Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan prove that polities can and do live with such tensions. Continuing development raises another issue: What should democracy in China look like? There is currently no consensus here, either in the West or among Chinese dissidents and intellectuals. When China’s liberals can’t agree on something as fundamental as “one person, one vote,” where does China begin?

Consider just the challenges posed by legal and judicial reform. China needs to decide what “justice” means in practice. How its judicial system should implement equality before the law. Which body, the National People’s Congress or the Supreme Judicial Court, should be the final arbiter of a law’s legality. Whether high-court judges should be appointed by political leaders, and, if so, what kind of political and judicial views appointees should have.

Most of China’s legal scholars are far from being Communist Party toadies; they are committed to the rule of law for China. Many have been trained in the West, and many Western lawyers and faculty—even U.S. Supreme Court justices—have been invited to China to help them think about the best way to reform the legal system. The fundamental questions China’s experts are struggling with crop up regularly in any democratic system, including our own, and the answers keep changing.

America doesn’t enjoy the moral high ground to stand in judgment of China’s government. Overall, if the Chinese people prefer economic growth, which they believe requires stability, to political democratization, which they believe could be quite destabilizing, who are Americans to say otherwise? We’ve never experienced the degree of political and social upheaval they have lived through.

And if the Chinese people don’t completely believe in the healing power of democracy, who can blame them? They see the disorder that has plagued Russia and the former Soviet republics, not to mention the rapid growth Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea have achieved under more authoritarian systems. A strong, stable, and developing China is in everyone’s best interests, including those of the United States.

The truth is, China faces a lot of difficult challenges, and democratization, if it comes, won’t be a simple or easy cure.

Suzanne Ogden, a professor in the Department of Political Science, is also a research associate at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.