Description
Bottom up Confucianism meets top down Confucianism … I took my Chinese government students to voting places in 2012, to see the election judges and voting machines and booths and the last-minute volunteer handouts for president and senators and congressmen and governor and treasurer and state representatives and city clerk and alderman and judges and trustees of the water reclamation district … this extraordinary expenditure of money and time, by government and individuals for … what?
It is an old truism that a civil society and a middle class are necessary for democracy to thrive. China has never had democracy, but it certainly has a large and growing middle class. Some China observers wonder whether the democratic necessities also work in the other direction – does a large middle class at some point demand democracy? Do Confucian values assist or impede a move in the direction of democracy? I think the questions are ill-formed with respect to China.
How should Chinese culture parse this –
Mencius in Jin Xin II, 60 tells us the people are most important, the sovereign least important. The Legalist Book of Lord Shang in Discussion About the People (Shang Jun Shu 1) tells us kindness and benevolence are the foster-mother of transgression – “… If the people are stronger than the government, the state is weak … with the result that the state will be dismembered and will come to ruin … if … the ruler has the wherewithal for defence and war, with the result that the state will flourish and attain supremacy.”
