A brief survey of the Chinese-language literature since the late 1990s indicates that the notion of good governance (shanzhi 善治) is now widely used in China. When shanzhi was used as a keyword or as an article title in a search of papers in the China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (Zhongguo zhiwang 中国知网), we found 804 and 607 articles, respectively, all of which were published in the past decade.Footnote 1 The shanzhi discourse covers wide-ranging themes, including China's civil society, administrative reform, social management reform, grassroots-level governance in rural and urban areas, and anti-corruption measures. This discourse has been extended not only to China's practitioner community, as manifested in the widely-acclaimed programme on “Innovations and Excellence in Chinese Local Governance” (IECLG hereafter), but also to the official lexicon.Footnote 2 It is not unusual for officials at the ministerial/provincial levels and below to cite the term and air their views on shanzhi.Footnote 3
Such a vibrant intellectual discourse, however, remains under-researched in Western scholarship. Opportunities to examine how this discourse may shed light on intellectual and political developments since the late 1990s have thus been lost. This article aims to start filling the gap by reviewing the views of Yu Keping 俞可平, a key contributor to that discourse, and other representative scholars wherever necessary. Yu, deputy director since 2001 of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (Zhonggong zhongyang bianyi ju 中共中央编译局) (CCTB hereafter), an important think tank under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not only introduces relevant international theories to China but also applies them to his analyses of Chinese politics; these analyses are shaping the Chinese view of good governance. Yu has developed his own intellectual network. At its core is the CCTB's China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics, the most influential institute devoted to research on local government innovation and the promotion of good governance in China. Several of Yu's CCTB associates, for example, He Zengke 何增科, Yang Xuedong 杨雪冬 and Zhou Hongyun 周红云, have emerged as major players in the good governance discourse. Other participants include affiliated scholars at research centres on Chinese government innovations at ten universities,Footnote 4 as well as other like-minded scholars throughout the country. Owing to the consistent efforts of Yu and his colleagues, discussions about good governance have assumed a major position in Chinese academia.
An examination of Yu Keping's good governance discourse will also shed much needed light on his conception of Chinese-style democracy, which is intertwined with his views on good governance. Along with several others, Yu is “the most watched Chinese theorist on the Chinese style of democracy.”Footnote 5 However, Yu's notions of democracy, as succinctly expressed in his famous 2006 article, “Democracy is a good thing,” have elicited controversy.Footnote 6 For example, when exploring how Chinese intellectuals and political elites think about China's political trajectory, Andrew Nathan does not consider Yu as a liberal thinker. For Nathan, the ideas Yu expresses in his “Democracy is a good thing” article are nothing new in CCP history.Footnote 7 In contrast, Cheng Li holds that Yu stands in the liberal wing of the political establishment, that his attempt to offer a road map for China's democratic future is his most important contribution, and the associated views are “intriguing and thoughtful.”Footnote 8 There is also confusion: as one China scholar nicely wrote, “what is he really arguing for? … Does he want to promote what we in the West understand as democracy, or not? Is he using a sophisticated form of vagueness to sneak truly democratic ideas into the Party discourse, or using sophisticated vagueness to buy tolerance for the authoritarian enterprise among liberals and pro-democrats?”Footnote 9
Much of the confusion stems from Yu's use of the word “democracy.” In propagating the view that democracy embodies a set of universal political values, Yu argues that it is incorrect to assert that China, as a socialist country, should not embrace democracy. But, Yu's Chinese-style democracy does not include the essential element of what most in the West call democracy, that is, selecting top power holders through competitive elections. Following the Schumpeterian definition of democracy,Footnote 10 this article does not consider Yu's Chinese-style democracy a “real democracy.”Footnote 11 To promote conceptual clarity, with the exception of references to Chinese-style democracy and socialist democracy, we will not use the “d” word to describe Yu's political views.
To help explain why Yu's writings appear vague and confusing, we will look for insights in the political sociology of intellectuals to reveal Yu's personal character, which the next section will discuss in detail. This article will also join the literature on “the man and his ideas” that focuses on the “ideas” of a few prominent Chinese intellectuals to illuminate larger political issues. This scholarship was prevalent during the Mao Zedong era but has been marginalized since the late 1970s.Footnote 12 Moreover, such scholarly inquiries have been dominated by historians.Footnote 13 Nevertheless, in studies of Chinese politics, there has been a small but growing literature based on the assumption that “ideas matter.”Footnote 14
This article reveals that the good governance discourse revolves around the call to “move China towards good governance,” a discourse which consists of three major arguments. First, the ultimate objective of China's political reform is to move towards good governance, which comprises the ten elements of legitimacy, transparency, accountability, rule of law, responsiveness, effectiveness, civic participation, stability, cleanness, and justice. Second, “good government” and civil society are two keys for achieving good governance. Yu has articulated the importance of government innovation as part of the development of good governance, and has promoted in particular local-level innovations as part of efforts to seek realistic approaches to Chinese-style democracy. Meanwhile, to promote the growth of Chinese civil society, Yu has worked to correct government misconceptions on the allegedly negative roles of civil society. Third, political reform in post-Mao China, which in the terminology of this discourse is called “governance reform” (zhili gaige 治理改革) and is mainly about “government innovations” (zhengfu chuangxin 政府创新), has been as successful as the Chinese economic reform. Much progress has been made in terms of the ten elements of good governance mentioned above. Therefore, China has already embarked on the road to good governance. Nevertheless, there still exist serious obstacles and the road ahead remains difficult.
Because Yu's good governance discussions have never embraced the essential element of democracy, the ultimate objective of political reform Yu advocates is not about moving China towards what Western social scientists call democracy. Nevertheless, Yu remains liberal in his basic orientation: he has repeatedly emphasized the importance of rule of law, civil society, and citizens’ civil and political rights for China's political development. In particular, Yu has been actively promoting local government innovations and the growth of civil society.
Three data sources have been used for this research: all available academic and journalistic articles discussing good governance appearing in Zhongguo zhiwang, along with the relevant academic books, written by Yu and other Chinese scholars (including a small number of journalists and government officials); online debates (mostly criticisms) of Yu from the domestic “old left” and Western-based “right” (i.e. Chinese intellectuals in exile); and an interview and many discussions with Yu's CCTB associates,Footnote 15 as well as with other Chinese scholars.
Understanding Yu Keping: Insights from the Scholarship on Intellectuals and Politics
Tensions between intellectuals and political elites have always existed. Pierre Bourdieu maintains that intellectuals “are a dominated fraction of the dominant class.” Namely, intellectuals are dominant because of their cultural capital but concurrently they “are dominated in their relations with those who hold political and economic power.” This contradictory position leads to intellectuals’ dual personalities and ambivalence towards establishment authorities.Footnote 16 Nevertheless, as Jerome Karabel puts it, “Given the considerable benefits of compliance and the high costs of opposition, it is hardly surprising that most intellectuals … will reach an accommodation with the powers-that-be.”Footnote 17
In a major politico-sociological study of Chinese intellectuals, Zhidong Hao argues that there are “conflicts over values, knowledge, and authority in decision making” between intellectuals and political elites.Footnote 18 Notably, conflicts over values – i.e. political control and regime survival for CCP leaders versus democracy and human rights for PRC establishment intellectuals – have been the primary factor leading to intellectuals’ dual personalities. Although many withdraw from politics to purse scholarship (for example, Chen Yinke 陈寅恪), or become dissident intellectuals (for example, Liu Binyan 刘宾雁), the majority of establishment intellectuals choose to compromise their academic integrity and conform to the Party line (for example, Sun Yefang 孙冶方).Footnote 19 “A dual personality, if not a split personality, was inevitable.”Footnote 20
Yu Keping is no exception. Yu holds a high-ranking position (the deputy director of the CCTB), which effectively makes him an establishment intellectual. This fundamentally determines his political stance of remaining loyal to the Party.Footnote 21 His intellectual behaviour is profoundly affected by the Marxist-Leninist discipline demanding obedience to Party regulations. Yu regularly writes short articles to justify Party policies. On these occasions, Yu relies on Party vocabulary, and if the issue of socialist democracy is concerned, Yu strictly follows official expressions. But, more often, Yu's publications are academic. In many of these works, Yu employs the “art of oblique criticism”Footnote 22 to voice his dissatisfaction over the slow pace of political reform, and uses “roundabout ways”Footnote 23 to express his innovative and bold political ideas. Besides citing top leaders’ words and Party documents, Yu generally chooses non-politically sensitive vocabulary and relies on influential Western theories.
Yu is deeply influenced by the Confucian literati tradition, and his personality is also characteristic of the Red Guard generation of intellectuals.Footnote 24 Regarding himself as the conscience of society, Yu has a strong sense of responsibility and social justice. For example, “to advance socio-political progress through academia,” Yu launched the IECLG programme, using the CCTB's own research funds to run the programme.Footnote 25 As an “experienced and skillful” intellectual, having what Juntao Wang calls “the innovative capability” that is commonly possessed by the Red Guard generation intellectuals,Footnote 26 Yu has managed to carve out a limited public space in which to discuss good governance. The working mechanismsFootnote 27 Yu employs include publishing academic articles and short journalistic articles, delivering speeches and talks at academic meetings, organizing workshops and conferences, undertaking government research projects, creating a special journal entitled China Governance Review, and implementing the IECLG programme.
Good Governance: Yu Keping's 1999 Interpretation and Adaptations
Before turning to Yu Keping's works, it is necessary to discuss briefly how good governance is understood in international academic and practitioner circles, about which there exists a huge literature. For the purpose of this article, we sketch only what is relevant to our topic.
Traditionally, governance was a synonym for government. Beginning from the early 1980s and in response to the incapacity of traditional public administration and the welfare state to solve problems in providing public services, governance reform took place in the West.Footnote 28 Since then, “governance refers to the development of governing styles in which boundaries between and within public and private sectors have become blurred. The essence of governance is its focus on governing mechanisms which do not rest on recourse to the authority and sanctions of government.”Footnote 29 This new understanding has been incorporated into the New Public Management (NPM) movement in the West. Its dominant objective is to cut costs by modifying Weberian bureaucracy.Footnote 30
The notion and agenda of good governance first emerged at the end of the Cold War.Footnote 31 The first international development organization (IDO) to raise the notion was the World Bank in its 1989 report on Africa. “Good governance included some or all of the following features: an efficient public service; an independent judicial system and legal framework to enforce contracts; the accountable administration of public funds; an independent public auditor, responsible to a representative legislature; respect for the law and human rights at all levels of government; a pluralistic institutional structure, and a free press.”Footnote 32 In short, “‘good governance’ marries the new public management to the advocacy of liberal democracy.”Footnote 33
When IDOs provided loans to developing and transitional countries facing financial crises, the recipient countries were required to meet strict conditionalities of good governance. It was hoped that carrot-like conditionalities would result in the “dismantling of ‘over-developed’ state structures in the Third World and former Soviet bloc countries” and the building of multiparty democratization.Footnote 34 However, most IDO efforts failed. Among the many reasons, the lack of state-building is particularly noteworthy. Because many recipient countries do not possess even a rudimentary modern state infrastructure, the central concern of the good governance agenda shifted to how to build (rather than to cut back) the Weberian bureaucracy. This new orientation, to a large extent, was adopted by the donor community after the mid-1990s.Footnote 35
In sum, the IDO good governance agenda required that developing countries implement measures of an administrative-technical dimension, which focused on carrying out NPM-style policies in the early 1990s and building a modern public administration after the mid-1990s. The political-constitutive dimension focused on imposing a Western-style democracy on non-Western soil.
Against the backdrop of this international discourse, Yu Keping's Reference Yu1999 “Introduction to governance and good governance” was the first influential article on the topic published in China. After reviewing Western definitions, Yu states that “governance basically refers to the using of authority to maintain order and to meet public demands within given confines.”Footnote 36 “Governance” differs from “government” in that, in the former, governing mechanisms rely on the authority of both state and non-state sources rather than solely on the state. Furthermore, in addition to the traditional top-down and coercive modes of governing, other modes such as collaboration, negotiation, social networking and consensus-building can also be employed.Footnote 37 The direct reason why the IDOs have tended to use the notion of governance over that of government since the 1980s is that the IDOs have advocated a reliance on the mechanisms of governance to address those failures resulting from solely resorting to market methods or government planning and commands.Footnote 38
Yu notes that although mechanisms of governance can fix some of the problems brought about by “market failures” and “government failures,” there also exist “governance failures” as well as other problems. The following question thus emerges: how do we overcome governance failures? Among the theories proposed in response to this question, “the theory of ‘good governance’ is the most influential,” states Yu.Footnote 39 For Yu, “good governance is the process of social management aiming to maximize the interests of the public. Its defining feature is that it is the cooperative management of public life between the state and citizens, a new relationship between the state and civil society, as well as the ideal situation between the two.”Footnote 40 Good governance comprises the six basic elements of legitimacy, transparency, accountability, rule of law, responsiveness, and effectiveness,Footnote 41 to which four others were added by Yu in 2002, namely, civic participation, stability, cleanness and justice.Footnote 42 Yu's elaboration on the ten elements is summarized in Table 1.
Table 1: The Ten Elements of Good Governance
Sources:
Yu Reference Yu1999, 39–40; Yu Reference Yu2002, 23–24; Yu Reference Yu, Zhenglai and Guo2011, 17–18.
Note:
With the exception of legitimacy and responsiveness, Yu's elaborations on the other eight elements are from Yu Reference Yu, Zhenglai and Guo2011, 17–18.
These understandings are largely in line with international literature. Nevertheless, Yu's work reveals an explicit attempt to adapt the good governance discussion to the Chinese context. First, Yu argues that good governance means returning power to society from the state, i.e. the scaling back of state interventions while encouraging a larger role for civil society in social problem-solving. For him, “without a sound and developed civil society, there will be no real good governance.”Footnote 43 Furthermore, the key to the successful cooperative management of public life is providing the citizenry with the necessary means and sufficient rights of participation, which occur only in democratic regimes. With these views in mind, during the following decade Yu consistently promoted the growth of Chinese civil society.
Second, Yu has coined the term “good government,” which in his opinion was an ideal political system model until the 1990s, when good governance began to emerge as a new ideal. Elements of good government include “a good legal system, clean and honest officials, high administrative efficiency, and good administrative services.”Footnote 44 In 2004, Yu developed these views further, adding that good government is the key to achieving good governance.Footnote 45 This was especially the case in China. Third, in 2000, Yu stated that against the backdrop of the current globalization era, good governance is the ideal political model for countries throughout the world. He further noted that, going beyond good government, the Chinese government should move towards good governance.Footnote 46 Since then, this call has been repeatedly revisited and refined by Yu and other like-minded scholars.
A certain level of vagueness exists: what is the exact meaning of Yu's concept of good governance? What political ideas does Yu's good governance discourse advocate? Many of Yu's initial views have been developed or even changed in the following years. We will answer these questions in the remainder of the article.
After his initial 1999 introduction to good governance, Yu extensively applied the term to his analyses of Chinese politics. Owing to Yu's efforts, as well as support from the CCTB, Yu's Reference Yu1999 interpretation and its later development rapidly spread to Chinese academic and policy circles, and with only a few exceptions, it was generally accepted. Although a small number of Chinese scholars have raised doubts or critiques, Yu has never responded directly. However, by continuing to publish academic and journalistic articles, and through the IECLG programme, Yu simply overwhelmed the voices of criticism, with the result that they had little impact.
Encouraging the Growth of China's Civil Society
For Yu Keping, active citizen participation is indispensable for good governance. But, only when citizens can form associations, or civil society organizations (CSOs) in Yu's terminology, will their political participation be effective.Footnote 47 Therefore, much significance should be given to the growth of CSOs.
Yu writes that, “Since reform and opening up began in 1978, a relatively independent civil society has risen rapidly in China, where it has played an increasingly important role” in nearly all aspects of China's transition.Footnote 48 Yu defines civil society as, “a public sphere outside the sphere of government and the market economy that comprises all kinds of civic organizations not affiliated with the government or business.”Footnote 49 According to Yu, CSOs are unofficial, not-for-profit, voluntary, non-political and non-religious, and independent,Footnote 50 and to varying extents, China's CSOs share these common features.Footnote 51 Because the majority of CSOs have been established and led by the government, it is often the case that Chinese CSOs are not non-governmental, independent or confrontational. Moreover, as most Chinese CSOs only emerged after the 1980s, they are still transitional and immature.Footnote 52
Yu deftly summarizes the treatment China's civil society has received as a mixture of “macro encouragement” and “micro restrictions.”Footnote 53 China's constitution stipulates that Chinese people enjoy the freedom to form CSOs. In principle, this stipulation lays the legal foundation for Chinese civil society.Footnote 54 Furthermore, with the introduction and expansion of markets, with the retreat of government from society and the economy, and with citizens increasingly distancing themselves from politics, the macro environment has been conducive to the growth of CSOs.Footnote 55
In contrast, the micro environment has been negative or even hostile.Footnote 56 Government officials lack a correct understanding of Chinese CSOs – for example, they regard Chinese CSOs as appendages of the government or as Western imports, or they view them as dissident forces opposing the party-state.Footnote 57 As a result, government officials tend to be wary of CSOs and restrict their development. In addition, the Chinese legal and regulatory frameworks are not favourable: “there is no mother law for supervision of civil society organizations, only a random assortment of laws and regulations.”Footnote 58 Existing laws and regulations make the registration of CSOs difficult. All Chinese CSOs must accept the leadership of both the civil affairs department at their respective level, which is responsible for their approval and registration, and the government department in charge of their area of activity, which is responsible for daily oversight.Footnote 59 This regulatory system of dual leadership “results not only in conflicting policies and duplicate supervision but also in some civil organizations going unsupervised and having nowhere to turn for help.”Footnote 60
Over the past several years, the discourse has gradually shifted from general discussions on the positive impact of CSOs to a focus on specific CSO roles to help the government address social problems. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th CCP Congress in 2010 urged “strengthening and innovating in social management.” In response to the Party's call for innovation in social management (shehui guanli 社会管理), Yu and his research team undertook a government project entitled, “An assessment system regarding China's social management.”Footnote 61
Yu's team raised the notion of “social governance” (shehui zhili 社会治理), which consists of social management and social self-governing. The team wrote that “social management refers to the government's regulating and managing of social affairs, social organizations, and social life,”Footnote 62 and “social self-governing refers to self-management of the general populace over grassroots public affairs.”Footnote 63 The former is governmental while the latter is non-governmental, with CSOs as the principal players.Footnote 64 Yu's team contended that social management and social self-governing are equally important. By arguing that both the government and CSOs are indispensable for relieving social conflicts and to maintain social stability, in actuality Yu was highlighting the unique role that CSOs can play.
“Good Government” and the IECLG Programme
Yu Keping is realistic about underscoring the role of government in advancing China's political development. Good governance is the ideal political model in an era of globalization, “[b]ut under the current situation in China, it is firstly needed to realize good government in order to achieve good governance.”Footnote 65 To make the Chinese government “good government,” Yu initiated the IECLG programme in 2000 to encourage local government innovations.
In his 2004 article, “Good government: key to moving to good governance,” Yu outlines a set of requirements for good government and urges that the Chinese government reform along these lines. Yu argues that the specific content of good government will vary depending on the national context. In the case of China, good government should consist of the following eight elements: democracy, accountability, service, quality, efficiency, professionalism, transparency and cleanness.Footnote 66 Consequently, China must have a government that is democratic, accountable, service-oriented, high quality, efficient, professional, transparent and clean. After the publication of this article, many other Chinese scholars wrote about the ideal type of good government towards which the Chinese government should move.
What does good government mean? Confusion may emerge as its elements overlap with those of good governance (see Table 1). The IECLG programme is indicative of Yu's concept of good government. So far, six rounds of the IECLG programme have been conducted, 1,913 local government innovation projects have applied, and 139 were awarded as the final winners.Footnote 67 The first category of awarded projects is of an administrative reform nature, including innovations that aim to: strengthen institution-building with respect to public services and improving the quality of provision of public services; simplify administrative investigations and approval procedures, and reduce government regulations; take action to help and protect the rights of disadvantaged social groups; widen the scope of social security provision and promote social justice; transform the structure and functions of government, promote “administration by law,” and enhance governmental performance and strengthen governing capacity; resolve social conflicts and maintain social stability; perfect the management system of state-owned assets; reform the management system of urban communities; and spread the use of e-government.Footnote 68
The second category is mainly of a political reform nature, including innovations that aim to: improve rural governance mechanisms, especially village-level elections; gradually expand competitive elections (mostly at the township level); explore new forms of deliberative democracy and to democratize government decision making; publicize information about government affairs and make government more transparent; strengthen the monitoring of government power; expand the channels for orderly participation by citizens; and perfect the management system of CSOs and take advantage of the constructive role of civil society.Footnote 69
The first category of awarded projects focuses on how to make the government more efficient, competent, fair and service-oriented; the second focuses on how to promote an accountable and transparent government, as well as how to empower ordinary citizens and increase political participation. As will be discussed in detail in the final section of this article, although the latter type of innovation is political reform-oriented, the nature is merely consultative. Adopting participatory, consultative and deliberative practices so that citizens become involved in government policymaking and in the selection of village and township leaders does not weaken the final say of the Party.
Despite its limitations, the political agenda of Yu's IECLG programme is to find realistic breakthrough points for political reform from the bottom up. The choice of awarded projects is indicative of Yu's envisioned direction of future political development, and Yu often uses the projects as manifestations of China's political progress, which we will turn to next.
Moving Towards Good Governance: Justifying Party Rule and Establishing the Ultimate Objective of Political Reform
The upholding of the Party leadership, the defining feature of political development in post-Mao China, has been under constant attack by China scholars in the West and Chinese liberals; they claim that since 1978 there has been no meaningful political reform in China. Criticizing this view as “a bias and misconception,”Footnote 70 Yu justifies political development during the reform era through his good governance theory.
In his 2008 book chapter, “Toward good governance: the evolution of China's governance in the past 30 years and its future trends,” Yu asserts that, “China's political reform, to a large degree, has been governance reform,”Footnote 71 which is not about changing the fundamental political framework of Party rule into a Western multiparty system with a separation of powers. Rather, it focuses on the technical dimension, i.e. “the government management system” or “the public administration system.”Footnote 72 In Yu's view, China's governance reform, constituting a key component of the political reform, has been as successful as its economic reform. For Yu, governance reform also refers to government innovation, and the wide-ranging experiences of successful innovations in Chinese local governance, as discussed in the preceding section, lend empirical support to this claim.
“Judged by such criteria [of the ten elements of good governance], China's governance reform has made great progress in the reform era, but many apparent insufficiencies and substantial shortcomings also exist.”Footnote 73 This statement is further elaborated on by He Zengke, Yu's close CCTB associate, as presented in Table 2.Footnote 74 The table summarizes the achievements and reform measures in a wide variety of areas, suggesting that the good governance theory is a useful analytical instrument for justifying Party rule. Furthermore, the political achievements demonstrate that China has indeed embarked upon a road towards good governance.
Table 2: Justifying Political Development in Post-Mao China through Good Governance
Source:
He, Zengke Reference He2002, 16–19.
It should be emphasized that besides justifying Party rule, Yu Keping also firmly asserts that the “ultimate objective of China's governance reform is to realize good governance”;Footnote 75 “no matter what kind of political reform China undertakes, and no matter what kind of governance model will take shape in China in the future, for far-sighted Chinese leaders, the objective of governance reform has been very clear, which is democracy, rule of law, justice, accountability, transparency, cleanness, effectiveness, and harmony.”Footnote 76 What exactly is the ultimate objective of political reform for China? We will address this and other related issues in detail in the following section.
Yu Keping and the Good Governance Discourse: A Conclusive Analysis
On most occasions, Yu's view is that “good governance [comprising ten elements] is the process of social management aiming to maximize the interests of the public” (see Table 1).Footnote 77 In 2010, Yu furthered our understanding of good governance by demonstrating that good governance not only encompasses most of the elements of democracy, for example, the rule of law, participation, transparency and accountability, but also those elements that “are often considered to be absent in a democratic system” – efficiency, stability, fairness and integrity.Footnote 78 In this sense, the concept of good governance is even broader than the concept of democracy. However, this argument creates confusion over the relationship between good governance and democracy. It also raises the issue of the political implications of Yu's good governance discourse.
We hold that the political achievements in terms of Yu's ten elements of good governance (that were elaborated upon by He Zengke) (see Table 2) require a proper evaluation. In a recent authoritative and comprehensive study of the nature of political reform in local government innovations, most of which have received recognition by Yu's IECLG programme and have been recognized as among the most successful in China, Joseph Fewsmith reveals some serious limitations.Footnote 79 For example, when examining the new approaches to inner-Party democracy in terms of the selection of township leaders in Sichuan province and the “Wenling model” of democratic consultation and participatory budgeting in Zhejiang province, Fewsmith finds that almost all of these political experiments came about as the “personal” projects of reform-minded local leaders.Footnote 80 Once these leaders were transferred to other posts, the experiments generally tended to wither. For such reforms to continue, the most important impetus is an “appeal to higher-level authorities,” rather than an appeal to the constituencies of local citizens.Footnote 81 Thus, the accountability element is not brought into play. In fact, most innovative practices are not self-sustaining and have not been institutionalized. In contrast to assessments by Yu Keping and He Zengke, Fewsmith concludes that local political experiments have yielded “limited results.”Footnote 82 He argues that the constraints are “structural”: participation by ordinary citizens in the selection of township leaders or in government policymaking is substantially circumvented by the principle that the Party controls cadres.Footnote 83
Therefore, China scholars in the West should be aware that the statement, “the Chinese government has become democratic, accountable, transparent and responsive,” as is repeatedly asserted by Yu and other participants in the good governance discourse, does not necessarily imply that the government has moved in the direction of what most in the West would call democracy. Borrowing from Ethan J. Leib, using words such as “democracy,” “accountability,” “participation” and “transparency” to describe the new features of the Chinese political system is “a bit too capacious.”Footnote 84
Yu's claim that the ultimate objective of China's political reform is to move towards good governance is concerned with the following questions: what is the ideal political system for China? What will be the characteristics of any future Chinese-style democracy? Will the non-technical dimension of Party rule be reformed in some fundamental manner, and, if so, how and when? These questions are addressed rather vaguely as Yu does not provide clear answers. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: Yu's good governance discourse has never embraced the essential element of democracy. We therefore conclude that it is conceptually problematic to argue that the concept of good governance is a broader term than the concept of democracy. The ultimate objective of Chinese political reform – moving in the direction of good governance – is not about moving to what Western social scientists call democracy.Footnote 85
However, that Yu does not embrace the essential element of democracy should not lead to a complete rejection of Yu's promotion of good governance or to a negation of what Yu and He Zengke have praised as political achievements. Although local government innovations, or governance reform in general, fall within the technical confines of China's political framework, to varying degrees there has been progress in terms of building a modern administrative state that is more professional, competent, clean, efficient, service-oriented, fair and caring. Additionally, Party rule has become more consultative and deliberative. These changes have contributed to the resilience of Party rule since the late 1990s.
Other scholars evaluate local government innovations more positively. Baogang He and his collaborators have conducted extensive research on local political reform innovations which are regarded as having “a high degree of experimentalism with consultation, deliberation, and limited forms of democracy.”Footnote 86 They theorize that, during the past decade, China has developed a unique Chinese-style authoritarianism. This model is a combination of traditional command authoritarianism, consultative authoritarianism and the “apparent anomaly” of deliberative authoritarianism. The experimental consultative and deliberative practices have been “an important ingredient in the reproduction and resilience of authoritarian rule.”Footnote 87
As commonly acknowledged by Chinese practitioners and academics, Yu's IECLG programme plays an important role in promoting local government innovations. Among the IECLG programme's five objectives, one is to discover the positive experiences of government innovation and then to propagate and spread them to other parts of the country; another objective is to encourage local governments to adopt innovative methods when tackling public problems, and hence to promote good governance at local levels.Footnote 88
According to Yu, because central leaders always feel that it is extremely risky to make “big” moves in political areas, it is more practical to experiment with political reform measures first at local levels. If local political experiments go well and the broader political conditions become ready, they can be adopted as national policies. As He Zengke comments, “He [Yu Keping] wants to find [promising] political reform experiences [at local levels] on time, make them known to party-state officials and top leaders [through the IECLG programme], and provide manageable experiences for China's political system reform.”Footnote 89 Political reform should be step-by-step. Yu hopes to use the IECLG programme as a bridge between political experiments at the grassroots level and political system reform at the macro level, as well as a bridge between officials and academic circles.Footnote 90 The IECLG programme has served as a de facto platform and venue through which Yu can advance his political agenda.
In addition, Yu's good governance discourse also actively advocates several key elements of democracy such as civil society, the political and civil rights of citizens, and rule of law to protect citizens’ rights. It is particularly noteworthy that Yu has been writing extensively to correct government misconceptions about the allegedly damaging roles that civic associations would play in the hope of creating a more favourable environment for the growth of Chinese civil society.
Overall, Yu remains liberal in his basic orientation. He has been actively promoting citizens’ rights to political participation, the growth of civic associations and civil society, local government innovations, and other types of political development. Democratization cannot emerge from nowhere, and preparations encompassing the various elements of democracy remain necessary prerequisites.Footnote 91 In this sense, Yu is constructing the necessary building blocks for a possible democratic breakthrough in the future.
Yu's dual personality is manifest in this discourse. As an establishment intellectual, he does not challenge the CCP by openly embracing even a minimalist Schumpeterian notion of democracy. The phrases “governance reform” (rather than “political reform”) and “moving China towards good governance” (rather than “moving China towards Schumpeterian democracy”), as well as related discussions, essentially are “roundabout ways” to express Yu's innovative political ideas.Footnote 92 Yu's more “neutral” notions of governance and good governance allow him to engage in extensive discussions about the benefits of governance reform without opening a “Pandora's box” of political reform, and hopefully to lay down a lot of grounds, if the more technical ones, for more political changes in the Chinese system in the future.
Owing to Yu's decisive impact, China's good governance discourse serves the purpose of expressing certain political views, most of which are Yu's views. The discourse is non-ideological and non-dogmatic, and it does not compete with the official ideology or other non-official alternatives. In particular, it has not been involved in the new left–liberal debate. The limited criticism of the discourse is mostly academic and has had little impact. Consequently, this discourse is low profile, which partially explains why it has received little attention in China studies.
In broad terms, neo-conservatism refers to those reform-era schools of thought that advocate a middle path between the “old left” and radical liberals.Footnote 93 It follows that, since the late 1990s, a new type of neo-conservatism revolving around the call to “move China towards good governance” has become popular in China's academic community and, to a lesser extent, in government circles and among practitioners. “Moving China towards good governance,” located on the centre-right side of China's ideological spectrum, is the latest attempt to re-conceptualize the reform path, and it is also the latest intellectual effort to propose solutions to CCP rule. Similar to earlier varieties of neo-conservatism, it is a novel intellectual attempt to search for a new developmental model for China.
