Why Non-Democracy Engages with Western Democracy-Promotion Programs

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sungmin Cho

ABSTRACT Between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s, the Chinese government was distinctly open to the Western offer of democracy-assistance programs. It cooperated with a number of Western organizations to improve the rule of law, village elections, administrative capacity, and civil society in China. Why did the Chinese government engage with democracy promoters who tried to develop these democratic attributes within China? The author argues that the government intended to use Western aid to its advantage. The Chinese Communist Party had launched governance reforms to strengthen its regime legitimacy, and Chinese officials found that Western democracy assistance could be used to facilitate their own governance-reform programs. The article traces the process of how the government’s strategic intention translated into policies of selective openness, and includes evidence from firsthand interviews, propaganda materials, and research by Chinese experts. The findings show how democracy promoters and authoritarian leaders have different expectations of the effects of limited democratic reform within nondemocratic systems. Empirically, reflecting on the so-called golden years of China’s engagement with the West sheds new light on the Chinese Communist Party’s survival strategy through authoritarian legitimation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
A. P. Klimovich

The issue on the first principles of Internet building in China has been considered. An overview of establishment has been made and the specifics of the development of the Chinese information technology industry in recent years has been analysed. The influence of the state policy on digital technology market has been studied. The principles of Chinese authorities’ actions in relation to the domestic and foreign high tech markets have been highlighted. The causes of the Chinese industry rapid development, based on the state activity aimed at supporting the local manufacturers, have been analysed. Protectionism policy defining the government control pattern has been evaluated. Chinese development main program scale, embracing not only national, but also world economics, has been considered. It has been shown how domestic economy policy coincides with Chinese government foreign policy and how it is directly reflected in it. A parallel has been drawn between the principle of establishing of social credit system and the idea of counting merits and drawbacks, laying in the basis of finely built system of rewards and punishments of traditional Chinese society. A connection of this tradition with the official goal of the system, stated by the government of China to teach the Chinese society to become more honest by complete surveillance over people, has been shown. It has been shown how this system classifies people into several categories, creating the lists of those to reward and those to censure. The mechanism of how the state uses private companies’ resources, applying all its power to influence on them, has been considered. A critical analysis of the foundations of the system from the point of view of Western democracy values has been carried out. An overview of development prospects of the studied system and the assessment of the risks associated with it have been made. It has been noted that despite the fact that the basic ideas for the system are borrowed from the international practice of the financial sector, making decisions on authorizing going beyond the judicial system and transferring the classification of people in the lists of good and bad to the level of algorithms run counter to the principles of European and international law.


MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Li Xiguang

The commercialization of meclia in China has cultivated a new journalism business model characterized with scandalization, sensationalization, exaggeration, oversimplification, highly opinionated news stories, one-sidedly reporting, fabrication and hate reporting, which have clone more harm than good to the public affairs. Today the Chinese journalists are more prey to the manipu/ation of the emotions of the audiences than being a faithful messenger for the public. Une/er such a media environment, in case of news events, particularly, during crisis, it is not the media being scared by the government. but the media itself is scaring the government into silence. The Chinese news media have grown so negative and so cynica/ that it has produced growing popular clistrust of the government and the government officials. Entering a freer but fearful commercially mediated society, the Chinese government is totally tmprepared in engaging the Chinese press effectively and has lost its ability for setting public agenda and shaping public opinions. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Marquis ◽  
Juelin Yin ◽  
Dongning Yang

ABSTRACTDespite the prevalence of global diffusion, little is known about the processes by which international practices are adopted and adapted within organizations around the world. Through our qualitative research on the introduction of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting at two leading Chinese companies, we identify a unique set of political mechanisms that we labelstate-mediated globalization, whereby powerful nation-state actors influence the ways in which corporations adopt and adapt global norms and practices. We find that businesses’ needs for political legitimacy from a key stakeholder, in this case the government, leads them to deviate systematically from the global practice in bothformandcontent. These intentional practice adaptations are then legitimized by the government to createinternationalization toolsandlocalized standardsto aid adoption by other organizations. Our findings illustrate previously unidentified mechanisms by which powerful stakeholders such as the Chinese government may mediate, and thereby direct, the ways in which corporations adopt and adapt global CSR practices. Contributions to understanding the political processes of institutional translation in the context of globalization are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhi Ji ◽  
George Abuselidze ◽  
Valeriia Lymar

In the paper, the authors prove that the application of the Chinese currency in the less developed regions reveals that the Chinese Yuan, despite its limited turnover, can replace the national currency. The following positive and negative results on the global financial system are highlighted promoting the internationalization of the digital Yuan: ensuring and unlimited transparency of the government and visibility of internal financial transactions; transparency of all offshore financial transactions within a country as well as of non-resident users; providing a framework for the global financial system and controlling the monetary policies of regional economies that have actively adopted the Yuan. The paper analyses that the strategy of the Yuan internationalization was implemented through the mechanism of the currency swap agreements with central banks of different countries, respectively, the growing international application of the Yuan gradually stimulated the creation of the „Yuan zone". It is proved that the Yuan internationalization has become a part of the state strategy of the Chinese government in transition to a new type of economic growth, so the digital Yuan should eventually replace cash and will become the main innovation in the global financial system since the appearance of digital currency. According to the conducted research, it is shown that the main technology of the state digital currency of China accommodates security technology, transaction technology, and reliable guarantee technology. The system of Digital Currency, Electronic Payment - DCEP includes a digital currency tracking method system and a digital currency management system based on certain conditions. Launch conditions include terms of economic conditions, interest rate terms of the loan, the terms of the subject flow, and time conditions.


1974 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 518-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor C. Falkenheim

In most contemporary developing societies, the responsibility for directing broad social and economic change is assumed by the government. The success or failure of these government sponsored programmes often hinges narrowly on the degree of administrative capacity at the regional and local levels. Programmes which are otherwise well designed and funded at the national level may founder for lack of effective local organization.


Author(s):  
Sheri Berman

The decline of the centre-left over the past years is one of the most alarming trends in Western politics. During the latter part of the 20th century such parties either ran the government or led the loyal Opposition in virtually every Western democracy. Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), once the most powerful party of the left in continental Europe, currently polls in high 20s or 30s. The French Socialist Party was eviscerated in the 2017 elections, as was the Dutch Labour Party. Even the vaunted Scandinavian social democratic parties are struggling, reduced to vote shares in the 30 per cent range. The British Labour Party and the US Democrats have been protected from challengers by their country’s first-past-the-post electoral systems, but the former has recently taken a sharp turn to the hard-left under Jeremy Corbyn, while the latter, although still competitive at the national level, is a minority party at the state and local levels, where a hard-right Republican Party dominates the scene....


2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (5) ◽  
pp. 1440-1452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolin Liu ◽  
Lingling Xu ◽  
Dian Zhu ◽  
Linhai Wu

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer attitudes toward and willingness to pay (WTP) for traceability of tea in China. Design/methodology/approach – The authors used the payment card method to elicit WTP for certified traceable tea and logistic regression model to analyze the factors that affected consumers’ WTP. Findings – The results revealed that most consumers in China were concerned over tea safety; however, their WTP for certified traceable tea was limited. Only income and the degree of concern over tea safety affected the consumer’s WTP for certified traceable tea greatly. When it came to consumers’ WTP a positive price premium, income level, education, and attitude toward traceability of tea significantly influenced the actual premium consumers were willing to pay. Practical implications – The Chinese government and tea producers should pay attention when implementing tea traceability system. First, raising the consumers’ income contributes to the premiums that consumers are willing to pay for certified traceable tea. Second, social groups, consumer organizations and tea producers should popularize knowledge of tea traceability. Third, given the low price premiums that consumers are willing to pay, the establishment of viable traceability of tea in China requires the producers and the government to bear some of the cost associated with the implementation of this system. Originality/value – In past studies on WTP for certified traceable food, the study is focussed on meat in developed countries, and the research has expanded range of study, by conducting a survey in China to determine consumers’ WTP for certified traceable tea, and by empirically examining the main factors that influence the willingness of consumers to pay a price premium for certified traceable tea, as well as the premium that these consumers are willing to pay.


2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan D. Hyde

Randomized field experiments have gained attention within the social sciences and the field of democracy promotion as an influential tool for causal inference and a potentially powerful method of impact evaluation. With an eye toward facilitating field experimentation in democracy promotion, I present the first field-experimental study of international election monitoring, which should be of interest to both practitioners and academics. I discuss field experiments as a promising method for evaluating the effects of democracy assistance programs. Applied to the 2004 presidential elections in Indonesia, the random assignment of international election observers reveals that even though the election was widely regarded as democratic, the presence of observers had a measurable effect on votes cast for the incumbent candidate, indicating that such democracy assistance can influence election quality even in the absence of blatant election-day fraud.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tien-Chin Tan ◽  
Alan Bairner ◽  
Yu-Wen Chen

With the problems of doping in sport becoming more serious, the World Anti-Doping Code was drafted by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2003 and became effective one year later. Since its passage, the Code has been renewed four times, with the fourth and latest version promulgated in January 2015. The Code was intended to tackle the problems of doping in sports through cooperation with governments to ensure fair competition as well as the health of athletes. To understand China’s strategies for managing compliance with the Code and also the implications behind those strategies, this study borrows ideas from theories of compliance. China’s high levels of performance in sport, judged by medal success, have undoubtedly placed the country near the top of the global sports field. Therefore, how China acts in relation to international organizations, and especially how it responds to the World Anti-Doping Agency, is highly significant for the future of elite sport and for the world anti-doping regime. Through painstaking efforts, the researchers visited Beijing to conduct field research four times and interviewed a total of 22 key sports personnel, including officials at the General Administration of Sports of China, the China Anti-Doping Agency, and individual sport associations, as well as sport scholars and leading officials of China’s professional sports leagues. In response to the World Anti-Doping Agency, China developed strategies related to seven institutional factors: ‘monitoring’, ‘verification’, ‘horizontal linkages’, ‘nesting’, ‘capacity building’, ‘national concern’ and ‘institutional profile’. As for the implications, the Chinese government is willing and able to comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. In other words, the Chinese government is willing to pay a high price in terms of money, manpower and material resources so that it can recover from the disgrace suffered as a result of doping scandals in the 1990s. The government wants to ensure that China’s prospects as a participant, bidder and host of mega sporting events are not compromised, especially as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (01) ◽  
pp. 1850001
Author(s):  
FU LAI TONY YU

This study attempts to explain China’s industrial development with special reference to e-commerce. It argues that in a one-party autocratic regime such as China, the collaboration between government officials and private entrepreneurs in strategic industries can promote industrial growth. Since Internet can jeopardize communist party’s goal of maintaining cohesiveness and absolute political power, the Chinese government has imposed surveillance on private operation in all IT operations. Specifically, in e-commerce industry, through collaborations with private enterprises, the communist party can “kill two birds in one arrow.” On the one hand, party members are able to preserve national security and maintain social and financial stability by closely monitoring the private enterprise operation. Moreover, party members can seize tangible and non-tangible benefits from the growth in e-commerce firms. On the other hand, private e-commerce enterprises, by building close connection with public officials and senior party members, can obtain strong support from the government, and thus boosting its business growth. This argument is applied to explain the miraculous growth of Alibaba Group, a private e-commerce enterprise in China. In particular, the paper attempts to show the relationship between the Chinese government and the private entrepreneur in the e-business development and how their collaboration enhances growth in the Internet market.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document