[Biweekly Symposium] No. 477: Vertical Limit of the System and the Transition to Democracy
Time: May 24th, 2013
Topic: Vertical Limit of the System and the Transition to Democracy
Lecturer: CAO Zhenghan
Commentators: TONG Zhihui, LIU Haibo, SUN Long, WANG Qinghua
In the symposium, Professor CAO Zhenghan introduced the constitutional rules. He believed that the Chinese constitutionalism means the two-level legitimacy of the public power, and the restraining and limitation of the public power. He also put forward the idea that institutional transformation is the self-betterment and self-development of constitutional rules. He supported his argumentation with four examples where experiments of democratic reforms are taking places on the local level.
Dr. TONG Zhihui believed that the congress’ supervision over the government can be considered as the horizontal division of powers. Local congresses of the people oversee and limit the execution powers. He disagreed with the statement that the party’s control over the congress, and the congress’ supervision over the government can be taken as vertical limit to the public power.
Dr. LIU Haibo thought more research should be done on the reasons why experiments of local democratic reforms were shut down. It did not make sense to have pilot of such practices on the township level, rather than the national level. More efforts should be taken in political reforms. And the executive system should be greatly improved.
Dr. SUN Long thought the concept of two-level legitimacy needed reconsideration. Democracy on the local level is more than often distorted and abused. The current innovation to democracy does not hold constitutional significance. And the top-down political reform was flawed.
Dr. WANg Qinghua thought direct election could hardly be considered as innovation with constitutional significance. Democracy needed institutional support, which resulted in the direct link to the congressional mechanism reforms that promoted direct election of congress representatives on the national level. Local autonomy couldn’t come true without thorough political reforms.
Professor ZHANG Shuguang recognized the methodology taken by Professor CAO. He thought the concept of two-level legitimacy could be improved. Political tools could be abused, which may result distortion of the system in practice. More research should be done on the power distribution and control by the central government. And he held that not like economic reforms, political reforms should take a top-down mode, and should not be experimented.