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Unirule Reading Circle (IV) - On the Selection of Good Leaders in a Political Meritocracy
 
 Author:Unirule  
Time:2014-07-06 14:14:13   Clicks:


 

 On June 9th, 2014, Unirule Reading Circle (IV) was held at Unirule Institute of Economics.

 

Unirule Reading Circle (IV) invited Professor Daniel A. Bell from Tsinghua University to talk on his upcoming book On Meritocracy: China and the Limits to Democracy. This event was also gracefully joined by Professor YAO Zhongqiu (Qiufeng), President of Unirule; Professor SHENG Hong, Director of Unirule; and Mr. ZHI Zhenfeng, Associate Researcher from Chinese Academy of Social Science.

 

Professor Daniel A. Bell started by introducing the political ideal of Confucianism. He thinks the selection of good political leaders according to Confucian ideals is different from that of communism because in Communism there was no state, nor would there be need for governing talents. Then he used the meritocratic traditions of the West to illustrate the selection of political leaders in modern democracy, i.e., the voting mechanism. He believes this system is flawed due to two reasons. Firstly, the electorate is irrational. And secondly, the election can be heavily affected by the present interest which could jeopardize and harm future benefits of the people. Professor Bell believes the selection of political leaders in Singapore, which is meritocratic, brought a very helpful lesson for many countries. And this lesson found its roots in ancient China, but it’s only coming back to life in the post 1990s. Professor Bell then compared the single-party system and the multi-party system. He also listed the advantages and disadvantages of the Imperial Civil Examination System. At last, he proposed an improved method to select political leaders in a democracy.

 

 

Professor YAO Zhongqiu commented that Professor Bell’s book provided a different perspective for modern political theories, which was very important. And the perspective could be summarized as the possibility of discussing benevolent politics beyond democracy. Not only in China, but also in the US, there has been thinking on benevolent politics which was beyond democracy. As written in the Federalist Papers, what the founding fathers of the US tried to establish was a “republic”, instead of a “democracy.” Professor YAO Zhongqiu spoke highly of Professor Bell’s point that benevolent politics should be a mixture of democracy and meritocracy. Pure democracy brought more problems than it was capable of solving. At last, Professor YAO Zhongqiu proposed that what Confucianism could bring to meritocracy was the concept of “Junzi”(君子,or gentleman), i.e., the leader of the society. It also brought about the virtues of Junzi, which are the qualities we looked for in a political leader.

MR. ZHI Zhenfeng believes meritocracy serves as a very important switch of perspectives for political research. He thinks that democracy and meritocracy are both good. It is a shame that people put them in opposite positions nowadays, which he considers narrow-minded. Discussion on meritocracy stemmed from thinking on the challenges for China and the world. One of the challenges was the problems of democracy, for example, tyranny of the majority. The second challenge was the fact that China’s development provided great material to research on political institutions. Mr. ZHI then proposed questions such as how to identify good political leaders; how to select them; and how to maintain their good qualities. At the same time, Mr. ZHI also pointed out several problems that could jeopardize meritocracy, namely, hypocrisy, privileges and corruption, closeness and openness, cronyism, powerful ministers, ethical dilemma, transition of power, terms, bad emperor, and the more discussed problem of meritocracy, i.e., linguistic expressions. At last, Mr. ZHI stated that it would be very helpful to make the best of the two institutions, democracy and meritocracy, and achieve the ideal of benevolent politics.

 

Professor SHENG Hong pointed out that meritocracy is one of the multiple political choices, but it is criticized due to political correctness. And most of the criticism of meritocracy is because of simplified understanding of ideological concepts. Therefore, we should take meritocracy into careful consideration before jumping to conclusions. Professor SHENG then mentioned the background of the discussion on meritocracy, i.e., criticism on the shortcomings of democracy which involves many urgent and difficult problems such as the problem of minorities, and the balance between short term and long term interests. Western democracy has flaws, but we should realize that the development of the western world was attributed to more than just democracy. When Chinese scholars talk about democracy, many cultural and institutional aspects of democracy is actually missing. Professor SHENG thinks that western democracy and the philosophical thinking behind it underpin one another and one of their essential spirits could be found in Chinese culture, too. For example, even in the most democratic country, the US, there are anti-democratic institutions, such as the chief justice of the Supreme Court. However, it is such institution in selecting political leaders that kept the operating of American democracy. Concerning meritocracy, Professor SHENG proposed several questions to be asked and answered. For example, who is to execute meritocracy? How does meritocracy take effect in power transition? And what is the relation between meritocracy and constitutionalism? Besides, Professor SHENG emphasized that the discussion on meritocracy did not mean the current political institution was right and just. And the criticism on the present political system is two-faceted, there is a lack of democracy, and there is a lack of meritocracy.

 

 

This Unirule Reading Circle was hosted by Dr. WANG Jun, Director of Unirule International Cooperation Center.

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