This author also makes much of subtle distinctions made by scholars on subjects that abut onto the central question of democracy. One of these is the nature of the state.
Does it stand for the mass of the proletariat, defending them against "enemy classes," as it claimed to do in the early days of Chinese communism? Or does it stand for the people as a whole, a far more varied grouping? This, Ding argues, is what it effectively, and sometimes explicitly, does in China today. The enemy classes have been defeated, the argument goes, or anyway incorporated into the system, and the state is no longer operating in confrontational mode.
What this amounts to is the idea of pluralism -- many different kinds of economic and other non-political activity being permitted -- as standing in for the time being for "democracy" as those outside China perceive it. Seen like this, China can easily be made to fit into the required mold.
But as with so many other things, this is "freedom," "democracy" and "rights" China-style. There's nothing wrong with that, necessarily. Only the most intransigent globalizer thinks that the entire world can be steamrolled into a Western pattern, be it American or European. Even so, such nuances are important. China may be loosening up, permitting greater freedom in order to allow economic development to proceed unhindered. And maybe political democracy Western-style is indeed an alien concept there. But it has worked very well indeed in Taiwan, even if certain heroic individuals had to sacrifice their freedom for long periods, and even risk their lives, in order to bring it about.
This book, then, effectively makes a very limited case for a very specially defined form of democratic development. This development is nothing like what the Tiananmen protesters wanted, and the Tiananmen events themselves are still not open to discussion or free analysis, as the recent moves against those perceived as responsible for compiling the book Tiananmen Papers shows.
In this sense, this new book is a variety of special pleading. But, looked at from another point of view, it does seek to educate the Western academic world -- clearly its target audience -- in how mainland Chinese society goes about things. The truth is not always as it is presented in Western propaganda. Nevertheless, it has to be repeated that this book makes a very limited case. Facts that argue for a different perception -- the profusion of political prisoners, the persecution of Falun Gong, the silence over Tianenmen -- are not stressed. This is essentially the case for the defense, albeit shrouded in academic terminology and modestly phrased. For the case for the prosecution you will have to look elsewhere.
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