Countries around the world have long imported European and American scholarship, but the flow in the other direction has been uneven. This is particularly evident in the case of China. Although China's rapid economic growth and emergence as a world power has attracted an enormous amount of attention in the West, very little work by Chinese scholars themselves has become influential outside China. Perhaps the main reason is that Chinese work is rarely translated into European languages; by contrast, the works of Western scholars are frequently translated into Chinese. The result is that we often fail to understand China on its own terms and miss a vital chance for cross-pollination.

Fortunately, things are beginning to change for the better. Three translation series from Chinese to English have been launched of late. Brill's Humanities in China Library, edited by Zhang Longxi and Axel Schneider, aims to translate important works of Chinese scholarship in the humanities. The first book in that series, Tradition and Modernity: A Humanist View, by Chen Lai, perhaps China's most prominent scholar of Chinese philosophy, was published in 2009. The Princeton-China Series (disclosure: I am an editor) will soon be launched, and the first book in that series—Ancient Chinese Thought and Modern Chinese Power by Yan Xuetong, China's most influential foreign policy analyst—will be published early next year.

A third series, The Thornton Center Chinese Thinkers, was launched in 2009. The first book in that series is the book under review, Democracy Is a Good Thing. Yu Keping is an adviser to Chinese President Hu Jintao and one of China's most prominent political scientists. In 2006, the Beijing Daily published a three-page essay by Yu, entitled “Democracy Is a Good Thing,” that created a big splash in intellectual and perhaps policy circles in China. Today, the phrase “Democracy Is a Good Thing” is as well known in China as Francis Fukuyama's phrase “The End of History” in Western countries. This book leads off with Yu's famous essay and includes 12 others, along with an excellent introduction by Cheng Li and a foreword by John L. Thornton, for whom this series is named.

The book is divided into four sections: political development in reform-era China; social transformation and civil society; culture, modernity, and sustainability; and globalization and governance. The essays address diverse topics and do not form a coherent whole. With one or two exceptions, they are relatively brief and addressed to a broad audience rather than to academics. The main interest of the book is political rather than scholarly: To what extent do Chinese leaders favor political reform, and what exactly do they have in mind? Yu is perhaps best placed to discuss such matters, and The Thornton Center should be commended for bringing his views to an Anglophone audience.

So what exactly does Yu say about democratic development in China? Unfortunately, only two essays—Chapters 1 and 3—really delve into that question. Yu is a political reformer in the Chinese context, though he is careful to couch his views in ways that would be politically acceptable to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). There is no discussion of political dissidents, no critique of political leaders, no discussion of what China can learn from democratic developments in neighboring East Asian countries or elsewhere, and no calls for multiparty elections or a more open media to monitor the ruling party. Yu is not particularly unique in feeling constrained—those of us working on the question of political change in China need to pick our battles carefully—but his close connections with the ruling establishment mean that he must be particularly cautious.

Having said that, Yu does put forward some proposals for political reform under the rubric of “incremental democratization.” In Chapter 3, he describes various aims of Hu Jintao's report to the Seventeenth National Congress of the CCP in 2007 and implicitly notes the often large gap between reality and the ideal. He argues for improving democracy at the grassroots level and “then developing democracy at the higher levels,” though he does not mention anything higher than the township level. He also emphasizes “intraparty democracy,” meaning democratic reforms within the 76 million member CCP. As Yu puts it, “if grassroots democracy means pushing forward democracy from the bottom up, intraparty democracy entails doing so from the inside out” (p. 19). He is a bit vague about what that would mean in practice: “The central focus of improving intraparty democracy lies in the reform of intraparty election, decisionmaking, and in revamping oversight systems” (p. 19). However, John Thornton's foreword rather optimistically notes that “one intriguing possibility mentioned by some knowledgeable Chinese, which would represent an important advance, would be for the 371-member Central Committee to elect directly the next Politburo—and perhaps even the Standing Committee—in 2012, when Hu and his comrades are expected to retire and transfer power to the next generation of China's leaders” (p. x).

At some level, Yu is arguing for more open and accountable government. But he also favors more government intervention and regulation of society. For example, he notes that most civil society organizations are not officially registered with the government, hence the need for “a mother law for supervising civic organizations” (p. 69). His recommendations are motivated partly by the need to more effectively deal with problems like environmental protection and poverty alleviation, but the caveat that only civil society groups “that are small, engage in limited activities, and do not concern themselves with important political issues should be registered” (p. 84) is cause for concern.

In Chapter 12, Yu argues against federalism. This essay shows him at his intellectual best: The argument is clear, concise, and thought provoking. He discusses advocates for federalism in China in the early twentieth century and argues that they failed because they seriously misunderstood how it was practiced in Western countries, they underestimated the cultural influence of a unitary political ideal in China, and they did not grasp the extent to which their ideas could be misused by local despots and warlords. But he notes (correctly) that most scholars believe there is no direct link between democracy and federalism.

Perhaps most disappointing, Yu never really does spell out the long-term political goal for China. There should be incremental progress toward what kind of democracy exactly? In his famous essay “Democracy Is a Good Thing,” he recognizes that democracy can go wrong, but he blames “certain politicians who do not understand the objective rules of democratic government” (p. 4). In its essence, “democracy guarantees basic human rights, offers equal opportunity to all people, and represents a basic human value” (p. 4): In short, it expresses the political values we ought to care about. Perhaps the book should have been entitled “A Good Thing is Democracy.” What is clear is that China's political future is bound to be democratic, however we define the term; “political democracy is the trend of history, and it is the inevitable trend for all nations to move toward democracy” (p. 4). But he also notes that China's “construction of political democracy must be closely integrated with the history, culture, traditions, and existing social conditions in our nation” (p. 5). How do we distinguish between good and bad values in Chinese political culture, and how can the good ones shape Chinese-style democracy? These questions are left unaswerered.

What the book does show is a potentially sharp and politically astute mind at work. But the best of Yu comes through only in the more historical chapters, 7 and 12, when he doesn't have to worry too much about the political consequences of what he says. We probably need to wait till Yu retires from politics before he shares his more penetrating thoughts on the present and future state of Chinese politics.