Daniel A. Bell's The China Model is an important contribution to the literature of political meritocracy as well as the ongoing debate on the legitimacy of China's political regime. In this book, Bell challenges the dominant view that electoral democracy should be regarded as the only acceptable form of government in the contemporary world, and contends that political meritocracy could provide an alternative. According to his view, China and Singapore are two successful models that prove the feasibility of meritocracy.
Compared to some Chinese political theorists’ effort to go beyond the Schumpeterian understanding of democracy and emphasize the substantial rather than procedural dimension of democracy to justify China's political practices (see [Four Lectures on Democracy], Beijing, 2008), Bell's approach in The China Model is much more challenging. The word “meritocracy,” although often used to refer to the institution and process to select capable leaders and talents, is rarely used in English to describe an overall political system, except perhaps in an ironic sense. Bell attempts to make this world a heavier one, signifying both a political system, and an independent source of political legitimacy.
To further this goal, Bell has no choice but to challenge the doctrine that electoral democracy is the only legitimate model. In Bell's opinion, electoral democracy can easily have a number of negative results: the tyranny of the majority, the influence of money on elections, so-called negative voting, conflicting identity politics, and the divisive social effects caused by all these phenomena. In these respects, China's and Singapore's governance can offer some counterexamples. He also responds to Michael Young's three criticisms of meritocracy: corruption, ossification, and the difficulty to justify the system to outsiders, and argues that all the three problems have its solutions in meritocracy. In Bell's eyes, China represents the “vertical” model of meritocracy among his triple classification, a model with the flexible space of experimentation as well as some benefits of election.
Even in China, Bell's strong defense of China's political system ignited polarized responses. While liberal intellectuals tend to criticize Bell for legitimizing the illiberal status quo, intellectuals identified themselves more with the Confucian and socialist heritages tend to appreciate Bell's sympathetic reading of China's history and contemporary political reality. Especially for most Confucian intellectuals, Bell's effort to explain China's current political system by the Confucian meritocratic ideal is praiseworthy and admirable.
However, since there was significant tension between China's Confucian tradition and the socialist heritage in the 20th century, Bell's work could also be read in the light of this conflict. From my perspective, China's current meritocratic practices have two sources: the classical Confucian-imperial source, and the Leninist-Maoist source. Leninism emphasizes the leadership of a vanguard party consisting of professional revolutionaries. In recruiting party members and selecting party leaders, a Leninist party highly emphasizes the virtue and ability of candidates, although the pool of the candidates is to a certain extent limited by the political trust in peasants and workers. While Lenin set down an elitist political structure, Mao added an egalitarian spirit to the daily operation of this structure: cadres should learn from the mass to approach the truth of history, and go to the mass to test the validity of their understanding of truth. This is the so-called “mass line.” Cadres are required to conduct investigations on people's needs and concerns from time to time, and make response promptly. Therefore, when the party was selecting capable cadres, one's understanding and practice of the “mass line” should be counted as an important part of his virtue and ability.
Bell's work emphasizes the Confucian source of China's meritocracy, but does not discuss the other source in detail. No matter how CCP has changed from its early anti-Confucian attitude to a pro-Confucian tone, it is a solid fact that its basic power structure and various mechanisms stemmed from the revolution of the 20th century. And, to many people's surprise, the People's Action Party in Singapore also bears with it this legacy—since its early days, PAP has learned a lot from the CCP under Mao's leadership, including the idea and practice of “mass line.” To maintain its political leadership, PAP institutionalized the “mass line” and created many mechanisms for the party cadres to understand the needs and concerns of the people on a daily basis. Since the political system can for the most of time respond to the needs of the mass promptly, the mass has little desire to ask for a higher level of political competition (see [Small City-State, Good Governance: State-Building in Singapore], Beijing, 2017).
Classical Confucians did not invent political party. For them, party (党) is a bad word equal to self-interested faction. Living in an age where social hierarchy was taken for granted, classical Confucians even did not need to think about how to maintain meritocracy in a society full of egalitarian desires. It is the 20th century revolution that creates a new type of political organization capable of maintaining a meritocratic political structure while appealing to people's egalitarian mood. Although the revolutionary egalitarianism of the 20th century has faded, and the party turns to the pre-revolutionary traditions for ideological support, its institutional structures and many mechanisms remain stable. Therefore, in discussing China's meritocracy, I believe it is necessary to give Lenin and Mao their due credit. If we do not define meritocracy so narrowly, as a system led by persons with high academic degrees, it would be self-contradictory to recognize Mao as an opponent of Confucian meritocracy, while at the same time calling the institutional structures and mechanisms he created as “meritocratic.”
In his book, Bell soberly realizes it may be hard for a meritocratic system, in establishing its legitimacy, to hold up virtuous statesmen/stateswomen as supreme models for the whole society because it may not sit well with those who are shut out of the system (149–159). Therefore, a meritocratic system may need an egalitarian discourse that each profession of the society could produce successfully role models. In this respect, one can also see that China during Mao's era successfully produced such an egalitarian discourse. Model workers from the frontline of different professions enjoyed high honor in the society. Since the 1980s, the ratio of frontline workers in the model workers has dropped significantly, and the ratio of managers and technicians has arisen rapidly. One could infer from this phenomenon that the selection of model workers has become more out-put oriented, or, more “meritocratic” in its narrow sense. But this may also injure the enthusiasm of frontline workers for the political system as a whole. How to use egalitarian discourse and practice like “mass line” to consolidate the legitimacy of a meritocracy is still a question for China.
In conclusion, Daniel A. Bell's The China Model is an important work for readers interested in meritocracy and the future of China's political regime. To further the discussion on the two topics, one need to delve into the origins and history of the CCP and the People's Action Party in Singapore. Political party is the “modern prince” that steers the ship of meritocracy. Classical Confucianism could help us understand a part of the historical legacy that the party bears, but there are more ideas, institutions, and mechanism to be explored on the meritocratic practices of the party. By observing how the two parties maintain a meritocracy in an egalitarian social ethos, modern Confucian could find new inspirations for the development of Confucianism.
