Xiaoguang Wang: Democracy Is Realistically The Best Choice, But We Cannot Blindly Worship It
If we consider to choose theocracy, tyranny(ruled by ruler), and democracy these three ways to discipline people, democracy is undoubtedly the best one. This is agreed by most people. Yet, it doesn’t mean that democracy is always right, and we cannot have any criticism on it. Besides, democracy has its own range. American’s democracy is only applied to elect American’s president and senators, it never goes beyond America and has no effect on other countries’ election. So the American governmental officials which are elected by American people have no right to intervene China’s affairs. Because Chinese people don’t elect them or give them the power to run China’s business. The other year, when President Clinton pleaded leniency for a young people who violated Singapore’s law, he actually exceeded his jurisdiction. As long as Singapore government punished the young man according their country’ law; as long as Singapore’s government doesn’t insult the young people; President Clinton would have no right to intervene.
Furthermore, we cannot blindly worship democracy. We have no reason to believe that democracy can solve everything. According to China’s condition, we cannot assume that all of China’s tough problems will be solved by introducing democracy; we cannot assume that democracy will definitely help us build a powerful country; we cannot assume that corruption will be eliminated overnight; the workers who are laid off will find their job immediately; the China Banks’ bad debit will be handled with a bang. All in all, we cannot assume that all of China’s critical issues will be solved straight away by democracy.
Especially, we cannot suppose that democratic policy will help China build a solid relationship to all those democratic countries. For example, if Japanese Government still refuses to apologize their crime to Chinese people during the Second World War, if they don’t have the right attitude to regret what they had done before, even a democratic China will probably not bring a good relationship between the two countries.
Regarding to democracy, on one hand, we should pursue it; on the other hand, we cannot expect too much from it. Democracy cannot solve all the problems instantly. Even if we realize democracy, we should still confront many tough problems in our real life. To solve those problems still needs our hard and constant work.
In any case, we should keep pursuing democracy, but in the process of pursuit, we need always to keep our mind, but not go fanatical. The pursuit of democracy requires more reasoning, perseverance, and nonviolent resort; the pursuit of democracy should be justifiable, gradual, strategic, and being done by baby steps. The pursuit of democracy needs firm steps, and it should be started from the grass-roots. Specially, fanaticism and violence should be avoided in the process. If we bring these two elements in, what I am afraid of is, we will eventually end up with no democracy, but another tyranny.
Xiaoguang Wang
2005/8/17
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