Democracy and rule of law construction in the process of modernization in ethnic areas

Author: Zeng Xianyi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-08-01
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II. The Path of Building Socialist Democracy in China
The goal of building socialist democracy in China is to establish a democratic state. This democratic state is composed of the following elements. A well-established system of democratic elections, decision-making, management, and supervision, which ensures that the people are masters of the country, mobilizes the enthusiasm of all political parties, social organizations, and strata of the people to participate in politics, guarantees the normal operation of state power, ensures the integrity and efficiency of the government, effectively supervises the behavior of state organs and their staff, effectively protects the legal rights of citizens, upholds the equal rights of all ethnic groups within the country, strengthens national unity, consolidates the existing ethnic relations, and facilitates the rule of law and the construction of a socialist rule-of-law state. Second, citizens have fully developed democratic rights. This full democratic right is not only reflected in legal norms but must also be implemented in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, and social life. The people enjoy broad rights and freedoms under the law, and the state and society respect and protect human rights. At the grassroots level, the people directly exercise their democratic rights, implementing open elections, disclosing government affairs and finances, allowing the public to participate in discussions and decisions on grassroots public affairs and public welfare undertakings, and implementing democratic supervision over cadres. Third, the whole society must have conditions and an environment for the operation and development of democracy. This means that the main body of society, including state organs, personnel of state organs, social organizations, economic and cultural organizations, and individual citizens, must possess modern democratic concepts and awareness, making democracy a habit and an everyday, self-evident part of life. The political report of the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that the current tasks of democratic construction consist of three aspects:
First, improving the democratic system. This includes: reforming the current political system and government structure in line with the needs of developing a socialist market economy, rationally setting government management functions and administrative bodies to form a political system that adapts to the socialist market economy system. Adhering to and improving the people's congress system to ensure that the National People's Congress and its standing committee legally fulfill the functions of the state power organ, gradually forming a decision-making mechanism that deeply understands public sentiment, fully reflects public opinion, and widely concentrates public wisdom. Strengthening the supervision and restriction of the work and power of state administrative organs, judicial and procuratorial organs to guarantee the effective implementation of the state constitution and laws. Adhering to and improving the system of the Communist Party of China-led multi-party cooperation and political consultation, further promoting the standardization and institutionalization of the political consultation, democratic supervision, and participation in politics functions of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Improving the democratic supervision system. Forming a top-down supervision system to ensure that the power of all levels of state organs is truly used under the supervision of the people, and that state organs truly exercise the power of the people for their service. Improving grassroots democratic elections, democratic management, democratic decision-making, and democratic supervision systems. Second, strengthening the rule of law. Strengthening legislation, law enforcement, and judicial work to ensure that there are laws to follow, laws must be enforced, law enforcement must be strict, and violations must be punished. Adhering to civilized legislation, civilized law enforcement, and civilized adjudication to truly institutionalize and legalize modern democracy. Third, maintaining stability and unity. Using various means to properly handle internal contradictions among the people. The party committees and governments at all levels must wholeheartedly resolve contradictions and issues in the masses, care about the suffering of the people, and solve practical problems for them to prevent contradictions from escalating. At the same time, it is necessary to maintain social order to ensure that China's economic construction and democratic construction proceed in an atmosphere of stability and unity.
China's democratic construction has its own unique path and methods. This is because, first, China is a developing country, and the current central task is to carry out economic construction, develop the socialist market economy, and improve the material and cultural living standards of the people. To smoothly carry out economic construction, China must advance democratic construction, raise the level of social civilization, and strive to create a political situation that is both democratic and centralized, both free and disciplined, both harmonious and stable, and full of vitality. The development of democracy is carried out on the premise of creating good conditions for economic development and also serves the economic development. In this regard, what are the difficulties in building democracy in China? Simply put, China cannot develop democracy for the sake of democracy; the development of democracy must be adapted to the development of the economy. This is determined by the national conditions of China's primary stage of socialism. The primary stage of socialism in China is a long historical stage, which is a historical stage of gradually shedding underdevelopment and basically realizing socialist modernization; a historical stage of gradually transforming an agricultural country with a large proportion of agricultural population and manual labor into an industrialized country with a majority of non-agricultural population, including modern agriculture and modern services; a historical stage of gradually transforming a natural economy and semi-natural economy with a large proportion into an economy with a high degree of marketization; a historical stage of gradually transforming a large proportion of illiterate and semi-illiterate population and backward science, education, and culture into a relatively developed stage of science, education, and culture; a historical stage of gradually transforming a large proportion of impoverished population and relatively low living standards into a relatively prosperous stage for all the people; a historical stage of gradually narrowing the imbalance in regional economic and cultural development through development with different priorities; a historical stage of establishing and improving a relatively mature and vibrant socialist market economy system, socialist democratic political system, and other systems through reform and exploration; a historical stage where the broad masses firmly establish the common ideal of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, strive for self-improvement, forge ahead with determination, work hard, practice thrift in building the country, and strive to build a spiritual civilization while building material civilization; and a historical stage of gradually narrowing the gap with the advanced world and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on the basis of socialism.
Then, under current conditions, what level or degree of democracy can adapt to economic development? In my opinion, in the primary stage of socialism, China's transformation from backwardness to a relatively developed level in terms of economy and culture is achieved in stages and in different regions, which determines that China's democratic development is not the central task, cannot be done all at once, and cannot advance uniformly, but can only proceed with democratic development in line with the corresponding level of economic and cultural development. This process cannot be rapid but must be steady, and must be carried out under leadership in steps. Second, China is a country without a democratic tradition. The long feudal society was an autocratic society with centralized power. The rigid class system and the "the emperor is the world" autocratic system were both the basic structure of the feudal autocratic regime and the soil conditions for cultivating a new autocratic system. Non-democratic concepts such as class consciousness, privilege consciousness, blind loyalty, the concept of a virtuous official, and the concept of imperial power were widespread in society. During the long feudal society, the ruling class's thinkers also preached the idea of valuing the people, and the ruling class also implemented people-friendly policies, but these were based on maintaining autocratic imperial power. The feudal society in China implemented autocratic politics, and the essence of the political system was autocratic imperial power, with the basic strategy of governance being ritual governance, that is to say, autocratic imperial power was realized through ritual governance. This historical tradition inevitably affects the process of democratic political construction in the new China. That is to say, we cannot complete the construction of socialist democratic systems, rights, awareness, and concepts in a short time. Therefore, developing democratic culture, eliminating the negative effects of history, reforming the planned economy system, and reforming the overly centralized political system are essential links in developing socialist democracy. Since the reform and opening-up, we have made great strides in economic system reform, and the socialist market economy system is being established and improved; we have also made solid progress in political system reform, and the goal of governing the country according to law and building a socialist rule-of-law state has been written into the constitution. The state has also adopted measures to develop democratic culture and has done a lot of work in building socialist democracy, achieving good results. However, it will take a considerable period of time to truly build democracy as a national system and as the rights of citizens, especially to cultivate democratic concepts and awareness among cadres.