Chinese Intellectual Discourse on Democracy

Intellectual discourse on democracy has made important impacts on China’s transformation and the Chinese pursuit of democracy. There has been an intense divergence in understanding and interpretation of democracy among the Chinese scholars. In spite of different point of views among scholars in China, there is a growing consensus among them that political reform is the right answer to China’s today’s problems and democracy is a good thing for China. This paper analyzes the on-gong heated debates on democracy. It reviews the main structure, characteristics, and implications of the debates on democracy among three major schools of thought, namely: democracy with Chinese characteristics, liberalism, and New-Leftism.