Bottom-Up Reform

During the “onlookers biting Han” incident (see my previous two articles), I took the opportunity to skim through the legendary “Han Three Essays.” I have to say, Han Han really is better suited to snark than to building arguments…

But on the basic attitude toward these three big concepts, I completely support Han Han: oppose revolution, be cautiously skeptical of democracy, and emphasize and fight for freedom.

Why am I “anti-revolutionary”? In middle school, I did indeed hold some sort of “quality theory” position: the civic quality of the Chinese people was still far too low, there was a lack of self-discipline, and once things got chaotic they would be impossible to rein in. Of course, I haven’t thought that way for a long time now. Even now I still believe that China is not suited to a drop-in Western-style democracy, because political systems are not a universal tool floating outside society and culture; rather, they must grow out of a culture’s own traditions. If China wants democracy, it will necessarily have to let it grow slowly from its own soil.

Western political systems all grew up slowly within their respective cultural environments, whereas those democracies obtained through revolution or air-dropping are mostly in poor shape. Moreover, as Han Han says, revolution is not necessarily democratic, and democracy is not necessarily free. Most of the later nationalist authoritarian states arose from revolutions carried out in the name of democracy. The fiercer the revolution, the more often the despotism. This is no coincidence. As Han Han says, in the early stage of a revolution everyone may have the same demands (anti-corruption), but by the middle and later stages there is simply no such thing as a unified demand anymore. All kinds of intellectuals and artsy youths have always talked past one another and refused to buy one another’s arguments, while ordinary people have always wanted stability and peace. Thus revolution always requires iron-handed leadership; without leadership, revolution will collapse into fragmentation. And whether through popular voting or through hopes for civil war and struggle, the leader who ultimately wins must be the strongman who can hold the situation together. Compared with the present, if it is not a regression, then that is already fortunate enough.

Still, at the very least, why not first achieve universal suffrage with one person, one vote? Don’t we already have the right to vote one person, one vote? It’s just that what we elect is not the highest officeholder. The key point is that the essence of democracy lies not at all in elections, but in dispute. When we look at American elections, we cannot just keep staring at one person, one vote. What matters most in the entire electoral process is not voting but the public debates among the candidates; these debates become part of citizens’ political lives. Debate brings social contradictions into view. The mission of politicians is to express the people’s divisions in exaggerated, sharp, but peaceful and controllable ways, rather than to “harmonize” them away. True harmony is not the absence of differences or contradictions, but a subtle tension maintained among various differences. By contrast, if contradictions and divisions are made to erupt all at once in revolutionary fashion, the result often leads toward a kind of forceful unity; contradictions and conflicts are violently snapped apart and are given no sufficient room to unfold gently, and then fierce conflict will produce an all-or-nothing situation. Those who survive will be hard-pressed to become rich and diverse; instead, they will become even more monolithic.

Therefore, what I hope for is a kind of bottom-up reform: from below upward, slowly stretching out contradictions and conflicts, not treating differences as some terrible flood or ferocious beast, not trying to strangle contradictions in the bud, but gradually unfolding them, adapting to them, and letting people who differ from one another slowly come to accept their differences. This is a bottom-up, gradual process. Once this process has truly begun to flourish, then the top-level system making one adjustment or another will be a natural development, something that falls into place as a matter of course. Was modern Western democracy born from the designs of a small group of intellectuals, or did it rely on certain enlightened rulers to reform themselves and establish it of their own accord? No. Besides the traditional elements of Greek, Roman, and Germanic culture, modern democracy began to germinate with the rise of the guilds; later, the public sphere that gradually took shape thanks to printed books became an even more direct base, and only after these hundreds of years of gestation did the Age of Enlightenment finally emerge.

Some people hear “reform” and understand it as top-down, while hearing “bottom-up” and immediately think of making revolution. But in my view, the desire for a bottom-up revolution and the desire for a top-down reform are not essentially different—they are both, knowingly or unknowingly, expectations of the emergence of a small group of leaders. But don’t fantasize! Even if such forceful leaders really did appear, that would precisely not be a good thing. How can you expect to rely on certain people to lead us toward a society that rejects “being led”?

Of course, I also hope that “those above” will do something; to be precise, what I hope is that “those above” will not do certain things. They should stop making some new “development” in the name of keeping pace with the times. It is inappropriate to try to maintain stability while also keeping up with the times. Real stability maintenance should mean not rushing to cope with new things, new phenomena, and new contradictions, but instead allowing these new contradictions to unfold naturally, being a bit more passive, a bit more lagging, and not acting as the vanguard but as the rear guard—that’s the right way. What the government should guarantee is the people’s retreat, not their advance. If “those above” always want to guide “those below,” always charge ahead of the people to hack a path through thorns and brambles, and cut down contradictions before their sprouts have even appeared before the people’s eyes, then “bottom-up reform” will be extremely difficult to achieve.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.