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China is not converging with the West and there is a distinct Chinese system. Socially, the network of communities and work units is organically connected and overlapping with the vertical and horizontal networks of bureaucracy. This is in sharp contrast to the West, where independent and self-organized civil societies contend for resources through partisan politics. Politically, a unified and neutral governing group under the principle of meritocracy leads a Minben democracy (Minbenism: the only reason for the existence of a government is to serve the welfare and maintain the harmony the entire society, or it will be rightly overthrown), with a division-of-labor mechanism to prevent and correct mistakes. In the West, an electoral democracy of contending parties forms a balance of power under the principle of majority, with an independent judiciary to prevent instability. Economically, the Chinese system features a guided market economy with two functionally differentiated sectors, a state sector and a private sector, which are mutually supportive to avoid market failures. In the West, it is essentially a market economy of free enterprises.

 

Presenter

Wei Pan (Peking University)

 

Participants

Jun-Hyeok Kwak (Director of EAI CVE, Korea University)

Joo-Youn Jung (Korea University)

Jaekwan Kim (Chonnam National University)

Sukhee Han (Yonsei University)

 

About the Presenter

Professor Pan Wei (潘维) is Professor at School of International Studies and Director of Center for Chinese and Global Affairs at Peking University. He was educated in Peking University (BA and MA in International Politics), and received his Ph.D. in Political Science at University of California, Berkeley in 1996. His research interest lies in Comparative Politics, Chinese Politics, and International Relations. He is an author of numerous books, including Farmers and Markets (2003), Rule of Law and the Myth of Democracy (2003), Dragon and Lion Dancing Together (2009), and Contemporary Chinese System (2010). He is also an editor of books including Theory and Practice of Socialist New Countryside (2006), The Thirty Year Changes of Social Values in China (2008), Contemporary Chinese Values (2008), China Model: A New Development Model from the Sixty Years of the People’s Republic (2009), and PRC 60 Years and China Model (2010). He is currently a Visiting Professor at Kyung Hee University, Seoul.