Chinese Meritocracy versus Western Democracy: An Artificial Dichotomy

Whether China should be more democratic has been a continuous debate among political theorists inside and outside of the country. Over the last decade or so, much scholarly discussion on the question surrounds the ideas of the political meritocrats, who hold that democratically elected officials should be constrained, if not replaced, by meritocratically selected officials, chosen by means of, for instance, examinations and peer recommendations. This institutional arrangement, most of them argue, is particularly suitable for the circumstances of China. The political meritocrats construct the dichotomy between democracy and political meritocracy by showing that political meritocracy is intimately connected to Chinese culture, and that democracy is in many ways Western. I argue, however, that this dichotomy is artificial and misleading. First, the ‘Chineseness’ of political meritocracy as well as ‘Westernness’ of democracy are often exaggerated by the political meritocrats. Second, the cultural considerations underpinning the Chineseness of meritocracy and Westernness of democracy are not taken as seriously by the political meritocrats’ view on the superiority of ideal meritocratic politics to non-ideal democratic politics, which renders the political meritocrats’ argument about the democracy–meritocracy dichotomy inconsistent.