Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle, Meritocracy and the ‘China Model’

Thomas Carlyle’s knowledge of ancient Chinese literature and political thought, specifically Confucianism, helped shape his political view of heroes and meritocracy. His view of ‘ good government’ might have inspired, in a reverse way, John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy of ‘representative government’, which somewhat converged with Carlyle’s idea of meritocracy by integrating bureaucracy with democracy in government. Carlyle’s advocation of meritocracy in the past finds an echo in contemporary China’s ‘vertical democratic meritocracy’ or rather ‘China Model’. An investigation of the Western political theories raised by Joseph Schumpeter and Daniel Bell as well as the political proposals upheld by some Chinese Neo-Confucianists demonstrates that the traditional dichotomy of meritocracy vs democracy could be problematic under the complicated circumstances of contemporary China. The exercise of ‘selection plus election’ as a model of democratic meritocracy in the mainland of China seems arguably practicable in spite of its many potential problems such as legitimacy of election, abuse of power and vulnerability to corruption.