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Paul Jennepin

Indias Tortoise VS. Chinas Hare


They are the two fastest-growing major economies of the world. They are neighbors but
compete one against the other for foreign investment, access to oil and gas, and diplomatic
clout. But the root of their differences in the race for growth and development lies in two
opposite political models. The battle between China and India is one of ideas.
On the one hand, Indias model, based on democracy, due process and the rule of law allows
the country to have a sustainable system that absorbs the peoples mass aspirations and
negative feelings , leading to a deeply harmonious society , which Chinas leader can
currently only dream of Indias democracy might not seem the most stable system at first
sight, but further analysis would reveal a lot of consensus deep down on the political system
and on the engaged process of economic liberalization since 1991. The government seems to
have recently realized that growth must translate into prosperity for all . Indias stability
definitely takes root from the bottom up. However, while democracy and the countrys culture
of individual rights provide a useful check on government and corporate malfeasance, an
organized few can promptly railroad the public interest. Indias wind of change is easily slowed
down by the small but powerful bricks in the wall of Indias democracy. A stable wall, that must
make all his bricks move together in order to make any small step. Every single step is a whole
countrys step : so every single step has a lot of inertia, especially in a country with so many
tiny but well-organized minorities : it takes a long time to make a step, but once a step is
done, it is legitimate and therefore allowed to be durable.
On the other hand, China, with its unbridled government authority, has a very effective model.
However, is a model that puts the public good ahead of individual rights and benefits and
doesnt need or want any consensus among the public durable ? The strength of China is
leadership and vision : its leaders can and do take decisions without engaging in endless
debates. But the Chinese system relies on a stability enforced from the top down, muzzling
the news media and giving all rights to the one party. Chinas future is therefore neither
predictable, nor sustainable : neither the media nor the peoples negative feelings can
indefinitely be muzzled. There are already leaks and mass unrests. In the short-term the
Chinese wind of change is very efficient, because all the bricks in the wall are forced to stay
together by the one party, which even choses the direction in which the wind blows. But the
wind of change blows straight into the face of time like a stormwind that will ring the freedom
bell, and might make the Chinese wall collapse So the issues at stake are : will China
already have become a viable Great Power at that moment, so it can make it through this
stormwind ? May India find a path that all its bricks agree to take together so it can follow
quickly enough the wind of change or will the country be too slow to be a forerunner ?
Both countries are building their path in the race for growth and development. In order to take
the most efficient and durable paths, the Indian tortoise and the Chinese hare will probably
have to learn from one another !

Paul Jennepin

Nowadays things have quite evolved, specially in China. Technology and communication have
played an important role within a globalizing society by empowering the people. However hard
they may try, non-democratic countries are still unable to prevent people from using the
Internet, keeping cross-border connections, travelling or obtaining information about the wider
world. The financial crisis caused a blurring of the border between democracy and
authoritarianism. The Chinese system has essentially become an adjustment to the age of
democratization. From the outside, China still does not look like a democracy and institutional
design has not so much changed in China since 1989. However, since then, China has
succeeded in integrating key democratic elements while preserving the communist
infrastructure of power. For example, Chinese leaders do not stay in power for any more than
ten years, after which a new party leader and president are automatically elected. The Chinese
system, based on the principle of collective leadership, prevents the emergence of
personalized authoritarianism and provides much more checks and balances than for example
Russia, whose system elections are used as the way to legitimize the lack of rotation of power
of a president that has not lost a single election in the two post-communist decades. When it
comes to listening to its people, China is not that bad too : the Chinese government has not
criminalized labour protest so every year hundreds of thousands of strikes become an
important source of reliable information for the government. In the Chinese collective
leadership, having different views is actually seen as legitimate. The loyalty test in China starts
only once the Communist party has taken a decision. Another point is that a sens of general
optimism and rising power seems to have made China more tolerable to dissent on policy
positions. The Chinese Communist party is also doing its best to create different layers of
society, and does try to make the system reasonably meritocratic. The Communist party
serves as a vehicle to recruit and socialise the elites. Finally, Chinese political and economic
reforms are organized around the experimentation of different models in the different regions
and try to figure out what works from the point of view of the leadership. To conclude on the
Chinese system, I would say that it remains of course authoritarian and severe and cannot
satisfy a minimalist definition of democracy (competitive elections with uncertain outcomes).
However, because of the pressure of the system, the different ideas underlying its
transformation, and the countrys involvement on the world stage, its political practices are
much more open than its formal institutions may lead us to believe.
In order to understand that, we should compare the Chinese system, as described before,
and the Russian one. Here is a quote of Ivan Krastev that puts in a nutshell what follows : the
Russians are faking democracy while the Chinese are faking Communism. The first thing to
understand is the important shift that took the Russian and the Chinese system in two
opposite directions at the juncture 1989-1991. Soviet and Chinese both came to realize that
Communism had become a dysfunctional type of system. But while Gorbatchev decided to
preserve socialist ideas and to dismantle the Communist party, the Chinese believed that what
was bad about communism were the Communist, socialist ideas, especially in an economic

Paul Jennepin

sense, and what was good about socialism was the Communist party and its capacity to keep
control of society. That is why the Russian regime, observed from afar, certainly looks like a
democracy. It enjoys a democratic constitution, runs elections, has a multiparty political
system, some free media, etc. China, on the other hand, does not look like a democracy.
Today, the Chinese regime is generally accepted to be much more effective than the Russian
one, and the quality of its decision-making is certainly much better. We could even argue that
it is more democratic than Russia. Chinese regimes are for example much more capable for
self-correction. If we take a look at each key democratic element developed in the previous
paragraph, we can see that China, after scratching a little bit of the surfaces of the systems of
both countries, is probably more democratic than Russia. Putins country has no rotation of
power. In Russia, you dont see strikes, because the price for protesting on labour issues is
very high, so Russias rigged elections are a much weaker test to judge the mood of the
people and the ability of the regional leaders to deal with them than the Chinese test. The
Kremlin broadly tolerates the opposition, but it does not listen to it. The loyalty test in Russia
starts as soon as the president makes a proposal. When it comes to the recruitment of people
to occupy the most important positions in the state and leading industry, studies show that
Russia is merely governed by a circle of Putins friends, which is not a meritocratic system in
any sense. Finally there is no experimenting in the process of trying to build a governable state
in Russia. The country has fashioned a democratic surface, but under it all types of nondemocratic practices are flourishing. Chinas decision-making is undoubtedly superior. Ivan
Kristen say it himself : Over the last two decades, when China was busy with capacity
building, Russia seems to have been pre-occupied with incapacity hiding. Today, Chinas
future looks much brighter than Russias one, especially when you compare the political
systems of both countries.

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