Consultative Democracy or Authoritarianism?

This book theorizes Chinese politics, specifically about China’s “deliberative democracy (xieshang minzhu 协商民主)”. This book theorizes Chinese politics, specifically about China’s “deliberative democracy (xieshang minzhu 协商民主)”. Creating a China-West comparative framework, the author interrogates China's government's claims to give representation to citizens, allowing readers to see how all of these concepts interact within Chinese ideology, democratic discourse, and governance, and their relationship with Chinese authoritarianism. Above all, this book represents a sustained hybridization of political theory, one which is neither a simple democratic-authoritarian dichotomy, nor a reinterpretation of the official propaganda. This study will interest scholars of Chinese politics and statecraft, shedding light on an emergent discourse of the state – Chinese xieshang minzhu. More importantly, this book goes beyond a simple rhetorical and linguistic use of ‘deliberative democracy’ in the Western sense, and rather emphasizes the very consultative nature of Chinese politics, which facilitates and reconsolidates Chinese authoritarianism. Rongxin Li is a postdoctoral fellow at School of Government and Research Center for Chinese Politics, Peking University, China; he holds a PhD from the Research Center of Sociological and Political Study in Paris and Paris 8 University, France.