{"id":476,"date":"2008-10-28T09:36:41","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T13:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/guorui\/?p=476"},"modified":"2008-10-28T09:46:11","modified_gmt":"2008-10-28T13:46:11","slug":"liberal-democracy-and-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/2008\/10\/28\/liberal-democracy-and-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel A. Bell: Beyond Liberal Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Daniel A. Bell: Beyond Liberal Democracy<\/a><\/p>\n

(Description of Dworkin’s trip to China)<\/p>\n

Those expressing \u201centhusiasm for liberal values,\u201d Dworkin noted, did
\nvoice their views: \u201call the scholars and almost all the students who spoke
\nabout the issue on various occasions insisted that there was no impor\u00ad
\ntant difference between Western values or conceptions of human rights
\nand their own.\u201d One member of the audience \u201csaid of course the funda\u00ad
\nmental situation of human beings is the same everywhere, that there
\nshould be no more talk of distinctive Chinese values, that China must
\nbegin what he called a \u2018renaissance\u2019 of liberal individualistic values.
\nWhen he finished, the large audience clapped loudly.\u201d Nevertheless,
\nDworkin found it peculiar that members of the audience did not seem to
\nshare his desire to discuss specific cases of human rights violations, lead\u00ad
\ning him to conclude that Chinese academic discourse remains \u201ceerily ab\u00ad
\nstract in a country whose government treats itself as above the law.\u201d
\nWhat Dworkin seems to have learned from his trip, in short, is that Chi\u00ad
\nnese academics cannot mount a successful defense of an Asian philoso\u00ad
\nphy even when given the opportunity to do so. The only question that
\nremains is how to implement liberal individualism in China, which ap\u00ad
\nparently requires greater moral courage and concrete thinking on the
\npart of Chinese academics.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Dworkin\u2019s visit generated less-than-friendly responses.
\nProfessor Liufang Fang, who teaches law at the Chinese University of
\nPolitical Science and Law, opens his critique with a sarcastic account of
\nthe college students who attended Dworkin\u2019s lectures because they \u201cdid
\nnot want to miss the festival-like event.\u201d They could hardly hear any\u00ad
\nthing, but \u201cbeing squeezed in the crowd itself was a joy to many of the
\nstudents.\u201d Professor Dworkin, meanwhile, \u201cunilaterally believed that
\nhis China tour was a valuable opportunity for China to be privy to his
\nideas of liberty.\u201d Ironically, he was taken for a ride by the Chinese gov\u00ad
\nernment. His visit had been organized to showcase China\u2019s new free\u00ad
\ndoms, and the government knew full well that Chinese academics would
\nnot argue publicly about the details of particularly sensitive cases.
\nDworkin seemed unaware of the risks that China-based academics would
\nincur by publicly endorsing his condemnation of the Chinese govern\u00ad
\nment\u2019s handling of such cases. As Professor Fang puts it, \u201cthe truth is
\nthat the degree of freedom of speech is negatively correlated with the
\nrisks borne by the speaker.\u201d Moreover, Dworkin seemed unaware of the
\nextent to which \u201cgeneral discussions\u201d of legal issues by China-based ac\u00ad
\nademics have led to substantial improvements of legal practice. Had
\nDworkin been better informed, he would not have made facile comments
\nregarding the \u201ceerily abstract\u201d Chinese discourse. Professor Fang con\u00ad
\ncludes his essay by suggesting that Chinese professors should spend
\nmore time reading, thinking, and writing instead of wasting time on \u201chot
\nevents.\u201d
\nEven scholars otherwise sympathetic to Dworkin\u2019s theory reacted with
\ndismay. The philosopher Jiwei Ci expresses broad agreement with the
\ntwo principles of ethical individualism spelled out in Dworkin\u2019s article
\n\u201cTaking Rights Seriously in Beijing,\u201d and he praises Dworkin for criti\u00ad
\ncally evaluating his own society on the basis of his moral theory in other
\nworks. However, Dworkin\u2019s theory \u201cwent out the window\u201d when he ad\u00ad
\ndressed the Chinese audience. Rather than appealing to his radical first
\nprinciple (which underpins his critique of economic inequality), he stuck
\nto American political common sense that equates human rights with civil
\nand political rights. As a result, Professor Ci notes, \u201cthe United States,
\nand the West as a whole, emerge triumphantly above the threshold, well-
\nplaced to sit in judgment of the human rights record of the rest of the
\nworld. . . . When Dworkin leaves the Euro-American academic context
\nand takes on the role of observer and critic of China\u2019s human rights
\nrecord, he can come pretty close to an uncritical identification with the
\nmainstream values of the West, at times almost sounding like its moral
\nand political spokesman.\u201d<\/p>\n

How could things have gone so wrong? Yes, Dworkin should have
\nbeen better acquainted with the contemporary Chinese political context
\nand the situation of Chinese academics in particular.<\/p>\n

His less-than\u00admodest demeanor and hectoring tone did not help. The deeper problem,
\nhowever, is that Dworkin made no serious attempt to learn about Chi\u00ad
\nnese philosophy, to identify aspects worth defending and learning from,
\nand to relate his own ideas to those of Chinese political traditions such
\nas Confucianism and Legalism. Whereas earlier luminaries such as
\nDewey and Russell had expressed their admiration of Chinese culture
\nand argued for a synthesis of \u201cEast\u201d and \u201cWest,\u201d\u00a0 Dworkin merely put forward
\nhis own ideas and identified fellow \u201cliberals,\u201d
\nand the \u201cde\u00adbate\u201d rarely moved beyond this starting point.<\/p>\n

Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously in Beijing<\/a><\/p>\n

Fang Liufang,Taking Academic Games Seriously<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Daniel A. Bell: Beyond Liberal Democracy (Description of Dworkin’s trip to China) Those expressing \u201centhusiasm for liberal values,\u201d Dworkin noted, did voice their views: \u201call the scholars and almost all the students who spoke about the issue on various … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,1017,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-in-english","category-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/guorui\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}