China has challenged the ideological challenge of the usefulness and relevance of Western democracy. that will ever happen, Very few people would have guessed this in the West until recently. China to its system ,Chinese type of socialism says. He has tried to prove his system better than American-style democracy by calling his system a total process democracy. This argument was formulated in its pamphlet by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think tank based at China’s Renmin University. The name of that bookTen questions from American democracy Kept.
American political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s famous book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ was published 29 years ago. A year before that, i.e. in 1991, the Soviet Union had disintegrated. Before that in 1989, Fukuyama wrote ‘The End of History?’. Wrote an article with the title. The same year the Berlin Wall fell, which was seen as a sign of the end of the Soviet camp. So excited by the collapse of the Soviet socialist system as a whole, Fukuyama declared that history had come to an end. That is, with the end of the Soviet Union, that (ideological and class) struggle of history has ended, due to which human civilization has been passing from one era to another in its development.
Fukuyama wrote – ‘This is the final point of the ideological development of humanity. This is the universalization of Western liberal democracy, the ultimate form of human governance. Clearly, Fukuyama argued that after the end of the socialist polity, the only option left was the Western-style capitalist democracy, which would sooner or later be adopted by all the countries of the world. At the time Fukuyama made this claim, not only was the Soviet Union disintegrating, but China’s socialist system also seemed to be in tatters. China had moved towards a market economy and it was believed that sooner or later it would adopt the western style of political system.
It is true that since then till this year no other system or country has presented any concrete ideological challenge to Western capitalist democracy. Islamic systems, based on cultural or traditions, continued to reject the need for Western principles, but they never seemed capable of challenging the Western system on modern criteria of socio-economic development. Meanwhile, the power of the Communist Party remained in China, Cuba, Vietnam etc. But on the front of the ideological struggle, the ruling party and governments there continued to be seen on the defensive. Socialist parties came to power in many Latin American countries—notably Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua during this period. He also did some very successful experiments. But America-led Western countries waged propaganda wars on issues of democracy and human rights, often forcing them to take a defensive stance.
In this form, for nearly three decades, Western capitalist democracy did not see any challenge in the global mainstream discourse. But coming in 2021, the face has completely changed. Signs of this happening were beginning to appear only in 2020, but this year, the ideological challenge China has posed to the usefulness and relevance of Western democracy, it would have been few people in the West until recently. By the way, among the people who had some sense of this happening there, one of the prominent names is Fukuyama. In his new 2018 book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Fukuyama admits that his predictions three decades ago have turned out to be wrong. But the reason for this, he considered the increased demand for recognition in the world. He described the question of identity as the main concept of modern times and said that this concept has emerged as a major challenge for western liberal democracy.
It is pertinent to recall on this occasion that throughout the 1990s, Fukuyama’s then book was in the news. Western intellectuals and politicians often refer to it. The end of history remained a well-known jumla. But in the second decade of the 21st century, when Western systems themselves appeared to be in turmoil, intellectuals there began to realize that their faith in the supremacy of their ‘democracy’ was being shaken. Fukuyama said in his 2018 book – The reason behind all the current dissatisfaction with the global liberal order is the demand for identity: Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Xi Jinping, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, gay marriage, ISIS, Brexit, emerging He saw European nationalism, anti-immigration political movements, university campus politics, and the election of Donald Trump as a result of the discontent that had arisen because of this.
Possibly being trained in Western liberal intellectual discourse, Fukuyama’s vision did not reach the deepening fundamental crisis of neo-liberalism. It is for this reason that he, and most other Western intellectuals, has been unable to see how the economic system on which his liberalism and democracy rests has put himself in jeopardy. Although the symptoms of this crisis were showing even earlier, but in 2020, the Kovid-19 epidemic exposed it completely. Fukuyama and other Western intellectuals due to their same training did not even recognize the fundamental reason behind the rise of China in time.
Indeed, the crisis of Western democracy has also been exposed on this occasion because China, running with its own system of political organization, has so far controlled the epidemic with more efficiency and less human damage. The relatively superior success of Vietnam and Cuba in keeping their people safe has also exposed the weaknesses of Western liberalism.
Against this background, the claim of western liberal democracy as the best form of governance was bound to be challenged sooner or later. But instead of introspecting on this weakness or failure of the Western countries – especially America, instead of starting a new kind of cold war against China, it has accelerated this process. The result is that even before the end of 2021, China has retaliated on issues like democracy and human rights. Although in 2020, when former US President Donald Trump campaigned on strategic issues along with imposing a variety of trade sanctions against China, China had started this debate since then, but it has become a full ideological battle. The current US President Joe Biden has given him the opportunity to give it.
Biden had promised at the time of his presidential election in 2020 that if he won, he would organize a ‘summit of democracies’ (summit of democratic countries) in the first year of his term. But then it was understood that Biden would sit down with the leaders of countries going down on the criteria of democracy to discuss the phenomena that led to the rise in these countries. Such a retrograde phase has come. Conversely, after becoming president, Biden made the proposed summit an opportunity to mobilize “democratic countries” (meaning countries that the US considers in its camp) against “dictatorial countries” (meaning China and Russia). This summit took place on 9 and 10 December through virtual medium, in which more than 100 countries including India were invited.
China understood that this summit was actually part of the US strategy to surround it. So instead of being defensive on this occasion, he has taken an aggressive approach. On this occasion, China has officially released two long documents. Simultaneously, a debate on the question of democracy was started on the Chinese media. Think tanks associated with Chinese universities have published special documents or pamphlets on this occasion. An official document of China has been published titled ‘China: An Effective Democracy’. In this, China has called its system ‘whole process democracy’. He has said that the people are at the center of this system and this system works for the people. China’s second official document is ‘State of Democracy in America’. It describes in detail the shortcomings and crises of American democracy.
Joseph Stalin, the then head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, claimed that socialism was the best form of democracy. China calls its system ‘Chinese type of socialism’. But in this debate he has not insisted on this mention. Rather, it has tried to prove its system better than American-style democracy by calling its system a total process democracy. This argument was formulated in its pamphlet by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think tank based at China’s Renmin University. The booklet was named ‘Ten Questions to American Democracy’. Here is the question:
- Is American Democracy for the Majority or for a Few?
- Does the system of barriers and balances in America balance power or promote abuse of power?
- Is the system for the welfare of the people or is adding to their troubles?
- Does the American system protect liberty or is it hindering it?
- Does it protect or violate human rights?
- Does the American system increase the feeling of unity among the people or the feeling of division?
- Is she making dreams come true or has become a nightmare?
- Has American democracy reformed the national system or led the system to failure?
- Is the American system a source of growth and prosperity in other countries or of destruction and turmoil?
- Is America protecting world peace and development or ignoring the international order?
The document cites several arguments and reference sources in favor of negative answers to these questions.
Describing the merits of its system, China has made a special mention of its successes in eradicating poverty and controlling the epidemic. While the second document mentions racism and political polarization in America. Along with this, the attack on Capitol Hill (US Parliament House) on January 6 this year by Trump supporters has been mentioned and has been described as a sign of increasing turmoil in America.
Obviously, China (as well as anti-US countries like Russia and Iran) will be targeted while discussing dictatorship and human rights in the summit of democracies organized by the US. But even before that, China has made it clear that it is not on a defensive position in this ideological battle. Perhaps China’s assessment is that it has a favorable opportunity to claim the superiority of its system and publicize its facts and arguments. It has built a line of supporters around the world through its Belt and Road Initiative and vaccine support. It has presented an opportunity for countries from Asia to Africa and Latin America to break away from Western domination. Meanwhile, he has also strengthened his promotional medium, due to which he is able to spread his word across the world.
On the other hand, the economy of Western countries has been in crisis for 13 years. The vulnerabilities of their health system and infrastructure are now openly exposed to the world. In such a situation, after challenging their military and technical supremacy, China has now decided to face them on the ideological and moral front as well.
The result of this newly created situation will be that the ideological divide in the world will again become sharp. The last time this sharp ideological divide was born out of a confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union. Then Western liberalism won. But this time the conditions are not favorable for the West. What will be the outcome of the new ideological struggle (and the Cold War) cannot be predicted yet, but Western countries may not be able to make democracy and human rights as effective weapons as they did during the previous Cold War. were successful in Then these weapons proved to be very useful in defeating the Soviet camp. But this time in the hands of the West, these weapons seem somewhat rusty, while China seems to be successful in adopting an aggressive posture with a new and different definition of them.
