Wang Jing: Theoretical Connotations and Global Significance of the Unique Concept of Democracy Contained in Chinese Modernization

The unique outlook on democracy contained within Chinese-path modernization is a vital ideological driver for its success. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that the unique outlook on democracy inherent in Chinese-path modernization and its grand practice "represent a major innovation in the theory and practice of world modernization." Because the logic of capital is the dominant logic of Western modernization, the liberal-democratic outlook formed therein is necessarily an ideology maintaining the valorization of Western capital. This outlook on democracy has already pushed the political development of some countries into the predicaments of democratic backsliding, governance deficits, and political polarization.

Within the conceptual history of world modernization’s democratic theory, 20th-century scholars of democratic transition criticized the "linear view of development" and "regime dualism" of Western democratization theory for failing to explain the diverse political developments of late-developing countries. Post-modern theorists have used post-modern values and global democracy to deconstruct the theoretical foundations of Western liberal democracy. Western left-wing scholars have employed deliberative democracy and consultative democracy to remedy the issue of insufficient representation in liberal democracy. However, because these theories lack the practical support of real-world democratic practice and a profound understanding of the logic of capital in Western democracy, they have been unable to theoretically transcend the Western liberal-democratic outlook or provide theoretical guidance for the increasingly prominent crisis of political modernization. As Marx and Engels pointed out in their critique of German ideology: "The driving force of history, as well as of religion, philosophy and any other theory, is revolution, not criticism." Tremendous transformations in democratic practice provide powerful real-world material for the development of concepts; a revolution in democratic concepts can only be truly realized within actual democratic practice. This article presents the theoretical connotations of the unique democratic outlook contained in Chinese-path modernization by critiquing the essence of the liberal-democratic outlook of Western modernization. It demonstrates that this unique outlook transcends the Western liberal-democratic outlook in both theory and practice, which is of great significance for promoting the evolution of world democratic views and the cause of human democracy. It also provides a useful perspective for a profound understanding of Chinese-path modernization's innovation in world modernization theory.

I. The Essence of the Liberal-Democratic Outlook in Western Modernization

Western modernization began with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, in which political democracy served as the signifier of the West launching into modernization. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Western thinkers represented by Montesquieu, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill propagated and argued for concepts such as "natural rights," the "separation of powers," and "liberal democracy," forming the basic core of the Western liberal-democratic outlook. In the 20th century, as developed capitalist countries suffered severe blows from economic crises and the Soviet Union achieved great success in socialist construction, socialist democracy became a new political model for modernization; "Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country" ^[1] became the new benchmark of the era. After World War II, to prevent socialist democracy from threatening their bourgeois rule, Western capitalist countries launched a movement to seize the "naming rights" for the concept of democracy. Through the interpretations of scholars such as Sartori, Schumpeter, Dahl, and Almond, the subjective element of "the people" was stripped away from democracy, and electoral democracy and procedural democracy became the authoritative definitions.

Simultaneously, the wave of modernization led by Western countries laid a factual foundation for the establishment of the Western liberal-democratic outlook. The leadership status of Western nations in the historical evolution of modernization also prompted the birth of classical Western modernization theory. Classical modernization theory interprets modernity based on modern industrial civilization; taking the "rational man" as its logical starting point, it insists on the supremacy of capital, promotes instrumental and secular rationality, and advocates liberalism. After World War II, the Western world used Western modernization theory to examine the global wave of democratization, concluding that modernization is Westernization and that economic modernization inevitably leads to political democratization.

Thus, the generation and evolution of the liberal-democratic outlook intertwined with the developmental logic of political modernization to constitute the liberal-democratic theoretical system inherent in Western modernization. First, it emphasizes that the property rights system is the key to driving Western modernization, and that democratic construction must be based on property rights and market order to safeguard individual rights. Second, the core of the Western liberal-democratic outlook is using power to check power and guarding against state infringement on individual freedom, manifested in the system of separation of powers, pluralistic governance mechanisms, and regional decentralization. Third, it constructs a "Western-centric" historical narrative of liberal democracy, claiming that it was precisely because Westerners possessed the democratic traditions of Ancient Greece and Rome and had undertaken early experiments with representative democracy and republicanism that they were able to launch the wave of democratization before other civilizations. Fourth, it formed a knowledge system of democratic institutional construction and linear development, establishing the Western liberal-democratic model as the exemplar.

However, the liberal-democratic outlook contained in Western modernization conceals its essential attribute as a hypocritical democracy under the logic of capital.

First, the myth of the property rights system inverts the relationship between capital and democracy, framing democracy as a servant of the market economy. Douglass North pointed out that the property rights system, judicial system, and constitutional democracy established after Britain's "Glorious Revolution" created a secure and stable investment environment for Britain's first industrialization, enabling Britain to become a powerful nation. However, the use of static cost-benefit analysis by New Institutionalist political science to explain dynamic institutional change is a "square peg in a round hole" ^[2] absurdity; the Western constitutional democratic systems they extol are the products of the bourgeoisie protecting commercial capitalists, stock speculators, and large manufacturers. Western modernization is a capital-led modernization; the logic of capital is to realize capital valorization through the continuous expansion of reproduction. On one hand, Western liberal-democratic institutions protect capitalist ownership and distribution systems, thereby liberating the productive forces previously oppressed under feudal hierarchy. On the other hand, the property rights system—built on the basis of capitalist relations of production and serving as a tool of capital—has also become a shackle suppressing the independent individual in modern society. In a capitalist society, workers without assets lose the means to arrange and realize their own way of life according to their independent will; what "freedom" remains is dominated and coerced by the managers of capital. As Marx said, "Capital is clearly a relation, and can only be a relation of production." Bourgeois liberal democracy is nothing more than a specific formal determination emerging from the capitalist economic process. These ideas and democratic institutions define the relational needs of capital as an exchange process between people, and the democratic system is likewise understood as a process of exchange between the rights of the individual and the state. This obscures capital as the essential logic of capitalist democracy, makes maintaining the market economy an inherent requirement of political modernization, and turns capitalist representative democracy into part of a state power characterized by "capital enslaving labor."

Second, the political logic of "elections-above-all" conceals the elite-democratic essence of Western modernization, restricting democracy to the act of voting. In the process of Western modernization, representative democracy, parliamentary systems, electoral systems, and party systems together constitute the pillars of Western political functioning. From the mid-20th century onward, Schumpeter’s "competitive election" model became synonymous with the "American-style" liberal-democratic outlook of Western modernization. Schumpeter rejected the idea of the "will of the people" in classical democratic theory; he also rejected the idea of popular political participation, believing that individuals are irrational, easily manipulated, and lacking a sense of responsibility. After comprehensively dismantling the foundations of classical democratic theory, he defined democracy as a means—an institutional arrangement—asserting that the essence of democratic politics is the rule of politicians. This concept simply and effectively led people to believe that democracy is merely a competitive system of free voting. The Belgian political scientist David Van Reybrouck argues that the fundamental reason the current Western society suffers from "Democratic Fatigue Syndrome" is that they have all become "electoral fundamentalists," blindly believing the ballot box to be the foundation of popular sovereignty. This belief in the supremacy of elections not only fails to help reach policy consensus but also tends to dissolve the people's sense of participation efficacy, lower citizens' consultative skills, and neglect substantive democratic values. More importantly, elections have become a democratic ritual where the people overlook the fact that election results are determined by games played among elites.

Third, the historical myth of liberal democracy provides a foundation of legitimacy for global capital expansion, packaging "democracy promotion" (democracy output) as a moral mission to "save the world." Democracy is not an institutional form unique to Western countries; it is a primitive mechanism that has existed since the dawn of human civilization, foundations of which can be found in the myths and epics of all nations. However, theorists of Western modernization treat the Greco-Roman democratic republic, British constitutional democracy, and American competitive democracy as the "orthodoxy" of human democratic history. Consequently, the "regional" liberal democracy of the West became a "universal" political value for the world. This theory of Western liberal-democratic superiority opened a moral window for the external expansion of Western modernized nations. As early as the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the U.S. Democratic Party began promoting the victory as the glory of "democracy"; during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson proposed an alliance of democratic nations to guarantee peace. Since then, nearly every U.S. president has made "exporting democracy" a major plank of foreign policy. David Harvey pointed out that since the late 19th century, the United States has gradually learned to universalize its own values without spatial distinction, masking clear intentions of territorial acquisition and occupation under this mask. Capitalist countries, in the process of modernization, all face recurring crises of surplus capital and surplus labor; expanding territory is a primary path for developed Western nations to solve this crisis. Promoting the superiority of liberal democracy, supporting various pro-U.S. forces, controlling cultural dissemination, and providing economic aid are all means by which Western countries make late-developing nations "willingly" become part of the chain of their global capital plunder.

Fourth, the meta-narrative of liberal democracy monopolizes the cognitive framework of world democracy, shaping Western-style democracy into the "End of History." Under the collusion of Western modernization scholars and liberal democratic scholars, the establishment of Western liberal-democratic institutions became a criterion for judging political modernization. Western rationalism and linear historical determinism are the deep roots of Western liberal-democratic monism. Western rationalism essentially manifests as egocentrism, absolutism, and universalism, holding that reason occupies a supreme position. Correspondingly, the theory of institutional rational construction holds that institutions are the result of human rational design, where decision-makers can choose the optimal institution to achieve a goal. This rationalism, when reflected in democratic institutional reform, further reinforces the institutional advantages of Western early-movers, becoming the "moral justification" for developed Western countries to interfere in the institutions of late-developing countries. Simultaneously, linear historical determinism insists on the continuity of temporal sequence, denying the spatial composition of history and its diverse, unfolding processes, while emphasizing the mechanical and teleological nature of history. Thus, Western liberal democracy is viewed as the progress of historical development and the ultimate goal for other countries and democratic developments. This discourse has gradually become "rational and universally significant thought." In essence, Francis Fukuyama’s reasoning regarding the "End of History" commits the error—long ago criticized by Marx and Engels—of viewing the historical process as an external process operating independently of human beings. It also commits the error of abstract humanists like Feuerbach and Stirner, who view the abstract "Man" as the creator of history. Fukuyama uses the "master-slave dialectic" and the "struggle for recognition" to argue for the universality of liberal-democratic institutions; such abstract reasoning and its conclusions cannot serve as the theoretical basis for the entire historical development of democracy.

II. The Theoretical Connotations of the Unique Outlook on Democracy Contained in Chinese-Path Modernization

Chinese-path modernization is essentially different from Western capitalist modernization. This difference is not merely a conceptual opposition between the "particularities" of "China" and the "West," but stems from the fact that Chinese-path modernization is built on a thorough critique of the capital logic of capitalist modernization and is rooted in the value concept of achieving the modernization of the human person. The outlook on democracy contained in Chinese-path modernization is the ideological crystallization of the integration of the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and with China’s fine traditional culture. The connotations of this unique outlook mainly include the following aspects:

1. Adhering to a value-orientation of democracy that puts the people first.

An outlook on democracy refers to people’s views and attitudes toward democratic issues such as democratic values, the subjects of democracy, the essence of democracy, democratic institutions, the democratic process, and democratic evaluation. Democratic values are the core of an outlook on democracy; they determine its fundamental direction and embody the fundamental question of "for whom" democracy exists. "The essence of modernization is the modernization of the human person." The awakening of individual subjectivity is a necessary prerequisite for modernization, and the free and comprehensive development of the person is one of its goals. Although Western modernization possessed the advantages of an early-mover, its logic of capital constrained its developmental limits, failing to take the realization of human value as its fundamental purpose; its liberal-democratic outlook likewise became a tool for disciplining the masses and controlling thought.

Unlike Western countries that restrict "the people" to an abstract, holistic state, the Chinese people have always been the real political subjects in the process of China’s modernization development. They are...

"The fundamental deciding force of the nature of the state, its political direction, and its policy processes." This is determined by the essential difference between socialist democracy and capitalist democracy. Socialist democracy is built upon a foundation of the public ownership of the means of production, enabling the genuine realization of economic equality and the consolidation of political equality. Socialist democracy is a democracy shared by the vast majority of people; members of society are not only the practitioners of state power but also direct participants in the management of public and economic affairs. Socialist democracy is a democracy with the fundamental goal of ultimately achieving the liberation of labor; thus, it places greater emphasis on actual people achieving individual liberation and social development through collective participation within society. Therefore, in the process of the CPC leading China toward modernization, guiding the people to seize political power and establish their own state, serving the people wholeheartedly, and ensuring the benefits of modernization reach all people have become the core tenets of the CPC’s advancement of socialist democracy and the practical requirements of the "people-centered" democratic value system. Specifically, the standing of the people is the starting point of the people-centered view of democracy; achieving the people’s happiness is its livelihood orientation; and "the people are the lands and the lands are the people" ^[3] is the vivid manifestation of this view. When the people become the core of modernized politics, the predicament of Western modernized democracy is dissolved at its source. The problem of Western modernization is essentially a problem of the "economic base shackling the superstructure, and the erosion of the values of modernization and equality in the name of freedom." The restrictions on democracy, the fear of the people, and the dependence on capital all stem from this. Chinese-path modernization regards the people as the fundamental purpose of modernized development, taking the promotion of social fairness and justice and the enhancement of the people’s wellbeing as its starting point and ultimate goal. The unique view of democracy contained therein possesses the significance of transcending capitalist "capital-democracy" and ultimately achieving the modernization of Man.

2. Adherence to a democratic institutional view where the people act as masters of the country. Institutional modernization is a core component within the system of modernization and the vehicle for the rules that drive a country from tradition to modernity. Western liberal democratic systems believe in "using power to restrain power." They construct electoral systems to restrain autocratic power through the number of votes; they design party systems to restrain the dominance of a single party through partisan struggle; and they implement systems of separation of powers to check and balance power and prevent its concentration. This set of democratic institutional views extracts the substantive participation of the people from democracy, instead exacerbating "political vetos" and reducing the efficiency of national governance, becoming a stumbling block to institutional modernization.

The CPC has led the people in creating a comprehensive, extensive, and organically integrated system of institutions for the people to act as masters of the country. In the early stages of China's modernization, the CPC proposed the establishment of a "truly democratic republic," the "Chinese Soviet Republic," and the "New Democratic Republic," respectively. They explored the Soviet system of the integration of legislative and executive powers in the Central Revolutionary Base Area centered on Ruijin, established the consultative council system in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and introduced the "Three-Thirds System" ^[4]. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the "People's Democratic Dictatorship" was formally written into the Constitution; this was the most concentrated conceptual manifestation of the democratic practices of the communists during the New Democratic period. Entering the New Era, the report to the 20th CPC National Congress pointed out that whole-process people’s democracy is one of the essential requirements of Chinese-path modernization. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee required improving the levels of institutionalization, standardization, and proceduralization of whole-process people's democracy. From the cognitive and developmental trajectory of democratic institutional practice, one can clearly see that the concept of the people acting as masters of the country has always been embedded in institutional construction.

In terms of institutional functions, the CPC provides the ultimate political guarantee for the realization of the people acting as masters of the country through its value orientation, organizational mechanisms, and development strategies. The system of People's Congresses ensures that the state power exercised by the people through congresses is unified, rather than being divided into three independent powers, allowing the will of the people to be expressed in the most direct, complete, and authentic manner. The system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CPC breaks through the traditional framework of old-style party systems, creating a composite model combining "leadership-cooperation" with "ruling-participation." The system of regional ethnic autonomy organically combines the minority peoples acting as masters of their own affairs with the political integration of a multi-ethnic state through the autonomy of ethnic minorities, the enjoyment of equal rights by the broad masses of ethnic minorities, and the support for economic development. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC has embedded primary-level Party organizations into primary-level community self-governance organizations. By innovating organizational mechanisms for democratic decision-making at the grassroots, improving procedures for democratic deliberation, and perfecting mechanisms for democratic supervision, it ensures that grassroots citizens are informed, involved, heard, and able to supervise affairs concerning them. In short, the democratic view built upon the institutional system of the people acting as masters of the country consistently adheres to a people-centered approach, incorporating concrete, actual individuals into the entire national political system. This turns abstract popular sovereignty, diverse interests, and pluralistic claims into reality through the subjective form of "acting as masters."

3. Adherence to a democratic process view of whole-process people's democracy. The expression and realization of one's own interests through democratic forms is an important component of democratic practice. In the Western view of modernized democracy, this is often called "political participation," including elections, voting, demonstrations, strikes, and lobbying; it is also where proponents of Western liberal democracy believe they are more advanced than the modernization of late-developing countries. However, these methods of political participation only remain at the stages of expressing opinions and political communication—the "political input" phase of contemporary political operations—while rarely involving crucial parts such as political decision-making, execution, and supervision.

The CPC has led the Chinese people in exploring, establishing, and continuously developing whole-process people's democracy, pioneering a new form for the realization of people's democracy. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that whole-process people's democracy "is a democracy that covers all links, all aspects, and all sectors; it is the most extensive, genuine, and effective socialist democracy." It is a "full-chain" democracy because the "five democracies" ^[5] are interconnected and interlocked, covering the entire political system. It is an "all-aspect" democracy because democratic consultation, decision-making, management, and supervision are embedded in modernization across the political, economic, social, cultural, and ecological fields. It is "full-coverage" because the CPC, through democratic centralism and the mass line, leads governments and organizations at all levels to effectively respond to and absorb the needs of the people through information communication, consultations, hearings, and deliberations. It gathers the people's interests through democratic consultation (party, People's Congress, government, CPPCC, and social organizations), democratic decision-making (legislation, strategic planning, fiscal budgeting, work reports), and democratic supervision (by democratic parties, the CPPCC, the masses, and public opinion). This facilitates a high degree of alignment between the will of the people and the purpose and nature of the governing party. The democratic process view of whole-process people's democracy is also an inevitable requirement for a country with a huge population to achieve modernization. Only by implementing whole-process people's democracy can we ensure that the different individual interests of over 1.4 billion people are expressed and integrated, achieving the unification of individual interests with the overall development of the country while solving massive livelihood needs and regional development disparities.

4. Adherence to a democratic evaluation view that is extensive, genuine, and effective. For a long time, the power to evaluate democracy has been controlled by Western intellectual circles. These Western democratic evaluation indicators use competitive elections as the criterion, ignoring "subjective standards." However, many "top students" of democracy according to these indicators often become "failing students" in political practice, falling into governance deficits and political decay. Clearly, the democratic evaluation view formed by Western modernization can neither truly reflect the status of global democratic development nor assist in guiding the achievement of substantive democracy.

When profoundly elucidating major issues such as who evaluates democracy and how, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Democracy is a right of the people of all countries, not a patent of a few countries. Whether a country is democratic should be judged by the people of that country, and should not be judged by a few outsiders pointing fingers."

The Chinese people have had different democratic value demands in different historical periods. During the period of striving for national independence, establishing a people's republic and obtaining independent and equal citizenship were important democratic goals. In the early stage of modernization, solving food and clothing needs and escaping poverty to become wealthy were the core contents of democracy. In the process of deepening modernization, fully guaranteeing the subjectivity of the people's participation throughout the entire process, enabling the coordinated development of material and spiritual civilizations, and enhancing the people's subjective happiness through livelihood guarantees are all new requirements for the in-depth development of democracy. What the Chinese people have formed during China's modernization is a "seek truth from facts" composite view of democracy, which includes substantive demands such as social equality and governance performance, as well as procedural demands such as political rights and competitive elections. Therefore, democratic evaluation is the unity of historical needs and subjective feelings. As General Secretary Xi Jinping creatively proposed the democratic evaluation criteria of the "four looks and four even-more-important looks" ^[6]: "Whether a country is democratic, the key lies in whether the people truly act as the masters of the country. It depends on whether the people have the right to vote, and even more on whether they have the right to extensive participation; it depends on what verbal promises the people receive during the election process, and even more on how many of these promises are fulfilled after the election; it depends on what kind of political procedures and rules are stipulated by the systems and laws, and even more on whether these systems and laws are truly implemented; it depends on whether the rules and procedures for the exercise of power are democratic, and even more on whether power is truly subject to the supervision and restraint of the people." This is the scientific answer provided by Chinese communists, based on the laws of the construction and development of human political civilization, to the question of what constitutes democracy in its "true sense."

III. Global Significance: The Transcendence of the Unique Democratic View in Chinese-path Modernization over the Western Liberal Democratic View

Is there only one "correct path" to political modernization via Western liberal democracy? Can only democratic systems created by elites promote modern development? Is it difficult to achieve the multidirectional progress of political, economic, and ethnic integration in a multi-ethnic country? These questions are difficult problems in the theory and practice of political modernization and are also the shackles restricting late-developing countries from independently exploring their own paths to democracy. The unique democratic view contained in Chinese-path modernization has driven successful practices and remarkable achievements, breaking the world's superstitious belief in the Western liberal democratic view and setting a model and providing confidence for late-developing countries to move toward modernization independently.

1. Adhering to historical materialism, breaking Western democratic monism, and opening up the autonomy and diversity of democratic development. Classic Western modernization theory upholds the view that "modernization = Westernization," believing that the modernization process is divided into four stages: the challenge of modernity, the consolidation of the power of the leadership, the transformation of economy and society, and social integration. Western political theory simplifies this linear development as "democracy = electoral politics + voting ⇒ economic development, political integrity, and social progress." They believe this is a political system model that can be transplanted and imitated. However, the reality is that a chasm exists between Western liberal democratic theory and the complex political realities of the Third World. The singular evaluation standard of the Western liberal democratic view is unhelpful in promoting political integration, political stability, and democratic construction in late-developing countries. This Western democratic monism has caused political modernization to be long trapped in the theoretical misunderstandings of researching the conditions for liberal democracy, designing liberal democratic institutions, and preventing the collapse of liberal democratic systems. This is precisely where the fallacy of Western democracy lies. Western scholars often start from a bourgeois ideology, abstracting the rationality of democratic systems through a logic of human nature deduction, then limiting contemporary democracy to voting rules based on the finiteness of human behavior, and finally endowing this theory with "scientificity" through the empirical logic of reality.

The question of the view of democracy is first a question of the view of history—that is, how democratic concepts and systems are generated. Marx and Engels pointed out in The German Ideology that the starting point of all theory is "the material production of life itself." The relations of intercourse produced by a certain mode of production are the structural basis of all history, and the entire social structure constrains the formation of the structure of consciousness. Historical materialism emphasizes that objective practice determines concepts. Mao Zedong’s discourses on the "New Democratic Republic," the "joint dictatorship of all revolutionary classes," the "mass line," "democratic centralism," and "People's Congresses"; Deng Xiaoping’s analysis of "democracy and centralism," "democracy and dictatorship," and "democracy and the rule of law"; as well as the innovations in the theory of consultative democracy and the theory of whole-process people's democracy in the New Era, all reflect the combination of democratic theory with the specific social practices of the time.

Therefore, the unique democratic view of Chinese-path modernization theoretically transcends...

The framework of modernization in which "the East is subordinate to the West" formed a conceptual system distinct from Western democratic monism, yet it possesses universal value. First is the significance of "autonomous development." Chinese-path modernization constitutes the historical and practical context for the formation of this unique view of democracy. This means the view of democracy contained within Chinese-path modernization must proceed from the actual economic and political conditions of our country’s modernization and serve China’s developmental progress. It must also fully embody the "Two Combinations" ^[7] to ensure the socialist nature, modernization, and localization of this democratic outlook. Typical examples include "democratic centralism" and the principle that "deliberation is best when there are issues to resolve" ^[8]. Second is the significance of "diverse development." There is no single modernization model that is the gold standard in the world, nor is there a universal civilization based on a standard of identity. After extensive research on Eastern societies in his later years, Marx pointed out that it was possible for Russia "not to pass through the Caudine Forks of the capitalist system, but to possess all the positive achievements created by the capitalist system." Human development can thus achieve a transition from a unilinear, monistic evolution model to a multilinear, pluralistic one. Furthermore, Marx believed that on the question of developmental path models, there is no "supra-historical" cognition for any nation-state based on "a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical" ^[9]. Every country can choose a path of civilizational development suited to itself, provided it respects historical laws. The view of democracy inherent in Chinese-path modernization reveals the historical, concrete, staged, and differentiated nature of the path of democratic development. Therefore, late-developing countries in the process of modernization can fully create their own models of democratic development by integrating their national conditions with changes in the global economic and political landscape.

2. Adhering to the mass line view of history, deconstructing the Western theory of elite creation of democracy, and expanding a new path for people's democracy to promote comprehensive modernization.

When Western-style democracy is packaged as a universal value, the view of democracy within Western modernization also completes a discourse-building project that uses democracy to conceal its capitalist liberal ideology. By constructing a "secular image" around "abstract man" and establishing modern values such as "liberty, equality, and fraternity," bourgeois thinkers completed the beautification, abstraction, and absolutization of unfair and irrational modes of production hidden beneath the veil of commodities. The Western liberal view of democracy is the 20th-century substitute for these values; it is "the theoretical expression of the material relations that dominate individuals." Proponents of Western liberal democracy, on the one hand, promote the omnipotence of liberal democracy, exaggerating its "magic bullet" effect on modernization; on the other hand, they go to great lengths to argue for the irrationality and inefficiency of the people's participation in politics, stigmatizing people's democracy and framing democracy within limited passive actions. This series of operations—controlling democratic knowledge, substituting democratic concepts, and masking the essence of capital-driven democracy—has caused the alienation of the democratic outlook. That is, the view of democracy has become a discourse controlled by developed Western countries; the subjects of the democratic view do not create it, but are instead constantly told they can only elect representatives with leadership capacity to express their opinions. This results in the ossification, monetization, and oligarchization of political modernization. Furthermore, Western modernization theorists praise the "critical juncture" where elites reshape the political systems of late-developing countries, which directly misleads some late-developing nations toward the path of elite worship and the negation of people's democracy. Huntington argued that in the reform of liberal democratic systems, the interaction between reformers, conservatives, and moderates is most important; scholars like Weber believed that elite rule exists throughout the process of democratic development. They contend that East Asian countries like Singapore and Japan became exemplars of modernization because they either established elite party systems or emulated Western elite electoral systems.

The people are the true creators and practitioners of concepts. That the masses are the creators of history is a basic principle of Marxism. "In the objective dimension of historical dialectics, man is not a self-subject, but an objective subject." The view of democracy inherent in Chinese-path modernization is the result of the Chinese people, as the subjective force, learning from and borrowing foreign democratic theories while repeatedly practicing and creating in integration with the country's democratic context and people-based (minben) culture ^[10]. After the May Fourth Movement ^[11], Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu further pointed out that to realize the people as masters of the country, the people must be led in class struggle, allowing the proletariat to transform into the subject of democracy. These concepts provided a new direction for the "New Youth" and the laboring masses who urgently sought China’s national salvation and opposition to multiple layers of oppression. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Communist Party of China established and adjusted the assembly system in various base areas, reflecting the class alliance characteristics necessary under the circumstances of a nationwide war of resistance. For example, the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region Assembly ^[12], founded in 1939, broke through the Kuomintang’s legal framework that defined it as merely consultative; after the second session in November 1941, the assembly’s powers were expanded to strengthen supervision and checks on the government. Entering the New Era, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the major concept of whole-process people’s democracy based on China’s rich democratic practice. Shanghai established grassroots-level legislative contact points to complete the solicitation of opinions on draft laws; Zhejiang Province achieved full coverage of the system where deputies to people’s congresses vote on livelihood projects at the city, county, and township levels, giving the ultimate beneficiaries a voice and transforming ex-post supervision into whole-process tracking. Only a democratic outlook generated from the needs of the people can exert a powerful force in mobilizing the people to devote themselves to the practice of modernization. As Mao Zedong emphasized, "The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history"; General Secretary Xi Jinping also pointed out, "History has repeatedly proven that the masses are the subjective force of historical development and social progress."

By placing the people at the core of democracy, the view of democracy inherent in Chinese-path modernization transcends capitalist relations of production in terms of economic structure, shaping truly equal democratic relations. Ideologically, it liberates the logic of enslavement to material objects and establishes a people-centered political philosophy. In political culture, it dispels elite superstition and builds political self-confidence in the people’s creation of democratic concepts.

3. Adhering to the "Two Combinations" to resolve the paradox of modernization, creating a new model for multi-ethnic states to achieve the organic unity of democratic governance and ethnic unity.

Developing countries often face multiple crises during modernization, such as crises of identity, participation, and distribution. Huntington pointed out that modernization in late-developing countries involves an inherent tension between rapid economic development and long-term political stability. This is known as the "Huntington Paradox." This modernization "paradox" has reinforced Western-centrism and the theory of the superiority of Western systems; Western modernization scholars have argued that late-developing countries can only achieve good governance by following the path of Western liberal democracy. However, the Western liberal democratic system does not help late-developing countries with political integration; instead, it has exacerbated ethnic divisions, political polarization, and state fragility. There are three main reasons for this: First, in the process of modernization, traditional and modern concepts collide fiercely. The political identity of traditional society is dissolved, while regional, ethnic, religious, and class identities become more easily recognized and accepted. By stimulating the regional or identity preferences of voters, the Western electoral system intensifies political conflict even as it promotes party identity. Second, the prerequisite for democratic development is state-building. Late-developing countries often urgently need to awaken the national consciousness of the people to achieve the goal of national independence. In the Western liberal democratic system, "districting systems, ethnic federalism, ethnic power-sharing, and the granting of collective rights all unnecessarily solidify mutual exclusion and hostile ethnic identities," which is detrimental to national identity after state reconstruction. Third, political promises made during elections inevitably prioritize the bourgeoisie and its allies in political distribution, leading to persistent inequality in livelihood policies and further intensifying class contradictions and political confrontation; this has been particularly evident recently in Eastern European and Latin American countries. Therefore, "high political fragmentation among voters easily triggers intense political conflict, and overly intense political conflict affects the stability of the democratic regime, even leading to its collapse."

Addressing the difficulties of political order and social vitality in the process of modernization, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that "Chinese-path modernization should and can achieve a dynamic balance of liveliness without chaos, and activity with order." This is because the CPC has always adhered to the "Two Combinations," exploring solutions in the process of Chinese-path modernization to realize political integration and consolidate public support through the mutual promotion of state-building, democratic governance, and ethnic fusion. Marx and Engels pointed out that the political construction of a multi-ethnic state can only be achieved by establishing a single and indivisible democratic republic, and that efforts must be made to advance socialist construction, implement ethnic equality, and maintain national independence to achieve the construction of a national community. This reveals the importance of the coordinated development of democratic construction and ethnic equality, and of democratic development and ethnic fusion, during the modernization process. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the unity of Chinese civilization "dictates that national unity will always be the core of China's core interests, and dictates that a strong and unified country is the destiny of all ethnic groups." "Grand Unity" (Dayitong) ^[13] is a main thread running through China's historical political landscape, thought, and culture. This defined the historical starting point and internal environment for the construction of China's modern state power. "The construction of the modern Chinese state must create a new form of political Grand Unity; it must be capable of merging with the modern state and becoming the internal support for modern Chinese state-building." Therefore, the inherent requirement for unity in China’s political development calls for the establishment of a centripetal political system. At different historical stages, the CPC has promoted the mutual advancement of "people's democracy" and "nation-building," including practices such as "Party members know no ethnic or national boundaries," "the anti-Japanese national united front belongs to all ethnic groups in the country," "maintaining and developing socialist ethnic relations of equality, unity, and mutual assistance," "strengthening the great unity of all ethnic groups," and "forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation," thereby deepening ethnic consensus and common prosperity. Based on this, the unique view of democracy inherent in Chinese-path modernization includes a sentiment of "unity" in which "all ethnic groups merge into one," a global vision of "the world for the public" (Tianxia wei gong) ^[14], a consultative tradition of "pooling wisdom" (jisi guangyi), and an inclusive stance of "seeking common ground while reserving differences." Strategically, this view of democracy manifests as: improving the Great United Front ^[15] landscape to effectively solve the problem of political absorption and stimulate a sense of shared destiny among all ethnic groups of the Chinese nation; and adhering to the unity of Party leadership, the united front, and consultative democracy to enhance the centripetal force and solidarity of different groups through extensive, multi-layered, and institutionalized consultation.

The CPC's organic combination of democracy and the united front, and of people's democracy and the construction of a community for the Chinese nation, is both a product of the CPC combining the Marxist views of democracy and ethnicity with the concrete reality of China as a multi-ethnic state, and a creative exploration of how a multi-ethnic state can achieve the unified balance of political order and social development. This holds significant value for other countries seeking to escape the prejudices of Western modernization theory, respond to the challenges of global ethnic separatism, reshape trust in democracy, and explore centripetal democratic systems.

IV. Conclusion

Looking at the history of global modernization, the concept of democracy has played an important role in dispelling ignorance and promoting national independence, state-building, and political development. Western political scholars rarely focus on analyzing which view of democracy is more conducive to modernization or whether different modernization paths nurture different views of democracy. This is because, in the view of the vast majority of Western scholars, Western liberal democracy is the optimal democratic concept for modernization. This theoretical presumption of democracy essentially provides legitimacy for Western countries to seek the resources and markets of late-developing countries; it is the political value representation of the logic of the supremacy of capital. The unique view of democracy inherent in Chinese-path modernization adheres to the materialist view of history (social existence determines social consciousness), the mass line view of history (the people create history), and the methodology of the "Two Combinations." Thus, on the fundamental basis of the laws of historical development of modernization, it transcends the Western liberal view of democracy rooted in economic and "spiritual" logics.

So, why must the unique view of democracy inherent in Chinese-path modernization emphasize the word "unique"? Will this lead toward "exceptionalism" or "particularism," lacking the commonality to reach a universal theory of global modernization? In fact, the unique view of democracy within Chinese-path modernization emphasizes uniqueness for two reasons: First, to demonstrate that the democratic view of Chinese-path modernization has a qualitative difference from existing democratic views, representing the fundamental distinction between the socialist "people" as subject and the capitalist "capital" as subject. Second, to highlight that the democratic view inherent in Chinese-path modernization possesses systemic differences in its basic connotation, generative logic, and functional mechanism compared to other democratic views, establishing self-identity through comparative advantages. In particular, the "Second Combination" ^[16] allows Chinese-style democracy to establish the status of "cultural self" in the development of global political civilization, constructing a democratic paradigm with the cultural subjectivity of the Chinese nation.

As a part of the common values of all humanity, a universal understanding of the cause and concept of human democracy can only be truly advanced on the basis of grasping the democratic concepts of various countries, nations, and civilizations. Replacing capitalism with socialism does not mean destroying everything created by capitalism, but rather...

After "appropriating" ^[17] "all the positive achievements" of capitalism, these products of civilization already created by humanity are preserved while capitalism is replaced by socialism. Thus, the conception of democracy contained within Chinese-path modernization represents a developmental form of socialist democracy; it is a form of democracy that has already transcended the object-centered ^[18] nature of capitalism. Within the process of world history, socialist democracy—as an essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics—is more extensive, profound, and genuine than capitalist democracy, and thereby possesses true democratic universality. More importantly, the universality inherent in the conception of democracy within Chinese-path modernization is created and generated through practice; it was formed by the Chinese nation on the basis of learning from and drawing upon the beneficial achievements of the historical development of human democracy. Consequently, this universality is neither an abstract universality nor an isolated universality; it is a universality capable of responding to the current universal crises of humanity and possesses practical significance. "By effectively resolving issues of a national character, one gains a stronger capacity to resolve issues of a world character; by effectively summarizing Chinese practice, one gains a stronger capacity to provide ideas and methods for resolving world problems" ^[19]. For this reason, this unique conception of democracy serves as a universal model for 21st-century developing countries to independently explore their own paths to democracy and resolve their manifold governance dilemmas.