Democracy Is a Good Thing Essays on Politics, Society, and Culture in Contemporary China

by Keping, Yu; Thornton, John L.; Li, Cheng

• ISBN13: 9780815722182
• ISBN10: 0815722184
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-28
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Summary

"Democracy is a good thing. This is true not only for individuals or certain officials but also for the entire nation and for all the people of China." ;Yu Keping So begins "Democracy Is a Good Thing," an essay of great influence that has commanded attention and provoked discussion throughout the world. It is the touchstone of this important volume of the same name. As one of China's foremost political thinkers and a leading proponent of democratizing the People's Republic, Yu Keping is a major figure not only in his native land, but also in the international community. This book brings together much of his most important work and makes it readily accessible to readers in the West for the first time. "Democracy Is a Good Thing" created a stir internationally. Perhaps more important, however, is the heated debate it spurred within China on the desirability of democratic reform. That important essay appears here, along with several of Yu Keping's other influential works on politics, culture, and civil society. His topics include China's economic modernization, its institutional environment, and the cultural changes that have accompanied the nation's reforms. Democracy Is a Good Thing pulls back the curtain to reveal ongoing discourse in Chinese political and intellectual circles, discussions that will go a long way toward determining the future of the world's most populous nation.

Author Biography

Yu Keping is deputy director of the Translation Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Committee and a professor of politics at Beijing University. John L. Thornton is chairman of the board of trustees at the Brookings Institution and professor and director of Global Leadership at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Cheng Li, a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings, is editor of China's Emerging Middle Class (Brookings, 2010).

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. xvii
Political Development in Reform-Era China
Democracy Is a Good Thing	p. 3
The Study of Political Science and Public Administration in China: An Overview	p. 6
The Seventeenth Party Congress and the Agenda for China's Political Reforms	p. 27
Social Transformation and Civil Society
China's Civil Society: Conceptual Definitions, Types, and Background	p. 37
The Characteristics of Chinese Civil Society: Administrative Regulations and Institutional Environment	p. 52
Civil Society Organizations: Challenges and Responses	p. 75
Culture, Modernity, and Sustainability
Culture and Modernity in the Chinese Intellectual Discourse: A Historical Perspective	p. 93
The Transformation of Chinese Culture since the Launching of Reform: A Historical Perspective	p. 113
China's Economic Modernization and Sustainability	p. 134
Harmony between Man and Nature: China's Environmental Practices and Challenges	p. 140
Globalization and Governance
Preserving China's Autonomy in the Era of Globalization	p. 149
Federalism in Modern China: Concepts and Experiments	p. 157
A Harmonious World and Global Governance: A Chinese Perspective	p. 168
Notes	p. 181
Further Reading: The Writings of Yu Keping	p. 199
Index	p. 207
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