02_ (39-74) A Confucian Version.pmd


A CONFUCIAN VERSION OF HYBRID REGIME: HOW DOES

IT WORK AND WHY IS IT SUPERIOR?1

Tongdong Bai

Fudan University, China

Abstract

There are four problems with democracy, especially the institu-

tion of one person one vote.  Many democratic and liberal thinkers under-

stand them and try to correct them from within.  But I will argue that

these revisions are fundamentally inadequate to address these problems.

A better political arrangement to deal with this fact than today’s democ-

racies is a hybrid regime that contains both democratic and meritocratic

elements, which is what a Confucian would propose.  I will illustrate the

basic arrangements of this regime, and show why it can deal with the

aforementioned fact and so why it is superior to today’s democratic re-

gimes.

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Prajna Vihara, Volume 13, Number 1-2, January-December, 2012, 39-74 39

 c 2000 by Assumption University Press

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~



1. Four problems with democracy

The majority of people all over the world may still believe that

liberal democracy is the best possible regime, the “end of history”, as

Francis Fukuyama’s famous book’s title suggests (1992).  When facing

with challenges that show problems with democracies, the more informed

tend to appeal to the famous retort allegedly made by Winston Churchill:

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other

forms that have been tried from time to time”.2 Clever as it seems, this

claim may be a sign of our intellectual laziness, because it lacks empirical

and theoretical support.  Empirically, in controlling corruption, making

sound long-term economic policies, decreasing ethnic violence, and choos-

ing leaders that are competent and represent the true will of the people,

democracies, especially in the developing world, don’t always or clearly

do better than non-democracies.3

Theoretically, democracy, with regard to its institution of one per-

son one vote, also leads to many problems.  First, the mainstream ideol-

ogy beneath one person one vote is the belief in the power of the people,

and, by implication, the suspicion of the power of the elite and even the

power of the government.  For example, the anti-government and anti-

intellectualist attitude is a reason for many peculiar American phenom-

ena.  These phenomena include, first, a critical factor of “electability” of

a candidate is whether he or she is likable, is one of us, and is someone

that can come to visit us in our living rooms.  In the 2004 presidential

campaign, a “masterpiece” by the Bush team is to label successfully John

Kerry as a member of the East Coast elite.  Those who support Bush

believe in this propaganda, while those who are against him are con-

vinced that Bush is a redneck, like so many of his supporters.  However,

the matter of the fact is that the Bush family also came from the East

Coast, and his family is actually far more established than Kerry’s.  Bush

and Kerry both went to Yale and attended the same secret club.  More-

over, what many Americans don’t know is that Bush had higher GPA’s

than Kerry in college.  The cover-up of Bush’s background and the attack

on Kerry may have been a result of the campaign culture that is rooted in

one person one vote.  Second, American politicians often claim to be an

outsider of the government in order to get elected into the government,

40  Prajna Vihara
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and that their role in the government is to get rid of it.  When a ruling

branch of a government consists of ‘simple folks’ who despise govern-

ment (i.e., themselves), it is hard to imagine this branch will turn out to be

respected, even by the people who put them there.  This is probably why

the US Congress __ in principle, the most representative of

political institutions __ scores at the bottom of most sur-

veys asking Americans which institutions they most re-

spect whereas the Supreme Court, the armed forces, and

the Federal Reserve System (all appointed rather than

elected bodies) score highest.  (Zakaria 2003, 248)

Daniel Bell quotes this passage and uses it to support his Confu-

cian model that is partly based upon the rule of the wise and virtuous and

demands respect for government (Bell 2006, 289, note 34).

Second, the institution of one person one vote lacks effective

mechanisms to take into account the interest of non-voters, including

future (and past) generations and foreigners.  Thus, democracy may have

difficulties in dealing with issues of budget deficit (i.e., spending future

generations’ money for the present voters), environmental issues that are

related to spending the resources of future generations, and foreign aid or

other issues involving the interests of foreigners.  For example, an inter-

esting phenomenon in the U.S. is that, those interest groups that are con-

cerned with the interests of domestic workers, such as unions and Demo-

crats that are supported by these unions, often favor protectionist poli-

cies that hurt the interests of poor workers in other countries.

Third, and related to the second issue, even among the present

living adults of a state, the interest of the vocal and powerful tends to

trump the interest of the silent (or silenced) and the powerless.  This may

be a reason for the ethnical problems in democracies, especially the newly

democratized ones (that haven’t yet developed fully-functioned rule of

law and the protection of liberties).

Fourth, even with regard to their own interests, it is questionable

whether voters alone can be the best judges of them.  As many political

observers-from both a more popular and anecdotal perspective and a more

scholarly perspective-have pointed out, the appalling political ignorance

Tongdong Bai  41



of the (American) general public is a well-established fact over “the six

decades of modern public opinion research” (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004,

34).4

As an example, let me discuss a particular symptom that may have

been caused by the above problems, the issue of foreign policy.  Foreign

policy often needs expertise, patient and often painful dialogues, and long-

term planning.  But in a popular democracy such as the U.S., as Henry

Kissinger argues, foreign policy is often driven by the public mood, and

this mood is in turn swayed by what is on TV, but not determined by what

is important in international affairs.  Another influence on foreign policies

is domestic politics that has nothing to do with diplomacy.  This is be-

cause, oftentimes, a congressperson or an official who is in favor of a

foreign policy has to promise to support a domestic item to get the sup-

port of another congressperson or another official.  These factors are

obviously in conflict with the needs of good diplomatic policies (Kissinger

2001, 77).

2. “Internal” solutions to these problems and their fundamental limit

Many liberal and democratic thinkers also realize the aforemen-

tioned problems with democracy, especially the institution of one person

one vote, and have offered various answers to these problems.  On the

first problem, an obvious answer is call for a proper respect for reason

and government.  The respect for reason (and those with reason) doesn’t

necessarily mean the negation of equality.  People can still be equal in

many ways, because equality is a rather broad concept.  Government

should be understood as a necessary good, and not as a necessary evil or

even an unnecessary evil.  Popular elections can be understood as select-

ing the most competent and worthy, and not as the punishment of the

bad.5  These revisions can be endorsed by some liberal and democratic

thinkers, without contradicting their fundamental tenets.

A cause of the first three problems is an immoral and radical ver-

sion of individualism that is taken by some as the sacred ideology of de-

mocracy.  According to this individualism, we are and should be free and

equal individuals who care nothing but our self-interests (“self” under-

42  Prajna Vihara
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stood as an atom- or monad-like individual).  We concede part of our

freedom to be under a government because we would be better off than

we would be in the natural state of affairs, where our interests are in

constant jeopardy from other selfish individuals-hence the government is

considered a necessary evil, or because we are deceived to think so-hence

the government is considered an unnecessary evil.  Other than the regula-

tions by the government which are considered necessary in this tradeoff,

we should assert our self-interests as much as we like.  As mentioned,

“self” here is understood as an atom- or monad-like individual, and thus

self-interests are narrowly defined.  The interests of our ancestors or de-

scendants (especially those who are present) are not a part of these self-

interests, nor are the interests of foreigners.  To say that self-interests are

narrowly defined doesn’t mean that they only include immediate material

interests.  They can also include articles of faith taken sacred by the indi-

vidual.  As a result, for example, there are so-called “issue-voters” in

American democracy.  They vote based upon their pre-determined ar-

ticles of faith (on abortion, gun rights, etc.), not allowing it to be open to

just and fair discussion with others.  Democracy then degenerates into a

form of peaceful form of battle of might (which side has more issue vot-

ers that can push their legislature through).

Perhaps seeing that this selfish and radical version of individual-

ism as a cause of the first three problems of democracy, the late American

political philosopher John Rawls, for example, challenges the view one

person one vote is nothing but counting heads, and argues that, for voting

to be justifiable, the voting entity has to consider the common good or

the interests of other entities, rather than merely its own narrowly defined

private interests.  We can see this from the concept of “reasonable”, as

well as the related concepts of public reason and reciprocity, that are

crucial to his understanding of liberal democracy in his later philosophy.

On the concept of “reasonable”, Rawls writes,

Citizens are reasonable when, viewing one another as

free and equal in a system of social cooperation over gen-

erations, they are prepared to offer one another fair terms

of social cooperation … and they agree to act on those

terms, even at the cost of their own interests in particular

Tongdong Bai  43



situations, provided that others also accept those terms.

(Rawls 1996, xliv)6

On the contrary, if one votes purely based upon one’s comprehen-

sive doctrine, and accepts the failure of pushing through his or her agenda

by the majority of votes only as a convenient truce waiting to be broken

by any means possible, for Rawls, the stability so achieved is a “modus

vivendi” and is not stability for the right reasons.7  In short, according to

Rawls, liberal democracy requires that each voter vote not merely on

private interests, including both material and doctrinal, but on a concep-

tion of common good.

But how to achieve this?  How to make people moral as required

by Rawls and by our need to address the first three problems of democ-

racy?  To achieve this “civil friendship” (Rawls 1999a, 137), Rawls ap-

peals to education and habituation (“moral learning”) that are conducted

through social and political institutions arranged by liberal democracy

(ibid., 15 and 44-45), through families (ibid., 157), and through interna-

tional and domestic political and cultural environments (ibid., 27 (note

23), 102-103, and 112-113). He also pins his hope on the role of states-

men (ibid., 97-103 and 112).

The question, then, is whether these corrections will be effective.

The qualification of equality among individuals that is necessary to make

way for the respect for the competent and the public-minded and for

government is not explicitly discussed by Rawls, and thus the first prob-

lem that is partly caused by the selfish and radical version of individualism

is still undressed.  As for the second and the third problems, if the “rea-

sonable” people cannot form a majority of a democracy, under the present

arrangement of one person one vote, non-voters’ interests can hardly be

considered adequately.  Unfortunately, it seems that we cannot realisti-

cally expect the reasonable people to form a majority.  In fact, Rawls

himself offers an argument for this impossibility under the institution of

one person one vote, which he contributes to the Hegelians and never

answers.  He writes,

whereas, so the [Hegelian] view goes, in a liberal society,

where each citizen has one vote, citizens’ interests tend to

44  Prajna Vihara
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shrink and center on their private economic concerns to

the detriment of the bonds of community, in a consulta-

tion hierarchy, when their group is so represented, the

voting members of the various groups take into account

the broader interests of political life. (Rawls 1999a, 73)

Of course, whether the majority of reasonable people can be formed

is open to theoretical and empirical studies.  But there is yet another-I

consider most fatal-problem with democracy, that is, the fourth problem

with democracy previously mentioned.  Again, liberal and democratic

thinkers such as Rawls see this problem.  He also thinks that, in a real-

rather than formal-liberal democracy, citizens have to be informed.  To

achieve this, it is crucial that their basic needs be satisfied and they enjoy

education, as well as means necessary to get informed.  For example,

Rawls points out, “Hegel, Marxist, and socialist writers have been quite

correct in making the objection” that “liberties taken alone” are “purely

formal”.

By themselves they are an impoverished form of liber-

alism, indeed not liberalism at all but libertarianism (VII:3).

The latter does not combine liberty and equality in the

way liberalism does; it lacks the criterion of reciprocity

and allows excessive social economic inequalities as judged

by that criterion.  (Rawls 1996, lviii; also see Rawls 1999a,

49-50)

To ensure a plural liberal democracy that is stable for the right

reasons, Rawls proposes the following institutions: “a. Public financing

of elections and ways of assuring the availability of public information on

matters of policy”; “b. A certain fair equality of opportunity, especially in

education and training”; “c. A decent distribution of income and wealth

meeting the third condition of liberalism: all citizens must be assured the

all-purpose means necessary for them to take intelligent and effective

advantage of their basic freedoms”; “d. Society as employer of last re-

sort…” so that citizens can have a sense of long-term security and the

opportunity of meaningful work and occupation that are crucial to their

Tongdong Bai  45



self-respect and their sense of being a member of society; “e. Basic health

care assured all citizens” (Rawls 1996, lviii-lix).  According to Rawls,

failing to establish these institutions will lead to the sorry state of (Ameri-

can?) political reality.  He writes,

When politicians are beholden to their constituents for

essential campaign funds, and a very unequal distribution

of income and wealth obtains in the background culture,

with the great wealth being in the control of corporate

economic power, is it any wonder that congressional leg-

islation is, in effect, written by lobbyists, and Congress

becomes a bargaining chamber in which laws are bought

and sold? (Rawls 1999a, 24, f19).

It should become clear that, for Rawls, the desirable form of lib-

eral democracy is a kind of deliberative democracy.  In The Law of Peoples,

he explicitly expresses this idea: “Here I am concerned only with a well-

ordered constitutional democracy … understood also as a deliberative

democracy” (Rawls 1999a, 138).  Deliberative democracy

recognizes that without wide-spread education in the ba-

sic aspects of constitutional democratic government for

all citizens, and without a public informed about pressing

problems, crucial political and social decisions simply can-

not be made.  Even should farsighted political leaders wish

to make sound changes and reforms, they cannot convince

a misinformed and cynical public to accept and follow them.

(Rawls 1999a, 139-140)

In addition the arrangements that eliminate damaging social and

economic inequality, clearly, freedom of speech and information and other

liberties are also necessary for people to get informed.  As Rawls points

out, measures such as public financing of elections need to be taken to

assure that public information on matters of policy is not distorted by the

influence of money, and, in general, to assure the availability of public

information, in addition to the formal protection of relevant liberties.

46  Prajna Vihara
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Moreover, the public has to be given an opportunity to digest information

available.  Otherwise, the availability of information will again become

merely formal.  For example, political scientists Bruce Ackerman and

James Fishkin propose that there should be a new national holiday, the

Deliberation Day, when “registered voters would be called together in

neighborhood meeting places … to discuss the central issues raised by

the campaign.  Each deliberator would be paid $150 for the day’s work of

citizenship…” (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004, 34).  Clearly, the days when

voters cast their votes should also be national or state holidays.

However, I will argue in the following that these measures-al-

ready drastic and radical against the political reality of today’s democra-

cies-are still not adequate.  These liberal thinkers have a vision of liberal

democracy that is at least in one aspect fundamentally republican.  That

is, in their ideal form of democracy, citizens need to be well-informed and

actively participatory and have a form of civil friendship (Rawls 1999a,

137), although the degree of participation in their democracy may not be

as extensive as it was in ancient republics such as ancient Rome and those

of ancient Athens.  Then, a look into the Athenian democracy might help

us to see why today’s (weaker) republican form of democracy is doomed

to fail.  First, the success of Athenian democracy was built upon slavery.

That is, it was the use of slave labors that freed Athenian citizens from

daily work and made it possible for them to fully participate in political

matters.  But even by using slaves, the adequacy of the political compe-

tence of Greek citizens was still challenged by classical writers such as

Plato and Aristophanes.  Then, how likely is it that the common people in

a modern democracy, who need to work hard to maintain their basic liv-

ing-this is a basic fact of capitalism and perhaps all modern societies that

rid themselves of the guilty leisure of slavery, can participate in politics to

the extent of acquiring the political competence necessary for a desirable

form of liberal and deliberative democracy?  It is true that, through mass

education, the modern society produces much more educated, white color

professionals, such as scientists, engineers, doctors, financiers, teachers,

and so on.  But what the education gives them is a special craft, and they

are consumed by their daily work so as to know little about public affairs

or anything outside of their narrow specializations.  As Jose? Ortega y

Gasset said, they are “learned ignorami” (Ortega 1932, 108-112).  In

Tongdong Bai  47



short, in today’s world, the majority of people are still consumed by their

daily work, and may have limited knowledge about public affairs or any-

thing outside of their narrow specializations.

To make the problem even more serious, we need to understand

that also crucial to the level of political participation in ancient Athens is

the fact that Athens was all small in size and in population, compared to

most of the contemporary democratic countries.  According to many po-

litical thinkers, on the issue of what kind of regime a state can adopt,

“size matters”.  Montesquieu offers one of the most powerful arguments

for this view.  According to him, it is necessary that a democracy be small.

No medium-sized or large country can really be a democracy.  The rea-

sons he offers are the following.

In a large republic [which including both democracy

and aristocracy], there are large fortunes, and consequently

little moderation in spirits: the depositories are too large

to put in the hands of a citizen; interests become particu-

larized; at first a man feels he can be happy, great, glori-

ous without his homeland; and soon, that he can be great

only on the ruins of his homeland.

In a large republic, the common good is sacrificed to a

thousand considerations; it is subordinated to exceptions;

it depends upon accidents.  In a small one, the public good

is better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen;

abuses are less extensive there and consequently less pro-

tected.  (Montesquieu 1989, 124)9

In short, for Montesquieu, a large republic leads to large fortunes.

This corrupts the virtue necessary to a democracy.  In particular, a person’s

interest becomes detached from, or even in opposition to, the common

good.  Moreover, the common good becomes too sophisticated for the

citizens of this state to grasp.

One may argue that, for Montesquieu, a large state can be demo-

cratic in the form of the federal republic (Montesquieu 1989, 131-132).

But what Montesquieu discusses is something similar to the federation of

ancient Greek states, a federation still far smaller than most of today’s

48  Prajna Vihara
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democracies.  Also different from Montesquieu’s understanding, the cen-

tral government of today’s democracies is directly elected, and has far

greater power than what Montesquieu allows.

One may also argue that the kind of democracy Montesquieu dis-

cusses is not the same as the liberal democracy Rawls and others under-

stand.  This argument may be true, but this and the previous arguments

do not affect the force of Montesquieu’s challenge.  Put in today’s lan-

guage, we can challenge the likelihood for citizens to be informed in a

large state that does not allow the use of slave labors to free its citizens

from their daily works by offering the following arguments.  First, the

overwhelming material wealth in a large state may tempt people away

from the civil duty to be reasonable and informed citizens.  This require-

ment of citizens to be reasonable and informed is much more limited than

what Montesquieu considers the necessary virtue in a democracy

(Montesquieu 1989, 22-26), but it is still very demanding.  Second, cor-

porations, especially in the age of globalization, develop interest separate

from and even in conflict with the interest of their own states, be it demo-

cratic or otherwise.  Third, the common good in a large state is so com-

plex that it is beyond most people’s willingness or ability to comprehend,

and the majority is doomed to be uninformed, however intelligent and

well-educated and however willing to participate in political affairs each

citizen is.  Related to this point, in a small state, people might be ac-

quainted with political figures, whereas, in a large state, the majority of

the people cannot judge the quality of a politician through a long-term

and close contact with him or her, but can only do so by following all

kinds of propaganda, which makes their opinion of the politician easily

manipulatable.

In an article by the journalist Robert Kaplan, he offers many ex-

amples of failed democracies in the modern and contemporary periods.

His analysis of the reason for these failures is similar to Montesquieu’s

argument (Kaplan 1997), although he presents this kind of argument in

the context of modern and contemporary democracies.  The solution

Kaplan offers is a hybrid regime that combines the democratic elements

with paternalistic elements, which, as we will see, is similar to the limited

democracy that is suggested by Confucians.  In a recent article by the

political scientist Russell Hardin (2002), he discusses “three devastating

Tongdong Bai  49



theoretical claims” in postwar public choice theory, made by Kenneth

Arrow, Anthony Downs, as well as Mancur Olson, that are “against the

coherence of any democratic theory that is conceived as even minimally

participatory, collectively consistent, and well-informed” (2002, 212).

Hardin develops these claims “by relating them and, in particular, by sub-

jecting them to an economic theory of knowledge” (2002, 213).  Two

crucial arguments he makes in this paper are: first, each person’s vote

doesn’t really matter; second, to be informed is rather demanding, per-

haps much more so than we usually think.  If we put these two arguments

together, the implication is that, if they are rational, voters have, or they

should have, very little interest to vote, let alone getting informed.  The

first argument is partly a result of the fact that today’s democracies__even

on the scale of the state of New Hampshire that has about a quarter of a

million voters__are too large for one single vote to matter.  This is because

even if there is one vote difference after we count all the votes in a large

state, “merely for practical reasons of the impossibility of counting votes

accurately”, we still cannot say for certain which side wins, and other

means have to be used for us to make this judgment (Hardin 2002, 220).10

To understand this point, we only need to be reminded of the fact that,

during the Florida recount in the 2000 election, the matter had to be

resolved by the Supreme Court.  The second argument also has some-

thing to do with the fact of the size of today’s democracies, as their large

size makes the price of getting informed unbearably high.  Thus, we can

consider Hardin’s thesis as yet another contemporary development of

Montesquieu’s.  If all these thinkers are correct, then it is simply impos-

sible for the majority of voters to even come close to meet the pre-condi-

tions of a meaningful democratic participation.

On a more sympathetic note, all the previous problems aside, some

citizens may prefer other obligations and interests-such as family obliga-

tions or scientific or artistic pursuits__to a time__consuming involvement

in politics.  These citizens may choose to remain politically indifferent.

This choice becomes increasingly sensible when the political matters be-

come too complicated due to the size of the state and the fact that the

modern citizens don’t enjoy the guilty luxury of the ancient Greeks who

forced the slaves to do their daily chores.  Unlike the ancient republican

form of democracy, a contemporary liberal democracy should let these

50  Prajna Vihara
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voluntarily non-participating citizens be.  However, there should also be

a mechanism that prevents the indifferent citizens from having too much

a voice in political matters.

In Political Liberalism, Rawls points out five facts of democratic

society, which lead to his consideration of the central problem: how a

plural yet stable liberal democracy is possible (1996, xxvii, 36-38 and 58;

also see 1989, 474-478).  We can then add an additional (sixth) fact of

modern democracy (or a group of facts).  First, human beings have a

tendency to fall back to their self-interest, which is encouraged by one

person one vote.  Second, some citizens choose to remain politically in-

different to many political matters.  Third, modern democratic states are

in general so large that it makes it impossible for the majority of the citi-

zenry to be adequately informed, however hard both the government and

the individuals try.  The causes of this impossibility are, first, due to the

size of the modern states and the noble rejection of slavery, to be in-

formed is a burden that most citizens’ intelligence, education, and will-

ingness cannot bear; second, the population of modern states renders a

single vote practically meaningless; third, the material wealth and the power

of big corporations run free and wild, and they destroy the motive of the

elite to devote themselves to the common good and distort information.

The sixth fact seems to suggest that the Rawlsian liberal and deliberative

democracy, or liberal and deliberative democracy in general, in which

every citizen participates in an equal manner and in the form of one per-

son one vote, is impossible in the modern world where each state is sim-

ply too large.

3. The hybrid regime of Confu-China and its superiority

Next, I will present a Confucian form of ideal government-I call it

“Confu-China”, which, as we will see, can address the four problems of

democracy better than the present democratic regimes with all their pos-

sible internal revisions.  I have argued elsewhere that this government is

what a Confucian would endorse and promote,11 and, given the focus of

this volume, I won’t repeat the arguments here.  I will offer a framework

of this government in the following.

First, the rule of law and human rights are endorsed and firmly

Tongdong Bai  51



established in Confu-China.  The possibility and necessity of this endorse-

ment have been discussed elsewhere.12

Second, in Confu-China, the government is considered to be re-

sponsible for the material and moral well-being of the people.  It is re-

sponsible for making it possible that average citizen has their basic mate-

rial, social or relationship, moral and political, and educational needs met.

On the issue of material needs, economic inequality is contained, follow-

ing Rawls’s own “Difference Principle” (Rawls 1971, 60-62 and 78-83).

On the issue of education, in addition to theoretical and technical knowl-

edge, the government is also responsible for offering citizens civic educa-

tion.  The goal of civic education is to make citizens understand the fol-

lowing: each citizen should have compassion for others and maintain

proper relationships to them; the role of the government is to maintain

the material and moral well-being of the people; the politicians in the

government should be those who are morally and intellectually

superior__morally superior in the sense that they are willing to extend

their compassion to all the people who are within his or her power to

help; if the politicians are indeed morally and intellectually superior, they

should be respected by the common people; the right to participate in a

certain political matter is inseparable from one’s willingness to consider

the common good and one’s competence at making sound decisions on

this matter.  To satisfy the moral and political needs of each citizen in-

cludes satisfying his or her need to participate in politics.  Then, in addi-

tion to offering the aforementioned education, if a citizen is interested in

and has potential of participating in politics, the government should offer

all means necessary__for example, the freedom of speech that makes it

possible for people to be informed, place and time (for example, “delib-

eration days”) necessary for political discussions and voting, etc.

As argued in the first and second sections of this paper, the gov-

ernment and the competent and virtuous that run the government should

be respected.  Some democratic thinkers may accept this, but this is built

into Confucianism, making Confu-China more firmly equipped with deal-

ing with the first problem with democracy.  A fact noticed by many is that,

in America, politicians often pretend to know less than they actually do,

while in East Asia, with its Confucian influence,  politicians often pretend

to know more than they actually do.  Of course, faking to know is not

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what we want, but, at least, faking in the right direction may help the

coming into being of the desirable reality.  We can reveal his lie if a leader

fakes his educational background, thus encouraging other leaders to be-

come truly learned.  But if, in a culture, to have knowledge and experi-

ence is considered hurting political qualifications, no hope is left for im-

provements.

The treatments with other problems of democracy by democratic

thinkers are also endorsed and heartily promoted by Confu-China.  In-

deed, the Confucian education may be more adequate than the demo-

cratic ones because, as I mentioned, the democratic hope lies in a form of

civil friendship, which becomes impossible when the population is large,

while the Confucian education emphasizes on compassion that is targeted

at strangers.

But as I argued in the previous section, these arrangements, even

with the further revisions in Confu-China, are not adequate.  This leads to

the third arrangement of Confu-China that departs from the “internal”

solutions today’s democratic thinkers would endorse.  Firmly asserting

that the service to the people offers legitimacy to a state, but understand-

ing the limit of the aforementioned arrangements to improve people’s

morals and informed-ness, the Confucian would be in favor of a hybrid

regime that introduce and strengthen the role of the competent and moral

“meritocrats”, in addition to the institution of one person one vote.  The

necessity and the superiority of this regime to today’s democracy come

from the aforementioned sixth fact of modern democracy.  That is, as we

will see below, since the meritocrats are not swayed by votes, they might

be on the side of long-term or minority interests when there are conflicts

between short-term and long-term, or majority and minority interests,

and they might maintain stable, long-term policies.

Confucians think that the voting right (right of political participa-

tion) should be based upon (intellectual, moral, and political) compe-

tence, and the sixth fact of modern democratic society means that many

citizens are not capable of making sound judgments on many political

matters.  Through civic education, we hope that these citizens should

willingly stay away from the decision procedure on these political mat-

ters, when they cannot quickly improve his or her competence on these

matters.  At the same time, we should have more institutional arrange-

Tongdong Bai  53



ments that help to prevent the incompetent citizens from having too much

a voice in these political matters.  Based upon this consideration, follow-

ing arrangements are made in Confu-China.

First, we should see that a main reason for people not to be in-

formed is that modern states are often way too large.  But on communal

and local (neighborhood and town) matters__for example, which local

policy or which local leader benefits them the most, almost any local

resident knows them better than officials in the distant central govern-

ment.  Since the matters dealt with here are daily affairs most relevant to

residents, it is likely that they are willing to pay attention to them, rather

than staying indifferent.  It is also likely that the private interests of local

residents can be checked by local governments.  Therefore, the precondi-

tions for the sixth fact to hold don't exist in a small community.  This

means that all residents should be allowed to participate in local affairs,

the ways of participation can be electing local officials through one per-

son one vote, or directly voting on important matters.

A difficult problem here is which matters should be considered

local.  For one thing, although some educational matters should be handled

locally, according to Mencius’s philosophy, the central government should

offer a general and obligatory guideline of education.  For another, if

certain national policies are closely affecting local affairs, and the popu-

lace can make sound judgments on them, people should be allowed to

participate, and these matters can be decided by referendum.  A general

problem is that how large (how many people) a community has to be in

order for its complexity not to be beyond the comprehension of its people,

and the answer to this problem will determine the size of “local commu-

nity”.  These questions need to be answered empirically, and cannot be

answered by armchair philosophers.  But a philosopher can offer a gen-

eral principle: how much democratic participation depends upon how

likely the participants are able to make sound decisions that are based

upon public interests.13

Second, when we are dealing with matters beyond those of a small

community, the preconditions for the sixth fact of modern democracy are

met, meaning that it is likely that citizens are indifferent to many of these

matters, and they lack capacity of making sound judgments.  We should

then introduce arrangements to limit the influence of popular will on poli-

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cies.  There are many ways to achieve this restriction.  For example, at

each higher level, each voter has to take a class and participate in discus-

sions, or take a test specially designed for this level before he or she can

be allowed to vote.  Different weights may be given to their votes based

upon their performances in class or in the test, or based upon their educa-

tional levels, social and political roles, and other relevant factors.

Another, perhaps more practical and manageable arrangement is

this.  At a higher level, in addition to the elected branch, there can be

additional branches of the legislature that are used to check the popular

will.  Let’s call the former branch the lower house or the house of people,

and the latter the upper house or the house of the learned and experi-

enced (or “senators” in its original sense, that is, “elders”).14  From the

name of the latter branch, we can see that this branch or these branches

consist of the learned and the experienced (“elders” or “senators”).  Let

me first discuss how the experienced are selected.  Since the local offi-

cials of the most basic level who are directly elected are freed from spe-

cialized jobs and exposed to policy-making on a local level that is often

connected with policies on higher levels, they are then likely to be ca-

pable of participating in higher-level affairs that are beyond the grasp of

the common people.  If they have done good jobs in local affairs, but have

been retired from decision-makings on these affairs, these experienced

officials can then become members of the house of the experienced of a

higher level.  The house of the experienced can also include those who

have done well in areas related to politics and wish to devote themselves

to public affairs, such as industry leaders, scientists, organizers of local

NGO’s (non-governmental organizations, such as environmental groups,

groups for minority affairs, and unions), etc.  From this level up, members

of the houses of the experienced on higher levels may come from the

experienced “elders” who retire from the government on the same level

as the one on which the house of the experienced in question is, or from

the houses of people and of the experienced of one level lower, and they

are selected either through recommendations of some form or internal

elections.  In other words, houses of the experienced of different levels

adopt leveled, internal elections or recommendations.

To be clear, this leveled model is different from a representative

democracy in that the local officials who enter a higher-level government

Tongdong Bai  55



are not representatives of local interests in the higher-level government,

but are those who are capable of participating in the policy-making on a

higher level.  However, these officials, even if they are free from special-

ized jobs, may not be free from special interests, especially the immediate

material interests of their constituencies, if they are subjected to frequent

elections by the local people (as is the case in a representative democ-

racy).  This is what often happens in the American congress, and an obvi-

ous example is the various infamous earmarks or pork barrel projects in

which congressmen or congresswomen have the federal money spent on

petty projects in their own districts.  Oftentimes, these projects force the

federal money to be spent not in districts that desperately need it, but in

the districts the politicians from which are best at bargaining and manipu-

lating through material interests and threats.  But for a Confucian, popu-

lar participation is not a way to find consensus of people’s short-term

interests, and politicians should not be the mere mouthpiece of these in-

terests.  To free politicians from the control of special interests is a reason

that the house of the experienced consists of those who are not directly

subject to local popular elections anymore.

The other element of this house or another branch of the legisla-

ture is the learned.  In his recent works, Bell offers the following model.

Central to this model is “a bicameral legislature, with a democratically-

elected lower house and a ‘Confucian’ upper house composed of repre-

sentatives selected on the basis of competitive examinations [later called

the Xianshiyuan]” (Bell 2006, 267).  When there is a conflict between

these two houses,

The “Confucian” solution might be to strengthen the

Xianshiyuan, for example, by means of a constitutional

formula providing supermajorities in the upper house with

the right to override majorities in the lower house.  The

Head of Government and important ministers could be

chosen from the Xianshiyuan. Most significant legislation

would emanate from the Xianshiyuan, with the lower

house serving primarily as a check on its power.  (Bell

2006, 271)

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We can make the following revisions and developments on the

basis of this model.  Governments that are on a level higher than the most

basic level (the government of which is directly elected) can have their

own house of the learned (and the experienced) of the legislature branch.

The learned are those who are first selected by exams to attend “magnet

schools”, and are then selected through further exams.  This is similar to

the situations of keju 科举  in traditional China where the literati obtain
titles of different levels which may lead to different positions in the gov-

ernment by passing exams on corresponding levels.  Some might be sus-

picious of this attempt that apparently revives keju.  But we should see

that the keju system is in many ways similar to the Western civil servant

systems that are widely used today, and the limits of keju often come

from the subjects of the exams and the means to conduct them.  In the

cultivation and selection of the learned, we can take advantage of educa-

tional resources of various levels, and require the potential candidates to

study humanities (including both Chinese and Western classics) and sci-

ences.  Each member of the learned may have a specialty, or we can select

the learned from different fields that are needed for policy-making and

legislation.  Moreover, in order to prevent them from being merely book-

smart, they also have to go through a series of practical trainings and

obtain working experiences, in addition to passing exams.

As we have already seen, traces of the selection of the learned can

be found in the keju system in traditional China, and traces of selecting

the experienced, especially through recommendations, can also be found

in traditional China, especially during the two Han dynasties (206 B.C.-

220 A.D.), in the form of “recommending the filial and the uncorrupt” (ju

xiao lian 举孝廉 ).  In fact, in the Han recommendation system, promising
students were first selected to the imperial college (tai xue 太学 ), those
who did well in studies and exams were then sent to local governments,

and those who did good works in their governmental jobs were eventu-

ally recommended for higher offices.  Thus, this recommendation system

is actually a mixture of the two selection procedures (by experience and

by exams) that were discussed above.  The existence of this mixture tells

us that perhaps some combinations of the two selection procedures may

be more effective.  Generally speaking, the fact that we can find traces of

the selection procedures discussed here in traditional China shows that,

Tongdong Bai  57



in spite of our philosophical approach, our designs here are not baseless

contemporary inventions that disregard traditions, but are rooted in the

Chinese political culture and philosophy, in particular, Confucianism (or

the kind of Confucianism that incorporates into itself the Legalist Han Fei

Zi's considerations of institutional designs).  The resonances between our

designs and political mechanisms in China’s past suggest that we may

obtain many insights on how to design the selection procedures by study-

ing various selection procedures in traditional China.15

Whatever the details of the designs of the upper house may be, it

is clear that these arrangements of different branches of the legislature de

facto reduce popular will to the role of consultation, and give more power

to the relatively knowledgeable, experienced, and compassionate.  It is a

government for the people, but not purely by the people; rather, it is only

partly by the people and partly by the competent people.

4. Answers to challenges to the superiority of Confu-China

In the following, I will consider a few objections to the designs of

the upper house.  By answering these objections, I hope to elaborate on

the designs of the upper house and the reasoning behind them.  The first

objection is this.  The introduction of the upper house in such a manner

may breed resentment of the disenfranchised that will threaten the stabil-

ity of a society.16  In comparison, an important function of democracy is

precisely to give people a sense that the legitimacy of the state and the

government lies in the approval by the people, so that people will support

the state and the government full-heartedly.  My answer to this objection

is the following.  First, as is already shown,  it is crucial to the Confucian

version of democracy that people be instilled, through civic education,

with a sense of respect for excellence and acceptance of the rule of the

wise and virtuous so as to willingly abdicate their right to participate

when they consider themselves incompetent.  Chinese peasantry in the

past and many Western__especially American__voters before the age of

populism and cynicism had respect for the authority, and they didn’t find

it unacceptable that the experienced and knowledgeable have more au-

thority.  This fact shows the power of education and culture.  Second, in

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Confu-China, the government bears the responsibility of educating ev-

eryone, and the exams are open to everyone.  This may lessen the feeling

of disenfranchisement and resentment.  Third, legislatures of every level

still have a popularly elected branch.

An objection related to the first objection is that some might ar-

gue that the rule of the wise or paternalism will make the people who are

excluded from politics more and more incompetent, thus artificially per-

petuating the distinction between the ruler and the ruled.  This is perhaps

another reason that those who believe in democracy resist hierarchy and

paternalism.  To understand this objection, let’s take a look at John Stuart

Mill's account on this problem.  He warns the danger of paternalism in his

criticism of the idea that, “if a good despot could be ensured, despotic

monarchy would be the best form of government” (Mill 1958, 36).17  Ac-

cording to Mill, even if this good despot could take care of everything for

the people (which is nearly impossible), his paternalistic actions would

chain up the free agency of his subjects and thus perpetuate their incom-

petence.  This is like the situation where the children tend never to grow

up when the parents are over-competent and try to take care of every-

thing.  In contrast, popular participation offers the best civic education of

the people, leading their vision to go beyond their selves (Mill 1958, 36-

55).  From the discussion of the sixth fact of modern democracy, how-

ever, we should see that Mill’s expectation of the educational function of

popular elections may have been overly optimistic.  On the contrary, only

with popular election, the voting public may retreat to their narrow and

often misguided private interests.

On Mill’s critical note, I should first point out that Rawls offers a

similar argument in his earlier work A Theory of Justice.  He first defends

plural voting (i.e., “persons with greater intelligence and education should

have extra votes,”), an arrangement different from one person one vote

and, interestingly, an idea Rawls traces back to Mill:

The political liberties are indeed subordinate to the other

freedoms that, so to say, define the intrinsic good of the

passengers [in a metaphor, Rawls compares the state with

a ship and people with the passengers].  Admitting these

assumptions, plural voting may be perfectly just.  (Rawls

Tongdong Bai  59



1971, 233)

Immediately after making this argument, he criticizes this arrange-

ment, and his criticism is similar to Mill’s criticism of paternalism.  He

states that the participation of all citizens “lays the foundations for civic

friendship and shapes the ethos of political culture” and “enhance[s] the

self-esteem and the sense of political competence of the average citizen”

(Rawls 1971, 234).

In response, we can see that, in Confu-China, popular participa-

tion is still preserved.  It is just that the check by the elite is added to the

decision-making.  More importantly, although Mencius and other classi-

cal Confucians didn’t discuss the civilizing role of mass participation, a

Confucian can nevertheless happily recognize this role.  Moreover, Con-

fucians may even recognize the practical and psychological benefit of

making people feel involved as a member of the state through mass par-

ticipation in the age of democracy.18  As Bell points out, even in today’s

China, “the symbolic ritual of free and fair competitive elections __ even if

the people’s views have minimal impact on actual policies”__has to be

recognized (Bell 2006, 273).  All these considerations give us additional

reasons for Confu-China to preserve popular elections, although, at the

same time, different from Rawls, Confucians may also be concerned with

the possibility that, through this civilizing process, people may grow over-

confident, thus losing respect for the wise and the virtuous.  Moreover, in

Confu-China, exams and experiences are introduced as the basis for vot-

ing rights in the case of certain political matters and for the membership

of certain branches of the legislature, but these exams are open to the

public and the government has the responsibility to offer any means nec-

essary for citizens to be educated and to participate in politics.  Even if

people fail to pass or choose not to take the exams, the door will be

always open when they change their mind or improve their competence.

That is, unlike what is criticized by Mill, this hierarchy is not fixed.  On

the contrary, it encourages upward mobility.  As a famous line of an an-

cient Chinese poem (exaggeratingly) says, “one can be a farm boy in the

morning, but come to the emperor ’s court in the evening”

(朝为田舍郎，暮登天子堂 ).  This mobility may also dispel possible resentment
of the disenfranchised against the powerful elite.  When discussing the

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keju system that can be considered a forerunner of the selection mecha-

nism we discuss here, the historian and philosopher Qian Mu (钱穆 ) ar-
gues, it “can fundamentally eradicate the social classes…… [and] can

cultivate people’s interest in politics and strengthen their patriotism” (Qian

1996, 405-406).  We can see here that these arrangements by the Confu-

cians have an intention similar to the popular participation in a demo-

cratic regime.  Clearly, the rule of law has to be enforced so that there is

no perceived unfairness in this mobile hierarchy.

Another sensible objection is that the learned and the experienced

don’t always make good decisions.  This may be a sensible one.  But we

should see that the reason we need the branch of the elite is the recogni-

tion of the sixth fact of modern democracy.  In other words, the introduc-

tion of popular election in history was to prevent few noblemen from

controlling political decision-making process and using public resources

for their own gains, and mass participation was a good check of pure

aristocracy.  But a grave problem of today's democracies is that what was

meant to be a correction of aristocracy has gone to the other extreme,

and it has given too much voice to blind popular will.  Therefore, we need

to reintroduce the good aspect of aristocracy, that is, “aristocracy” in its

original sense, the rule by the excellent (at both knowledge and morality),

and use it to check the excesses of democracy, hoping to achieve a more

desirable middle ground between these two systems, rather than pinning

our hope for good governance on the conscience of members from either

side.  Some might agree with me on this point, but might argue that,

considering the fact that China (or other not-yet-democratic countries) is

not democratic yet, perhaps we should use the promotion of popular elec-

tions as a more effective means to achieve the desirable middle ground of

limited democracy.  But as the path of democratic countries in the recent

past has shown us, oftentimes, we often cannot stop at the desirable middle,

but slide helplessly and hopelessly to the extreme which we wished to use

merely as a corrective.  Even if we put aside this possibly controversial

empirical observation, the democratic promoters should at least be aware

of what the ideal state is.  Besides, even if the branch of the experienced

and learned didn’t directly improve the quality of policy-making, its ex-

istence can be taken as a civic education, thus indirectly improving the

quality of policy-making.  That is, the existence of this branch makes

Tongdong Bai  61



people aware of the idea that political participation is not an inborn right,

but is based upon competence and has moral requirements.  Mill and

Rawls are correct to say that political participation offers opportunity of

civic education.  But when participating, common people are also helped

by looking up to the exemplary people and institutions.  They offer role

models for people to participate in politics.  As Confucius says, “Govern-

ing by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while

all the other stars revolve around it” (2.1 of The Analects; for an English

translation of the Analects, see Lau 2002).  The role of civic education by

the upper house, the house of the experienced and learned in Confu-

China, enriches the educational role of mass participation discussed by

Mill and Rawls.  In short, as long as we don’t hold a radically pessimistic

attitude (an attitude some mystical or Christian thinkers might have) that

denies any positive role of reason and virtues in decision-making, we

should see that the upper house might improve government.

Some might object that, not only do not the elite often make good

decisions, but they often make bad decisions.  Thus they shouldn’t play

the role of check and balance.  The basis for this argument is that the rule

by the elite often falls victim to the interest of the elite class.  This worry

is a sensible one.  To prevent this from happening, we hope that the moral

education of the elite may play some role.  More importantly, some insti-

tutional arrangements should be made.  A key is that we must establish a

respectable and stable rule of law that regulates the elite branch and use

the house of people to check the former branch, so as not to let the elite

establish laws at their own will to benefit themselves or their associates.

Another mechanism to prevent the elite from serving their own interests

is that each branch has to have a significant number of members, so that it

is hard for the elite to form a unified interest group.  Another reason to

suspect that the elite will make bad decisions is this.  The sixth fact of

modern democracy presupposes that the populace in a large state can

easily be misled by interest groups.  But perhaps to mislead a small circle

of elite is practically even easier than misleading millions of people.19  This

might be the case, and I can only give an imperfect answer.  We need

empirical evidence for this claim, and, until we have it, we can at least

hope that the ruling elite who are wiser, more experienced, more virtu-

ous, and with better conditions (time, assistance, etc.) are less susceptible

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to mis-information than the populace.

I believe that the regime of Confu-China is applicable to all states.

The account of it is not only theoretical, but also is meant to be practical.

However, whether the ideal can be actualized depends upon the main-

stream culture of each state.  In the U.S., where most people take one

person one vote as something sacred and any challenge to it simply as

outrageous,20 the regime of Confu-China may only be established through

skillful disguises.  But in emerging democracies and democratizing coun-

tries, the idea of the regime of Confu-China might be spread in its original

form.  Besides, the design of Confu-China might also help the democrati-

zation process of pre-democratic countries.  This is because a problem

with recently democratized countries is that, among them, there are many

populist governments.  The chaos these governments create not only make

their own citizens suffer, but also make people in pre-democratic states

resist democratization.  For example, much of political turmoil in Taiwan

is often taken as a product of a populist government, and the lack of

education and other conditions makes many who desire democracy think

that it is not feasible to the present situations of today’s China.  But the

regime design of Confu-China, especially its limited or restricted form of

democracy, might help us to get around these obstacles.  More impor-

tantly, the previous discussions might help us to see clearly the truly de-

sirable elements of liberal democracy, thus offering guidance to the de-

mocratizing process.  These discussions, simply put, show that liberties

(rights) and the rule of law might be the gem of liberal democracy, while

popular election might be what is problematic.  People often believe that

liberties and the rule of law on the one hand, and popular election on the

other are inseparable from each other, but this view is verified neither

theoretically nor empirically.  If the two parts are separable, a very simple

summary of the above discussions in dealing with democratization is that

liberties and the rule of law should come first, and a limited form of de-

mocracy should come second.

Lastly, I will discuss some objections to the arguments in this sec-

tion that are based upon observations of political reality.  First, one could

argue that what is truly superior in the American regime is its rule of law

and bureaucratic (elite) system, and one person one vote doesn’t really

matter.  Moreover, one person one vote only gives people a sense of

Tongdong Bai  63



imagined equality, and this can be seen from the fact of the disproportionally

high number of rich and highly educated people in American congress.  In

other words, although there are no explicit arrangements like those in

Confu-China, the U.S. is a de facto regime ruled by the elite.  I agree on

this evaluation.  But I believe that, even if what popular election gives

people is an imagined equality, it still gives too much power to the popu-

lar will in its influence on politics and the ruling elite.  Therefore, I insist

that elitism or meritocracy should “come out of the closet”, becoming a

proud part of liberal democracy and culture.  Some of the American found-

ing fathers actually had some “elitist” designs, but perhaps because they

were not explicitly made, gradually, these elements have disappeared.

Not to repeat this history, we should make the meritocratic elements ex-

plicit.

The “elitist” design of Confu-China is to give more power to the

politically motivated, compassionate, and competent people, and check

the influence on politics by those who are politically indifferent, narrow-

minded, and incompetent.  Some might ask why we cannot leave it to

“natural selections”.  Those concerned with politics naturally wish to push

for their ideas.  From American political reality, however, this hope might

be overly optimistic, when we see the result of “natural selection” is the

rise of the extreme, the issue voters.  On surface, they are the opposites to

the political indifferent in our discussion of the sixth fact of modern de-

mocracy, but, in reality, they adopt the same kind of attitude of political

indifference and have the same kind of political ignorance as those appar-

ently politically indifferent and ignorant.  For they are concerned with but

one issue, refuse to discuss it with others, and indifferent to or ignorant of

other issues.  They actually offer a supporting example to the sixth fact.

Another challenge that is based upon observations of reality is about the

failure of the Iranian model.  Today’s Iran also tries to combine demo-

cratic election with the rule by the (religious) elite.  Of course, an obvious

answer to this challenge is that the choice of the elite in Iran is based upon

the religious expertise that might be politically irrelevant.  But this an-

swer needs to be scrutinized further.

It should be acknowledged that many observations of democracy

in this chapter are based upon American political reality.  But whether this

reality is peculiarly American or is world-wide can be debated.  In par-

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ticular, we need to refer to political scientists for their theoretical and

empirical studies of whether Western European and Japanese democra-

cies suffer from the problems caused by the sixth fact of democracy.

5. Confu-China: not a rejection, but an improvement of liberal de-

mocracy

Confu-China is a correction of present liberal democratic regimes,

but many who favor democracy may still consider this idea radical.  I will

show in this section that it is really not.  As we see, in practice, a key

difference between Confu-China and a liberal democracy is that the former

indirectly restricts one person one vote and leads to some sort of political

inequality.  But, as has been discussed, is one person one vote so essential

to liberal democracy?  Of course, according to Rawls, reasonable citizens

in a liberal democracy should view one another as free and equal.  But in

his works, there is little mentioning that one person one vote is an expres-

sion of equality.  Only in his discussion of the decent consultation hierar-

chy does Rawls seem to express a belief that one person one vote is an

essential element to liberal democracy (Rawls 1999a, 71).  However, in

the Law of Peoples (LP), he explicitly excludes the “right” to equal politi-

cal participation from the basic human rights, an exclusion criticized by

many.21  This suggests that this right is not as important as what he con-

siders basic rights.  In fact, as we see from his discussion of plural voting

in A Theory of Justice (TJ), he doesn’t seem to think that the violation of

one person one vote is in conflict with liberal democracy, although, as is

mentioned earlier, he defends it (or some form of popular and equal in-

volvement in politics__he doesn’t explicitly say that this involvement is in

the form of one person one vote) on the ground that it encourages civil

friendship, self-respect, and competence (Rawls 1971, 233-234).

In fact, as discussed in the previous sections of this paper, both

Confu-China and Rawls believe that political participation presupposes

proper education and being informed.  Theoretically, the only crucial dif-

ference between them is that the former recognizes the sixth fact of mod-

ern democracy, and offers a more realistic treatment of this fact.  With

regard to the de facto political inequality, if we follow the rationale of

Tongdong Bai  65



Rawls’s difference principle in TJ that economic inequality can be ac-

cepted if the least advantaged are benefited (Rawls 1971, 75-83), why

can’t we have a difference principle in politics (I will call it the political

difference principle): political or electoral inequality (in terms of voting

power) can be accepted if the least advantaged are benefited?  Interest-

ingly, after pointing out problems with contemporary democratic societ-

ies and offering the hybrid regime as a solution, the journalist and politi-

cal commentator Kaplan points out,

According to Aristotle, “Whether the few or the many rule

is accidental to oligarchy__the rich are few everywhere,

the poor many”.22  The real difference, he [Aristotle] wrote,

is that “oligarchy is to the advantage of the rich, democ-

racy to the advantage of the poor”.  (Kaplan 1997, 80)

From this he argues that perhaps the hybrid regime he discusses is

real democracy, while modern democracies have degenerated or will soon

degenerate into de facto oligarchies.  Similarly, we can say that perhaps

Confu-China is real democracy.

One may object to this line of reasoning by arguing that the first

principle of justice is the principle of equality, and some of the arrange-

ments in Confu-China violate equality.23  However, according to Rawls,

the first principle reads, “each person is to have an equal right to the most

extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty of others” (Rawls

1971, 60), and the political liberty, one of the basic liberties, means “the

right to vote [but not the right for each vote to be counted equally__my

note] and to be eligible for public office” (ibid., 61).  As we already saw,

in Confu-China, the democratic branch is still preserved, and the selec-

tion for the branch (es) of the experienced and the learned is also open to

the public (though not in the form of direct election).  Indeed, the govern-

ment is responsible for promoting the upward mobility of common citi-

zens to participate in politics and in the activities of the “non-democratic”

branch (es).  Besides, other aspects of equality are well preserved in Confu-

China.  In short, the political difference principle embodied by some ar-

rangements in Confu-China may be in a minor, if any, conflict with Rawls’s

requirement of equality that is expressed in the first principle of justice.

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There is yet another way to see the relation between Confu-China

and the Rawlsian liberal democracy.  If we follow Rawls’s idea that there

is an analogy between what is within a people and what is among differ-

ent peoples, we see that this analogy actually breaks down in Rawls’s

own later philosophy.24  That is, in his theory, domestically, a liberal people

consists of free and equal citizens and its majority is reasonable.  Interna-

tionally, however, he never asserts that well-ordered peoples__the only

peoples that are reasonable__must be the majority.  The well-ordered

peoples actually possess a higher position than other peoples, and thus

Rawls introduces a de-facto hierarchy of peoples on the international level.

In contract, the regime of Confu-China carries out the analogy much more

nicely.  Its domestic hierarchy corresponds to the hierarchy of peoples:

the informed and compassionate play a justifiably larger role in domestic

politics, just as the well-ordered peoples play a justifiably larger role in

international politics.  Of course, the percentage of incompetent citizens

over all the citizens of a state might be higher than the percentage of not

well-ordered societies over the totality of all societies.  Many cosmopoli-

tan liberal thinkers criticize Rawls for not being able to carry over his

approach in TJ that deals with domestic case to the international case,

and argue for a consistent approach to both the domestic case and the

international case that is based upon his handling of the domestic case.25  I

argue for a consistent approach to the opposite direction: to carry his

approach to the international case over to the treatment of the domestic

case.  Then, where do we put Rawls’s liberal people in my “backward”

analogy?  The liberal people and its corresponding international society

of liberal peoples can be taken as a domestic ideal and an international

ideal.

In addition to the above formal comparisons, from a more sub-

stantial perspective, Confu-China actually develops Rawls’s ideas, deals

with problems Rawls doesn’t deal with, and offer more realistic solutions

to the problems with which Rawls is concerned.  As is implied by the third

fact of democratic society (Rawls 1999a, 38), his version of liberal de-

mocracy presupposes that at least a substantial majority of citizens have

to be reasonable, and he doesn’t discuss how to deal with the situation in

which the unreasonable people may constitute the majority or a substan-

tial minority in a society.  He has a good reason to make this presupposi-

Tongdong Bai  67



tion.  That is, we have to solve the problem of the stability first in the ideal

situation in which the majority of a society consists of reasonable people

who nevertheless hold conflicting and irreconcilable comprehensive doc-

trines.  Then and only then can we deal with the problem in a more real-

istic situation.26  However, if we accept the fact that no real-world liberal

democracy has a majority of reasonable and informed citizens, then lib-

eral peoples as Rawls understands simply don’t exist.  In contrast, Confu-

China deals with the problem about the relations between reasonable and

informed citizens and unreasonable, uninformed, or indifferent people.

To be clear, my focus is not about Rawls’s failure to offer a proof of the

desirability of liberal democracy, as some people might be concerned with.

On this alleged failure by Rawls, I share Burton Dreben’s view, expressed

in a response he offered to someone who asked a question about the

justification for liberal democracy (Dreben 2003, 328-329).  Rather, my

concern is that, if, due to the sixth fact, this ideal of liberal democracy is

too utopian, can we have a regime that deals with this fact that is never-

theless in line with many of the Rawlsian ideals?  I argue in this paper that

Confu-China might fit the bill.  Moreover, as is pointed out in the previ-

ous section, Confu-China tries to deal with many practical problems, such

as Social Security, international aid, domestic and international human

rights, which Rawls is deeply concerned with (Rawls 1997, 773), and the

difference between Confu-China and Rawls’s ideal liberal democracy is

that the former doesn't believe that these problems can be solved within

the regime of the latter, but needs the corrections of regime adopted by

Confu-China.

If what we argue in this chapter stands, we then show the vitality

of Confucianism in designing an ideal regime.  In other words, Confu-

cianism as a political philosophy still has a broader function than educat-

ing the rulers.  Facing with the challenges of contemporary dominant

political values, Confucianism doesn’t have to retreat to the area of ethics

or some “Confucian reservations”. Confucianism-based Confu-China

doesn’t reject liberal democracy, but is a development of it.  It deals with

the sixth fact of modern democracy which other liberal democratic think-

ers fail to deal with adequately.  In his LP, Rawls calls the regime he

designs a “realistic utopia”.  To establish a realistic utopia is the differ-

ence between a political philosopher and a politician (the former being

68  Prajna Vihara
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more utopian), and between a political philosopher and a mere dreamer

(the former being more realistic).  But from the point of view of Confu-

China, Rawls fails to deal with some realistic factors which need to be

dealt with even in an ideal design.  Therefore, using Rawls’s terminology,

we can say that Confu-China is a more realistic utopia than Rawls’s de-

sign of liberal democracy.

Endnotes

1This paper is closely based upon Chapter 3 of Bai 2009, especially the

English and revised manuscript of this chapter.  The reader doesn’t have to read

Section 5 if he or she finds this paper too long, for this section is to argue that the

form of meritocracy proposed in this paper is not that radically different from Rawlsian

liberal democracy, a topic not closely associated with this conference.
2From a House of Commons speech in 1947, according to http://

en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill (accessed on 11/29/2011).
3For some examples, see Kaplan 1997 and Zakaria 1997.  A lot of academic

researches have also been conducted on the relations between democracy and growth,

democracy and corruption, and democracy and ethnic violence (I thank Tianjian Shi

for calling my attention to some of these researches).  For example, the political

scientist Jonathan Krieckhaus has shown that democracy has a negative effect on

economic growth in the 1960s and should have a negative effect in Latin America

(although it has a positive effect on growth in the 1980s and should have a positive

effect in Africa) (2004 and 2006).  Daniel Treisman (2000) shows that the perceived

corruption is influenced by many factors, and whether a country is democratic or not

is only one of them.  Moreover, with regard to the effect of democracy on perceived

corruption, a country has to have been democratic for decades in order for democ-

racy to have a significant but relatively small effect on perceived corruption.  Steven

I. Wilkinson (2005) shows a complicated picture of the relations between democracy

and ethnic violence in India, while Daniel Bell (2006) shows that, oftentimes, de-

mocratization leads to an increase of ethnic violence.
4For a more detailed account, see Ackerman and Fishkin 2005.  There are

also numerous popular accounts of the lack of basic political knowledge among

Americans.  For a recent one, see Kristof 2008.
5See Chan and Chapter 2 of Bai 2009.
6An almost identical passage can be found in Rawls 1999a, 136, and a simi-

lar passage can be found in Rawls 1996, 49.  See also Rawls 1999a, 86-88 and 177-

178.
7See Rawls 1996, xxxix-xliii and 146-150 and Rawls 1999a, 149-150 and

168-169.

Tongdong Bai  69



8We should consider, based upon this distinction, whether many “liberals”

in China are liberals in Rawls’s sense or libertarians.
9Jean-Jacques Rousseau agrees with Montesquieu on this issue, and offers

similar arguments.  See his dedication “To The Republic of Geneva” in his Discourse

On the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (Rousseau 1964, 78-90)

and Chapters 3 and 4, Book 3 of his On the Social Contract (Rousseau 1978, 83-85).
10This impossibility may be a mathematical impossibility: the statistical er-

ror of counting a large number of votes is too significant for one vote difference to be

considered meaningfully determining the outcome.  I thank Qian Jiang for pointing

this out to me.
11Bai 2009, Sections 1 and 2 of Chapter 3.
12Bai 2009, Chapters 2 and 4 and Section 5 of Chapter 3.
13The treatment of local affairs in Confu-China is different from what is

practiced in today’s China in that, first, village (local) elections should be free from

interventions of higher officials; second, on this level, popularly elected government

should be the only executive branch; third, basic liberties and rights should be effec-

tively protected by law; fourth, there are popularly elected elements in governments

and legislatures of higher levels, meaning that elections should not be restricted on

the village or town levels; fifth, certain national issues should be open to referendum.

None of these is satisfactorily done in today’s China. Another challenge to local

elections in China is that village elections in some parts of China have led to the

monopoly and abuse of powers by powerful village clans or strongmen (I thank Zhang

Qingxiong (张庆熊 ) for pointing this out to me).  This fact can challenge the argu-
ments in this paragraph.  I suspect that the rule of law, protection of rights and

liberties, and more democratic elements on every level of the government might

eventually correct these abuses.  But this is something that needs to be treated by

political scientists as well as political philosophers.
14Obviously, in today’s democracies, especially in today’s American context,

these names themselves would likely doom the latter branch to failure, because

“people” is often taken as a good word by the people, while “learned”, “experienced”,

“elders” are words of ridicule.  I use these names because they express the intentions

of these branches, and I will leave it to the politically savvy to come up with better

names for these branches.  Perhaps, for political purposes, we should use “the lower

house” and “the upper house” or simply “the senate” only.
15The late Chinese historian and philosopher Qian Mu 

钱穆 

 offers many

detailed, subtle, and insightful analyses of political arrangements in traditional China.

See, for example, Qian 1996 and 2005.
16I wish to thank Daniel Bell and Qian Jiang for pointing out this problem to

me.
17Mill’s choice of words is rather curious.  The “despotic monarchy” he

refers to is actually what we usually call “benevolent absolutism” or “enlightened

absolutism”, and the despot he talks about is what we usually call a benevolent or

enlightened monarch.  He uses “despotism” and its variants perhaps in order to lead,

70  Prajna Vihara
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through rhetoric, his readers to feel repelled by this kind of regime.
18Based upon some field works in Indonesia, Benjamin Olken arrives at the

following conclusion: although direct participation doesn’t lead to policies signifi-

cantly different from those adopted without mass participation, yet people in the

former situation feel far more satisfied with these policies (Olken 2008).  One might

dismiss democratic participation as cynical manipulation.  But we shouldn’t ignore

the significance of democratic participation, even if it lies chiefly in psychological

satisfaction.  After all, the goal of a good state is to make people happy, and happi-

ness does not merely come from the satisfaction of material needs.  I wish to thank

Qian Jiang for pointing this out to me.
19I wish to thank Qian Jiang for pointing out this problem to me.
20For example, a most powerful objection to Samuel Alito’s nomination to

the American Supreme Court is a ruling he made that could be interpreted as an

indirect challenge to ONE PERSON ONE VOTE, “a corner stone of American de-

mocracy” (Cohen 2006; see also the New York Times Editorial (New York Times,

2006)).  Interestingly, some, if not all, who defend Alito don’t defend him by criticiz-

ing the idea of one person one vote, but by pointing out that Alito didn’t really chal-

lenge this idea in his ruling (see, for example, http://www.professorbainbridge.com/

2006/01/what_the_ny_tim.html, accessed on March 15, 2006).
21See Nickel 2006 and Buchanan 2002.  For a defense of this exclusion, see

Berstein 2006.
22Kaplan doesn’t offer the source of this quotation.  He may have been para-

phrasing a passage in Aristotle’s Politics (1279b30-1280a5).  In the Politics, Aristotle

also gives many arguments that support hybrid regime (c.f. 1281b25-35).
23I wish to thank Li Shi (李石 ) for pointing this out to me.
24For an argument concerning a different kind of breakdown between the

domestic case discussed in Political Liberalism and the international case discussed

in LP and a more liberal solution of it, see Tan 2006, 88-91.
25See, for example, Pogge 1994 and 2006, Buchanan 2002, and Tan 1998

and 2006.
26In TJ, he offers a similar rationale for dealing with the problem of justice

first and postponing the more pressing problem of injustice (Rawls 1971, 8-9).

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