Abstract
China invented a vast array of devices and gadgets and, for a long time, led the world in pretty well everything. It had the biggest cities, the largest economy, the mightiest armies, and its influence among its immediate neighbours and even further afield was enormous. But China was also influenced by external factors, not least that of Buddhism from India in the first century and, later on in the seventh, Islam via Persia, which explains why both the Iranians and the Uighurs now use the Arabic script. This chapter concentrates on mainland China, but also refers to those other lands visited on this journey: Iran, Taiwan, North Korea and Mongolia.
The Mandate of Heaven (or a democratic principle): “When a ruler becomes unjust or tyrannical, then the people have the right to replace the evil ruler with a new, good one.”
(John and Nagai Berthrong 2000 : 49).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This old Uighur word means ‘those who go in do not come out’. The author went round.
- 2.
A little later on, Britain also wanted to be the centre of the world (and so did Germany but they lost) and hence the Greenwich (rather than the Berlin) Meridian. Later still, New York was chosen as home for the UN General Assembly.
- 3.
An extraordinary statement: so consensus is the opposite of democracy? How strange it is that ‘consensus’ and ‘democracy’ should be juxtaposed. It can happen, of course, if the former involves vetoes, and when the latter is assumed to be majoritarian.
- 4.
The British fought two nineteenth century wars in Afghanistan , from 1839–1842, and 1878–1880.
- 5.
Unlike so many other devices which were invented by the Chinese, it was not really an invention for by this time, the Greek City States had been using majority voting for more than a century or two.
- 6.
A Chinese (Mandarin) transliteration may sometimes be very different, especially when the original word is Cantonese or whatever.
- 7.
Needless to say, the vote was far from free; indeed, those who chose to vote ‘against’ ran the risk of being themselves denounced.
- 8.
‘Bloodied’ was the term used in the 1990s Balkans.
- 9.
As it happened, the author’s host had been elected some years earlier but had been de-selected by this very process; a fact, it seems, of which he was quite proud. In this village, then, the elections seemed to be functioning as they should; in another village on the outskirts of Beijing, however, there was talk of candidates buying votes.
The author does not know which electoral system was used; voting is 投票, tóupiào, but the correct translation for technical details can be difficult; not least in China, the term ‘alternative vote ’ could be ambiguous.
- 10.
Reproduced by kind permission of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd Copyright © 2012 Jonathan Fenby. First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012.
- 11.
For unknown reasons, he does not say how many.
- 12.
As it happens, in March 2018, the author was in Ānyáng, 安阳, where he was scheduled to give a talk on decision-making in the local university. On Monday 12th, he met the Dean and everything was fixed for the Friday. Perfect. But the 13th National People’s Congress was meeting in Beijing from 5th to 20th. The effect was palpable. On the Wednesday, the author’s talk was cancelled.
Talks on the same theme in Beijing and Tiānjīn, 天津, Universities went ahead as planned, however, but maybe that was because those in charge were a little older and therefore less concerned about their futures.
- 13.
The Huí are Muslim Han Chinese.
- 14.
The Open Journal of Political Science, OJPS, is based in Wuhan. It has published five of the author’s articles, albeit with rather lax levels of scrutiny.
- 15.
In 2018, the author spent a month in Xinjiang , mainly in Urumqi, (Wūlǔmùqí, 乌鲁木齐) Kashgar (Kāshí, 喀什) and Turpan (Tǔlǔfān, 吐鲁番). Most especially in Kashgar, security measures included numerous police stations or lookout posts in many urban areas, a lot of stop-and-search foot patrols in random arrests, and countless police vehicles seemingly forever driving up and down the main streets with sirens blaring. It was all very reminiscent of Belfast in the 1970s. One huge difference lies in the existence of labour camps, many of which have been reported in the western press of late; there again, albeit on a much smaller scale, NI’s H-block prison was often the focus of criticism.
- 16.
Meanwhile, in effect, presidential candidates in the US have to be ‘approved’ by their bank manager: millionaires only need apply.
- 17.
The author was in Hong Kong in 2014, and met with many of the demonstrators both on the island of Hong Kong and in Kowloon. At the invitation of Professor Benny Tai, one of the leaders in the 2014 protests, the author gave a talk in Hong Kong University in 2018 on the subject of decision-making . The purpose of the lecture was to suggest that, not least because Xinjiang is also part of China, to campaign for a binary referendum in Hong Kong (or Taiwan) would be not a little irresponsible. To ask instead for some regional autonomy, as Benny himself was suggesting, would however be utterly reasonable… but that option would only be on a ballot paper if the vote, and the debate which preceded it, were multi-optional .
- 18.
The CCP General Secretary is not here mentioning the two jurisdictions to which the current author refers.
- 19.
Silla was one of three kingdoms in what later became the one state of Korea in 676.
- 20.
The author spent ten days in North Korea, crossing the border from Tumen in the northeast to spend a few days in that part of the country, before going to Pynongyang and the DMZ. His visit coincided with this historic meeting in Singapore.
- 21.
The author, a long-term OSCE observer in Arkhangai and Khovsgul Aimags (or provinces), suggested a better methodology to the Mongolian authorities, the OSCE and his own Irish government. The first addressee replied. The OSCE did not respond. And nor did the Irish; instead they terminated the author’s participation in any future observation missions.
References
Bergreen, L. (2009). Marco Polo – From Venice to Xanadu. London: Quercus.
Berthrong, J. H., & Berthrong, E. N. (2000). Confucianism. A short introduction. Oxford: One World.
Brown, K. (2011). Ballot box China. London: Zed Books.
Brown, K. (2014). The new emperors. I. B. Tauris, used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing, London.
Chang, J., & Halliday, J. (2006). Mao, The unknown story. London: Vintage Books.
Chomsky, N. (2017). Who rules the world. London: Penguin Books.
Dikötter, F. (2011). Mao’s Great Famine. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Dikötter, F. (2016). The cultural revolution. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Dikötter, F. (2017). The tragedy of liberation. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Emerson, P. (2014). A democratic China? Open Journal of Political Science, 4(3). http://file.scirp.org/Html/4-1670125_48302.htm.
Fenby, J. (2012). Tiger head snake tails. London: Simon and Shuster.
Fenby, J. (2015). The dragon throne. London: Quercus.
Franke, H., & Twitchett, D. (1994). Cambridge history of China (Vol. 6). Cambridge: CUP.
Frankopan, P. (2015). The silk roads. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Gittings, J. (2005). The changing face of China. Oxford: OUP.
Hiro, D. (2009). Inside Central Asia. New York: Overlook Duckworth.
Holcombe, C. (2017). A history of East Asia (2nd ed.). Cambridge: CUP.
Hopkirk, P. (2006). The great game. London: John Murray.
Huntington, S. P. (1998). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. London: Touchstone Books.
Jacques, M. (2012). When China rules the world. London: Penguin Books.
Jang, J. (2014). Dear leader. London: Rider.
Juche, 106. (2017). The socialist constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
Keay, J. (2009). China, a history. London: Harper Press.
Kraus, R. (2010). The politics of art repatriation. In P. Gries & S. Rosen (Eds.), Chinese politics. State, society and the market. London: Routledge.
Lovell, J. (2011). The Opium War. London: Picador.
Man, J. (2007). Kublai Khan. London: Bantam Books. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. © 1996.
Man, J. (2011). Genghis Khan. London: Bantam Books. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. © 1996.
McLean, I., & Urken, A. (1995). Classics of social choice. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Nathan, A. J. (1986). Chinese democracy. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Needham, J. (1954). Science and civilisation in China, Vol I, Introductory orientations. Cambridge: CUP.
Runciman, D. (2018). How democracy ends. London: Profile Books.
Schram, S. R. (1969). The political thought of Mao Tse-tung. New York: Frederick A Praeger.
Su, Y. (2011). Collective killings in rural China during the cultural revolution. Cambridge: CUP.
Wang, Y.-C. (1968). An outline of the central government of the former Han dynasty. In J. L. Bishop (Ed.), Studies of government institutions in Chinese history (Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies XXIII). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Welsh, F. (1997). A history of Hong Kong. London: Harper Collins.
Westad, O. A. (2012). Restless empire. China and the world since 1750. London: The Bodley Head. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. © 1996.
Xí, J. (2014). The governance of China. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Yang, J. (2008). Tombstone. London: Allen Lane.
Zhao, Z. (2010). Prisoner of the state. London: Pocket Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Emerson, P. (2020). Asia, Where Voting Was Invented. In: Majority Voting as a Catalyst of Populism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20219-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20219-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-20218-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-20219-4
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)