Wang Huning Forgery

Forged Version of Wang Huning, “Reflections on the Cultural Revolution and the Reform of China's Political System"

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby

Introduction

​In September of 2021, I published on this site a translation of what I believed to be a revised version of Wang Huning's 1986 essay, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution and the Reform of China's Political System."  I had found the text online a few weeks or months before beginning to work on the translation in a general search for pieces written by Wang , and had saved a Word copy of an html document, forgetting to note the URL.  I could not locate the document when I tried to find it again, but did find a very similar text, which differed only in terms of subheads and other formatting issues, which at least assured me that I was not imagining things.  I noted when I posted the translation that I was not completely sure of the provenance of the text, and mentioned to readers that I would be eager to look into the history of Wang's multiple revisions to the document--the text I translated claimed that Wang had revisited the text five times since first writing it.  This revision was dated 2012, the year Xi Jinping came to power.

Matt Johnson, who knows more about Wang Huning than I do, wrote the introduction to the translation, so I spent less time thinking about the text than I otherwise might have.  I remember thinking that it was strange that someone as busy as Wang would come back to the same piece over and over, and also that the piece was much more liberal than I would have expected Wang to be, given that he has spent most of his career in the halls of power in China.  At the same time, I had not at the time read the original 1986 version--which I had been able to find online--and thus had nothing to compare the text to.

Over the course of Christmas holidays, I received a message from Ryan Mitchell, professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, informing me that the text I had translated was a forgery.  Ryan, whom I believe also knows more about Wang than I do, simply found the text too good to be true, and did the research necessary to discover that while Wang's original text is indeed included, the 2012 "revisions" were taken verbatim from a text written by Cao Siyuan 曹思源 (1946-2014) entitled "China's Political Transition Must Have Two Legs 中国政治转型要有'两条腿,'" and published in the Taiwanese journal China Secret News 中國密報. 

Cao was a mainland legal scholar, a market-loving liberal who first made his name by writing a leading textbook on bankrupty law and procedures.  He spent a year or so in jail because of his implication in the Tiananmen demonstrations, but eventually returned to an active--indeed, almost activist--intellectual life.  On his Aisixiang page, I found an online discussion dating from 2012 in which Cao was the featured guest, and translated it (see here) so that we can compare what Wang said in his Taiwan article and what he was saying online in China.  Clearly he was saying the same thing--demanding constitutional rule and inner-Party democracy in quite fiery terms.   It is bracing to be reminded just how radical Chinese intellectuals could be in 2012; I suspect that there are still many people in China who share ideas similar to Cao's despite Xi Jinping's best efforts.

I have no idea who perpetrated the forgery or why, but will leave it here as backhanded testimony to the value of the central argument behind this project and website--that the ideas of Chinese establishment intellectuals matter.  Of course, no one working on Chinese establishment intellectuals now would be tempted to put Wang Huning in the same basket with Cao Siyuan.  As Matt Johnson has persuasively argued, Wang Huning is powerfully connected with the idea that the CCP sees itself as the "engineer of China's soul," while Cao Siyuan is a classical liberal like Gao Quanxi or Ren Jiantao.  At the same time, there are many compatibilities between what Wang Huning said in 1986 and what Cao Siyuan said in 2012, a reminder of possibilities lost along the way and of the complexity of the Chinese thought world.

Translation 

The first two paragraphs were apparently composed by the forger.

A sound political system should have been able to prevent Cultural Revolution, which was launched, organized, and operated outside of the scope of the constitution and the law, but the system in place at the time did not have this capacity.  The political system established by the 1954 Constitution was destroyed with one blow by the Cultural Revolution, a fact which deserves careful study.       
 
Thus it is important to abide by the constitution. If the constitution and the law are ignored, and there are no consequences when citizens are carted away, the personal freedom of citizens interfered with, citizens are threatened with violence, and even scholarly activities are attacked, then there is a danger of the resurgence of the Cultural Revolution.

Wang Huning's text begins here, and is the same as the 1986 original.

Twenty years ago, the Chinese people suffered the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. Ten years ago we turned the page on this catastrophe. However, we should still reflect on that civil upheaval from time to time, to prevent such a disaster from recurring. 
 
A people should treat its most painful lessons as a mirror, keeping the mirror clean and looking in it frequently, so that generation after generation does not repeat the same mistakes and the people as a whole can continue to move forward.  The Cultural Revolution did not happen by accident. In terms of ideas, we failed to shift the focus of work to economic construction in a timely manner, continued to insist on the ideological line of "taking class struggle as the key link," despite the fact that the exploiting class had been basically eliminated, and adopted the ideological line of “creative destruction 破字当头,”[1] all of which were direct causes in terms of our thinking at the time. However, in the absence of certain conditions, the Cultural Revolution could not have occurred. In addition to historical, social, economic and cultural factors, an imperfect and unsound political system is a factor that cannot be underestimated.
 
Reflecting on the Cultural Revolution from the perspective of the political system is a particularly important part of summarizing the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. In recent years, people have analyzed the Cultural Revolution from any number of perspectives, including thought, ideology, culture, and the economy, but not enough has been done from the perspective of the political system. 
 
Political systems often improve as a result of thinking about instances of political turmoil.  No political system is perfect at the moment of its creation. It must recognize its own shortcomings and deficiencies in the course of its operations, practice, and the upheavals it encounters, and then move toward improvement and eventual perfection. Without this gradual process, a political system’s ingrained bad habits may be difficult to change.  The Cultural Revolution was certainly a catastrophe, but it also provides us with a basis for examining our political system. Today, as we embark on political reform, it is useful and necessary to reflect deeply on the Cultural Revolution from the perspective of the political system, learning from the past and preparing for the future. 
 
It would seem that a sound, healthy political system should have been able to prevent the Cultural Revolution, which was initiated, organized, and carried out outside of the scope of the constitution and the law, and did not conform to the scientific, democratic political process. However, the political system at the time did not have this capacity. The political system established by the 1954 Constitution was destroyed by the Cultural Revolution in one fell swoop. This is something that deserves our careful study. Setting other reasons aside for the moment, let's reflect on the Cultural Revolution from the perspective of the political system. A technical analysis of the political system reveals that the structure and function of some of the following elements help to explain why the Culture Revolution was not stopped. 
 
First, the ruling party that constitutes the core leadership of our political life does not have a healthy internal democratic system.   Our Party led the Chinese people through bloody battles and difficult struggles, establishing the socialist system and creating the lofty political prestige the Party enjoys;  the Party exercises full leadership rights in our social and political life, which is appropriate for our path of development. 
 
However, following subsequent changes in the situation and a misunderstanding of social class relations under conditions of socialism, the understanding of democracy by Party leaders at that time gradually declined, and "a work style based in subjectivism and individual dictatorship became increasingly serious and increasingly overruled the Party Center, so that the principles of collective leadership and democratic centralism in the political life of the Party and the state were constantly weakened to the point of destruction."[2] (Resolution on Certain Historical Problems of the Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China).
 
Consequently, on the eve of the launch of the Cultural Revolution, the actual situation was as follows:  the Party had overall political leadership over social life, and Party leaders had absolute leadership authority over the Party. Therefore, when Party leaders mistakenly decided to launch the Cultural Revolution, many cadres and Party members in our Party who disagreed were powerless to do anything about it. The inadequacy of the Party's internal democratic system made it impossible for the Party to prevent the wrongful act of launching the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in damage to the political life of the entire country.
 
Second, the National People's Congress, the organ of state power, was unable to exercise its power effectively and efficiently. The National People's Congress, as the highest organ of state power, should have had the solemn right to speak out and decide on the launching of a nationwide political movement like the Cultural Revolution. But in fact, soon after the start of the Cultural Revolution, the National People's Congress and local People's Congresses no longer functioned, and national leaders such as the Chairman were sidelined, and some were even persecuted and killed. The organs of state power had no ability to constrain this political upheaval involving China’s future destiny.
 
This, of course, had to do with the absence of a strict division of labor between the Party and the government. The absence of this division of labor meant the absence of checks and balances in the political system as well.  Without mechanisms of countervailing power, society pays a heavy price when one element changes direction.
 
Third, there is a lack of strong constitutional guarantees in political life. The way in which the Cultural Revolution occurred and developed was in fact totally inconsistent with the spirit of our Constitution and its regulations, and the practices and methods employed during the Cultural Revolution were also completely unconstitutional. The Constitution dictates the status and authority of the National People's Congress and the basic procedures of the political life of the country. However, the Cultural Revolution simply “destroyed everything” and "seized all powers" without following any procedures, thus consigning state organs to paralysis.
 
The Constitution outlines the rights and duties of the Chairman, of deputies to the National People's Congress, and of citizens, but these rights and duties received no guarantee at all during the Cultural Revolution. The absence of a mechanism whose specific function was to make good on constitutional guarantees was also a condition for the Cultural Revolution.
 
Fourth, there was the lack of an independent judicial system.  During the Cultural Revolution, there were many violations of the law, but no institutions that could actually exercise restraint. There were two aspects to this.  First, there was no system to handle administrative complaints, and thus no place to deposit griefs against government agencies that infringed on citizens’ rights and individual freedoms; government agencies controlled by the Gang of Four and their henchmen could do whatever they wanted, and there was nothing citizens could do about it. Second, the Cultural Revolution destroyed the general system for dealing with complaints, which meant that citizens had nowhere to file griefs about violations of their rights and interests, resulting in considerable beating, smashing, and looting, which constituted serious violations of human rights and human dignity. In addition, the public prosecution and law enforcement agencies were merged, and used to implement the Cultural Revolution, with no consideration of judicial independence. This meant that the Cultural Revolution became increasingly violent over time.
 
Fifth, the political system lacked a proper mechanism to decentralize vertical power.  After 1949, for historical reasons, i.e., our long-standing political, economic, and cultural backwardness, and also because of following the Soviet model, our system came to be highly centralized system. This system had a positive side, in promoting the economic development of an underdeveloped society, but it also created a latent possibility in our political life, meaning that a mistake at the top could wind up implicating society as a whole. Local areas do not have much jurisdictional competence and do not have legal autonomy over decisions made at higher levels.
 
If local authorities were granted certain powers, to be are exercised without interference, in accordance with the Constitution, then in the event of civil unrest such as the Cultural Revolution, local areas might avoid being dragged into a wrong-headed political upheaval, nor could general institutions force local governments to act contrary to the Constitution. The lack of such mechanisms meant that local governments were powerless in the face of the Cultural Revolution.
 
Sixth, there was no healthy system for the hiring and employment of state workers. Any activity undertaken by a political system, whether the activity be constitutional or not, requires a certain number of people to carry out the activity.  When the Cultural Revolution occurred, the absence of a strict and rigorous system regarding the hiring and employment of state workers allowed the Gang of Four to persecute good and loyal workers and replace them with people who were loyal to the Gang of Four. State employees, especially those with certain political responsibilities, should be appointed or dismissed through proper procedures, and cadres should not be appointed or hired haphazardly, as was the case during the Cultural Revolution.
 
All state employees at a significant level should be appointed or dismissed by the authorities. If the cadre system had ensured that cadres trusted by the people would assume political responsibilities, they might have been able to resist the Cultural Revolution to a certain extent. However, this system was not firmly in place at the time of the Cultural Revolution, so that the cadre system, which might have been effective in times of stability, became a major disadvantage in times of civil unrest.
 
Seventh, political life lacked a rigorous system to protect citizens' rights. Although the Cultural Revolution was a political upheaval that threatened the entire political system, it was also a disaster inflicted on the people. One social factor that made the Cultural Revolution possible was the widespread lack of a tradition of respect for citizens’ rights to democracy, freedom, and human rights. Civil unrest like the Cultural Revolution, which violated citizens' rights to democracy and human rights, would not have happened in a society where every citizen believes in democracy and where any violation of citizens' rights to democracy and human rights is punished by law and condemned by society. Both the lack of a strong sense of democracy and the rule of law in society, and the inability of the political system to effectively punish violations of citizens' democratic and human rights, served as social conditions for the launching of the Cultural Revolution. 
 
Clearly, even if we limit ourselves to the perspective of political technology, the above-mentioned items are not comprehensive, but nonetheless cover the basics.   The political development of a society can be regarded as a project—a political project. Political projects provide effective techniques and conditions for social and political activities and relationships, and ensure that social and political life unfolds according to the principles and methods that the people have chosen.  Certain political ideals, concepts, and principles can only realized effectively and efficiently through well thought out political projects. Without such projects, it is difficult for political principles to work themselves out in practice. Political projects require political technology.
 
Thinking about the Cultural Revolution, people have come to the conclusion that in the past, we neglected the development and application of political technology. The victory of the New Democratic Revolution and the Socialist Revolution provided the basic conditions for the realization of the people's democratic dictatorship. But for a long time we neglected the work of how to use political technology to build a democratic legal system, and as a consequence, when the Cultural Revolution occurred, there was no sound political system to intervene and put an end to it, and instead, the system itself was quickly destroyed by civil strife. This profound historical lesson is worth learning. 
 
Beginning about ten years ago, we began to pay considerable attention to this issue and took a series of constructive measures to improve the political system. In recent years, we have also focused on the reform of the political system. Through the above analysis, we see that an important direction for the reform of our political system is to ensure, from a technical perspective, that all aspects of the political system can function reasonably and effectively, including the relationship between the Party and the government, the relationships between various powers, the system of constitutional guarantees, the judicial system, the relationship between centralized and local powers, the cadre system and the democratization of society, etc. Through systematic political engineering, we can make our political system highly democratic, with a well-established legal system and an efficient political system.
 
Having reflected on the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, people have come to feel deeply that we should greatly develop our study of political technology in order to realize socialist democracy and the rule of law. On the one hand, this will involve thorough research and analysis to discover and create political technology that will be applicable to China's national conditions. On the other hand, we should compare and borrow from the political technologies employed by other countries throughout the world, including countries with similar socio-political systems and countries with different socio-political systems, adopting what is reasonable and scientific.
 
Different socio-political systems function according to different political principles, which are generally not interchangeable. But as political systems, all human communities face similar social questions and needs, as well as the same contradictions and problems. Some of the political technologies adopted to meet these needs and solve these problems are interchangeable. Economic management techniques from different economic systems can be imported, and the same is true for politics:  certain methods developed in different systems can be imported or adapted.  Of course, all societies have their own particular historical-social-cultural conditions. But a perfect socialist political system can be built only by studying and adopting scientific and rational political technologies found throughout the world.
 
Prior to the Cultural Revolution, for various reasons, we did not do this. Today, in the great process of modernizing our country, we clearly understand that we need to establish a solid political system, a fully democratic socialist system.  Only this will ensure that the tragedy of the Cultural Revolution not be repeated, and our material and spiritual civilization will achieve unprecedented development.

Wang Huning's text ends here.  The rest of the document is taken from Cao Siyuan's 2013 piece, published in Taiwan.
 
Is there a path toward establishing democracy within the Party? Of course there is. The First and Second Internationals, created by Marx and Engels, set the basic path: the separation of powers, and checks and balances. However, once Stalin took Lenin’s place, the entire international communist movement, including the Russian Communist Party, moved towards centralization. What were the results of centralization? The results can be summed up in one sentence: centralization harmed the Communist Party, and the damage was important!
 
Some friends say that it would be great if we had a leader like Chiang Ching-kuo to promote democratic constitutionalism. But whether we do or not, we as citizens should do our best to promote it. The current situation is that, everywhere in the country, everything is decided by the Party Committee, while in fact the entire population should be participating.  A healthy environment depends on concerned people (both inside and outside the system) to come together to fight to change the system.  This is urgent.
 
Some people say that the hard thing about changing a political system is top-level politics.  In fact, there is nothing in the world that is not difficult, and changing top-level politics requires the people to join in.
 
On Inner-Party Democracy
 
I would like to raise a question: Who leads the Party Committee? Some people say the Party Secretary.
 
In fact, it should be the Party Congress that leads the Party Committee, invests the Party Committee with power, and reviews the work of the Party Committee. Some people only talk about the monolithic leadership powers of the Party Committee, but in fact, inner-Party democracy demands three separations of powers.
 
Which three are these?
 
First, the Party Congress exercises decision-making power; second, the Party Committee exercises executive power; and third, the Discipline Inspection Committee exercises supervisory power. The three powers of state institutions are legislative power, executive power, and judicial power. In contrast, the three powers of the party institutions are: decision-making power, executive power, and supervisory power. 
 
These three separations of power were present during the era of Marx and Engels, before everything was decided by the Party Committee.  It was with Stalin, and then Mao Zedong, that decision-making power, executive power, and supervisory power were all centralized in one person, which is a monopoly of power, with no democracy. The consequences of this are very serious. 
 
Stalin, who destroyed checks and balances and concentrated the power of life and death in his own two hands, spent a great deal of time on the elimination of dissidents and the killing of innocent people. The numbers are telling.  Of the 24 members of the Party Central Committee who provided political leadership at the time of the October Revolution, 14 were killed by Stalin; of the 60 soldiers who led the military aspect of the October Revolution, 54 were killed by Stalin; of the 15 members of the First People's Committee, 9 out of 13, not counting Lenin and Stalin, were executed in the name of the revolution; in addition, more than 1.2 million Communist Party members were arrested, many of whom were sentenced to death or to prison terms. 
 
In a similar state of affairs, China under Mao did not separate the three powers, but instead lived through three great catastrophes: the 1957 anti-rightist movement, which attacked more than three million rightists; the 1958-1960 period, when the three red flags were raised high, in which more than three million right-leaning “opportunists” were attacked and more than 40 million people starved to death; and the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, which struggled more than 100 million people, of whom more than 20 million died. 
 
A very important but often overlooked fact is that these major decisions were not made by the highest decision-making body of the ruling party, the Party Congress, but by the Party Central Committee and Mao Zedong individually.  “I am the Central Committee.”  “I am the Party.” 
 
Let's use our imagination and try to figure out if these four leading figures—Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Liu Shaoqi—had a system to monitor one other. Sadly, they did not. Because there were no checks and balances, when Mao himself erroneously launched the Cultural Revolution, there was no way for Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Liu Shaoqi, to stop it, and Liu Shaoqi was even struggled to death. If Mao, Zhou, Zhu and Liu were not all part of the Central Committee, and under Mao’s thumb, but had been, respectively, the Chairman of the Party Congress, the Secretary of the Central Executive Committee, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the Director of the Central Disciplinary Committee, and if these four bodies and four leaders had had the power to supervise one another, could Mao have let himself go like he did, allowing his wife, Jiang Qing, to assume an important post in the Cultural Revolution Group of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, riding herd on the entire Party and the entire country? 
 
A mechanism which accomplishes the separation of powers and mutual checks and balances would not hinder the efficiency of decision-making, but rather improve its scientific nature. In short, if such checks and balances can be achieved, it will be an institutional arrangement that is conducive to "the concentration of power to do great things" and precluding "the concentration of power to do bad things." 
 
The CCP currently has more than 85 million members. If all party members could speak up, and if all Party Congresses could play their genuine role, it would be a huge benefit to the Party’s work throughout the country. To quote Mao Zedong, the idea that "there are no factions in the Party is nonsense."[3] It would not be a bad thing to let the Party diversify internally, to encourage debate and fair competition. 
 
Since the 12th National Congress, held in September 1982, and especially since the 4th Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee in September of 2009, the Communist Party of China has made great achievements in Party building. In anticipation of the upcoming 18th National Congress, to be held in November of 2012, we need to further promote the reform of the separation of powers and checks and balances within the Party, on the basis of a systematic summary of domestic and international experience, so that the Party makes fewer mistakes and achieves its mission. To this end, I have composed a set of inner-Party reform proposals for study and reference. 
 
Party Congresses at all levels should function as the basic power structure of the Party organization, and Party Congresses at all levels, beginning at the county level, should elect three bodies: a Standing Committee, an Executive Committee, and a Disciplinary Inspection Committee. Their respective duties are briefly described as follows. 
 
(a) Decision-making power. Party Congresses at all levels above the county level should implement a system of Party representatives (who will serve a term of five years).  The representatives will work full-time and will receive a full salary, paid by the Party organization at the corresponding level. In order to increase efficiency and reduce expenses, the size of Party Congresses is to be significantly reduced. There are some 500 delegates to the National Party Congress, about 50 at the county level, and provinces and municipalities lie in between. 
 
Party Congresses at all levels will elect a Standing Committee of the Party Congress (responsible for preparing and convening the Party Congress); its number will one tenth of the number of delegates to the Party Congress, and it will have a standing chairman and a vice-chairman to handle the daily affairs of the Standing Committee and to carry out investigations and write reports. The duties of the Party Congresses at all levels will remain largely the same as those stipulated in the current Party constitution, but with one additional duty: to hold a congress once a year to consider the work of the executive committee of the Party at the same level and urge it to strictly implement the decisions of the Party Congress. In case of emergency, the Standing Committee of the Party Congress will be empowered to convene an extraordinary congress of the Party. 
 
The delegates of the Party Congress will have the right to elect and to remove the main leading cadres of the executive bodies and disciplinary agencies according to certain procedures, but they will not have the right to interfere with their specific functional activities, and they are also subject to the constraints of a Party vote. The goal of such a separation of powers and checks and balances is to enhance the vitality of the Party and its influence among the people. 
 
This is something we can achieve if we struggle for it together.
 
(b) Executive power.  Party congresses at all levels will elect seven to nine members to form the executive committee at the same level, with one secretary and one deputy secretary. The Executive Committee at all levels above the county level will be the rough equivalent of the current Standing Committee of the Party Committee in terms of number and authority. At present, the leadership of the Party Committee at all levels is actually exercised by the Standing Committee, and the regular members of the Party Committee only attend a plenary session once in a blue moon.  They are little more than inner-Party decorations, something this reform will change.
 
The Executive Committee will be responsible to the Party Congress and will report on its work and listen to suggestions. The Standing Committee of the Party Congress will be kept informed of the work of the Executive Committee in a timely manner. 
 
The Party's executive body is not subject to the unilateral supervision and control of the decision-making body; if, in the course of its work, it finds that the decisions were wrong or in need of improvement, it can raise these concerns at the next Party Congress and ask to revisit the issue. This gives the party room to revise and improve its major decisions. 
 
(c) Disciplinary power.  Party Congresses at all levels will elect a disciplinary committee, consisting of five to seven members, with a director and a deputy director.
 
The main duty of the discipline inspection committee will be to conduct disciplinary inspections of the leading Party cadres at the same level (including delegates, executive committee members, etc.), but it will have no right to interfere with their daily work; discipline inspection committees at all levels will also lead the work of the party discipline inspection committees at levels subordinate to them. 
 
Let’s think about it: who should the Disciplinary Committee report to? Is it the Party's Executive Committee? No, it is not. Discipline Inspection Committees at all levels are responsible to and report to the Party Congress at the same level, and can report major issues to their superiors on the Central Discipline Inspection Committee. Clearly, the Central Discipline Inspection Commission should be independent of the Party's Central Executive Committee, and instead be responsible to and report to the National Party Congress. 
 
Real life tells us that executive power is often the most important power, with the greatest potential for abuse and harm. Therefore, the key goal of reform should be to supervise and restrain Party executive power. Our reform program, wherein the party's decision-making body takes on a genuine function, and the party's discipline inspection body becomes truly independent, it is conducive to the realization of the above reform priorities. 
 
Since the three powers are to be separated, serving as mutual checks and balances, it hardly needs saying that members of the three bodies should not have duties tied to the other bodies. If any of the delegates to a Party Congress is elected to serve in the executive body or discipline inspection body, he or she should resign as a delegate during his or her term of office to avoid conflicts of interest. In the past system, the delegate’s job consisted merely of attending a meeting once every five years, and taking up some other task on the side was not problematic. However, after the reform of the Party leadership system, the Party's decision-making power, executive power, and disciplinary power will be separated, serving as mutual checks and balances.  Delegates to the Party Congress will work full-time and at full salary, which means that serving on the executive committee or the discipline inspection committee will now be extremely inappropriate. 
 
Just think about it.  If we can achieve the inner-Party separation of powers and checks and balances, then will a leader still be able to "concentrate power to do bad things?"  If you want to concentrate power to do good things, the separation of powers can help guarantee the quality of these good things, while strict checks and balances can guarantee that each power acts in accordance with legal procedures, thus preventing "good things from going bad".
 
On the State Constitution
  
To reform of China's political system, we must follow the trend of the rest of the world toward constitutional rule.  To understand this worldwide trend, we must conduct comparative studies of the constitutions of various countries in China and abroad. I was fortunate enough to conduct a comparative study of the constitutions of China and 110 other countries for the 1997 edition of The Encyclopedia of World Constitutions 世界宪法全书, which is quite revealing. I would like to select some of the results and share them interested readers. What exactly is a constitutional trend? It is not a visible or tangible physical object, but instead a trend that can be deduced. I chose eighteen issues to look at, taking the 110 countries surveyed as a data base and calculating what percentage of countries meet the relevant criterion.  Mainstream trends will be immediately clear. 
 
1. 56% of national constitutions provide for referendums.

2. 66% of national constitutions provide for independent judges.

3. 67% of countries have a constitutional oversight body.

4. 69% of countries recognize or do not prohibit dual citizenship.

5. 69% of the countries have a president as head of state.

6. 71% of heads of state are also commanders of the armed forces.

7. 74% of countries have constitutions without a preamble.

8. 75% of the countries permit local autonomy.

9. 76% of the countries have directly elected parliaments (or representative bodies).

10. 85% of countries do not include the names of individuals in their constitutions.

11. 87% of countries do not include the name of any doctrine in their constitution.

12. 91% of the countries' citizens have freedom of religion and freedom of religious practice.

13. 91% of countries have constitutional provisions guaranteeing freedom of the press.

14. 94% of countries have the separation of powers.

15. 95% of the countries practice transparency.

16. 95% of countries do not recognize political privileges for any political party.

17. 98% of national constitutions guarantee human rights.

18. 99% of the countries do not provide for any dictatorship in their constitutions. 
 
If we say that trends in world constitutions are reflected in most countries’ choices regarding the eighteen questions examined, then we might add that the constitutional amendment adopted by the Chinese People's Congress in March 2004, which added a paragraph to Article 33 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China to the effect that "the state respects and protects human rights," is a preliminary indication that China is following world constitutional trends.  At the same time, we also see the gap between the Chinese Constitution and world constitutional trends, and the general direction China's constitutional reform should take.
  
The worldwide trend toward constitutionalism began in the 17th century in England and matured in the 18th century in the United States and Europe, and has been popular for several hundred years. The four basic principles of constitutionalism—the division of powers into legislative, executive, and judiciary, multi-party competition, universal suffrage, and freedom of the press—have gradually gained popularity in the international community to become a mirror by which people judge the merits of political systems. Is this not the case? Moscow changed its flag twice in the last century:  they raised the red flag in 1917, and on August 22, 1991 Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree replacing the hammer and sickle with the historical Russian flag (which is white, blue, and red) and reintroducing it as Russia’s national flag. There are many different opinions about this, and different arguments lead to different conclusions. But the four basic principles of world constitutionalism are clear.
 
First, the Bolsheviks eliminated their "fraternal parties" one after the other: the Mensheviks, the Constitutional Democrats, the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, and in 1921, Russia changed from a multi-party system to a one-party state, which was clearly a step backwards in history.
 
Second, the Russian regime after 1917 ran counter to the constitutional principle of the separation of powers and checks and balances, and subsequently went from its original stance of "all power to the Soviets," to a narrower focus on "all power to the Bolsheviks," and finally to the extreme situation of "all power to the Party General Secretary.” This created a highly centralized dictatorship, and the Red Terror enveloped the whole country. In the six years from 1935 to 1941 alone, 20 million people were politically persecuted, 7 million of whom were shot, an average of more than 1 million people per year.
 
Third, although the Soviet Constitution contained provisions for a system of universal and equal direct elections, in practice the candidates were chosen by the ruling party and voted on by the voters, and those who were not on the list of candidates had no chance at all. Elections became a farce year after year, decade after decade.
 
Fourth, the lack of freedom of the press in the former Soviet Union was known the world over, to the point that after the fall of Khrushchev, he had to listen to the Voice of America to keep up with the news, an ironic commentary on the denial of constitutional principles.
  
Soviet Russia’s anti-constitutional practices endured for more than seventy years,  but have finally met with universal anger and resentment. Finally, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by former Soviet Vice President Gennady Yanayev (1937-2010) and other high-ranking officials, staged a coup d'état on August 19, 1991, in an attempt to save the critical situation. However, the people, fearing a return to the horrors of one-party dictatorship, the scorn for human life, the rigged elections, and the stifling of press freedom, did not support the August 19 coup, which failed within three days.
 
The masses of citizens and their representatives abandoned the anti-constitutional political system, to the extent that that the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, made up of a majority of communists, adopted a resolution at its emergency session on August 29, 1991 to stop the activities of the Communist Party of the USSR on Russian soil.  The resolution passed by an overwhelming majority of 283 votes in favor, 29 against and 52 abstentions. History finally declared that the return of the tricolor flag in Russia in 1991 was a progressive move in line with the worldwide trend of constitutionalism.
 
Viewed in this light, it is not difficult to understand the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe during the same period, the events in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan since the beginning of the 21st century, and the possibility of such events in the future. Therefore, using constitutional trends as a mirror can help us identify historic changes yet to come. 
 
Whether in China, or in the former Soviet Union, or in Eastern Europe, the awareness of the need to reform the political system has reached new heights:  "If we don't reform, we will lose the party and the country” is a constant refrain. Yet how exactly to change, what frame of reference to use, and how to design and build a new future political system are still big questions that need to be studied in depth. Concretely, what kind of political system should China implement? According to certain people, the key is that it should be "rooted in the vast fertile soil on which the Chinese nation has been living and developing for thousands of years.”
 
What is this soil? Everyone knows that it is the feudal imperial system! China is the most developed country in history of the world in terms of imperial rule, and anyone who wants to do a doctoral dissertation on the subject of "emperors" must spend time in China. However, the fertile ground of feudal absolutism is not the glory of the Chinese nation, but the political root of China's enduring backwardness. If you fancy becoming a king, then go right ahead and enjoy this “soil.”
 
This may be the subtext of some people's emphasis on China’s "particular national conditions." But the vast majority of Chinese people prefer not to live under shadow of the imperial order. If a country's political system can only be rooted in the backward customs of the past few thousand years, how can it ever move forward? How can we talk about national revolution, social change, and "keeping up with the times"? Were Yuan Shikai and Zhang Xun right after all?[4] 
 
Obviously, the political modernization of late-developing countries must follow the essential wisdom of the political civilization of mankind, adopting the path of the separation of powers and checks and balances, rather than the path of centralized autocracy, which is what more than 90% of countries have done. “Stones from other mountains can also carve beautiful jade.”  We can learn an immense amount from world constitutional trends. For example, more than 70% of the world's large countries are federal systems, while more than 70% of non-federal countries practice local autonomy, which is also a useful reference for the design of China's state structure.
 
How to deal with the relationship between the central and local governments has been a persistent problem in China for thousands of years. At present, many people are unaware of the general concept of local autonomy, with the exception of the autonomy granted to areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. Drawing on the rich experience of the overwhelming majority of countries in this regard, it would be beneficial to seriously explore the notion of local autonomy, and at the same time, to revisit the issue of ethnic minorities. Therefore, only by taking the world's constitutional trends as our guide can we clear away the fog, envision the future, understand the real needs of the contemporary political reform, prioritize our tasks, and gradually achieve victory. 
 
An important part of China's constitution building is to guarantee the citizens' right to information. This right to information is a very important right to "direct democracy,”[5] and it complements the state obligation in terms of transparency and openness. Article 2(3) of the current Constitution provides that "the people shall, in accordance with the law, manage economic, cultural, and social matters through various channels and means." How can we talk about management if we are not informed? Without knowledge, how can we evaluate the attitude and competence to those who manage us, i.e., state officials?
 
Article 3, paragraph 2 of the current Constitution provides that "the National People's Congress and local People's Congresses at all levels are democratically elected, accountable to the people, and subject to their supervision." Without knowledge, how can we elect people's representatives who will satisfy the citizens; without knowledge, how can we remove representatives who do not satisfy the citizens; without knowledge, how can we supervise the work of our representatives? 
 
Citizens are the masters of the state, which is an unshakeable basic principle of modern constitutional democracy. But how can citizens function as masters if they are uninformed about affairs of state—including their "indirect democratic rights" to be informed about legislative, executive, judicial and social concerns? 
 
The opposite of openness is secrecy and mystery. Marx denounced the lack of state transparency as a sign of bureaucratism, saying: "The general spirit of a bureaucracy is secrecy and mystery. The preservation of this secrecy on the inside depends on the hierarchical organization of the bureaucracy, and on the outside, on the institution’s closed social nature. For this reason, a state that is transparent about its intentions is to the bureaucracy the same as a state that is selling its secrets."  Lenin also made this very clear: "It is ridiculous to speak of democracy without openness." Now that we are in the second decade of the 21st century, there is no reason why China should immediately practice openness in public affairs, sharing all information held by government organs (with a few legal exceptions) with the citizens. 
 
Therefore, both from the perspective of “direct democracy” and from that of “indirect democracy,” the state should fully guarantee the citizens' right to be informed and should be obliged to practice transparency.  Openness should be the principle and secrecy the exception. The importance of transparency and open government has been universally recognized as the principles have been written into the constitutions of most countries in today’s world. I proposed in the 1980s that the regulations and measures concerning openness be included in the Constitution, and to this end, the National People's Congress should enact the "Law of the People's Republic of China on Open Information," but unfortunately this has not yet come to pass. In 1988, the “Law of the People's Republic of China on Confidentiality” was promulgated, but a system that perfects confidentiality and not openness can only be a paralyzed system. 
 
It is because of the lack of sufficient understanding of the protection of the principle of openness at the constitutional and legal levels in China that we were hit hard by the SARS epidemic, which occurred in the first half of 2003. If we seriously study the lessons learned from that disaster, we will clearly discover that individual responsibility in terms of work performance was less important than the lack of transparency and openness on the part of the government, which led to the blockage of the transmission of information at the beginning of the epidemic, the lagging of epidemic prevention measures, and the rapid spread of the virus, resulting in the loss of too many lives. Without institutional remedies, the people and the country will inevitably pay a higher price in the future. 
 
The principle of openness means that state organs and public officials have the obligation to make government affairs public and to release related information in accordance with the law, except for those cases that are clearly required by law to be kept confidential for a specific period of time. It is illegal not to keep information confidential, but it should also be a crime not to disclose information in a timely manner. Openness cannot be limited to the declassification of outdated secret files by state organs, which is only one of the cases of government transparency and openness. Transparency means that all information other than that deemed by law to be secret must be fully disclosed to citizens in a timely manner, especially major issues that concern the rights, freedoms, and interests of the general public, which in all cases should be divulged without any concealment, so that citizens can be fully informed and can discuss the matters widely. 
 
Therefore, whether it is the legislature, the executive, or the judiciary, they all should establish a system for the release of information and for making information available to the press, and on a periodic basis—or whenever necessary—provide citizens with information and news and specialized reports, as well as through newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet, which will permit citizens to understand public affairs and related information.  The authorities should also ensure that the people can readily access this information. 
 
Take the People's Congresses as an example. According to the principle of transparency, certain specific revisions should be made to the procedural rules of the People's Congresses, such as: 
 
First, the National People's Congresses and local People's Congresses at all levels must be held in public, and if it is necessary to hold secret meetings, they must be approved by legal procedures.
 
Second, the transcripts of the speeches of the people's deputies given in public shall be made available by the secretarial department within three days, and citizens shall be allowed to inspect or obtain them at designated places; the secretarial department is responsible for regularly compiling the transcripts of the speeches of the people's deputies into a volumes for public distribution.
 
Third, applications from citizens, groups, and social organizations to observe the People's Congresses will be readily accepted.
 
Fourth, in normal situations, the National People’s Conference should hold regular press conferences to inform citizens of the work of the NPC; in exceptional situations, they should nonetheless issue written statements. 
 
Fifth, the People’s Congresses and related public meetings will allow journalists to cover the proceedings, and allow television and radio stations to record, videotape, and broadcast live or on tape.
  
The overall goal of China's political system reform is to follow the world trend of constitutionalism and establish a constitutional democracy. A modern democratic party system is one of the elements of the constitutional democratic system. Any political party must carry out democratization and build itself into a modern and democratic political party. As China’s ruling party today, the CCP needs to complete this reform task and become a model of modern democracy in order to effectively improve its governing ability and build a constitutional democracy in China. 
 
In short, the national constitution-building and democratic reform within the ruling party are closely related and cannot be separated. Thus the path to be followed in the reform of China's political system reform should be a two-pronged approach of national constitutionalism and inner-party democratic reform.

Notes 

[1]Translator’s note:  The longer phrase from which this comes is “destruction comes first,  but creation is found within destruction 破字当头，立在其中,” or “there is no creation without destruction, begin with destruction you will find creation within 不破不立，破字当头，立在其中.”
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[2]Translator’s note:  In the original text of the Resolution, the subject of the quoted sentence is Mao Zedong:  “Comrade Mao Zedong’s prestige reached a peak and he began to get arrogant at the very time when the Party was confronted with the new task of shifting the focus of its work to socialist construction, a task for which the utmost caution was required. He gradually divorced himself from practice and from the masses, acted more and more arbitrarily and subjectively, and increasingly put himself above the Central Committee of the Party. The result was a steady weakening and even undermining of the principle of collective leadership and democratic centralism in the political life of the Party and the country.”  Wang uses the quote without making a direct reference to Mao, although virtually all readers would have understood who was being discussed.  Translation taken from the Wilson Center Digital Archive,  pp. 17-18.

[3]Translator’s note:  Wang is quoting Mao in a speech delivered to the Standing Committee of the Politburo on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, ostensibly defending diversity within the Party before unleashing the Red Guards to attack such diversity.  Not without irony, Wang appears to be saying “Let’s remember both what Mao said and what he did.”

[4]Translator’s note:  the reference here is to two attempted imperial restorations that took place in the early Republican period.  Yuan Shikai sought to have himself named emperor, and Zhang Xun sought to reestablish the reign of the last Qing emperor, who had abdicated in 1912.

[5] Translator's note:  I confess to being baffled by these references to direct and indirect democracy, which generally have quite specific meanings in political science that do not correspond to the usage in this text.