Liberal rights and political culture : envisioning democracy in China

This study, broadly speaking, is about political theory, political culture and democratic development in China. Its main concern is about how the three topics relate to one another, and about how this relationship may further our understanding of political theory in terms of both form and substance. It ad dresses the questions of how Western political theory, or certain parts of it, may be applied to provide guidance for democratic development in a non Western political and cultural context, and of how this application may in turn help extend the limits of our conception of political theory. More specifically, it focuses on how the liberal concept of rights might fare in the Chinese political and cultural setting, and how this concept, viewed from a comparative perspective, might be able to offer a guiding hand in defining the nature and direction of democratic change in China.

There are two theses, one primary and the other secondary, that the study explores. The primary thesis is that the liberal concept of rights as a moral and political doctrine presuppposes and is grounded in a particular cul ture or shared way of relating. In China, where such a cultural grounding is radically lacking, the liberal notion of rights as we know it would be unlikely to provide a viable language for articulating visions of political change vis-à vis democratization. The secondary thesis is that for a rights-based argument to bear on democratic change, a redescription of liberal rights is required. This redescription should take into account some of the most important character istics that structure the Chinese politico-cultural tradition.