Illustration: Liu Rui

While China's development is unique, it can't be separated from the experiences of others.

Considering this, we conducted a three-year study of the political development of East Asia. After studying the historical origin and development environment of modernization of countries and regions including Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and Taiwan, we found that they shared a "hedging" of rights and centralized power.

In the process of industrialization, these countries and regions have all adopted systems that both ensure public rights and concentrate state power. They protect people's rights largely in the social and economic fields by opening up resources, expanding freedoms, encouraging people's enthusiasm to produce, and providing a huge impetus for industrialization and economic growth.

But they also concentrate political power among an elite class, strengthening the country's regime, and thus promoting the strategic development of industrialization.

These kind of systems lasted for around three decades, coinciding with rapid industrialization. Take Japan. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan both opened up its economy and maintained an imperial regime, promoting national unity and accelerating the country's industrialization process.

Thanks to this process, Japan rose rapidly over the next 30 years, and was the sole Asian power to industrialize in the 19th century, entering the ranks of the Western powers. During their industrialization periods after World War II, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan more or less duplicated the Japanese system, hedging between rights and power.

This contrasts with the political development of the US. When the country was established, the US government ensured two key things, the protection on people's rights and the opening up of state power, which became the foundation of US democratic politics. However, few other countries which later embarked on successful modernization have followed the same path.

In the era when the society is transforming rapidly in the industrialization process, opening up political power will definitely create ways to accelerate social mobility and push social groups to grab interests via participating in politics. It leads to political struggles and fights between various social groups.

Social turbulence will follow. Even worse, it may interrupt the process of industrialization and modernization. We define the political competitions caused this way as "distributive stimulation."

Distributive stimulation and the consequent chaos have been common in East Asia's industrialization procedure. For example, the democratic failure in South Korea in the 1960s, the turbulence of the Sukarno era in Indonesia, and the party battles in Thailand in 1970s are all typical social turbulence resulted from distributive stimulation.

The five East Asian countries and one region were industrialized by means of the "hedging" process. In the post-industrialization era, these countries and regions ended their original systems and gradually opened up political power and implemented competitive selection. This opening-up was part of the democratic process.

When the identities and positions of social groups are settled and new classes and groups are formed, when the political elites are content with basic social institutions and ideas, and when the main part of the society has shaped a new conservative consciousness and ideologies opposed to the system are restricted, then the conditions to turn to pluralism can be generally formed.

The author is director of the Institute of Political Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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