Dear Western brothers – the Professor of Political Philosophy and Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Tsinghua University seems to say – do not believe that you are the only bringers of modern Truth, and do not believe that the only possibility that China has to give freedom, wellbeing and peace to its citizens is to copy your model. During the years when the idea of exporting democracy from the West had come back into fashion (just as your Iraqi put-into-practice was obviously failing), Daniel A. Bell is responsible for reminding his readers in Washington and its surroundings that there is not just one development model: basing himself on Asian Values, Bell does with China and Singapore what a few years before, the Nobel prize winner for economy Amartya Sen did with India.

“Few, if any, Western liberal democratic theorists…have sought to learn from the traditions and experiences of East Asian societies – Bell writes – Their theories are presented as universally valid, and defenders of ‘Asian values’ are viewed as archaic or politically dangerous. This blind faith in the universal potential of liberal democracy would not be worrisome if it did not take the form of U.S. government policy to promote human rights and democracy abroad, regardless of local habits, needs and traditions. East Asian societies, by and large, have been relatively successful in adapting to the requirements of modernity”. Trapped in a form of instinctive sense of superiority (unjustified, and leaning towards the old colonialist idea) Western theorists seem to Bell as being incapable of even informing themselves on Asian political traditions (in this, showing the exact opposite of Asian colleagues, open to Western contributions).

A shame of pride, and a loss for Western systems, which could instead learn from Asian cultures: “There are morally legitimate alternative to Western-style liberal democracy in the East Asian region – the writer explains – If human rights, democracy and capitalism are to take root and produce beneficial outcomes in East Asia, they must be adjusted to contemporary East Asian political and economic realities and to the values of non-liberal East Asian political traditions such as Confucianism and Legalism. Local knowledge is therefore essential for realistic and morally informed contributions to debates on political reform in the region, as well as for mutual learning and enrichment of political theories”. In this way it is important to take note how Confucianism “facilitates and helps to maintain certain characteristic features of East Asian capitalism”, moderating capitalist individualism through social communitarian conscience and the paternalistic role of the State, a little like in continental Europe it contributed towards making the Christian religion.

If the Iraqi adventure can teach us anything, it is that local conditions cannot be ignored, nor can one be in a hurry when trying to bring in a system born in another part of the globe. The key point is that, if you want to hold a dialogue with (and understand) the Chinese ruling class, you need to put yourself in their minds, and know how they think. Well, even if they are (post) communist, very often they reason basing themselves on their own Confucian culture, which for example considers a war to be fair only if the people of the oppressed nation are forced to live in poverty. It is material poverty, not the lack of freedom or democracy, which justifies a war. And in this way the different concept of human rights in China and in the West is resolved in a difference of priority: for the Chinese (and Asians) getting out of poverty is worth more than granting freedom, and in this way the lack of social freedom in China is less serious, for a Chinese person, than social inequality in the United States. The prospective of Asian Values is not always understandable or appreciated by a Westerner. The Confucian familism can be immoral (just as Italian Catholics know only too well), the lack of interest of human rights is also explained by the priority that is given to material wellbeing, and the negation of the right to citizenship for “migrant workers” can seem cynical: it is precisely on this last point, in Bell’s view, where Asian visions clash with liberal-democratic ones; with the latter which pays more attention to the formal level and the former (the writer’s preference) which denies rights but concedes longer permissions and better opportunities for immigrants.

If it were not for the fact that Daniel A. Bell has reflected at length, studied and discussed these issues, we would say that he was trying to make us believe that democracy was not all that, and that contemporary China’s politico-economical model was not so bad, in fact, maybe, just maybe…Perhaps his thinking is at times provocative (in the chapter on minorities he never refers to the treatment of the religious minorities in China, and the idea that the non-democracies respect the minorities’ rights more than democracies do is not very convincing: minorities such as Indians in Great Britain, Francophones in Italy, Muslims in Spain are all better off than the Chechens in Russia, Catholics in China, Christians in Iran), but it is true that this book cannot not shake up our certainties on Western liberal democrats. Not so much when it reminds us that there is a whole Chinese way of thinking, older than ours, to which we should pay a lot of attention, but especially when it asks governments and Western NGOs to better consider the Asian context, when they preach and push for the democratization (Western-style) of those countries. Not even mentioning the chapter on the political elites. Here, Bell asks the West to first of all look at the beam driven into one’s own eye: how can the populist West (that of Bush and Berlusconi, to be more precise) give lessons on democracy to countries like China, in which the Confucian tradition has been teaching the cult of meritocracy for thousands of years?

Some theses are slightly arduous for a Westerner, but they are all justified by a deep reflection on Asian Values. Bell reminds us how the concept of Western civilization is founded on the active concept of the Greeks, while the Confucian one is decisively more familistic and refers the political decisions to the “best”, to an elite. It is on these bases where Bell’s proposal is founded, making the first step towards the democratization of China: “a bicameral legislature with a democratically elected lower house and un upper house composed of representatives selected on the basis of competitive examinations”, typical of the strict Confucian meritocratic system, because “whatever form of democracy takes root in East Asian societies will have ‘elitist’ characteristics”. It is a proposal which goes well with the traditional Asian respect towards the elite, but which Bell seems to think is also applicable to the Western system, where mass democracy has, in fact, lowered the cultural level of the representatives. Basically – it is his reasoning – a House of this kind is very similar to the British House of Lords, which is not elected (but which in the time being, precisely this year, has been reformed). There is an element of doubt in the writer’s criticism with regards the trade unions, which in the West are often object of criticism, but which in China would be a wonderful acquisition, if we take a look at how workers are treated in the great Asian power.

To conclude, Beyond Liberal Democracy is a book which is highly recommended for those who wants to deepen the link between traditional Confucian thought and current tendencies in Asian politics. Charles Taylor wrote the following on it: “This book is a lively and insightful contribution to what will be a major debate of the twenty-first century: how profound differences of culture and value will give a different shape to the core institutions of modernity in different civilizations”.

Translation by Sonia Ter Hovanessian