Digging for democracy in China

Abstract

Histories of democracy in China usually begin with the late nineteenthcentury reform movement. Non-government reformers, dismayed by China’s manifest weakness in the face of Western aggression, embarked on a search for ways to make China wealthy and powerful. They became convinced that Western ‘wealth and power’ were rooted in democratic political systems: governments based on elected representative institutions seemed able to mobilize all of their citizens behind development goals. By the 1890s we see a concerted push among China’s mainstream scholar-activists for political reform alongWestern lines. Radicals in the 1900s formed a revolutionary party and promised a democratic republic once the Manchu monarchy was removed. Revolution in late 1911 destroyed the monarchy, and the Republic of China was founded in February 1912.