Democratization and Causes of Public Participation in Macau: from 2009-2014

Abstract

There is a remarkable phenomenon that People’s Republic of China (PRC), with a population of over 13 million, seldom provokes chaotic issues that leads to serious social instability. Chinese citizens, for most of the time, acknowledge the authority of the state and obey its law regardless of how it is against their own inclination and interests. The underlying factor that triggers such “harmonious” atmosphere is undoubtedly the authoritarian system adopted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of the PRC. Back to post-1949 era when Mao Zedong established a so-called “new democracy” , he intended to recruit representatives over the society and to form various consultative groups. By engaging people at different society level into the political arena, it stimulated people to modernize and industrialize China (Brown, 2011). Yet such ideal situation did not came true and what even worse was that the infrastructure of elections, different political parties and potential sources of power that lay beyond the control of CCP were all removed. The CCP thus dominated the key areas of people’s political, legal and increasingly, economic and social life. Not until 1978 when Deng Xiaoping emerged a step-by-step reform , it focused on the necessary tasks of modernizing its agriculture, handling its relations with foreign countries, and, most importantly, enforcing the “open-door” policy which involved a larger extent of democracy to retrieve its economy as the first priority (Walder, 1988). Chinese leaders nowadays are more willing to talk about “democracy”; the only difference is they define such western ideology in its own way. The top leaders promote a strong rationale that they are mandate to govern its people rather than to enforce a one party dictatorship. PRC leaders are still strictly bounded by the long-established one party principle and the CCP, after several decades of establishment, remains by far the most powerful party within the PRC. It controls the People’s Congresses, the government and the court with an unchallengeable position.