For these reasons, amongst others, the Chinese state operates in an atypical way in comparison with conventional nation-states. The feedback loops, for example, are different. What might seem a logical consequence of a government action in an ordinary nation-state may not follow at all in China; in a country of such huge scale, furthermore, it is possible to conduct an experiment in one city or province without it being introduced elsewhere, which is what happened with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, even though they could hardly have been more fundamental or far-reaching in their effect. It is possible, in this context, to imagine democratic reforms being introduced in one relatively advanced province or municipality — Zhejiang or Shanghai, for example — but not others. As we saw in Chapter 7, the civilization-state embraces the concept of ‘one civilization, many systems’, which was introduced to the wider world in 1997 with the handover of Hong Kong to China under the formula ‘one country, two systems’; but the idea of systemic differences within China’s borders, in fact, has a very long history. It is conventional wisdom in the West that China should become ‘democratic’ in the West’s own image. The democratic systems that we associate with the West, however, have never taken root on anything like such a vast scale as China, with the single exception of India: indeed, apart from India, the only vaguely comparable example is that of a multinational institution like the European Union, and this has remained determinedly undemocratic in its constitution and modus operandi. One day China may well move, in its own fashion, towards something that resembles democracy, but Western calls that it should do so more or less forthwith glibly ignore the huge differences that exist between a vast continental-sized civilization-state like China and the far smaller Western nation-states. The fact that China ’s true European counterpart, the European Union, is similarly without democracy only serves to reinforce the point.

Fifth, the nature of the Chinese polity is highly specific. Unlike the Western experience, in particular that of Europe, the imperial dynasty was neither obliged, nor required, nor indeed desired to share power with other competing institutions or interest groups, such as the Church or the merchant class. China has not had organized religion in the manner of the West during the last millennium, while its merchants, for their part, instead of seeking to promote their interests by means of a collective voice, have sought favour through individual supplication. The state did not, either in its imperial nor in its Communist form, share power with anyone else: it presided over society, supreme and unchallenged. The Confucian ethos that informed and shaped it for some two millennia did not require the state to be accountable to the people, but instead insisted on its loyalty to the moral precepts of Confucianism. The imperial bureaucracy, admission to which represented the highest possible achievement for anyone outside the dynastic circle, was schooled in Confucian morality and ethics. The efficacy of this system was evident for all to see: for many centuries Chinese statecraft had no peers in terms of efficiency, competence or its ability to undertake enormous public projects. There was just one exception to the absence of any form of popular accountability: in the event of severe popular unrest and disillusionment it was deemed that the mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn and legitimacy lay on the side of the people rather than the incumbent emperor. Apart from this in extremis scenario, the people have never enjoyed sovereignty: even after the fall of the imperial system, the dynastic state was replaced not by Western-style popular sovereignty but by state sovereignty.

Little has changed with Communist rule since 1949. Popular accountability in a recognizable Western form has remained absent. During the Maoist period, the legitimacy of the state was expressed in terms of a new class system in which the workers and peasants were pronounced as the new rulers; during the reform period this has partly been superseded by a de facto results-based compact between the state and the people, in which the state is required to deliver economic growth and rising living standards. As testament to the historical continuity of the Chinese state, the same key elements continue to define the nature of the Chinese polity. There is the continuing absence of any form of popular accountability, with no sign or evidence that this is likely to change — apart from the election of Hong Kong ’s chief executive, which may be introduced in 2012, and the present election of half its Legislative Council. Notwithstanding the convulsive changes over the last century following the fall of the imperial state, with nationalist government, warlordism, partial colonization, the Maoist state and the present reform period, the state remains venerated, above society, possessed of great prestige, regarded as the embodiment of what China is, and the guarantor of the country’s stability and unity. It is the quintessence of China in a way that is not true of any Western society, or arguably any other society in the world. Given its remarkable historical endurance — at least two millennia, arguably much longer — this characteristic must be seen as part of China ’s genetic structure. The legitimacy of the Chinese state, profound and deeply rooted, does not depend on an electoral mandate; indeed, even if universal suffrage was to be introduced, the taproots of the state’s legitimacy would still lie in the country’s millennial foundations. The Chinese state remains a highly competent institution, probably superior to any other state-tradition in the world and likely to exercise a powerful influence on the rest of the world in the future. It has shown itself to be capable not only of extraordinary continuity but also remarkable reinvention. The period since 1949 has seen this happen twice, initially in the form of the Maoist state, with the Communist Party providing the embryo of the new state, and acting to restore China ’s unity; followed by the renewal and revitalization of the state during the reform era, leading to the economic transformation of the country. In the absence of any formal mechanism of popular accountability, it is reasonable to surmise that something like the mandate of Heaven still operates: should the present experiment go seriously wrong — culminating, for example, in escalating social unrest as a result of widening inequalities, or serious unemployment — then the hand of history might come to rest on the Communist Party’s shoulder and its time be called.

Sixth, Chinese modernity, like other East Asian modernities, is distinguished by the speed of the country’s transformation. It combines, in a way quite different from the Western experience of modernity, the past and the future at one and the same time in the present. In Chapter 5, I described the Asian tigers as time-compression societies. Habituated to rapid change, they are instinctively more at ease with the new and the future than is the case in the West, especially Europe. They embrace the new in the same way that a child approaches a computer or a Nintendo games console, with confidence and expectancy — in contrast to European societies, which are more wary, even fearful, of the new, in the manner of an adult presented with an unfamiliar technological gadget. The reason is that East Asian societies have not been through all the various sequential development stages — and their accompanying technological phases — that have been typical of Europe and North America, so the collective mind is less filled and formatted by older ways of doing things. China ’s version of modernity, however, by virtue of the country’s size, must also be seen as distinct from those of other East Asian societies. While countries like Taiwan and South Korea took around thirty years to move from being largely rural to becoming overwhelmingly urban, around half of China’s population still live in the countryside some three decades after 1978, and it will be at least another twenty years before this figure declines to around 20 per cent. This makes China’s passage to modernity not only more protracted than that of its neighbours but also more complex, with various stages of development continuing to coexist over many decades as a result of the persistence of a large rural sector. This is reflected in the often sharp divergence in living standards between different provinces. This juxtaposition of different levels of economic development serves to accentuate the importance and impact of the past, the countryside providing a continuous feedback loop from history. It makes China, a country already deeply engaged with its own past, even more aware of its history.