Martin Jacques：

I’d like to thank the organizers for inviting me to participate in this very timely dialogue.

There is something deeply ironic of a president Biden’s summit for democracy. Convened by the United States in order to promote the case, the western style democracy, it takes place at a time when democracy in the United States itself has never been weaker or more under threat, certainly not since the civil war. It is almost as if the insurrection at Capitol Hill earlier this year had never taken place. That it was just a bad dream. There are two profound problems in the west concept of democracy. The first is the lack of any serious historical context. The second is the failure to understand and respect cultural difference.

First, historical context. In the western mind, democracy has been elevated from a political form specific to its time and place, to a universal form all times and in all countries. In so doing, any sense of historical context has been lost. Such a mindset is profoundly flawed. No political form is a cure-all. All are a product of their time and circumstances. Western democracy is no exception. Its future, even in the west itself, is neither certain nor guaranteed. The idea western style democracy is permanent rest on a belief that the fundamental conditions that have sustained in the west over the last 70 years, longer of course in the case of the U.S. and U.K. will continue indefinitely. It is becoming increasingly clear that this cannot be assumed. Democracy in a range of western countries is not in good health. 

It is in a worst condition more than any time since the 1930s. We should remind ourselves that democracy has only been dominant in the west since 1945. During inter-war period, 1918 to 1939, democracy was confined, at least in Europe, to a very small number of countries. As the great historian Eric Hobsbawm has pointed out, the only European countries to have functioning democratic political institutions, which managed to survive for the entire period between 1918 and 1939 were the U.K., Finland, the Irish Free State, Sweden, and Switzerland. These countries contain a very small minority of Europe's population. The great majority lived under various forms of dictatorship for part, most or all of that period. 

There are many reasons why democracy was sparse, but the most important were the catastrophic effects and consequences of the Great Depression, which created the conditions for fascism and undermined those for democracy. In direct contrast, the main reason for the success of western democracy after the second world war was the long boom from 1945 until the mid-70s. After which growth continued, but at a much lower pace until 2007. The financial crisis in 2008 marked a major turning point. It led to growing disillusion in the governing elites and institutions in many western countries, including the U.S., U.K., Italy, France, and Greece. The most dramatic example was the United States, the rise of trump, growing divisions, polarization, the rise of populism and nationalism and austerity towards established elites. The very institute for public policy and Cambridge has recorded a growing crisis of democracy in the Anglo-Saxon countries with those dissatisfied with the performance of democracy doubling since 1995. As the western economy continue their relative decline, as they certainly will. It seems highly likely that such dissatisfaction will continue to grow. Even the future of U.S. democracy, long the bastion of western democracy, is now far from certain. 

The U.S. has been on the rise for virtually its whole existence and extraordinary fact. This is given its governing system great prestige and authority. But what happens when the opposite is the case? When the U.S. finds itself in an unending process of relatively decline? Because that is what the future holds. Will American democracy survive in far less increment circumstances? The early signs are not too encouraging. Let me put this point in a different way. Ultimately, whatever the form of governments it has to deliver on behalf of its people. This is the bottom line. If it can't deliver, then sooner or later it will be replaced. This is the crucial problem now faced by western democracy. Increasingly, they have been unable to deliver whatever the fancy talk about democracy. The acid test is the ability to deliver, to enhance the living standards and lives of the people. This is exactly where the western democracies are now failing, and China, in stark contrast is delivering. The Chinese governing system has proved much superior in delivering results over the last 40 years than the western-style democratic system.

This brings me to my second general point, cultural difference. The west has always regarded its model of governance to be universally applicable. Wherever the country might be, and whatever history and culture one size fits all. The classic example was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The imposition of an entirely alien form of governance on a country that culturally and historically was profoundly different. But this abortive mission was no accident or isolated incident. The same basic philosophy had informed the colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and other European powers in the 19th century and earlier. The European powers sought to impose their will, their religion, their customs, and their fear in whatever territory they could seize, including China. All in the name of civilizing the uncivilized. Invasion and intervention in the name of democracy is but the latest example. If a state has, in the U.S.’s view, an illegitimate form of governance, then it believes it has the right to intervene in order to impose its own version of democracy. So, the right of every country to sovereignty and its right to choose is, in the eyes of the U.S., conditional upon what choice it makes. 

Remember, too, that the west conception of democracy is solely confined to the nation-state. It has no application outside the nation state, for example crucially in the international realm. That is why the term democracy is never used by the west in the context of the international system. And this is why the latter is devoid of democracy. United States is the architect and keeper of the international system, and it believes it has the right to act unilaterally whenever and wherever it was. The west now represents less than 15 % of the world's population, and yet it is by far the dominant player in the international system. Any notion of democracy is regarded as irrelevant and inapplicable to the international system. Let's return to the nation-state, far from the monolithic approach favored by the west, where countries are expected to conform to the western norm of governance. In the reality, of course, the world embraces a huge variety of different histories, cultures, and forms of governance. The failure to recognize and respect this has inflicted huge damage on many countries, including China.

As Francis Fukuyama has rightly argued, the governing system in China has been characterized by an extraordinary continuity over a period of two millennia, far greater than that in any other country. This is one of the reasons why Chinese governance is so remarkable, and so affected. It has very deep roots, far deeper than those of any western system of governance. Successful governance is not about transplanting an abstract set of rules and procedures from one country and applying it to an entirely different environment and set of circumstances somewhere else. Democracy means respecting the culture and traditions of a country, allowing governance to grow and flower in its own indigenous conditions. Thank you very much.

（翻譯：張佳奕、程澤笠）

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