Chinese Democracy

by Andrew J. Nathan

This examination of how the Chinese, who regard their current government as a "democracy," interpret that concept assesses the elements that have shaped the modern Chinese political sensibility and recounts the direct elections to the People's Congress held in 1979

Genres: China

313 pages, Hardcover

First published August 12, 1985

About the author

Andrew J. Nathan is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His teaching and research interests include Chinese politics and foreign policy, the comparative study of political participation and political culture, and human rights. He is engaged in long-term research and writing on Chinese foreign policy and on sources of political legitimacy in Asia, the latter research based on data from the Asian Barometer Survey, a multi-national collaborative survey research project active in eighteen countries in Asia.

Born on April 3, 1943, in New York City, Professor Nathan received his degrees from Harvard University: the B.A. in History, summa cum laude, in 1963; the M.A. in East Asian Regional Studies in 1965; and the Ph.D. in Political Science in 1971. He taught at the University of Michigan in 1970-71 and has been at Columbia University since 1971.

Reviews

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

UPDATE Jun 2023 ... reading again, from a different perspective, and finding many gems of thought relevant to my research ... still struggling with the idea of "Chinese democracy"

I found this a very difficult read ... the book is poorly organized ... in many cases logical chronological connections are not presented ... there are many conclusions offered that are not supported by any evidence ... and of course the title alone is suspicious ... what exactly is "Chinese democracy"?