In classical approaches to regime taxonomy, classifying a particular order within a typology of regimes turns on identifying the particular mix of its most important institutions and their associated purposes. Baogang He and Mark Warren’s past work has unsettled this familiar approach through a combination of innovative theorizing and empirical research. In this chapter, they extend their approach to recent arguments that Confucian ideals of meritocracy have been a significant factor driving China’s astonishing economic growth in recent decades. Beyond contesting the claim that China’s current regime is meritocratic, they reject altogether the view that “political meritocracy” is a regime type that can be coherently contrasted with “democracy.” Distinctions between regime types turn on how power is conferred on officeholders, whereas “meritocracy” refers to the qualities that officeholders possess. “Meritocracy” should be understood as an adjectival modifier of the two core regime types, authoritarianism and democracy. He and Warren draw on empirical research to argue that the current Chinese regime is a hybrid form, “authoritarian meritocracy with democratic characteristics,” that has emerged through innovative combinations of institutional forms. In practice, Chinese innovations sacrificed both democratic and meritocratic features of these institutions to the temptations of authoritarian rule.

INTRODUCTION: SEARCH FOR AN ALTERNATIVE TO OVERCOME THE CURRENT STALEMATE

The Tibet issue has remained intractable for at least fifty years (Sperling 2004; Sautman & Dreyer 2006). Several dialogues between representatives of the exiled Dalai Lama and the Chinese government in the last few years have produced no tangible results (Rajan 2005; The Nation 2005; Rabgey & Sharlho 2004). The 2008 Tibetan protests against Chinese rule in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, and the counter-protests by Chinese students in major cities around the world, inflamed mistrust and suspicion between the Tibetan and ethnic Chinese communities. This discord tarnished China's credibility as a global power (Economy & Segal 2008: 47).

Over the next few years, increased radicalisation in both Tibetan and ethnic Chinese communities is anticipated. This highlights the need for initiatives that would build up mutual understanding and trust at a grassroots level, as well as within the leaderships. Given how hard it is now to rebuild trust between the Chinese government and the Tibetan government in exile, it is vital to promote mutual understanding and trust between the two communities of people through a process of citizens’ deliberation.

A deliberative approach to minority rights issues in Xinjiang Province was called for by Justin J. Stein (2003), who argues: ‘CCP rhetoric regarding the unity and apparently utopian quality of interactions between various nationalities should be replaced by a more genuine discourse reflective of vying interests and preferences.’ In the past decade, the Dalai Lama himself has made a number of significant efforts to talk with Han Chinese scholars in the US and beyond (Zhang Weiguo 1999). Even earlier, in 1988, Wu Jinghua, the former party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), organised a series of ‘heart to heart’ meetings with representatives of the major monasteries to hear their grievances. Wu paid a price, becoming dubbed a ‘Lama Secretary’ (Bahl 1989) and being removed from his position a few months later.

Between 2009 and 2012, Beijing sent a number of official delegations to major international cities to host a series of talks on China's Tibet policy. (A quick online search for the term ‘Sino–Tibetan dialogue’ on 10 August 2012 brought up a list of 533,000 items.) Such meetings could potentially reduce mutual distrust, explore new thinking and initiatives, and provide a basis for the development of a deliberative approach.

This concluding chapter not only aims to provide a summary of the democratic approaches discussed in the book, but also seeks to present an integrated theory of democratic governance which is centred on deliberative referendum. It presents a synthesis of the theory and case studies in the book, focusing on the idea of deliberative referendum and how it can improve democratic governance mechanism.

This book has examined a number of democratic devices: referendums, autonomy and minority rights, consociational arrangements and deliberative forums (Chapter 1); the referendum as a conflict resolution mechanism (Chapter 5); liberal multiculturalism's system of minority rights that protects the interests of Tibetans (Chapters 7–9); consociational democracy and the building of complex power-sharing mechanisms (Chapter 8); deliberative democracy and its offer of a talk-centric approach as better management of the conflicts of divided societies (Chapter 10). Each of these devices has been applied throughout the world with varying degrees of success and failure.

In the specific context of China, this book has sought to develop an anti-empire thesis that articulates how democracy can address the national identity issue (Chapter 3); it has discussed a federalism solution to the Taiwan question (Chapter 4); it has examined the case of the 2004 referendum in Taiwan and attempted to derive lessons from it so as to improve referendum mechanisms and processes through public deliberation (Chapter 5); it has discussed Taiwan's bid for a UN seat, and examined questions concerning political representation and equality (Chapter 6); it has examined three competing discourses on the Tibetan question, calling for a dialogue and engagement between Confucianism and liberalism (Chapter 7); it has dealt with the autonomy issue in Tibet and makes a number of miniproposals to overcome the current stalemate (Chapter 8); it has addressed China's language policy in Tibet, and called for the return to the multi-linguistic policy of the Qing dynasty (Chapter 9); and it has examined and tested the idea that the Tibetan autonomous question could be addressed through a deliberative experiment (Chapter 10).

To this point, our ideas about democratic approaches have been treated separately in different chapters. It is useful now to combine these democratic approaches in both theory and practice; to forge a synthesis of them in a spirit of holism.

Two paradigms for, and two approaches to, the Taiwan and Tibet questions can be roughly grouped under the headings of realism and democracy. Analytically, these two are distinctive, but in reality each approach interacts and overlaps with the other. The two paradigms have shaped both political debates and intellectual research.

Over the past decades, realism has dominated in China, while Taipei and Dharamsala have advocated democracy. The US has favoured a democratic principle and supported the democratisation of Taiwan and Tibet communitties in exile, but has to come to grips with the fact that China has become a greater regional power. Different actors in Beijing, Taipei and Dharamsala have different interpretations of and emphases on the paradigms.

When realism and democracy are viewed as oppositional and exclusive, they constitute two closed knowledge systems. They can be considered ‘boxes’: each approach will be persuasive only to those who look at the issue from the same perspective. Recycling its own ideas, each side has perpetrated paradigms, predetermining opinion and rationality. Chinese realism regards the democracy and human rights language as a disguised attempt to disrupt Chinese unity and order. In contrast, the human rights discourse dismisses Chinese realist thinking as an attempt to maintain the authoritarian system and demand surrender to it. Both paradigms strengthen polarisation, leaving little room to search for a third way, an alternative to address the dilemma that the Tibet and Taiwan questions pose. It is important to develop an intellectual approach to break down closed knowledge production systems and find a way out of this predicament.

This book adopts Eric Wright's real utopian approach as an overriding methodology. Wright's ‘Real Utopian Project’ seeks to embrace the tension between ‘dreams and practice’, and is based on the belief that what is possible is not predetermined but is in fact shaped by one's vision. However, it advocates the notion of envisaging utopian ideals that are simultaneously grounded in real possibilities. Thus, the objective is to find radical, yet specific and plausible, solutions to problems (Wright 2010).

A real utopian approach does not endorse immoral realism. It challenges the diminished imagination of realism and calls for a more democratic imagination in addressing the Tibet and Taiwan questions. It takes democracy as central in addressing the Tibet and Taiwan questions. It holds that a utopian way is not wishful thinking, nor is it an intellectual luxury.

The controversial referendum proposals and the first island-wide referendum on 20 March 2004 were a crucial aspect of the emergence, growth and acceleration of the conscious effort by President Chen Shui-bian and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to articulate and redefine a distinct Taiwanese national identity. The controversial issues concerning Taiwanese national identity and the referendum have drawn much attention from policy-makers and scholars in Taiwan, Mainland China and the US. Yet a substantial study of the intrinsic and complex multirelations between Taiwanese national identity and the referendum question has not been undertaken.

This chapter focuses on the important topic of the debate over the resolution of Taiwanese national identity through referendums. The previous chapter provided the political background against which the impact of Taiwanese democratisation on the national identity question and the politics of referendum took place. Through a case study of the referendum in 2004 in Taiwan, this chapter shows how the proposed referendum was manipulated and watered down. While it points out the limits of referendums in general and the flaws of the Taiwanese referendum in particular, the chapter still favours referendums as a conflict-resolution mechanism, and argues for increasing the deliberative component of such referendums.

The chapter begins by outlining the party-political origins of the referendum and then examines the influence of outside actors on the process. It then describes the process of political struggle and negotiation between the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps and assesses the outcome of that struggle before finally arguing in favour of deliberative over mobilised form of referendum (Chapter 1).

REFERENDUM: PRINCIPLES AND PROBLEMS

Today, national groups are seen to have a right of secession, that is, a right to leave the existing state and to take over control of the territory that they currently occupy. The legitimacy of state boundaries is thought to be conditional upon the popular vote. There is a growing consensus that state boundaries are legitimate only if the state protects the peoples within them and the people assent to remaining within those boundaries. If these conditions are not met, peoples are increasingly able to divorce themselves from the political unit and take their land with them.

To find a solution to the Taiwan question, policy-makers and scholars have discussed the proposal of the interim (or peace) agreement across the Taiwan Strait (Chang 1999b; White 2000; for a critique of White, see Dittmer 2000). Nevertheless, the proposal does not address the underlying question of sovereignty, and misses the key issue of Taiwan's place in international society.

This chapter aims to fill this gap. It argues that the solution to the Taiwan question must take into account Taiwan's desire and place in international relations; to do so, Beijing has to reconsider its Taiwan policy in terms of a new concept of sovereignty. Beijing's rigid approach to sovereignty has led to Taiwan's attempts to take the alternative route of trying to generate international legitimacy by emphasising democracy (Larus 2006). This chapter examines ways to move beyond these diverging approaches and bring China and Taiwan back into a shared framework that reduces the likelihood of conflict and meets the needs for international recognition of both sides.

The notion of sovereignty is a key concept in the normative thinking and strategic policy on the Taiwan question, yet it appears illusory, ambiguous and problematic. It lends political leaders forceful justification for their actions on the one hand, and traps them in a fixed way of thinking without policy innovation on the other. Currently the One China policy means recognising only ‘one China’, the Mainland, as legitimate. And the membership of the UN means international recognition as a sovereign state. In this normative conceptual imperative, Taiwan is excluded from the UN.

To deal with the Taiwan question, Professor Wang Yizhou (2000) from the Academy of Social Sciences of China has called for a search for a new concept of sovereignty which is capable of defending the core element of the sovereignty principle while at the same time providing greater flexibility. Wang, however, does not propose a concrete idea. The chapter attempts to transcend nationalist thinking, challenge the traditional concept of sovereignty, and outline an alternative approach to international recognition for China and Taiwan. It will provide an analysis of China's conceptions of sovereignty, the Taiwanese response, and options for bringing these diverging approaches back into a shared framework for interna- tional recognition. The chapter does not focus on any immediate practical solution to the Taiwan question, but on the long-term intellectual ‘solution’.