Thursday, January 7, 2010: 3:20 PM
Gregory A (Hyatt)
The newly founded People's Republic of China was presented in 1949 as a "people's democratic dictatorship" under the leadership of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. This paper will first examine such a political form as a manifestation of popular sovereignty; this raises a complex set of issues. On one hand, Mao located sovereignty not in the "people" per se, but in the Chinese territory occupied by a number of national peoples, including the majority Han and several minority nationalities such as the Tibetans and Mongols. On the other hand, voting and other such "democratic" practices tied to popular sovereignty were organized according to party membership, class identity, nationality, and other such markers. This paper will then turn to an examination of the reforms under way since the 1980s to make sense of the claims that China is growing more democratic. How do the reforms reflect the nature of popular sovereignty in China?