Minzhu versus Democracy. Evolution and analysis of the concept of "Democracy with Chinese characteristics"

The working paper examines the evoluti on of the concept of democracy in Chinese political thought , analysing the historical development that has defined "democracy with Chinese characteristics". The objective is to deepen and understand the view of democracy "from within" the CCP through the a nalysis of secondary sources and official Party documents. The structure of the paper is organized as follows: the first section analyses how the concept of democracy entered China and its relationship with some concepts related to the tradition of Chinese thought; the second section examines how the formulation o f democracy linked to a purely collectivist dimension was influenced first by nationalist sentiment and later by Maoist thought; the third section traces the evolution and different interpretations of the concept of democracy in the Chinese democratic move ment up to the tragic repression of 1989; the fourth section briefly reviews the political intellectual debate regarding political reform starting from the 1990s and focuses on the systematic explo ration of the model of democracy with Chinese characteristi cs; finally, in the last section, the concept of whole process people's democracy" of Xi Jinping is briefly analysed . The analysis reveals the fundamental role of Confucian and socialist traditio ns in defining the concept of democracy in contemporary Chin a and how the CCP's rhetoric on Chinese style democracy is mainly a tool to strengthen the legitimacy and power of the one party system.