The Institute for China’s Democratic Transition, a non-profit research and educational organization working on China’s political and economic transformation, launched its inaugural edition of China Journal of Democracy in January 2023. The quarterly journal aims to provide Chinese readers, mainly mainland Chinese readers, with new perspectives and new knowledge about China and the world, especially about Chinese politics, democracy and democratic transition.
The Institute invites experts and scholars who write in Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur or other ethnic languages and are based in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, the United States, Europe, Australia and other regions to contribute articles and share independent research and free thinking.
The first edition of the journal includes articles on: The Challenges to Democracy and China’s Possible Political Prospects; The Arduous Exploration of Liberalism in China; Regime, Society and Voluntary Action: China’s Democratization from a Historical and Social Perspective; The Return of Totalitarianism in China; The People’s Leader at the Wrong Time: The Rise of Xi Jinping’s Dictatorial Power; and The Talisman of Lifelong Rule: The Personal Cult from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. Authors include Larry Diamond, Teng Biao, Chen Kuide, Xia Ming, and Andrew Nathan.
The journal’s leadership team includes Mr. Wang Tiancheng as the editor-in-chief and Teng Biao as the deputy editor-in-chief. Wang Tiancheng is the author of The Grand Transition: A Research Framework for the Strategy to Democratize China published in 2012. Teng Biao is a human rights lawyer and Pozen Visiting Scholar at University of Chicago.
“The main reason for starting this quarterly is that the Chinese-speaking world lacks such an academic journal that discusses China’s political society, including international relations,” said Teng Biao. He is further quoted as having said “China’s constitutional democratic system in the future is connected with how we understand China now, how we analyze the situation in China and the international situation. If we do not have any understanding of the historical democratic transitions of other countries around the world, and do not learn lessons, China’s democratic transition will not be smooth. Therefore, this is a theoretical and ideological discussion, which is a necessary step.”
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Launch of China Journal of Democracy
