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have achieved much. While millions were still starving under Mao 
Zedong, China is now the world's second-largest economy. 
Europe, immersed in both a debt crisis and a crisis of meaning, is not only 
mesmerized by Asia's rising powers, but is also asking itself how 
governing works in these countries. China's economic success also raises 
another, more outrageous question: Is it possible for an undemocratic 
government to be a good government? 
Beijing's Development Strategy 
In China, good governance is primarily defined as the government 
satisfying the material needs of its people. The people along China's east 
coast, in particular, have been able to enjoy rapidly growing prosperity. 
Deng Xiaoping, the reformer, deliberately chose to develop the coastal 
regions first. Under Deng's policies, the losers were primarily in rural 
areas and in western China. 
Nowadays, when Shanghai residents take a taxi they can learn about the 
best temperatures for wine by watching advertising clips on a screen in 
front of their seat. Meanwhile, some farmers in western China live in 
caves because they can't afford brick houses. The government's response 
is a policy Beijing calls the "Great Western Development Strategy." 
The central government attaches great importance to the strategy, as 
evidenced by the fact that it has appointed a special "leadership group" 
headed by Premier Wen Jiabao, as well as a separate agency, to manage 
the program. The new strategy was adopted in 1999, under then President 
Jiang Zemin. Even though Jiang may have also been thinking about his 
legacy, China's "Go West" policy reveals a strength of Beijing's approach: 
Once something has been recognized as a national problem and defined as 
a national effort, it is addressed in a consistent and enduring way. A 
government that is not voted into office has no need to take voting blocs 
and elections into account. This is the economic advantage of an 
authoritarian system. 
Ms. Li Yingming meets with us in a nondescript, gray concrete building in 
Beijing. She is the deputy director of the Department of Western Region 
Development, which is part of the National Development and Reform 
Commission (NDRC). Li is satisfied, at least to the extent that she can be 
today, in the second year of the 12th Chinese five-year plan. 
'A Long Road' 
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Tens of thousands of kilometers of railways and highways have been 
developed, including the controversial rail line to Lhasa, built at a cost of 
about €3.3 billion ($4.06 billion), new hydroelectric power plants, 
airports, a gas pipeline and a fiber optic cable network. "The progress we 
have made in this area in the last 10 years is greater than the progress 
made in the last 50 years." 
But when will the Chinese in the west and those in the east have the same 
standard of living? 
"That's a long road," she says with a smile. It isn't the cities that she's 
concerned about. China also has the "Starbucks Index," which shows 
where the brand-conscious middle class can be found. In reality, there isn't 
a single Starbucks in remote Lanzhou, whereas Shanghai has almost 150. 
Li, however, is more interested in farmers and the illiteracy rate. In Gansu 
Province, for example, in 10 years, it has fallen from 14.3 percent to 8.7 
percent in 2010. Nevertheless, it is still significantly higher than the 2-
percent illiteracy rate in China's southern Guangdong Province. 
"Talented people play the most important role in China's development," 
says Li. And then she talks about how schools and dormitories are being 
built, and how hundreds of cooperative efforts bring together the different 
parts of the country. Universities on the east coast support their 
counterparts in the west, and there are partnerships between eastern and 
western provinces. Besides, says Li, more than 10,000 university 
graduates voluntarily go to western China each year to teach subjects like 
English. Of course, she adds, this experience is useful to young people 
embarking on government careers, and some of the most sought-after 
positions are reserved for them. "But," says Li, "these graduates also have 
a very strong spirit of volunteerism. They want to make a contribution to 
society." 
At the end of the meeting, as we are walking through the hallway, she 
says: "Our leaders have told us that this is a hundred-year project." And 
then she hurries past a tall floor vase to her next appointment. Her time is 
precious. 
A New Quality of Life 
Duan, the official in the west, is also in a hurry. Duan builds things, and 
he does so because he can. Lanzhou is not Stuttgart, where protests have 
held up a major rail development project. Chinese pragmatists don't have 
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to worry about how their plans will affect endangered species like the 
hermit beetle. 
The land already belongs to the state, and the migrant workers who are 
building this city are hardworking and happy to be earning about 2,500 
Yuan, or roughly €300, a month. The people who are living there now can 
be relocated. A government brochure clearly outlines how they should feel 
about the whole thing. "The construction of the Lanzhou New Area is a 
splendid solution that was conceived by the city government and the party 
committee to implement the Great Western Development Strategy," the 
brochure reads. It also specifies, in tiny lettering, how much compensation 
the government will provide for specific items, such as 4,000 Yuan for a 
concrete well and 700 Yuan for a gravesite (per coffin). 
There are indeed farmers in Lanzhou who support the New Area, even 
though they know that there will be a lake where their houses now stand. 
They hope that they will be able to work as drivers for business 
executives in the new city. And then there are people like the medical 
student who eventually wants to move to Beijing, because it's the best 
place to work. He says that his biggest dream in life is to own a 
Lamborghini. 
They are the people for whom the government is doing all of this, so that 
it can offer them something, a new quality of life. It doesn't want the 
students to leave, because the brain drain is one of Lanzhou's biggest 
problems. It wants farmers to be motivated by hope instead of rage. And, 
of course, the mayor and the party secretary in Lanzhou are also thinking 
about their careers, given that economic growth is still the gauge of a local 
politician's success. 
Meanwhile the city is growing rapidly, with a current population of 3.6 
million. But Lanzhou, wedged between mountains, declared the world's 
most polluted city 14 years ago, has no room to expand. Officials even 
considered removing mountaintops, but then they opted for the flat, 
undeveloped land out near the airport instead. 
There are also those in Lanzhou who would have preferred to invest in the 
old city instead. But they don't want to see their names in print. The 
Chinese efficiency praised by so many in the West comes at a price: the 
silence of critics. The government decides what is good for the people. 
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And if something is deemed good for everyone, the individual must 
conform. 
How Five-Year Plans Keep Power in Check 
But the Lanzhou New Area is only one piece of the puzzle. There was 
always more at issue for Beijing in its development program for the west. 
Most of all, it wanted to bring the west closer to the rest of the country. 
This creates stability, and "stability" is the favorite buzzword of China's 
rulers. And so the "Go West" strategy was incorporated into the national 
five-year plan. 
This plan is an idiosyncratic political instrument. Just writing it alone 
takes more than two years. First a subset of chief planners within a larger 
group of chief planners, that is, the Department of Development Planning 
of the NDRC, develops the initial proposals -- under the leadership of the 
Central Committee and the Politburo, of course. 
Then city and provincial governments are brought into the mix with their 
proposals, as are ministries and experts from universities and think tanks. 
Countless drafts are evaluated, adjusted and reviewed by the Central 
Committee, until a new plan is born and a consensus is reached. A 
beneficial side effect is that planning alone holds the giant Chinese 
administrative machinery together. Besides, the same principle applies 
here as it does elsewhere in Chinese politics, where draft documents are 
constantly being circulated and conferences never end: Consensus creates 
obligation, and those who have agreed to something later bear some of the 
responsibility for it. 
In the third year of a given five-year plan, there is an interim evaluation. 
The last time this happened, the NDRC even asked the World Bank for its 
opinion, which led to the bank publishing its own report on 
implementation of the 11th five-year plan in 2008. By the fourth year, 
preparations for the next plan are already underway. 
Of course, China's five-year plans have changed since the first one was 
launched in 1953. Whereas the Chinese initially emulated the Soviet 
Union, today Beijing doesn't seek to supplant the market's role in guiding 
the economy, but rather to steer the economy according to market 
principles. The terminology has also changed, with officials now referring 
to the plan as a program. But it still involves planning. 
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Five-year plans have their own dynamics, because the beginning of a new 
plan generally does not coincide with a change in leadership. This means 
that a new leader will likely remain tied to an existing plan and its 
established goals, and thus cannot immediately implement a radical 
change of course. This may irritate the individual at the top, because it 
prevents him from boosting his profile, but the principle creates continuity 
in the larger political picture. The plan keeps power in check. 
China Experiments with Dual Approach to Governing 
Ding Wenguang dreams of being part of the central government's next 
five-year plan. Ding, 48, is a short, clever man who knows what 
participation, one of the key elements of good governance, can look like 
in China -- to those with patience. He also knows that Beijing has recently 
been trying to combine two approaches to governing: from the top down 
and from the bottom up. 
Ding also wants to fight poverty in the west, not only with investments 
but with an idea. He is the director of a non-governmental organization 
and a lecturer at the University of Lanzhou. When he came to the village 
of Qingshuiling in 2003, he witnessed a vicious cycle. Farmers were 
cutting down trees for heating, cooking and to sell the wood. This leads to 
erosion and landslides. But the more frequently nature punishes people, 
the poorer they become. 
Ding wanted to create a "cycle of good" instead. Under his plan, the 
farmers would raise cattle, which meant that they had to plant grass, and 
the cow dung could be converted into biogas. To start the cycle, an aid 
organization donated cows to the poorest people in the village. In return, 
they were required to give the calves to the second-poorest residents, with 
the next generation of calves going to the richest of the poor. Today, the 
farmers live in brick houses, they have more tractors, mopeds and mobile 
phones, and everyone has a color TV set. 
But how could Ding convince the government to apply his model on a 
large scale? How was he to explain to officials that everything has to be 
viewed as part of a bigger plan, one that incorporates both cow dung and 
disaster management? Ding began his lobbying effort. 
If there is one thing that someone hoping to get his idea put into practice 
needs in China, it's trust. But a certain social status is needed to build 
trust. "I am a professor," says Ding. "If I were nothing, the officials 
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wouldn't listen to me." It's also helpful to have received awards and 
official positions, such as being a representative in a people's congress. 
When close to 1,500 people died in landslides in Gansu Province, Ding 
was invited to conferences held by the provincial government. He is also a 
permanent advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology in Beijing, 
for which he provides expert reports. Finally, Ding is a party member. 
That, he says with a smile, is important in China. 
The Politics of 'Guanxi' 
At the time, however, the first thing he needed was a "partner" in the local 
government. Fortunately he had a contact in the provincial government, 
namely the father-in-law of one of his students. He ensured that local 
officials would show interest in Ding's project village. 
Another element of the game is called "guanxi," or the relationship 
between a supplicant and a sponsor or protector. Guanxi is part of Chinese 
culture and, therefore, Chinese politics. Having things in common with 
others, such as having attended the same school or university or having 
served in the same military unit, are the prerequisite for the development 
of guanxi. 
Ding once served in the provincial government for four years, where he 
worked in a poverty reduction program. His former coworkers put him in 
touch with their supervisors. It was also helpful that Ding had traveled 
through Europe with officials for the purpose of "group brainstorming." 
The most important thing of all, however, is that Ding will be 
participating in a research project at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 
the future, which will involve frequent flights to the capital. "If you have 
guanxi," says Ding, "you have to spend less time on lobbying efforts." 
Nevertheless, he still had to demonstrate that his proposed reforms were 
feasible and not too costly. He had learned that while it was important to 
have many meetings with officials, the reports had to be no longer than 
three pages and the restaurants had to be good. "Dinners can create an 
open and friendly atmosphere in which to champion your interests," says 
Ding. Guanxi thrives at such dinners, where participants are freed of the 
constraints of their respective roles. Banquets and politics are Siamese 
twins in China. 
And because Ding kept bringing journalists to his project villages, and his 
ideas were even featured on a party website, he was successful. He 
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believes that his model will become part of the provincial government's 
policy in 2014. He also expects 2016 to be a very big year for him, when 
his ideas will be incorporated into Beijing's next five-year plan. 
Meanwhile, the Chinese government is asking for help in governing the 
country, for reasons Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has candidly admitted: 
"Given the complex and varied economic situation, it would be 
impractical to expect a few top leaders to always make the right decisions. 
Therefore, we need to seek advice from experts in order to make the 
decision-making process more scientific and democratic." Apparently 
Beijing also aspires to professional management, another dimension of 
good governance. 
A Unique Think Tank Culture 
One of the brains behind it all, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 
(CASS), is located in a light brown high-rise building. It is one of China's 
most important think tanks. However, unlike their counterparts in the 
West, whose credibility is enhanced by their independence from the 
government, influential Chinese think tanks tend to have close ties to the 
government. 
Sometimes the State Council assigns certain tasks to the Academy. For 
example, professors working for CASS were asked to develop proposals 
for a new civil law. In another case, the Ministry of Railways wanted to 
know what would happen if passengers were required to provide 
identification when buying tickets. CASS also provides impetus for 
reforms that might, for example, involve the combining of government 
agencies. Of course, the premier also consults with CASS experts to 
obtain advice on economic policy. Sometimes CASS even publicly 
corrects elements of the administration. For instance, it has accused the 
National Bureau of Statistics of inaccuracies in calculating the rate of 
inflation. 
The deference given to experts began with Deng Xiaoping, who sought to 
replace the emphasis on Mao and ideology with a focus on 
professionalism and knowledge. He wanted the intellectual to contribute 
to China's modernization. Today the University of Pennsylvania counts 
425 think tanks in China, making it second only to the United States, 
where there are 1,815 think tanks. 
In China, Experimentation Is the Norm 
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Chinese policies always follow the same pattern: First ideas are 
considered and then they are simply tried out. The government has turned 
the concept of the experiment into the norm. It uses small, local testing 
laboratories to try out a pilot project, but only once a proposed reform has 
been shown to be successful and applicable in multiple locations does the 
government venture to implement it more broadly. This stands in contrast 
to the Western concept of the constitutional state, in which the law comes 
before implementation. 
The Chinese version has its advantages. For instance, it makes it easier to 
assess the consequences of innovations. A successful real-life test also 
helps convince opponents to support a reform. Flexibility is assured 
through the development of competing models. Sinologist Sebastian 
Heilmann has called China a "learning authoritarian system." 
The establishment of special economic zones in the 1980s was already 
part of this model. There were pilot projects in healthcare, pension reform 
and the system of registration. Everything was tested, from road tolls to 
smoking bans to travel requirements for Taiwan. 
Small Signs of Goodwill 
The government even experiments at the local level with those elements 
of good governance it would normally refuse to accept: transparency and 
giving citizens a say. The towns of Wenling and Baimiao became famous 
for publishing their budgets and listing their expenditures in detail. This 
prompted the state-controlled newspaper China Daily to print an article 
under the headline: "Transparent Budget, Happy People." It concluded 
that publishing budgets leads to fewer people complaining about the 
squandering of taxpayer money and puts an end to the private abuse of 
public funds. 
These are small signals of good will that the authoritarian regime is 
sending to its people. One milestone was an environmental law which 
requires the solicitation of public input. The people are even asked to 
comment, via email, on the five-year plan. 
China's leaders sense that they can no longer simply govern as they see 
fit, and they are feeling new pressures. China now sees up to 180,000 so-
called mass incidents a year. The people are becoming adept at staging sit-
ins and blocking streets to champion their interests. What was once a 
matter for the very few now triggers nationwide solidarity activities. The 
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Internet has become established as a marketplace for opinions and 
innovations. For instance, the rumors about a coup in Beijing only gained 
as much traction as they did because China's leaders generally act behind 
a cloak of secrecy, so that without freedom of the press the people can do 
nothing but speculate. What is happening on the web is direct 
participation, as short-lived as it is intense, a forced instead of tolerated 
participation in politics. 
Officials in Lanzhou have also felt the effects of local residents' fury. 
When they tried to stage a run through the city on New Year's Day 2012, 
artist Ma Qizhi protested online. "Refuse to be a filter made of human 
flesh!" he wrote on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging website. He 
meant that the people of Lanzhou shouldn't offer themselves up to be 
sucking the city's polluted air into their lungs. 
The protest wave surged through the Internet for only a few days, but 
more than 10,000 discussed their opinions of Lanzhou's plans on Sina 
Weibo. "The decision-makers must have swallowed some kind of pill if 
they think that children should run under such conditions," noted one 
person. Another wrote: "In China, the leaders are more interested in 
saving face than in their underwear, which is why they will not take back 
their instructions." 
Even the state-owned news agency reported favorably on the resistance, 
and the local sports agency announced that it would take the suggestions 
of the environmental agency into account in the future. 
Ma knew that he had succeeded in teaching the people a lesson. "The sad 
thing is when citizens don't say what they want to say. Taxpayers support 
this group of people, which is why they should perform their duties well." 
The People Will Hold Government Accountable 
The Chinese government has to get used to the idea that its people will be 
holding it accountable. The country is still filled with confidence. Chinese 
society has been shaped by the experience that everything was improving 
for everyone. This combination of economic growth and patriotism lends 
legitimacy to the regime, turning the people into a society of consumers 
and patriots. 
But farmers, unemployed university graduates and the people in western 
China also want their share of success. President Hu Jintao himself has 
identified corruption, the opposite of good governance, as one of the 
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greatest threats to party dominance. In the 2011 Transparency 
International Corruption Perceptions Index, China was ranked 75th out of 
183 countries. Beijing punishes people, even with the death penalty, but 
by pointing to the individual it seeks to divert attention away from the 
failings of the system. 
Some are simply refusing to accept the deal that the Chinese government 
offers its citizens: We'll stay out of your private life if you stay out of 
politics on a large scale. Chinese civil rights activists are going to prison 
for values that most in the West take for granted. But some in the West 
also forget that voting rights, an independent judiciary and a democratic 
constitutional state are never only a means to an end, and never exist only 
to furnish results. Instead, they are values in their own right. Most 
Chinese are still satisfied with results, but they have to be good. A 
minority in China, however, wants more. Those are the people who are 
locked up for their opinions. 
No government that does this can call itself a good government -- even if 
it delivers good results. 
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