A few days ago, I attended a talk at the Harvard-Yenching Institute titled “The U.S. Cultural Relations Program towards China and the Emergence of Transpacific Intellectual Networks (1942–1947).” At the end of the lecture, an American professor raised a question that lingered in my mind long after I left the room:
Why did those Chinese intellectuals who had received education in the United States start to criticize democracy after returning to their homeland?
At first glance, the question seemed ordinary. Yet beneath its simplicity lies a deeper presupposition: When we ask “Why did they criticize democracy?”, we are already assuming that democracy should be accepted, transmitted, and perpetuated.
1. Hidden Assumption: The "Universal Logic" of Democracy
Let us unpack the implicit assumptions within this question.
H1: Democracy is universal.
In her worldview, democracy appears as a political ideal that can be transplanted across cultures — wherever its light shines, freedom and reason are expected to bloom.
H2: To criticize democracy is abnormal.
When someone educated in the West no longer believes in democracy, it provokes surprise — as though it violates the narrative of progress and rationality.
H3: Intellectuals are meant to be missionaries of democracy.
Within the Western intellectual tradition, reason and liberty form the scholar’s creed. Hence, to “criticize democracy” seems a betrayal of intellect itself.
But this very surprise reveals a deeper bias within Western academia: democracy as a one-way narrative — a civilizational export flowing from the “enlightened” center to the “to-be-enlightened” periphery. In this narrative, democracy is not a question but an answer; not a hypothesis but a belief; not a field of inquiry but an article of faith.
2.2. Democracy Has Never Been Universal: It Is Cultural, Contextual, and Historical
A glance at democracy’s historical lineage reveals that it has never been a fixed formula, but rather a product of particular societies at particular moments.
In ancient Athens, democracy was limited to a small group of free male citizens; the vast majority — women, slaves, foreigners — were excluded from public life. Aristotle’s conception of democracy in Politics was confined to that specific polis, already reflecting the structural inequalities of its time.
Modern democracy, too, is not a single universal design but an accumulation of local experiments:
Britain forged its constitutional monarchy through a compromise between revolution and aristocracy;
The United States built a presidential republic shaped by federalist ideals after independence;
France oscillated through revolutions and restorations before settling into its Fifth Republic’s semi-presidential system.
Each system emerged not from an abstract ideal, but from concrete struggles — class relations, historical legacies, and economic foundations. Democracy, in essence, is a local answer to the universal question of how we live together.
Moreover, history shows that democracy often functions as an instrument of class power rather than a pure moral ideal. The bourgeois demand of “no taxation without representation” was less a cry for universal equality than for institutionalized property rights. In the United States, the entanglement of money and politics continues to reveal that electoral procedures frequently serve capital more than citizens.
Thus, democracy’s meanings and mechanisms have constantly evolved with shifts in power, class, and culture. To declare one form of democracy “universal” is to deny history itself and to silence the political diversity of human civilization. A genuine understanding of democracy must return to its social context and ask: “Who holds power — and for whom is it exercised?”
Today, in the United States, that question remains unanswered.
3. What they criticize, perhaps, is not "democracy" itself
I have not read every text written by those who criticized democracy, nor do I claim to know their lives in full. But if we walk briefly in their era, perhaps we can glimpse what they saw.
Some criticized the hypocrisy of democracy, exposing the minority rule hidden behind the rhetoric of majority consent.
Some lamented its hollowness, the procedural justice that failed to address real social suffering.
Others resisted its ideological imperialism, where democracy presented itself as universal truth while erasing other civilizational paths.
In other words, what they criticized was not democracy as an ideal, but democracy as a reality. They were not betraying democracy — they were rewriting it within their own cultural and historical context.
4. Re-understanding: The diverse forms of democracy
So, what is democracy?
"Democracy" is not a set of replicable institutional blueprint; it is an ongoing social experiment and a process of constantly exploring how societies can coexist. Its core is not elections but the inquiry into "the will of the community". The answers vary across different civilizations.
Throughout history, the light of critique has never been absent: Marx’s exposure of bourgeois democracy’s contradictions; the Chinese May Fourth intellectuals’ rebellion against dogma and feudalism; and the persistent questioning of Western centrism across the Global South.
Different voices, different aims — yet they all echo a timeless inquiry: How can the smallest voices be heard? How can the silent participate in creation? How can power remain humble before the people?
Conclusion: Redefining Democracy
So, when the professor asked, “Why did they criticize democracy?” I found myself asking instead:
“What do we mean when we say ‘democracy’?”
Democracy is not an eternal answer but an unfinished debate. Its significance lies not in its origin, but in how each society redefines it through its lived experience.True democracy is not replication — it is creation.
It belongs not to any nation, but to all who continue to ask, “How shall we live together?”
