How China Can Help France Get Back On Track

How can you radically reform a country with a population of more than 66 million when only 6.7 million of them voted for you in the first round of the presidential election and only 6.4 milion in the first round of the general election? This is the question now facing Emmanuel Macron. In the paradoxical world we live in today, could it be the Chinese example that our president should turn to in order to find a new source of inspiration?

Meritocracy. Firstly, to introduce a meritocracy, starting from the top, and gain credibility from the skill of those raised to the status of a new elite rather than from a discredited democratic legitimacy. This is what the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has been doing over the past five years, by surrounding himself with the “princelings” – the heirs of the revolutionaries of the Mao era, but weaned on the effectiveness of economic restructuring. He has done this even if it has meant concentrating power, at least during a transitory phase, in order to remove the obstacles that the “old guard” have placed in the way of reform. This is what Emmanuel Macron' has chosen to do in ensuring that the members of Parliament belonging to LREM (La République en Marche) commit themselves to voting in favour of all government legislation during the whole of the administration's term of office. His recourse to decrees is directly linked to the use of the 49.3 article of the constitution by Michel Rocard when he was Prime Minister – a man who Emmanuel Macron recognises as being the greatest reformer in recent history.

Cyber-cracy. Secondly, to reintroduce democracy, from the bottom up, in which the emergence of a “cyber-cracy” by means of social media appears to be the only means of reconciling “Millenials” with the responsibilities of citizenship. This is an urgent problem to be solved, for during the last general election, votes cast by the over-65s were twice as many as those cast by the under-35s. This has been the path taken by the Chinese government, faced by the rise of “public opinion“, born of the internet over the last ten years, and which, for the first time in that country, is denouncing all the system's imperfections.

Emmanuel Macron's gamble will pay off if he also manages to reform our gerontocratic democracy and replace it with a new, more direct and more effective blueprint.

Opposition. Finally, to innovate in terms of how opposition is managed. With Parliament under control, opposition will come from two main sources: from the mayors of large cities and from the street. Here too, it is useful to look at the Chinese example: in the space of a few years, Xi Jinping has been able to control the “top dogs” of the Chinese provinces where two powerful factions opposed to Beijing's reforms used to hold sway; by analysing the social media, he has also taken control of the street and its 200,000 grassroots demonstrations every year.

Any revolutionary period is marked by tough power. The present multifaceted revolution is no exception. In China, Xi Jinping has managed to change a dictatorship into a démocrature (a combination of democracy and dictatorship) by combining an awareness of public opinion with a strong central power. This pattern has been echoed, with less success, in Russia, Turkey and, maybe tomorrow, in Donald Trump's USA.

Emmanuel Macron's gamble will pay off if he also manages to reform our gerontocratic democracy and replace it with a new, more direct and more effective blueprint. This is why it will be to his advantage to take more inspiration from China, and to remember in particular that a “Long March” can help a country to re-invent itself.

This column was previously published in L'Opinion on july 6th 2017