Peace Essay :: essays research papers

China and Iran: Transition to Democracy   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Throughout the course of history, there have been Communist, Socialist, Democratic governments and dictatorships, but the most equitable form of government has been Democracy. All these different forms of government have been successful at some time, but in today’s world in order for the process of democratization to succeed, many factors have to be favorable for success to be achieved. In this essay, the democratization of China and Iran will be discussed. One has been successful where the other has not emerged. The process and factors that lead to their present outcomes will be discussed.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The democratization of China had been a very slow process. China’s process of democratization has been long in coming, â€Å"for 160 years since the Opium War, China has struggled through countless tortuous paths in pursuit of democratization. Millions of people with lofty ideals sacrificed for it; a number of them were killed by those who resisted democratization, but even more died as a result of internal conflicts.†1 These deaths were not in vain, they taught the people of China a very valuable lesson and after the Cultural Revolution(1966 to 1969), which was a crucial period when many political and social reforms were initiated, the people of China started to accept these political reforms. â€Å"The legitimacy of the Communist government had been exhausted. Cultural Revolution raised questions to the Chinese about the legitimacy of the former communist regime.†2   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There were many events that led to the democratization. The incident at Tiananmen Square was a major event (June 1989) in twentieth century Chinese history, as well as one of the causes of the downfall of communism in many countries. During this incident students marched and demonstrated against the CCP. It was watched by the world via television, it marked the beginning of the third period of modern Chinese foreign policy. The first was coterminous with Mao Zedong’s rule, 1949-1976, and the second was coterminous with the economic reform movement of 1977-1988, led by Deng Xiaoping. Under Mao, Beijing’s foreign policy was determined mostly by domestic factors. The first of these was revolutionary politics. The most important domestic change was replacement of Maoist radicalism by Dengist pragmatic moderation and a corresponding shift from the primacy of politics to that of economics. â€Å"Tiananmen symbolized the beginning of the end of communist r ule in China, contributed to the end of Marxism-Leninism globally, and affected China’s foreign relations in two ways.