Professor Wei Pan ("Crossing the River," Summer 2003) suggests China's next decade of reform will succeed or fail according to three choices: whether "reformists" or "conservatives" run the government, whether external powers (especially the United States) help or hinder China's political reform, and whether Beijing elites prefer a "legalistic rule of law" or "democracy." I agree with Pan on his first two points. On the third, his position is unadmittedly conservative, not reformist, even though its inadvertent result may be democracy. Any modern country has both laws to constrain officials and elections to legitimate them. Laws lend predictability to rule, but they do not guarantee good governance any more than does any other regime type, including democracy. Competitive elections provide temporary mandates to the winners. Such rulers can make allocative decisions, including market-regulative ones of the kind that Pan recognizes as necessary. Where would "legalistic" governors get their mandate? They are inherently weak. As the concerns of modern Chinese people diversify, dissent rises, and legalistic governors will need more police if they lack institutions to prove popular consent. Pan thinks that, "Through firm rule of law, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) executive power would be reduced by an emergent system of checks and balances." Contrary to many analysts who see the CCP as still subject to vicious factional struggles, I agree that China's emergent system involves restrained compromises. But Pan downplays politicians' links to constituents: Hu Jintao has inland colleagues; Jiang Zemin has coastal ones—and these leaders are presently cooperating. Balances are not abstract legalisms; they are between sociopolitical interests. Who could write laws apolitically? China was traditionally ruled by intellectuals, most of whom disdained "legalism" in favor of more sensitive ethics, although Pan's apparent main hope is to perpetuate rule by intellectuals. Governments are indeed better run by smart people than by stupid people. Civil service exams are a boon that the Chinese gave to us all; and we are grateful, because such tests ensure some smart bureaucrats. China's recent stress on "intellectualization" (zhishihua) has modernized its old system, so that now on the Politburo 16 percent have postgraduate degrees, and another 76 percent have bachelor's degrees. (See a current Asian Survey article by Li Cheng and this author.) Technocracy provides a criterion for choosing elites, but it gives ordinary citizens no ownership of decisions and, thus, less cause to support them. Pan proposes "an extensive consultation system based on China's central and provincial parliaments." (He avoids their proper name: people's congresses.) He says this system should be "independent" of the executive bureaucracy, but he never defines how "consultation" makes allocations. Pan fears that, "Democratizing the country without ... clear and stable social or class divisions would lead to a Hobbesian war of all against all." How would more divisions help? Ethnically, China is 92 percent Han. Socially, the migration of 100 million people to cities—the "turmoil of urbanization" that Pan fears—does not threaten the Chinese state. Such events have not brought down other governments, for reasons Wayne Cornelius, Oscar Lewis, and Charles Hirschman have researched. Wide income differences are common in countries that industrialize quickly while unskilled workers remain near subsistence. Many democracies in various culture areas avoid Hobbesian chaos. Many other states have disorder. Arguments about consequences may be moot. No matter how they turn out, Pan seems to think the legitimating power should be kept—forever—in the hands of the few because he suggests that is the Chinese way. His view underrepresents China's rich diversity. Singapore may indeed be threatened by divisions. That city, with 0.2 percent of China's population, lives in an ethnically challenged neighborhood, so Singapore rightly prohibits freedoms that could mobilize conflict between Chinese and Muslims. But for Pan to hold up Singapore and Hong Kong (and explicitly not Taiwan) as crucial models for China courts ridicule. In Hong Kong, the government is not sovereign. It has been slow to make authoritative decisions during medical and land-price disasters, because CCP technocrats and local tycoons have guaranteed constitutionally that government can have no serious, modern, popular mandate to redistribute resources. Hong Kong freedoms support elections to a partially legitimate but usually powerless debating society, the Legislative Council (which cannot make laws despite its name because the constitution disallows bills without prior written consent of the Chief Executive). Pan praises, as I would, a "separation of powers." Nothing like this exists in Hong Kong. Real separation could mean political conflict. Does Pan not prefer unified executive power, vested in the head of a civil service who pretends to be "neutral" but is objectively a dictator? Such rule "by man" runs into trouble when the ruler need not notice ordinary people. China's mishandling of the SARS outbreak exemplifies the inadequacy of Pan's views. The CCP repressed news of early cases in Guangdong out of fear the epidemic showed "disorder." This caused real disorder. Conflictual, nosy, impolite, loud reporters might have published data, gathered from among the unwashed masses, that would have helped local doctors contain the disease. Elite superstitions about "chaos" throttled them. More trust of lowlier citizens would have avoided gigantic costs. Pan theorizes that democracy, dispersing information and power to more people, is "suicide for both the Party and the nation." Control-freakiness about SARS, however, caused the deaths of many Chinese. Hu Jintao speaks often about "rule of law," but also "socialist democracy." Like Pan, Hu is vague about practice, but Hu does not make "democracy" a dirty word. As China's economic growth further raises per capita income after some years, data from Adam Przeworski in Democracy and Development suggest that any decision by China's elite to democratize after that would not be reversed. This would likely be a stable regime, even though no regime type solves all problems. Yet Pan's most ardent message is precisely that China's elite should decide against democracy. In the future, or now, deciding against democracy does not enhance stability. With all due respect to Chinese intellectuals, many (especially in the capital Beijing) are political conservatives merely claiming reformism. "Rule of law" is a presentable cipher for rule by academically credentialed elites. From imperial times, these have often been intellectuals. They are not a "stinking ninth category," despite what Red Guards said. Their memories of chaos are understandably searing, but that does not excuse snobbery. A habit of pride among Chinese scholars is an historical fact—but it is not the only Chinese tradition. The Book of Documents says, "Heaven sees as my people see; heaven hears as my people hear." Of course there is (and should be) elitism among China's legacies. Populism is also Chinese, however, and serving the people is not just a Maoist error. Pan may be denying that. He condones the "four freedoms" of speech, press, assembly, and association. If his call is serious, these lead to democracy. Free people will complain and want to vote incompetent rulers out of office. Freedom would aid China internationally, too. If China's leaders trust their own diverse compatriots so little, should foreigners deem these elites trustworthy? I share Pan's hearty dislike of "self-proclaimed US 'strategists' who are zealously committed to maintaining a US-dominated unipolar world." Those warmongers would succeed politically within the United States if some new Chinese top leader were to establish a national, socialist, xenophobic state that threatened the United States. When China democratizes, these "strategists" will fade away, because democracies do not attack each other. Like many others, I share Pan's delight in China's recent growth. Unlike Pan, I predict that China's future democratization will strengthen links to other liberal states (including the United States and Japan) and spur negotiations in which Taiwanese, for their own security and cultural reasons, will exercise their option to be Chinese. Pan's opposition to democracy is practical opposition to "one China." The United States can get along with a China that in the distant future may well become the world's most powerful country, partly because it is so populous, provided the Chinese regime type is one that engenders US trust. Professor Pan would now steer China in another direction. Socio-economic development is likely over the next few decades to produce a fairer result than he expects. Even Beijing intellectuals can become real reformists. As the rule of law is strengthened, democracy will grow in China. This process is political, not administrative. "Peaceful evolution," whose benefits Professor Pan still doubts, proceeds apace. There is nothing wrong with peace, or with evolution.