Reflections on the Concept of Representation and Its Application to China
This paper presents both a literature review on the issue of political representation and the preliminary
framework of a sub-project on new political claims of representation in China. It is primarily
concerned with portraying and typing diverse schools of thought in both a “Western” and a Chinese
context, while the sub-project is part of the French-German Joint Cooperation Project “New Political
Representative Claims: A Global View: France, Germany, Brazil, China, India”.
The paper is organized as follows: (1) The concept of representation is examined by a brief review
of the history of this concept, including the existence of two diverging strands of representation in
“Western” discourses. (2) We then examine the meanings of representation, its definitions, and its peculiarities.
Points (1) and (2) in particular are based on a literature review. (3) We discuss the issue of
representation in a non-democratic, authoritarian setting in general and in China specifically in light
of the fact that almost no literature on representation in authoritarian polities exists. (4) We outline the
Chinese domestic discourse on political representation. (5) Finally, we clarify the distinction between
political representation and participation on the one hand and elections as a specific feature of representation
on the other. We then conclude with a summary of our preliminary findings.