Yao-Shunism: A New Approach to Politics

Most of the studies and debates on liberal democracy in literature are centred around what goes wrong with liberal democracy and how to remedy it. However, there is little attention on oriental practice of democracy or viable alternative to western democracy. In this paper, a study is made on ancient Chinese thinking and practice of democracy. It is found that the first democracy was born in China more than 4,000 years ago. As a result of the discovery, a practical framework called Yao-Shunism is formulated and presented. Yao-Shunism offers non-partisan politics and participatory governance. It is backed by major Chinese philosophies and provides a viable alternative to existing political practice. It is shown that the entire world can benefit from Yao-Shunism if implemented. We demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of Yao-Shunism through George Washington.