Those Hong Kong politicians seem to be having trouble staying out of trouble. A few months ago it was the late Ma Lik with his assertion that what happened at Tian'anmen was not a "massacre". Late last week it was Chief Executive Donald Tsang suggesting on a radio call in show that the Cultural Revolution was democracy gone awry.

The blog ideas Revolution has a convenient transcript (proxy link) as well as a link to a RealAudio file. Here are the comments, reprinted from ideas Revolution:

Host: I was struck by one phrase at the end of the policy address, towards the end of the conclusion, you say, we promote democratic development without compromising social stability or government efficiency, that kind of implies that democratic development does compromise social stability or government efficiency?

Donald Tsang: It can, it can, if we go to the extreme, people go to the extreme, and you have a cultural revolution, for instance, in China. When people take everything into their hands, then you cannot govern the place.

Host: But the Cultural Revolution wasn’t really an extreme example of democracy.

Donald Tsang: What is it? People taking power into their own hands! Now, this is what it means by democracy, if you take it to the full swing. [And in] other democracies, even if you have an elected person, then you overturn the policy in California, for instance, you have initiative number, number, number what, then you overturn policy taken by the government, that is not necessarily conducive to efficient government.

It was duly reported to predictable outrage. Mr. Tsang has subsequently apologized for his remarks, which he has "retracted".

That's good, because it was a silly remark for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that this is simply another manifestation of the old autocratic scare technique of asserting that democracy will lead to chaos. Often this is combined with a patronizing remark that the polity in question is "not ready for democracy". This approach has been wielded by autocrats and authoritarians around the world, many of whom trade on the idea of stability, as if autocratic regimes never descended into chaos, or didn't come with ghastly trade-offs in the name of order, like secret police, disappearances, and always popular presidents-for-life.

The second reason why the remark is silly is that it is patently wrong. Imagethief is not a political scientist, but he is modestly read in the area and would venture that what Mr. Tsang is describing is anarchy, not democracy. Anarchy is society without government or law. As a political theory it proposes a system of mutualism that makes government and law redundant. In practice, and in common definition, it generally means chaos. Democracy in its modern definition (as opposed to rarefied Aristotelian theory) implies a functioning system of government. In a republic, which is pretty much the only way democracy seems to work in large populations, it proposes that supreme power is vested in the people but is actually exercised by representatives chosen by the people and supported by institutions that survive individual governments.

Democracies can break down, convulse and disintegrate. But so can autocracies and authoritarian governments. The Cultural Revolution is proof of the latter. It was anarchy brought about by a devastating cult of personality cultivated in a society where there was no meaningful dissent and no way to hold political leadership to account. To compare that situation to democracy is to willfully twist the concept of democracy in the name of disinformation, and to fall into the worst rhetorical habits of autocracy.

That was unworthy of Mr. Zhang. It is a good that he has apologized.