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The cartoon at the top of this article (squinty eyes, fatty short figure) makes me uncomfortable, as it edges pretty close to old racist depictions of Asians and Blacks from half a century ago. That said, the article itself takes a negative and biased approach to evaluating China's government. China's system seeks, and achieves, representation of its people through a variation of a social contract that has lasted - and been updated and modernized - through thousands of years. China's current Communist Party is measured against specific outcomes, the livelihoods, outlooks, and possibilities of the people of China, which have never looked better (the next century has been dubbed by historians the "Chinese Century" based on the demographic, financial, cultural, and technological success of China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Century). That same party is measured against corruption, and recent efforts in the country to excise grift and nepotism have given its government new efficiency, purpose and effectivity. Old Western power centers (Europe pre-WWII and America post-) may have some anxiety about the the relative loss of leadership that global scandals, lost legitimacy, financial crashes, and systemic corruption have wrought in recent years. Its with this anxiety that I find articles like this written: China is, and has been, doing something right, and the West needs to look at its own failings and correct them to succeed and keep pace with 21st century dynamism. |