[Kon5ole]

Mostly sympathetic statements but the problem with any statement from a nondemocratic country is that it can change after a bad lunch by the dictator in charge. The problem addressed by the statement from China is entirely caused by Russia being a dictatorship that allows a single individual to control the military might of an entire nation.

Democracies have safeguards in place that complicates many radical actions, such as starting wars. So the long-term solution to problems like these is to get rid of all dictatorships, as peacefully as possible but with strong determination.

I'd like to see a UDN - a united democratic nations. The base rules should be that no country that has had the same person in the top two political positions of power for more than a decade can be part of the UDN and there should be steep barriers for trade with non-UDN nations.

This should be done while democratic countries still have the largest economies in the world, after that it's too late.

[roenxi]

> Democracies have safeguards in place that complicates many radical actions, such as starting wars.

The US gets involved in a new war every 2-3 years [0]. In the 21st century pretty much every time they start something it has been effectively unprovoked. Democracies are notably more bloodthirsty than dictatorships; dictatorships need to preserve their troops at home to suppress dissidents but can't afford for the army generals to be too powerful which leads to a level of self-contradiction and ineffectiveness in undemocratic armies.

It is quite possible that if Russia were a democracy, the only change would be that they prosecuted the war more competently.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

[yogthos]

I'm not sure where you get this notion that China is not a democratic country. First, people who actually live in China seem to disagree with you. In fact, far more people in China think that their country is more democratic than Americans think US is. https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-...

This page explains how grassroots democracy and public participation works in China. https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-runs-the-cpc/index.html

This is a good overview of how the party is structured, and how people participate in the governing process. This is fundamentally different from how electoral parties work in western countries. https://news.cgtn.com/event/2019/whorunschina/index.html

The party in China is predominantly composed of working class people as opposed to a ruling political class as seen in the west. This goes a long way in helping ensure that the interests of the government align with the interests of the working majority http://www.chinatoday.com/org/cpc/

Furthermore, a study spanning many decades of US policy shows that US can hardly be called a democracy in practical terms:

    What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

[grayhatter]

> I'm not sure where you get this notion that China is not a democratic country. First, people who actually live in China seem to disagree with you. In fact, far more people in China think that their country is more democratic than Americans think US is. https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-...

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to pretend to be shocked that in a country who's censorship apparatus is not only the worlds best, but well known by the name "The Great Firewall of China"[^1]. The same country who has demonstrated they will jail you for having or expressing thoughts contrary to the ruling party's stance[^2]. That people who live in said country, when asked, agree their country is the best. If I was worried that admitting I have questions about my country would get me sent to an interment camp, for some forced "re-education". I'd likely adamantly agree my country was democratic.

But even I'm mistaken about all the human rights abuses in China, and it's actually a great, misunderstood place. I still wouldn't trust the majority public opinion about something. Because unless I'm curious about sentiment, it's far better to trust and rely on experts, rather than the feelings of an opinion poll. Which is something I'd hope you agree with given you cite a Cambridge study in this very comment.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China [^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_China

[yogthos]

Ah yes, censorship makes people unable to see whether their lives are good or not. A real genius argument you've mustered here. You should also let people like Manning and Assange know that they shouldn't be worried about being sent into an interment camp.

[grayhatter]

> Ah yes, censorship makes people unable to see whether their lives are good or not. A real genius argument you've mustered here.

Wow, you're just going to be all sorts of mean today... feels bad...

But I think maybe I was unclear. I wasn't claiming the majority of the population in China was unhappy with their lives, or that we shouldn't believe them when they claim to be happy. My point was, it's bad policy to believe an opinion poll, in this case the arguably uneducated populace opinion of how democratic a country is, over experts in the field.

> You should also let people like Manning and Assange know that they shouldn't be worried about being sent into an interment camp.

Interesting red herring here, but my views on the reasonability of these two prosecutions. At least they were for crimes, not related to "subversion of state power". And the fact that there's really only 2 you can name also speaks volumes compared to the volumes you need for the number arrested by CCP.

[yogthos]

You're trying to claim that people in China can't understand whether their government works for them or not. This is a profoundly absurd claim. The fact that you don't understand that is absolutely shocking.

Here's a Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey showing that Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...

Here's a summary of studies finding that China is in fact more democratic than the US

https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-tha...

Another Harvard study https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resil...

And another survey https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilif...

All of these western sources, and all agree on this point.

Furthermore, why don't we take a look at the tangible outcomes of the policies of the CPC to see why the government enjoys such high support, and why people in China consider their country democratic. Chinese government practically eliminated extreme poverty. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-10-17/Graphics-Ending-China-...

In fact, China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:

    If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/5-myths-about-global-...

    The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/12-things-we-can-agree-about-glob...

China also massively invests in infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/12/05/china-...

China has built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/ten-years-2...

90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-peop...

Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI

This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet.

Social mobility in China is also far higher than it is in US according to NYT https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/ch...

This is what a government that actually works in the interests of the majority looks like.

[grayhatter]

> You're trying to claim that people in China can't understand whether their government works for them or not.

I'm not, but seeing as you just want to scream at someone on the internet, while also attempting to straw man any argument I make. Which seem to me so that you can argue that opinions from a heavily censored country are more important than independent evaluations from experts. I'll simply respond with

no.

For anyone else following along, majority of the links I looked at, don't support his assertions, or missing enough context that they are deeply misleading. The remainder seems to be "what about [bad thing] in [other place]" It's dangerous to allow that to distract from the point.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Both of you are wrong.

China is most definitely not a democracy. At the same time, it is misunderstood in the West, and it's nothing like the nightmare that most Westerners imagine. Westerners are subjected to an unbelievable level of propaganda when it comes to China. China is neither a utopia nor a dystopia.

[jszymborski]

I would have never thought when I woke up this morning that someone would try to sell me "China is a democracy", but here we are I guess

[yogthos]

Yeah, what do people who actually live in China know about their own country. Some white dude from America who couldn't find China on a map surely knows better. Peak chauvinism here my friend.

[grayhatter]

> Yeah, what do people who actually live in China know about their own country.

Is it still illegal to know things in China? I read stories all the time about government enforced censorship in China, so I think it's fair to assume that people in China know less about the country than interested parties outside the country, right?

And while I am just a white American dude, thankfully one who can find China on a map. The tone here screams needless hostility.

[yogthos]

There is plenty of government censorship happening in US as well. Entire books have been written on this subject. I'm not aware of any country that doesn't have censorship in practice.

I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd. People can certainly understand whether they are happy with their lives and whether their quality of life is improving or not. Given that vast majority of people in China claim this is the case, I'm going to go with their lived experience over your notions about what life in China is like.

Frankly, the fact that people in US have been convinced that they know better what life in other countries is like than people living there do is a testament to the effectiveness of US propaganda.

[mindslight]

> I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd

I'd say the exact opposite - those in a system become desensitized to its failings, and steeped in societal myths. One needs to be outside of that to have a frame of reference to compare anything to.

Your argument seems to hinge upon material wealth. That can carry a lot of water for a system's failings, as it does in the US. But it's not particularly indicative of the shapes of power structures.

[grayhatter]

> There is plenty of government censorship happening in US as well. Entire books have been written on this subject

Interesting, can you cite any of these books? I don't believe they contradict my understand that censorship in China is so drastically different from the US that the comparison becomes dishonest.

> I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd. People can certainly understand whether they are happy with their lives and whether their quality of life is improving or not.

I didn't claim this, because normally I'd agree with you. I don't think I understand their lives better than they do. If someone says they're happy with their life, and I don't suspect duress. I'm happy to believe them. My claim was, in part because it's so hard to get reliable information inside from China given the extreme government censorship; that the opinions from the population about the quality shouldn't be given the normal amount of weight you'd give opinions about the government from a country that has strong protections and freedoms for the press. At best, they're under informed, and at worse they're misinformed. If you disagree, and believe they're perfectly informed, can you explain why there's so many articles, information, and evidence showing the CCP attempting to coverup information and events?

[jszymborski]

If you think the ad hominum is going to bully me into accepting something akin to saying the sky is green and polka dotted then I suggest you change tact.

[yogthos]

Please learn what ad hominem means if you're going to use it. Nowhere am I suggesting that your argument is wrong because of your character flaws. I've explained why it's wrong on its own merits.

[jszymborski]

I'm not going to argue with you beyond this last comment because you're clearly doing so in bad faith, but you were trying to invalidate my comment because I'm "some white dude who cant find China on a map".

An ad hominem is "a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself."

Your incorrect and baseless assertion that I can't find China on a map attacks me as a person, and not what I said. I'm also not American fyi.

Now kindly never interact with me again.

[Kon5ole]

China was arguably a democracy of sorts before they changed their constitution to allow unlimited terms. Before that, they had two terms. Even though the next leader had to come from the same party, having a party with several million members means they actually had some form of general representation.

Having a peaceful mandatory transfer of power from any individual after a set number of years is not the only requirement but it's one of the most fundamental. China has removed that. The US for all its problems still has that, despite the troubles during the most recent election.

A democracy that has been subverted by corporate interests and is not acting in the best interests of its population still has mechanisms in place by which the population can detect and change such subversions. The forced transition of power being one of the most important.

[yogthos]

This may shock you, but plenty of western countries don't have term limits. Merkel had a longer term than Xi for example, and nobody was screaming that Germany turned into a dictatorship as I recall.

Ultimately, a democracy is a government that works in the interest of the majority and that's being held accountable to the majority. Chinese system seems to do a good job of that as evidenced by the fact that quality of life in China continues to improve. People living in China think they have a democracy because they see the government working for them. The same can't be said for many western countries.

[Kon5ole]

Merkel did not have supreme power over Germany and was also supported by officials that do have term limits. The bundestag is re-elected every 4 years and could end Merkel’s chancellorship if she went nuts, and even if she went nuts she couldn’t do much damage since her powers were limited.

Any democracy that gives great power to its leader has term limits (or they are not a democracy for very long). Most democracies have both divided executive powers and also term limits.

[Tarsul]

but a democracy also has saveguards that protect minorities. Does China have those? I'm thinking about e.g. Uighurs. Also, in a democracy everyone is entitled to have an opinion and say it (good that you can write freely, here!), e.g. criticizing political leaders (like Winnie the pooh) and also freedom of information, e.g. knowing about history (Tiananmen square etc.). Does China offer this?

[ashwagary]

By your standards, based on how the US treats minorities, antiestablishment groups, and whistleblowers; runs CIA blacksite prisons, gitmo, and regularly invades and overthrows and/or assassinates democratically elected leaders; it isn't a democracy either. Similar things can be said about England.

[krapp]

It isn't. The US is a military-industrial oligarchy whose elements of democracy exist primarily as theater.

Americans believe they live in a democracy because they've been conditioned through propaganda that their guns make them free. Yet their consent for American imperialism is manufactured by lies from the media, their police steal from them and murder from them with impunity, their intelligence services spy on everything they say and do, and their government is engineered to operate completely divorced from the will of the people. They suffer a quality of life worse in many metrics than other first world countries, with fewer rights and freedoms. But it's cool as long as they can shoot a senator in the head whenever they want.

[yogthos]

Uyghurs in China certainly enjoy a lot better lives than indigenous people in US do. Meanwhile, you appear to be confusing your ability to scream into the void with being an actual stakeholder in the political decision making process.

And of course China offers this. Here is the footage of Tianamen Square 1989 as reported on television in China https://web.archive.org/web/20200604205421/https://www.youtu...

Interestingly enough this footage was removed from youtube recently, which leads to the question of which government is actually practising censorship here.

[roenxi]

The Chinese people are probably misinformed. One of the things that stands out from Western (and Indian) experiments in democracy is they are noisy, boisterous, have very loud special interest groups and are appallingly bad at keeping secrets. Leaders spend a lot of time in front of huge crowds.

There simply isn't enough political chatter coming out of China to support the idea that there is a healthy democratic process at work. Although I take no position on how stable their foreign policy may or may not be.

[yogthos]

Seems to me that it's far more likely that you are the one who is misinformed as opposed to people living in China. Not sure what this lack of political chatter that you allude to is to be honest. Anybody who actually follows politics in China knows this statement to be utter nonsense.

[tannhauser23]

Do me a favor. Go to China and start an opposition party. Or hand out flyers in Beijing criticizing Xi’s third term. When you come back from the gulags in couple decades, tell us about your experience with Chinese democracy.

[yogthos]

Democracy isn't about having more parties, it's about having a government that represents the working majority. China has settled on a political path which is communism, this is why there are communist parties in China, while in US you have capitalist parties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_C...

Evidently, you weren't even aware of the fact that there are multiple parties in the country.

Meanwhile, absolutely hilarious of you to talk about gulags when US runs concentration camps for kids on its border https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-detention-child-migrants

[mopsi]

> Evidently, you weren't even aware of the fact that there are multiple parties in the country.

That's quite telling. People are often surprised that East Germany had multiple parties too; surprised for the same reason.

[fspeech]

People usually use the word "democracy" as a synonym for "liberal democracies".

[yogthos]

Which is an incredibly reductive understanding of the concept.