Give them education and hope for a better life: now you have a problem. — frank

"Correct. And China's communist rulers know this. Hence the regime needs economic, political, and military expansion abroad to keep the developing internal tensions as well as international pressure under control. "

The US has military budget several times that of China. In addition, it is clear that the US is currently highly polarized. It badly need an external enemy to achieve domestic unity.

Conclusion: What you had attributed to China is actually more applicable the US.

The US is backing down from military intervention right now. And though Americans are at one another's throats continuously, there's not really any significant threat of social breakdown at this time.

I'm impressed by the love Chinese people have for their country. They're doing something right.

Conclusion: What you had attributed to China is actually more applicable the US. — ltlee1

To some extent, I suppose, that may be the case.

And, yes, maybe the US does need an external enemy to unify society. In that case, having an enemy may be a good thing.

However, isn't China doing the same by portraying all non-Chinese, including Tibetans, Mongolians, and even some Chinese, as enemy?

Chinese, like all other people, want good life or happiness which is an intrinsic good.

Political liberty like voting, at most, is an instrumental good.
Anyway, Chinese can join the CCP if they want to be involved politically.

The more I think, the more I get to the conclusion that rather than: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, "Life and pursuit of Justice" may work fine if not better.

And so they define "democracy" as a government that works for the people?

Western democracy is for reform retail.
At present, China's per capita GDP is about 1/6 to 1/5 to US. Per capita income is still lower. Implication, China still quite a lot of reform wholesale.

I read the following from a monograph on democracy. I cannot recall the name of the author.
Democracy is satisfying most of the people's needs and/or desires most of the time.

I am Chinese. I do understand that there are a lot of misunderstanding about China and things Chinese in the US. Your comment did not bother me at all.
Chinese do eat all kind of animals. However, I never heard about bat soup.
Bat sounds like "Blessing." Upside down is the homophone of "arrived".
So, some Chinese pin the picture of an upside down bat to their doors wishing for the arrival of blessing.

Democracy is satisfying most of the people's needs and/or desires most of the time. — ltlee1

Right. In a sense, any healthy government is a democracy.

Anyway, Chinese can join the CCP if they want to be involved politically. — ltlee1

But if they join the CCP then they will have to be involved politically as mandated by the CCP. If not, they get kicked out or punished.

Criminal Code of the People's Republic of China, Article 105, Paragraph 2:

"Anyone who uses rumor, slander or other means to encourage subversion of the political power of the State or to overthrow the socialist system, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years. However, the ringleaders and anyone whose crime is monstrous shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years."

In other words, anything you do that can be interpreted as "subversion of the political power" can land you in jail or in a concentration camp for life.

One can ask the same question about the US.
Americans, left and right, are not happy about the political system. Yet they are still proud of their democracy.

Looking backward, Chinese people see steady improvement of their lives. Looking forward, they see something better ahead.

So, some Chinese pin the picture of an upside down bat to their doors wishing for the arrival of blessing. — ltlee1

I see. Now I understand. I thought they did that because they hoped to catch one.

But they made me delete my comment because it was alleged to be "offensive", so I'm glad you didn't find it offensive. Maybe Chinese people are brainier than others. So, I can see your point.

Oh, no.
Xi does do something new to the Uighurs. Xi himself was sent to live with peasant to learn about how they lived and how to lift them from poverty. Likewise, Xi sent some officials to leave with the Uighurs according to dissident websites.
This is not unlike US government sending anthropologists to Iraq to understand the local people better.
More intrusive, yes. But then the families were given to incentive to accept them. One of the recommendation is More training is needed. Hence the re-education school. According to what I can get from Chinese media. The total number of students should be hundreds to one thousand. And they had all been graduated. What they should have done is to have graduation ceremony.

It is impossible to put one million in some kind of jail for long. Too expensive. In the US, it costs about $35,000 to keep one prisoner. China would be lower. But no matter how low, that would be too high.
In addition, there were about 6 million Uighurs in Xinjiang. The region would immediately explode if 1 out 6 were suddently locked up.

One of the recommendation is More training is needed. Hence the re-education school. According to what I can get from Chinese media. The total number of students should be hundreds to one thousand — ltlee1

Oh dear. You don't know. :grimace:

It is impossible to put one million in some kind of jail for long. Too expensive. — ltlee1

I'm afraid I must disagree on that.

If you put a million political prisoners in one concentration camp with little food and other maintenance, and make them manufacture cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices fitted with spying equipment and sell them all over the world, then you make billions from the sales alone, not to mention the value of the information stolen from all over the world.

Please read my first post.
I was searching response to China's "Whole Process Democracy".

Why?
No long ago, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had declared that democracy was not Coca-Cola that promised the same taste everywhere in the world and the United States should respect the path and system independently chosen by China. He said that it was wrong to describe China as “authoritarian” because the country’s democracy “takes a different form than that of the United States.” At the same time, Washington should refrain from using democracy and human rights as a pretext to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs or provoke confrontation that can lead to “turmoil or disaster,”

I found it odd that major media in the US had no response. Given that the US has treated China with great hostility. Shouldn't it watch like a hawk what Chinese government does and speak all the time?
Does silence mean the US does not know how to respond?

Well, this time, China fleshes out its democracy. Hint: Chinese democracy is as good if not better.

↪ltlee1

Frank, "The US is backing down from military intervention right now. And though Americans are at one another's throats continuously, there's not really any significant threat of social breakdown at this time."

The following from article excerpted from MSN article "A quiet battle is raging in Congress over how the US will respond to China's growing power."

"Prominent among these are measures and rhetoric that appear to create a fundamental change in US policy toward Taiwan.
...
The bill clearly implies that a separate Taiwan is a vital US national security interest, and even critical to the defense of Hawaii. It also calls for joint US military training and exercises with the Taiwan military, an unprecedented step which would directly escalate tensions in the Taiwan strait.

Such fundamental changes in US policy not only risk military conflict, but also make progress with China more difficult in every area of mutual concern, including trade, climate change, and managing future pandemics."

US domestic situation is still very bad. I wish I could be as optimistic as you. Mass extremism. Gun sales up. Still large percentage of Republicans believed Biden had stolen the election. And of course, still unresolved racial issues.

MSN article:

"U.S. gun sales in the first five months of 2021 surged 26% to 19,188,494. This makes it among the largest figures since sales were first recorded in 1998. ...
Growing civil unrest may have prompted people to buy guns for personal and family protection, many social scientists have posited, although this remains a matter of debate."

Such fundamental changes in US policy not only risk military conflict — ltlee1

Not really. It's just bluster. Nobody on either side wants war.

US domestic situation is still very bad. I wish I could be as optimistic as you. Mass extremism. Gun sales up. Still large percentage of Republicans believed Biden had stolen the election. And of course, still unresolved racial issues. — ltlee1

Yeah, it's terrible. We're circling the drain.

What they do if they have nothing to lose?
Wont they fight to the death? What next? River of blood.

So far the so called genocide is still bloodless. Are you sure you are not a CCP secret admirer?

Bat sounds like "Blessing." Upside down is the homophone of "arrived".
So, some Chinese pin the picture of an upside down bat to their doors wishing for the arrival of blessing. — ltlee1

I like that.

It's a shame that the conversation juxtaposes Chinese democracy and US democracy. The US is not an especially democratic nation. Look instead to Australia, New Zealand or any of the Scandinavian countries for better examples. Social cohesion is much stronger, social policies lean far more to the left, and they don't shoot each other in school.

What they do if they have nothing to lose?
Wont they fight to the death? What next? River of blood — ltlee1

No, just ashes. :lol:

Are you sure you are not a CCP secret admirer? — ltlee1

Actually, we were beginning to think that you might be an acquaintance of Banno, that's why he changed his identity to deflect attention from what's going on. However, now that you are saying that we are CCP secret admirers, there may be some truth in it ....

@ltlee1

The core issue here may be one of translation. What you are calling democracy is not what is called democracy in English, and in other European languages.

Democracy is not "the greatest happiness of the greatest number". It is not

...satisfying most of the people's needs and/or desires most of the time. — ltlee1

Democracy is where people vote directly on issues of concern to them.

They might vote badly, they might misunderstand the issues, they might vote against their own best interests, they might vote against satisfying most of their needs and desires most of the time; there's no guarantee they will get it right.

So the article cited in the OP comes over as disingenuous. That is, it comes across as insincere; as saying that China is democratic when really it is understood that it isn't; it's as if the author were pretending not to understand the word "democracy" in order to argue that China is democratic.

To put it bluntly, the article could not be taken seriously by a reader of English; in fact, it is quite funny.

Take the example chosen in the article - taking a year to remove a dovecot from a roof. Here, there would never be a dovecot on a roof int he first place, and were one found, it would be removed immediately.

Why is it like this? Because the folk who make and enforce the law get kicked out at the next election if they do not "satisfying most of the people's needs and/or desires most of the time".

We don't have to wait until the party hierarchy realise that there underlings are incompetent.

Claiming China is democratic when it so obviously isn't, is laughable.

Democracy is where people vote directly on issues of concern to them. — Banno

Yes to your overall post. I however take democracy to be pivoted on a checks and balances of political power among citizens. This either via direct democracy (as one example I find remarkable, in later ancient Athens many public offices were elected by lottery, presupposing the requisite that all citizens in the lottery were capable of holding the given office for the allotted time, with all such citizens holding the potential to exert the same degree of political power) or via representative democracy, wherein - at least as the USA was envisioned to be by its founders - checks and balances are meant to occur both between a) representative factions themselves as well as between b) representatives and those they represent. A voting citizenry would then be a necessary consequence of “a checks and balances of political power among citizens”, but democracy seems to me to be defined by the latter and not the former. Voting could for example occur in oligarchies, but to me this does not make them democratic.

Curious if you’d disagree and, if so, on what count.

The reason nobody reacts to the idiocy of describing the Chinese system as democratic is precisely because it's so obviously false it doesn't require a counter argument.

Claiming China is democratic when it so obviously isn't, is laughable. — Banno

Let's repeat that again.

China is a tyranny and it ought to be boycotted for its human rights abuses against Tibet and Uighurs, the treatment of democratic leaders in HK, the silencing of critical media, sham court proceedings, disappearances of citizens and threats to the sovereign nations of India and Taiwan etc. I can go on but the crimes are numerous.

I don't disagree; indeed,

Why is it like this? Because the folk who make and enforce the law get kicked out at the next election if they do not "satisfying most of the people's needs and/or desires most of the time". — Banno

...makes the same point. The advantage of democracy is the feedback from the governed to the government, which cannot happen in an autocracy — it only just happens in our representative democracies. I was working towards making this point. You call this "checks and balances"; same thing.

Itlee1 knows they're using the word differently from westerners. The idea is that it's a better way.

This is the confidence of the naive, and they need it. They're taking a leap into the dark.

Democracy is where people vote directly on issues of concern to them. — Banno

I deeply, deeply dislike this definition, which confuses a mechanism of democratic rule with democratic rule as such. If democracy is the exercise of political power by the people, this is a principle which can be cashed out in many ways, of which 'voting' is a minimal and barely sufficient one.

As for the notion that China is simply 'using the word differently' - well sure, but it is the kind of different that ought to be contested and opposed at every turn. As utterly empty as "Western" claims to democracy are, China is expressly anti-democratic at all levels, and cedeing to propaganda is a stupid move.

If democracy is the exercise of political power by the people, this is a principle which can be cashed out in many ways, of which 'voting' is a minimal and barely sufficient one. — StreetlightX

:up: In the west, laws are made to protect people and they're immediately subverted by wealthy entities.

The power of the people is really found in the threat of insurrection, even in the west.

As for the notion that China is simply 'using the word differently' - well sure, but it is the kind of different that ought to be contested and opposed at every turn. As utterly empty as "Western" claims to democracy are, China is expressly anti-democratic at all levels, and cedeing to propaganda is a stupid move. — StreetlightX

As I mentioned, China has change ahead of them and they have no recipe. They're making it up as they go.

Yes, they seem childish at times, but it hasn't been that long ago that the US was the new bumbling fool on the world scene. So I cut them slack. In a few generations they'll be more mature.

As I mentioned, China has change ahead of them and they have no recipe. They're making it up as they go. — frank

I think this view is both paternalistic and naive. China commands an extremely well oiled state apparatus that has proven time and time again to execute on long term strategy with results in hand. The idea that China is some wide-eyed baby fawn may have passed muster in the 70s, but that time is long past. it certainly has far more strategic vision than anything the West can muster up in response, which has been a confused mix of total economic dependency on China combined with stoking up xenophobia as a response to internal failures all around. The West as it stands is undergoing a process of regression to juvenilia with respect to China's own maturity of state. The US is a bumbling fool on the world scene, not 'was'. With democracy already a walking zombie in the West, the last thing anyone needs is to give it up to an out and out authoritarian superpower.