Bunch of BRICS countries arent democratic themselves, not to speak of their new additions.
The whole BRICS conference didnt allow journalist questions
Democracy with Chinese characteristics they meant.
Democracy without dissent. China has achieved peak democracy. Once you mercilessly crush all opposition, your population becomes completely unified and elections are easy, straightforward affairs! The one secret of success that western democracies don’t want you to know!
A study by Harvard over 15 years show that the Chinese national government, administered by the CPC, enjoys a consistent 95% approval rating. You’re delusional if you think they achieved that with violence against 1.4 billion people
I used to live in China.
Yes, there are people that like the government. However, most people are very aware they can’t speak out against the government, and would if they could. Far more than 5%.
Based on my experience, the statistic of 95% feels highly flawed in some way.
Overall satisfaction in my experience was still pretty high. Did people have complaints? Of course. But, well, looking at the alternative…
Fuck man, if the US didn’t pay so well it really would feel like a third-world country. Transit? Nonexistent. Roads? Falling apart. Drugs? A core component of society. Police? Insanely corrupt and racist. Crime? Rising as you sleep, but at least violent crimes are falling. Time spent on useless bureaucratic bullshit? Infinite. Wealth inequality? Of course. Healthcare? The fuck is that? Life expectancy? Low. Sanitation and drinking water? Clearly still questionable. Traffic accidents? Everywhere. Electrical grid? Literally falling apart in some places.
Plus, the democratic system inherently polarizes people towards dissatisfaction. In a democracy, you might be dissatisfied if you think someone could do better. Without a vote, you’re dissatisfied if you think the government is not acting in your best interests.
Ignoring the whataboutism, I wouldn’t use the US as an ideal alternative lol. Both China and the US have many areas in which they should improve. It’s in only one of those countries that it is potentially dangerous to say that though.
Ah yes, because the right to protest is very well-protected in the US and police never oversteps their bounds against activists…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Manuel_Esteban_Paez_Terán
The government also doesn’t have a vast surveillance apparatus that spies on everyone and has public and fair justice system…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act
And I’m sure that the US never conducts extrajudicial killings of US citizens in non-hostile countries, because that would be wrong…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki
Meanwhile, weibo was full of posts condemning the COVID-19 lockdowns. It’s still full of posts asking how the government plans to revive the economy. Hell, the lockdown protests in China literally forced the government to change COVID-19 policy significantly.
When was the last time a major US protest achieved anything?
Dude, I just said I’m not trying to say that the US is an ideal country to compare things to. I agree with you, the US sucks in a lot of ways.
I am saying that speech about sensitive topics can be dangerous in China. Hong Kong stuff, tiananmen square, Uighurs in Xinjiang, those kinds of things - the people I talked to seemed to be afraid to talk about those things, to the point that people would tell me “we should not talk about this.” That isn’t something that happens in places with stronger freedom of speech protections.
Please don’t respond by a list of ways America is bad. I know that already, and it isn’t the point.
You should use your insights to conduct your more scientifically based study. I’m sure the CIA will be happy to fund you if you explain it’ll refute Harvard’s 95% claim.
The role of democracy is to make government responsible to its constituents rather than to the rulers: democracy was founded on the idea that the monarchy fucking sucks and wealth/power should be better distributed.
China’s government is still accountable to its constituents, just in a different way than the US. Instead of winning and losing elections, getting increased or reduced responsibilities (promotion and demotion) is the primary way of managing accountability. The primary failure mode of China’s government is rampant corruption that decouples the promotion/demotion mechanism from actual constituent well-being, which is why stopping that is the platform that Xi Jinping rose to power on.
People always talk about civil liberties in China, but frankly Asian culture is notoriously conservative. LGBT rights are still an active topic across East and Southeast Asia (and indeed even in the US). Religious freedoms are just… not really a big concern when most of your population isn’t religious. Freedom of speech exists up until they begin calling for government reform/replacement: protests are a dominant form of expressing displeasure to local and municipal governments (the Jasic workers protest was quelled, but the company was punished by government policy that fucked their short-term growth prospects), and can even influence national politics (see the protests against COVID-19 lockdowns and the resultant opening of policy on COVID-19). The War On Terror rears it’s head in ugly ways, but all indigenous minorities get handled with affirmative action policies that encourage economic independence.
Getting over the great firewall is fairly trivial in practice, particularly for the young and tech savvy. The prevalence of studying (4.4 million students) and travel abroad (who the fuck knows) makes it even more trivial to learn and spread news from other perspectives. Activism is prosecuted a fair chunk more, but it’s not like activists in the West are given carte blanche either.
Is it less progressive than urban West Coast/Northeast US? Absolutely. Is the government as accountable as in democracies like the Nordic states or Switzerland? Absolutely not. Then again, you wouldn’t expect it to be. Chinese culture is far closer to that of right-wing America (without the bible thumping and gun toting lol) than it is to that of left-wing America, nevermind left-wing Europe.
Is the government as accountable as in democracies like the Nordic states or Switzerland?
Bruv everyone in Norway wanted 10 politicians jailed last year. All that came from it was memes about how “I’m sorry I didn’t know corruption was illegal” is a laughable excuse and then it was memory-holed. The only person punished was one of the journalists and they shuffled some things around to reduce transparency. One criminal resigned but she got an emotional distress payout and is still at AP.
Belt Road Initiative of China, Stupid
It’s another means for china to have influence
China is far from Democratic
Countries that have fallen for belt and road have already or will regret it
Now tankie whataboutism…
BRI is, in all ways, better than anything the West has ever offered or even considers offering in the future.
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