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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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Indeed. China is such a paradox. An absolute anathema in terms of culture and politics. It's almost impossible for us Westerners to grasp how a people could accept that level of authoritarianism, how they could value their personal freedom so little. And yet, and yet. Without China we would be royally screwed. They are pulling the weight of the green transition basically alone. So personally I've decided to hold off on China-bashing for now.
This assumes that they have an alternative to authoritarianism that they could enact if they wanted. For some reason, the authorities don't allow that. And the authorities also don't like when people talk about it, so it's difficult to discuss and convince others that authoritarianism is bad.
Yes sure but China has never been anything remotely like a Western democracy. It would be difficult to keep the lid on a billion people if they really wanted to live differently. Political culture runs deep.
If they want to defer to authority, they can just keep voting in the ruling party. Democracy doesn't mean no choices.
Voting? Democratic elections are literally not a thing in China, at least not higher than the level of the village. There are no political parties other than the Communist Party. But for Western democracies I do agree. We have no excuses.
My later comment was misunderstood. If being ruled by strong Communist leaders is the "political culture" of China, then fine. Give them a choice every few years and they will keep selecting that.
But we all know that the "revolution" needs to maintained by not giving the people the choice. If given a choice, the people might be "fooled" by Western influence and select someone other than the Communists. So the Communists pick all the candidates and then let the people choose only between them.
The fact is that the "political culture" that supposedly backs authoritarianism would not survive free and open elections. The political culture being unwaveringly Communist is a sham and a lie.
Fair point. I just looked into this and what I said was roughly correct: there are indeed somewhat open elections at the local level in China, but further up the pyramid everything is locked down by the Communist Party hierarchy, as you say.
Turns out to be a pretty complicated system in theory, and it must work to some degree because China just had 40 years of incredibly successful development.
Voting is absolutely meaningless in Xi's China. But I gotta give it to them for their solar panel work. Too bad it's all about to jump in price due to the idiotic tariffs.
True but it's not like China has never decided enough was enough and replaced their leadership by force
Tiananmen Square was not that long ago. There are lots of living people who would have seen their fellow students get crushed by tanks and rinsed down a drain.
That will keep a generation and their children quiet. Their children have also now seen how risings are punished via Hong Kong.
I don’t think it’s even possible to imagine what you would do having seen your government enact that kind of violence on your peers. So I certainly don’t judge.
In a way it's even scarier than that. Most younger Chinese do not even know those things happened. I can confirm this incredible fact from personal experience. At this point "Tiananmen Square 1989" has more meaning to the average educated Westerner than it does over there. It has been scrubbed from history.
You just did, according to .ml users, because ACkShuLly cHiNa iSnT aN AuThoRitArIaN CounTRy
Joke's on them: not only authoritarian, but capitalist authoritarian.