I am no expert, but I disagree and I think this is the kind of thinking that has failed the west for the last thirty years. I think the idea started with the fall of the Soviet Union. That culture and ideology was bankrupt. So a lot of western people thought that when there was a free exchange of ideas with China, the Chinese would eventually reject the CCP.
My experience of people in China-- admittedly a long time ago-- was they are generally very patriotic or nationalistic, like Americans. They appreciate the CCP and what it has accomplished. They have a strong domestic arts industry making movies, books, games. Sure lots of people disagree with the party, but that doesn't that they want a western liberal democracy. So lots of people will speak in favor of a benevolent elite and against populism or what they see as western chaos or oppression. When people are against the government, they aren't wishing for a different government system, just less corrupt or more benevolent authoritarians.
Anyway, that is the way I am thinking about these days. But I could be very wrong and I would love to hear from people who are from or spend time in China.
> Sure lots of people disagree with the party, but that doesn't that they want a western liberal democracy. So lots of people will speak in favor of a benevolent elite and against populism or what they see as western chaos or oppression. When people are against the government, they aren't wishing for a different government system, just less corrupt or more benevolent authoritarians.
I think it's important to note those views are in large part created an reinforced a deliberate propaganda program. For instance, I believe one of the ideas the Chinese government pushes is the Chinese people "aren't ready" for democracy (while carefully preventing anything that could make them ready). When educated Chinese people were better exposed to ideas about liberal democracy, they were very clear that they wanted it (e.g. 80s leading up to Tiananmen Square, the Liberal Studies curriculum in Hong Kong), but the government has learned from those episodes and has taken action to get the ideological results it desires.
It's both trying to show less corruption and simultaneously scaring everyone away from dissent. Gross but seems powerful.
https://www.propublica.org/article/operation-fox-hunt-how-ch...
Isn't that exactly 1) what the Communist Party wants them to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote?
Now I'm not suggesting that this is a good analogy for the Chinese situation, nor that this is how highly education urban Chinese think about democracy (though I do know a few who do seem to think that way). What I am suggesting is that democracy is not always and everywhere the slam dunk win that some Western liberals appear to think it is.
I write this as a second generation immigrant raised since elementary school with Western democratic values. I do believe that despite some flows it is the best system for most of Europe and the US. My parents fled the madness of the Mao CCP regime, and they've probably seen the worst side of the CCP. Yet they are ambivalent whether a US-style democracy today would be superior for the Chinese citizens to the current CCP.
Though implicit in that fantasy is that, without democracy, the blue-state liberal gets to impose his will on the Trumpers. Something that can keep someone like that committed to democracy is (for instance) the thought that the alternative is could actually be a never-ending dictatorship of Mitch McConnell, beating humanity with its chin waddle forever.
> Now I'm not suggesting that this is a good analogy for the Chinese situation, nor that this is how highly education urban Chinese think about democracy (though I do know a few who do seem to think that way). What I am suggesting is that democracy is not always and everywhere the slam dunk win that some Western liberals appear to think it is.
Are you saying that educated urban Chinese are hesitant about democracy because they get to vicariously impose their will (or something close enough to it) on the rabble via the CCP?
Right. I don't think it's a given that democracy is demonstrably superior to meritocracy or even aristocracy or enlightened despotism in delivering better outcomes for the majority of people (working definition, GDP/capita, or some honest measure of life satisfaction).
> Are you saying that educated urban Chinese are hesitant about democracy because they get to vicariously impose their will (or something close enough to it) on the rabble via the CCP?
I'm saying that I do know some educated urban Chinese who seemed to believe that, at least the post-Mao CCP leadership probably did a better job than a counterfactual popular elected leadership. I have no idea how representative those few opinions are of the general Chinese urban population. I don't know the country or politics well enough to agree or dispute such views either, but I can certainly see where they're coming from. Mobocracy by the uneducated masses was also one of the largest worries of the American Founding Fathers if I recall my history correctly. Bear in mind that the urbanization rate in China ("blue states" from the educated Chinese perspective) barely reached 30% until 2000 or so. And some Chinese friends summarized Mao-China as basically mob-rule by the peasants.
The ideological difference within China is not anything less then that of America. The gay marriage issue along could leave the country 80% to 20%, with the liberals on the 20% side. Yet in a authoritorian state like China, I don't think I've heard anything amount to hate crimes like that in the US, A lot of them would be scared to come out, but no one would be murdering them just for their identity. I think the issue with electoral democracy is that every issue is public, in constant debate, and people's political identity became so important to some that they are willing to kill.
People, expats especially, who live in affluent areas of China often lack the knowledge necessary to understand the less-developed areas of China. Like how people in California lack understandings of Alabama.
This falls flat for me. So the implication is that there are no educated Chinese today with exposure to liberal democracy? I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.
I'm not saying "no exposure," I'm saying they were "better exposed" in the past. You can even see changes like that happening in Hong Kong now, under the new crackdown on civil liberties. For instance, the government is now tinkering with the curriculum of a "Liberal Studies" course in Hong Kong to make it more "patriotic."
> I think we take for granted the supposed superiority of a system that empirically has delivered many recent failures.
Would you trade Donald Trump, Joe Biden, the Democrats, and Repubicans for Xi Jinping and the CCP (and everything that entails)?
If it were solely between these two choices? I'm not exactly ecstatic about these options, but I would. The fact that someone like Trump could come to power here - a fact that we, amazingly, seem to be trying to sweep under the rug - says this system is a complete failure and is just waiting to be exploited further.
Many systems can become prosperous if relatively small and sufficiently aligned to US foreign policy to preserve the hegemony. Democracies that don't will get crushed / contained inspite of "democratic peace". The real disruption of PRC's rise is an alternate system that could create a prosperous or even moderately wealthy society, despite US supremency.
I'm all for a fair comparison. And as someone who currently benefits from Western ideals of personal liberties, I'd be happy to see it proven that they are superior. But let's make it fair
Meanwhile, the anti-china folks blithely go on about how much better freedom of expression is in America, and assume that silence means they are right.
Washington Post and NYT will happily run Adrian Zenz all day long, even though he's a right wing religious nut and they're secular liberals, but you never see them print the majority viewpoint of actual Chinese people.
Having been on the inside, it's not that they don't want a different system, it's that they see the real or perceived problems of our system as highlighted by their domestic media and generally from their point of view. This makes them substantially less enthusiastic than we think they would be.
The only way to convince them is to show them that liberal democracy does indeed yield better results, with people feeling more secure and leading happier lives. In order to do that we need to ensure that our democratic processes lead to solidarity and not division. That's why the last 4 years have been so damaging to our system, the fabric of the system has been damaged by extreme partisanship, without considering that standing together with our neighbours is in many cases more important than being 'right'.
Bonus point that there is a lot less chance of war this way.
I don't think so. Fixing domestic problems is a worthy goal, but it's wishful thinking to believe it will do anything to "effect change in China politically."
Life is probably far from pleasant if you're an Uyghur or a Falung Gong, but the overwhelming majority of the population is not too concerned with their lot. The CCP clearly does suppress dissent, but it can be targetted to minority opinions.
The median Chinese citizen doesn't just see Western Europe and the USA and concludes that democracy leads to great results. (S)he can also see that it did not appear to bring great prosperity to India, Brazil or Russia.
"The Curious Story of China's Indie Gaming Scene"
I don't think the Chinese would want a fall of the USSR scenario, however little the bloodshed is. Economic disruption can kill a lot of people and there is not even any guarantee the next system would stand on it's own.
But you're comparing apples and oranges.
Russia was still a command economy when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and went straight to democracy and capitalism at the same time with very little transition (IIRC, mainly because of the bad advice of Westerners who were too ideological and infatuated with markets).
China has already made the transition to capitalism, so I don't think a political transition to liberal democracy there would entail the kind of economic disruption Russia experienced.
A transition to hard capitalism and a collapse of the government would absolutely bring economic disruption. And China right now is much less self sufficient than Russia was in 1991, and gets its foreign exchange from complex and vulnerable supply chains.
China is also much less educated than Russia was at the time, and would be even more vulnerable to corruption.
