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0 pointsem5004y ago0 comments

Assume for the moment that you're American, liberal, white collar and live in one of the more affluent blue coastal states. Now imagine that 75% of your countrymen are rabbid red state Trump supporters, of low education, get most of their news and information from low quality Facebook shares, and are clearly misinformed about the world in many ways. Now imagine that the Federal government is much more powerful than the States, and that representative democratic policy will mostly reflect the will of Trump True-believers, the people fully supportive of the Capitol riots. How principled are you really about the rule of democracy?

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.

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tablespoon4y ago

> Assume for the moment that you're American, liberal, white collar and live in one of the more affluent blue coastal states. Now imagine that 75% of your countrymen are rabbid red state Trump supporters, of low education....How principled are you really about the rule of democracy?

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?

em500OP4y ago

> 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.

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.

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