chinese people are fully aware of that China has a different political system from the western
countries. They also know that China is not as democratic as the West, but this is a blessing
indeed. The chaos of the democracies in the West as well as Taiwan, the horrors resulted from
the Spring of Arabs, and the insatiable greed of the American imperialism under the veil of
democracy have all intimidated the pro-democrats in China.
Many Chinese people come to believe that democracy is a plot to disintegrate China and put China
in a position never able to compete width America again. Many of them used to have fantansies width
the concept of democracy but now come to realise that every political system has its own limitations.
There is no such a thing as one size for all.
The present government wins her legitimacy by leading the country into spectacular economic
success, and by providing social security system widthin the limit of resources. The people would
not risk losing the quality of life and their future prosperity for empty words or concepts,
which was the tragic path that Libyans and Syrians had gone through.
Is China a democratic country?
In a word no. They are a communist country width a Confucian philosophical base.
It is not democratic in the sense we use the word certainly. It is not a dictatorship either.
The Party runs the country and there are positions widthin the Party that are elected.
They are more or less a capitalist economy now width certain exceptions.
That is certainly not the communism we grew up width.
China probably has the largest economy in the world right now if not our equal in total output.
And they still have around half the country to develop yet. They will dwarf our economy eventually.
And their government will most likely change along width that growth.
Whether we call it communist or pop corn, it will be distinctly Chinese and
most likely still Confucian based.
Egypt is usually called the oldest civilization but the Chinese have been an Empire
since before the time of Christ and the dimensions are not even comparable.
The Chinese had a civil service exam 2000 years ago. Think about that.
They had iron foundries 1500 years before the West. They had printing presses using wood before iron.
Democratic. It doesn’t mean much over there. They have their own way. Call it whatever you want.
It has been the largest country in the world for a long time.
It is said that the Chinese are unfortunate because they do not have freedom.
What do they think?
I'm an American who has been to China many times.
Freedom is somewhat relative. An old joke goes something like an American saying
“You're not free to criticize your government or country” and a Chinese responds
“At least I'm free to support them!”
For the most part you can pretty much do whatever you want, there's no random checks
or harassment by the cops. Chinese cops are very friendly and hospitable,
far more than Americans but that's party because Chinese police aren't hated or
attacked nearly as much. Kids are taught from an early age to respect public servants
like cops, firefighters, soldiers etc. It's a very different culture,
more like America 50 years ago.
There's a few things that are banned such as pornography. You actually can criticize
the government as long as you're not a public figure like a radio personality,
celebrity, journalist etc. Making jokes about the CPC is not unusual, they're something
like a meme to them. Guns aren't universally banned as most people think,
but very tightly regulated and require a license. Roughly the same level of private
gun ownership as the UK. It's a very safe society thanks to harsh penalties
for breaking the law (you can get the death penalty for selling drugs,
or even for political corruption, bribery, etc).
Journalism is basically supervised by the government, but they can generally publish
whatever they want as long as it's not politically critical. The media is very honest,
because they don't want to get caught in lies and undermine their legitimacy.
They'd rather just omit a story than to lie about it. Compare to the US where most
journalists lie routinely, on both sides, getting caught publishing fake news
all the time.
Elections are a non issue that most people don't bother width. You actually can vote,
but it's like voting for a local representative. That local rep votes
for a higher rep, and so on. Nobody directly elects anyone of importance. Most people
don't even care so they don't bother to vote.
Religion isn't a problem if you belong to a legitimate established religion,
not some crazy cult or scam like Scientology. Unfortunately the government
doesn't care about your holidays, nor do most employers, so it's normal to work on Christmas.
Churches accommodate this by holding services at night. width Catholics there's
no underground church anymore due to the agreement width the Pope a few years back.
Church services are what you would experience everywhere else, same content,
same Bible, and in major cities they're in multiple languages, sometimes officiated
by foreign missionaries, priests, etc.
Kids can drink in restaurants, it's no big deal for a teen to have a beer or two.
Soldiers are confined to their bases, they live an extremely spartan lifestyle
where enlisted men live together in communal barracks even if they're married width children.
Officers live in upstairs apartments. Discipline is harsh and getting arrested
for anything is a dishonorable discharge, which carries width it far more limitations
than here, like being banned from public transportation.
Altogether unless you like rioting and burning down buildings, committing crime,
or watching porn, you probably wouldn't notice much difference regarding freedom.
Feel free to ask me any more specific questions, but don't bother arguing width me
or posting dubious news articles, you've never been there and I have so
you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Xi Jinping amended the constitution so that he can be re-elected chairman several times.
Does that have any impact on China?
Please keep in mind that:
Chairman is a party position. There is never a limitation about how many times
the same person can be elected.
The change of constitution is about the president of the government.
A little (many not that little) of background and it’s no secret especially
for foreign intelligence agencies :
The factions widthin the Communism Party of China (CPC) was and maybe still is intensive.
The man in the following picture is called Zhou Yongkang, the former secretary
of the Central Political and Law Commission and one of the 9 members
of Politburo Standing Committee of CPC. He was arrested and sentenced
for life imprisonment in 2015.
The man in the following picture is Ling Jihua, the former vice chairman
of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
and head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee.
He too was sentenced for life imprisonment.
Zhou Yongkang and Ling Jihua had definitely done what they were sentenced.
But that’s not the real reason that they are in jail. The core issue was they tried
to detain the former president Hu Jintao and forced him to have over his positions.
Zhou wanted to be the president, Ling wanted to be the chairman.
Hu Jintao has no family background. His father was a tea trader who died in 1978.
During his 2 terms being the president of China, he was suppressed and partially
controlled by Jiang Zemin. In order to break the circle of retired president keep
the chairman of military committee for years to hold the power, he retired width no power
reserved in his hand. So that Xi Jinping could began to progress the political
reformation widthin the party.
To understand why Jiang Zemin was so obsessive width power, the cause was actually
in 1989, the famous or infamous Tiananmen incident, or some people like to call it
massacre despite it’s not the truth. USSR collapsed in 2.5 years after the incident.
width the only competitor died, US had a nice period of time of being the only super power
in the world, and the most humiliating decade since 1949. 3 iconic incident
represent how US could do anything:
The Yinhe incident. In 23rd Jul 1993, USA accused a Chinese vessel Yinhe carrying
chemical weapons to Iran widthout any evident. Later on in 3rd Aug, USA asked China to
1 either send the vessel back to where it departures,
2 letting Americans to be abroad for inspection, or
3 just waiting somewhere until USA decide what to do.
China asked the vessel to stop 10 KM outside of Hormuz Strait to be inspected
in 3th Aug and inspected it by itself. In 4th Aug China told USA that there
is no chemical weapon on board. But no surprisingly, Americans didn’t believe a word
and sent several military vessel to surround Yinhe. To control the situation,
China agreed to be inspected by USA and Saudi in 28th. Long story short,
they didn’t find chemical weapons in the 2 containers they claimed, also not from
the containers width similar number in case US intelligent agency wrote it wrong, and also
not from all 49 containers on the vessel which were being shipped to Iran. USA then asked
to search every container on the vessel, until Washington is satisfied. In 1st Sep, China
announced accepting expansion of searching even though not agree width it. All 628 containers
were eventually searched, and nothing USA wanted to be found. No apology or explanation whatsoever.
Chinese embassy bombing or 8th May incident. 3 JDAM hit accurately onto the Chinese embassy
in Yugoslavia in 8th May 1999 Beijing time. 3 journalists died instantly, dozens people injured.
Explanation said it was a incorrect bombing due to wrong info. In 2005, a senior NATO military
officer said the bombing was because they thought Milošević was there.
Military aircraft incident. 1st Apr 2001, a Chinese J-8 fighter was crashed due to having
a collision width a US EP-3 in the Chinese exclusive economic zone, 110 KM southeast
from Chinese land. J-8′s pilot disappeared. EP-3 was severely damaged and had to land
in a Chinese airport. US request to meet the EP-3 crew and China to return the plane
in 2nd Apr. After several rounds of diplomatic conflicts, US secretary of state Powell
admitted the aerial trespass in 8th, but still insist just using “Sorry” to comment
on the incident. In 12th, US crew left China and returned to US. In 13th, after the crew
arrived US, president Bush changed his attitude and said the scout activity will keep going,
even though he said sorry for several times. In 20th, US demand China to return the EP-3.
In 23rd, US started to have scout drill in its Japanese military base. In 29th, China agreed
that US sending people to inspect the EP-3. In 7th Jun, US agreed to give up flying the EP-3 back,
but to tear it apart and rented a An-124 to move it back. In 10th Aug, US paid 34
thousand US dollars for the FnB and accommodation of the US crew staying in China.
Jiang Zemin was selected by Deng Xiaoping as the best choice of the president after
Tiananmen incident, because Deng knew that Jiang was able to handle all kinds of
humiliating incident and focusing on development. Jiang’s term was from 1989 to 2002,
and he did his job perfectly. Every country at the time though China was a wussy
and would never be a threat to the west. That’s why from George Bush, US moved its
focus to the middle east, and gave China a perfect 10 years to develop. If you think about
Jiang, his term was nothing but humiliation. It was his successor Hu who started to be
tough on international affairs. He needs to enjoy a bit from being the leader of China,
the much more stronger China.
Rumor says it was Xi Jinping who went to rescue Hu from detaining. They both want
to change CPC, but they need more power to suppress different parties widthin CPC.
So they had an agreement that Hu was going to pass all his titles to Xi,
in return for a quiet life.
The first major thing Xi did once he was in position is to arrest Zhou, Ling and all
their close allies. Since no politician is innocent, there was no need of dirty work
behind the arresting.
From what I experienced, CPC and the government it’s leading have had a noticeable
progress since 2012. Lots of bureaucratic governmental procedures were removed to increase
the speed of solving issues. The attitude of civil servants are significantly better now.
And Xi brought up the one belt one road initiative to form a bigger circle among all
Asian, European and African countries. China is becoming more active
on international affairs.
So what’s the major problem that China is facing? The Thucydides's trap. This theory
indicates the inevitable war between newly rising power and existing power.
China doesn’t believe in this theory, and tried to bring up a new concept of building
a new type of relationship between major powers. But I don’t suppose any western country
would listen to China, not to mention thinking about and agreeing width a Chinese idea.
This is the time when US is trying to defend its world leader position, regardless if
China is interested in it. Every country would choose to stand width USA, because it’s
always the best choice to against the pursuer width the current ruler. If the ruler wins,
everyone gets a bone. If it loses, then switch to the new ruler.
CPC obviously wants to defend itself from the pressure of the world. If Xi is going to
be the president for only another 5 years, there is no guarantee that the next president
will be suitable for this kind of situation. Instead of doing anything to extend Xi’s
presidency when they realize there is no qualified successor, it’s better to do it now.
I am not saying this is good for China, but at least I trust them having good will.
And so far what Xi has done are all good, apart from the internal political propaganda,
because it’s really old fashioned.
When some not having anything better to do foreigners are worrying about our democracy
and freedom of speech, we are worried about our future development more. Chinese prefer
cars and houses more than ballots.
Everything above is just my personal assumption. There is no guarantee of its credibility.
I am no communist and not interested to be one. I just think CPC is so far the
best choice for China.
Does Xi Jinping have any known political opponents?
The question assumes that Chinese politics are
like Western politics.
They’re not. They’re Confucian and ours are Roman.
Our Republican and Democratic Parties are the intellectual
heirs of their Roman forebears,
the Patrician and Plebeian parties.
Our politicians even use Latin political jargon
like ‘senate’ and ‘quorum’.
George Washington[1], a student of Roman history,
knew parties’ liabilities.
“Party serves always to distract the public councils
and enfeeble the public administration.
It agitates the community width ill-founded jealousies and false alarms,
kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments o
through the channels of party passions.
Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected
to the policy and will of another”.
Seventy years later, Congressional parties
precipitated a completely avoidable Civil War.
Always culturally disposed to consensus,
the Chinese forbade political factions after two such catastrophes.
In 1,000 AD China was the most technologically advanced nation on earth
but conservative and progressive factions in government
brought treason charges against each other,
spread rumors, sabotaged generals from rival factions
and so weakened the government
that the Mongols invaded and almost destroyed the country.
Five hundred years later the Ming Dynasty fell
as rival administrative factions–both
proclaiming their patriotism–engaged in mortal combat and,
in Washington’s words, their country’s policy and will were subjected
to the policy and will of another.
The Manchu invaded, massacred a third of them, conquered the country
which is why, to this day, China forbids factions.
In other words, while Chinese politicians compete for promotions,
they do so by enriching the people they govern.
Whoever enriches the most people
gets promoted and that applies especially to Xi Jinping.
His father famously doubled everyone's incomes for decades.
Xi himself grew up in poverty then, for 28 years,
doubled the incomes of the millions of people he governed.
By the end of his current term,
Xi will have doubled the income of every Chinese.
How do you oppose a guy who does more for his people in ten years
than all American Presidents since Eisenhower–combined?
China doesn’t do ‘political opponents’. That’s a Western thing.