Very persuasive cogent erudite elucidation.

Yes the chinese could introduce a form of democracy, even with a single party that provided all the candidates!? And where aspiring CCP candidates could seek the people's prerogative on well argued policy platforms, personality, previous performance and or merit?

Even so not much of a change nor dramatically so? And maybe more democratic than the very best (from the west) democracy that money can buy? And a way to manage essential change for the better, without changing too much?
Alan B.

China's leaders are thoroughly corrupt, and will fiercely resist any attempt to make them accountable to the people. So far they can fool enough of the people enough of the time, but that situation can't continue for ever.

Or, if the Communist party of China wanted to eat the cake and have it too, then they could adopt the Australian system, split their party in half and allow the ordinary Chinese vassals to select every few years between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Yuyutsu, that's something they've seriously considered, and it would be an enormous improvement as it would enable the rule of law to override the rule of the party. But as I said, it's something they're strongly opposed to. The corrupt never want accountability.

Dear Aidan,

Where did you mention that they are opposed to this idea?

And why would this, which is essentially a propaganda-exercise, be any improvement?

I never meant that they become in fact accountable to anybody, only that they will split exactly in half and each half will wear a different-coloured hat. They will of course stage some mild scuffles between the two halves, just to pretend that they are different, but at the end they will remain the exact same and united party, just like here, laughing all the way to the bank.

Tianmen " Heavenly Peace" was the affirmation of emperors' godly mandate written in the stars as on the flag. Lee Kuan Yew began as a communist, merged to socialism and swung hard right. Czar Putin and Emperor Xi have people who are used to lofty authority but now having a tech level suited to imperial visions. Democracy is really a minor abnormality.

Chinese see the world through the eyes of business, not democracy. What is good for business is what will be good for the country.

If democracy succeeds in China, it will be due to the ability of the democratic process to furnish business success, and will not include the consideration of freedoms offered by democratic rule, given to its people. Since when in history, have the Chinese experienced control over their own personal destiny?

"Little Princess" syndrome, evident now among the children of the one child generation, will not improve the outcome for a democratic rule in China. Poor little rich kids with cluster "B" personality disorders, have an export wealth potential for the new China. An army of vacuum cleaners, marching into beleaguered Western Democracies, scooping up its wealth and sucking its strength all at the one time.

Chinese Democracy, don't be stupid!

Yuyutsu,

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. They will resist anything that weakens their power, including any attempt to hold them to account.

"And why would this, which is essentially a propaganda-exercise, be any improvement?"
Because they'd lose the ability to spin any criticism of government policy as opposition to the state. And the party would not be able to maintain control over the judiciary, so China would finally gain the rule of law.

Hi Alan B.,

A one-party democracy ? Do you realise - surely you do - how oxymoronic that would be ? When I was a Maoist, I was always puzzled by Mao's notion of a 'People's Democratic Dictatorship'. A 'People's Democracy', yes, but if that was the case - I thought in my naivety - why the need for a dictatorship ? By whom ? Over whom ? Why ? God, what a child.

Democracy is always going to be imperfect, particularly from the point of view of those whose preferred candidates are out of power. As long as there are classes, which is probably forever, there will be parties, above- or below-ground, and contention between them, a mad scramble every three or four years, with inevitable recriminations afterwards.

But that beats the dead hand of dictatorships every time.

Joe

My experience of working in China over five years has been that the 'average' person just doesn't even want to remotely go there nor have the 'stupidity' to think that the Party would accept going to a true republic with notions of democracy even though they claim in their propaganda that they are already there! Much like freedom of speech, freedom of protest and assembly, etc etc - the all persuasive and pervasive mantra is anything that has the least propensity to be seen as possibly challenging the status quo will be summarily and harshly dealt with under the offence of 'challenging the social order' or whatever is 'deemed appropriate' to incarcerate or permanently eliminate the offender[s]. Their constitution is a sad mockery of many 'noble statements' about democratic rights but it is all rubbish.
Power by the Party for the Party members is the highest aspiration - the New 'Socialist?' ruling class that replaced the corrupt regimes before them, appear to be completely devoid of actually ensuring that justice according to their own laws/constitution is ever going to be reality. As Mao stated: 'Power comes out of the barrel of a gun' and the Party holds all the guns, internet censorship, media control, the armed police, the military, the government, the education system and anything that could perhaps be used to rock the boat.

A famous banned book quotes an ancient adage, 'The water holds up the boat, the boat can be sunk by the water.' as an allusion both to the boat being the Party and the water the common people - no wonder it was banned.

Most have learnt from their early years "You don't rise above the Party mandates on anything or else you will 'earn' the consequences.

Hi CIA,

[An unfortunate acronym].

On party dictatorship: there is a quote from Lenin in today's Cut & Paste section of The Australian, which goes something like:

" .... If we have to wait for the intellectual capacity of the masses to mature, we won't have socialism for five hundred years."

If that's fair dinkum, it confirms my suspicions that sections of the disaffected elites, the professional classes - those without a genuinely left-wing bone in their bodies since the aim was merely to seize power one way or another - latch onto the 'masses' to do all the work for them, put THEIR bodies on the line, and pave the way for the rightful control of society by their betters with their Utopian Blueprint.

Perhaps the current opportunist Left still think this way ? News flash to the 'Left': the numbers of people in manufacturing etc. peaked in about 1966. There are now probably more baristas and purveyors of kale than actual factory workers. Find yourself another donkey.

Cheers,

Joe

The people of the West are Hegelians in the sense that, as it seems to me, they think all human history moves inexorably towards one goal, democracy. Hegel was a romantic day-dreamer.

Ke Long, a Chinese working in Tokyo for a Japanese think-tank, is not an anti-CCP but seems to admit social, political and economic limits to China. He says that if democracy should be introduced, people would bribe and buy votes more rampantly for political and economic gains; they would intimidate or assassinate opponents; they would do all sorts of nasty things. China would break into pieces unless controlled, as it was throughout its history, by a despotic, authoritarian regime.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has a strong committment to democracy in Myanmar. But the country does not have socially a cultural basis for democracy. People are divided into many minor ethnic groups, speaking different languages and lacking in a common historical consciousness and dedication.

I would like Mr. Hill to read, for instance, Sonfa Oh/Getting Over It!: Why Korea Needs to Stop Bashing Japan, George Akita/Japan in Korea, and David S. Landes/The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Sonfa Oh was a South Korean and is a Japanese citizen now. Landes's book is full of misinterpretations about Japanese society but he says, "...the best colonial master of all time has been Japan..."

When the robots start a slow clap in unison in all factories and trucks the rice bowls will come down hard ._ sweat-shop proverb

Hi Michi,

You suggest that " .... The people of the West are Hegelians in the sense that, as it seems to me, they think all human history moves inexorably towards one goal, democracy."

I don't recall that Hegel ever had the slightest positive thing to say about democracy: monarchy, autocracy, dictatorship maybe, but not democracy. In that sense, he was a Right-Utopian. But aren't they all ?

And one lesson of history is that no, nothing moves inexorably towards anything. There is no inevitability about history, says Karl Popper. Democracy is not a given: even the half-witted Left seems to be shifting towards support for dictatorships, the Great Leader - but perhaps they always have preferred totalitarianism to the uncertainties and imperfections of democracy.

BTT: China has maybe five or ten years, before its economic, demographic and geopolitical problems become insurmountable. I'm predicting war between China, Russia, Iran and Turkey over who controls Central Asia by 2025.

Joe

Loudmouth,
Hegel did not say human history moved towards "democracy," but he said things like 'it had an inevitable logic or law of development that it could not help following, the end was human freedom and Prussia was destined to take the lead.'

China has a lot more of internal weaknesses than strengthes but Chinese leaders have always pretended and said all is right with the Middle Kingdom.

Michi,

Yes, and to Hegel, 'human freedom' reached its highest level under the Prussian Emperor. I agree with your equation of 'human freedom' and 'democracy' but Hegel wouldn't.

"Chinese leaders have always pretended and said all is right with the Middle Kingdom." i.e., they are perfect, and whatever freedoms the people have now are pretty much all they are going to get. Now, THAT's Hegelian thinking.

I have to say I could never see how and why Marx ever gave Hegel the time of day - unless there was a reactionary streak in Marx, a craving for a sort of Utopia, perhaps different from Hegel's imperial ideal, but all the same something which closed off any further development, which had all the answers and which had reached some sort of end-point. All Utopias are ultimately reactionary.

Joe

It may be that fascist leaders were Hegelian. Reason tells us that our elections are now promoting irrationality.
" Landes's book is full of misinterpretations about Japanese society but he says, "...the best colonial master of all time has been Japan..."
Well they weren't as good as the Mongols. In their towns the citizens all rested in peace..

Hi Nick,

Sleeping peacefully, like the entire population of many cities. So a legitimate question is: what did the Mongols ever do for us ? Or for anybody ?

Imperialism comes in different forms: there's the Mongol and Turkish and Arab empires, in which the 'other' got butchered, at least the men, while the women were taken into sex slavery. Mesopotamian (i.e. now Iraqi) DNA shows this pattern: male DNA is overwhelmingly Arab; female DNA is 80 % Kurdish and Persian.

And then there's the various British models which, at least in South Australia's case, recognised Indigenous people, the 'other', as British subjects from the outset, with the full rights and legal protections of other subjects, with the extra legal right to hunt, fish and gather food wherever they wished, alongside the provision of materials, fishing gear, rifles, boats, etc.,to help them to do so. Yes, I'm as surprised as you :)

And then there is Chinese imperialism .......

I know which I would prefer :)

Cheers,

Joe

.

Absolutely correct .
The Colonial Office subsequently enshrined the principal of Aboriginal land rights by inserting in the Letters Patent, the document issued to the Colonization Commissioners early in 1836 to formally establish the colony of South Australia, a clause which recognized the prior rights of the Aborigines to the land and guaranteed that "any lands now actually occupied or enjoyed by [the] Natives' would not be alienated."

After protracted negotiations with the Colonial Office, the Colonization Commissioners agreed to the appointment of a Protector to safeguard the Aborigines' interests. Among his duties, the Protector was required to ensure that any land opened up for public sale had been voluntarily ceded and fairly purchased from the Aborigines. The Commissioners agreed to set aside 20% of the proceeds from all land sales in the colony to be used for the benefit of the Aborigines and also committed the South Australia Company to protecting "the natives in the unmolested exercise of their rights of property .."
Aboriginal Investment Properties and hunting estates entered an era of financial prosperity and excellent medical facilities on the extensive rural profit centres. The fine arts of music and opera flourished leading to the opening in 1849 of the Royal Aboriginal Conservatory for Theatrical and Symphonic Studies. Stud kangaroo and emu bloodstock earned top awards at Adelaide Livestock Society parades.

Hi Nick,

Gosh, I didn't know about all that. I knew that the traditional rights to use the land were recognised in 1836 or earlier (if not actively exercised, after the ration system kicked in). The Protector provided provisions to enable people to go out and use the land as they had always done, fishing gear, boats, guns, etc. But I didn't know about the Royal Aboriginal Conservatory for Theatrical and Symphonic Studies. Live and learn.

By 1900, a network of around seventy ration stations were distributed across South Australia. Able-bodied men were expected to either hunt, fish or gather or work for their living. The elderly, sick and disabled, widows, children, women with young children, were all provided with rations, amounting to a pound of flour, etc., and when it was available, a pound of meat per day. Try it for a few days.

During droughts, able-bodied men also received rations. During the ten-year drought through the 1890s, people would have congregated almost permanently at a distance from ration stations, passing on their culture, instead of scattering across the landscape. Prior to this system, during droughts, old people and young children would have died. With the ration system, they didn't.

Colonialist bastards !

Joe

A noted composer was Badovan whose 7th Symphony for Didge , gidgee sticks and bunyip received favourable reviews on its opening night in 1852 with a male and female choir of 482 singers. Proceeds went to the Spinifex and Orphans Hospital famed for Lung by-pass operations due to tobacco wages of 2 1/2 lbs a day. Arsenicosis was treated by stomach pumps where arsenic was an OH& S problem until the Kangaroo Courts were approved after 1893.