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..."