[Far-Right Sage]

The Kuwaiti ambassador's (to the U.S.) daughter, Ben; Nayirah al-Sabah. Good points all around however.

Harmattan, I feel it's very disingenuous to compare the development models between post-WWII Japan and South Korea on one hand and China on the other when Japan was essentially subsumed and run as a U.S. protectorate within weeks of defeat all throughout the Cold War years to this very day, as was/is South Korea, a satellite in the Western orbit with an interlude of a more independent model rooted in carving out a unique cultural distinction/autonomy and modernization of the largely agrarian countryside outside of hubs like Seoul and parts of Busan under Park Chung-hee. By contrast, China was treated as an enemy power in the same league as the Soviet Union with Tibetan militants and irregulars even trained on U.S. soil in the mountains of Colorado with plans to orchestrate an insurgency against the country, not to mention the earlier years of Maoist rule which knocked the Chinese population through a loop and which the post-war South Korean and Japanese people (fortunately) had no experience with.

I certainly wouldn't defend the Maoist regime on almost any issue, but the point is that after the brief flurry of strategic cooperation between Beijing and Washington D.C. to help undermine and collapse Moscow, China was placed back in the enemy camp as far as Washington strategists were concerned by 1991-1992 at the latest, and it has had to succeed since then not with Western backing and protection but in spite of Western opposition.

It wouldn't take me a very long time to assign many negative attributes to the current Chinese government under the state capitalist authority of the post-Deng CCP, but the point is that it is ultimately no worse than the presently hegemonic alternative. On some issues it is slightly better and on some slightly worse, but luckily the difference and the distinction exists - This is a most important point, because it keeps China outside of and apart from an international system under Western overlordship as a rival if until now relatively docile force of opposition, which benefits smaller nations (specifically Middle Eastern/African countries which are targeted - I won't go into details as everyone has heard enough on this topic) as there's no unifying voice to legitimize crushing them. And as China, Russia, India (even with the most textbook liberal regime of the three) and other powers continue to build up their own respective independent strength and distinguish themselves in more overt and meaningful ways, that gap will only widen until the dreams of world unity under the singular model held by an elite group of men who can be more sensibly likened to vampire bats, that toxic dream will be dashed for good.

[Harmattan]

Mate, golden ages happen after wars - when you win it quickly without having to fight it on your home. You guys have all your industrial capabilities and specialist populations intact while winning resources colonies overseas to supply yourselves.

Europe was greatly harmed after WW2 and there wasn't any new colony (quite the opposite, the independence fire had started). I can agree that you must have enough industrial capacity and brains left to at least support your remaining infrastructure and organization, but the fact there has been losses is precisely what triggers a growth cycle. Destruction triggers growth because it creates a clear economic path to follow and ramp up along.

Quick answers:
* I am not saying that our machines and knowledge allowed you to be competitive with us, I said it explains why it took you 50 years rather than 100. And it's pretty hard to deny.

* A developing country faces two challenges: the international trade to acquire advanced goods and resources, and political stability. China had significant advantages on both of those sides. Only the latter seemed hard, the economical development looks fairly easy.

* A poor country does not have to be competitive with us, it only has to get a few competitive exporting industries in order to import advanced goods and resources. Now the smallest and weakest countries do not have enough of those and are forced into free trade agreements that destroy them. But the appeal of the Chinese market weighed heavily in the negotiations balances and your size made you largely autonomous: you have plenty of resources and USSR had most of the goods you needed.

* The fact is that many Asian countries succeeded in their development while most of African ones failed. Do you think all those countries miraculously got good leaders? I think the Asian cultures favored stability while the fact that African nations were artificial constructions harmed them a lot.

At the root of it, you believe "the West" is the ideal role model which every country in the world should follow, and if they do it well and reasonable enough they will be prosperous.

When the hell did I say that? For the second time, please stop making assumptions about what I think.

* Democracy is not for an illiterate country. First you must educate your citizens.

* Democracy is hard. It took my country one century to finally get a stable democracy, and one more century to completely settle things down (but during the first century most of people were illiterate). For a democracy to work mindsets must be changed so that anyone will be outraged whenever a leader tries to twist the democracy, so that they will refuse to obey or will immediately turn to the medias to report the event, so that electors will refuse to vote for that candidate and be ready to protest. People must acquire defense reflexes against what could threaten democracy.

* Democracy is incomplete. This is something that is constantly evolving and it takes time to find proper answer. The TV, Internet, the global mega-corporations, globalization, etc, all triggered changes, good and bad, and it takes time before proper solutions are found.

* The West is not the fucking anglosphere. The West is not the fucking anglosphere. The West is not the fucking anglosphere. There is no such thing as a Western model, only when you look at it from very far away.

* I am not saying "go for democracy". I simply don 't see how you could avoid it. Because:
** Your oligarchy will become even more oligarchic and aristocratic because oligarchs first and foremost defend *their* interests.
** The more educated your people are, the slower things will be changing (less growth, less improvements to expect), the more protests you will face, the more people will ask for power.

Well, every good liberal (Not in the US sense), points to Sweden / Norway as a last resort. I would again point out, with a tiny educated population (9.6M Sweden, 5M Norway - half of Chongqing City in total), natural resources, and no wars? You can literally run any system and be happy as a clam. In fact, liberals love to cherry pick the small numbers of "successful democracies", but fail to acknowledge that a lot of failed states run honest, unrigged democracies too. You can't pull a "no true scotsman" everytime democracy is critized.

* The USA are not a democracy, period. At best it is an illusion of a democracy. It is an oligarchy, period.

* France and other European countries are what you call democracies and it worked decently before the EU. The EU itself is non-democratic, we voted for an economic alliance and twenty years later we find ourselves with an oligarchic nation embryo.

* I already stated that a large country cannot be democratic, hence why I expect China in the future to be filled with regional protests and autonomous movements. Especially given your linguistic heterogeneity.

* As I said democracy in general is a work in progress, something that started two centuries ago and has greatly evolved since then. I think our democracies leave a lot to be desired before they can be really said to be democratic but when it comes to efficiency, I think the correlation between wealth and democracy is a causal relation. Not because democracy is good for economy (although I think it is for a developed economy), but rather because prosperity triggers democracy.

That's a completely different can of worms. I have discussed that thoroughly in a few other posts regarding Tibet and Uighur, but lets leave it there for now.

Fine for me but I was not thinking to Tibet or Uighur. Only a third of China's surface primarily speak Mandarin and half speak non-Sinitic languages. While the CPC organized settlements by Hans that succeeded at anchoring the Tibet or Uighur within China, the same cannot be applied to the whole nation's scale. Sooner or later those people will want a greater regional power, at the very least.

No, people call for a change of leader when their current one is absolutely intolerable. They call for a change of local policies usually, which is allowed.

Why would they wait for this leader to become "intolerable"? Why would they not just want another leader as soon as they are dissatisfied with the present one?

I am aware that Confucius advises for bearing with any monarch, even the mediocre ones, and never protest. And it could be that Chinese now genuinely cope with any leader. However I do not think it's just westerners who want to change things as soon as they are dissatisfied. Time will tell whether Chinese keep this submissive mindset.

When what you do is considered a destablizing effort, such as conspiring to overthrow the government, to inspire revolts, or to spread unfavourable rumors, then it is a state policy (rightfully) to shut you down by censorship or even actual arrest depending on severity. The execution is a bit ambiguous, and is annoying at times, but it is gradually loosening up as the government becomes more and more confident of themselves. You would be surprised how some loud mouth public figures are still writing articles against China without getting into trouble, so to speak. Again, there is plenty of room for improvements, but I consider it necessiary to protect the stability that is very important for China right now.

Note that "destabilization" here is equivalent to "taking action when words are not heard". But anyway I agree that China once needed a strong power, although I am not sure it is still needed. But our difference rather seem to be about the future and how and when should violence be used?

Uh...Occupy wall street crackdown? Furguson police department? Riot in Greece? Don't pull a "no true scotsman on me"

For the first two, I am pretty sure that the majority did wanted those movements to end and everything was done according to the law. It may also be true for Greece: although most of people were probably sympathetic, in the end most the reality principle prevailed and it was obvious that they had to submit to money lenders' conditions, although there were other technical things to discuss (which sacrifices to do, leaving the eurozone or not, etc). Note however that the Greece government did set up early elections because the people had to re-choose their future in the light of those new circumstances.

I cannot tell you exactly how propaganda made it into your media so successfully and systematically, but it did.

But again all of this only concerns foreign policy and I did not deny the fact that propaganda works and is used for foreign policy. But the original discussion was about propaganda as a support to the government and looking at how fast our governments wear down it is obvious that propaganda is not/cannot be used effectively to such an end.

And also please note that the US medias contain far more propaganda on foreign policy matters than most of the West (and as a proof I never heard about some of the things you mention). The Iraqi MWD myth invented by the CIA was laughed at in most of European countries (excluding the UK), including those who did join the war (for opportunistic reasons).

That's only half of it. For it to be "democratic" it has to be "only when the majority of people agree to it and it doesn't violate the rights of minorities or individuals".

I was expecting an answer like this but I disagree: while the rule of the law is of course mandatory for a democracy, in the end it's still the majority that decides who has what rights (sometimes the two thirds or three fifths). If tomorrow a democracy decides that Jews, Muslims or blondes no longer have rights, this will still be democratic.

Harmattan, I feel it's very disingenuous to compare the development models between post-WWII Japan and South Korea on one hand and China on the other when Japan was essentially subsumed and run as a U.S. protectorate within weeks of defeat all throughout the Cold War years to this very day, as was/is South Korea, a satellite in the Western orbit with an interlude of a more independent model rooted in carving out a unique cultural distinction/autonomy and modernization of the largely agrarian countryside outside of hubs like Seoul and parts of Busan under Park Chung-hee.

The most important economic advantages that the US did bring them were good trade agreements because more direct interventions did not amount to that much in respect of those countries' size. Things would have been easier for China if it had had such agreements and access to the world markets, however between the USSR, its large territory and resources pool, and the weight of its inner market in negotiations with neutral countries, I think China was not a in bad position on such a topic.

[Sampanviking]

Why should the PRC wish to adopt Western Liberal Democratic systems?
You adopt something new when the new thing can be seen to be giving significantly better results than the systems being currently used.
Clearly this is not the case and China is consistently outperforming its peer competitors and strategic rivals.

Ultimately the argument boils down too, its not fair, you are not doing as badly as the rest of us.

It will start to get really interesting over the next few years. Guangdong province has become the first province to break the equivalent $1 Trillion GDP by exchange rate barrier and number of other provinces are not far behind. Soon the GDP of many of China's leading provinces will overtake those of major European Nations.

This will not be achieved by adopting Western Liberal Democracy, their prosperity will not be maintained if they switch to Western Liberal Democracy.
They know this and have no intention of doing anything so irredeemably stupid.

[Harmattan]

Why should the PRC wish to adopt Western Liberal Democratic systems?

As I said, and said, and repeated, this is not so much about what you should do, but rather about what you will do once your growth will slow down and unemployment will arise because you already achieved the significant productivity improvements (the fate of all rich countries that you should discover in a few decades), when the wealth and power concentration will be at its peak and when your educated people will more and more want to be empowered and will be more and more informed and more and more dissatisfied.

Stop thinking that I am trying to tell you what to do, we're just having a discussion here.

It will start to get really interesting over the next few years. Guangdong province has become the first province to break the equivalent $1 Trillion GDP by exchange rate barrier and number of other provinces are not far behind. Soon the GDP of many of China's leading provinces will overtake those of major European Nations.

Yes, because of your large population, but the gap per capita is wide.

As for efficiency my own country (France) has been a democracy since two centuries and during that time we have been the second most powerful country of the world (the first one was also a democracy) and are still economically about on par with China despite our 65M people only, against your 1.6B. We are far richer, enjoy far more freedom and individual power, little corruption and small inequalities. I think democracy served us right.

[Far-Right Sage]

Your mistake is in believing however Harmattan that the evolution of the political system in China will mirror that of France or any other European or Western country, indeed that any nation's would inherently be destined to follow the trajectory of another's, and that the history is already written and decided upon with only small gaps to be filled. I myself truly at times wonder why so many people have this erroneous mentality, in which everything which preceded us was ordained and set in stone and the future closely follows. There are so many variables as to be considered truly infinite, and making a proclamation about another country's future based upon the history of your own is the height of naïveté.

[Harmattan]

Your mistake is in believing however Harmattan that the evolution of the political system in China will mirror that of France or any other European or Western country, indeed that any nation's would inherently be destined to follow the trajectory of another's, and that the history is already written and decided upon with only small gaps to be filled. I myself truly at times wonder why so many people have this erroneous mentality, in which everything which preceded us was ordained and set in stone and the future closely follows. There are so many variables as to be considered truly infinite, and making a proclamation about another country's future based upon the history of your own is the height of naïveté.

I disagree with your interpretation of my words, I see plenty of possible futures. However mankind has some laws such as:
* Without major events, especially destructive ones, capitalism always enter into stagnation after a period of growth.
* Capitalism increases wealth and power concentration during those stagnation periods.
* People whose material needs are satisfied turn to immaterial ones, especially freedom, politics, ideologies or religion.

Those rules are universal. Yet this leaves plenty of room for the possible futures. China could crumble. China could explode. China could turn into a supremacist/beliquous power to feed its people with an ideology. An succession of breakthroughs could yield to a technological singularity. Or the world could strive for resources and fall into a world war. Or China could just turn into a liberal democracy. Those scenarios would all be compatible with the rules I mentioned. However China cannot simply remain as it is if it ever becomes rich, even with its submissive mindset.

So far I only implicitly excluded the "bad" scenarios or those usually deemed implausible for the sake of the discussion.

[Powerup]

Of course, this is called propaganda and it does wonders. It is common in authoritarian regimes, even the very inefficient ones, for the power to enjoy a great support. Sure, the fact that things go well help a lot and there are many people who actually enjoy order and domination over freedom and tend to dislike democracy.

But this would never be enough to maintain a high support level after so long without the propaganda and information control.

I cannot say for others, but the exposure to western media's China bashing just made me love my country ten times more than before lol. Overseas Chinese, especially those with high levels of education, are the most patriot of all.

[Harmattan]

I cannot say for others, but the exposure to western media's China bashing just made me love my country ten times more than before lol. Overseas Chinese, especially those with high levels of education, are the most patriot of all.

It's not just the western medias. Read the African medias, read the South-American medias, read the Asian medias, read the Russian medias, it's everywhere.

The USA were hated, you will be five more times more powerful than them (*), you will pollute five times more than them, you will encompass half of the world GDP and will dictate your trade conditions to everyone, you will need five more time imperialism than the USA to get the five times more resources you will need for your economy (with the additional restriction that the USA sought to have low resource prices in the whole world to stimulate the global economy and simply kept the added value while you will probably keep those resources mostly for yourselves since there will not be enough) and finally nationalism, xenophobia and national ego troubles are very strong in China, while your entertainment and societal model are less attractive as they promote obedience and community while the US entertainment used to promote freedom, individualism and other cool values, and your language(s) is far too tedious to learn. Your weight is far too disproportionate when compared to the other countries: you have five times more people than the third one, fifteen times more than the tenth one, ten times more than the biggest African country, twenty times more than the biggest European country and there are more than 200 countries.

You will be hated, you already are, you will be hated far more than any other country has ever been. Deal with it.


(*) Assuming everything goes well for you.

[kanarisblog01]

I don't care one inch whether or not China wants or should have liberal democracy. I don't find it preferable myself. It is that China is still under and hasn't repudiated that hellish system called communism. Wake me up when they finally renounced it and them we'll talk.

[Rugoz]

If I ever go to China and think this is the place where I want to live I will change my opinion about liberal democracy.

Chance for it to happen? Probably never.

[benpenguin]

If I ever go to China and think this is the place where I want to live I will change my opinion about liberal democracy.

Chance for it to happen? Probably never.

You know what, assuming you are a white person coming from a 1st world country, yes you will never want to live in China. But refer to the thread - I don't think comparing to 1st world anglosphere countries is even a meaningful comparison, because...

Well, I don't want to type the whole thread over, read the damn thread.

...

Sorry for late reply, I was on trip the last 2 weeks, but you have made some good points.
I guess we are only disagreeing on 2 things: 1, You believe that China's development is easy because we are copying the West. 2, China will inevitably be drawn towards liberal democracy.

Point taken, and for the rest we will see.

I don't care one inch whether or not China wants or should have liberal democracy. I don't find it preferable myself. It is that China is still under and hasn't repudiated that hellish system called communism. Wake me up when they finally renounced it and them we'll talk.

Have you been living under a rock in the past 2 decades? You should ease off the Fox news my friend.

[benpenguin]

DELETE

[Rugoz]

Well, I don't want to type the whole thread over, read the damn thread.

Harmattan has already said all that can be said. China is catching up economically. There is no reason per se why one country should be poorer than another one if both have access to the same knowledge, so its actually a natural thing to happen (its more interesting to understand why it doesn't happen in many cases). At some point though China will be a frontier country as well and then its a lot harder to innovate and grow. Finally the "West" is not in decline and liberal democracy is not in decline. I have no idea why people come up with such nonsense.

Regarding the title of your thread. I don't know the political system in China very well. I guess it will become more inclusive and more bottom-up and less top-down over time though. Maybe you can explain to us how it works?

[benpenguin]

There is no reason per se why one country should be poorer than another one if both have access to the same knowledge, so its actually a natural thing to happen (its more interesting to understand why it doesn't happen in many cases).

I have agreed to disagree with Harmattan here, and has explained in great detail in this thread. Long story short:
1. Technologically, we learn from the west and yes that has been a great help to speed things up. But that is not even remotely the only thing we need to compete with, otherwise every single country on earth would already have done that.
2. Politically, your ideologies are counter-productive to our situation. Most countries, with very few exceptions, that follows liberal democracy outside the Anglosphere will never be able to compete - it's just natural, you don't get to win if you follow the rules of the top dog. To illustrate: If you allow free elections, your opponents gets bankrolled by outside forces. If you open up free media, you get your own public opinion assaulted by globalist media that can easily outwit, outspend and drown your own. You allow NGOs, they will fund every single opposition in your country. You follow patent protections, it will take 100 years or more to even remotely catch up with their tech level, and before that can happen your economies will already be dominated by foreign companies.
If you are a friend of the west, that might be survivable. If not, when you open up you invite a dagger to your spine. And I think we both can agree that China is surrounded by very powerful enemies.
3. On geopolitics, the Western bloc have formed powerful political, military and trade unions that works to contain us, and on top of that the dollar is still dominant of global trade. If not of the US' own decline, we would still be unable to shake that off and remain a fringe player until god knows when.
4. On starting situation, China has gone through 200 years of non-stop wars and invasion (Of which most of the time we are losing badly) that destroyed all our infrastructure (not much to begin with) and left us with a massive, illiterate and starving population. In comparison, the US inherited the British empire, then won WWII and the cold war without firing a single bullet on the home front.
On our end, the old communists are also crazy enough to wreck China even further by the cultural revolution. Luckily, our current generation leaders are smart enough to grow out of that. They managed to build China from a backwater shit hole to a world superpower in what, 20 years - and you guys call that easy?

Regarding the title of your thread. I don't know the political system in China very well. I guess it will become more inclusive and more bottom-up and less top-down over time though. Maybe you can explain to us how it works?

You can call it authoritarian state capitalism or whatever you like, but truth is we are also seeking to perfect it. Many believe that liberal democracy is the template we should follow, which I disagree with reasons described in this thread.

Currently our system is top down instead of bottom up for a few reasons:
1. We are under siege by forces inside and outside of China. Some of it is legitimate and driven by disgruntled people, but a lot of is also driven by our enemies. Internal problems we can perhaps fix but cannot solve overnight, external hostilities we can do nothing about. In the end it doesn't matter - you have to recognize, threat is threat. You need a centralized and strong central government to deal with all that. Also note that current satisfaction rating to the government is VERY high, even when compared to the West in general. (Harmattan attributes all of that to propaganda. I will leave you to decide.)
2. China is a massive country. A country as big as us have gazillions of social and economical problems, many of which can utterly destroy us if allowed to fester. Most of these problems are state-wide, and state-wide problems again requires centralized, across the board policies that comes from the top. To illustrate, lets take corruption for an example. When you run anti-corruption policies in one province, and allow the other one to rabidly pursue GDP economic goals, the dirty money will escape. Same with things like pollution, population control and terrorism. As a side effect, these policies however come with the expense of some - it is unfortunate but a very necessary sacrifice.
3. Voices from the bottom readily reaches the top via very informal channels like online discussions and academic researches. These channels leave much to desire, but at the moment they do work to a certain extent. To be honest, I actually find the government pretty responsive to these discussions - partly because of time saved from endless bickering of the politically correct, democratic process.

All of the above I have already covered and defended multiple times in the thread, so I encourage you to read through from the beginning, if you are interested in the topic. I hope this summary helps.

[Harmattan]

Most countries, with very few exceptions, that follows liberal democracy outside the Anglosphere will never be able to compete - it's just natural, you don't get to win if you follow the rules of the top dog.

But liberal democracy is not "the rules of the Anglosphere". Those ideas bloomed outside of the Anglosphere, although the USA were one of the first to put them in practice. The Anglosphere is only one third of the West and it raised late: one century ago it was almost exclusively represented by Britain, and that was one tenth of Europe, one fifth of the Western Europe.

If you allow free elections, your opponents gets bankrolled by outside forces.

Not if you instigate a public funding for political parties, as many countries do. In my country the use of money and medias during political campaigns is harshly controlled to ensure a fair audience sharing. It's not just against foreign forces, it's first and foremost to prevent oligarchy.

If you open up free media, you get your own public opinion assaulted by globalist media that can easily outwit, outspend and drown your own.

Not if you instigate restrictions against the concentration of medias in a few hands and against the foreign capital in medias. Many countries have such laws in the West. Again it's also needed to prevent oligarchy.

You allow NGOs, they will fund every single opposition in your country.

Very few will do. Most NGO and the biggest of them stay away of such behaviors because they undermine their action. Now if a few NGO are actually covert operations from the CIA, you can issue adequate laws and debunk them through your own intelligence services.

1. We are under siege by forces inside and outside of China. Some of it is legitimate and driven by disgruntled people, but a lot of is also driven by our enemies.

I am certain that there have been destabilization attempts but I am also certain that they are greatly inflated by the Chinese government in order to legitimate itself. There is nothing like a foreign enemy to strengthen the national cohesion, and nothing like an inner enemy to justify every form of political control, as demonstrated by the anti-terrorism laws in the West.

On our end, the old communists are also crazy enough to wreck China even further by the cultural revolution. Luckily, our current generation leaders are smart enough to grow out of that. They managed to build China from a backwater shit hole to a world superpower in what, 20 years - and you guys call that easy?

Again I spoke about economy only. As for geopolitics and stability, I already said that those are different stories.

3. On geopolitics, the Western bloc have formed powerful political, military and trade unions that works to contain us

The EU is the most open market in the world despite the many complaints from many EU citizens about this and despite the fact that this openness is unlikely to be in our best interest given the many European industries that have been crushed by the Chinese labor cost. You cannot seriously pretend that we're containing you while we almost completely dropped protectionism against every country and especially against China because your size allows you to impose favorable conditions (perhaps more favorable than the ones granted to the USA). The only real protectionism that remains is for some agricultural goods and the promotion of domestic cultural productions (and it is mostly against the USA).

I understand that it may be hard for non-EU countries to export to EU because of our stockpiles of absurd norms (mostly about safety and ecology) but those norms are not decided as a protectionist measures and even less against China. We're simply really and stupidly afraid of all chemicals.

As for a military containment, the military embargo remains because we're afraid that you could use them against us and regarding political containment we are indeed protecting our privileges at the UN council because no one wants to share and split its power with another country. But none of that is related to democracy in China.

You follow patent protections, it will take 100 years or more to even remotely catch up with their tech level, and before that can happen your economies will already be dominated by foreign companies.

Agreed. Not just patents actually (*), the whole intellectual property.

(*) Note that, again, the USA have their specificities: in most Western countries only real innovations used to be patentable while in the US you can get a legal monopoly over every stupid idea. Things have started to drift because of the EU, a very undemocratic entity that has been manipulated by those big corporations that are in love with legal monopolies.

Finally the "West" is not in decline and liberal democracy is not in decline. I have no idea why people come up with such nonsense.

a) Declining demography for decades.
b) Inflating debts for decades.
c) Fast relative loss of power because of the rise of new powers.
d) Transformation into police states since 2001 and the shrinking of democracy in Europe as our nations merge into this giant English-speaking and non-democratic excrement called EU.

[Crantag]

Harmattan has already said all that can be said. China is catching up economically. There is no reason per se why one country should be poorer than another one if both have access to the same knowledge, so its actually a natural thing to happen (its more interesting to understand why it doesn't happen in many cases).

It is interesting to study and seek to understand why it is that some countries don't become rich. That doesn't mean that it is not interesting to study the development process, also. The sheer amount of analytical focus on China is sufficient to discredit your comment here.

At some point though China will be a frontier country as well and then its a lot harder to innovate and grow. Finally the "West" is not in decline and liberal democracy is not in decline. I have no idea why people come up with such nonsense.

I don't like the catchall phrase 'the West' much either, but there is considerable cause for people's notion that many of the countries of Western continental Europe, as well as the Anglo-American countries, (and we'd might as well not forget Japan either), are in relative decline. Moreover, the US is clearly in relative decline as a global superpower (or as some prefer empire). This has repercussions in the economic and business sphere as well. The US has also not recovered from the collapse of 2008 (corporate profits are not a sufficient gauge of economic well being of a country). In my view, it likely never will 'recover'. It can thrive again, but only on the back of sufficient adjustments to the political-economic state of affairs. Such adjustments look to be a long ways off.

Regarding the title of your thread. I don't know the political system in China very well. I guess it will become more inclusive and more bottom-up and less top-down over time though. Maybe you can explain to us how it works?

I don't mean to address this point. But one question I have about China, is given the size of the country, I'm often curious to what extent different regions and localities are soundly represented in Beijing? And whether there is potential for the increase of this?

The problem with a word like 'democracy' is that it has become political speak, and the very word is thoroughly and irretrievably corrupted as a result.

But, there are certainly aspects of so-called 'democratic traditions', which could likely benefit China, if applied tactfully.

Adopting an American model, on the other hand, is a sheer recipe for disaster and nothing else.

[benpenguin]

But liberal democracy is not "the rules of the Anglosphere". Those ideas bloomed outside of the Anglosphere, although the USA were one of the first to put them in practice. The Anglosphere is only one third of the West and it raised late: one century ago it was almost exclusively represented by Britain, and that was one tenth of Europe, one fifth of the Western Europe.

Liberal democracy bloomed everywhere in the world, but only "The west" (US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia etc, mostly the NATO bloc) is economically successful. One century ago "The west" can be represented by Britain, and later on US took over. They grew even more powerful from winning WWII and the cold war, and are the champions of liberal democratic values. I use "Anglosphere/The west" as a blanket term, who propagates these values to "universal" status - but their underlying strength isn't of democracy, but of media, economic, diplomatic and military domination.
As I have stated countries outside the western bloc rarely succeeds following liberal democracy, and truth be told I find that economic success and political power rarely correlates with what political system a nation uses.
There are of cause different flavors of the democratic system, but still I don't find it inaccurate to use the blanket term "liberal democracy".

Not if you instigate a public funding for political parties, as many countries do. In my country the use of money and medias during political campaigns is harshly controlled to ensure a fair audience sharing. It's not just against foreign forces, it's first and foremost to prevent oligarchy.

Not if you instigate restrictions against the concentration of medias in a few hands and against the foreign capital in medias. Many countries have such laws in the West. Again it's also needed to prevent oligarchy.

That is completely unrealistic. Take Hong Kong for example, all Chinese government news loses against foreign news and opposition news. People will pick the most extremist news over state news anytime of the day. People will take CNN and BBC news as gospel truth, even though they have been exposed to be lying. You think we don't have laws trying to prevent that?
Take Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong for instance. This guy is almost openly a CIA agent with evidence all over him, but since Hong Kong is following a liberal democratic model, freedom of speech is protected and he gets to fund all opposition parties and media, and inciting riots every other month. Your "European prevention laws" worked in Europe because you have nothing substantial to defend against in the first place. Nobody is seeking the collapse of your government, and the global media is friendly. In the situation of a besieged country like China, the truth can't be further from that. Money trails can be easily hidden by trained hands, and even if exposed, one can easily hide behind "freedom of speech". The authorities won't be able to make arrests or stop these people in fear of public opinion. And when you take one puppet down, a new one will come in his place very soon.

Very few will do. Most NGO and the biggest of them stay away of such behaviors because they undermine their action. Now if a few NGO are actually covert operations from the CIA, you can issue adequate laws and debunk them through your own intelligence services.

Same with the above. NGOs can simply receive funds legitimately from NED (with overseas accounts if needed), get strategic advice from CIA advisors, get global media coverage, earn lucrative business deals with overseas branch - the possibilities are limitless. There are a million ways to bypass the law, and that is exactly what agents are trained for.

I am certain that there have been destabilization attempts but I am also certain that they are greatly inflated by the Chinese government in order to legitimate itself. There is nothing like a foreign enemy to strengthen the national cohesion, and nothing like an inner enemy to justify every form of political control, as demonstrated by the anti-terrorism laws in the West.

On the contrary, that is simply my own observation from reading western news and observing the situation in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, and most importantly other destabilized countries like Venezuela, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe, and the failed attempt to bring it to China and Russia.

Remember that I never actually read Chinese news sources until 2 years ago.

That is not to say China is always on the "correct" side of these events - usually they aren't. But the more digging I did, the more I find that nobody is clean. But lets neglect ethics for now - for the sole purpose of keeping China stable, you have to control these things.

Again I spoke about economy only.

I don't think you can realistically single it out like this.

The EU is the most open market in the world despite the many complaints from many EU citizens about this and despite the fact that this openness is unlikely to be in our best interest given the many European industries that have been crushed by the Chinese labor cost.

The EU is exactly what I mean by the decline of US power. It is formed to counter-balance the domination of US. If it is really up to the US like it was in the 90s or before, China can't really trade 10 meters from home. See all the ex-soviet countries and enemy states that were crushed economically by embargoes, and you will understand how it could have been.
But for now we are building trade and military alliances of our own as well, so yes, we are out of the containment. But if it were 50 years ago, Europe wouldn't even be interested to bat an eye for us.
Here it is probably unsuitable to use the blanket term "Anglosphere", for it is mostly the US' doing. In the end, it doesn't matter - threat is threat. We were contained really hard until we broke out of it.

As for a military containment, the military embargo remains because we're afraid that you could use them against us and regarding political containment we are indeed protecting our privileges at the UN council because no one wants to share and split its power with another country. But none of that is related to democracy in China.

Military containment relates to my point: We need a strong and powerful centralized power to deal with surrounding threats. Just a few years ago in the race riots against Indo Chinese, we can't do nothing because we don't have a blue water fleet, and if we try to sail to Indonesia we will get sunk, and that would be rather embarrassing. Now if somebody tries to mess with us we pay them a visit with destroyers, submarines, and very soon carriers, to their doorstep.
UN, on the other hand, is another power circle that we are locked out of until the recent decades. That relates more to my point of China's difficulties in development.

[benpenguin]

I don't mean to address this point. But one question I have about China, is given the size of the country, I'm often curious to what extent different regions and localities are soundly represented in Beijing? And whether there is potential for the increase of this?

Refer to my post after Rugoz's comment, Beijing's current focus is emphasizing sweeping policies across China, sacrificing regional needs at times. A more downward and regional focus won't be possible unless the majority of big social issues are dealt with, or until we really enter 1st world status.

The problem with a word like 'democracy' is that it has become political speak, and the very word is thoroughly and irretrievably corrupted as a result.
But, there are certainly aspects of so-called 'democratic traditions', which could likely benefit China, if applied tactfully.

Agreed. Even the Chinese government is not throwing all "Western models" into the bin. Your independent legal system, your anti-corruption policies, and the environmental protection laws are good, so on and so forth. We actually learn a lot of lessons from the West and from the Soviets, and we optimize our political doctrines every new generation of leaders.
I am simply rejecting the notion of liberal democracy as gospel truth or an end goal of Chinese politics, that's all.

[Harmattan]

That is completely unrealistic. Take Hong Kong for example, all Chinese government news loses against foreign news and opposition news. People will pick the most extremist news over state news anytime of the day. People will take CNN and BBC news as gospel truth, even though they have been exposed to be lying. You think we don't have laws trying to prevent that?

Then why is it that in France public medias are very popular and are often considered to be the most trustable? Because they are.
Maybe people in Hong-Kong simply trust official medias even less than foreign medias because those official medias are even less trustable than foreign medias.

Your "European prevention laws" worked in Europe because you have nothing substantial to defend against in the first place. Nobody is seeking the collapse of your government, and the global media is friendly.

Between the time those laws were instigated and now France experienced three invasions and suffered manipulations from both the USA and the USSR during their cold war. Nothing substantial?
Those laws proved to work in harsher situations than the one you are currently experiencing.

NGOs can simply receive funds legitimately from NED (with overseas accounts if needed), get strategic advice from CIA advisors, get global media coverage, earn lucrative business deals with overseas branch - the possibilities are limitless. There are a million ways to bypass the law, and that is exactly what agents are trained for.

So what? Financially speaking you can now fight on equal terms with the CIA and this is your home ground, this should be easy for you to defeat such attempts or counter them with equal attacks. Even if the CIA was focused on China (and they are not, they are focused on the EU first, and on Muslim countries next), this should still be completely manageable for you at this point. And it will be even truer in a few decades.

On the contrary, that is simply my own observation from reading western news and observing the situation in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, and most importantly other destabilized countries like Venezuela, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe, and the failed attempt to bring it to China and Russia.

Remember that I never actually read Chinese news sources until 2 years ago.

So it seems like it is a matter of a difference of interpretation: you believe that the media behaviors you observe have been mostly driven by conspiracies, I think that they have been mostly driven by a sum of individual behaviors, views, prejudices and interests.

I don't think you can realistically single it out like this.

"Politically it can be difficult to avoid troubles because of the existing problems, but economically it is a piece of cake."
This is what I wrote on the previous page.

The problem with a word like 'democracy' is that it has become political speak, and the very word is thoroughly and irretrievably corrupted as a result.

But, there are certainly aspects of so-called 'democratic traditions', which could likely benefit China, if applied tactfully.

Adopting an American model, on the other hand, is a sheer recipe for disaster and nothing else.

I agree with all of those three points.

[benpenguin]

Then why is it that in France public medias are very popular and are often considered to be the most trustable? Because they are.
Maybe people in Hong-Kong simply trust official medias even less than foreign medias because those official medias are even less trustable than foreign medias.

You are right. The official medias are not trustworthy. Even I ignore them most of the time. But then, opposition media are also lying quite a lot, and they work very hard to destabilize every opportunity they have. Apple daily for example, uses its front page to call for demonstrations every other month.
Again, I am not arguing from an ethical point of view. As I said, China is not quite the saint most of the time (I am actually a partial supporter of the Umbrella protests myself). But the events unfolding in Hong Kong just demonstrates how vulnerable a society can be when free speeches are allowed. I don't know much about France, so I cannot comment. But I strongly suspect how effective your laws can be, defending against US and Soviets at the same time. I'd place my bets that the Americans won on that covert war, instead of being blocked out.
Also, the global media mouthpieces didn't dominate everything like it did now. Many people I know, inside and outside of China, will reference CNN and BBC like it is already the final truth. So when these outlets are hostile, it isn't manageable at all from the statesman's point of view.

So what? Financially speaking you can now fight on equal terms with the CIA and this is your home ground, this should be easy for you to defeat such attempts or counter them with equal attacks. Even if the CIA was focused on China (and they are not, they are focused on the EU first, and on Muslim countries next), this should still be completely manageable for you at this point. And it will be even truer in a few decades.

Yes it is manageable in the sense where they create a mess here and there, and you need to clean up after them, and pray that none of it gets out of control. Why allow these rodents around in the first place?

So it seems like it is a matter of a difference of interpretation: you believe that the media behaviors you observe have been mostly driven by conspiracies, I think that they have been mostly driven by a sum of individual behaviors, views, prejudices and interests.

Now that would depend on what you interpret as "conspiracy". The color revolutions, Venezula oppositions, and millions of covert operations are pushed by CIA, that much is clear. They are involved in almost every coup and social unrest in the world, and their own documents presents that much.
China is an enemy. CIA have NED, they also have a cooperating global media and lots of local assets at their disposal. They have used these assets time and again to many opposing states, and they aren't even afraid to acknowledge it. It is just a logical conclusion that they will do everything they can to undermine China. In fact, if they aren't trying really hard to destabilize China, they aren't doing their job at all. That is just simple deduction.
You believe the global hostile media is not driven politically, but simple personal references of individuals. But the consistent lying, misrepresentation and even falsification of facts (instead of simply hostile opinion) shows otherwise.
In the case of China, for example:
1. The Fal un Gong cult is mostly a bunch of uneducated peasants, but soon after they are expelled, they started a unified global campaign against China - utilizing newspapers, radios, community events and the likes to focus on China, all done professionally like the CIA destabilization textbook. They own a bunch of websites, all of it based in the US. One of them, "Boxun", is the heaviest proponent when they attempted to launch "Jasmine revolution" in China. Epoch times, their newspaper, has a well written English version, but the Chinese version are written like rants from a bunch of lunatic goons. They maintain consistent amount of media presence for a whole decade despite having displayed no meaningful income at all. Their leader owns a large mansion in US.
2. Jimmy Lai who runs Apple Daily, paid millions of dollars to opposition parties yearly. Jimmy Lai himself regularly meet with US officials, especially republican ones. His top aide, Mark Simon has a CIA background for more than a decade before he joins up with Jimmy.
3. The student protests in 1984 has been video taped by Spanish journalists, who showed that there is a peaceful dispersal of students. Wikileaks leaked US cables saying that US government officials claimed that they know a massacre didn't happen. While these might not be concrete evidence, but they get no meaningful media coverage either. Also, all student leaders got asylum in US.
4. The Uighur racial riots had lots of Hans killed, but the Western media didn't report any of that. Instead, they claimed that the Chinese government is massacring citizens, and showed pictures of bloody people, police, ambulances and carnage. ALL, I mean every last one, of these images are afterwards proven to be taken from other news from other countries, falsely titled or cropped in half to change the context. CNN refuses to apologize, and time and again, they have been caught doing the same in many other incidents.

I can go on for days, and if you need to keep on dreaming that there isn't a strong and hostile campaign against China, you go ahead. If I decide to include all of these shit done to other US enemy states as well, the whole Pofo isn't big enough.