Do you think democracy can actually work in China?

[angus]

We have had a number of china/democracy threads and it is invariably the tendency of this forum to overrate democracy, or at least to underrate its alternatives.  There are probably different ways to read the question, but I think from the chinese point of view all democracy is liberal democracy.  Certainly during the Cultural Revolution democracy was considered Western by virtue of its history.  In any case I merely made the implicit explicit.  

As for freedom, Janis Joplin called it another word for "nothin' left to lose."  Whether or not they have tasted it, I'm sure that China doesn't want to be India.  

Also, we cannot say for certain that the air quality would be any better in a democracy.  In fact, it could be far worse.  Beijing cleaned up as much as it did and as quick as it did for the olympics precisely because they don't have to put up with democracy.  We cannot know whether the Three Gorges dam would have been built if the millions of people who were displaced from their ancestral homelands by rising waters had any input in the decision, but it probably would not have been built as quickly and as efficiently.

Like I said, I voted yes, because I think it "can work" with democracy, but I am not sure it would work quite as well as it does without it.  I don't think you should underestimate the importance of utility value and economic indicators.  Justice and fairness don't put food on the table, and the Chinese have had a much longer time to think about what is important and what isn't than any other extant society.  Therefore, you also should not underestimate the importance of history.

[ag]

Well there were (at least nominally) representative assemblies in most of Europe (East as well as West; even the Russian Empire had the Duma) a century ago... but most countries fell well short of what we would call 'democracy' today (but not always for the same reasons).

A democratic tradition does not necessarily mean that there is a fully fledged democracy, just that the idea and ideal of democracy is widespread.

Well, a Russian finance minister once said on the floor of the Duma: "Thanks God, we do not have a parliament!" )

[ag]

The idea that China would not work as a democracy simply because they have no "democratic tradition" is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on this forum... guess what neither did most of Western Europe 100 years ago.

Actually that's not true (but would be true of a lot of other places which are now democratic).

To most non-historians/historically interested "100 years ago" is just a way of saying "long time ago", but it still hurts the eyes to read it.

Well, you could argue that even in 1915 the "democracy" in Spain, Austria-Hungary, or even Germany, etc., etc., was, at best, very imperfectly established.

Austria-Hungary was not Western Europe.

I admit that how you define Western and Eastern Europe and whether you consider Central Europe (Mitteleuropa) to be a separate region (I do) influences the answer quite a bit.

The mainstream view in North America is to split Europe in two: West and East, corresponding on which side they were during Cold War.

Yeah, but the claim was made by a Swede and quoted by a Russian, so that is hardly relevant.

Well, as a North European yourself, you do not seem to view your own position as very relevant either

BTW, I am Mexican

Though, when I lived in Spain, I remember people their saying "in Europe" when they meant "north of the Pirinees. I guess, you should have excluded Spain from "Western Europe" as well. Then, again, hard to be further "West".

[politicus]

The idea that China would not work as a democracy simply because they have no "democratic tradition" is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on this forum... guess what neither did most of Western Europe 100 years ago.

Actually that's not true (but would be true of a lot of other places which are now democratic).

To most non-historians/historically interested "100 years ago" is just a way of saying "long time ago", but it still hurts the eyes to read it.

Well, you could argue that even in 1915 the "democracy" in Spain, Austria-Hungary, or even Germany, etc., etc., was, at best, very imperfectly established.

Austria-Hungary was not Western Europe.

I admit that how you define Western and Eastern Europe and whether you consider Central Europe (Mitteleuropa) to be a separate region (I do) influences the answer quite a bit.

The mainstream view in North America is to split Europe in two: West and East, corresponding on which side they were during Cold War.

Yeah, but the claim was made by a Swede and quoted by a Russian, so that is hardly relevant.

Well, as a North European yourself, you do not seem to view your own position as very relevant either

BTW, I am Mexican

Though, when I lived in Spain, I remember people their saying "in Europe" when they meant "north of the Pirinees. I guess, you should have excluded Spain from "Western Europe" as well. Then, again, hard to be further "West".

Many Northern Europeans use Central Europe as a category, so I am not sure what you mean.

The Western/Central/Eastern division of Europe is logical, not some local idiosyncrasy as some Spanish, British and Scandinavians talking about "Europe" as something outside their own region.

Your view of Europe is clearly determined by having grown up in Russia and not by your current status as a Mexican.

Anyway, if you use the cold war division line Austria-Hungary would be an overwhelmingly Eastern European country, despite its capital being in the West (which shows how artificial that division is from a cultural POV).

[Beet]

As for freedom, Janis Joplin called it another word for "nothin' left to lose."  Whether or not they have tasted it, I'm sure that China doesn't want to be India.  

I'm sure India doesn't want to be China, either. In any case, that comparison is rather a fallacy that assumes the only difference between China and India is their form of government, ignoring massive differences in history and culture. A better comparison would be China and Taiwan.

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Yes, and they put many people out of work. The only way to get worse than China's air quality is to breathe China's polluted air and smoke cigarettes on top of that (as 50% of Chinese men do). Yet because the government makes 7% of its revenue off cigarettes, it has been extremely reluctant to crack down on smoking. In a democracy, public health advocates would be able to oppose the tobacco lobby. Nearly half the cigarettes in the world are smoked in China. That's a big negative when considering the "air quality" actually going into people's lungs.

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Certainly autocracy has some benefits when it comes to the construction of infrastructure, but modern China is approaching the limits of what can be achieved with more infrastructure. Returns are diminishing. After a certain point more roads, railroads, airports and dams just stop contributing as much to growth as they did initially. Also let's not forget that the current wave of Chinese economic growth was unleashed not when the government decided to start spending on infrastructure, but when the government decided to liberalize its management of the economy, allowing market forces a greater role. In a way, it was the market forces that financed the infrastructure spending to begin with.

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This is a valid point, but there may be economic advantages to switching to a democratic system of government in the long run that are underestimated as well. The Great Firewall and the heavy censorship of the Internet stifles innovation and makes it harder to do business in China. The government's one child policy (supported by the CPC family planning bureaucracy) will create a country where 1/4 of the population are retirees and that will heavily tax the economic system. And then there is the militarism that comes with an autocratic government. The more other countries see China as a threat, the less likely they will be willing to cooperate with China and share technology with it, the more difficult it will be for China to invest abroad, and the more China will have to spend on defense. If China gets into a war with another country, its economy could be devastated. Over the long run all of these factors will be more important than building infrastructure.