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.
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