May I propose: China is probably better for many of its citizens compared to the U.S. and is objectively run by more competent people. The western world is built on mountains of anti-communist and anti-Chinese propaganda that makes discerning the truth about the reality of living there hard for the average westerner who hasn’t actually spent time there. At the same time, absolute power corrupts, and any system that concentrates power into centralized structures is at very high risk of that power being co-opted and abused by counter-revolutionary, power-hungry assholes. Regardless of whether that has happened in China (or any other socialist state), the risk is there, and the way to mitigate it is to dismantle the structures that allow it to happen.
Power is not a supernatural force that turns people evil. The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Moreover, the economy in the PRC is socialist, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
May I propose: China is probably better for many of its citizens compared to the U.S. and is objectively run by more competent people. The western world is built on mountains of anti-communist and anti-Chinese propaganda that makes discerning the truth about the reality of living there hard for the average westerner who hasn’t actually spent time there. At the same time, absolute power corrupts, and any system that concentrates power into centralized structures is at very high risk of that power being co-opted and abused by counter-revolutionary, power-hungry assholes. Regardless of whether that has happened in China (or any other socialist state), the risk is there, and the way to mitigate it is to dismantle the structures that allow it to happen.
Power is not a supernatural force that turns people evil. The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Moreover, the economy in the PRC is socialist, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.