China is a one party state. The CCP cannot be voted out, challenged or replaced. The legislature has never once rejected a Party decision. Xi removed his own term limits in 2018. Media is state controlled, dissent gets you imprisoned and there is no independent judiciary.
Democracy means people can remove their government. In China that is simply not possible, it is written out of the system by design.
Two examples of actual democracies: Japan and South Korea. Both have multiple parties, a free press, independent courts and governments that have actually been voted out.
Sounds like you’re narrowing democracy down to liberal, capitalist “democracy.” Democracy means rule by the majority, neither of which is true in Japan and the Republic of Korea who are both dominated by capitalists. Socialist democracy is focused on collaboration and cooperation, not competition, whereas liberal democracy focuses on competition and division. Defining democracy as the presence of capitalist press is also another bit that doesn’t make sense.
Wrong immediately. China has nine legally recognised parties. The CPC is the largest, leading party because it is the party that actually led the revolution, built the state, and retains mass legitimacy. Pretending the other eight parties do not exist because they are not liberal opposition parties is cope and also idiotic.
The CCP cannot be voted out, challenged or replaced.
The Party line is challenged, tested, corrected, and revised constantly through congresses, consultation, local implementation, mass feedback, inspections, anti-corruption campaigns, policy pilots, and material results. You are confusing “not replaced by a capitalist opposition party” with “not accountable.” Those are not the same thing.
The legislature has never once rejected a Party decision.
Because by the time something reaches the final legislative stage, the struggle has usually already happened through drafting, consultation, amendment, expert input, local trials, and internal debate. You are judging the system only at the final vote and pretending the whole prior process does not exist. That is not serious. Especially when said prior process is years of testing revisions feedback and criticism.
Xi removed his own term limits in 2018.
Term limits are not inherently democratic. If the people support a leadership line and it is producing results, forcing it out because an arbitrary calendar says so is anti-democratic. Democracy means rule by the people, not worship of procedural gimmicks.
Media is state controlled, dissent gets you imprisoned and there is no independent judiciary.
Public media is preferable to billionaire media, advertiser media, landlord media, arms-industry media, and intelligence-cutout media. Western “free press” mostly means privately owned ruling-class consensus.
And yes, if you organise to overthrow the socialist state, promote separatism, or act as a tool of hostile powers, you will face consequences. Every serious state defends itself. Ordinary criticism of officials, corruption, pollution, housing, services, labour issues, and bureaucracy is widespread. You are pretending “China does not allow colour revolution politics” means “nobody can criticise anything.”
“Independent judiciary” means independent from whom? Courts in liberal states are not above class society. They defend property, capital, empire, and the constitutional order they belong to. China’s courts operate within China’s socialist constitutional order. That is not a scandal. That is state power being honest about itself.
Democracy means people can remove their government. In China that is simply not possible, it is written out of the system by design.
No, democracy means rule by the people. Reducing democracy to swapping elite factions every few years is liberal nonsense.
The real questions are: are people represented, are officials accountable, does mass feedback shape policy, do living standards improve, does the state act when necessary, and does the government serve the majority?
On that basis China has a stronger democratic claim than any liberal states. Direct elections exist at township and county levels. Higher deputies are elected upward through the people’s congress system. Grassroots legislative liaison stations, public consultation, local pilots, petitions, online criticism, and mass campaigns feed into policy. Democracy is treated as a continuous process, not a five-minute ritual every four years.
Two examples of actual democracies: Japan and South Korea.
I actually burst out laughing on the subway and got some stares. Your examples of “actual democracy” are a U.S. client state rapidly remilitarising under American strategy and another U.S. client state famous for chaebol domination, anti-communist repression, cult scandals, and politics bent around Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and SK.
If being allowed to choose which faction manages capitalism under U.S. military and financial hegemony is the summit of democracy in your mind I truly feel sorry for you.
Now shoot, cowboy.
If you want to be smug, try being correct first.
China is not a liberal multiparty capitalist state. Correct. It is a socialist people’s democratic system led by the CPC, with multiple recognised parties, direct local elections, consultation mechanisms, mass participation, cadre accountability, and a proven record of improving people’s lives.
Direct elections reach the township and county levels, where voters choose deputies to local people’s congresses. Those grassroots deputies form the base of the entire people’s congress system, and higher-level deputies are elected upward from below rather than parachuted in as media celebrities or donor-backed party hacks. Cadres do not begin as detached professional politicians selling themselves on television; they are expected to prove themselves through work at lower levels, in villages, counties, workplaces, departments, and local administrations before advancing. That ties political authority to practical service, local knowledge, and demonstrated ability, not just money, charisma, or elite schooling. Minority representation is also guaranteed: all 55 ethnic minorities are represented in the NPC, which matters directly to people like myself because representation is not left to the mercy of majority demographics or party marketing. Add to that grassroots legislative liaison stations, community consultation, local policy pilots, petitions, mass criticism, and the CPC’s presence across villages, factories, universities, scientific institutions, and public administration, and what you have is not “no democracy.” It is a different and I like many others would say better democratic form: continuous, organised, consultative, developmental, and rooted in material outcomes rather than liberal spectacle.
Also don’t think I didn’t notice your yellow peril nonsense of trying to equate China and Myanmar earlier.
The eight other parties all legally commit to CPC leadership in their founding documents. They cannot oppose it, campaign against it or replace it. Calling that multiparty democracy is like calling a company with one shareholder a cooperative because it has nine employees.
On Japan and South Korea: yes, US client states with real problems. But both have had their ruling parties voted out and replaced by the opposition. That has never happened in China and cannot happen. That remains the point.
The rest is redefining democracy until it means whatever produces the answer you want. Consultative processes, local pilots, cadre accountability, all of that can exist in an authoritarian system. And it does. The question is still the same one: can the people remove the government? A long and elaborate no is still a no.
You’re defining democracy by people being unhappy with a ruling party and voting it out, which doesn’t make sense. People support the CPC in China and don’t want to vote it out, but they still have control over how China develops and acts. You’re redefining democracy into a narrow, capitalist viewpoint that focuses purely on multi-party dynamics while obfuscating the class character of the state.
The eight other parties all legally commit to CPC leadership in their founding documents. They cannot oppose it, campaign against it or replace it.
Yes, because China’s party system is not built around anti-system opposition. I already said that. You are repeating my point as if it refutes me.
China has multiple legally recognised parties under CPC leadership. That is not the same thing as a Western liberal multiparty system. However the question that actually matters is whether democracy requires parties to be organised around replacing the constitutional order. It does not.
You redefine democracy as “the ability of rival elite parties to compete for control of the state.” I am defining democracy as rule by the people (it’s actual meaning). That means representation, participation, accountability, mass consultation, material improvement, and the state acting in the interests of the majority. If anyone is redefining democracy here, it is you reducing it from popular rule to party rotation.
Calling that multiparty democracy is like calling a company with one shareholder a cooperative because it has nine employees.
No, it is recognising that different political systems organise participation differently. China’s democratic parties are not “employees.” They participate in consultation, supervision, policy discussion, united front work, and state governance. They do not exist to overthrow CPC leadership because the system is not liberal parliamentarism. Again, that is not a gotcha. That is the structure.
You are basically saying: “China is not a liberal capitalist party-state.” Correct. It is not trying to be.
On Japan and South Korea: yes, US client states with real problems. But both have had their ruling parties voted out and replaced by the opposition.
And the ruling class remained.
In Japan, parties change and the U.S. military alliance remains. Rearmament remains. Capital remains. The bureaucracy remains. The imperial security architecture remains. The monarchy remains. The same class order remains.
In South Korea, parties change and the chaebols remain. Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK, U.S. military power, anti-communist state structures, and the basic dictatorship of capital remain. Presidents come and go. The actual ruling interests stay intact.
That is exactly the point. You are mistaking alternation of political managers for rule by the people. Liberal democracy lets people change the personnel of government while leaving the underlying class power untouched. China does not treat that as the highest form of democracy, because it is not.
That has never happened in China and cannot happen. That remains the point.
No, your point is that China does not allow a hostile opposition party to take state power and dismantle socialism. Correct. Why would it?
A socialist state is not obliged to create a legal mechanism for capitalist restoration, separatism, comprador rule, or colour revolution and then call that “democracy.” No state is neutral. Liberal states defend capitalist property and imperial alignment. Socialist states defend socialist leadership and national development. The question is not whether a state has class content. The question is which class interests it serves.
The rest is redefining democracy until it means whatever produces the answer you want.
No, democracy literally means rule by the people. It does not mean “the state must have adversarial parties funded by capital competing every four years.”
You keep turning democracy into a checklist of liberal institutions: opposition parties, private media, courts insulated from popular power, and elite alternation. That is not democracy as such. That is the political form of bourgeois rule.
Consultative processes, local pilots, cadre accountability, all of that can exist in an authoritarian system. And it does.
This is just handwaving. You are refusing to engage with the actual mechanisms because they do not fit your script.
Direct elections at township and county levels are not nothing. Deputies being elected upward through the people’s congress system is not nothing. Grassroots legislative liaison stations are not nothing. Guaranteed representation for all 55 ethnic minorities is not nothing. Cadres having to build experience through villages, counties, departments, workplaces, and local administration before advancing is not nothing. Mass consultation, local experimentation, petitioning, public criticism of local governance failures, anti-corruption discipline, and policy adjustment are not nothing.
You do not get to dismiss all of that as “authoritarian” simply because it is not liberal party competition.
The question is still the same one: can the people remove the government? A long and elaborate no is still a no.
The people can remove officials, discipline cadres, vote at local levels, participate in consultations, shape legislation, pressure local governments, use petition channels, punish corruption through inspection systems, and force policy correction through mass feedback. What they cannot do is vote to hand the state to a capitalist opposition party hostile to the socialist order.
Your entire argument depends on treating “remove the ruling party” as the only meaningful form of popular power. But if party rotation leaves capital, landlords, monopolies, foreign military power, and imperial alignment untouched, then what has actually been removed? The face changes. The class rule remains.
China’s system should be judged by whether the people are represented, whether minorities like myself are institutionally guaranteed a voice rather than left to demographic chance, whether cadres are rooted in grassroots work instead of bought by donors and media machines, whether policy responds to mass needs, and whether the state can subordinate capital to development. On those measures, China is unambiguously one of the few real democracies on earth. Your examples of Japan and South Korea have party alternation, yes. They also have entrenched capitalist class rule, U.S. military domination, monopoly power, and political systems that cannot fundamentally challenge any of it.
Have you tried educating yourself on subjects before speaking on them?
The class critique of western democracy is legitimate and I don’t dismiss it. Structural change attempted within liberal democratic systems consistently runs into capital, media and institutional resistance before it gets anywhere. That is a real problem worth taking seriously.
But that does not make China a democracy. It makes western liberal democracy compromised. Those are two different problems.
On the local mechanisms, you listed them again without addressing the point. Consultation, local elections and cadre accountability are compatible with authoritarian systems. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have versions of all of them. Responsiveness is not the same as accountability.
The documented treatment of Uyghurs and the 709 crackdown are hard to square with a system that claims genuine popular accountability.
We probably won’t agree on this one and that’s fine.
The class critique of western democracy is legitimate and I don’t dismiss it. Structural change attempted within liberal democratic systems consistently runs into capital, media and institutional resistance before it gets anywhere. That is a real problem worth taking seriously.
So you agree your shining examples of democracy are in fact not democracy but rather the dictatorship of capital?
That is a real problem worth taking seriously. But that does not make China a democracy. It makes western liberal democracy compromised. Those are two different problems.
Perhaps. But if you use Japan and South Korea as the standard China must emulate to be considered “real democracy,” then the fact that they are not rule by the people (democracy ) but in fact systems dominated by capital, the US, media monopolies, corporate boardrooms, and in South Korea’s case chaebol and cult influence (dictatorship of capital), it is extremely relevant.
You cannot hold up liberal client states as the gold standard, admit they are structurally blocked by capital, and then act like party rotation is still the decisive test of democracy.
China’s model integrates the people throughout the process: local elections, mass consultation, cadre evaluation, policy pilots, petitions, grassroots legislative liaison stations, anti-corruption discipline, and material performance. You are free to dislike that model, but it is not refuted by saying “but can a capitalist opposition party take power?” No, nor should it.
On the local mechanisms, you listed them again without addressing the point. Consultation, local elections and cadre accountability are compatible with authoritarian systems. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have versions of all of them. Responsiveness is not the same as accountability.
This comparison is ridiculous. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are hereditary monarchies. The top of the state is literally dynastic rule. Political authority flows from royal families.
China’s local mechanisms are not decorative suggestion boxes attached to a monarchy. They are integrated into a system where direct elections exist at township and county levels, deputies are required to start from the bottom and move upward through the people’s congress structure, cadres are expected to prove themselves through practical work at lower levels, and policy is shaped through consultation, pilots, inspection, correction, and implementation. That is not remotely equivalent to Gulf monarchies giving controlled municipal channels while royal houses rule by decree.
The documented treatment of Uyghurs
Which treatment, exactly?
Given that you are using it to dismiss China as a democracy altogether, I suspect you mean the Zenz-style atrocity narrative rather than the actual reality.
Were there real abuses? Yes. Racial profiling, dragnet policing, excessive securitisation, and heavy-handed counter-extremism are all serious and should be criticised. But if those disqualify a country from democracy, then I have bad news for the entire Euro-American bloc. The U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Koreae, etc.
The Western approach to terrorism was mass surveillance, drone murder, torture sites, Guantanamo, invasions, occupations, sanctions, and millions dead and millions more displaced across the Middle East and Central Asia. China’s approach, however flawed in implementation, was not to bomb Muslim countries into rubble, but to suppress armed separatism and extremism domestically while also pushing development, education, infrastructure, poverty alleviation, and integration.
As an aside: would it have been more “democratic” for China to follow the Euro-American model and commit war crimes abroad in response to ETIM attacks? Or is it possible that China’s line of deradicalisation, development, and social integration, even with serious excesses, was still vastly less barbaric than the Western model?
the 709 crackdown
You might have a point here if not for the unfortunate reality of these “human rights” activists like many others being backed by and used as vehicles for US foreign policy interests through NGO links as opposed to actually fighting for any real rights. Was the crackdown excessive, likely, but it didn’t come from nowhere and is not a reflection of the Chinese approach to government criticism more broadly.
system that claims genuine popular accountability.
The system does not claim it. Popular legitimacy has been repeatedly demonstrated, from the Harvard Ash Center’s long-term survey showing extremely high central government satisfaction, to broader democratic perception surveys such as the democratic perception index where Chinese respondents consistently report high confidence in their system.
You may not like the result because it does not flatter liberal assumptions, but Chinese people are not props. If the overwhelming majority of us experience the state as responsive, developmental, representative, and legitimate, that matters more than whether Western liberals approve of the institutional design. Again democracy is rule by the people not swap the face of the dictatorship of capital every handful of years.
Number of parties have fuck all to do with democracy as we can clearly see with western attempts at liberal democracies. What matters is that the government can be held accountable to the people and it works in the interest of the public. China demonstrably outperforms vast majority of western attempts at implementing democracy in this key regard.
We only need to look at the latest Democracy Perception Index, compiled by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (in partnership with Nita Data). The Alliance of Democracies Foundation, the organization behind the report, cannot even remotely be suspected of being some sort of anti-West outlet: it was started by an ex-NATO Secretary General (Anders Fogh Rasmussen) and its stated purpose is “to unite world democracies”. The report measures “perception is reality” because, like it or not, what people believe about their system is what determines its legitimacy. A democracy that nobody actually experiences as one can’t credibly claim to be one.
Like every single year, according to the Chinese people themselves, China is one of the most democratic countries in the world. And I’ll just preempt the whole Chinese people are afraid to express their opinion nonsense. If that were the case you’d see the same dynamic in other presumed “authoritarian” countries. But Russia scores -21, Belarus -9, Kazakhstan -31. If “fear of the regime” explained China’s +14, why aren’t Russians and Belarusians equally afraid?
Professor Jason Hickel, who is an economic anthropologist, also wrote an article on exactly this topic titled “Support for government in China: is the data accurate?” where he systematically dismantles the “fear bias” argument by examining studies that used anonymized and implicit methodologies. His verdict is that across every methodology tested, Chinese people mean what they say. https://jasonhickel.substack.com/p/support-for-government-in-china-is
There’s also a higher perception of freedom of speech in China than in the immense majority of Western countries, including in the United States. Meaning that when you ask the Chinese people, a higher proportion of them feel they “can criticize the government without consequences” than in the US.
Even taking Hickel at face value, his own anonymized studies show support dropping to 62-77%, well below the headline figure. He also admits the methodology has its own problems.
But more importantly, none of this answers the actual question. Plenty of people liked Mussolini. Democracy is not about whether people approve of their government. It is about whether they can peacefully remove it. In China they cannot. That is the whole point. I’m glad most seem to like it. That does not make it a democracy, though.
And 62-77% is still far ahead of vast majority of western countries. And you will get different results depending on the questions you ask and how you measure. That’s just how surveys work. No methodology is perfect, but when EVERY single study on China consistently shows that majority of the population says they have a democracy and they support their government, it’s frankly idiotic to claim that’s not the case.
People liking their government does not make it a democracy. That’s just a hamfisted straw man you’re making though. The question asked is whether they feel they are being represented, and whether the government works in their interest. Also, if majority of people liked Mussolini, he definitely would not have ended up the way he did.
Democracy is not about removing the government either. It’s, once again, about having a government which implements the will of the majority. This is demonstrably the case in China. Perhaps learn what democracy actually is before wasting other people’s time attempting to debate a subject you’re woefully ignorant on?
If democracy means a government that implements the will of the majority, then every functional dictatorship that delivers economic growth qualifies. Singapore, UAE, Rwanda. You have defined away the problem entirely.
The reason procedural guarantees like elections, term limits and an independent press matter is precisely because they are how you verify the claim that the government represents the majority. Without them you are just taking the government’s word for it. Which is not democracy, it is blind trust.
Also Mussolini did not fall because people stopped liking him. He was overthrown by the Italian king and his own Grand Council after military defeat. Popular approval held up considerably longer than it should have. That is actually the point.
That is literally the definition of democracy, a government that implements the will of the public. It’s absolutely hilarious how you lump Singapore, which uses a democratic framework featuring regular elections and universal suffrage, with UAE and Rwanda. It once again highlights that you have absolutely no business discussing this subject.
The reality is that we have ample proof that procedural guarantees like elections, term limits, and oligarch owned press do fuck all to facilitate meaningful democracy. They create a procedural democracy where all the boxes are checked, but the government is in no way accountable to the working majority. It’s a dictatorship of capital.
And no, people in China aren’t taking the government’s word on anything. The single party is very much accountable to the public because its very legitimacy rests on implementing the will of the public. Meanwhile, liberal multi party systems simply play hot potato with responsibility.
Popular approval held up considerably longer than it should have.
The single party is very much accountable to the public because its very legitimacy rests on implementing the will of the public.
Not to mind the fact that slightly over 1 in 14 people are party members, party offices are everywhere to take criticism and feedback and when you can’t be bothered to walk to the office you can just call 12345 for a direct line to the local government to ask questions and provide criticism and feedback.
Exactly, in China you have meaningful direct participation of the working class in governance. In the west, there’s practically no worker representation in any major political party, and there is no 12345 equivalent for people to submit any feedback or criticism. All you get to do is pull a lever every few years to decide which member of the ruling class will repress you.
All you get to do is pull a lever every few years to decide which member of the ruling class will repress you.
And in many cases you don’t even get to do that. Look at the UK and how they purged labour or in the US how Bernie was suppressed and Copmala was smuggled past the primaries.
You’re still defining democracy purely by outcomes. A government that delivers results and therefore retains legitimacy. By that logic any successful authoritarian system qualifies, which makes the definition meaningless.
I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on what democracy is and I don’t see that resolving itself here.
China is a one party state. The CCP cannot be voted out, challenged or replaced. The legislature has never once rejected a Party decision. Xi removed his own term limits in 2018. Media is state controlled, dissent gets you imprisoned and there is no independent judiciary.
Democracy means people can remove their government. In China that is simply not possible, it is written out of the system by design. Two examples of actual democracies: Japan and South Korea. Both have multiple parties, a free press, independent courts and governments that have actually been voted out.
Now shoot, cowboy.
Sounds like you’re narrowing democracy down to liberal, capitalist “democracy.” Democracy means rule by the majority, neither of which is true in Japan and the Republic of Korea who are both dominated by capitalists. Socialist democracy is focused on collaboration and cooperation, not competition, whereas liberal democracy focuses on competition and division. Defining democracy as the presence of capitalist press is also another bit that doesn’t make sense.
Wrong immediately. China has nine legally recognised parties. The CPC is the largest, leading party because it is the party that actually led the revolution, built the state, and retains mass legitimacy. Pretending the other eight parties do not exist because they are not liberal opposition parties is cope and also idiotic.
The Party line is challenged, tested, corrected, and revised constantly through congresses, consultation, local implementation, mass feedback, inspections, anti-corruption campaigns, policy pilots, and material results. You are confusing “not replaced by a capitalist opposition party” with “not accountable.” Those are not the same thing.
Because by the time something reaches the final legislative stage, the struggle has usually already happened through drafting, consultation, amendment, expert input, local trials, and internal debate. You are judging the system only at the final vote and pretending the whole prior process does not exist. That is not serious. Especially when said prior process is years of testing revisions feedback and criticism.
Term limits are not inherently democratic. If the people support a leadership line and it is producing results, forcing it out because an arbitrary calendar says so is anti-democratic. Democracy means rule by the people, not worship of procedural gimmicks.
Public media is preferable to billionaire media, advertiser media, landlord media, arms-industry media, and intelligence-cutout media. Western “free press” mostly means privately owned ruling-class consensus.
And yes, if you organise to overthrow the socialist state, promote separatism, or act as a tool of hostile powers, you will face consequences. Every serious state defends itself. Ordinary criticism of officials, corruption, pollution, housing, services, labour issues, and bureaucracy is widespread. You are pretending “China does not allow colour revolution politics” means “nobody can criticise anything.”
“Independent judiciary” means independent from whom? Courts in liberal states are not above class society. They defend property, capital, empire, and the constitutional order they belong to. China’s courts operate within China’s socialist constitutional order. That is not a scandal. That is state power being honest about itself.
No, democracy means rule by the people. Reducing democracy to swapping elite factions every few years is liberal nonsense.
The real questions are: are people represented, are officials accountable, does mass feedback shape policy, do living standards improve, does the state act when necessary, and does the government serve the majority?
On that basis China has a stronger democratic claim than any liberal states. Direct elections exist at township and county levels. Higher deputies are elected upward through the people’s congress system. Grassroots legislative liaison stations, public consultation, local pilots, petitions, online criticism, and mass campaigns feed into policy. Democracy is treated as a continuous process, not a five-minute ritual every four years.
I actually burst out laughing on the subway and got some stares. Your examples of “actual democracy” are a U.S. client state rapidly remilitarising under American strategy and another U.S. client state famous for chaebol domination, anti-communist repression, cult scandals, and politics bent around Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and SK.
If being allowed to choose which faction manages capitalism under U.S. military and financial hegemony is the summit of democracy in your mind I truly feel sorry for you.
If you want to be smug, try being correct first.
China is not a liberal multiparty capitalist state. Correct. It is a socialist people’s democratic system led by the CPC, with multiple recognised parties, direct local elections, consultation mechanisms, mass participation, cadre accountability, and a proven record of improving people’s lives.
Direct elections reach the township and county levels, where voters choose deputies to local people’s congresses. Those grassroots deputies form the base of the entire people’s congress system, and higher-level deputies are elected upward from below rather than parachuted in as media celebrities or donor-backed party hacks. Cadres do not begin as detached professional politicians selling themselves on television; they are expected to prove themselves through work at lower levels, in villages, counties, workplaces, departments, and local administrations before advancing. That ties political authority to practical service, local knowledge, and demonstrated ability, not just money, charisma, or elite schooling. Minority representation is also guaranteed: all 55 ethnic minorities are represented in the NPC, which matters directly to people like myself because representation is not left to the mercy of majority demographics or party marketing. Add to that grassroots legislative liaison stations, community consultation, local policy pilots, petitions, mass criticism, and the CPC’s presence across villages, factories, universities, scientific institutions, and public administration, and what you have is not “no democracy.” It is a different and I like many others would say better democratic form: continuous, organised, consultative, developmental, and rooted in material outcomes rather than liberal spectacle.
Also don’t think I didn’t notice your yellow peril nonsense of trying to equate China and Myanmar earlier.
The eight other parties all legally commit to CPC leadership in their founding documents. They cannot oppose it, campaign against it or replace it. Calling that multiparty democracy is like calling a company with one shareholder a cooperative because it has nine employees.
On Japan and South Korea: yes, US client states with real problems. But both have had their ruling parties voted out and replaced by the opposition. That has never happened in China and cannot happen. That remains the point.
The rest is redefining democracy until it means whatever produces the answer you want. Consultative processes, local pilots, cadre accountability, all of that can exist in an authoritarian system. And it does. The question is still the same one: can the people remove the government? A long and elaborate no is still a no.
You’re defining democracy by people being unhappy with a ruling party and voting it out, which doesn’t make sense. People support the CPC in China and don’t want to vote it out, but they still have control over how China develops and acts. You’re redefining democracy into a narrow, capitalist viewpoint that focuses purely on multi-party dynamics while obfuscating the class character of the state.
Yes, because China’s party system is not built around anti-system opposition. I already said that. You are repeating my point as if it refutes me.
China has multiple legally recognised parties under CPC leadership. That is not the same thing as a Western liberal multiparty system. However the question that actually matters is whether democracy requires parties to be organised around replacing the constitutional order. It does not.
You redefine democracy as “the ability of rival elite parties to compete for control of the state.” I am defining democracy as rule by the people (it’s actual meaning). That means representation, participation, accountability, mass consultation, material improvement, and the state acting in the interests of the majority. If anyone is redefining democracy here, it is you reducing it from popular rule to party rotation.
No, it is recognising that different political systems organise participation differently. China’s democratic parties are not “employees.” They participate in consultation, supervision, policy discussion, united front work, and state governance. They do not exist to overthrow CPC leadership because the system is not liberal parliamentarism. Again, that is not a gotcha. That is the structure.
You are basically saying: “China is not a liberal capitalist party-state.” Correct. It is not trying to be.
And the ruling class remained.
In Japan, parties change and the U.S. military alliance remains. Rearmament remains. Capital remains. The bureaucracy remains. The imperial security architecture remains. The monarchy remains. The same class order remains.
In South Korea, parties change and the chaebols remain. Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK, U.S. military power, anti-communist state structures, and the basic dictatorship of capital remain. Presidents come and go. The actual ruling interests stay intact.
That is exactly the point. You are mistaking alternation of political managers for rule by the people. Liberal democracy lets people change the personnel of government while leaving the underlying class power untouched. China does not treat that as the highest form of democracy, because it is not.
No, your point is that China does not allow a hostile opposition party to take state power and dismantle socialism. Correct. Why would it?
A socialist state is not obliged to create a legal mechanism for capitalist restoration, separatism, comprador rule, or colour revolution and then call that “democracy.” No state is neutral. Liberal states defend capitalist property and imperial alignment. Socialist states defend socialist leadership and national development. The question is not whether a state has class content. The question is which class interests it serves.
No, democracy literally means rule by the people. It does not mean “the state must have adversarial parties funded by capital competing every four years.”
You keep turning democracy into a checklist of liberal institutions: opposition parties, private media, courts insulated from popular power, and elite alternation. That is not democracy as such. That is the political form of bourgeois rule.
This is just handwaving. You are refusing to engage with the actual mechanisms because they do not fit your script.
Direct elections at township and county levels are not nothing. Deputies being elected upward through the people’s congress system is not nothing. Grassroots legislative liaison stations are not nothing. Guaranteed representation for all 55 ethnic minorities is not nothing. Cadres having to build experience through villages, counties, departments, workplaces, and local administration before advancing is not nothing. Mass consultation, local experimentation, petitioning, public criticism of local governance failures, anti-corruption discipline, and policy adjustment are not nothing.
You do not get to dismiss all of that as “authoritarian” simply because it is not liberal party competition.
The people can remove officials, discipline cadres, vote at local levels, participate in consultations, shape legislation, pressure local governments, use petition channels, punish corruption through inspection systems, and force policy correction through mass feedback. What they cannot do is vote to hand the state to a capitalist opposition party hostile to the socialist order.
Your entire argument depends on treating “remove the ruling party” as the only meaningful form of popular power. But if party rotation leaves capital, landlords, monopolies, foreign military power, and imperial alignment untouched, then what has actually been removed? The face changes. The class rule remains.
China’s system should be judged by whether the people are represented, whether minorities like myself are institutionally guaranteed a voice rather than left to demographic chance, whether cadres are rooted in grassroots work instead of bought by donors and media machines, whether policy responds to mass needs, and whether the state can subordinate capital to development. On those measures, China is unambiguously one of the few real democracies on earth. Your examples of Japan and South Korea have party alternation, yes. They also have entrenched capitalist class rule, U.S. military domination, monopoly power, and political systems that cannot fundamentally challenge any of it.
Have you tried educating yourself on subjects before speaking on them?
The class critique of western democracy is legitimate and I don’t dismiss it. Structural change attempted within liberal democratic systems consistently runs into capital, media and institutional resistance before it gets anywhere. That is a real problem worth taking seriously. But that does not make China a democracy. It makes western liberal democracy compromised. Those are two different problems.
On the local mechanisms, you listed them again without addressing the point. Consultation, local elections and cadre accountability are compatible with authoritarian systems. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have versions of all of them. Responsiveness is not the same as accountability.
The documented treatment of Uyghurs and the 709 crackdown are hard to square with a system that claims genuine popular accountability.
We probably won’t agree on this one and that’s fine.
So you agree your shining examples of democracy are in fact not democracy but rather the dictatorship of capital?
Perhaps. But if you use Japan and South Korea as the standard China must emulate to be considered “real democracy,” then the fact that they are not rule by the people (democracy ) but in fact systems dominated by capital, the US, media monopolies, corporate boardrooms, and in South Korea’s case chaebol and cult influence (dictatorship of capital), it is extremely relevant.
You cannot hold up liberal client states as the gold standard, admit they are structurally blocked by capital, and then act like party rotation is still the decisive test of democracy.
China’s model integrates the people throughout the process: local elections, mass consultation, cadre evaluation, policy pilots, petitions, grassroots legislative liaison stations, anti-corruption discipline, and material performance. You are free to dislike that model, but it is not refuted by saying “but can a capitalist opposition party take power?” No, nor should it.
This comparison is ridiculous. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are hereditary monarchies. The top of the state is literally dynastic rule. Political authority flows from royal families.
China’s local mechanisms are not decorative suggestion boxes attached to a monarchy. They are integrated into a system where direct elections exist at township and county levels, deputies are required to start from the bottom and move upward through the people’s congress structure, cadres are expected to prove themselves through practical work at lower levels, and policy is shaped through consultation, pilots, inspection, correction, and implementation. That is not remotely equivalent to Gulf monarchies giving controlled municipal channels while royal houses rule by decree.
Which treatment, exactly?
Given that you are using it to dismiss China as a democracy altogether, I suspect you mean the Zenz-style atrocity narrative rather than the actual reality.
Were there real abuses? Yes. Racial profiling, dragnet policing, excessive securitisation, and heavy-handed counter-extremism are all serious and should be criticised. But if those disqualify a country from democracy, then I have bad news for the entire Euro-American bloc. The U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Koreae, etc.
The Western approach to terrorism was mass surveillance, drone murder, torture sites, Guantanamo, invasions, occupations, sanctions, and millions dead and millions more displaced across the Middle East and Central Asia. China’s approach, however flawed in implementation, was not to bomb Muslim countries into rubble, but to suppress armed separatism and extremism domestically while also pushing development, education, infrastructure, poverty alleviation, and integration.
As an aside: would it have been more “democratic” for China to follow the Euro-American model and commit war crimes abroad in response to ETIM attacks? Or is it possible that China’s line of deradicalisation, development, and social integration, even with serious excesses, was still vastly less barbaric than the Western model?
You might have a point here if not for the unfortunate reality of these “human rights” activists like many others being backed by and used as vehicles for US foreign policy interests through NGO links as opposed to actually fighting for any real rights. Was the crackdown excessive, likely, but it didn’t come from nowhere and is not a reflection of the Chinese approach to government criticism more broadly.
The system does not claim it. Popular legitimacy has been repeatedly demonstrated, from the Harvard Ash Center’s long-term survey showing extremely high central government satisfaction, to broader democratic perception surveys such as the democratic perception index where Chinese respondents consistently report high confidence in their system.
You may not like the result because it does not flatter liberal assumptions, but Chinese people are not props. If the overwhelming majority of us experience the state as responsive, developmental, representative, and legitimate, that matters more than whether Western liberals approve of the institutional design. Again democracy is rule by the people not swap the face of the dictatorship of capital every handful of years.
Number of parties have fuck all to do with democracy as we can clearly see with western attempts at liberal democracies. What matters is that the government can be held accountable to the people and it works in the interest of the public. China demonstrably outperforms vast majority of western attempts at implementing democracy in this key regard.
We only need to look at the latest Democracy Perception Index, compiled by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (in partnership with Nita Data). The Alliance of Democracies Foundation, the organization behind the report, cannot even remotely be suspected of being some sort of anti-West outlet: it was started by an ex-NATO Secretary General (Anders Fogh Rasmussen) and its stated purpose is “to unite world democracies”. The report measures “perception is reality” because, like it or not, what people believe about their system is what determines its legitimacy. A democracy that nobody actually experiences as one can’t credibly claim to be one.
Like every single year, according to the Chinese people themselves, China is one of the most democratic countries in the world. And I’ll just preempt the whole Chinese people are afraid to express their opinion nonsense. If that were the case you’d see the same dynamic in other presumed “authoritarian” countries. But Russia scores -21, Belarus -9, Kazakhstan -31. If “fear of the regime” explained China’s +14, why aren’t Russians and Belarusians equally afraid?
Professor Jason Hickel, who is an economic anthropologist, also wrote an article on exactly this topic titled “Support for government in China: is the data accurate?” where he systematically dismantles the “fear bias” argument by examining studies that used anonymized and implicit methodologies. His verdict is that across every methodology tested, Chinese people mean what they say. https://jasonhickel.substack.com/p/support-for-government-in-china-is
There’s also a higher perception of freedom of speech in China than in the immense majority of Western countries, including in the United States. Meaning that when you ask the Chinese people, a higher proportion of them feel they “can criticize the government without consequences” than in the US.
Even taking Hickel at face value, his own anonymized studies show support dropping to 62-77%, well below the headline figure. He also admits the methodology has its own problems.
But more importantly, none of this answers the actual question. Plenty of people liked Mussolini. Democracy is not about whether people approve of their government. It is about whether they can peacefully remove it. In China they cannot. That is the whole point. I’m glad most seem to like it. That does not make it a democracy, though.
And 62-77% is still far ahead of vast majority of western countries. And you will get different results depending on the questions you ask and how you measure. That’s just how surveys work. No methodology is perfect, but when EVERY single study on China consistently shows that majority of the population says they have a democracy and they support their government, it’s frankly idiotic to claim that’s not the case.
People liking their government does not make it a democracy. That’s just a hamfisted straw man you’re making though. The question asked is whether they feel they are being represented, and whether the government works in their interest. Also, if majority of people liked Mussolini, he definitely would not have ended up the way he did.
Democracy is not about removing the government either. It’s, once again, about having a government which implements the will of the majority. This is demonstrably the case in China. Perhaps learn what democracy actually is before wasting other people’s time attempting to debate a subject you’re woefully ignorant on?
If democracy means a government that implements the will of the majority, then every functional dictatorship that delivers economic growth qualifies. Singapore, UAE, Rwanda. You have defined away the problem entirely.
The reason procedural guarantees like elections, term limits and an independent press matter is precisely because they are how you verify the claim that the government represents the majority. Without them you are just taking the government’s word for it. Which is not democracy, it is blind trust.
Also Mussolini did not fall because people stopped liking him. He was overthrown by the Italian king and his own Grand Council after military defeat. Popular approval held up considerably longer than it should have. That is actually the point.
That is literally the definition of democracy, a government that implements the will of the public. It’s absolutely hilarious how you lump Singapore, which uses a democratic framework featuring regular elections and universal suffrage, with UAE and Rwanda. It once again highlights that you have absolutely no business discussing this subject.
The reality is that we have ample proof that procedural guarantees like elections, term limits, and oligarch owned press do fuck all to facilitate meaningful democracy. They create a procedural democracy where all the boxes are checked, but the government is in no way accountable to the working majority. It’s a dictatorship of capital.
And no, people in China aren’t taking the government’s word on anything. The single party is very much accountable to the public because its very legitimacy rests on implementing the will of the public. Meanwhile, liberal multi party systems simply play hot potato with responsibility.
[citation needed]
Not to mind the fact that slightly over 1 in 14 people are party members, party offices are everywhere to take criticism and feedback and when you can’t be bothered to walk to the office you can just call 12345 for a direct line to the local government to ask questions and provide criticism and feedback.
Exactly, in China you have meaningful direct participation of the working class in governance. In the west, there’s practically no worker representation in any major political party, and there is no 12345 equivalent for people to submit any feedback or criticism. All you get to do is pull a lever every few years to decide which member of the ruling class will repress you.
And in many cases you don’t even get to do that. Look at the UK and how they purged labour or in the US how Bernie was suppressed and Copmala was smuggled past the primaries.
You’re still defining democracy purely by outcomes. A government that delivers results and therefore retains legitimacy. By that logic any successful authoritarian system qualifies, which makes the definition meaningless.
I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on what democracy is and I don’t see that resolving itself here.