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.
France is even more egregious where Macron just refused to appoint a PM after losing the election. The whole process is just a veneer of democracy, and as soon as things don’t go the way the ruling class works, the mask drops and you see the face of fascism beneath.
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.
I’m not doing any such thing. But what I am saying is that without outcomes there cannot be meaningful democracy in the first place. Outcomes are a prerequisite for any sort of democratic process. And any country that consistently fails to produce outcomes the public demands cannot be said to be democratic. Also, the term authoritarianism is utterly meaningless because all governments rely on coercion to maintain their authority. The state is fundamentally an instrument that’s used by the ruling class to maintain its dominance. The whole notion that political systems can be neatly categorized into authoritarian or democratic binaries is deeply infantile.
The reality is that every government derives its authority from its monopoly on legal violence. The ability to enforce laws, suppress dissent, and maintain order is derived from control over police, military, and judicial systems. Whether a government is labelled authoritarian or democratic, the fundamental basis of its power lies here. Therefore, the only meaningful questions to ask are which class interests it represents, and to what extent can it be held accountable to them.
What ultimately matters is which class controls the institutions of state violence. In capitalist democracies, the government represent the interests of the economic elites who fund political campaigns, own media outlets, and control key industries. Western public lacks the mechanisms necessary to hold the government to account, and the ruling class is disconnected from the broader population. That’s precisely what’s driving political discontent all across western sphere today. Meanwhile, in China, the ruling party serves the working class. Hence why there is widespread public trust in these government and the party enjoys broad support from the masses.
I get the impression that you haven’t actually spent any time to think about what democracy actually is. Western liberal democracy is simply an attempt at implementing the broader concept, and given what we see in the west, it’s pretty clearly not an effective one. There are other ways to implement this idea, such as democratic centralism, which is what’s practiced in China. The results that stem from these respective approaches speak for themselves.
Mussolini did not fall because people stopped liking him. He was overthrown by the Italian king
Mussolini was captured and shot by communist partisans like theseveryfinepeople, aka people that never liked him. That the ruling class like the king decided to abandon ship to save their necks when the war was lost is irrelevant, considering they had helped him get to power in the first place.
There was "widespread and mounting hostility to the regime among large sections of the population, even in the 1930s. The regime relied heavy on coercion, rather than popular support, to maintain control. The “consensus” was shallow, and the fascist party itself was plagued by internal infighting and widely seen as corrupt. https://catalog.uttyler.edu/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=1164077
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.
France is even more egregious where Macron just refused to appoint a PM after losing the election. The whole process is just a veneer of democracy, and as soon as things don’t go the way the ruling class works, the mask drops and you see the face of fascism beneath.
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.
I’m not doing any such thing. But what I am saying is that without outcomes there cannot be meaningful democracy in the first place. Outcomes are a prerequisite for any sort of democratic process. And any country that consistently fails to produce outcomes the public demands cannot be said to be democratic. Also, the term authoritarianism is utterly meaningless because all governments rely on coercion to maintain their authority. The state is fundamentally an instrument that’s used by the ruling class to maintain its dominance. The whole notion that political systems can be neatly categorized into authoritarian or democratic binaries is deeply infantile.
The reality is that every government derives its authority from its monopoly on legal violence. The ability to enforce laws, suppress dissent, and maintain order is derived from control over police, military, and judicial systems. Whether a government is labelled authoritarian or democratic, the fundamental basis of its power lies here. Therefore, the only meaningful questions to ask are which class interests it represents, and to what extent can it be held accountable to them.
What ultimately matters is which class controls the institutions of state violence. In capitalist democracies, the government represent the interests of the economic elites who fund political campaigns, own media outlets, and control key industries. Western public lacks the mechanisms necessary to hold the government to account, and the ruling class is disconnected from the broader population. That’s precisely what’s driving political discontent all across western sphere today. Meanwhile, in China, the ruling party serves the working class. Hence why there is widespread public trust in these government and the party enjoys broad support from the masses.
I get the impression that you haven’t actually spent any time to think about what democracy actually is. Western liberal democracy is simply an attempt at implementing the broader concept, and given what we see in the west, it’s pretty clearly not an effective one. There are other ways to implement this idea, such as democratic centralism, which is what’s practiced in China. The results that stem from these respective approaches speak for themselves.
Mussolini was captured and shot by communist partisans like these very fine people, aka people that never liked him. That the ruling class like the king decided to abandon ship to save their necks when the war was lost is irrelevant, considering they had helped him get to power in the first place.
There was "widespread and mounting hostility to the regime among large sections of the population, even in the 1930s. The regime relied heavy on coercion, rather than popular support, to maintain control. The “consensus” was shallow, and the fascist party itself was plagued by internal infighting and widely seen as corrupt. https://catalog.uttyler.edu/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=1164077