China Has No Use for Democracy

It's almost impossible for someone who is 'strong' in the sense used in this article, no matter how unique and noble of character, to maintain that honesty and dedication to continuously improve. Ultimately it becomes difficult for them even to know what the truth is, as people around them become more and more unprepared to share it with them, and the whole structure stultifies.

Putting all the faults and failings and divisions and bickering out in the open may seem weak, but it can lead to a kind of dynamic strength and robustness that is not available to the authoritarian.

That said, the article itself takes a negative and biased approach to evaluating China's government. China's system seeks, and achieves, representation of its people through a variation of a social contract that has lasted - and been updated and modernized - through thousands of years.

China's current Communist Party is measured against specific outcomes, the livelihoods, outlooks, and possibilities of the people of China, which have never looked better (the next century has been dubbed by historians the "Chinese Century" based on the demographic, financial, cultural, and technological success of China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Century). That same party is measured against corruption, and recent efforts in the country to excise grift and nepotism have given its government new efficiency, purpose and effectivity.

Old Western power centers (Europe pre-WWII and America post-) may have some anxiety about the the relative loss of leadership that global scandals, lost legitimacy, financial crashes, and systemic corruption have wrought in recent years. Its with this anxiety that I find articles like this written: China is, and has been, doing something right, and the West needs to look at its own failings and correct them to succeed and keep pace with 21st century dynamism.

But to take the point you've made and work through its conclusions: Hacker News skews heavily privileged male high-income engineer, and likely wouldn't trade their lives to live as an _American_ female, much less a Detroiter, Hispanic laborer, or American prison inmate.

Living in the world's sole superpower (most of HN) has, of course, its own advantages that we don't need to enumerate.

Chinese future looks a lot brighter according to most political forecasters, economists, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Century