China: Vote as I say
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China: Vote as I say
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Re: China: Vote as I say
#2Genuinely independent electoral candidates in Taiwan, who in some cases won executive offices with substantial decision-making power, first ran decades ago. Even when Taiwan was unmistakably a one-party dictatorship (the first time I lived there), there was more contesting of more consequential elections than there yet is in China. China has a LONG way to go to all of its talented, diligent people opportunity to shape the policies they live under.
Re: China: Vote as I say
#3China is interesting. It's not like USA with just a population of 310,000,000, it has 1,330,000,000 people.
If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memory when China and India start becoming major players.
How can a democracy successfully emerge when you have the potential to introduce great divergence and even possibly civil war?
Re: China: Vote as I say
#4China is interesting. It's not like USA with just a population of 310,000,000, it has 1,330,000,000 people. If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memo…
"Great divergence" is not necessarily a problem for democracy. Any specific manifestation of democracy is a tool for governing despite them.
Civil war is not more likely in a democracy than a non democracy. Civil wars (I'm perhaps controversially excluding revolutionary wars such as the current Libyan or Syrian wars because they are usually wars between a regime and the The People) are rarely over political disagreement.
Most civil wars are a result of either: (1) two or more competing elites competing for power (eg James vs William; Augustus vs Anthony). (2) Ethnic/confessional divides that supersede everything else politically. For example, Lebanese Maronites are politically Maronites. They will not vote for a Druze Social-Democrat even if this is their political belief because that identification is much weaker than the Maronite one. Lebanese politics is about dividing political pies between sects.
China is probably in greater danger of 1 today than it would be if democratic and it probably wouldn't be under greater danger of 2, Chinese minorities don't want to be Chinese but they are too small even if they do identify politically entirely along ethnic lines.
Re: China: Vote as I say
#5China is interesting. It's not like USA with just a population of 310,000,000, it has 1,330,000,000 people. If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memo…
> USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memory when China and India start becoming major players.
As individual entities, perhaps. As a bloc? NATO member countries total population is about 800 million, if I'm not mistaken. The Western world is hardly going to disappear.
Re: China: Vote as I say
#6China is interesting. It's not like USA with just a population of 310,000,000, it has 1,330,000,000 people. If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memo…
"Great divergence" is not necessarily a problem for democracy. Any specific manifestation of democracy is a tool for governing despite them. Civil war is not more likely in a democracy than a non democracy. Civil wars (I'm perhaps controversially excluding revolutionary wars such as the current Libyan or Syrian wars because they are usually wars between a regime and the The People) are rarely over political disagreem…
Re #2 of your point. The divide isn't along ethnic lines; it's along economic/cultural. Huge divide between rural farmers and urban yuppies. The yuppies are like the HN crowd. But historically, China goes as the peasant class goes.
Most of the time, the government is trying to appease the peasants while encouraging the yuppies. It's a tough balance.
Re: China: Vote as I say
#7China is interesting. It's not like USA with just a population of 310,000,000, it has 1,330,000,000 people. If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memo…
One potential result is that you end up with... two democracies. Revolutionary divisions in Europe just ended up more permanent than the ones in China.
But I don't think population totals tell the whole story. One thing I like to quote is when a friend of mine visited China and noted that the "small towns", which still had 2-4 million people but were smaller than the big cities, still felt like small towns. They were less culturally interesting, less alive. The point is the cultural dynamic of "cosmopolitan centre" against "sleepy provincial town" exists despite multiplying the populations by 10; it's more about where the "centre of culture" is I imagine. So maybe democracy can survive scaling as well.
Re: China: Vote as I say
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Great divergence" is not necessarily a problem for democracy. Any specific manifestation of democracy is a tool for governing despite them. Civil war is not more likely in a democracy than a non democracy. Civil wars (I'm perhaps controversially excluding revolutionary wars such as the current Libyan or Syrian wars because they are usually wars between a regime and the The People) are rarely over political disagreem…
Re #2 of your point. The divide isn't along ethnic lines; it's along economic/cultural. Huge divide between rural farmers and urban yuppies. The yuppies are like the HN crowd. But historically, China goes as the peasant class goes. Most of the time, the government is trying to appease the peasants while encouraging the yuppies. It's a tough balance.
Had the Han ethnicity not been so dominant, though, ethnic divisions would have been more prominent.
Re: China: Vote as I say
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Great divergence" is not necessarily a problem for democracy. Any specific manifestation of democracy is a tool for governing despite them. Civil war is not more likely in a democracy than a non democracy. Civil wars (I'm perhaps controversially excluding revolutionary wars such as the current Libyan or Syrian wars because they are usually wars between a regime and the The People) are rarely over political disagreem…
Re #2 of your point. The divide isn't along ethnic lines; it's along economic/cultural. Huge divide between rural farmers and urban yuppies. The yuppies are like the HN crowd. But historically, China goes as the peasant class goes. Most of the time, the government is trying to appease the peasants while encouraging the yuppies. It's a tough balance.
My experience in China has been a little different. You certainly see divides along economic lines, but there are tremendous ethnic divides in China that aren't talked about outside the country, and often its these ethnic divides that create some of the worst economic divides.
Additionally, in recent years the population of China's cities has grown to be around half or more of the total Chinese population. It's not just farmers vs yuppies anymore, its non-local immigrants vs native locals. I saw this big time in Beijing, where a lot of the general working class were pissed because they had to work and ended up with crap for housing while the "natives" didn't work nearly as much - not because the natives were rich, but because they received state-funded stipends and discounted premium housing which immigrants to the city (from other parts of China) aren't eligible for.
I suppose you could consider my second point "economic", thought it's not really in the way most people would think of that term. It's a general side-effect of communist policies which still exist, though are far less publicized within the country.
Re: China: Vote as I say
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re #2 of your point. The divide isn't along ethnic lines; it's along economic/cultural. Huge divide between rural farmers and urban yuppies. The yuppies are like the HN crowd. But historically, China goes as the peasant class goes. Most of the time, the government is trying to appease the peasants while encouraging the yuppies. It's a tough balance.
My experience in China has been a little different. You certainly see divides along economic lines, but there are tremendous ethnic divides in China that aren't talked about outside the country, and often its these ethnic divides that create some of the worst economic divides. Additionally, in recent years the population of China's cities has grown to be around half or more of the total Chinese population. It's not j…
Is country/peasant worker vs city worker an ethnic divide? Sounds more like a class divide. (ironic in a post-maoist country)
The urbanisation figures in china are highly suspect. Given one child policy is primarily policed in the city and intentionally lax in the countryside. This coupled with the fact their census seems (unconfirmed) do NOT count unofficial residence (i.e second/third/etc children). It makes it very hard to get a real picture of China's urbanisation stats.