How China Won The Democracy Crown—and America Lost It
China's democracy delivers what people actually want. America's doesn't. So simple.
If one should propose to all men a choice, bidding them select the best customs from all the customs that there are, each race of men, after examining them all, would select those of his own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best. Herodotus, The Histories.
Popularity Contest or People’s Mandate?
If ‘democracy’ implies a political system that responds to the desires of the people who reside in it, America’s system falls at the first hurdle, as Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page proved: “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” [See last year’s Losing Democracy: On Social Homogeneity, Coherence and Democracy]. But wait..
It gets worse
Not only is there no sign of democracy in the United States, there is an aggressive, even murderous, insistence that by calling their failed system ‘democratic’ Americans tend to think of their country as good—regardless of what it does—simply because they are democratic and different systems as undemocratic states and, therefore, illegitimate, regardless of what they do. Kenneth Waltz called this ‘democratic wars’:
