Why is China not Considered a Democracy in the West?

Why is China not considered a democracy in the West?

China is not considered a democracy in the West? Does China have government of the people, by the people, for the people? Or government of the oligarchs by the oligarchs for the the oligarchs? So why is China not Considered a democracy in the West?

The West doesn’t care. It calls obedient governments ‘democracies’ and disobedient governments ‘authoritarian’ (it sounds bad though it has no agreed definition) and calls totally disobedient governments ‘dictatorships,’ (a good excuse for invading them if they’re small and embargoing them if they’re big). So Why is China not Considered a democracy in the West?

It makes no difference if they have the biggest, most frequent, most transparent, most equitable elections on earth (think Venezuela) if they don’t obey the West then it’s smacky-whacks for them.

Democracy’s a matter of degree, of course. Even ultra-democratic Switzerland (where they vote on the location of street-signs!) is dissatisfied with its democracy so, if we ignore labels like ‘authoritarian’ and ‘dictatorship,’ we might find that countries like Venezuela and even China are more democratic than many (obedient) Western countries. Could we find that China is a real democracy and the USA is a fake democracy?

Why is China not Considered a Democracy in the West?

Is that Why is China is not Considered a democracy in the West?

Let’s compare democracy in China and the USA by examining it in six dimensions: formal, elective, popular, procedural, operational and substantive.

1. Formally–in shape or appearance–China’s constitution (Article Three: “The State organs of the People’s Republic of China apply the principle of democratic centralism. The National People’s Congress and the local people’s congresses at various levels are constituted through democratic elections. They are responsible to the people and subject to their supervision. All administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs of the State are created by the people’s congresses to which they are responsible and by which they are supervised”.) makes her a democracy. America’s constitution doesn’t. America is a republic founded by democracy-hating slave-owners who never mentioned democracy in the Constitution or anywhere else except to curse it. China 1–USA 0.
2. Electively, China has bigger, more transparent elections than the USA that are supervised and certified by The Carter Center, which also runs China’s election website. China 2–USA 0.
3. Popularly, China has a twenty percent higher voter participation than the USA (62% to 52%), suggesting that more Chinese voters think their vote counts. China 3–USA 0.
4. Procedurally, China uses a public, democratic process to appoint senior officials and approve all legislation. America? Not so much. American presidential candidates are chosen by wealthy backers and appointed by an unelected group of people called the Electoral College which nobody understands. China 4–USA 0.
5. Operationally, American presidents operate like like medieval monarchs. They hire and fire all senior officials and frequently order citizens kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned and assassinated without consulting anyone. They can secretly ban 50,000 people from flying on airlines without explanation and take the country to war at any time, for any reason. No Chinese leader–including Mao–could do any of those things. They have to vote on everything, democratically. China 5–USA 0.
6. Substantively, China’s government policies produce democratic outcomes. Ninety-six percent of Chinese voters say that the government’s policies are just what they want and eighty-three percent say China is being run for their benefit rather than for the benefit of a special group. Only thirty-eight percent of Americans think this of their country. Ninety percent of Chinese voters are pleased with the direction their elected representatives are taking them, compared to twenty percent of Americans. China 6–USA 0.

Is the score really 6–0? Which country looks more democratic to you? Why is China not Considered a democracy in the West?

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