this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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china is more of a democracy than the US what with its supreme court, senate, and electoral college.
Great, I wasn't talking about America. I am also not American, so maybe you're right about it being corrupt.
It doesn't change the fact that China's CCP allows other parties in a controlled manner, to such an extent that they are allowed to exist as long as they acknowledge the superiority of the CCP.
This leads to the tyranny of the majority, as explained in the writings of John Stewart Mill.
Is it morally wrong? I'm not sure you can judge China the same as other nations. I find China to be very complicated and unique in human history.
Is it a democracy? Certainly not a full one. The Majority's tyranny is an easy discerning factor between democracies and republics.
you might have a more accurate assessment if you got the name of the party right lmao
Is it not CCP? Chinese Communist Party?
communist party of china is the preferred nomenclature, communist parties are usually "communist" first and whatever nation state second, see see pee is a western invention, maybe to scare boomers by reminding them of the CCCP but i'm not sure we have a memo or leak about why the switch was made.
people have mentioned older coverage when china was not the big scary enemy where capitalist media referred to the cpc correctly, but i don't have arbitrary 1990s newspaper articles at hand.
Ok, CPC instead of CCP. Brilliant.
How does that make China a democracy?
presumably how their legislators and executives get their jobs, and who gets to vote would make china a democracy or not?
do you know whether they have elections or how they are held? do you know how proposed laws are considered and declined or instituted? or do you just hear "one party state" and make a pile of assumptions?
ancient athens, the american representative republic, westminster derived parliamentary systems, and school textbook direct democracy aren't the only forms democracy can take, and frankly those systems (except for the school book one that isn't used to run any countries) all have huge flaws and failings, and could fairly be called "not actually democracies" if we look at public opinion polling compared to what public policy is actually made.
logically it can't be true that the members of an association ought to govern themselves by the democratic process, and at the same time a majority of the association may properly strip a minority of its primary political rights. That logical statement is only true if you assume that in a democracy, political power is equal.
And yet, by definition, Democracies are not holding said contradiction to be a paradox or negating factor. As a matter of fact, the only conclusive definition of the word Democracy is "a form of government that allows all eligible members of it to partake in the ruling of the country."
By that definition, China is a democracy. It is, by the Chinese constitution - "The people's Democratic dictatorship", but it is still a democracy. It is actually intentional, to make sure that reactionary forces won't overthrow the communist party. At least, that's what I've read so far.
I stand corrected, and apologize for being confidently wrong in my terminology.
yeah i mean that's the school book scenario and one of the flaws with "simple" democracy that has no mechanism to protect women or queer people from christians, slavevs from their owners etc. the democratic process is more than one thing, especially once your association gets too big and you decide to have representatives. Places like china, viet nam, and cuba are democratic but unless you live in a place that does "democratic centralism" you probably weren't taught about that form in school. I certainly wasn't.
that "people's democratic dictatorship" terminology that you seem bothered by is by way of marx's "dictatorship of the bourgeoise" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" and doesn't mean the same thing as "state run by a single dictator". Somebody else can give a better summary but the really bare bones version is that the state is ostensibly putting the interests of the people first and actually controlled by the people, unlike the US which talks a big game about "of the people, by the people, for the people" and then congress never does wildly popular things like legal weed and proper healthcare and does do horridly unpopular things all the time because the rich fucks who own congress benefit.
Keep reading, there's a lot of misconceptions to break and good on you for taking the time.