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| Source: asianconservatives.com Will China become a democracy in a decade? 7JAN China is entering a crucial period: in 2014, its per capita GDP will surpass $10,000. Historic episodes show that autocracies reaching this income level became much more democratic over the next decade. Will economic growth result in more democracy in China? There is still an ongoing debate on whether higher incomes lead to a more democratic political system. But I believe that if historical patterns are any guide, China will become a lot more representative in the next 10 years (or get stuck at around current income levels). In 2014, per capita GDP will surpass $10,000 in China – in 2013 dollars and in purchasing power parity terms (IMF data). This level seems to be a significant threshold for democratization, although the exact value is of course hard to pin down. Historical fact: apart from major oil-producers, any country that surpassed this level in a sustained manner was either already a reasonable democracy or became one in 10 years. The only exception seems to be Singapore. But even Singapore is characterized as an “Anocracy” by the Polity project (scoring -2 on a scale of -10 to 10), not an “Autocracy” as China (scoring -7). … for more, go to http://barrelperday.com/2014/01/07/prepare-chinese-democracy/ |
Source: asianconservatives.com
Will China become a democracy in a decade?
7JAN
China is entering a crucial period: in 2014, its per capita GDP will surpass $10,000. Historic episodes show that autocracies reaching this income level became much more democratic over the next decade. Will economic growth result in more democracy in China? There is still an ongoing debate on whether higher incomes lead to a more democratic political system. But I believe that if historical patterns are any guide, China will become a lot more representative in the next 10 years (or get stuck at around current income levels). In 2014, per capita GDP will surpass $10,000 in China – in 2013 dollars and in purchasing power parity terms (IMF data). This level seems to be a significant threshold for democratization, although the exact value is of course hard to pin down. Historical fact: apart from major oil-producers, any country that surpassed this level in a sustained manner was either already a reasonable democracy or became one in 10 years. The only exception seems to be Singapore. But even Singapore is characterized as an “Anocracy” by the Polity project (scoring -2 on a scale of -10 to 10), not an “Autocracy” as China (scoring -7). … for more, go to http://barrelperday.com/2014/01/07/prepare-chinese-democracy/
China - a fusion of communism and democracy for prosperity
Much has been written about democracy and communism, majority being anti-communism - not surprising to anyone.
Today, the rest of the world, save for the US and its cronies, look at China’s economic transformation in the past four decades with amazement.
The US is today saddled with a national debt of between US$20 trillion and US$222 trillion (Read this for context: https://ilovemalaysiachinasilkroad.blogspot.my/2018/01/is-us-debt-us20-trillion-or-us222.html) while China is busy investing into economic initiatives to boost trans border business and trade.
And, China’s trillion-dollar Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is being demonised by the sour grapes US a an attempt at economic colonisation.
Clearly, the US has lost much of its financial might and global influence that it wielded in the 20th Century.
It is reeling in debt while China is investing all over the globe and surging ahead with its innovative science and technology research and development.
I Love Malaysia-China Silk Road reproduces below two articles on democracy in China for the convenient reading of our followers:
"No Matter What the Western Propaganda Says, Chinese Democracy Is Alive and Well!
By Andre Vltchek
Asia-Pacific Research, March 03, 2018
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| New huge wave of ‘China bashing’ is once again rolling from Europe and North America. Its water is filthy and murky. It tries to smear everything about the present Chinese system: from its own and unique democratic model, to its leadership, as well as the political, economic and social system. |
Criticism of the Chinese system sometimes comes from within the country, but more often it arrives from abroad. Even local critics are usually deeply influenced by the foreign perceptions.
China is often ‘analyzed’ and judged strictly by the Western norms and rules, and that is chauvinistic and amazingly patronizing.
My friend and colleague Jeff J. Brown, a leading expert on China, author of a book China Is Communist Damn It! wrote indignantly in his recent essay “Western Racism and Hypocrisy Foaming at The Mouth Over China’s Constitutional Changes”:
So-called “China experts” are piling on with all kinds of doomsday the-sky-is-falling scenarios… President Xi Jinping is being portrayed as megalomaniac, power hungry tyrant. His 1.4 billion citizens respectfully disagree.
This whole Western charade exudes the worst hypocrisy and at its core, racism. When was the last time the mainstream media got into a snit because a Western country changed its laws? In 2001, where was Western propaganda when George W. Bush & Co. forever destroyed any semblance of the US Constitution conferring civil and human rights to its citizens, when a false flag 9/11 gun was held to the heads of every congressman and senator, to sign the Orwellian named “Patriot” Act – literally in the middle of the night, never having a chance to read it? America’s corporate whore media was right there, screaming, Sign it! Save us! Protect us! This is how corrupt, Western “democracy” “works” …”
A distinct Turkish professor Tugrul Keskin, from Shanghai University in China, calls recent trends in the West simply and correctly: Chinaphobia.
For decades and centuries, in the West, Chinese people suffered from spiteful racism and discrimination. In the United States, Chinese migrants were ridiculed and humiliated at best, and physically liquidated at worst. European powers attacked, occupied, divided and destroyed China, even succeeding in ransacking Beijing.
I wrote entire books (including Exposing Lies Of The Empire) and numerous essays, in which I argued that China, with thousands of years of tremendous history and culture, has undeniable right to be defined and judged by its own people and by its own measures.
But now let’s talk about democracy.
First of all, the expression democracy is derived from Greek language. It loosely means ‘rule of the people’. It doesn’t stipulate that a truly democratic country has to follow a Western multi-party/corporate model, or more concretely, a model in which big corporations and ‘powerful individuals’ are financing political campaigns (while backing the candidates), and de facto selecting the governments.
In the West, and in its ‘client states’, most of the ordinary people are destined to serve the corporate interests, and the government is there to make sure that they do not break ‘the rules’.
China simply cannot follow such model. Chinese people fought hard for their independence, they struggled during the great revolutionary war, and all this in order to create a system which would be serving the people. After great sacrifices, people of China achieved their goal. The system is theirs, it exists in order to improve their lives. It is not perfect, far from it, but it is rapidly evolving into perhaps the most humane system on our Planet.
Chinese corporations are there to serve the people, to serve the nation, and they are told what to do and how to behave by the government and by the Communist Party, not the other way around. Again, it is not as simple as that, and there are problems and setbacks and corruption, but the country is marching forward, irreversibly. Anyone who knows China, knows that the country is improving dramatically, and not only economically but also ecologically, socially and culturally.
There is no other country on Earth, which is changing lives of its ordinary people for better, so rapidly and with such determination. And it is happening because of the system, because of the Communist Party’s leadership, and because of the NPC. Some people ask me:
“Do you think China’s democracy, or the political system of Party’s leadership, and NPC can improve people’s livelihood?”
I always answer:
“Not only they can, but they do; day by day, year by year!”
Those who deny it either don’t know China, or are simply sore losers.
Unlike in the West, Chinese leaders are listening attentively to their people. China is ‘direct democracy’, and it functions without huge army of political parties. I don’t want to exaggerate and say that the ‘leadership in China is afraid of the people’, but is definitely respecting and listening to them.
It is nothing new: it has been this way for centuries and millennia, since the “Heavenly Mandate” was born. To rule, to be ‘at the top’, could never be taken for granted. To rule, in China, also means ‘to serve’. Arrogance and self-indulgence was rarely accepted, and when it was, it was a warning signal that the country was in decline.
Recently, in Claremont, Ca., I discussed China with a great U.S. Whiteheadean philosopher, John Cobb Jr., who has been, for years and decades deeply involved in China, particularly in the “Ecological civilization” project. He replied:
I think that in China, many leaders actually do genuinely care about the well-being of their nation.
Something that could be hardly said about the leadership in the West.
Deng Xiaoping
When Chinese people sent clear signals to the top that they want more economic freedoms, more consumer goods, and that they want to be able to freely travel abroad, Deng Xiaoping launched sweeping reforms.
Some people agreed with those reforms; some didn’t. But that is what the majority at that time, truly wanted. Party and the government were only responding to people’s demands.
Decades later, people got tired of so many elements of the market system; of growing inequality, environmental issues and negative by-products of the super-rapid economic growth. And they were listened to again. President Xi Jinping put great emphasis on the environment (“Ecological Civilization”), on the great Chinese culture, and above all on improving lives of all Chinese people no matter where they live. Powerful and progressive model of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” was reinvented, improved and put to work with new determination and zeal.
Result: soon, perhaps as early as by 2020, there will be no pockets of extreme poverty, anywhere on the territory of the People’s Republic of China. If this is not socialism, than what really is?
All this is clearly proof of the Chinese democracy at work. Even when there are protests, when people are demanding changes, look closely what many of them are holding in their hands: they are waving the little red flags of the Communist Party of China; definitely not some symbols of the Western regime.
What will be remembered about all this in hundreds of years from now?
While it cannot be denied that several Western countries gave at least some freedom and passable standard of living to their citizens, the price has been paid by the plundered continents, squashed under the Western colonialist and neo-colonialist heels. Tens of millions of non-white people died and are still dying, in order to fulfill tremendous greed and gluttony of so-called Western democracies. I saw it, unfortunately too often, with my own eyes. Only lives of the European and North American citizens are respected and protected, not at all the lives of those who are forced to serve them.
China showed to the world a totally opposite path. Everything in the PRC is created with hands of the Chinese people; with their brains, their muscles and their sweat. It is ‘clean’ and honest progress, not one that is resting on the corpses and blood of the millions of ‘others’.
And that is not all. Brainchild of President Xi, One Belt One Road, is essentially this: “sharing of China’s achievements and success with the rest of the world”, especially with the struggling and unfortunate countries.
China does not turn its success into religion. It believes that everything positive should be shared, that there should be progress, social justice and respect for different cultures. The entire world should be benefiting.
This is true internationalism, and true human decency, as well as unmistakable sign of ‘democracy’, serving all human beings, on truly global scale!
*
A shorter version of this essay appeared in Chinese press
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DR Congo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
The original source of this article is Asia-Pacific Research
Copyright © Andre Vltchek, Asia-Pacific Research, 2018
嚴許
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Surprise surprise Diplomat has one piece that's seem a bit positive on China and it was written by a member of the democracy party of China. Is not easy just to be a member, the committees vet through each applicant on their background i.e. education level. This make sense to me because democracy system needs literacy like the more wider your knowledge and understanding is about politics, the world, economies (well informed) the better that person knows what they are after. You don't want China turned into the next India the biggest democracy country in the world but 50% of the voters are illiterate and look at India internal problems.
Besides that, their meetings are not for the faint heart, every compliant or issue the member brought up must be accompanied by solutions and some in written reports. This is tedious, hard but quality discussions.
Nah not for the "western democracy" to accept.
What makes this post interesting is, go and look for those comments by those anti Chinese, ridiculously retarded. They comment for the sake of criticizing not to learn what they are ignorant off. Sad because some are old enough to have such wisdom to see wider.
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| Delegates attend a closing session for the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing (March 13, 2017). Image Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong |
What Do China’s Democratic Parties Actually Do?
The CCP is not China’s only political party. Here’s a closer look at the role and function of the other eight.
By Xiaofeng Wang
March 03, 2018
Following Friday’s press conference for the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the annual plenary sessions of China’s top legislative and political advisory bodies will kick off in the usual fashion on Saturday. That means China’s eight non-communist parties, known in Mandarin as the “democratic parties,” will no doubt become the focus of public attention once again.
China’s democratic parties have been described as empty shells by Western media outlets in their coverage of the Two Sessions over the past decades. The assumption stems from the fact that democratic parties are not vested with substantial power by the Chinese Constitution, despite their constitutionally endowed position. However, in reality, democratic parties and their political functions are much more dynamic than Western media coverage conveys.
To figure out whether democratic parties are merely insignificant decoration in China’s political system, we should examine the way they participate in politics. Democratic parties now have a combined membership of more than 700,000 nationwide. I’m one of them. I joined the Jiusan Society, which is mainly composed of intellectuals in the fields of science, education, medicine, and culture, in Beijing in 2015. Joining a democratic party is not an easy thing; applicants not only have to be at least mid-level intellectuals or entrepreneurs, but also need a reference from senior party members. The latter is the most difficult part.
Despite the difficulty, one of the major incentives for joining the democratic parties is the chance to have a say in public affairs. At the local level, the party committee has improved the mechanism of political consultation to encourage members to contribute useful policy suggestions. Take the Jiusan Society as an example. Ordinary party members like me have two major ways to participate in government affairs. The first option is to do a policy survey. To do so, members need to draft a brief plan, including problem description, object, and research design, to their local branch, to be submitted each March. If project plans are approved, members will receive research funding and have six months to finish the research.
A meeting is then held around September to discuss the research results. I once attended this meeting, and the heated debates went far beyond my expectations. The then-vice chairman of Jiusan Society urged members to provide workable suggestions rather than empty words. He criticized some members for spending too much time on describing problems rather than providing useful solutions.
Unlike the stereotypical portrayal by Western media, members of democratic parties express very critical opinions at internal meetings. “In order to put forward constructive suggestions, we speak pretty openly to each other behind closed doors,” a central committee member of Jiusan Society said to me. This is true not only for discussions of local policy but also state policy – scientists from Jiusan Society raised the earliest warnings about the Three Gorges Dam, China’s ambitious hydropower plant, and suggested efforts to preserve the ecosystem and make use of resources in a rational manner.
Compared with the time-consuming policy survey, the second way to participate in the policy process is a special reporting system that enables members to provide policy suggestions rapidly. Whenever party members identify a problem, they can quickly file a report of approximately 1,000 words, including a summary of the problem, analysis, and advice, and submit it to the Department of Political Participation of their local party branch. Based on quality of the report, the reviewer decides whether refer it to higher authorities, namely the local committee of the CPPCC or the United Front Work Department, which manages relations with the non-communist parties. The local government will adopt good suggestions. For example, in 2008, the Beijing city government took the advice proposed by a member of Jiusan Society on removing the disorganized billboards near the Beijing international airport.
The policy survey and reporting systems are highly complementary. Not long ago, I had some suggestions on improving the regulation of cryptocurrency in China. The officials with the Department of Political Participation of Jiusan Society’s Beijing Bureau encouraged me to submit my advice via the special reporting system, so they could evaluate it quickly. If the report is thoughtful and feasible, it would be referred to United Front Work Department of Beijing city. Or I could apply for funding in March to conduct a thorough policy survey.
At the local level, most of the suggestions that are presented to upper level authorities could either be adopted or added to the party’s proposals to the CPPCC. Previous experiences indicate that addressing high-profile issues and loopholes in policy or law means a better chance to succeed in influencing policy. In the case that your suggestions are not accepted, though, you will receive proper explanation.
Beyond that, senior member of democratic parties, who are elected as CPPCC members, have the right to directly submit proposals to both the local and national committee. More than that, despite the democratic parties’ limited constitutional powers, the leaders of democratic parties at each level have substantial influence over policymaking. This is empowered by the Opinions on Strengthening the Work of the CPPCC, which holds that political consultation is an integral part of policy legitimacy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and state, so both CCP and state officials should consult the leaders of democratic parties as they make new policy. Indeed, a senior party member of the Jiusan Society told me that CCP and state officials actively seek policy suggestions from democratic parties on a variety of subjects, ranging from the government and party work reports, to socioeconomic development plans to important personnel appointments.
For instance, I attended a Jiusan Society internal meeting in 2015. At the end of the meeting, the then-vice chairman revealed that the government was about to abolish the one-child policy. Officials had asked democratic parties to provide suggestions on dealing with the associated problems caused by the repeal, such as the shortfall of education resources.
Both ordinary and senior members of democratic parties have various methods to substantially participate in politics, which helps ensure scientific and democratic policymaking at the local and state levels alike, as well as improving the ruling party’s governance capacity. Therefore, it’s necessary to both value and make use of the great potential of democratic parties.
To tap into this potential, one of the problems that needs to be addressed is the low profile of the non-communist parties. China’s democratic parties are criticized for being invisible to the general public for much of the year, even though they actively participate in politics as mentioned above. One of my friends complained that it’s hard to know who the members of democratic parties in his community are, let alone how to report problems to them. Since the budgets of democratic parties depend on fiscal revenue, they should ensure taxpayers know how much money they spend and how much they contribute to public affairs. Moreover, the democratic parties should harness convenient platforms like social media to facilitate communication and connection with the public, as well as improving transparency.
Xiaofeng Wang is the Fulbright Humphrey Fellow at Arizona State University. Prior to that, Wang was a Beijing-based journalist. - THE DIPLOMAT"
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| CHINA 2014 … PROSPERITY FOR THE CHINESE TODAY China’s dictatorship is haunted by the prospect of a new mass revolt Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info June 4th marks the 25th anniversary of the bloody massacre in Beijing that ended the mass student-led democracy movement which came close to toppling the Chinese dictatorship. This year on the night of June 4, hundreds of thousands will fill Hong Kong’s Victoria Park for the city’s annual commemoration of these events. Less than one hour’s train ride away, however, in mainland China, no protests will be tolerated and all mention of the 1989 movement has been erased from the media and internet. As Chen Mo explained in our book Seven Weeks That Shook the World(chinaworker.info 2009) “It is almost as if ‘89’, ‘June 4th’ and the ‘Tiananmen Incident’ never happened, and the subsequent generations have unfortunately been given amnesia-at-birth.” This book, which includes Stephen Jolly’s excellent ‘Eyewitness in China’, written after participating in these events, can be ordered from chinaworker.info. … for more, go to https://www.socialistalternative.org/2014/06/04/china-1989-25-years-since-the-mass-democracy-movement/ |
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