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Been hearing about China in the news lately. China's human rights issues have been talked about. This got me remembering how people were assuming how if China became more capitalist this would then lead to more democracy. This must be why so many American business people got into doing business in China even with their human rights issues. Do these U.S. businesses need to rethink things?
Quote:
Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, says that instead of democratizing China, economic growth helped the party strengthen its grip on power.
The delusions are in the minds if the usual collection of special snowflakes.
The number of fully-tested democratic nations on this globe, while advancing, remains small. Most Americans still don't recognize that a large portion of the Russian population, to cite one example, is still dispersed in rural regions not much changed from the days of the Cold War. The infrastructure is being developed, but the legacy of an overbuilt, corrupt and abusive central government is still there, and the man or woman in the street is still wary of it.
And that's nothing compared to what has to happen in China.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 01-19-2022 at 08:05 AM..
Been hearing about China in the news lately. China's human rights issues have been talked about. This got me remembering how people were assuming how if China became more capitalist this would then lead to more democracy. This must be why so many American business people got into doing business in China even with their human rights issues. Do these U.S. businesses need to rethink things?
It's all about the bottom line when it comes to business. Businesses flocked to China because they could make money. Had nothing to do with brining human rights. At the time there was no other country with such an abundance of cheap labor, low barrier to entry, lack of environmental protections, quick access to resources, and easy logistics. Add in a rapidly expanding population that was becoming wealthier providing a huge future customer base, China was and still is a businessman dream.
Human rights is a tool used by established countries to gather public support for confrontation against adversaries. This is the reason why "human rights" violations are ignored for one country, yet vehemently applied to others. Also no one can ever truly define what is a "human right" or where these rights come from, therefore, the established country can operate under vagueness or ambiguity.
Scholars made the following mistakes
1) Assuming that democracy and capitalism are explicitly linked. You can have capitalism in authoritative states.
2) Assuming China would follow the same path as other successful East and Southeast countries (S Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore). They neglected to notice, that other countries had at some point been under the control or greatly influenced (as with S Korea and Taiwan) by a Western nation This allowed Western ideas to take hold in these countries. China was never under Western occupation and therefore was able to retain its cultural elements which lean more towards authoritative style governments.
Of course, democracy doesn't mean more freedom inherently as far as individual, day-to-day freedoms go. I do wonder if a majority of the Chinese public, if allowed honest votes, would substantially expand personal freedoms
Of course, democracy doesn't mean more freedom inherently as far as individual, day-to-day freedoms go. I do wonder if a majority of the Chinese public, if allowed honest votes, would substantially expand personal freedoms
The end of the day regardless of the political system people will choose security and prosperity. Whether that's delivered by a liberal democracy or a authoritative regime. Freedoms can be subjective. The right to own a gun is a second amendment here, but for most of the world, the right to own a gun seems crazy. Even if voting were allowed, I doubt much would change from status quo due Chinese society evolving under a more community/greater good banner compared to here in the West.
As mentioned above, Chinese citizens at this point are more than happy to sacrifice personal freedoms for prosperity. You must also consider the culture, as China (apart from Taiwan, and that was a gradual process as well) has never endured anything but an authoritative regime even under it's Republic phase in the early 20th century.
But I don't remember that anyone expected the Chinese version of capitalism to result in democracy, or if they did then that thought certainly ended in the Tiananmen Square protests and it's brutal suppression in 1989.
None of this troubles the American businessman, even the ones that are on this "corporate woke" campaign you see in TV ads seem to conveniently forget they are doing business in an authoritative regime accused of human rights violations including charges of genocide. Instead they simply see a market with 1.5 billion consumers. The practice of China IP theft has them a bit nervous however.
On paper they are a parliamentary republic based on the Westminster system. Now in practice I agree with you their version of democracy is a bit questionable, with the ruling party having never lost an election. Basically there are elections, but the deck is greatly stacked in favor of the ruling party.
I was wondering if the many Chinese students who attend western schools would be influenced by the democracy that they've been exposed to in the U.S? But even in the U.S the Chinese government has informants working against students who become democratic in their thinking.
Quote:
At Brandeis University near Boston, Chinese students mobilized last year to sabotage an online panel about atrocities against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang...
On paper they are a parliamentary republic based on the Westminster system. Now in practice I agree with you their version of democracy is a bit questionable, with the ruling party having never lost an election. Basically there are elections, but the deck is greatly stacked in favor of the ruling party.
It's not a bit questionable. It simply isn't. Having elections =/= democracy. Singapore's constituencies are a joke. The ruling party holds 83 of 92 seats in the Parliament. Another country where the ruling party holds similar proportion of all Parliament seats is Russia. Would you call Russia a democracy?
They also ban protests. If that can be called a democracy pigs can fly.
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