I’m not from the US and I’d say both are pretty bad. US democracy seems to be in shambles and their interference around the world is well known. China democracy is non existent and the treatment of their own citizens is questionable.
China practices democracy a little bit differently, and I’d argue more democratically.
Instead of fighting over candidates in a show fight where you don’t get a say in policy, China operates under democratic centralism where you come to a consensus on actual policy. As for treatment of their own citizens, the Chinese government has been making strides to improve the lives of their average citizen, and this does show in statistics.
I know I’m in the wrong community for this but I’m interested in your take. I thought China was an authoritarian one-party state. To be a democracy don’t the people need to be able to vote for their elected officials? I see China as democratic as Russia in that sense, with a single party being kept in power for decades with the intent of eternity.
I thought China was an authoritarian one-party state
Both China and the DPRK are led by multi-party popular fronts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_China
Cuba, Vietnam and Laos are one-party Marxist-Leninist states.
Others have commented here telling you more about China’s system (technically not a one party state, though CPC rule is constitutionally protected; Russia also has multiple parties).
I encourage you to continue interrogating your own understanding of democracy beyond what the US insists democracy is. Is it democratic to allow voting in a system that only has real room for two corrupt bourgeois parties that only serve the billionaire class while its citizens have no functional say in the matters that actual affect them? What about all of the people living in the vassal states and colonies of US empire? Do they get a vote? Does it make sense for the “leader of the free world” to have the largest prison population in the entire world, a heavily racialized one at that? How can you honestly and confidently claim that the US is democratic when you look beyond the theatre that happens every 4 years? (I’m not saying you’re claiming this, I’m just confronting you with the question).
What about the Nordic-model countries that the Western left loves to point to as “democratic socialism”? They have multiple parties, even explicitly fascist/white nationalist parties that participate in the legislature. Is it democratic to allow explicitly fascist political forces a say in the political system? Is it democratic for Nordic countires to support their welfare states using the spoils of imperialism while the US, Britain and France do the dirty work of military occupations and regime change operations?
Going back to the US, do you think the founding fathers would have allowed a monarchist party a say when establishing the expectations of the liberal democratic system? Of course not. If we are to understand socialism as a progressive economic system that will supplant capitalism, then why should China, a socialist country, allow a liberal capitalist party a say in their politics either?
Lastly, why do you think democracy is totally impossible within the confines of a one-party state? Have you thought that maybe without designated factions, that one party would not have any other party to blame things on when things go poorly? Have you considered that there might actually be more incentive for a one-party state to remain accountable to the people?
I thought China was an authoritarian one-party state. To be a democracy don’t the people need to be able to vote for their elected officials? I see China as democratic as Russia in that sense, with a single party being kept in power for decades with the intent of eternity.
China is a democracy, they vote for represnatives, they then vote for policy. Its a one ideological state, sure; the people vote for that every year. America is also a one ideological state too, need I remind you communists are banned in the US and the red scare was literally the american state deporting people for even being suspected of being communist.
Only having one ideology isnt a unique feature of chinese democracy; its the reality in most neo-liberal democracies too.
Sure, in some countries in neo-liberal systems do they tolerate socialists or other ideologies, but name one time this has succeeded in beating a neo-liberal party; neo-liberal countries have dominated every aparatus of society, through the media to education, the odds are so heavily stacked in there favour that it is in practice one party.
