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When I said communist, I meant it with an obvious context to China - essentially not meant to say a communist society(as in socialism) but instead a communist s
by bluethunder 16y ago
When I said communist, I meant it with an obvious context to China - essentially not meant to say a communist society(as in socialism) but instead a communist single-party government.
Similarly for Singapore. I understand China to be a lot more capitalist than India for example.
It is true that Japan and a lot of european countries have done better with democracy, however they typically have a lot homogenous populations - very unlike of bigger countries like the US, China and India and also unlike some smaller countries like Singapore.
Even then there is little reason to believe if a communist form of government would not have done better in these countries also.
- drinian 16y agoI would argue that Singapore espouses democratic ideals like transparency, tolerance, a fair court system, etc., even if their government has effectively gerrymandered the city's population to ensure the ruling party stays in place. The elections are certainly not shams, and the ruling party would win them in a fair fight regardless. It is a very Confucian form of democratic society, but democracy it is. I do think that China's more enlightened leaders are probably hoping that they'll be able to use Singapore as a model for their own society at some point in the future.
- bluethunder 16y agoI am essentially questioning the fact that 'transparency, tolerance and a fair court system' might not really be democratic ideals, or rather cannot consistently be associated with democracy. It is definitely possibly to acheive all of them in a communist system of governance. India is a democracy, but the state is hardly transparent, tolerance has given way to appeasement for vote politics and the court/legal system does not work anymore.