6 ms·

Is this sarcasm? While no authoritarian government can exist with no consent of the government, the PRC has no legal vehicle for citizens to disagree with the s

Is this sarcasm? While no authoritarian government can exist with no consent of the government, the PRC has no legal vehicle for citizens to disagree with the state.

coldtea 7y ago
Huh? If we're strict, it has plenty of avenues, including courts and elections [1]. They might be nominal, but legally they do exist and operate: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  Elections are meaningless if the public can't decide who runs.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    You are too hard on US elections. People wanted Bernie and got HRC.
    - beat 7y ago
      More people wanted HRC, though. That's how elections work. It doesn't mean the loser is unpopular or broadly disliked. It means there's another candidate voters like better (or dislike less).
      - StreamBright 7y ago
        Nope, they did not. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/11/democrat-primary-elections-need-reform https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/11/democr... Even Warren agrees DNC was rigged against Sanders. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/04/politics/bernie-sanders-2016-election-donna-brazile/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/04/politics/bernie-sanders-2... https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2fposteverything%2fwp%2f2016%2f11%2f10%2fhillary-clinton-lost-bernie-sanders-could-have-won%2f%3f https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2f...
        beat 7y ago
        My eyes are rolling so hard right now. Primaries/caucuses are managed at the state level, and are not controlled directly or indirectly by the DNC. "Bias" means nothing without action, and the claims of "cheating" are completely unfounded (and insulting to the countless thousands of party volunteers who run caucuses and serve as election judges). Bernie lost by three million votes. Not because of cheating, but because more voters wanted HRC. Period. edit: Bernie has been languishing at 12-18% or so in the polls since the 2020 race really got rolling. That's Bernie's real base. Losing 2-1 to a colorless apparatchik like Biden does not suggest a revolutionary groundswell for Bernie. Rather, it suggests that the success he had in 2016 was due to other factors. I'd argue that more than half his votes weren't pro-Bernie, but rather anti-Hillary, a symbol of defiance and frustration against her near-coronation by the DNC, without giving actual rank and file voters a say (basically, by discouraging other A-list candidates from running against her).
        StreamBright 7y ago
        >> Bernie lost by three million votes. Just like Obama lost by couple of hundred thousand votes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presiden... "What’s a political party for, anyway? It’s easy to bash the DNC’s joint fundraising agreement with Clinton, or the leaked emails showing that DNC staffers were supportive of Clinton and frustrated by Sanders. The DNC is meant to be a neutral presence in party primaries, and even minor deviations from that position are affronts. The harder question in the larger one: What role should party elites play in primaries? It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that they fully decided primaries, meeting in smoky back rooms during the political conventions to hash out the next nominee. Before 2016, the reigning political science theory of primaries was called “the party decides,” and it argued that political elites still largely decided party primaries, albeit through influencing voters rather than controlling convention delegates." https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/... I think it is quite obvious that the DNC did everything in their power to get rid of Sanders and put HRC into position. The problem was that she was unelectable and many Bernie voters just decided that Trump will be a better president than HRC (and many unfortunate other things, like HRC's popularity went down after every public appearance, all the left leaning social media declared HRC president, etc.).
  - guerrilla 7y ago
    By public, do you mean the party elites and corporate newsmedia, like here in the west?
- pimmen 7y ago
  If you cannot vote for a different party that doesn’t share the values of the CCP, and can’t form one yourself, elections are meaningless rubber stamps.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    You don't need parties to have elections, just like how elections within a single community or organization don't have political parties, just candidates and fractions (voters/executives with different opinions). As for the values of the CCP, consider them like the Constitution in the US or the values of the "founding fathers". People don't get to change those either in any direct democratic way (but through a slow, ideological and legal process). Besides, 1 party vs 2 parties alternating seems hardly much of a difference...
    - pimmen 7y ago
      Of course you don’t need parties to hold elections, that’s not what I said. I said they become meaningless rubber stamps since all the different factions are curated by the party establishment to the best of their abilities making any challenge to the establishment at best painfully slow (as in people have to be replaced through death or expulsuon for any blockage to stop) and at worst impossible. I’m not talking about changing the constitution or policy in a direct democratic way, changing them in a representative way through Western style democracy would be a vast improvement. Because the constitutions of Western governments still leave a lot of political room to manouver, such as taxation. In the US, stuff like that was left out of the constitution because the founding fathers knew they didn’t have all the answers, no one does. Especially not the CCP. Instead, things like basic human rights such as the right to not get locked up and brainwashed because of your religion is enshrined in the constitutions of Western style democracies because unlike taxation or government ownership of enterprises that is really important to make sure all individuals matter. And yes, changing the constitution is very slow, but if you have a multitude of differences with the government and the majority population, you can still progress politically and change one thing about the constitution where you do find common ground if you’re a competent politician. That’s far faster, more efficient and meritocratic than having to share the vast majority of policy with just one arbitrary party leadership to even be elligeble to run. All of these advantages are still present even with a two party system, but I prefer the multiparty, parliamentary system we have here in the Nordic countries.
andrekandre 7y ago
that’s basically true, but it does seem china does have some nominal democracy at local levels, which then in turn elect upper levels and so on [1] so, while indirect, there does seem some nominal way to disagree as you say [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China
- analognoise 7y ago
  You say disagree, I say disappear. Tomato, authoritarian regime.
- wyuenho 7y ago
  One thing you do have to realize is, the Chinese are very good at keeping up the appearances. While there are local elections, there's usually no right to stand for elections. These so-called elections, generally has only 1 candidate, or a few that are all communist members, with pretty much the same views. "Elections" where people can't stand to be elected freely are not elections, they are just some elaborate ceremony to rubber-stamp government official appointments.
  - andrekandre 7y ago
    thanks for the reply that is unfortunate, it seems anywhere you go people try to subvert democracy (to different degrees of success)... i guess that’s why they call it “eternal vigilance”
nailer 7y ago
Why would it be sarcasm? > PRC has no legal vehicle for citizens to disagree with the state. Yes that's true. There should be one. People in Beijing and Shanghai and everywhere else deserve leaders that actually represent them too. Do you think otherwise?
claudiawerner 7y ago
Although it's nothing like China, by what means can the average citizen in the UK, for example, raise an issue if their representative is of another party? Example: I care about issue x, but the people I live around don't. So I create a petition on the parliament petition website. Just like every other petition to date (to my knowledge) no change comes about because of it. How can I, as an individual citizen, disagree? Some philosophers of democracy argue that voting isn't worth the cost of actually voting, since your vote is unlikely to make a change in the first place.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  You can run for office. Of course, you need to convince enough other people to agree with you.
- pimmen 7y ago
  Lots of things beside petitions. You can run for office. If you find no parties that share any of your values, form one. You can raise the issue in the media which would pressure the government. You would probably not get kidnapped while on vacation in Thailand, and then get locked up without a trial and a forced confession through torture, just for criticizing the UK government. If it's something that affects an entire class of people, such as a certain profession, you could organize something like a labor strike or a protest. And if all else fails, you could actually just break an existing law you think is unfair. You would get an actual trial administered by an independent justice system where you get to defend your actions, you can then argue that the law is unfair and restricted your life in a cruel way. Sadly, it had to come to measures like this for LGBT rights to improve in the UK. You also mentioned "but the people I live around don't". In China it wouldn't matter if everyone around you care about the issue, something will only happen if the CCP deems it necessary.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Every party member can petition the state to make changes.
- pimmen 7y ago
  Can I join the party if I fundamentally do not agree with its values? Such as, I think the party should have absolutely no control over the army, the judicial process, the selection of ministers, influence over state controlled media and many, many other presumably big points of contention? Because in the West you can form a party even if you fundamentally disagree with the parties already in power. If you go back a few decades the green parties and the nationalistic parties as we know them today didn't exist in most of Europe and were formed as reactions to feeling of the government not sharing the same fundamental values.
incognition 7y ago
Well to paraphase, governments are people too.. most middle class folks in China are nominally CCP members themselves.. operationally CCP maps to a corporation in org chart then a democracy of course..
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  Same difference apparently: https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/file/472/download?token=Bdon5_Pf https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/file/472/download?token=Bd... > Every single day in China, depending on which statistic from the Chinese government is used, an average of 16 to 76 people are placed into the new liuzhi detention system and, by definition, disappeared. [..] > For decades, the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful anti-graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), used the shuanggui detention system to hold suspects for up to six months without charge. Enforcers were not answerable to any state laws. The use of shuanggui has been a strictly internal affair for the members of the CCP, it is completely separate from the state or judicial system. The meant that the normal protections afforded to those detained within the judicial system and rights, such as access to legal counsel, were not available to shuanggui detainees. Once in these facilities, you have no right to have your family informed of your whereabouts. You simply disappeared. > At the National People’s Congress in March 2018, China introduced a constitutional amendment to establish the National Supervision Commission (NSC), based on the new National Supervision Law (NSL), effectively replacing shuanggui with liuzhi. In practical terms, the biggest change was the NSC has authority over not just the 90 million or so CCP members but state employees and anyone working for an organization that manages public affairs or is involved in public affairs in any manner, right down to the village level. The style of Investigation and detention, despite the change in name, remain the same.

Is this sarcasm? While no authoritarian government can exist with no consent of the government, the PRC has no legal vehicle for citizens to disagree with the state.

coldtea 7y ago

Huh? If we're strict, it has plenty of avenues, including courts and elections [1]. They might be nominal, but legally they do exist and operate: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China

i_am_proteus 7y ago
Elections are meaningless if the public can't decide who runs.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  You are too hard on US elections. People wanted Bernie and got HRC.
  - beat 7y ago
    More people wanted HRC, though. That's how elections work. It doesn't mean the loser is unpopular or broadly disliked. It means there's another candidate voters like better (or dislike less).
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      Nope, they did not. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/11/democrat-primary-elections-need-reform https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/11/democr... Even Warren agrees DNC was rigged against Sanders. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/04/politics/bernie-sanders-2016-election-donna-brazile/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/04/politics/bernie-sanders-2... https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2fposteverything%2fwp%2f2016%2f11%2f10%2fhillary-clinton-lost-bernie-sanders-could-have-won%2f%3f https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2f...
      - beat 7y ago
        My eyes are rolling so hard right now. Primaries/caucuses are managed at the state level, and are not controlled directly or indirectly by the DNC. "Bias" means nothing without action, and the claims of "cheating" are completely unfounded (and insulting to the countless thousands of party volunteers who run caucuses and serve as election judges). Bernie lost by three million votes. Not because of cheating, but because more voters wanted HRC. Period. edit: Bernie has been languishing at 12-18% or so in the polls since the 2020 race really got rolling. That's Bernie's real base. Losing 2-1 to a colorless apparatchik like Biden does not suggest a revolutionary groundswell for Bernie. Rather, it suggests that the success he had in 2016 was due to other factors. I'd argue that more than half his votes weren't pro-Bernie, but rather anti-Hillary, a symbol of defiance and frustration against her near-coronation by the DNC, without giving actual rank and file voters a say (basically, by discouraging other A-list candidates from running against her).
        StreamBright 7y ago
        >> Bernie lost by three million votes. Just like Obama lost by couple of hundred thousand votes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presiden... "What’s a political party for, anyway? It’s easy to bash the DNC’s joint fundraising agreement with Clinton, or the leaked emails showing that DNC staffers were supportive of Clinton and frustrated by Sanders. The DNC is meant to be a neutral presence in party primaries, and even minor deviations from that position are affronts. The harder question in the larger one: What role should party elites play in primaries? It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that they fully decided primaries, meeting in smoky back rooms during the political conventions to hash out the next nominee. Before 2016, the reigning political science theory of primaries was called “the party decides,” and it argued that political elites still largely decided party primaries, albeit through influencing voters rather than controlling convention delegates." https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/... I think it is quite obvious that the DNC did everything in their power to get rid of Sanders and put HRC into position. The problem was that she was unelectable and many Bernie voters just decided that Trump will be a better president than HRC (and many unfortunate other things, like HRC's popularity went down after every public appearance, all the left leaning social media declared HRC president, etc.).
- guerrilla 7y ago
  By public, do you mean the party elites and corporate newsmedia, like here in the west?
pimmen 7y ago
If you cannot vote for a different party that doesn’t share the values of the CCP, and can’t form one yourself, elections are meaningless rubber stamps.
- coldtea 7y ago
  You don't need parties to have elections, just like how elections within a single community or organization don't have political parties, just candidates and fractions (voters/executives with different opinions). As for the values of the CCP, consider them like the Constitution in the US or the values of the "founding fathers". People don't get to change those either in any direct democratic way (but through a slow, ideological and legal process). Besides, 1 party vs 2 parties alternating seems hardly much of a difference...
  - pimmen 7y ago
    Of course you don’t need parties to hold elections, that’s not what I said. I said they become meaningless rubber stamps since all the different factions are curated by the party establishment to the best of their abilities making any challenge to the establishment at best painfully slow (as in people have to be replaced through death or expulsuon for any blockage to stop) and at worst impossible. I’m not talking about changing the constitution or policy in a direct democratic way, changing them in a representative way through Western style democracy would be a vast improvement. Because the constitutions of Western governments still leave a lot of political room to manouver, such as taxation. In the US, stuff like that was left out of the constitution because the founding fathers knew they didn’t have all the answers, no one does. Especially not the CCP. Instead, things like basic human rights such as the right to not get locked up and brainwashed because of your religion is enshrined in the constitutions of Western style democracies because unlike taxation or government ownership of enterprises that is really important to make sure all individuals matter. And yes, changing the constitution is very slow, but if you have a multitude of differences with the government and the majority population, you can still progress politically and change one thing about the constitution where you do find common ground if you’re a competent politician. That’s far faster, more efficient and meritocratic than having to share the vast majority of policy with just one arbitrary party leadership to even be elligeble to run. All of these advantages are still present even with a two party system, but I prefer the multiparty, parliamentary system we have here in the Nordic countries.

andrekandre 7y ago

that’s basically true, but it does seem china does have some nominal democracy at local levels, which then in turn elect upper levels and so on [1] so, while indirect, there does seem some nominal way to disagree as you say [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China

analognoise 7y ago
You say disagree, I say disappear. Tomato, authoritarian regime.
wyuenho 7y ago
One thing you do have to realize is, the Chinese are very good at keeping up the appearances. While there are local elections, there's usually no right to stand for elections. These so-called elections, generally has only 1 candidate, or a few that are all communist members, with pretty much the same views. "Elections" where people can't stand to be elected freely are not elections, they are just some elaborate ceremony to rubber-stamp government official appointments.
- andrekandre 7y ago
  thanks for the reply that is unfortunate, it seems anywhere you go people try to subvert democracy (to different degrees of success)... i guess that’s why they call it “eternal vigilance”

nailer 7y ago

Why would it be sarcasm? > PRC has no legal vehicle for citizens to disagree with the state. Yes that's true. There should be one. People in Beijing and Shanghai and everywhere else deserve leaders that actually represent them too. Do you think otherwise?

claudiawerner 7y ago

Although it's nothing like China, by what means can the average citizen in the UK, for example, raise an issue if their representative is of another party? Example: I care about issue x, but the people I live around don't. So I create a petition on the parliament petition website. Just like every other petition to date (to my knowledge) no change comes about because of it. How can I, as an individual citizen, disagree? Some philosophers of democracy argue that voting isn't worth the cost of actually voting, since your vote is unlikely to make a change in the first place.

CalRobert 7y ago
You can run for office. Of course, you need to convince enough other people to agree with you.
pimmen 7y ago
Lots of things beside petitions. You can run for office. If you find no parties that share any of your values, form one. You can raise the issue in the media which would pressure the government. You would probably not get kidnapped while on vacation in Thailand, and then get locked up without a trial and a forced confession through torture, just for criticizing the UK government. If it's something that affects an entire class of people, such as a certain profession, you could organize something like a labor strike or a protest. And if all else fails, you could actually just break an existing law you think is unfair. You would get an actual trial administered by an independent justice system where you get to defend your actions, you can then argue that the law is unfair and restricted your life in a cruel way. Sadly, it had to come to measures like this for LGBT rights to improve in the UK. You also mentioned "but the people I live around don't". In China it wouldn't matter if everyone around you care about the issue, something will only happen if the CCP deems it necessary.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Every party member can petition the state to make changes.

pimmen 7y ago
Can I join the party if I fundamentally do not agree with its values? Such as, I think the party should have absolutely no control over the army, the judicial process, the selection of ministers, influence over state controlled media and many, many other presumably big points of contention? Because in the West you can form a party even if you fundamentally disagree with the parties already in power. If you go back a few decades the green parties and the nationalistic parties as we know them today didn't exist in most of Europe and were formed as reactions to feeling of the government not sharing the same fundamental values.

incognition 7y ago

Well to paraphase, governments are people too.. most middle class folks in China are nominally CCP members themselves.. operationally CCP maps to a corporation in org chart then a democracy of course..

PavlovsCat 7y ago
Same difference apparently: https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/file/472/download?token=Bdon5_Pf https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/file/472/download?token=Bd... > Every single day in China, depending on which statistic from the Chinese government is used, an average of 16 to 76 people are placed into the new liuzhi detention system and, by definition, disappeared. [..] > For decades, the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful anti-graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), used the shuanggui detention system to hold suspects for up to six months without charge. Enforcers were not answerable to any state laws. The use of shuanggui has been a strictly internal affair for the members of the CCP, it is completely separate from the state or judicial system. The meant that the normal protections afforded to those detained within the judicial system and rights, such as access to legal counsel, were not available to shuanggui detainees. Once in these facilities, you have no right to have your family informed of your whereabouts. You simply disappeared. > At the National People’s Congress in March 2018, China introduced a constitutional amendment to establish the National Supervision Commission (NSC), based on the new National Supervision Law (NSL), effectively replacing shuanggui with liuzhi. In practical terms, the biggest change was the NSC has authority over not just the 90 million or so CCP members but state employees and anyone working for an organization that manages public affairs or is involved in public affairs in any manner, right down to the village level. The style of Investigation and detention, despite the change in name, remain the same.