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(Part 1) Okay this is complicated to explain to a western perspective so I have to split my answer in multiple parts. First, about China's political system. Ch

(Part 1) Okay this is complicated to explain to a western perspective so I have to split my answer in multiple parts. First, about China's political system. China is often described as totalitarian or a dictatorship. And certainly there is less political freedom than in many western countries. But "totalitarian/dictatorship" doesn't accurately describe it: it's better described as a political meritocracy. China's system has: - representation - voting (in a hierarchical manner) - consultation of the people (this one has become very big nowadays) - multiple parties (though CCP leads the pack, the other parties aren't empty zombies either) This interview with professor Daniel A. Bell, dean at School of Political Science and Public Administration of Shandong University, explains how the system works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ZzlPoapB4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ZzlPoapB4 (full disclosure: interview by CGTN, Chinese state media) At 13:30 he explains why it makes no sense to lump China together with the likes of North Korea and Saudi Arabia. An important distinction between the Chinese system and western systems, is that there is no separation of powers ala Trias Politica, in which different bodies and parties limit each others' power. Instead, the Chinese system is much more about collaboration, while at the same time the CCP stays firmly in power. A forced unity, if you will. China's voting system is hierarchical. People vote for a representative at the village level. Those representatives vote for even higher levels. Here is a first-hand account by David Fishman, who is an expert on China's energy sector. https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1428397761142018048 https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/14283977611420180... During his holidays he met a village leader who has 90% election approval rating because he works hard for the benefit of his village. This thread describes how that village leader works, and how this village leader's attitude differs from higher-level governors that tend to be careerists. Fishman also says that in the next village, local democracy has unfortunately not resulted in a good representative. Voting bubbles up to the top legislative body, the National People's Congress (NPC). This body makes national laws. Here is a good explanation video by Einar Tangen, political commentator who advised US, South Korean and Chinese governments (again full disclosure: he's hosted by CGTN): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CpiLcLOTSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CpiLcLOTSg The NPC actively consults lower levels, all the way down to the village level. For example, all new proposals are published through newspapers and people are solicted for opinions. See also this thread: https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/1208042661136850944 https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/120804266113685094... There are 8 parties in China. But their relationship is not antagonistic, i.e. they don't fight for which party gets in power. The voting system selects representatives (people), not parties. The NPC consists of people from multiple parties, though in practice the CCP is the biggest party. Government officials (including the president) are not selected through voting, but through meritocracy. They are promoted to a higher level (e.g. city -> provincial) based on how well they perform against KPIs. Promotion comes with relocation so that you get to experience (and must prove yourself in) different contexts: governing Shanghai is very different from governing the province of Guangdong. This ties in with the "talk is cheap" concept: rather than selecting based on popularity, people would rather see that you prove yourself for 30 years and that you're not full of shit. Xi Jingping began as a village official, he literally had to work in poop (installing a methane tank in a village) early in his multi-decade career. Here are two interesting threads which describe the promotion process: https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/1305784641262026752 https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/130578464126202675... (a general description) and https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/1306991115820695554 https://twitter.com/thinking_panda/status/130699111582069555... (a case study of Hu Chunhua's career, who's the vice premier) This is why Fishman talks about "careerists". Sometimes the interests of the province-level governor's career conflict with the interests of the local village. So the NPC is similar to a parliament. Unlike western parliaments, the NPC's role is not to keep the power of the executive body in check, i.e. they can't oust the president (formally they can but there are technicalities why in practice they can't). Instead, the executive body and the legislative body collaborate more closely than in western systems. In western systems, politicians make proposals as an expression of ideology, and politicians do not have to be qualified in terms of skill or experience. It's the bureaucrats' jobs to implement new ideas. In the Chinese system, politicians consult bureaucrats a lot more, and decisions are made in collaboration rather than "thrown over the wall". As I said, the CCP is the largest party and the NPC can't oust the CCP president. But that doesn't mean the CCP deprives non-CCP members from having a say. They have a body called the CPPCC (Political Consultative Conference) through which they actively consult non-CCP members (so people who either belong to other parties, or don't have an affiliation with any party) for political advice. Even though it "merely" has an advisory role and does not have binding powers, the CCP actively makes use of this body for advice on major political and social issues.

toss1 5y ago
This is a lot of good information you provided and makes a good case for the CCP perhaps being legitimate, or perhaps least-illegitimate govt available given Chinese realities. I'll read up on the references you provided. Like anything, it is not universally bad, and there are many good things it does, and the meritocracy sounds great as you describe it. And the cooperation between the bureaucracy and politicians also sounds way more effective than things are often done in the west. Yet the 8 parties with a non-adversarial relationship sounds like standard authoritarian controlled opposition. Plus, there remain many problems both internally and on the international stage. Internally, you make clear that the goal isn't 100% censorship, but only suppressing anything that might become a movement of it's own, even if apparently favorable to the CCP. And suppressing news that might turn to racist acts against Uyghurs is not a bad thing to do. Yet we still have 'forced reeducation' of a million of them. We still have the 6 year-old Panchin Lama and his family being disappeared 3 days after being recognized by Buddhist religious authorities, and a new CCP-appointed person announced, along with many actions to dilute Tibetean Buddhism. This is straight-up cultural genocide, designed to wipe out a culture in a generation. We also have many wholly unjustified claims of sovereignity in international waters, islands, and Taiwan, for example. They blatantly violate the Hong Kong transfer agreements only a few years after they start. You need only skim the Human Rights Watch reports [1] to see a litany of problems, all systematic, and not one-offs. Not to mention efforts to silence people abroad [2]. They say "don't interfere in our internal affairs" which sounds fine, except that they are actively attempting to annex and eliminate their neighbors. And sure, if they've done so many good works, maybe they could win an election. But since they never put it to the test, I'm still not sure I could call it legitimate. If they didn't have the systematic internal human rights oppression, and systematic international expansionism, I could see it as a legit alternative... but there are these core systematic problems underlying all the good stuff. [1] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/china-and-tibet https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/china... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jan/15/orwellian-china-silencing-dissent-at-home-and-abroad-says-human-rights-chief https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jan/15/orwellian-china-...
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  Glad to see that you're genuinely interested in this topic! I'll also take a look at your articles. I think "least-illegitimate" is key here. There is a philosophy that states that only the actually available options matter, not the theoretically ideal options that never were available in the first place. This ties in with what you said about the CCP taking their ruling position by force. Historically speaking, how the CCP got into power (and how they are composed) is as close to democracy as you get, especially considering the available options. The CCP got into power after the Chinese civil war of 1927-1949. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century, the KMT (Nationalist Party) got into power. But they were both corrupt and incompetent, and their loyalists consisted mostly of the tiny elite, so people revolted. The vast majority of the (poor and rural) population supported the communists. So it's not so much that the CCP took their position by force: they got into their position because they had the overwhelming support of the populace. There were no further options other than Qing (weak, corrupt, incompetent), KMT (slightly less weak, still corrupt & incompetent), the various warlords because China fractured into pieces (each one corrupt and brutal) and the CCP (weak but got support of the majority). The CCP was regarded as the least corrupt because it was the most grass-roots movement. It was a peasant army. Daniel Dumbrill, a Canadian citizen journalist vlogger that lives in Shenzhen, made a video in which he analyzes the CCP's history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxQDezR7Bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxQDezR7Bg His source is the lecture "From Yao to Mao" by history professor Kenneth James Hammond, New Mexico State University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VMEFNcbR0o&t=8m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VMEFNcbR0o&t=8m30s My father-in-law explained it to me like this: 200 years ago, people were at the mercy of an emperor, who ruled by hereditary monarchy. 150 years ago, people were at the mercy of foreign imperialists, who exploited China for their own benefit. Today, the CCP rules, but the CCP consists of normal people and not a dynasty or foreigners, and therefore we have democracy. That last sentence deserves more explanation. The CCP has 95 million members. That's about 5% of the population. This scale means that — even outside the NPC framework — there is a certain amount of people's representation just through party membership. Most party members are normal people who have a normal job outside party membership. For example teacher, factory worker, doctor. Pretty much everybody has a relative that's a party member. Party members are expected to work for the greater good. During the COVID epidemic in 2020, many frontline workers were party members. Not few of them either got sick or died. The CCP just can't be compared to parties in western systems, it's conceptually very different. I think the name "party" is a misnomer: it's more like the fabric of the entire society. You say that it's necessary to make a distinction between people and government. But in the Chinese case, just by the sheer size of party membership, this distinction is truly very difficult to determine. --- Regarding your question about whether people know about Tiananmen and what they think: I have a radical statement to make. The 1989 Tiananmen protests succeeded. Not in the sense of overthrowing the government, but in the sense that the government realized that something big was going on and that people were unhappy. In response, they accelerated economic reforms and got more serious about improving people's lives. That succeeded. This ties in a bit with what I previously said about "censorship doesn't mean that the government won't deliver". I've heard somebody explain censorship of 1989 as follows: the government is ashamed of themselves and that's why they'd rather not talk about it. But they'd still quietly do their job and address the grievances. The Tiananmen event isn't talked about much in Chinese society. That's because, in contrast to the west, it's not known as a big scandal. A lot of the protesters have moved on, exactly because it succeeded per my above definition. Some of them regretted taking part and thought they were too naive. Nowadays, the location of Tiananmen is a popular tourist spot. People don't primarily associate the location with the 1989 event. And the reason why it's not a big scandal is because it wasn't a massacre. There were fights yes, there were people that got injured or died yes, but it wasn't "tanks rolling over people" and "soldiers firing into crowds". You know the famous Tank Man photo, right? Western mainstream media usually only shows that photo, or a short clip, with the implication that the man died because he was ran over. Well here's the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk The man was never run over! The tank was trying to avoid him. The man even climbed on the tank, had a conversation with the soldier, and then the man left. Nothing happened to him. Imagine doing the same thing in a western country: you'd be shot before you even approach the tank. This is such a huge contrast with how western mainstream media characterizes 1989, that I question their entire narrative. Leaked cables confirm that there was no massacre in the sense of the mainstream characterization of the event: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142... There were still people killed outside the square. But it looked more like a riot that got out of hand, rather than "government one-sidedly massacres innocent people". For example, prior to the crackdown, people attacked and lynched soldiers. There are photos of burned tanks and burned soldiers. This documentary analyzes the mainstream reporting of the event and critizes how it's characterized. The interesting thing is that his critique is based solely on western sources. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idv8Ne0xeTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idv8Ne0xeTo When I look at this documentary, I see that there was a lot of disingenuity in the protests — many protesters didn't know what they were doing and what they were asking, and blindly followed idealistic talking points with no regard for practical concerns, which is why from time to time I hear stories about former protesters being ashamed of how naive they were. It also looked like that the government exercised restraint as much as they could and knew how to, back at the time. The protests raged on for many days but got increasingly tense. The government tried multiple times to cool down the protesters. Daniel Dumbrill interviewed a former Tiananmen protester. This is also a very interesting conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh2gLRUC6hc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh2gLRUC6hc

toss1 5y ago

This is a lot of good information you provided and makes a good case for the CCP perhaps being legitimate, or perhaps least-illegitimate govt available given Chinese realities. I'll read up on the references you provided. Like anything, it is not universally bad, and there are many good things it does, and the meritocracy sounds great as you describe it. And the cooperation between the bureaucracy and politicians also sounds way more effective than things are often done in the west. Yet the 8 parties with a non-adversarial relationship sounds like standard authoritarian controlled opposition. Plus, there remain many problems both internally and on the international stage. Internally, you make clear that the goal isn't 100% censorship, but only suppressing anything that might become a movement of it's own, even if apparently favorable to the CCP. And suppressing news that might turn to racist acts against Uyghurs is not a bad thing to do. Yet we still have 'forced reeducation' of a million of them. We still have the 6 year-old Panchin Lama and his family being disappeared 3 days after being recognized by Buddhist religious authorities, and a new CCP-appointed person announced, along with many actions to dilute Tibetean Buddhism. This is straight-up cultural genocide, designed to wipe out a culture in a generation. We also have many wholly unjustified claims of sovereignity in international waters, islands, and Taiwan, for example. They blatantly violate the Hong Kong transfer agreements only a few years after they start. You need only skim the Human Rights Watch reports [1] to see a litany of problems, all systematic, and not one-offs. Not to mention efforts to silence people abroad [2]. They say "don't interfere in our internal affairs" which sounds fine, except that they are actively attempting to annex and eliminate their neighbors. And sure, if they've done so many good works, maybe they could win an election. But since they never put it to the test, I'm still not sure I could call it legitimate. If they didn't have the systematic internal human rights oppression, and systematic international expansionism, I could see it as a legit alternative... but there are these core systematic problems underlying all the good stuff. [1] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/china-and-tibet https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/china... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jan/15/orwellian-china-silencing-dissent-at-home-and-abroad-says-human-rights-chief https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jan/15/orwellian-china-...

FooBarWidget 5y ago
Glad to see that you're genuinely interested in this topic! I'll also take a look at your articles. I think "least-illegitimate" is key here. There is a philosophy that states that only the actually available options matter, not the theoretically ideal options that never were available in the first place. This ties in with what you said about the CCP taking their ruling position by force. Historically speaking, how the CCP got into power (and how they are composed) is as close to democracy as you get, especially considering the available options. The CCP got into power after the Chinese civil war of 1927-1949. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century, the KMT (Nationalist Party) got into power. But they were both corrupt and incompetent, and their loyalists consisted mostly of the tiny elite, so people revolted. The vast majority of the (poor and rural) population supported the communists. So it's not so much that the CCP took their position by force: they got into their position because they had the overwhelming support of the populace. There were no further options other than Qing (weak, corrupt, incompetent), KMT (slightly less weak, still corrupt & incompetent), the various warlords because China fractured into pieces (each one corrupt and brutal) and the CCP (weak but got support of the majority). The CCP was regarded as the least corrupt because it was the most grass-roots movement. It was a peasant army. Daniel Dumbrill, a Canadian citizen journalist vlogger that lives in Shenzhen, made a video in which he analyzes the CCP's history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxQDezR7Bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxQDezR7Bg His source is the lecture "From Yao to Mao" by history professor Kenneth James Hammond, New Mexico State University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VMEFNcbR0o&t=8m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VMEFNcbR0o&t=8m30s My father-in-law explained it to me like this: 200 years ago, people were at the mercy of an emperor, who ruled by hereditary monarchy. 150 years ago, people were at the mercy of foreign imperialists, who exploited China for their own benefit. Today, the CCP rules, but the CCP consists of normal people and not a dynasty or foreigners, and therefore we have democracy. That last sentence deserves more explanation. The CCP has 95 million members. That's about 5% of the population. This scale means that — even outside the NPC framework — there is a certain amount of people's representation just through party membership. Most party members are normal people who have a normal job outside party membership. For example teacher, factory worker, doctor. Pretty much everybody has a relative that's a party member. Party members are expected to work for the greater good. During the COVID epidemic in 2020, many frontline workers were party members. Not few of them either got sick or died. The CCP just can't be compared to parties in western systems, it's conceptually very different. I think the name "party" is a misnomer: it's more like the fabric of the entire society. You say that it's necessary to make a distinction between people and government. But in the Chinese case, just by the sheer size of party membership, this distinction is truly very difficult to determine. --- Regarding your question about whether people know about Tiananmen and what they think: I have a radical statement to make. The 1989 Tiananmen protests succeeded. Not in the sense of overthrowing the government, but in the sense that the government realized that something big was going on and that people were unhappy. In response, they accelerated economic reforms and got more serious about improving people's lives. That succeeded. This ties in a bit with what I previously said about "censorship doesn't mean that the government won't deliver". I've heard somebody explain censorship of 1989 as follows: the government is ashamed of themselves and that's why they'd rather not talk about it. But they'd still quietly do their job and address the grievances. The Tiananmen event isn't talked about much in Chinese society. That's because, in contrast to the west, it's not known as a big scandal. A lot of the protesters have moved on, exactly because it succeeded per my above definition. Some of them regretted taking part and thought they were too naive. Nowadays, the location of Tiananmen is a popular tourist spot. People don't primarily associate the location with the 1989 event. And the reason why it's not a big scandal is because it wasn't a massacre. There were fights yes, there were people that got injured or died yes, but it wasn't "tanks rolling over people" and "soldiers firing into crowds". You know the famous Tank Man photo, right? Western mainstream media usually only shows that photo, or a short clip, with the implication that the man died because he was ran over. Well here's the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk The man was never run over! The tank was trying to avoid him. The man even climbed on the tank, had a conversation with the soldier, and then the man left. Nothing happened to him. Imagine doing the same thing in a western country: you'd be shot before you even approach the tank. This is such a huge contrast with how western mainstream media characterizes 1989, that I question their entire narrative. Leaked cables confirm that there was no massacre in the sense of the mainstream characterization of the event: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142... There were still people killed outside the square. But it looked more like a riot that got out of hand, rather than "government one-sidedly massacres innocent people". For example, prior to the crackdown, people attacked and lynched soldiers. There are photos of burned tanks and burned soldiers. This documentary analyzes the mainstream reporting of the event and critizes how it's characterized. The interesting thing is that his critique is based solely on western sources. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idv8Ne0xeTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idv8Ne0xeTo When I look at this documentary, I see that there was a lot of disingenuity in the protests — many protesters didn't know what they were doing and what they were asking, and blindly followed idealistic talking points with no regard for practical concerns, which is why from time to time I hear stories about former protesters being ashamed of how naive they were. It also looked like that the government exercised restraint as much as they could and knew how to, back at the time. The protests raged on for many days but got increasingly tense. The government tried multiple times to cool down the protesters. Daniel Dumbrill interviewed a former Tiananmen protester. This is also a very interesting conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh2gLRUC6hc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh2gLRUC6hc