4 ms·

Okay. It is a bit hard, because on one hand there isn’t anything similar to CCP in the western world, on the other hand my understanding of all this is quite

by trasz 4y ago

Okay. It is a bit hard, because on one hand there isn’t anything similar to CCP in the western world, on the other hand my understanding of all this is quite poor, and on the third hand China, being some five times the population of US, is adequately more complicated. There are parties in China other than CCP (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in...), and those are kind of like parties in the west. CCP is different though - it’s less of a party and more part of the government, with “sub parties” inside it. This means that on one side it’s privileged - as described in the constitution - but on the other hand, being part of the government, it’s controlled by govt mechanisms, unlike the “do whatever you wish” western parties. You could draw analogies with what the Church used to be in Middle Ages - except Church ended up being fundamentalist, while CCP keeps adjusting to society’s preferences. It’s a part of government, essentially. Expecting China to be ruled by someone outside is like expecting US to be ruled by someone who’s not a citizen - both are fundamentally arbitrary rules, but both exist for complicated historical reasons. Of course in US there are also hard rules that aren’t in constitution, eg you need to be a member of one of two ruling parties, you must not have left-wing views, and you have to be wealthy and Christian. But I’m pretty sure there are similar quirks in China too.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Good reply, thanks. But I notice the very first sentence of that link: "The People's Republic of China is a one-party state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." So, yes, there are other parties that are allowed to exist. (If you want one that doesn't include "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" as part of the platform, you're out of luck, though.) But some of those parties actually have people who have won elections and have seats, which is more than I thought was the case. That's slightly less "one-party state" than I thought. Still... there's also a list of banned parties. I'm trying to remember when the last time was that the US banned a political party. So China lets there be alternate parties, as long as they don't stray very far from the CCP orthodoxy. That's more than I thought, but it's considerably less than political freedom.
- trasz 4y ago
  Banned parties - eg those promoting fascism - are a thing in Europe. We've learned the hard way what happens if you don't do that.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    I doubt that is the reason they are banned.
- radu_floricica 4y ago
  At the process level, I don't think it's a good idea to work on particular implementation traits when comparing very different systems. One will complain that in China parties are banned, the other will complain that in US third parties can't win anything anyways and so on. I think it's better to look at more broad goals. Can ideas or people get represented in each system? The actual mechanisms may be very different, but I think comparing the end results would be more interesting. An anecdote from my country. We have a left-leaning party that constantly wins the poorer areas. At first glance, this means they're popular. In practice, it's a bit different - since they already have a stable majority, and they have an old tradition of only supporting their own people when it's their turn to govern, what happens is that each individual potential candidate simply decides to go with this party instead of swimming against the current. So the real election is inside the party, then their candidate wins in 70-80% of the cases. Is this a good system? Well, this strongly depends on the process to select the party candidates. It's surprisingly non-shitty on average, in that it tends to select competent people. It's shockingly shitty on occasion, when it fails basic integrity checks. Judging the end results is far from straightforward. Btw, I'm definitely not advocating for more of this inside the existing western democracies. It's definitely a horrible idea, because we definitely do NOT have the institutional processes to select consistently good candidates inside each party. China is not mixing them.
radu_floricica 4y ago
> you must not have left-wing views Not trying to start something, just want to say I chuckled here - saying this in the middle of debt forgiveness for democrat voters is pretty ironic. And thank you for the comment.
- trasz 4y ago
  Democrats are not left-wing - they are merely less right-wing than Republicans.

by trasz 4y ago

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Good reply, thanks. But I notice the very first sentence of that link: "The People's Republic of China is a one-party state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." So, yes, there are other parties that are allowed to exist. (If you want one that doesn't include "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" as part of the platform, you're out of luck, though.) But some of those parties actually have people who have won elections and have seats, which is more than I thought was the case. That's slightly less "one-party state" than I thought. Still... there's also a list of banned parties. I'm trying to remember when the last time was that the US banned a political party. So China lets there be alternate parties, as long as they don't stray very far from the CCP orthodoxy. That's more than I thought, but it's considerably less than political freedom.

trasz 4y ago
Banned parties - eg those promoting fascism - are a thing in Europe. We've learned the hard way what happens if you don't do that.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  I doubt that is the reason they are banned.
radu_floricica 4y ago
At the process level, I don't think it's a good idea to work on particular implementation traits when comparing very different systems. One will complain that in China parties are banned, the other will complain that in US third parties can't win anything anyways and so on. I think it's better to look at more broad goals. Can ideas or people get represented in each system? The actual mechanisms may be very different, but I think comparing the end results would be more interesting. An anecdote from my country. We have a left-leaning party that constantly wins the poorer areas. At first glance, this means they're popular. In practice, it's a bit different - since they already have a stable majority, and they have an old tradition of only supporting their own people when it's their turn to govern, what happens is that each individual potential candidate simply decides to go with this party instead of swimming against the current. So the real election is inside the party, then their candidate wins in 70-80% of the cases. Is this a good system? Well, this strongly depends on the process to select the party candidates. It's surprisingly non-shitty on average, in that it tends to select competent people. It's shockingly shitty on occasion, when it fails basic integrity checks. Judging the end results is far from straightforward. Btw, I'm definitely not advocating for more of this inside the existing western democracies. It's definitely a horrible idea, because we definitely do NOT have the institutional processes to select consistently good candidates inside each party. China is not mixing them.

radu_floricica 4y ago

> you must not have left-wing views Not trying to start something, just want to say I chuckled here - saying this in the middle of debt forgiveness for democrat voters is pretty ironic. And thank you for the comment.

trasz 4y ago
Democrats are not left-wing - they are merely less right-wing than Republicans.