These claims are backed by eyewitnesses (expats living in China) as well as research.
Cyrus Janssen: The Truth about Protests in China 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqcScSCTgbM
Harvard: Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence From a Survey Experiment in China http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.703...
American Journal of Political Sciences: Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/pe-2014/10062014_Paper_Jen_Pan...
Interesting bits from this last source:
- In China, citizen engagement and protest do not contribute to regime change. Instead citizen engagement contributes to regime survival.
- Section 6: “upper levels of government use citizens as an oversight mechanism on subnational leaders, which imbues citizens with the ability to sanction lower level leaders, and generates responsiveness among local leaders to citizen demands.”
China is neither a western democratic system, nor a totalitarian/communist/dictatorial system. Instead, China is a third distinct category, fitting neither of the first two.
If there is no accountability at the top (and there clearly isn't), then there is no meaningful accountability at all. Such arrangements provide a veneer of agency, with lower level functionaries and regional governments acting merely as scapegoats when embarrassing situations get out of hand and cannot be suppressed. Likewise, when only one party is allowed to run for "elections", those "elections" by definition are a fraud with no meaningful choices.
> Likewise, when only one party is allowed to run for "elections", those "elections" by definition are a fraud with no meaningful choices.
In China, parties don't run for elections, people do. People from other parties (China has 8) are elected. At present, there are 152000+ members from other parties that hold positions in People's Congresses (China's representation body) as deputies. [1]
Parties don't form adversarial, power-balancing relationships with each other. The existance of other parties are not used to put up a fake display of western-style multiple-party elections. Instead, the system works completely differently, trying to push participants towards unity, even if only outwardly.
> and regional governments acting merely as scapegoats
Given the meritocratic system, in which officials are promoted based on KPIs, this is not a logical thing to do. Scapegoating your own subordinates undermines the system's selection process of a future leader. Even Xi himself started at the village level, working his way up to county, city and province level over a 30-year period.
It is also illogical given that China's governance system is highly decentralized. The central government doesn't make all the policies, a lot are left to local governments. They aren't mere puppets that follow instructions. That wouldn't even be scalable given the country's size.
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China's system is distinct, and different from both actual western systems and from western imagined dystopias or fake democracies.
You can argue that only the western democratic way is acceptable. Fine, that's your opinion. I disagree. I subscribe to Kishore Mahbubani's thought. He's ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat. He says that the west should accept that not all countries will become carbon copies of the west. He says that the west should accept a world with a diverse range of governance systems.
This is sophistry considering that out of the one group of representatives that are elected directly, those candidates are only allowed to run at the pleasure of Chinese Communist Party (the "CCP") leadership. Saying there are eight parties, when one party controls the candidate selection process is again just thin a veneer slapped on a defacto single-party system. It is worth noting it is impossible for the populace to determine if a leader is "actually governing well" considering the heavy restrictions on information, free speech, and a non-existent free press.
> You can argue that only the western democratic way is acceptable. Fine, that's your opinion. I disagree.
I made no such claim about democracies. My main point is that the CCP is objectively repressive and despotic on a scale, consistency, and breadth not yet seen over such a sustained period of time (i.e. Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, One Child Policy, The Great Firewall of China, Hong Kong, etc.). Therefore, the CCP regime is utterly loathsome from a humanitarian perspective.
> China does have accountability for government officials
True, but is it the case that the laws are upheld every time? Is there an independent judiciary that sees violations persecuted through with due process?
I submit: no, this is not even possible due to the level of corruption. Officials accumulate influence, wealth and power so they can extract themselves out of sticky situations. Occasionally, officials are held accountable to much public fanfare, but they happen to be unwitting pawns, scapegoats taking the fall for someone else, or faction members that are opportunistically eliminated by their rivals.
> criticisms and protests are common
True, but do they effect change? I submit: rarely. The vast amount of forms of criticisms and protests are suppressed before collective action can occur.
Source: eyewitnesses (expats living in China)
> China is [not] a totalitarian/[…]dictatorial system.
Shill harder. I've seen you approve of CCP apologist Barrett.
I deny your accusation. I have my own opinion based on my own knowledge and research, thank you very much.
> True, but is it the case that the laws are upheld every time?
No. Accountability is not perfect. There is no country in which accountability is perfect. Accountability does not have to be perfect in order for there to be accountability.
I submit that the situation in China still has room for improvement, and that it is improving.
> True, but do they effect change? I submit: rarely.
The paper I showed you contradicts your submission. They define "receptiveness" as "actually changing policy".
> Source: eyewitnesses (expats living in China)
Please post their videos. I posted one, I showed data. In his videos he makes concrete, verifiable claims. I would like to see your data as well as concrete, verifiable claims.
> Shill harder. I've seen you approve of CCP apologist Barrett.
This reference to "shill" is uncalled for. It is an evidence-free out-of-hand dismissal of anybody who has a different opinion of China than yours.
I don't even watch Barrett's videos that often. The only time I posted something was when Barrett documented on how sanitary workers in Shenzhen receive 1 free meal every week. That's not even political, so why do you categorize this under "shilling"? Aren't we supposed to be "only against the CCP and supporting the Chinese people"?
I think it's made obvious that you're operating on a level in which you still critically think about the opinions that you hold. Most of the people who resort to anti-China platitudes or accusing others of shilling have simply tuned out the actual thinking part of the equation.
Most outrage culture nowadays involve blatant rage without giving a second thought. I checked out your links and it seems more substantial than "eyewitness accounts from expats".
A mafia family does not work for the interest of those it "protects", nor do people approve of them. The Chinese government does work for the interest of its people, even if you don't agree with all of the ways they operate. It also enjoys very high levels of approval by its people. Apart from hearsay or informal street interviews [1], there are two researches that corroborate this [2][3].
As Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat, puts it: the CCP is more accurately described as the Chinese Civilization Party. Ultimately, they work to further the interest of Chinese civilization.
[1] Street interview: what does democracy mean to the Chinese? https://youtu.be/nl59t---30g
[2] https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/05/did-pande...
Everthing in a communist party is about loyalty and fear not merit or election. If you don't like censorship or try to challenge the direction of the CCP you are out of the club for life and maybe even in jail.
Imagine Jack Ma saying the Xi is a stupid bear and doesn't know anything about finance or technology and that he (Jack Ma) would be a better leader for China so the people should be let to vote him as China's leader.
Inland Chinese call these government agents "Little pinkies"
If they were Russian, those agents would be called spies.
Second, the authors in your Harvard article are * Tinguang Meng * Jennifer Pan * Ping Yang
Jennifer Pan has Chinese backgrouds, as Tinguang and Ping do. I won't say the article is fake, I only hoovered over it, but I will put it in the same shelf where I keep RTNews (russian television) articles.
Edit: When I see a Harvard backed piece, the same as a Lancet piece, I don't give it a free pass. I read it because I know it is influential because of the name. We still have to go indeep, whenever possible.
