I just want to put in a link to Scott Adam’s blog (the creator behind Dilbert for those who care). It is China in Dilbert’s eyes if you may. Here is the link, and here is an exerpt.
First of all, there are 1.3 billion Chinese, but only 73 million of them are members of the Communist Party. The party has a monopoly on power. They decide who gets to run for office. The Communists manage a vast bureaucracy that apparently has provisions for weeding out the idiots. I make that assumption based on the fact that the country functions at all, given its size and complexity. Check out this chart of the Chinese government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_political_system.jpgAlthough the Communists run the show, I assume most citizens have the right to join the party and work their way up the ranks. So merit appears to be important in their system. Obviously any big political system will have its share of corruption and favoritism. It’s unclear to me if China is better or worse than the United States on those measures. But I imagine that getting caught with your hand in the public till in China means death. Here it means reelection. Advantage China.
Chinese citizens can vote for their local leaders, at least from the slate of candidates deemed appropriate by the party. And those local leaders in turn select higher level leaders, and so on. Is that less fair than the political systems in so-called democratic countries? Philosophically, it might be less fair. On a practical level, that’s not so clear.
Bear in mind that Scott is the creator of the comic below (source: http://www.dilbert.com):
That is pretty spot on! I have many chinese friends, young professionals mostly, who really don’t care about politics at all. they are more interested in the fruits of the new free market; a new cell phone, luxury hand bags, a spiffy laptop. They eat out and enjoy their new material lives, they often all tell me, “politics is for the politicians”.
Hek