patchen
02-16-2012, 08:58 PM
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View Full Version : Why China’s Political Model Is Superior
podfish
02-18-2012, 10:11 AM
.... (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/why-chinas-political-model-is-superior.html?_r=1&hp)This article is going to start a foo storm -- .... Looks to me as if it was pulled off the front page after about an hour.
I don't think we're all that frail. Or that this is all -that- bold.
Many have characterized the competition between these two giants as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism. But this is false. America and China view their political systems in fundamentally different ways: whereas America sees democratic government as an end in itself, China sees its current form of government, or any political system for that matter, merely as a means to achieving larger national ends.... there have been two major experiments in democracy. The first was Athens, which lasted a century and a half; the second is the modern West. If one defines democracy as one citizen one vote, American democracy is only 92 years old. In practice it is only 47 years old, if one begins counting after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — far more ephemeral than all but a handful of China’s dynasties..... after this point he kind of goes off the rails, but it's an interesting reminder of how limited the world's experiment with democracy is. And how common it is for its inevitability to be assumed, and its underlying principles to be taken for granted as a given.
I don't think we're all that frail. Or that this is all -that- bold.
Many have characterized the competition between these two giants as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism. But this is false. America and China view their political systems in fundamentally different ways: whereas America sees democratic government as an end in itself, China sees its current form of government, or any political system for that matter, merely as a means to achieving larger national ends.... there have been two major experiments in democracy. The first was Athens, which lasted a century and a half; the second is the modern West. If one defines democracy as one citizen one vote, American democracy is only 92 years old. In practice it is only 47 years old, if one begins counting after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — far more ephemeral than all but a handful of China’s dynasties..... after this point he kind of goes off the rails, but it's an interesting reminder of how limited the world's experiment with democracy is. And how common it is for its inevitability to be assumed, and its underlying principles to be taken for granted as a given.