Is China too big for Democracy?

@breadloof.

Thats called "material democracy", in other way, the thesis used by socialist communist governments around the world to justify the lack of "formal democracy".

Its often consider that the goal of formal democracy is to achieve material democracy, do the prevailing idea in the west is that there cant be one with out the other.

I think the West is a little "into itself" a bit much. I think that "material democracy" has the side effect of "formal democracy", but formal democracy has nothing to do with bringing about material democracy. None of the west built its vast fortunes off of being democratic.

Which is to say that if China thinks it can avoid formal democracy by solely going after material democracy, that probably won't work.

edited 5th Jun '12 6:45:42 AM by breadloaf

The last thing China needs is material democracy. It forgoes bribery and unrestricted lobby funding, creating lots of monetary vacumm leading to policy failures or massive debts like those possessed by America, Greece and Japan. The 'progress' is pretended while what was spent and earned were done too much by credit instead of cash. China IS facing a nett loss by credit as well, all because the trade that must happen between itself and Western nations who can't possibly turn up profit in this turbulent economic direction

Do you really think there's more bribery in democracies like the US than one-party states like China? Really?

I wouldn't say that any country is "too big" for democracy. In the case of China and India, it would be a simple matter of enough organization and subgovernments to keep everything functional. Now, there is such a thing as "too big to have a non-corrupt democracy," but the US and Russia are also way above that threshold too so it's not as if we're paragons or anything. There is also the fact that Chinese culture doesn't seem to currently support democracy.

edited 5th Jun '12 6:17:03 PM by DerelictVessel

India does have democracy, you know — unless you're not calling the Westminster system undemocratic?

That was poor phrasing on my part. I was primarily referring to China, and rebutting a previously mentioned idea of "if China can't do democracy, then India can't, either." I'm not strictly familiar with Indian democracy, but the basic principle of suborganization being used to keep everything in order still applies and I assume that's what they do. India probably has it easier, too, since they have a smaller land area to cover.

Doesn't China technically have elections? They're obviously rigged, but I heard they have them anyhow.

I thought he meant it was so ridiculously corrupt that he thinks it's not democratic. That is a sorta valid argument. I mean if the end result is just as bad, it makes it seem all too pointless.

As for "material democracy", I think that by definition it means you don't have massive income gaps and everyone enjoys a high standard of living. So if there is mass bribery, corruption, standard deviation in income and so on, then you in fact don't even have material democracy.

Well, there's that too. I personally imagine that India, being so unfathomably massive, is thoroughly riddled with corruption as far as the government goes. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, though.

Definately.

To quote:

and:

Knowing the perception of how India works, Government is probably exceptionally complex too and the system little changed (and probably even more full of Obstructive Bureaucrats) from the time of The Raj.

edited 6th Jun '12 12:40:45 AM by Greenmantle

Well, if we were to expand the topic a bit, between India and China, China is "smaller" in the sense that the various ethnic groups are much closer together linguistically, culturally and historically and have less class divides. Some parts of India continue to retain a caste system, though that's pretty rare these days, and they've many mutually unintelligible languages, and several wildly different religions in the area. For China, the largest non-syncretist religion is Islam, followed up by Christianity, but most of the muslims in China have been long well integrated.

India clearly has a democracy.

Democracy has nothing to do with income inequality. I don't know why you would think this. Just because India has a lot of income inequality doesn't mean it's not very democratic.

Of course, the corruption and bribery is a bad thing, but it still doesn't make India less democratic than say, Russia.

"Democratic" isn't the first word that comes to mind to describe the Russian government.

@ultrayellow

The Chinese argument is that you can't ignore the corruption and lack of actual representation when calling something democratic. So while India is more democratic than North Korea, it starts getting questionable if you say it's better than say Russia. That sounds more like bias versus the nonexisistent communist regime. How did Putin rig the elections? In literally the same way tories in Canada rigged the elections, but because we still enjoy both more material and poltical freedom, we rank as more free.

So clearly end result even by western standards matter more.

The question should be "Is China's military too big for Democracy?"

The US gets by just fine, and we spend 47 cents of every dollar spent on military forces on the planet.

@breadloaf: Putin rigging the elections is actually the "tamest" sign of the lack of real democracy in Russia.

My point is that the vast majority of what we rank countries on, in terms of democracy, is in operation. Russia's lack of democracy is certainly worsened by rigged elections but we look at actions such as state-interference in corporations, state-interference in the media in favour of the ruling party, political activists that are attacked and so on.

China, like Russia, doesn't really have a base of, shall I call it, operational luxuries to "spend" away with yearly democratic deficit. The reason a corrupt Chinese official hurts significantly is because they don't have a pre-existing policing base that is extensive, mostly uncorrupt with a working justice system. They have to work year over year, in a positive manner, to create this base of democracy. A single corrupt official in an undemocratic system is going to hurt a lot versus an undemocratic government in a democratic system. It's the institutions that matter.

When someone points out that material democracy shouldn't be held in favour of political democracy, they sorta forget all the "little things" that really do matter. You can walk down the street, see a cop, and not be concerned you have to bribe that guy otherwise you get a ticket (well in most places in America anyway). You have a justice system where the default norm is that a court case is tried in a normal manner, heard by a judge, perhaps you have jurors or perhaps it is a judge panel, and it follows either law or case precedence... something that resembles justice. You don't have to be concerned about inconsistencies as much, or bribery or corruption. When the government spends tax dollars, you think about how it might be operating inefficiently, but you don't really think that most of the money is going toward either unsanctioned actions or into someone's pocket.

These things ARE more difficult when your country is larger and more diverse because of the limited nature of any watchdog agency to properly manage a certain amount of information. In a country like Canada, our Auditor General is able to "grep" through our entire financial status of our government, being able to single out a $47 000 bill for a vain photo op by our Defence Minister because he wanted a "hero shot" of himself inside an F-35. When you look at the USA, a 47 000 bill would go by completely unnoticed in favour of billion dollar scandals that occur.

And, really we shouldn't ignore our "deficit rate" with regards to democracy. You can enjoy your lifestyle now, but like the US debt and the Eurozone debt problems, the ugly face of deficit will eventually rear its head when too much has piled up. One day you'll wonder why you live in such a craptastic fakocracy where your votes are nothing more than a formality. (By one day, I do mean like 50 years down the road)

But, I think that since technology, especially with regards to social media, has improved so much, that the Chinese and their government is on an accelerated path to better governance. It's hard to stop a million Chinese people suddenly putting up photos of an official being bribed and caught on a cell phone camera. The communist party has no choice but to sack the official and jail him for the crime.

It is because of technology that I think China, especially as we move forward into the future, will not be too big for democracy or eventually will not be too big for it.

edited 6th Jun '12 9:18:34 PM by breadloaf