Absolutely not, do you want to get massive purges? Cause that's how you get massive purges.
Chinese Internal Politics
- Thread starter FairAndUnbiased
- Start date
Why would that lead to purges?
A tyrannical SecGen can purge rivals if they know what individuals in the central committee voted for and why. That makes it more difficult to remove them. A good SecGen on the other hand will not use this information.
This encourages tyranny.
Suppose the whole world knows you voted against General Secretary Xi? That's the end of your political career, even if Xi doesn't order anything, underlings would automatically rip you to shreds, since you are politically vulnerable.
It's much better to keep these things secret and limited to only top-level members, the losing side doesn't have to get ruined by CCDI and can retire with dignity.
Well this is a problem, are you only allowed to disagree or disapprove in private? How would a leader know if he/she is making the wrong decisions, or that someone else endorsed is doing specific things better than him? Firing/demoting someone should only be allowed with concrete proof of incompetence, corruption or treason
Ok think about it from the US point of view. Why is a ballot secret?
Why do cabinet members get fired for disagreeing with the president?
How would the president know, especially one that is not an SME in much beyond getting elected, know if their decision is wrong?
The problem of selecting a good ruler has been written about for over two thousand years. The CPC has institutionalized a method of selecting a leader that is quite meritocratic, so regardless of who comes into power, they will at least be very competent, read more about it here.
The second age-old problem of ensuring the ruler gets good advice for the benefit of the entire country and not just the elites has also been discussed ad nauseam. The CPC at every level regularly conducts (un/shortly announced) local inspections, i.e., higher-ups directly inspect base level (i.e., common people), this checks that the advice offered by middle-level bureaucracy is actually good for the country.
The Politburo and the standing committee meet regularly and host discussions, they just don't publicize their discussions. Likewise, you don't hear the details about internal discussions within every other government, some aspects of politics require secrecy, transparency is not always good.
You are not the first person to think about these questions and you will not be the last. There is no perfect system of governance, there is only a good enough system of governance. The CPC system is gradually improving, its governance is suitable for China right now.
The second age-old problem of ensuring the ruler gets good advice for the benefit of the entire country and not just the elites has also been discussed ad nauseam. The CPC at every level regularly conducts (un/shortly announced) local inspections, i.e., higher-ups directly inspect base level (i.e., common people), this checks that the advice offered by middle-level bureaucracy is actually good for the country.
The Politburo and the standing committee meet regularly and host discussions, they just don't publicize their discussions. Likewise, you don't hear the details about internal discussions within every other government, some aspects of politics require secrecy, transparency is not always good.
You are not the first person to think about these questions and you will not be the last. There is no perfect system of governance, there is only a good enough system of governance. The CPC system is gradually improving, its governance is suitable for China right now.
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Eric Li actually directly responded to this perennial question that above member asked about. Even, the venerated western analyst, Francis Fukuyama has issues with too much transparency on his recent books: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, and especially Political Order and Political Decay.
Eric Li did in my view a brilliant take down and response to @Reclaimer western posturing questions and queries.
Eric Li did in my view a brilliant take down and response to @Reclaimer western posturing questions and queries.
I agree, common people got the vote when they started to have a reasonable level of education. The fact that taxes on labour became a major source of income also mattered. Taxpayers want their money to be used well. But the key question is not why popular votes were introduced, but whether they are better or worse than a single party system or monarchy etc
My argument is that the western world pulled ahead of the other traditional civilisations of the world in west and east Asia in the 18th and 19th century. At that time, they didn't have anything we would recognise as modern western style democracy today. In the industrial revolution era voting rights were extremely restricted or votes were meaningless. In the era of universal suffrage after WW2, many countries have managed to catch up to and sometimes overtake traditional western great powers despite the economic miracle in Europe after the war and the West having huge technological advantages.
So if we look at it as a social experiment, which system of government allows a society to advance faster than others? Has any country moved through the middle income range as a western style democracy? The four Asian tiger states are perfect examples of successful models avoiding meaningful elections. I don't think governance has improved in Korea and Taiwan since they introduced American style democracy.
I don't think the general population ever had the capacity to make decisions on how to rule a country. This system of universal suffrage is a big and expensive burden on a society. It's only very rich countries that can afford such a political system and western countries were reasonably successful on it in the last century because they were so far ahead of everyone else. But their expensive system cost them their lead. Now that they're in competition with China, their systems are becoming unaffordably expensive. Western countries will either reduce the importance of general votes or they will start falling behind. Most of Europe is already in the process of falling behind, people just haven't realised it yet
Today, I would rate military dictatorships as generally disastrous, western style democracies as tolerably successful, monarchies as more successful but only if the king happens to be competent and single party systems as the most successful as long as they have a good system for selection of new leaders. Compare democratic India vs China, democratic Philippines vs Thai monarchy, the failed democracy in Egypt and Tunisia with the stability and success of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The only world region that's an exception is Eastern Europe and turkey, because these countries have been heavily subsidised by western Europe. In the European golden age, governments were either monarchies or oligarchies
But the degree of citizens participation then has 0 correlation to economic success. Military dictatorships are disastrous yet have degrees of citizen participation higher than monarchies, but lower than democracy. But both those are supposedly better performing.
And even in military dictatorship, what about that of KMT Generalissimo Chiang in Taiwan and Imperial Japanese Takagi Masao, er I mean, 100% Korean definitely not traitor, Park Chung Hee, in South Korea? Egypt also never had democracy for long, they had one military strongman after another from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak to Al-Sisi, all military officers. Yet why can't they match similar military dictators in South Korea despite South Korea being not just a military dictatorship but an unstable one with dictators being overthrown by each other every decade or so?
I think that the system a country settles on naturally will be the one suited for their economics. Since you can't switch government forms too often, it is basically a matter of luck that your government is suited for a particular economic era or not. Monarchy isn't doing too well today but neither would democracy or a one party state have been in the feudal era. I mean, Revolutionary France was basically a 1 party ideological state, yet they quickly went back to monarchy under Napoleon because the Reign of Terror unleashed by Robespierre completely destabilized the country. It was too early in history for that. Yet nobody thinks that bringing back Napoleon would be great for France today.