I agree that it is not a or b. For me it is about security of rights, but others can see something similar as security of laws. We all want to be more than just sheep to a government with some capability to shape their decisions to benefit us and secure our important vitals like respected rights or law-obdience. These are seen as requirements for our ongoing success that is usually equated with success of the system we partake.
In representative democracy, majority rules. Right is a mechanism to protect individual/minority against majority abuse. Hence a somewhat stable balance between majority and individual/minority power ensue. The rule of law act as a clear guideline for all citizen to behave hence provide a relatively stable political and social environment.
You can base such a system on select distribution of favours and well-being at the expense of other humans. This is the Western Eurasian and African slavery tradition, last enacted on a grand scale by the animal-lover Hitler. He did create a giant sheme to restructure the world on older ideological templates of our past fitted to the creation of a new present and future that eventually failed. But it provided enough economic benefits to still convince many people all over Europe to long for that reported time of great personal benefits by grand public projects. The idea is not dead and it works simply by a credit based economic bubble with massive armament for robbing your neighbour state's bank vaults for continuing liquidity. The cold truth of the city and the states derived from these cities is that most things can be traded for economic benefits, but trading a few issues will backlash because within this set-up they are fences against human nature that otherwise destroys the communal system for personal gains. Democracy has and will always be a timocracy. Lobbyism is just one expression of that truth. As long as the established fences stand and there are pressures on the timocracy to earn via cooperation and not exploitation, people feel free and satisfied. Authoritarian systems have an easier route to exploitation and discontent due to perceived personal underachievement for they are quite capable to set up large scale very unfair external conditions. You get a revolution as soon as the system is rigged enough to deprieve very capable people of their chances - they fight back with all means necessary and if they need guns and bombs, so be it. Guess what, in no democracy exists a level playing field, but discontent is usually within tolerable levels and has a less destructive outlet for capable challengers. But they can fail due to corruption of leaders and representatives for effective status quo. Insert Chinese man-of-letters and scholar and you see the same pattern.
"select distribution of favours and well-being at the expense of other humans" will happen as long as there is a human society unless you believe in a communist utopia). The only difference is in degree. All you can do is to legislate to guard against over abuse and incentivize fairness/equality in accordance with consensus among the majority. This to guard against the losers to revolt against the system.
The authoritarian system is very quick and can quickly transform anything for good or bad. Democratic systems are best seen as institutionalized and quite lethargic with lots of friction if ever moving. The advantage of lethargy is that you don't screw up things yourself without having enough time to reliably predict and correct the course. Authoritarian forms have their benefits if rapid development, usually due to external influences, is required, but lack the safety net of the slower institutions. The longer you keep on such a dangerous fast track, the higher are the chances that it will fail due to leadership errors (human nature). More institutional systems can be dinosaurs (extinct) or crocodiles (same design since millions of years) and institutional designs don't require democracy, a seemingly open meritocracy like in ancient China can do the same service. Democracy as an institution tries to keep at bay special self-serving interest groups, but can fail on a large scale if you look at Greece.
An authoritarian system is comparatively efficient but not as stable as democratic system. Democratic system is more stable but it could also fail.
So, democratic system with majority rule/consensus, individual rights, rule of law, acceptable fairness/equality is a more stable system than authoritarian system.
I think chinese are well aware of all the advantages of the democratic system. And slowly, with more and more chinese visiting and staying in western country, with the occurrence of some recent revealing event, chinese also come to notice some of the pitfalls of democratic system. I think China is in no hurry and indeed might not even consider moving to a democratic system. China is a big ship, steering that ship in an about turn would be dangerous.
Some western people have this impression that China is a police state, and the chinese government rule with brutal force, without majority consensus from among the chinese people. And when they cannot reconcile the contradiction that chinese economic could have progress so much without cooperation from the people. Chinese would be accused of being brain wash automaton. The truth is that chinese individual is quite capable of critical thinking and thanks to the chinese culture, is very adept at balancing the interest of the individual and the nation, and among short and long term self-interest. And as evidently demonstrated throughout Chinese history, chinese people has shown no shortage of courage to start a protest or armed revolt against the establishment.
As for representative voice in the government, there is election of representative plus delegate to the people congress. Although in practice, the people congress is often being considered as a rubber stamp for the party. There are sign that the people congress is more and more independent as compare to before. How the people voice reach the government is different from the west, where you have representative, media and opinion poll that serve that function. In China, it is the government (executive rather that the legislative, in practice, separation of powers do not exist in China) that is expected to collect public opinion through various means. Chinese government generally would issue a request for public opinion before some project. It does not always work, as the recent protest/riot against a proposed chemical plant show.
Western media routinely report or insinuate chinese government abuse of human right of individual. It is true that chinese people do not enjoy the same legal right as in western society. But bear in mind that limitation of certain right are often done in order to maintain social/political stability. Chinese is a collective culture, individual are often expected to sacrify oneself for the good of many. The consensus on where the balance of majority versus individual/minority interest is not the same as western consensus.
"Rule by man" and "Rule by law" is a much discuss topic in China. The debate is not as obviously forgone concluded as westerner would expect. Chinese have no similar religion like the west, the concept of a single omnipotent benevolent God has never occur to chinese. Therefore chinese also do not believe in absolute/deterministic law. Chinese place ethics above law. Simply law abiding is not good enough. Chinese ethics are general principles that are open to interpretation with a basis of general public consensus. (Much like in the west if you substitute ethics with Christian principles). Therefore to provide justice as the public expect is not easy.
In the west, people are used to trusting the system. Even if some falls through the crack, it is general consider as acceptable and would believe that the system would somehow right itself. Chinese has no concept of such a system, leader is expected to intervene and do the right thing. Otherwise people would say to the leader what do I need you for then and mob rule is known to happen in china.
The chinese government is currently trying to implement a comprehensive legal system. To put ethics in writing is an impossible task. Both the government and the people need to learn and adjust. The current practice is to put emphasis on consultation/reconciliation before the legal process. How that is going to pan out, is yet to be seen.
There is much report on wealth inequality that exists between rural and urban china in the media. However, equality for chinese is not judge by wealth alone. In fact, chinese ethics has an undertone of hating the rich, and would consider judging worth by wealth alone unrefined. Chinese is an honor (face, pride, vanity, ego) base society. Being respected is important to chinese. What that mean is people expect government to have a face, someone that they can reason/argue with, equality under the eye of the law is not enough. China has party representative throughout all level of government that serves that purposes.
Owing to its communist tradition, china comes from a less stratified and more egalitarian society. Majority of party/government official came from or has worked in grass root level. Party/government official were carefully selected by a complicated process. Often by merits but favoritism like the so called princelings class do exist. Civil servant was selected by public examination and is hotly contested.
Economic opportunity is generally considered equal for all. Major complain being government official corruption/bias and an overly powerful public sector that suffocate the private sector. China has a big government that although respect free market but placing public service before it. Private property was respected as similar to the west.
Chinese citizen is free to follow any religion, although communist party member are not encouraged to be religious. Chinese government is also suspicious of foreign religious organization gaining a foothold in China.
The Chinese political system is a strange entity. By design, it is similar to most western democratic system. It has a legislative lower and upper house, a judicial and executive branch. It is also multi-parties. In practice, it is all CPC (Communist Party of China). And if you look closely, you would discover that the actual functioning of the government is just the same political system that has rule China for thousands of years with modern modification. I think this is hardly surprising; traditions for a culture that has exist for an extended period naturally are well adapted and resilient.
Chinese are pragmatic people, as long as it delivers, they do not care if it is called communism, authoritarian or socialism with Chinese characteristic. They do not care what form/grand overall design the system take. The system would be modified either officially/formally or even unofficially in accordance with how Deng Xiaoping put it “feeling the stone while crossing the river”. They would carefully study all form of government and pick and choose whatever is useful and design an experiment to adapt it to Chinese environment. For stability sack, the façade of “socialism with chinese characteristic” would be maintained. The immediate/primary goal is short and long term stability. The long term goal is Hu Jintao’s great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
I feel that it is a mistake to simply label China as authoritarian and apply analysis as such. Chinese political system is more than what meets the eye. China is an ancient civilization with long tradition. Chinese ethics and traditions is a very significant force that influences the political system in a bottom up way that is difficult for outsider to understand.
Since the 90s, putting stability above all is a stated policy of the Chinese government. As long as Chinese leaders keep both short and long term stability as a topmost priority, who can say that they will fail in that attempt. After all, they have manage to kept China growing at a fast pace without major economic and social upheaval (1989 is an exception) for almost thirty year. You cannot achieve that without sufficiently diligent.
