Politics aside, I want to talk about the internet usage in China. From the “Digging deeper” article, they mention that there is a huge underclass of single males who live, eat, play, and sleep in filthy city internet cafes for about $5 a day. Another article mentions that “there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined…” continuing to say that only a small portion have access to the full internet. The potential for online revenue seems like it could be tremendous. Companies are realizing that just adding a .cn extension, and roughly translating the page isn’t cutting it. Clever advertisers are going to need to actually cater to the Chinese people by creating websites that they can relate to. Should be interesting to see how companies approach this.

If China converted, who would benefit the most from a democratic government? Probably the farmers since they make up roughly 75% of China’s population. However, urban areas receive most of the government’s expenditures. How would a democratic parliament assess Chinese national interests? Above all it would probably try to improve the living conditions of the millions of people in poverty. In order to free up this money, China would have to stop investing so much money into military. This would mean that they would have to become friends with the US (its biggest market).

Most of this information I read from an article entitled “How Would Democracy Change China?” written by Arthur Waldron in 2004. http://www.fpri.org/orbis/4802/waldron.democracychangechina.pdf It is a very interesting read and informative pertaining to China’s conversion to democracy.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/19/content_6911079.htm

The Chinese government depicted in this article doesn’t seem to fit the conventional mold of textbook communism, the sort of “hide your children” and “Red scare” vibe. For those people who don’t read the article:
Both the government and private investors have stake in Chinese companies.
Official figures show the non-public sector currently produces 67 percent of China’s GDP and contributes nearly 80 percent to the country’s economic growth.
Many private business owners are Communist Party of China members.

Ironically, “Democratic” doesn’t really describe the United State’s government well either. In a pure democratic society, all members of society vote on everything. That means that we should be voting on everything from tax increases to road construction budgets. We of course do not vote on these issues but instead elect representatives to decide for us. The real kicker is that those representatives were elected by only a small fraction of the American people (most of us, including myself, don’t vote). This is not a democracy people…it’s a republic.

It seems like they’re on the right track though. As observed from the Coal Mining and Green issues raised in the other posts, there has to be a tipping point. As Simone said, they’re talking about it and it’s tolerated, so maybe they’re entertaining the idea at the top in some fashion. Maybe we’ll see a mix of democracy and communism that will form a new style of government that will better represent 1.3 billion people but still be fast moving enough so as not to get stuck in red tape.

Yu Keping, a major player in China’s political process has given many speeches about democracy in China. He thinks that it is the best of all political systems and that China should not have only two people define the policy by themselves. From my point of view, I think it is very interesting that you can read many articles on debates going on in China about the need for elections and people demanding a new system. That such a discussion can be held openly in a controlled media landscape shows me that these discussions are tolerated “from the top”; maybe they are even desired? The party has certainly increased their self-confidence. Just think about how they used to controvert the “western liberalization”. Now they want to find their own democratic way. An idea would be to start democratize the internal party, the convention, expanding elections into the small towns etc.

My point is that I think China has already started to follow a new democratic path. Even if they are not copying our western democratic system, they can certainly learn from it.

The fourth cause of the double standard is the over-critical attitude many foreigners have towards China’s system of governance, stemming largely from a blind faith in the legacies of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, which of course made valuable contributions to our modern ideas about democracy, human rights, religious tolerance, and the rational pursuit of truth.

I believe the best system for China involves reform of the current system while maintaining the party’s control. (Read HERE for some of Hu’s views on democracy) Especially after hearing from Dr. Morris that any drastic political reform will result in the deaths of millions of people as it has throughout China’s history. How to create and implement the incremental reforms is the difficult part, and is something that I hope to work on and post in the coming months.