Comment by marcus_holmes
5 years ago
This is a good point. I would say there is a difference of degree, but it's very debatable.
My stance has been heavily influenced by my experience living in Cambodia. They have an authoritarian government. But they have also an authoritarian culture. Attempts to create a democratic government there haven't failed because the regime are a bunch of bastards (they are, but that's not the point), but because the people generally haven't supported it. Part of this, I'm sure, is their traumatic experience with the Khmer Rouge. I see so many parallels with what's going on with Myanmar. I don't see so many parallels with what's going on in China.
Can we measure the legitimacy of a government by the number of protesters it has killed? Seems like a better measure that "compatibility with Western economic interests" which seems to be the current measure.
I am from South Korea. This is the same "culture" bullshit argued about South Korea 30 years ago. Kim Dae Jung who dedicated his life to democracy in South Korea and who went on to be the first president elected from the opposition wrote a through rebuttal in 1994. Go read it.
Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia's Anti-Democratic Values (Kim Dae Jung, 1994)
He went on to "write" an even better rebuttal by being elected in 1998 and building the foundation of South Korea as a fully functioning democracy in his term. Now the result speaks for itself.
I'll dig it up and read it, thanks for the pointer.
I heard this from several Khmer acquaintances - they're fed up of Westerners coming to Cambodia and trying to enforce Western ideas of democracy and "freedom" on them. There are a shit-tonne of White Saviours running around Phnom Penh trying to "save" Cambodia, so I totally get this.
A home-grown idea of Cambodian democracy, from Khmer people who are actually interested in what Khmer democracy would look like, is a totally different thing. If that's what happened in South Korea, then that's fantastic.
We should also remember that we are discussing a different civilization to that of the 'western' sphere.
Not in the orientalist sense of being incomprehensible, but by just by understanding the political history and hence the intuitive sensibilities of what is understood to be a just way of running a government being quite different.
This is not to claim democracy would not fit all, but rather, it is quite a different thing to introduce it to an environment which already accepts as its philosophical inheritance the democracy of Athens, the Republic of Rome, the Magna Carta, and so on, to one for whom these are exotic and foreign historical references.
And frankly, a stable government - no matter how legalistic or authoritarian - is almost always better than no government at all (ref. all the areas with failed states and ruled by warlords).
In a political environment that has never known anything but authoritarian rule, it is actually quite safe bet that any destabilizing forces are not trying to "improve peoples lives" but actually just to replace the existing authoritarian power structure with a one of their own.
So... while mistreating demonstrator is reprhensible ... the situation is not necessarily about "good v.s bad" but actually about "stability vs. chaos" and in both situations there are losers - only in the "chaos" case the number of losers is larger.
I will just quote from Kim Dae Jung which I mentioned elsewhere.
"The proper way to cure the ills of industrial societies is not to impose the terror of a police state but to emphasize ethical education, give high regard to spiritual values, and promote high standards in culture and the arts."
So no, authoritarian government does not lead to stability and democratic government does not lead to chaos. You get stability by educating the next generation and promoting the culture.
I totally agree with that - that it begins with education.
Cambodian education at the moment is corrupt. You bribe the educator to get into a course. You bribe the examiner to pass an exam. If your family is rich enough, you never need to even attend a class.
Changing this is not going to be possible from outside. The Khmer people will need to want to change. I don't think that's true at the moment. I hope they'll get it eventually.
I did not claim democratic government leads to chaos, but rather the absence of government that does. Perhaps I am not familiar with all the discussions about this topic (I believe democratic governance is the best possible but have not experienced non-democratic societies so have strong cultural bias).
That's a beautiful quote.
This relativism is ridiculous. As much as western governments have their own problems - are you seriously going to pretend individuals are protected similarly between China and EU or US ?
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying the Chinese people have the right to determine what government they should have. No-one else gets to decide that for them.
But saying that one government is "better" than another can be seen as imposing your standards of "better" on another culture. Especially if you choose to ignore some criteria and select others - the USA has by far the highest percentage of its population in prison in the entire world[0], so yes you can make a serious claim that China "protects its citizens" better than the USA.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
The argument that local people have the right to determine what government they should have is true but a bit irrelevant in cases when they do not have the practical ability to do so. For example, Hong Kong; for example, another comment above who responded to a Russian's comment with "As a Russian you could try to change your government." which is laughable knowing the fate of opposition organizers. Asserting that "the people of X alone have the right to determine what government they should have" implies "the current government of X is what X should have" if and only if that government was democratically elected in fair elections.
As you say, "no-one else gets to decide that for them" - which also includes all the non-democratic regimes currently clinging to power after losing the consent of the governed. For example, look at Belarus - other countries don't have the right to unilaterally determine what government Belarusians should have, but, crucially, Lukashenka also does not have that right, he does not get to decide that for them.
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I don’t think GP has made any such claim.
I think really all they’ve said is that different countries has different cultures, and that in turn result in different types of government being acceptable.
I’m not going to get involved in the details here, because there are many countries and governments out there, and everyone has different views on which is “best”.
I think the topic was overall quality of governance. This affects the lives of all citizens, not just those in the political opposition. There is quite large variance in the capability to govern with CCP and Tatmadaw.
What protection? And from what angle? Sure western governments do treat their own citizens better comparatively. But at the same time as soon as some country starts refusing to dance their tune they'd be more than happy to "democratize" it into oblivion and ruin with the bombing being cherry on top. They're also happy to prop and support murderous regimes when it suits their overall goals.
Outsider does not give a shit how well western countries treat their own citizens. If one comes home and starts picking up bits and pieces of their family members in the rubble that used to be their house they might hold very different opinion.