Comment by lucian1900
5 years ago
The UK is a literal kingdom with a first past the post voting system and a media dominated by Tories (including the BBC). Recently they’re trying to ban all protest while the police is beating up those of us that resist.
China’s elected national congress that includes easy recall and competence-based civil servant positions doesn’t seem any less democratic.
Come on bud, that’s a silly argument disproved with a 2 second google search. The U.K. ranks 16th on the democracy index, and China ranks 151st. At this point I can only assume you’re arguing in bad faith for fun.
Living in the UK, I can tell you it’s definitely not a democracy. Chinese friends I spoke to feel the opposite about their own country.
Who wrote that index? Where are they from? What interests do they have? How do they show up high in search results?
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Oh, “the democracy index”? Good thing we have a neutral and objective measure of each country’s quantity of abstract democracy. I’m sure there’s no cultural chauvinism or politically-motivated biases at play here.
Do you have any specific criticisms of that index, or just generalized ideological grievances? Moreover, are you saying that the UK is not meaningfully more democratic than China, and therefore that index is inaccurate?
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They publish extremely detailed methodology for each country, so feel free to browse and let me know which parts you disagree with (assuming you're not in China, because you probably won't be able to access this there. All that democracy hey ;)
https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2021
Some highlights for China:
* There are no direct or competitive elections for national executive leaders. * Elections are not administered by an independent body. * China’s one-party system rigorously suppresses the development of any organized political opposition * The political system is dominated in practice by ethnic Han Chinese men. Societal groups such as women, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBT+ people have no opportunity to gain meaningful political representation * China is home to one of the world’s most restrictive media environments and its most sophisticated system of censorship, particularly online. * None of China’s national leaders are freely elected, and the legislature plays a minimal role in policymaking and the development of new laws. * The CCP regime has established a multifaceted apparatus to control all aspects of religious activity
It goes on and on. All of this seems pretty tangible to me? Again please let me know what I'm missing.
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