Translate

Tuesday 3 November 2009

The Discreet, Bloodless and Glorious Revolution of China

When China embraced capitalism and dumped Communism, the world barely noticed. All this was possible because of their one-party system. It would be impossible here because the divisive party system makes governments unresponsive to the public, reluctant to stand out as being Politically Incorrect because they fear expulsion and demotion by their tribal leaders. Think of David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg with a bone through their noses being chief of their tribe with the power of life or death over recalcitrant members and you will get the idea.

The Chinese have a rather more sophisticated and Athenian system, of direct democracy under a narrow elitist and meritocratic franchise, that we would do well to emulate, but we are both too proud and frightened. No, the awful truth is that we do not have a better system than the Chinese and many of them pity us for our lack of basic freedoms, such as the inability to say "gollywog", "nigger", "Enoch was right" without getting demoted and losing our jobs.


More members of the Chinese Communist Party voted to support capitalism and dump Communism, and it happened, just like that. Surely that would be, and is in fact, the democratic ideal?

No comments: