My hunch is that consciously or subconsciously, the urban residents of
China are not thrilled by the idea of a pure democracy that would
effectively turn the country over to the rural poor.
That's Scott Sumner and the post is interesting throughout.
Of course. A left-wing authoritarian regime (also known as Barack Obama’s administration if you listen to some on the right) would be awfully tempting to me if it would forever keep Republicans from office. I know, I know, that’s not playing nice, but hey, I’m just being honest!
His thesis supposes that the current urban elites do not want to share power with poor rural Chinese, but would be willing to share power with urban masses. In my experience, those urban elites look just as down on the rurals after they move to the city as before.
It also supposes that those urban elites could demand democracy from the CCP if they really wanted it.
The alternative vision is that the CCP (not exactly a simple unified group itself) is simply in charge at the moment and others, including urban elites, are not. That’s the model that doesn’t fit Fukuyama, and it seems to fit the facts just as well, although not necessarily better.
My hunch is that Scott Sumner’s means nothing. Where does he draw the line between urban and rural in China?
makes sense… “pure democracies” have a horrible track record, read anything by mencius moldbug if you need evidence. ( moldbuggery.blogspot.com )
I agree
But while I am reasonably confident that India will still have representative government in 50 years, I will offer no conjectures as to the form of China’ government in 50 years.
It is unfortunate in that most of the chinese growth is due to the savings and forced taxation by the CCP. An Economist survey says the central govt. controls what a rural family can earn and spend to such an extent that often the savings or the cost over run is with in a 5% for most of the households. This is remarkable and can never happen in India where the rural poor get a huge subsidy for their agriculture and lively hood. It is another thing that the Indian inflation eats away this subsidy to a large extent.
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