How many have you met, out of 1.2 billion, that you can speak for the Chinese people? Have you met those in prisons or those who can't get jobs because of their political beliefs? What about those who can't practice their religion? What about those who censor their beliefs so they can keep their jobs? What about those in Tibet? In Xinjiang? What about those protesting against the government all over China, because their rights are ignored and trampled by a political establishment which has no responsibility to the people (because they can't be voted out of office)? Why must the Communist Party jail democracy advocates and censor the Internet, if their people don't want it?
Let me answer your self-righteous question with another self-righteous question. Of these trampled down masses that are protesting the government, how many have you met? Are they not capable for speaking for themselves? Hare dare you engage in the soft bigotry of ascribing your own motivations to the actions of the oppressed! /sarcasm
But seriously, are the Tibetans that yearn to be free of Beijing, yearning for a democracy, or merely the return to the theocratic feudal state and their god-king that ruled Tibet for millennia?
Are the religious minorities calling for elections, or are they merely wanting to be left alone?
Are the Uyghurs calling for elections, or the end of a government policy of encouraging the migration of Han from the populous east to the less populous west?
Are the Chinese government protests calling for democracy, or merely an end of corruption?
But the facts are overwhelming: Democracy and freedom are desires and values universal to humanity.
And yet authoritarianism is on the rise across the middle east. Do you truly believe that if the Saudi family were toppled today, and election was held, that anything like a Jeffersonian democracy would spring forth, or would it merely be another Iran or worse?
And speaking of Iran, here is a country that not only toppled one dictator, the Shah, but then sought to install a shill democracy, the Islamic Republic. Even now would the Ayatollahs be under threat if they just counted the votes? I think not. And if Ahmadinejad were somehow replaced, would the protest continue, or would they be diminished? An interesting question that neither of us can answer.
The people of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and others, representing almost every other non-Western culture, have adopted it with great success. Only those who are forcibly repressed by their government are denied it. And all over the world, nearly 100% of the most prosperous, stable countries are democracies.
Account for Russia then? It's 6th in GDP by Purchasing Power Parity, yet is only nominally a democracy. Not only have they moved backwards from the joyous day in 1991, they have positively skipped happily back towards oligarchy and totalitarianism. Putin is wildly popular in that country, and yet he has done all he could to dismantle the democratic process.
Turkey is a country that has a history of military coups, including a plot this past year, and threatened one back in 2007. Hardly shining example.
To say the people of China lack the motivation or ability to seize it for themselves is patronizing and insulting.
Nice try.
