[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #38

Leaders of China are not clones of Lee Kuan-Yew. I do not discount that, in the business of catching up with front-runners, top-down reform can be done effectively as long as ruling elites can maintain some integrity. That is the case of Singapore. Old German empire and post-war Japan could keep some level of integrity too. In S. Korea, they were not as successful but bottom up pressure of popular dissent kept things under control. I am not sure Chinese leadership is sticking to voluntary code of integrity as much as they should or people's bottom-up pressure is effectively checking any corruptions or excess before it is too late.

[AIG]

Perhaps, but we know for sure that China's been doing better over the past 20 years than most Third World democracies. If the alternative to China's current system is to become the next Russia, Indonesia, India, or S. Africa, who can blame China for wanting to avoid that and preferring the E. Asian one-party authoritarian path instead. Remember, if China became a democracy tomorrow, it would be ruled by 800-900 mil. poor peasants, and the first thing thing they would do is stop economic reforms in their tracks, raise agricultural tariffs, pull out of the WTO, etc. India's been a democracy for 50 years, but constant bickering and political gridlock has needlessly wasted the lives of 2 generations of Indians. Democracy is great in theory, but in practice in Third World countries, it's a joke. As we speak, it's the Third World democracies in Latin America which are collapsing, not China, so democracy is no magic panacea. As for India, chronic gridlock has prevented economic reforms with the result that foreign investors largely avoid it. When you recommend China change its path, you have to keep India, Latin America, and other Third World democratic basketcases in mind before you idealistically recommend China become the next Third World democracy.

[AIG]

Democracy means majority rule. China's got a majority of peasants. In every Third World country today, the majority-poor populations tend to oppose capitalist reforms, tend to want to maintain their big government welfare states, and tend to elect politicians who will do their bidding. It's unrealistic to expect that it would be any different in China. Merely imposing a democratic political structure doesn't make a Third World country any less corrupt either. Democratic Russia, India, Latin America, etc. all have massive bribery and corruption problems. But at least China's government is passing economic reforms. It's just too difficult for most Third World democratic countries today to pass economic reforms due to democratic legislative gridlock. Economic progress is the best long-term solution for bribery, so whereas China is likely to achieve First World status in the next few decades, most of today's Third World democracies will still be Third World countries in the next few decades.