China has a more rational and robust form of democracy than the US right now. It can be improved in many ways, but its foundation is more solid and more central than the US. I wouldn’t worry about it. The Chinese can improve it on their own terms.
This may come as a shock to you, but American-style democracy in politics is the equivalent of Soviet-style communism in economics.
In Soviet-style communism, my laziness is equal to your diligence. My guaranteed job and pension is equal to your risk-taking. My useless busywork is equal to your efficiency and innovation. So guess what happened? Everybody wants the take, and nobody wants to do the work. So eventually everybody is poor together.
In American-style democracy, my ignorance is equal to your knowledge and experience. My irresponsibility is equal to your responsibility. My cowardice is equal to your bravery and self-dedication. My selfishness is equal to your compassion. And guess what? Everybody wants more political privilege and nobody wants any political accountability. So eventually politics degrades to your ‘bread-and-circus’ PR swindle gig to make other people pay for my benefit, and everybody is screwed.
This new crop of politicians in the West are all PR specialists / drama kings. Mr. Trump (US), Trudeau (Canada), Macron (France), Erdoğan (Turkey), Kaczyński (Poland), etc. Even the German political scene is getting more PR-centric, for crying out loud! They may be fighting like cats and dogs among themselves, but in essence, they are all cut from the same cloth. Excellent PR, lousy policy.
This should not surprise anyone. In fact, during the Cold War, Democracy was a USSR slogan, and Freedom was the US slogan. The root thinking behind Democracy is the same fundamental social concept of Equality as in Communism. Well, ideologies are like religion - they can be good and useful, but if you are too literally into it, it’ll kill you.
There is no doubt that Equality is a very good social concept, but the trick is to know what the most important equality is that will move the whole society forward, and make other types of equality easier, not harder, down the road. The Chinese, being practical and agnostic, the antithesis of ideologues, started with “the result we want to achieve”, and then walked down the path of “how to get the result we want to achieve”. Politics is treated as an applied science discipline, and the democracy is configured as the democracy of a university Physics Department.
In a Physics Department, you would pick Copernicus over the Pope, because the fact proved him right. You would pick Stephen Hawkins over Macron, because Hawkins is more brilliant, even though he can’t speak or walk, and looks ugly. You would pick Michael Faraday over Rothschild, because Faraday could contribute more to Physics, even if he was poor and uneducated. This is the result you want to achieve, the opposite of what a PR campaign will deliver, for sure. But you can not have power without corresponding capability and accountability, and to go one step deeper - the person is not important. The result and the knowledge that can be experimentally proven to be beneficial to the world, now that’s the useful bit.
So now you can see where Democracy fits into the path to achieve this result - It’s not about a PR campaign for an irresponsible vote. Instead, it’s about creating the largest pool of candidates possible for the likes of Copernicus, Hawkins, and Faraday. It’s about the liberation of the under-privileged class, so that they can all write their own equations and do their own experiments, thus contributing to physics. It’s all about EQUAL OPPORTUNITY so that everyone has a real chance to be Copernicus, Hawkins, or Faraday, if he so wish. The best minds out of a billion people should for sure be better than the best minds out of the 200 super-rich. So it’s all about safety and security for all, women’s liberation, free and ever improving education, universal basic healthcare, and openness to factual evidence, irrespective of religion or ideology - It’s about liberation, and enabling, for all, everything that’s the opposite of what competitive party politics can give you.
Who dah have thought!
But would I ever advocate for it for the US? Not in a million years! You see, this is fundamentally culturally incompatible with Individualism, the driver of American culture and economics. Under the circumstances, the smartest ones will only screw the less-endowed people the hardest, because people define “success” as “what I can achieve for myself”. Poor people deserve less education, less healthcare, less safety for themselves and their families, and more prison times for petty transgression. This is the social consensus in the US. So what do you get for putting the smartest folks in power? They’ll use their formidable intelligence to screw you out of your life and your money even more efficiently! Warren Buffett: 'My Class Has Won' And 'It's Been A Rout' The elites are already carving laws in stone to keep their elitist status in the family forever! How it got here is totally bizarre, when the original intent of individualism, as in the early American history, is that an individual should have the same dignity and freedom as anybody else!
Confucius defined Adulthood at around age 40, because by then you really know yourself, and you fully shoulder the responsibilities for your parents, your wife, and your kids. So basically, you are not Adult until you have the will and the ability to Be Responsible for Other People. That’s China, not America. That is so NOT how we define adulthood. We define adulthood as “I’m 18, I can borrow money and watch porn”, not “I’m responsible for other people’s welfare”. In the US you vote for pot if you want to smoke pot. In China you vote for pot if you want to take care of your drug-addicted father or children, so yes in the US, and like “never in your wildest dreams” in China. This is the reality one has to work with.