Is American democracy really so much better than Chinese dictatorship?

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Oh jeez. The people saying America isn’t a real democracy and China isn’t a real dictatorship are completely missing the point, as well as misrepresenting democracy.

Put them on a scale, and America is clearly on the democratic side, whereas China is clearly on the authoritarian side. It’s like people’s brains short-circuit just because they heard a word.

Which style of government is better? Instead of jumping to a conclusion, let’s think about what the question means. What are you hoping to get from your government? Peace? Economic opportunity? Political voice? It’s easy to see that unless you actually know what you’re asking for, you can flip it around to say anything you want.

Let’s say we want all three of those things. So, let’s examine them in turn.

First, peace. America and China are both very peaceful countries. China is arguably more peaceful because it doesn’t participate in overseas conflicts, but the last time either country has seen war hit their shores was World War 2. You don’t have to fight in conflicts in the US unless you want to. That qualifies as peaceful in my book. So I call this a draw.

Second, economic opportunity. Here’s where the political differences really start to show. China wants badly to be an economic powerhouse, but its government wants political survival even more, and so they will sacrifice economic viability in service of its authoritarian agenda and not give a second’s thought to it. You can see this in the Great Firewall, and shutting down foreign businesses that want to provide services in China. Also as a small businessman, your enterprise needs to be approved of by the Communist Party, otherwise they’ll find a way to shut you down.

Essentially, China does not respect rule of law. The country is ruled by the Party, law is what the Party says it is, and the Party is not limited to the law. You can make money in China, so you can say you have economic opportunity there, but it’s limited.

The US has far fewer political restrictions on business, but the economic barriers to entry can be greater because you often need more capital to get started. Essentially, rather than pleasing a small group of people who want your political allegiance, you have to please a small number of people who want your economic behavior to be acceptable to them. You can’t just roll out a food cart onto the streets in America like you might be able to in China if you greased the right palms.

So this one is a tossup that can be argued either way.

Finally, there’s political voice. I don’t think there can be any questioning the fact that the US is unparalleled in this area. We’ll let anyone promote any political agenda, we are careful to not criminalize political speech. We elected Barack Obama, a minority candidate, and then turned around and elected Donald Trump, a political outsider. Minorities and outsiders have to beg for political scraps in just about every other country. If you want to have a political voice in China, you can, so long as your voice echoes the Party’s positions. If you don’t, you risk being thrown in jail. Americans have largely forgotten what authoritarianism even looks like, so we’ll readily say silly things like Trump is a fascist.

So we have one tie, one tossup, and one clear American winner. I think America has won the contest, but the situation might look different in another hundred years.