China does not pretend to be a democracy.

when you're talking about China in the
21st century it's very important understand that you're not talking about a failed democracy you're not talking about a corrupt democracy Communist China is a country that does not claim to be a democracy at all and you're now going to hear this from the government's own perspective every five years the Chinese Communist Party Hosie Party Congress when it clicks the refresh button on itself be like a new generation of senior leaders called the Politburo Standing Committee the last time this happened was in 2012 let's face it you hear complaints that the selection process was too secretive and involves favoritism but what people rarely mention is that more than many other political systems advancement in the Chinese Communist Party is largely based on merit to enter the party and state official system you must pass China's civil service examine this levels the playing field social rank does not affect test scores for more than a thousand years to serve in the Chinese government high and lowborn alike had to pass exams so you notice what they've done here obviously this is very carefully crafted intentional propaganda coming from the communist government of China they first tell you that this is concerning the election of people to the Politburo Standing Committee where does the word Politburo come from where does that structure and tradition of government come from not ancient China not from 1,000 years ago not from 5,000 years ago in China comes from Russia it comes from Soviet Communism the even the concept and organization of the Politburo but that's that's not where the time of year they don't get into the question of who votes who elects who selects others no no your first told that people are appointed to the Politburo on the basis of merit and you're then told this merit is established through exams and the exams have no favoritism whatsoever they don't reflect your class status or any kind of corruption within the system and that this tradition of exams goes back more than a thousand years to some kind of ancient pre Communist Chinese tradition so think about the basis for legitimacy in the Chinese political system that this video is presenting you with a modern exams last five hours includes events mathematics logic verbal skill and world knowledge so politicians in China have to write an exam that lasts for five hours there is no claim whatsoever that their legitimacy rests on competitive elections that it rests on debate cross examination by the public interviews in the press election promises there is absolutely no sense in which they are even pretending that this is a democratic process in our sense of the word democracy this is very important if you're talking about almost any other rival to American power in the world right now for example Russia Russia does claim to be a legitimate democracy and they may be a corrupt democracy or a bad democracy it may be inadequate in various ways but nevertheless Russia has elections and has very similar claims to legitimacy as the United States of America Cambodia claims to be a democracy they have elections that are incredibly corrupt holding perfect elections but nevertheless though claims they have elections in a parliament its horn and so forth China is not playing that game China is not presenting itself in theory or in practice as a flawed or corrupt democracy they're telling you very clearly their concept of legitimacy in government is not based on Elections at all it is not based on voting at all it is not based on public choice or politicians promises or the free play of ideas mutual cross examination criticism debate discussion at all if you pass promotion then is based on a ten tier ranking system on average it takes twenty to thirty years for an entry level coup or Foucault civil servant to become a ghoul or fool go party or state leader very few get near the top term limits also keep new ideas flowing the party's top job is general secretary for the US Congress the turnover rate in any given election is around 10 percent or less one congressman representative John Dingell of Michigan got reelected 30 times and spent 60 years in the House what about the Communist Party of China the Tanner rate of the central committee maintained roughly about 62 percent on average every five years so this icky turnover rate is but faster than some of the democracies around the world so this is quite a surreal comparison right the turnover rate in the United States if someone is not elected again to Congress it's either because they failed in the elections the public chose someone else instead of them or it's because they retired or they decide to quit politics and get a different job in the Chinese system how can you fake this comparison where nobody has engaged in competitive elections nobody is being voted and are being voted out what does it mean to say that the turnover rate is different now it's also really worthwhile to note for better for worse in terms of real the real academic study of Chinese politics how it goes on in universities and in area tight books by specialists and for specialists this system of examinations and the the various ranks of civil servants that have just been mentioned the formal on paper criteria for how people are advanced in the Chinese system and how sometimes they're eliminated it is never even discussed because the whole system is pervasively corrupt when you talk about civil servants in China rising to the top the reasons given in like hardcore political science analysis of how the how the system works it's entirely about favoritism and that favoritism isn't always on the basis of financial corruption or economic corruption it's sometimes like well this politician was trying to accomplish this sort of thing and he knew that this guy would have the skills to achieve that goal you know the favoritism is sometimes well it's transactional but not always necessarily having to do with the the paying of bribes and when people pardon me more people dramatically fall from power when their careers suddenly end that's abyss book is all about well yeah they may have bought their way into office there's there's a chapter of this book that's called buying public office but very often of course they're kicked out precisely because there is a corruption scandal their corruption is exposed their bribe taking is exposed and so on and so forth so yes especially under the c Jinping government when cgn thing first came into power the number of highly ranked political cadres important powerful political people who were eliminated kicked out of their positions of power and in some cases sent to prison and in some cases executed was tremendous there was an enormous number of people who fell from power but that's not because they lost elections that's not because they sat in front of a camera like this and had a debate with a journalist or with another politician of people thought hmmm I don't like this guy's ideas I think this other person has other has better ideas no it's the brutal world of favoritism and favors given and favors taken within the Chinese Communist Party it is a corrupt and corrupting world where people generally rise to power because of the corruption and they also fall from power because encroach as data show party elections can have busy fact along with term limits the elections how promote reform and help ensure new Chinese leaders rise based more on performance then on privilege child arise has attracted global attention and many have focused on China's economic model behind these rights which is of course important but China's evolving political change has been somehow ignored by many in fact without a much fanfare China has established a system of meritocracy or what can be described as selection plus election competent leaders are selected on the basis of performance and broad support through vigorous process of screening opinion surveys intern evaluations and there is times of Elections what a careful choice of phrase that is in the first place there's a lot of use of passive voice here leaders are selected selected by whom well they're not selected from the bottom up as in a democracy they're not selected by the people they don't work for the people right leaders are selected from above leaders are selected by other leaders which makes it fundamentally like an aristocracy I mean you know hates day but most of the claims made to meritocracy here could have been made by kings in medieval times both in Europe and in China and indeed the system of writing examinations as invention going back to more than a thousand years this goes back to the Empress foods at Yin in China these are feudal methods of power sharing and of unequally structure of authority so leader leaders are selected and then here we have this great phrase on screen and various types of elections hmm there is various types I'm a specialist in political science and to some extent I'm a specialist in China now I wouldn't that China is in my top five area of expertise I guess I'm not narrowly or exclusively an expert on China there's a certain kind of bias that creeps into my own life simply by virtue of being a specialist and I had a fan of the channel a supporter wrote in to me saying that in my videos talking about Chinese politics I was ignoring the significance of elections within China and we both had links I mean he sent me some likes I sent him some links somewhere to newspaper articles Wikipedia when have you reporting on elections in some sense as this says here various types of elections and of course I have this kind of insiders bias at this political science specialist pious or what I was trying to say to the guys look you have to understand nobody in the field takes this seriously these elections it's almost like a translation error there are elections in China but they are not elections in our sense of the word at all and the Chinese government doesn't even pretend that they are and indeed in this book this book is entirely about corruption in China and Chinese politics in the index to this book there is no entry for the word elections there's nothing about elections there's nothing about voting for any other country if this were a book on political corruption in Russia the main topic conversation might be corruption of elections right and so on for many countries around the world to struggle with having a corrupt democracy China it's not a corrupt autocracy it has no pretense to be a democracy at all so this book is talking about corruption but this is talking about corruption of appointed positions and government people buying positions in government but they're not buying elections they're buying what would be hypothetically meritocratic appointed positions in a government that both in theory and in practice is in absolutely no way democratic became on your pay attention to the propaganda the structure of government in China is never once described here in this propaganda message it is never once described as being Russian in origin it's never once described as being German in origin okay Karl Marx was German Lenin was Russia everything about the Chinese system of government is derivative of European traditions specifically communist Marxist Leninist traditions but that's entirely buried here and we're instead presented with the fiction that somehow the Communist Party of China is carrying on the ancient pre-modern tradition of Confucius of feudal medieval or Socratic China and you know what the irony is maybe it's true maybe they are maybe in their rejection of democracy they really are carrying on this more futile and aristocratic tradition this is much in line with the Confucian tradition of meritocracy Oh Oh China is the first country that invented the civil service examination system or the courier system