This one’s good for some cynical smiles.
The document notes that China is a big country with a large population “where things are complicated.” Such a country needs a “strong political core,” it says, which sounds more like an argument for dictatorship than democracy.
All Chinese over the age of 18 have the constitutional right to vote and stand for election but the white paper admits that direct elections are limited to the country and township levels. This is due to “China’s realities.”
One of these “realities” is that the Chinese people realize that “mechanically copying the Western bourgeois political system and applying it to China would get them nowhere.” Yet the “Western bourgeois political system” never has been tried, let alone “mechanically copied,” in mainland China. And where it has been tried — Taiwan — it has been a success.
The paper goes on to spout absolute falsehoods about the rights enjoyed by the Chinese people — freedom of religion, speech and press, association and the like.
Lots more. Via CDT.
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By Austin Arensberg
Web 2.0, Plurality Politics and China
O’Reilly: What Is Web 2.0
I am too lazy to do a huge search to see if what I am proposing has been written on. Instead I offer it here in the vain and probably short sighted hopes that I am actually being original:
Web 2.0 (if you don’t…
November 2, 2005 @ 5:14 am | Comment
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By Si
I thought it was an interesting article, though rehearsing many of the usual points. However the following phrase caught my eye
“Note the strange transition from “democratic rights” to “masters of the state,” as if rights and power are somehow the same thing.”
Correct me if I am wrong but in Chinese aren’t rights and power are largely the same thing, both being translated as ‘quan’? Quan mans authority or power, so human rights are translated as ‘renquan’ or ‘people power’, rather than ‘people’s rights’. the language doesn’t make the distinction we do.
November 2, 2005 @ 11:09 pm | Comment
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By kevin
Quan does mean power, but rights is generally “quanli,” which is what I believe the “quan” in “renquan” refers to. Although I must admit there is a relationship between the two that had never really occurred to me…
November 3, 2005 @ 12:34 am | Comment
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By kevin
there is also another word for power which is also spelled quanli, i guess the pinyin would be the same as the word for rights, but the second character in the word is different…
November 3, 2005 @ 6:59 am | Comment