I think this might be the way in which China becomes democratic, slowly and without rocking the boat too much, with the seed being sown by Hong Kong, which incidentally, had been influenced by democratic reforms of the last British governor Chris Pattern.
Now I don’t doubt that Chinese government wants to crack down on this, however surely it must be on a tightrope to not detract foreign investment in Hong Kong from de camping en mass if things got out of hand. I doubt they’d get away with another Tienanmen.
They’ll probably allow Hong Kong to go ahead and vote, but what will happen is there will be a sudden influx of Communist Party politicians, and magically, they’ll receive greater than 50% of the seats. I don’t know that the Hong Kongers will accept it, when it happens, but I definitely see China trying.
In general, South-East Asia doesn’t believe in democracy. Letting the people run wild and influence politics just makes the government run less effectively. It’s like taking a corporation and, instead of having a hierarchy formed based on merit and capability, you hand over the keys to the rank and file and have them start voting on their own wages and stuff.*
I don’t see China accepting true democracy in their territory, regardless of all the external (and internal) force that might come on them to do so.
Hence why we live in a republic, not a democracy. Ideally, it finds a middle-road. But China doesn’t believe that.
Even if they did something like this, it’s an admission of defeat, because they couldn’t kill the democratic process, they will try to co-opt it, thinking it will go away which it won’t and will chip away at the legitimacy of their rule. Something similar happened in the British Raj.
Really, are you for real?
Southeast Asia does believe in democracy, otherwise Indonesia wouldn’t of found it necessary to democratize itself, or the Philippines, or Taiwan.
Oh sorry my mistake, I meant democracy in the way in which citizens could vote in free elections or have a free press and so on. I believe the Chinese government doesn’t believe in the middle road, but the Chinese people do.
I only really know Japan, though I have friends from Singapore and have toured China, so it’s possible that I may have been too sweeping.
Checking out whether the ruling party has been consistent in Taiwan and the Philippines, it looks Taiwan stopped being a single-party state in the late 80s, and the Philippines never started. That seems to be a relatively good indication that they are indeed democratic-republics and that I was assuming too much.
My belief was that the Chinese people (excluding Hong Kong) were relatively happy with their country and the government? I know that, recently, they were complaining about polution levels, but that seems more like a real-world complaint rather than a political-theory one.
The fact is a one party government can never be popular because it doesn’t have the checks and balances in place to ensure there’s a curb on corruption and nepotism, which is rife in China.
The people of Hong Kong weren’t allowed to vote for their governor while under British rule and free elections anywhere in China are a nightmare to the ruling class so I doubt we’ll see any of that despite what the official word is.
Which assumes popularity means choosing between the established organization and an equally viable alternative. Yet many in the world actively choose a poor government to anarchy.
The point I’m making is not that it’s going to be 100% instant democracy from the get go, but that slow gradual changes will have their own momentum after a while, and that it will eventually reach a stage of where the Chinese can have a proper democratic government.
Yet you’re assuming that anarchy would be the eventual result of such a change of government in China, but the Chinese I think will take the gradualist approach to democracy, and we’re seeing that in Hong Kong now.
There are some interesting pro-democracy stirrings happening in local level politics in parts of China. Of course, labor protests happen by the thousands every year. I don’t see the Chinese government falling anytime soon without some kind of major, destructive crisis, but there is some change happening.
That said, I don’t think Hong Kong is a seed for that change. I’m happy to be corrected but I don’t see people in Mainland China viewing Hong Kong as an inspiration or a real model to follow. It doesn’t really rank among the bigger worries for the Chinese government (which include Xinjiang, economic growth, environmental issues, and some other things) either.