In a simply dreadful column* in The Financial Times, Daniel Bell and Eric Li – two shameless apologists for China’s Communist Party dictatorship – attempt to justify the unjustifiable. They make out a case why China’s 1.4 billion subjects should remain under the repression of a small winning coalition of self-seeking autocrats.
The gist of their argument is as follows:
1. Democracy conveys voting rights only on adults within national borders. Thus, non-voters located outside the national borders and future generations are excluded from the calculus of consent.
2. Voters should vote for the common good. But they tend to vote according to self-interest, when able to identify that interest correctly.
3. Many voters lack economic competence. Democracies require no competence test in order to vote.
4. Democracies do not elect leaders on the basis of merit.
5. China’s Communist Party has perfected a process whereby leaders are chosen on the basis of superior competence and virtue. Potential leadership cadres must undergo a grueling process of talent selection. They attend the best universities, compete for admission to the Party, work as bureaucrats at various levels within a one-party system, and are hand-picked by those who have served within the top echelon of the ruling coalition.
I find it difficult to comprehend why even a pinko-left newspaper like The Financial Times would publish such sycophantic drivel. I must presume that none of the newspaper’s senior editors have ever felt the autocratic lash of the Standing Committee of Nine.
Have the editors of this news-rag never heard ofsuch names as Bo Xilai, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, or Wen Jiabao? As they swig down their after-dinner port and chortle about the deficiencies of democracy, are they totally unaware of the billions of dollars stolen from their subjects and syphoned out of China by these corrupt autocrats? Do these portly editors mistakenly confuse such Chinese dwarfs with Alexander, Hercules, Hector, and Lysander and such great names as these?.
Would you trust such a newspaper to sell you a second-hand car?
* Daniel Bell and Eric Li, ‘In defence of the Chinese way of picking leaders’, Financial Times, November 12, 2012
Tags: contempt for democracy, Financial Times, international front for China's dictatorship
November 15, 2012 at 5:11 am |
Dear Prof. Rowley,
I wonder what was the financial Time’s stand at the time of South Rhodesia’s UDI in 1965, and the British inspired UN sanctions against, thanks to the “classical” governments run by Rhodesian from british stock.
You may know William H. Hutt’s position on the issue of what he termed ‘classical democracies’, in the line of J.S. Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government (see his The Rhodesian Calumny, published in the New Individualist Review) : a qualified franchise. That means a defined standard, and no arbitrary once it is established, so more and more people will be qualified. (He has also an interesting paper about South Africa, republished in the collection edited by S. Pejovich, where he advocated for South Africa a Constitution inspired by the 1961 Rhodesian Constitution with a double roll). That is obviously not the Chinese process (point 5).
So it appears the British left-leaning papers have a double standard. Or no standard.
Link to Hutt’s paper :
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2136&chapter=195488&layout=html&Itemid=27
November 15, 2012 at 1:07 pm |
This supposedly communist country is probably the clearest example that free market works better for countries with authoritarian regime. Our capitalist doctrine tries to explain it by saying China is using the strong domestic economic control to support its exports.It is true, but it also makes huge investments in its infrastructure. Who does not profit from this system is the average Chinese citizen. He has to challenge many risks during his life, and has to pay for everything except education. This enables China to step out from the left – right economic paradigm (which is plaguing our Western countries – see for example how to fight global economic crisis) and focus on the growth and privatizing the profits more and more. I would say China is a cancer in a cancerous system.
November 18, 2012 at 1:24 pm |
[...] Finally, somebody is as outraged about the China-related apologism I see everywhere as I am. [...]