China is far more meaningfully democratic than the West
In this clip from an interview with @thebridgetoChina , Carlos Martinez argues that "Western liberal democracy" is not democracy in any universal sense — it is capitalist democracy, a system in which political power reflects the interests of those who own and deploy capital. As Marx observed, the oppressed are permitted once every few years to choose which representatives of the oppressing class shall govern them. The democratic element in capitalist societies is always subordinate to the capitalist element — and in times of acute crisis, as Europe demonstrated in the 1930s and as we are witnessing again today, it can be dispensed with entirely.
China, Carlos argues, operates a fundamentally different model suited to a fundamentally different social system. With the capitalist class unable to organise politically or dictate to the state, the Communist Party — a mass party of 100 million members — is obliged to maintain its legitimacy by actually delivering for working people. China's whole-process people's democracy, operating through the National People's Congress at every level of society alongside the consultative CPPCC system, produces something far more substantive than what Xi Jinping has called "election-time democracy."
Full interview here: • Why Does the West Fear China?