From the Readers

Chinese democracy VS Western democracy

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-06-13 15:40

Comment on "Reform must be incremental" (China Daily, June 11)

First, democracy is a state of thinking that people believe they have some kind of control over the government and the government listens to their needs and demands and changes policies now and then.

People should keep this in mind that government is manned by non-politicians and politicians at the end of the day. Hence it is not just the CPC that runs the Chinese government at all levels.

As long as people are allowed to pass on their displeasure and suggestions to the politicians and those running government in whichever way that they are able, democracy is in existence. Democracy with elections is just one way of this. Democracy by other means is as valid in many ways. It does not have to be the Western model.

Second, to me, democracy is about the level of participation of the people. The more times and the more frequent people get involved in the running of government, the more democratic a nation is.

Western democratic systems have two very visible problems- elections only occur every few years and there is a low rate of voters who turn out to cast their vote.

Australia is one of the very few nations in the world that voting is compulsory and yet less than 90 percent participation is the norm. Many eligible voters do not register to vote or if registered just pay a small fine to avoid voting. In other Western democracies, voter turn out rate is rather much lower than this. In the 90's, just about 50 percent of all US voters bothered to cast their vote for the presidency.

The large membership of CPC is very democratic and indeed its constancy of participation of large members is more democratic than a democratic system in the West. In the West, membership of political parties is very low.

There is a huge number of government workers that are not CPC members. They have their input and influences in the formulations of policies and implementations of government policies.