> they were not particularly democratic, for example people would sell their vote.

Classic... this is why democracy is a lot less important than some less-obvious factors when it comes to quality of governance - especially things like upholding the rule of law. BTW, there's nothing particularly "westernizing" about that, either - in fact, it's something that Confucianism explicitly calls for (albeit historically with other labels, such as "Rectification of Names") and I believe it's even mentioned in the official PRC Constitution.