I wouldn't characterize the Chinese political system as democratic at all, and there are many ways in which it does not work for many people. However, life has gotten way better in China by almost every metric over the last few decades, and Western depictions of China are incredibly distorted / driven by fear and chauvinism.

And, by the way, there are also many ways in which our liberal democracy doesn't work for us. Look at our breathtaking Covid death tolls. Look at our staggering inflation and energy shortages. Look at the current mass protests all across Europe over the cost of living. Look at the media censorship over the truth about the Ukraine war. I could go on and on and on.

> Look at our breathtaking Covid death tolls. Look at our staggering inflation and energy shortages. Look at the current mass protests all across Europe over the cost of living. Look at the media censorship over the truth about the Ukraine war.

I've had people in China asked if our country has been destroyed by the pandemic, inflation, energy shortages, BLM protests, etc...and well my answer is "no, you're just being lied to by CCTV." It isn't like the misinformation goes both ways.

True, but my point is that no population has a consensus. Whether you live in China or the West, there are people who know the truth and people who don't know the truth. There are people who are well-informed and people who are ignorant.

Whether or not we think it's democratic is irrelevant; the important thing is that the Chinese think it's democratic. China's system doesn't have to work for us, as long as it works for them.

The Chinese believe they enjoy just as much freedom as we do. They are informed by their international travel. Every year, over 100 million Chinese travel the world over. They've seen our freedoms in the US, UK, France, Germany, etc.

Most Chinese wouldn't classify their government as "Democratic" even if they think the government works for them. Most Chinese never go abroad either, just a small portion that makes up the middle class. You aren't going to talk to some farmer in the middle of henan province about their overseas trips. Heck, most people in Shanghai (the richest city) haven't been abroad, especially if they don't have hukou there (and many don't).

Given that only 120 million Chinese even have passports, 100 million traveling the world every year seems a bit optimistic.

You didn't read the article. Latana's Democracy Perception Index for 2022 shows that the Chinese believe their country is democratic.

Stats do show at least 120 million Chinese have travelled outside the country every year (except, of course, during the pandemic years). This is not speculation requiring optimism.

Do you have a cite for that. The most I can find is that 120 million Chinese had passports in 2016. According to https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-07-09/Chinese-passport-holde..., they still had 120 million in 2019, and were expecting 240 million by 2020 because of a price cut in the passport fee (and then the pandemic comes, so I doubt they made those numbers). According to https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107607/china-number-of-..., it might be up to 170 million now?

But if what you say is true, that means most Chinese with a passport are taking international trips every year. If we discount Hong Kong (which doesn't require a passport, and anyways, is part of China, though it does count as an international trip from the airport's perspective, and you have to go through emigration, you also didn't say if you were counting HK residents also, so I guess we could have a bunch of different numbers there), I don't see how that could be true given the dearth of people with passports who are even capable of taking trips abroad.

Hong Kong's population is only 7 million or so, a tiny fraction of 120 million travelers, assuming every Hongkonger went on international tours.

Hong Kong is a city state however, so it is probably true that most of their residents travel abroad each year (if we count China as traveling abroad, but even if we don't, > 50% is probably about right).

I assume you know that the majority of Hong Kong citizens live in poverty. They can barely afford a roof over their heads, much less international travel.

But perhaps you've never experienced poverty, so you may not know.

Although there are a lot of poor people in HK, it isn't true that most of them live in poverty:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-02/hong-kong...

1.6 million out of 7.3 million people is definitely serious, but hardly a majority. I've been to the SAR a few times, and don't think it is especially poor, especially when compared to even China's richest city like Shanghai.

As for my own personal experiences, please don't make assumptions like that. You have no idea what I've been through in my life, and it is rather not relevant to this discussion.

Perhaps I overstated the poverty in HK. But my point was that many people there cannot afford to travel. They live paycheck to paycheck; they have very little in the way of savings. I know people in HK, including family. Most people in HK are not well-off.

When you add these to the people who are living in poverty, that doesn't leave for a lot of travelers.

The ability to afford an apartment (expensive, even rent) and the ability to take a holiday to Thailand are completely different costs. An HK resident could be homeless (unable to afford rent) and still easily have the ability to take a holiday to Phuket. That's how crazy HK is, at least.

Hong Kong statistics are usually separate from mainland statistics. This goes for GDP, trade statistics (Hong Kong is a separate member of the WTO, for example), and many other things. I strongly suspect that it goes for tourism statistics as well.

In 2019, there were about 150 million outbound tourists from China (and I think this means mainland China, specifically, but I don't know if multiple trips by the same person count multiple times).[0]

That's up from 100 million in 2013, so the number was rapidly increasing before the pandemic (and it will probably begin rapidly increasing again).

Regardless, the point stands that at the moment, there's no mass rush to escape China. Most people in China think life is getting better year for year, and are fairly optimistic about the future of the country. It's not a democracy, but it's not the dystopia it's caricatured as in Western media.

0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1068495/china-number-of-...

> It's not a democracy, but it's not the dystopia it's caricatured as in Western media.

It's not liberal democracy. It's not democracy as defined in the West.

It's the Chinese model of democracy, or what is known as "whole-process people's democracy."

And it works for the Chinese. That's the big takeaway.

That's why the Chinese regard China as the most democratic nation in the world, according to Latana's Democracy Perception Index 2022.

It's just as silly to buy into the Chinese government's own propaganda about "whole process democracy" as it is to buy into Western fear propaganda about China.

Why is whole-process people's democracy silly? Just because you don't believe in it?

That's what the author meant by Western arrogance. We in the West think we are entitled to define what is and isn't democracy. On what basis? Because we dominate the world politically?

Because it has nothing to do with democracy. I'm the farthest thing from a Western chauvinist, but I'm also not a naif.