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Comment by df41 | Hacker News Reader

A funny thing is when I was talking to a lot of friends in China recently, while they like america in general, they believe the Chinese system is superior to the western "democracy". Do not get me wrong, they blame the Chinese government for many things rather fiercely at the same time.

I somehow feel like they are overly optimistic but could not find any proof to refute their point (talking about the current US election clearly did not help...). They are mostly upper middle class who worth more than me. So I guess they may be biased? However the taxi drivers seem to have the same view.

An anecdote: none of them want to immigrate (at least to US) and their only major concern seems to be the air quality. Since they can buy everything else from overseas anyway.

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>An anecdote: none of them want to immigrate (at least to US)

I think your sample is skewed. Chinese people from all social classes are immigrating to the US at record rates. The US gets about 25% of all Chinese emigrants each year, a number that's been growing not decreasing. China recently overtook Mexico as the top source for new immigrants in the US.

Look at the number of Chinese students, the number of H-1Bs, and the number of Chinese green card applications for evidence of middle class highly educated immigration.

For less educated immigration, visit any Chinese restaurant in any backwater town in the country. You'll find that the front of house is staffed by an endless supply of new immigrants.

My sample is definitely skewed, since it is just like a dozen of upper middle class friends. However, your argument may be flawed as well :)

It is possible that Chinese immigrants are on the rise, but it is not like a Chinese person can easily immigrate to US, legally or not. Comparing the number of Chinese and Mexican is a bit silly, because of the "undocumented".

The number of Chinese students is meaningless as not every student wants or can stay. The number of H-1b may mean something but my feeling is that Chinese are getting less in recent years. Do you have actual data? The green card applications is more direct evidence, but some real data showing the trend would be useful.

Anyway, I think if there is no pacific in the middle and there is no wall at the border. At least 100 million Chinese people would love to move to US...

That only goes to show that for people with money, citizenship becomes a choice and you get a market of countries that are in competition.

Countries compete in many ways and form of government is just one and might not even be the deciding factor.

This might become a problem for China in the long term but I don't think it's certain.

In the end every form of government is democractic, simply because it's not possible to maintain a stable government over a population that is not satisfied to some degree, you get revolutions otherwise and this is how democracy or at least regime changes happen.

Democracy makes sense because governments make mistakes and those need to be dealt with. Democracy is able to deal with that very nicely.

At the moment the Chinese government does a very good job and have the benefit of pretty much everyone else in the world who matters being highly interested in seeing China succeed. As longs that doesn't change - and I find it very hard to imagine a scenario where it does - China won't become democratic.

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