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Comment by throw2016 | Hacker News Reader

throw2016

China is a totalitarian country. Its not a democracy so there is no point criticizing them for the lack of democracy but its democracies that must be held accountable, yet we do not see that right from Snowden, Assange and Manning to a culture of surveillance, torture, war crimes, secret courts and processes and border agents demanding to go through your personal papers.

You can't claim to be a democracy and do these things by definition yet not only are 'democracies' doing these things openly but we have people who seem less outraged by what's happening in their own 'democratic' backyards and more outraged by what a totalitarian country is doing.

This lacks credibility and seems more like a way to score political points than out of any genuine concern for democracy or human rights.

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To be clear, there's the Chinese government and then the Chinese people. The Chinese government is criticized when it abuses the Chinese people. The idea that the Chinese government cannot or should not be criticized, is to say that it is acceptable to abuse the Chinese people.

While they may live in another country, they still deserve all of the rights and liberties that all human beings deserve.

The Chinese government should be criticized when they do things that infringe on the natural human rights of the Chinese people... just as any other person or government should also be criticized.

We could have and still can apply economic pressure, but let’s face it, if the EU and US even tried, multinationals would complain it puts companies in peril or economic disadvantage. Before allowing them into MFN status or WTO, we had much better leverage, but that was wasted.

China does claim to be a democracy in its constitution, though:

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China [...] the Chinese people of all nationalities will continue [...] to turn China into a socialist country that is prosperous, powerful, democratic and culturally advanced.

http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/15/con...

Of course the literal text of the constitution is completely ignored in practice, but criticizing that doesn't automatically lack credibility.

The word 'democracy' has been used in two incompatible senses.

In the West, we see democracy as a means of limiting the excesses of power. As Karl Popper noted, 'democracy' is not so much the answer to the question "who should rule?", as to the question "how do we prevent bad rulers ruling absolutely?". When 'democracy' is taken to imply the first answer, it is seen as the grounds of total legitimacy for the ruler. It is simply a substitute for the divine right of kings. In the second case, the ruler seen as having limited legitimacy, subject to the rule of law, of criticism, even ridicule, and of lawful challenge from other potential rulers.

When totalitarian states called themselves 'Democratic People's Republics' they were not so much lying as using the term 'democracy' in the first sense above. They were signaling that their governments had a legitimate claim to absolute power on the grounds that they were the expression of Rousseau's 'general will'. Those who clashed with the state were not seen as rebels against the ruler, but as 'enemies of the people'.

That's very insightful comment. I'd never thought about it that way. Thank you.

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