China, Not US, Should Be Worried

Many Chinese in the mainland, from ordinary folks to state media, have been laughing at the big mess called 2020 Election, from the Biden-Trump debate chaos all the way to Trump’s brazen claims of voter fraud. China’s official media of course do not want to let such a gold opportunity pass by without saying anything. But this time their job has actually been easy, because many Chinese citizens, like their counterparts in Europe, already looked at many things from the election as jokes.

The official media only need to push that impression a little bid further by saying that not just this particular election, but rather democracy in general, is laughable.

But that would be wrong!

It’s one thing for the American journalists and reporters to record exaggerated but newsworthy comments and responses from domestic and abroad, it’s quite another for China, both its people and its leaders, to take the wrong signals from the US and come to the conclusion that the status quo at home is superior to what the US has to offer. Unfortunately this seems to be exactly the thinking behind Mr. Xi, Jinping’s Confidence Doctrine: Confidence in chose path, in guiding theories, in political system and in culture.

Watch How Players Move in A Game

But how can we be so sure that what we are currently seeing in the States is not threatening to deteriorate the country, sending it to a non-return and sealed doom?

It is quite simple: You do not just see the event but how people acted before, during and after the event. In the case of US election, you watch how different parties move and you can figure out what the country is really all a big mess or is hopeful and even solid deep down.

Yes, Trump is the worst this country has to offer. But luckily he is not the only player in the game. The mainlanders may have a hard time to understand American politics, as China does not have balance of power and everything is determined by the “executives” with the People’s Congress and courts all under the control of the party. But it is easy to see the design of check and balance at work, because the US media reports everything by everyone.

So what is to be watched here? First of all, where the game is played. As bad as Trump is, he still chose to fight an (obviously hopeless) legal battle. Not that he had never thought about non-legal options but he knew those were not feasible. Either military coups or mobilizing his fans and followers to take the streets would be political suicide. This is why Trump has envied all the dictators so much: They have options he does not have.

The courts of law are the most civilized, most cost efficient way to determine power transition. By the time Trump decided to go to the courts, he was already 80% doomed to fail. The remaining 20% is controlled by whether the judges will put the laws and evidences above personal preferences. So far these judges, even those appointed by him, have proven their worth and kicked out his cases one after another.

But the future of a country, unlike the result of the election, is not entirely dependent on the courts. We must also see how people act outside the court. After all, it is getting clear that Trump’s legal fight may be just a show to gather cash from his supporters for paying off his debt.

Again, this all comes down to watching how people act outside the court. Here the results are not as clear cut as in the court. We have observed some distances between the GOP establishment and Trump, although the former has been avoiding to annoy the latter, clearly because the party cannot afford to lose those 74 million of Trump voters. Having said that, decency still managed to prevail, even among Republican officials, even at the explicit request by Trump for the most crucial state.

Do not take these incidences lightly, because they show that people have bottom-lines that they do not want to cross — no matter how much is at stake. This is the most important and last line of defense for democracy.

China Is So Far Behind

Enough about what happened in the US, now let us move to China. Things are much darker there, and offer little support for the Confidence Doctrine. Sure, China grows its economy fast, and sure, the country has largely succeeded in containing the coronavirus. As an extra bonus, China has just eliminated poverty at the county level and enters the stage where extreme poverty is gone. I want to give all these achievements my heartfelt applause.

But China can’t just grow its economy and expects its citizens to be happy forever and the country to win international respects. Simply put, Chinese citizens need democratic training and discipline to prepare the country for democracy. No one else can do that better than the party state.

Now is the best time to get started. No, I say that not because China will collapse soon, like Gordon Chang has been claiming for decades, but rather because the party state is at its peak of power, both hard and soft natures, within China. Experiences from Taiwan and South Korea indicated that having a strongmen regime that proactively starts political reform is the most cost efficient way toward democracy. It will do everyone in China a big favor, and also everyone in the world a big favor. By being a change agent, the party will accomplish the most in its own history, and will become one of the greatest entities in human history.

Even from the perspective of economic growth, China needs changes. We cannot and should not sleep on the past achievements, because the country has been picking up the lower-hanging fruits. No other country in the world has been more conscious about technology bottlenecks than China does. But the biggest bottleneck arises from within China, when most, if not all, parents discourage kids from doing anything that has no obvious links with fames and fortunes, when they effectively suffocate the room to grow curiosity in their young minds, and when they only care about getting their kids into the national key universities.

A Phoenix Rising from Its Ashes

To catch up with the US on science and technologies, China needs unprecedented and fundamental changes like a phoenix regenerating from its own ashes of fire. Such changes are not even imaginable for most, if not all, countries in this world, but possible for China. This is a country that places so much value on successes and on beating others through cutthroat competitions.

Right now, an average Chinese will do anything to get rich or fame. Fair competition or fair election? Never mind! So many Chinese today would use WeChat to ask their friends, family members, coworkers and acquaintances — anybody from the same WeChat group — to vote for themselves, their sons/daughters, their relatives or friends for a trophy, an award, an honor or a title that is designed to give someone with the most votes. Based on my personal observation, nobody in the group that I put myself in has ever raised any question about fairness of the competition. All are happily doing the fake votes because they know other groups are doing just the same!

Nobody from outside China has even a small chance to change behaviors like this, but the party state can do that.