Job security in China must be nice... http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/146...nsible-for-poisoned-milk-powder-get-new-jobs/
The Dynasty lives! Being somewhat a student of history, I'm rather not surprised at all, over how similar the political cronyism is, when compared to that which eventually doomed the late Qing. It may take a century or two, but eventually these things come back to haunt those who rely on such state functional mechanisms. Oh, and just a bit of disclaimer context; the Epoch Times is a rather well known privately funded, anti-communist party media outlet that sprang up in the aftermath of the Falun Gong crackdown.
http://www.epochmediagroup.com/ Apparently, this guy John Tang is a Falun Gong practitioner who, along with others of his passion, formed Epoch Times in direct response to the oppression of their group by disinformation spread by the Chinese Communist Party. If you recall, Falun Gong came to notoriety, when they scared the piss out of the CCP through their sudden mass performance of group exercise by 10,000 members, directly in front of ZhongNanHai (the secure compound where all the top communist officials live). The PRC government was especially embarrassed and frightened that 10K Falun Gong members (a group that had scantly been on their radar) could, without warning, appear in such tactical proximity to their nation's highest seat of power. They reasoned that, had this been a coordinated attack instead of simply silent protest, that Falun Gong members could have easily overrun the compound by sheer weight of numbers and usurped the government had they so desired; their fear laid in Falun Gong's extensive organizational ability. To this day, the PRC actively represses anything to do with Falun Gong, including sending CCP agents abroad to monitor, infiltrate and subvert FG activity. And no, I am NOT a member.
Right now I can't give you one single explicit source that corresponds to my statement. It is rather an aggregation of what I have heard from certain people and sides that propagate the current Chinese system. One example would be
One of the things that has really flummoxed the US vis a vis "Democracy" as an end all to the political process is the fact that, when given the chance to vote and choose as individuals, some populations may actually choose to hate the US and endeavor to do everything in their power to destroy us. So much for democracy being a political process that is friendly, or at least benign to our existence. On the contrary, some of the most undemocratic and authoritarian places, say... like Singapore, is actually quite friendly with Americans. Thus, the problem here isn't style of government but rather one of national intent. While the US is corrupt in its politics, racist and unfair to its own citizens in many ways, it nonetheless forgave and almost single handedly rebuilt the nations of its former sworn enemies, after fighting brutal wars with them. This leads me to believe that if anyone needs to lose a war, it's best to lose a war to the Americans, because they will buy you your country back and feed your children while they're doing it. Imagine any other nation being the victor; say the Russians, or the Chinese? Would they be so inclined to allow their former enemy to keep their nation? In fact, both Russia and China, right now are aggressively expanding their borders in defiance of international law. A pride of lions in the wild is an absolute meritocracy. They're also ruthlessly dangerous, even amongst themselves and especially to anyone else around them.
I can see your points. Germany and Japan are arguably two two best examples of how the US cooperated with and supported the former enemies after WWII had ended. Your post lays emphasis on foreign policies and attitudes towards other countries, whereas my original post and the video were more about how political systems affect the Interior, the countries' own peoples and societies. And indeed there seems to be discernible flaws in how Western countries operate today - the power of lobbyism, the short-sightedness of politicians under pressure to be be (re-)elected, etc. You already named Singapore, which is not a Western-style democracy, but it does offer its people a pretty high standard of living many Americans would be envious of. This is a really complex topic one could discuss. I also prefer a world dominated by the US to a world dominated by the Chinese or Russians, just because the US constitutionally supports the ideas of freedom and rights of people. With that, US-dominated regions like Germany and Japan quickly recovered, prospered and got to enjoy the properties of liberal societies. However, there are also cases in which it is not easy to praise the US. Take their interventions in South America. Or the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in which the Americans pretty much left a mess behind.
