Last night I was speaking to my Chinese friend who lives near to me in London. He spoke about how in China, during these riots, the thugs would be shot on sight. This was his basis of an argument as to why the political system in China is better then it is here in the UK. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure the methods of control over riotous parts of a population are how a political system should be judged. If that were true, then the USSR and Nazi Germany are both one of the best countries in the world. Hmm, not too sure about that. He went on to talk about how corrupt our system is. How the government likes to coax us all as the election comes up with pledges designed to appeal to the public, and then go back on their promises later on. Whilst this is true in some ways, one should respect that as a coalition it is difficult for the government to keep true to all their promises when the pre-election promises often become contradictory as a coalition. Whichever way the Government goes on common issues, there will always be people that complain. In China, this complaining is not noted on the same scale, as more often than not, disagreements are put down by the government. Of course, there are no elections, so no pre-election pledges, there is only one president after another but that’s “communism” for you.
Another issue for us western countries I’ve seen my Chinese friend throw around is that the problems of a democracy one of the main reasons for our current economic climate. I can see his reason, the governments need to appeal to the population lest they fail to be re-elected; by keeping taxes low, prices low, the economy good, plenty of jobs available and allowing protests to take place in case they missed anything on the "list of public wants, but you can't provide". Unfortunately, maintaining all of this whilst resources such as oil dwindle is difficult, markets change and new powers, both corporate and state, come and go means that sooner or later an economic crash is expected. It doesn't matter what the party in charge at the time is. What my friend fails to realise, is that China was affected by the crisis too, but it is highly more privatised then the US or Europe, as well as having plenty of resources in its landmass – like the US did 100 years ago (which is why it is so powerful today) and this is why China’s economy continues to grow exponentially. Its political system too contributes to this, given that workers are whipped into duty with limited pay. Casual racism aside, sure China is a country on its way to the top, but to be honest, do we really want to live in a world like an average Chinese worker? Sure the economy is good, but general pay is relatively low, living conditions often cramped and as much as we complain about health and safety in the UK, there practically is none in China. Most importantly, with no right to openly protest, it’s basically a big brother state over there. So, if I’m perfectly honest; I’d rather live in a country with a few riots now and then but overall a lot more liberal, then one where the price of no encounter with any social aggression, is our freedom.
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