>Adrian Zenz, a German academic who has researched ethnic policy and the security state in China’s western province of Xinjiang, said the government craves omnipotence over a vast, complex and restive population.
This is short-sighted. The more rigidly a population is controlled, the less flexibility and creativity it can provide when things unexpectedly go wrong. And when all dissenting opinion is suppressed, the government after a while gets the illusion that everyone supports it when actually their is anger underneath waiting to burst out.
That is the great advantage of democracy. It is messy, but in the long term far more adaptive.
China defenders say total social control is the traditional Chinese way, but what we have today is not at all traditional. Under Confucianism, there was an elaborate set of rules that everyone knew and that everyone, including the top leadership, was obliged to follow. And everyone enforced it on everyone else, and that included that if the masses judged that the leadership was no longer following the rules, they had a right to overthrow it.
What you have nowadays with Xi Jinping is a highly secretive government that is making up the rules as it goes along, and is invulnerable to public inspection, much less judgement.
This is short-sighted. The more rigidly a population is controlled, the less flexibility and creativity it can provide when things unexpectedly go wrong. And when all dissenting opinion is suppressed, the government after a while gets the illusion that everyone supports it when actually their is anger underneath waiting to burst out.
That is the great advantage of democracy. It is messy, but in the long term far more adaptive.
China defenders say total social control is the traditional Chinese way, but what we have today is not at all traditional. Under Confucianism, there was an elaborate set of rules that everyone knew and that everyone, including the top leadership, was obliged to follow. And everyone enforced it on everyone else, and that included that if the masses judged that the leadership was no longer following the rules, they had a right to overthrow it.
What you have nowadays with Xi Jinping is a highly secretive government that is making up the rules as it goes along, and is invulnerable to public inspection, much less judgement.