Elections in the US and China
by John Lawrence, August 23, 2019
At the local level elections in the US and China are similar. Local officials are elected directly by the people in both countries. At the regional level officials are elected indirectly in China by the officials at the local level. In the US state officials are elected from districts. For instance, there are 40 Senate districts and 80 Assembly districts in California. California has a bicameral legislature so each citizen of California is represented by one state Senator and one Assembly person at the state level. That means an individual citizen is represented by 1/40 of the state Senate and 1/80 of the state Assembly in terms of the legislature. A citizen of California does not get to vote on 39/40 of the state Senate and 79/80 of the state Assembly. Since each state legislator is supposed to represent their district, most of the state legislature does not democratically represent most of the state's citizens.
According to Wikipedia, People's Congresses of cities that are not divided into districts are directly elected. In most US cities, councilpersons are elected by district. This means that a citizen of a particular city is only represented by one councilperson. In San Diego there are 9 districts so each San Diegan is represented by 1/9 of the city council. It would seem that there is more democracy in China at the local level which is always the case in a districtless election in which citizens get to vote on the entire council rather than to elect just one councilperson.
At the regional level, it depends on how exactly the local Chinese officials vote for the regional People's Congress. If they do so in a districtless way, then the regional People's Congress would be a form of representative government which could be considered more democratic than US elections by district. In the US at state and national levels there is not direct democracy but representative democracy as well, but elections are undertaken by district. So in both countries there is a form of representative democracy. It just depends how you measure democracy.
There are 435 congressional districts in the United States House of Representatives, so each citizen is represented by 1/435 of Congress. You could argue that China's way of electing representatives at the national level is more democratic than the US' method because it is not based on districts. Since in the US each representative and Senator is supposed to represent only their district, this leads to a lot of contentiousness, gridlock and getting nothing done. In China their system leads to more consensus than the US system so they are able to proceed without constant wrangling.
At the national level the US bicameral legislature has produced nothing but gridlock for years. In the Senate there are 100 senators, 2 from each state so each US citizen is represented by 1/50 of the Senate. China has a unicameral National People's Congress made up of 2980 people. The indirect way in which it is elected might just make it more representative of each individual citizen than is the US bicameral legislature. Democracy can be measured in different ways, but essentially the question is how much each representative represents each individual citizen. The further question is how much consensus is there vs how much gridlock. At the present time, China seems to be moving ahead with a high degree of consensus while the US is mired in gridlock not able to get anything done. This has led to the ineffectiveness of the US Congress which has ceded much of its power to the President especially in terms of starting and carrying on wars.
