A Comparison of US Democracy and Chinese Meritocracy
by John Lawrence
China has been characterized as an autocracy or a dictatorship by American media which is basically a misrepresentation of how their political system actually works. China has a long history going back 5000 years including a number of dynasties such as the Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Yuan and Quing. For most of its history China's political system has been primarily influenced by Confucianism which mandated that Chinese scholar-officials be chosen after submitting to a rigorous and extensive examination so as to choose the best and the brightest people and also those with the highest ethical standards to comprise the government. In one dynasty applicants had to show up at the examination site with their own food and sleeping bags and be locked into a cubicle for 3 days while they took the exam. China does have democracy at the local level. These local leaders then choose the government at the prefectural level who choose the leaders in the National Assembly so it is an indirect democracy in a sense just as parliamentary democracies choose their prime minister not by a vote of the people but by a vote of the people elected to parliament.
The US has a form of democracy where the people vote district by district for members of the House and state by state for members of the Senate. They also vote directly for the President. Because of the nature of the voting system which is first-past-the-post or plurality, the candidate with the most votes, even if not a majority, wins. The voting system is further complicated by the electoral college when voting for the President and by gerrymandering when voting for Congressional representatives. US voters get to vote for one Congress person representing their district and two senators representing their state so only three people at the national level at all. There are no standards of knowledge or expertise for any candidate so any fool or idiot can be elected President or a member of Congress. Because of the nature of the voting system, the US is a two party system as opposed to China which is a one party system. The best form might be a no party system in which at least one House of a bicameral legislature is chosen by sortition (random selection) which is what Aristotle recommended. This type of system would exactly mirror the society which arguably is what democracy is supposed to accomplish. That would at least reduce the divisiveness between elites and non-elites which both the US and the Chinese systems suffer from.
Some people have argued that the Chinese Communist Party controls the Chinese government. To some extent this is true since China is a one party system. However, China changed its economic system in 1980 When Deng Xiaoping became Chairman. China's economic success is largely due to Deng's abandoning the communist economic system in favor of capitalism. So while China is no longer communist, they have still stuck with the name. Many scholars have recommended a name change to eliminate the word communism such that the party is simply known as the Chinese party, not the Chinese Communist party. Due to private enterprise, more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 40 years. Both the Chinese one party system and the US two party system have their defects. In the recent US election the majority or voters had no interest in long term solutions to problems such as climate change. Their only interest was their own wallets. China is capable of long term planning and also of making big changes on an immediate basis while the US is stuck in gridlock on many issues due to divisiveness of the two parties. True the US has a one person, one vote democracy, but the quality and sophistication of the voters, themselves, determines to a great extent the quality of US democracy as a whole.
Perhaps the Chinese system could be broadened in such a way that the people voted on all those candidates who passed the Confucian style examinations. The American system could also be improved by requiring its candidates for office to have attained some level of expertise for the offices they seek. A combination of democracy and meritocracy might be the way to go.
