Last Thursday was the discussion of whether globalization affects politics or not. I say yay. Every democracy, for example, comes from Great Britain, communisits come from Marx and Lenin, totalitarian is taken from the tradition of monarchs and dictatorship. For the most part, the successful countries are the democracies. The biggest exception for this would be China. China is communist, but yet, is becoming quite successful, so successful, that there is fear of China dominating the rest of the world (my old high school principle actually had an assembly once, and lectured the school about how China was going to take over the world if we weren’t better students). Why is China so successful as a communist country? Well, it isn’t as if some people didn’t try to bring more democracy into the system. For years, China kept itself pretty much separated from the rest of the world, until after Mao dies and China joins the WTO. Joining the WTO was risky, it would mean bringing in Western ideas as the West started to trade with China. Sure enough, revolts started, such as Tiannaman Square. The students there wanted more democracy, as they saw the West had, such as freeom of press and speech. Well, the military was brought in, and it turned into a massacre. Today, the politics just are not questioned as much, due to acts like that. China has the highest legal execution rate in the world, at about 5,000-10,000 people a year, and 99% of all defendants are found guilty. China is able to keep this stability because the peasants are still rather uneducated, and do not take much of an interest in politics. A middle class is almost essential for democracy, but the growing middle class in China just isn’t strong enough yet. Things such as interest groups are simply lacking participants. It is Chinese tradition to be subordinate to leaders and elders, and as the saying goes, old habits are hard to break.
