{"id":1097,"date":"2024-11-16T14:47:33","date_gmt":"2024-11-16T14:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themapledragonpod.com\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2024-11-16T14:47:36","modified_gmt":"2024-11-16T14:47:36","slug":"democracy-vsmeritocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themapledragonpod.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/16\/democracy-vsmeritocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Democracy VS Chinese Meritocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Personal Intro<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preventing my baby boy from being suffocated and thrown off the balcony in the middle of the night, his mother from taking her life, begging doctors to give her Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) to save her life, a botched treatment, post-traumatic stress and twice hospitalized first for a stroke and then a heart attack, it wasn\u2019t until I moved and found myself immersed in an utterly alien culture of caring and kindness, that I began to heal, after 17 years in the individualistic West.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a disconnected world, re-discovering ourselves is its own journey, but what if the journey isn\u2019t just about self-discovery but learning, for the first time, that what you assumed about \u201cthe other\u201d wasn\u2019t what you thought, but mind-bogglingly different than anything you could have possibly imagined?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fascinated by difference and complexity, my hunger to make sense is unrelenting. Returning to teach for the third time, this time in Shandong Province, the birthplace of Confucius, a recent cycling trip forced me to make sense of another incongruity: that China\u2019s authoritarian system might be more citizen-centred than the democratic system I grew up with; China had dumbfounded me once; maybe it would defy my assumptions about Western superiority a second time… <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Research on how Asians and Westerners think differently clarifies why the West profoundly misunderstands China[i<\/a>] <\/span>and explains my bizarre experiences after moving to Nanjing, one of China\u2019s four Great Ancient Capitals, eleven years ago. Whether I was greeted with \u201cWelcome to China\u201d everywhere I went like I was a guest of a small village, asked by strangers for selfies to show off their new \u201cforeign friend\u201d, told by a young male hairdresser how honored he was to cut my hair, KTV (karaoke bar) staff kowtowed, or complete strangers helped me order and eat in a cafeteria, with public transit or just daily life, China wasn\u2019t just different; it was otherworldly. Though my ancestors go back thousands of years in the Anglo-Saxon West (England, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany), it took moving to China to get what I needed. Living in China saved me from losing faith in humanity. Perhaps\u00a0the extreme isolation I had felt allowed me to \u201csee\u201d the deep humanity in another culture. All this made me deeply reflect, from the beginning, China\u2019s utterly different civilizational roots compared to mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the pandemic has taught us anything, we\u2019re all connected. Marianne Williamson, New York Times bestselling author of A Return to Love<\/em> suggests as much in her praise of famed Gabor Mate M.D. and son\u2019s critique of the absence of links in the West between \u201cthe individual and the social and the emotional contexts within which our lives unfold, and health or illness ensue\u201d (p.2) [ii]<\/span> in the New York Times bestseller, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. <\/em>Mate and Mate (2022) go further and assert that a society that doesn\u2019t value our need to care for each other or belong has lost touch with its humanity. China, in contrast, was unlike anything I could have imagined; the harmonious, status-oriented mindset permeated everything. But I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised; this was consistent with what Chinese scholars had long been saying: that the Chinese have not radically changed their worldview in the 1800 years since the golden age of Chinese civilization (1099 B.C.E. to 221 C.E.) (Ruan 2021)[<\/a>iii<\/span>]<\/a>. This short quote from a translated version of, Dongjing meng Hua lu<\/em> (Dreams for Episodes of Splendour of the Eastern Capital)[<\/a>iv<\/span>]<\/a>, an authoritative book on affluent Chinese culture, where Meng Yuanlao (1187) describes the congenial nature of Chinese, especially towards strangers in the ancient capital of Kaifeng 900 years ago is but one example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was such happy times, so many people and an abundance of things in the shops, the wonderful festivals, so many sights for the eye to enjoy, above all, I remember the humane and congenial character of the citizens, always ready to help a stranger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, despite the West\u2019s profound misunderstanding, after 200 years of dominance, it\u2019s supreme confidence in the superiority of Western-style democracy over all other types of government in \u201cdelivering what citizens want\u201d[v]<\/span> continues. This is despite survey after survey in which a greater proportion of Chinese people have greater belief in the democracy in China than citizens in almost every Western country. Latana\u2019s 2024 Democracy Perception Index [vi]<\/span> (the world\u2019s most extensive annual study on how people perceive democracy), for example, reveals that 79% of Chinese citizens believe China is \u201cvery democratic,\u201d the third highest of any country. This contrasts with 57% of Americans who believe the US is \u201cvery democratic\u201d. But, confronted with something that flew in the face of everything I had been conditioned to think, the issue faded from memory. However, a question still lingered: if Western democracy was so superior, why were so many in the West losing faith in it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Latana\u2019s 2024 Democracy Perception Index<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Questioning democracy<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For years, I had normalized the uneasiness I would feel cycling in my hometown of Toronto after close calls with cars, trucks, and buses, yet I never lost faith in the superiority of Western democracy. But, after a recent cycling trip in Yantai (a lower-tier Chinese city), my faith was shaken when a bicycle sign above the lane ahead made it unmistakable: a lane solely dedicated to bicycles and e-bikes on an overpass appeared before me! The sense of safety was an out-of-body feeling! Never did I imagine the possibility in any first-world, Western democratic country, let alone China\u2019s authoritarian system. The exhilarating feeling of being \u201cseen\u201d kept lingering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bicycle\/E-bike lane on an overpass in Yantai, China<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I was in my 8th year of cycling in my 3rd Chinese city, so with years of Canadian cycling experience and a research background in governance, I was confronted by some challenging questions. How could a poorer city, in a third-world authoritarian country design infrastructure more perfectly suited to its citizen\u2019s safety needs than a wealthy international city in an advanced, western democratic country? Weren\u2019t democracies \u201cby and for the people\u201d? Weren\u2019t authoritarian governments indifferent to their citizens? Yantai\u2019s cycling paths were routed behind bus stops, and I later discovered car-wide lanes solely for bicycles and e-bikes went through Yantai\u2019s many tunnels, too. The city government\u2019s exceptional responsiveness to the safety needs of cyclists (apparently regardless of cost) projected a distinctly more generous feeling of humanity and caring than the democratically-elected city government in my hometown had ever given me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bicycle\/e-bike lane weaving behind a bus stop in Yantai, China<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s subway systems reflect its greater focus on the safety of its citizens, too. It would be impossible, for instance, to get hit by a subway train because platforms in every city I\u2019ve visited are separated from trains by glass wall barriers with sliding glass doors that open only when trains are stopped. I have never seen such a focus on subway safety in any of the world\u2019s democracies I\u2019ve visited. China\u2019s lack of homelessness compared to Canada, as an \u201cadvanced\u201d developed country, is yet another example. Again, how could a so-called indifferent authoritarian government like China\u2019s care more about the safety needs of its citizens than the Western democracy I grew up in and all the rich Western democracies I\u2019d visited? I needed to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subway platform with glass wall in Nanjing, China.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I discovered a TED talk by Eric Li. Eric, an investor and political scientist born in Shanghai at the height of the Cultural Revolution, tells us that a standard assumption in political science has been that, as society progresses, it eventually becomes a capitalist, multi-party democracy. But, in this boundary-pushing talk, Eric asks us to consider other ways to run a prosperous modern nation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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