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Why Can't China? |
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Some Westerners like to hold out Taiwan as an example of a Chinese population having been successfully infected by Western democracy, but a necessary condition to arrive at this conclusion is severe myopia if not outright blindness. Gathering a group of intelligent people to select a nation's leaders is an eminently serious task, but you wouldn't know that from watching the political rallies in Taipei. The Taiwanese are fine people, but we need only inject a bit of "democracy" (an election) into their lives, to see their brains turn to jelly and most of them parading in the streets with all the intelligence and composure of 10,000 hysterical 14-year-old girls awaiting the latest Korean rock star. We would almost think we were in England, watching the juvenile football hooligans drunk and screaming, cheering for their team and looking for fist fights. To an outsider, there is nothing serious or mature about any part of Taiwan's political behavior. And the ability of Taiwan's electorate to choose intelligently can perhaps be best appraised by comparing the number elected to the number in prison. If anything, Taiwan's entire political process is just as juvenile and as much a failure as those of South Korea and Australia, where not only the voters and candidates resort to violence, but the elected government members scream, call each other vile names, engage in fist fights, throw books and furniture at each other - and often go to prison. It is ludicrous for anyone to claim that party politics is a highly evolved form of anything. We need only look briefly at the behavior of those involved in any part of the political world. Truly, you would have to be possessed by some kind of evil spirit to claim this political insanity is a "universal value" and the pinnacle of human achievement. More likely, it belongs in a zoo. When the Chinese look at Taiwan, they see a US-style multi-party political system as having destroyed good government. They see two parties constantly confronting and slandering each other, blaming the other for the nation's problems, and a totally corrupt President funnelling dirty money to his wife and children. Why would the Chinese want to emulate it? While we may admire some of Taiwan's achievements, their infection by the US political virus is not one of these, and a similar political system implemented in China would probably lead to mass chaos. Which is why it won't happen. Return to Index |