The Chinese government system is, very roughly, that you elect the city counselors for your district, then all the city counselors elect your mayor. Every five years, all the city counselors in your province elect delegates to the national convention, then the delegates elect congress, and finally congress elects the president. There are a ton of edge cases to this, where what I referred to as "city counselor" and "province" could be all sorts of other things if you don't live in a large city in a standard province.
There's plenty of room to argue about whether this is more or less democratic than any other system, but ultimately it is considered authoritarian because the people who own western newspapers don't get to vote.
edit: lol damn, Awoo ninja'd me by 40 minutes
The Chinese government system is, very roughly, that you elect the city counselors for your district, then all the city counselors elect your mayor. Every five years, all the city counselors in your province elect delegates to the national convention, then the delegates elect congress, and finally congress elects the president. There are a ton of edge cases to this, where what I referred to as "city counselor" and "province" could be all sorts of other things if you don't live in a large city in a standard province.
There's plenty of room to argue about whether this is more or less democratic than any other system, but ultimately it is considered authoritarian because the people who own western newspapers don't get to vote.