Other people can give more thorough answers than me than I can, but since I'm first I'll go ahead and say that I begin by asking them if they know what the national peoples congress is. They nearly always say no. Then I ask them if they know what the Politburo is and all of the layers of it. They usually say no. I'll give them a short primer if they're still interested that the National People's Congress are direct people's representatives voted in layers.
If they haven't heard of anything and they're at least kind of curious, I'll tell them to start there because there's actually a lot more voting going on than people think. You'll never convince someone in one conversation that a country that they believe is not democratic, is actually democratic. But this is enough to get them to question things, and that's pretty much how I started, so hopefully it helps others that I talk to.
If they're willing to continue listening, then I mentioned that the government has a over 90% approval rate and has for a very long time. If I'm paying attention to the news lately and I've heard good things that liberals would actually support coming out of China, I will usually mention those. The most recent one about the workers' rights to have a council on their board of directors in every company, that kind of stuff.
The hard one for people to get past is democratic centrism, but they need to learn a little bit about what communism actually is before they can stomach that. That usually comes off as anti-democratic. When in reality, it's just a good fucking idea. They just need a better theoretical basis before accepting that democratic centrism is necessary to keep the peace.
If who I'm talking to is pretty pissy about United States democracy, then I usually put my thumb on that scale and ask them if they think that two parties trying to sabotage each other all the time is really a good strategy. Even if Democrats get something passed, if the Republicans turn around and spoil the barrel with their bad apples, then nothing can get done anyway. Even when you pass policy, it tends not to work.
If they're a gun-toten red-blooded American, I'd probably just stick to the workers' rights stuff. How their middle class alone is bigger than the entire United States population, and is growing, not shrinking as it is in the United States.
I read The East is Still Red by Carlos Martinez, and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Roland Boer.
I also have in my possession Soviet democracy by Pat Sloan, but I have not read it yet, but I have heard that is a really good source for understanding the Soviet system too, of which the Chinese borrow their system from. Looking at the table of contents, it looks like it has a lot of good information. Topics like a equality of opportunity, the rights of the wage earner, What are Soviets, and some more good chapters I looks like. After thumbing through that, just now I think I need to push that to the top of my list.
I also just kind of googled around, which is honestly hard to get good information, but I was persistent and found out the different structures of the NPC and such. I also used chat GPT, which that was a while ago, so maybe things have changed, but if you prompt it correctly, like by saying " From a communist perspective, what does democracy look like under Soviet-style leadership?" Or " What are the various technical levels of government in China, including the NPC and CPC?" You can usually get good enough information that you can confirm with a separate search.
Other people can give more thorough answers than me than I can, but since I'm first I'll go ahead and say that I begin by asking them if they know what the national peoples congress is. They nearly always say no. Then I ask them if they know what the Politburo is and all of the layers of it. They usually say no. I'll give them a short primer if they're still interested that the National People's Congress are direct people's representatives voted in layers.
If they haven't heard of anything and they're at least kind of curious, I'll tell them to start there because there's actually a lot more voting going on than people think. You'll never convince someone in one conversation that a country that they believe is not democratic, is actually democratic. But this is enough to get them to question things, and that's pretty much how I started, so hopefully it helps others that I talk to.
If they're willing to continue listening, then I mentioned that the government has a over 90% approval rate and has for a very long time. If I'm paying attention to the news lately and I've heard good things that liberals would actually support coming out of China, I will usually mention those. The most recent one about the workers' rights to have a council on their board of directors in every company, that kind of stuff.
The hard one for people to get past is democratic centrism, but they need to learn a little bit about what communism actually is before they can stomach that. That usually comes off as anti-democratic. When in reality, it's just a good fucking idea. They just need a better theoretical basis before accepting that democratic centrism is necessary to keep the peace.
If who I'm talking to is pretty pissy about United States democracy, then I usually put my thumb on that scale and ask them if they think that two parties trying to sabotage each other all the time is really a good strategy. Even if Democrats get something passed, if the Republicans turn around and spoil the barrel with their bad apples, then nothing can get done anyway. Even when you pass policy, it tends not to work.
If they're a gun-toten red-blooded American, I'd probably just stick to the workers' rights stuff. How their middle class alone is bigger than the entire United States population, and is growing, not shrinking as it is in the United States.
I wish I knew more about the governmental structure of China, do you happen to have any sources you can recommend for further reading?
I read The East is Still Red by Carlos Martinez, and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Roland Boer.
I also have in my possession Soviet democracy by Pat Sloan, but I have not read it yet, but I have heard that is a really good source for understanding the Soviet system too, of which the Chinese borrow their system from. Looking at the table of contents, it looks like it has a lot of good information. Topics like a equality of opportunity, the rights of the wage earner, What are Soviets, and some more good chapters I looks like. After thumbing through that, just now I think I need to push that to the top of my list.
I also just kind of googled around, which is honestly hard to get good information, but I was persistent and found out the different structures of the NPC and such. I also used chat GPT, which that was a while ago, so maybe things have changed, but if you prompt it correctly, like by saying " From a communist perspective, what does democracy look like under Soviet-style leadership?" Or " What are the various technical levels of government in China, including the NPC and CPC?" You can usually get good enough information that you can confirm with a separate search.
Writes six paragraphs
Good response, btw
Yeah, I wrote that first and then after I was done. I was like, well, that's not really relevant, but I'm not gonna take it out.