What do you call a nation that spends 800B on the military while their infrastructure rots, routinely sponsors coups all over their hemisphere and maintains an aggressive forward military posture all over the planet?
A democracy is a form of government where citizens pick who is in charge.
You can have pacifist government against war. You can have the opposite.
Norway is a democracy but doesn't have an aggressive miliary posture. The US has the largest army and probably spends 800b on their military.
Authoritarian government manage by suppressing their own people. This requires an aggressive military presence locally. All of the conditions above could be true as well for these types of governments.
There's polling numbers on all this. You can check popular approval of imperial wars in the US (it is low), or you can check Chinese approval of their government (it is high).
Ah yes, the extremely reputable self-reporting from Chinese citizens, who absolutely have no fear for their safety should they say the wrong thing. Of course the Chinese love the CCP, they all say so!
Go talk to some Chinese people, then, do your own research.
Just don't call them brainwashed while uncritically swallowing a story about how we're all free and they're all oppressed, no matter what they say about it.
Hmm maybe once China decides to get rid of it's Muslim concentration camps I'll take a visit and ask around. Until then, it's pretty clear to me which government is objectively worse.
Approval of their government compared to what? What is the alternative? Chaos?
In a democracy you have many parties and points of view which would naturally lead to lower popularity as it spreads over many ideas. Each takes turns and this system renews ideas.
Sorry, I thought you were trying to understand why Chinese people might be happy with their government after you add it all up. If it's just cold war arguments and demonization, I can't help you with that.
Consider, even if you're that hardcore about it, 'know your enemy' has some value. They understand us but we don't understand them, and sometimes it's willful on our part. We'd rather tell ourselves a story.
What do you think the word democracy means? None of that is incompatible with being a democracy.
That's not a defense of those actions, but there's an incredibly bizarre trend these days to act as if words don't have any actual meaning beyond their mood affiliation. Just pick a word from a vaguely-related grab bag ("living wage", "misinformation", "democratic", white supremacy ") and hurl it blindly at the conversation and you get all the retweets you want.
If you admit that, the issue becomes actual reality, not authoritarianism per se, and the comparison between the US and China becomes very uncomfortable when democracy is no longer a crutch.
"Good" is such a subjective term. Even the worst totalitarian governments are good for some percentage of the population. Even the best democratic ones have people who are struggling against the system and would regard it as evil.
I live in New Zealand and there are people driving around thinking we are a communist country and feeling oppressed by government. They express as much through the signs and stickers all over their vehicles.
I wish that good and evil existed in a measurable way but I fear that we live in a world of grey and everyone sees the shades differently from their different perspectives.
