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> Democracy has been restored in plenty of countries previously ruled by authoritarians without recourse to the military.

Would a military coup in China be the opposite of democracy? Then what do they have now? A different opposite of democracy? I think you wanna paint a black and white pic of the subject but that is impossible

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Yes! A military coup in China would not be democratic. How complicated is this to understand? A military coup implies government by a military junta.

Even when the military runs an election soon after taking power?

It is very unusual for any such election not to be a sham election with a preordained winner, but in any case this scenario is straying pretty far from the one we started out discussing.

Is it a triumph for "democracy" when one king overthrows another? You're describing a scenario in which neither the current government nor the hypothetical replacement (or means of putting it in power) is democratic. It's only in the past few centuries that the majority of would-be rulers have felt compelled to even make a pretense of respecting democracy, so I don't understand what makes this so mind-bending.

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