I'd argue that a government is supposed to fear its citizens. It's just not supposed to censor them and take away their rights to quell that fear: rather, it should hold itself accountable and not do things that would cause resentment.
Anyway... I disagree (amicably). I think this is a terrible state of affairs. A fearful regime is a dangerous one. Fear is the enemy of "us" and this is degenerative to a republic, and oppressive in non-republics. The GDR feared the people would overthrow. Assad fears the people.
It doesn't generally result in "we'll do a better job so they like us." It results in building up a populist (and sometimes violent) popular counterbalance. It results in paranoid spying and attempts at control.
I know HN prefers high brow, philosophical quotes but this really does sum everything up, even if it's campy.
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering - yoda
I don't know about other countries, but you're right, some Frenchmen want the government to fear them, because it's one way to keep the power in check. We also have a really strong executive power who kinda own legislative rights and have control over a tiny bit of the judiciary system, so it's understandable.
I won't pretend I understand the nuances but to us it seems almost comical. Train schedule changes, and people are upset? Fires will be lit.
I mean, given who Macron was this was entirely predictable, but many people believed he'd changed. For what reason ... I cannot fathom. But then again, Australia did essentially the same: an ex-Goldman Sachs vice president (with half his immediate family still GS VPs) will change the country to be more fair ! Oh wait ... he didn't. Quite the opposite in fact. Cue complete and total amazement.
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-labor-reform-5-key-po...
And Assad does not fear the people.
Damascus: https://www.unusualtraveler.com/damascus/
In a way, in the extreme, it is literal: in a healthy democracy, the citizens are so comfortable in their sovereignty that they would be willing as a last resort to forcibly, physically remove a despotic leader. But healthy democracies also have strong institutions that will check such a leader and eventually replace him peacefully - so this fear is mostly theoretical.
In the more symbolic sense, the "fear" is simply to be understood as the citizens having the absolute power to get rid of their leaders through the democratic process. If you want to be a leader, and if you want to stay in office, you basically have to keep the people happy (very broadly speaking, of course), there are no shortcuts in the long run for this. It's "fear" in the sense of "fearing the next election".
The definition of “fear” is then just very different.
I submit the dissolution of the Soviet Union is an example of a large communist goverment transferring power outside the party without it being 'catastrophic'. While it was a politically and economically turbulent time, control of the goverment was relinquished without civil war. Some protesters were killed in various countries, but there were many orders of magnitude less death in the USSR relinquishing control than the USSR to gaining control.
China has no choice to keep pumping their economy. Even a mild recession could lead to really bad things.
Xi answers to the communist party. The communist party is more invested in staying in power than keeping Xi in office. Every five years the National Congress of the Communist Party of China convenes, which selects the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the Central Committee, and has the authority to change the Community Party of China's Constitution.
China has had a long run of good years. It'll be interesting to see how the party reacts to unruly citizens.
On any given day, there are a few hundred protests in China; eg some migrant workers didn’t get paid. Your question is not hypothetical.
This is a good opportunity to quote Bert Brecht, who (after seeing which way the wind blew, doing a 180 degree flip on his original stance) penned the poem 'Die Lösung' in response to the East German Worker's Uprising of June 17th, 1953 -
"Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni / Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands / In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen / Auf denen zu lesen war, dass das Volk / Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe / Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit / Zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da / Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung / Löste das Volk auf und / Wählte ein anderes?“
The translation is my own, and neither German nor English is my first language, so please bear with me:
"After the June 17th uprising / The secretary of the Writers' Union / Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee / They said that the people had lost the trust of the government / And could only regain the trust by doubling their efforts / Wouldn't it be simpler, then / If the government dissolved the people / and elected another?"
Here in JP we see people holding cardboard stating how they are miss-treated in front of the ward office. Letting these voice be heard means more leverage to the citizen. like pressuring law changes. A large part of the world is not like America. In Chinese twitter there are quite a few words you simply can not type.