The West thought once China is full of billionaires, the billionaires having all that wealth would then have the power to oppose and dissolve the CCP.
Didn't go as planned.
The ability of the government to take on actors with vast amounts of private capital is, in my view, one of those things worth learning from.
Many are worried that America's rule of law is also being slowly deteriorated. Once you go down the path of authoritarianism, there is no turning back.
Only in extremely rare cases like South Korea managed to go from authoritarian military junta that came to power, built up its economy by exploiting and oppressing labor movements, , to a democratic state with civil elections only really started in 1993.
Even now South Korea still has problems with following the rule of law. It used to be that the judicial committee is "independent" from the President but recently the Moon administration has completely destroyed this delicate mechanism that was built to prevent authoritarianism. UNHRC openly calls Moon a semi-dictator now and Moon is getting cozy with the CCP and turning its back on the US. Before, this setup allowed for the arrest of past two military dictators that came to power after Park Chung Hee's assassination by his own spy chief. Now it's gone.
What I'm trying to say is that democracy is truly a gift when it works, its noisy, people fight but thats exactly what is needed but it can easily be taken away.
This is what worries me most about Trump, with the recent military manuevers within the country (squad of apache helicopters, troop transports, Trump heading to a USMC command bunker) makes me suggest this is a man with nothing to lose and evrything to gain with the military and police behind him (police were seen removing the barricades in capitol hill rush).
The problem with the US is that the class interests of those whose consensus is important in lawmaking is aligned with the interests of the ultra-wealthy.
Nor do I buy into the mythos that "lawfulness" is something universally applied in the United States. Laws, procedure, delay always play a large part when the interests of people with large capital are threatened, but lawlessness is the norm in many relations that impact ordinary people, like that weird clocking in rule that your boss at your retail job has instituted that is actually illegal under labor law or when the Federal gov't decides they will no longer enforce redlining law by going undercover to investigate racial discrimination.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alibaba-jack-ma-idUSKCN1N...
This is a classic power struggle between ideological and technocratic elements. Jack Ma vs Xi Jinping. Jack Ma, a communist party member, challenged party Chairman. As we can dispense with the notion that Jack Ma lacks the necessary wits, the actual interesting question is why did Jack Ma think it opportune to openly challenge Xi Jinping at this time?
In the US, this struggle is a non-issue as the ideological element (venture capital) finances and controls the technocrats (such as Jack Dorsey). We just however recently were treated to a purported “outsider” ideologue locking horns, via technocrat proxy of FANGs, with the ideological establishment. Given that this outsider also happens to (still) be the head of state in USA, I guess we need not wonder too deeply as to the logic of CPC reminding a prominent party member and fellow travelers of who still calls the shots in China.
But the actual rubber stamper voting group is about 3000 people.
However, since there was never any real independent and strong opposition (the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan) the only power struggles were very much about succession, and again that's like a minor clash in a royal family, whoever wins, it's still feudalism.
... yes, you said that Jack Ma is a CCP member, but he was nowhere near close enough to Xi in any aspect to challenge him. He's a useful idiot who got a sector allocated to (IT, cloud hosting and web/online/in-app payments), got big thanks to no competition, and thought he has actual power.
By membership I do -not- mean registration to vote for a party; meaningful participation in the political organization, from local office, all the way to national committee level, and of course actual elected and political appointments.
I don't have the numbers but wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be an even smaller fraction of total population than the Chinese single party.
Roughly take US as 1/3 of population of China, and then test expectation that 91/3 => ~30,000,000 politically active members of political organizations in US. Again, I don't have the numbers, but I would be shocked if actual party members in US even reached the 1 million mark, much less 30 million people. For fairness, let's throw in 18 million Americans that belong to unions. Let's make it 20 millions in total. That's still less than the required 30 million politically organized Americans to be at par with CCP.
[but p.s. /g! If we throw in the 18 million American millionaires, then we have a system that is a bit more representative than the CCP]
Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies and billionaires and can force a change in behavior quickly. There's no feedback loop like that with the CCP, and the US gives citizens more power but having to wait 4 years to vote on a change is a very slow feedback loop.
I don't know what to answer that except that it's the quickest way to get a fascist regime that doesn't even try to hide it's fascist. Monopolies don't need to compete with people's dollars.
> Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies
None of these movements really hurt these respective companies.
Chick-Fil-A stopped donating to anti-LGBTQ groups. #deletefacebook did work but most users just switched to instagram so it had a minimal effect on revenue.
And putting unelected billionaires in charge is going to do exactly that? No.
> #deletefacebook did work but most users just switched to instagram so it had a minimal effect on revenue
No it didn't. Neither case the bottom line of both companies was impacted in any meaningful way.
It's important to have external checks to political power. It's pretty amazing that private companies (Twitter, FB, Stripe) were able to stand up to and effectively limit the power of the commander of the largest military on earth. That has almost never happened without bloodshed.
The US constitution is has worked pretty well, but it's just a document. History has not been kind to those nations that have centralized power by nationalizing companies. Doesn't that get us closer to fascism?
The CCP will not be opposed.
Or maybe in order to archive such success in China one must have connections to people in high places and people with said connections can't imaging their connections turning on them.
don’t think the US acrually expected the oligarchs to overthrow china as they are in bed with the ccp.