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End of the covid lockdowns say otherwise.

Can you explain what you mean? The USA never had “lockdowns” at all – to some degree because of public pressure though also because for the first year or so of the crisis the federal government flailed around passively/counterproductively due to abject incompetence (plus some grifting) at the top. Meanwhile China’s Covid policy had nothing whatsoever to do with the American electorate or stakeholders, but was instead driven by political pressures internal to China.

If your point is that different American states responded differently despite broadly similar public opinion based on party affiliation of the legislators and governors, that’s true, and part of how our the US system works. Public preferences clearly aren’t the only thing driving policy decisions.

I think fooster's point is that Xi had to eventually give in to pressure from "the electorate and [China]-based stakeholders" as evidenced by the CCP having to eventually abandon its zero covid policy, so there are some constraints from the people on his power.

Though I think it's less that Xi responded to pressure from the people and more that his personal power was starting to become at risk due to the policy from others in the CCP.

In that case they are entirely missing my point. Obviously Chinese politics responds (to one extent or another) to internal pressure. My point is that as an American citizen/resident I don’t have any influence on Chinese politics, so if a Chinese company under influence from the Chinese government infringes on my rights I have no real recourse. Whereas if something goes wrong here in my own country based on action of local citizens or locally based companies/politicians, the residents here can put direct pressure on the domestic political system, bring civil/criminal legal action against wrongdoing, etc.

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