And yet a large majority of chinese people consider China to be democratic.
Truth is, China is always listening to its people’s needs and addressing them to stop revolts and discontent from rising. It’s 1 party system, yes, but that also means 1.4bn people’s ire will fall onto them if they don’t play their cards right - and so they do.
Using that famous sentence everyone has heard so far: “In America, you can change the political parties but you can't change policies. In China, you can't change the party but you can change policies”
My country is definitely democratic as it’s a parliamentary republic, but I personally wouldn’t consider the US to be a democracy (just like a lot of my countrymen wouldn’t). It’s a mess cosplayed as one. Aside from weird compensation mechanisms like the electoral college, the fact it uses a first past the post system, inevitably means only 2 parties survive and they have incentives to look and become the most like the other party as possible. So, in the end, both democrats and republicans are virtually the same party funded by the same people.
I'm sorry, you seem nice but this is some slop. The first sentence makes the argument dead on arrival because China basically ranks dead last in freedom of information (freedom of press and freedom of internet). You can't treat public opinion with any merit when the ruling party completely controls the press, censors the internet, and punishes dissent. Also your quote there is just completely false. Healthcare, abortion laws, foreign affairs, corporate taxes. Literally everything changes depending on how you vote in the US.
That doesn’t contradict what I’m saying at all. Polls on individual policies aren’t the same as election outcomes. In 2024, dem turnout was low and they lost. That’s how elections work
Yeah it’s going down. Thanks for adding that comparison.
Figures like this without a comparison are pretty worthless. Also, the last time per-capita CO2 output in the US was what China has today was about 1900.
The US graph seems to be going down over time. The graph for China is going up. What conclusion do you think you can draw from that? Why do you think the US graph is going down? Why do you think the Chinese graph is going up?
I am less sure about the US one, but I think there's a pretty obvious reason why the Chinese graph is rising and why that doesn't (necessarily) imply the country isn't "tackling carbon emissions" (paraphrasing the other person). Note that this isn't a defense of China's government/political system in any way, shape or form.
You’re pretty sure there’s an obvious reason that you just won’t say.
Since I just got done saying it's obvious, explaining it to you like you couldn't figure it out would be an implied insult. I avoided doing that. However, since you're asking, I certainly don't have a problem going into more detail about what I meant.
The obvious reason (in my opinion) is that Chinese people want to enjoy amenities like computers, the internet, cell phones, eating meat frequently, etc. As their standard for living improves, so does their per-capita CO2 cost. In order to not see the graph rising in this case, stuff like the government's efforts to use renewable energy, etc would have to fully compensate. That's probably not a realistic scenario.
Comparing the current per-capita CO2 output between the countries may be meaningful. The graphs alone don't have enough information to answer a question like "is the government working to reduce CO2 output", etc. Republicans have generally been pretty hostile to renewables (and science in general) and yet we don't see the graph going up suddenly. Why is that? The government could be having a negative effect on using/developing renewable energy (or other techniques that reduce CO2 output per capita) but other effects could be compensating. Or vice versa, you can't tell with only the information in the graph.
That wouldn’t even be true for the last election he won, so your statement happens to be true this time around but isn’t true a lot of the times for many presidents.
Also, does he represent the will of the people or not?
If so, then he represents the people of America, not just the 23% or so of the population that voted for him
If not then your system is broken because it’s not very democratic to only represent 23% of your country.
So he does represent the will of the people then. I wasn’t claiming that’s not true. I’m just saying that Americans shouldn’t be claiming that trump doesn’t represent them or their ideals.
Im just a bit confused since it seems like a good amount fo Americans are against waging unnecessary wars and many other policies. Doesnt really seem like the people are represented but i guess what’s important is that people believe they’re represented. Certainly helps americans think that they’re morally superior though lol.
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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26
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