China—Political System
China lags far behind other world powers in official government interest in democracy. This curious state of affairs cannot be fully explained historically. After all, every contemporary democracy has a nondemocratic past. But in China the past weighs unusually heavily.
A Tradition That Scorned Politics
Since before 500 BCE, politics in China were more social than institutional. In the past, various philosophical schools had contended, and something of a feudal structure had been evident, with healthy competition among aristocratic clans, emperor, and officialdom. But long before the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, Confucianism overwhelmed other schools.....
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