Listening to Damian Gramaticus, the BBC's man in Beijing, describing the Chinese system as authoritarian, secretive and corrupt on Radio Four this morning, I once again felt the power of our media to tell us what to think about the world.
The propaganda message is unrelenting. In the run-up to the People's Congress in China, which will anoint the new party leaders, we are being constantly reminded how flawed and undemocratic their system is. It is as if they need to keep telling us that the Chinese desperately want our democracy and are being cruelly denied it by the Communist party. So Cold War, it's like the 1980s all over again.
Are BBC journalists telling the truth? I don't think so, not when they so assiduously paint a picture of a 'regime' denying its people's aspirations. For when it comes to aspirations, I find it hard for any Western government to claim that it is democratic in the sense as representing the people's will. In Europe, Britain and North America, we have a system that constantly enriches the 1% richest, while imposing austerity on the majority.
This is done in the wake of a financial crisis caused by the deregulation of the banking system over many years, carried out on 'our' behalf, but which the 'people' never asked for.
An economic system built on debt was hoisted on western electorates without it ever being put to the electorate. Of course, we can easily see the faults of China's model of 'democratic people's dictatorship' in which a pyramid of bodies each chooses their leaders, giving the people little or no say in who rules them.
But democracy is not, as our media would have us believe, simply a matter of having a choice of personalities at an election every four years. Americans just 'chose' Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, but this was the 'choice' between two candidates backed by the millions of dollars donated by corporations, and from two parties that each uphold a system of debt-based capitalism that has seen the gains of growth go into the hands of the 0.1% for the last three decades.
So the question isn't as facile as how you choose your president or parliament. It is how accountable are these representatives. If they are hardly accountable at all, then how real is the democracy we have? Yes, to some extent we have 'freedom of speech' - mostly thanks to the internet - but media is controlled by billionaires, whose message is overwhelmingly in favour of the system as it is. We do not have a free flow of ideas accessible to the majority about what kind of system they would like to live in. Education is increasingly a matter of privilege and birth - money buys access to the best schools for the wealthy.
I would wager that for most countries, the higher the liabilities of the banking system, and the more 'open' it is to the free flow of capital in and out of the country, the more likely that conditions for the masses will stagnate, the more inequality will intensify, the more indebted the state will become, and the more eviscerated and elite-manipulated will become the system of democracy.
If you live in a country where capital movement is restricted, and banks' liabilities cannot exceed a certain amount, that is a country whose wealth is based on real economic activity, where the state has a reasonable degree of control over the flow of finance and over the ownership of assets within the country's borders, it is more likely that state policy will have a beneficial impact on the majority of the population.
China has adopted many elements of capitalism, including fee payment for public services such as education and healthcare, private housing developments and massive wealth inequality. Billionaires are now integral to the Communist elite, which means that potentially they can exert a stranglehold over policy, as the party moves further away from socialism and marxism. But for more than three decades reform and growth did raise millions out of poverty in a way not witnessed in that splendid democracy, India.
However, the clamour from the west is now for 'reform' in China - and when they say reform they mean a combination of mass privatisation of state assets and the introduction of the western system of representative democracy. The thing about the latter, it is not government of the people for the people, but it is mostly government of the rich for the rich. Look how it worked out in Russia to get an idea of what China could have in future - how different it would be from now is questionable. The people simply get to choose which representatives of the owning class they prefer. This is what the BBC - as the state broadcaster under a monarchichal democratic oligarchy - will never tell you.
Further, the social contract under a dictatorship may well be more honest than under a democracy, since the deal is 'we will let you continue to rule if you provide benefits for the people, but if you simply enrich your elite families and leave us in poverty we will rise up and attempt to overthrow you'.
This is what happened in Syria - the ruling family forgot the deal and the people rose up. This is why in dictatorships there has to be a deal, because the stakes are very high, whereas in democracies, the deal breaks down because the leaders leave office every four years and thus avoid accountability - and take cushy directorships in industry. While in office, they are under no obligation to do what they said during the elections since 'representative' does not mean delegate, and most members of parliament are placemen under the thumb of party whips and hacks. Rather like in China.
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