On July 23, Red Flag Manuscript (红旗文稿) published an article, which Qiushi then republished, titled "’Chaos’ in Western Democracy." The following is a translation of some excerpts from the article.
The West, in particular the U.S., emerged as the triumphant side in the post-Cold War world and then promoted the so-called Third Wave of “Democratization” in the world. Twenty some years later, the records of the democracies that the U.S. exported are totally lackluster. In 2012, former U.S. national security adviser and renowned international expert, Zbigniew Brzezinski, when answering reporters’ questions, asked, "Will democracy still be prosperous? It really is a question." Recently, the British magazine the Economist published an article asking, "What’s gone wrong with democracy?" The article pointed out that "democracy’s global advance has come to a halt, and may even have gone into reverse." This statement was spoken loudly in the Western media, causing hot debates and discussions.
First, (in west democracy) it has become a norm to canvass for votes through the use of illegal bribes. Today, the Western democratic rule has developed to such an extreme that votes decide the seats and party politics has become purely electioneering politics. Therefore, a democracy based on parliamentary form has become a democracy of ballots. The ultimate goal of political parties is to court votes. Thus they have become the hostages of votes and votes have become the stepping stones for politician to be elected to “(the emperor’s) palace.” To win more votes, they would do their best to cater to voters in elections, which lead to illegal bribes for votes as a norm.
Second, the system of representation has incurred a structural imbalance. As the U.S. Democratic and Republican Parties are tit-for-tat in the budget battle, resulting in delays in passing the budget act, and the federal government has to close down its non-core departments and repeat its mistakes of 17 years ago. Since 1977, this is the 18th time the federal government has closed down. From this, we can see there are problems in the three structural features in US politics. First, the US stresses the importance of checks-and-balances of the executive branch and the judicial and legislative branches, including the two major political parties. This results in the fact that the legislative branch ends up solving the executive branch issues. Consequently there is inconsistency and inefficiency in government functioning. Second the impact of interest groups and lobbying groups are increasing, which not only distorts the democratic process, but also erodes the government’s ability to operate effectively. Third, the legislative body is divided into two evenly matched bodies – the House and Senate, and different political parties control each body. Therefore, on the national level, more obstacles (for the government) keep in from acting in accordance with the wishes of the majority.
Third, money is the mother’s milk for "the game of democracy." The West has always preached that Western capitalist democracy is sacred and equal, and that the process is fair. In fact, money, business, media and vested interests groups often manipulate Western-style democracy. It has evolved into a kind of "rich man’s game" and a "democracy of money pockets." Democracy has been reduced to elections, elections to political marketing, and political marketing to the fight for political donations, to electoral strategy and to the fight for PR or shows.
Fourth, the dissemination of democracy triggers social unrest. The externally existence of Western-style democracy is in the form of expansion and dissemination. In the process of dissemination of Western-style democracy, the Western powers have played a leading role. In March 1990, President George W. Bush proposed in the report of the "National Security Strategy," that one of the main goals of the U.S. in the 1990s was "to foster political freedom, human rights, and democracy" globally. He wanted to extend this democratic trend to the entire African continent. On this basis, the U.S. government announced that its aid to African countries would be pre-conditioned on these countries’ implementation of "multi-party democracy." That is, the US would invariably link its aid to African countries with democracy, in order to blackmail African countries.
We can look at today’s Africa, particularly at the countries that have implemented Western-style democracy like Tunisia and Egypt. These countries all have unbearable political instability, continued war, and conflicts. The ordinary people cannot even have the most basic social stability and a guarantee of a material life, let alone freedom and democracy. We can say that, to some extent, "democratization" has become synonymous with social disorder in these countries.
In recent years, the global trend of democratic recession has been more obvious in non-Western regions. The introduction of Western values and political systems in these developing countries not only failed to promote the country’s economic development, political stability and social progress, but also caused a mushrooming of political parties, political instability, and social disintegration. A lot of pressing issues related to people’s lives are often put aside because of political strife. Many countries have been pushed into the "quagmire of democracy."
Source: Qiushi, July 23, 2014
http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/hqwg/2014-07/23/c_1111750512.htm