I'm watching a report on this issue by Hong Kong's ATV as I'm typing this. Another cause of the exodus of factories (probably >50% are owned by Hong Kong business people) is blamed on the new Chinese labor law enacted this year which closes many of the loopholes of the old one and causing labor cost to rise. On one hand, it is good for the Chinese laborers are getting more protection from the government; on the other hand, the factories just close down, move and fire the workers. (Contrary to popular belief here, Chinese labor laws are tougher than that of the U.S.; just that few private companies, owned by HK, Taiwan, and Japanese, obey.)
Every year, there are estimated 2 million new college graduates entering the job market in the Guangdong province. How many non-college-graduates are entering job markets across China? I can't estimate.
That's why if anyone live in China long enough would be getting sympathized on how hard their government's job is.
That's exactly what's happening, as reported by Chinese and HK media. The clothing factories in southern China are closing in large number and relocated to Vietnam.
I'm sure if that relocations are completed, we will see all criticism of Vietnamese human rights and labor abuses rather than that of Chinese, in our mainstream media.
It is always terribly sad and pathetic when people try to reach back into history to try to justify what is happening today.
That was exactly the message I tried to convey as well. Many of accusations of the Chinese government did happen but they happened during Mao's era and to all of China.
Today, there are still some problems but it is vastly improved, in Tibet and in the rest of China.
Whereas the mainstream Western media still have their mind stuck in the past, relying solely on anti-China groups for information, and downplay any progress happening in China. Don't tell me that the government restrictions forbid them to know anything -- they should at least notice some positive progress, shouldn't they? And if you follow media coverages from Hong Kong (which still has a lot of freedom in expression,) those are usually a lot more neutral.
Like it is portrayed that the Chinese government try to eradicate the culture or language of Tibet today. But how? Are the Tibetans not allowed to speak their languages? Not allow to celebrate their holidays? No. Not allow to worship Dalai Lama publicly? Yes. Do they have to use Chinese currency? Yes. Do their children need to learn Mandarin like children in Guangdong province? Yes. Are capitalistic economy being introduced to the region? Yes. But should these be considered as "eradication of culture/language" or just as "development"? As I said, the government and Han are less effective eradicating Tibetan culture than we mainstream Americans eradicating Indian culture today.
All I said is that both sides have some facts -- it is just that what they want to exaggerate are different -- and that are motivated by who pays, for both sides.
That could be the case for the Chinese people, but conversely, after years of hearing anti-China media coverage, it is hard for you to make a distinctions between myths announced by the Tibetan movements and facts in Tibet, between past and present, between Tibetans in exile, Tibetans supported by political influences/CIA, and Tibetans in Tibet.
It is wording like the summary and your comment that angers Chinese people who take actions on themselves. In fact, from the events in the past few years, like the bombing of Chinese embassy in Kosvo in 2000, Chinese fighter jet's collision with the US spy plane in 2001, and the anti-Japanese protests in 2004, it was the Chinese government who was afraid of overrun patriotism. Just yesterday, the Chinese government mouth piece published a statement asking for calm and ration in patriotic actions, like what they did after the earlier mentioned events. You could say the Chinese government is freaking about destabilized society, whether that is caused by Tibet, Falun Gong or patriotism. Blaming every anti-West protest as government sponsored is exactly what humiliate those who are patriotic.
In general I feel that whenever 'weapons' (DoS attacks, censorship, physical force) are used to end a discussion, it means that party has run out of reasonable arguments (and in a way, admits moral defeat). Are you referring to the physical attacks to the Olympic torch relay by the pro-Tibetan?
It is often hard to tell when the Chinese nationals are shouting down dissenting points of view if they actually believe that crap, or if they're just doing what they're told. I have a suspicion that a lot of them (even the ones here in Canada who were protesting against Western media bias last week) honestly don't know any different version of events. Therefore, they assume that we really are trying to hurt their national pride. They don't want to be told that their government is and has been lying to them.
That could well be the case, but so are the ones supporting the Tibetans. Sadly, historical, or even current, truth on hot topics are rarely available. Like, I actually try to figure out who's right on Tibet by reading the Wikipedia entry on Tibet (and, please, don't start the debate on Wikipedia here.) I still have little clue which side is right.
The furors of Chinese (including those residing oversea and having access to all free media) over this matter are grounded on their patriotic instinct. For examples, they can easily point out, from their own experience living in China, that many of the critical coverages on China by the Western media, from human rights to product quality are exaggerated, biased or incomplete. I, for one, clearly see those issues are true yet they are exaggerated. While I know next to nothing about Tibet's situation, except people are still poor, but it is probably safe to say that the issue is also exaggerated outside while suppressed inside.
It seems that most normal people will have some patriotic instinct to rebut bad things are said or exaggerated of their country, even though at the same time they have lots of complaints. For example, I don't like or agree the Iraqi war (and many other aspects of this country) but I found myself defending the American invasion back in 2004 and American way of doing things in general, while I was residing in China.
So who's right? As always, both have the point but neither is 100% correct.
The Chinese government have acknowledged atrocities occurred in the 1960's and 70's but those were due to Mao's Cultural Revolution which affected all of China and not just Tibet. In the current times, the Chinese government or Han Chinese probably eradicate Tibetan culture/language/religion probably no more effective than the mainstream Americans eradicating the culture/language/religion of American Indian.
Well... in a sense, the whole China has already adopted the "one county two systems" policy -- communistic in politics (or should I say communistic in name, totalitarian in politic,) capitalistic in economy. While the central government does not interfere with freedom of expression in Hong Kong and Macau, they have an absolute control of picking the head of the SAR governments.
It seems that the central government fears that if it gives too much autonomous political power to one province (or even HK/Macau,) the rest will demand that power. and they also fear of interference from the West behind the back should the people have more political freedom and power.
Many of the movements against China have been linked to foreign influences, like the Tibetan resistance was/is supported by the CIA. Falun Gong may also be supported by the CIA. Basically, for any cause to become any significance in the general public, large amount of money is needed on a continuous basis.
I would think it is very hard for us average joe to see all the facts and intricacy of these political matters. We certainly can't rely on what the Chinese government tells us, but it is just about as risky to rely on accusations from these movement groups.
Fortunately, these really aren't our matter, other than their entertainment values to us.
I wish D becomes more popular. It allows the low level efficient coding without the craps of C++. it also borrow and improve many ideas found in java/C# such as javadoc-style documentation.
Unfortunately, the US is now only better in terms of allowing free speeches that nobody cares. See my previous comment about free speech in China. The good thing is that in China you are now allowed speak more and more freely while people care about what you have said less and less, just like here. For other matters in life, I found the differences are getting smaller and smaller -- the US is stagnant or declining while China is improving. That's why I pitch people I know in China not to immigrate here anymore -- it is just a waste of their times and money to re-adjust.
Won't work because your average English web pages are not blocked at all -- not even coverages of Tibet/FLG/Taiwan from CNN/NYT/WSJ. They don't care about English content much -- read some other comments I have posted. they blocked mpstly Chinese contents. Those who know English are the better-off class and not against their government.
As I have lived in China for a few years, these evictions with inadequate compensations do happen. However, the severity of the cases depend greatly where it occurs. Sometimes the old area was so bad and you wish someone will come to ask for your house in exchange for a new one. For example, my mom inherited an old house in the city of Guangzhou; about 10 years ago, the area was demolish, rebuilt and my mom get a condo of the same size. You can't ask for a single-house anymore but the values probably go up as the neighborhood is anew. Generally, in the city, you will see people keep adding illegal extensions to their houses in the old neighborhoods because they know the compensation is based on the footages and even though those extensions have no permits, they can still make more claims.
In the suburb villages, unvalued compensations by corrupted officials have happened often, especially a few years back, and it is the main causes of protests in China. BTW protests are allowed in China as long as it is not too large or involve political topic -- and it works probably as often as protests in the US.
I meant they talked about democracy, freedom, equality in discussions of the other news. Got it? Most news themselves, released by the various news agencies, would refrain from direct talk of democracy and freedom, but they do talk about equality directly, that's not a restricted topic.
I will suggest you to do two things: (1) get a travel visa to China, go to a large city like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and visit some English corners (if you don't know where to find one, try google; (2) start learning written Chinese and visit the discussion forums of Chinese news website like sina.com for sometimes, especially for discussions about corruption cases, housing prices, or even news when the stock market heads down.
(1) will show you who and how many people are fluent in English; (2) will show you if people there know about "democracy", "freedom" and "equality" and if people can criticize the government or not. don't take my words here. go try the above two things. Of course, you can also choose just to listen the mainstream opinions you have heard from CNN and Slashdot -- that's your right as well.
Yeah... it is like most U.S. presidential candidates of the Democrat party are millionaires. Even bin laden is a millionaire. The mass of the revolution are the poor people.
As I lived in China for 3 years, you can surf most English foreign media websites like CNN, New York Times, etc., most of the times. They don't really care. Because if you are so fluent in English, you already know all about human rights and you are likely a member of the better-off class. In China, like everywhere else, the people that want to and will revolve against the government are the poor people -- never the middle class or rich people. Remember who in the U.S. joint the L.A. riots in the 1990's?
In China, they are most interested in blocking oversea/HK/Taiwan Chinese sites. Like sina.com is a Chinese company operating two sites -- one for domestic and others for oversea with contents not allowed in China.
Is there no Chinese term for "Bad PR" or are they just that stupid? Wait until they hire a PR and lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. and the problem will be fixed. Actually I read a news on a Hong Kong newspaper websites the other day that many lobbying firms are opening up offices in Beijing under variety of disguise -- not sure if they want to help American penetrate the Chinese government or help the Chinese penetrate the U.S. government -- or both.
The US interest in Tibet and Taiwan is for its own strategic interests, rather than genuine concern over human rights. Back in 1970's, China was still under Mao and was in a period known as the Cultural Revolution; it was one million times more oppressive than it is now and over half million people died for political reason (comparing to maybe tens to hundreds, depending on the reports you read, of people are under arrest for political views today.) YET, it was at that time the US gave up on Taiwan to foster closer tie with China in order to fend off the Soviet Unions. And now, China has opened up and has much better human rights landscape comparing to the pre-reform era, but the US started pressing China on the human rights and gave Taiwan much more supports. Why? Because China becomes so strong now and Taiwan is known as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" of the US to contain China's expansion. The US cannot afford to lose it -- not to mention the billions of dollars of weapon sales. To the best of our interest, Taiwan should neither go independent nor re-unify with China, we should continue to provoke the war of words between China and Taiwan and enjoy the billions of weapon sales 9along with the Russian defense industry.)
Similarly, Tibet is such a remote mountainous region with very limited resources and capability, it is only good for deploying missiles. Tibet cannot be truly independent -- it must rely on some big country for foods and supports. either it can rely on China or it relies on the US. The US can then deploy missiles along its food supplies -- like what we do in easter European countries.
And for your last question, nothing bad will happen to either places after the Olympics or in the future, unless the US start stirring up again. They are just two pieces on the chess board played by China and the US -- just like China used to be a piece on the board between US and Soviet Unions. Oh... by the way, Taiwan just elected a pro-China president over the weekend, ditching the pro-independent DPP.
Very true. The books of all radical religions deliberately contains wide range and subtle contradictory verses so that the leaders and clergies can easily justify whatever they want you to do. On some times and places, like religious sessions with their own people, they can pitch use of whatever means to defend the believe; on other times and places, like photo-ops with American politicians, they can pitch peace and appear as good people.
The bottom line is that somebody will try to doctor the "democratic process" somehow. It can be the king. It can be big corporations and mainstream media (the US?) It can be rich businessmen (Philippine? Thailand?) It can be the church (Iran?) It can the CIA (Kosvo? Ukraine?) It can be the ruling party (Russia?) It can be the competing parties using questionable means (Taiwan?) It can be the drug lords and mafia (Mexico?) It can be the poor people who just vote for anyone who can bring them fringe extremely short term benefits (India?) (I think people in china are worrying about the last one given the mass of poors there.)
Also as seen in India and the US, open and highly competitive democratic elections do not guarantee the change of status quo either. Whereas in Singapore, though the election is not considered open or competitive, people still mostly satisfy with the resulting government (which is one of the cleanest and less corrupted in the world.)
No, thats not accurate. Democracy is one of the few forms of government that are meritocracies, the best rise to the top, not held back by political beliefs or whatever. This is an essential prerequisite for the growth of wealth and hence a large middle class. Most of those countries you listed are not true democracies, there is still an ingrained upper class which is holding on
Democracy is an ideal, all current form of practices are far away from the ideal and will likely remain so forever. Election, even a true competitive ones, will not necessary overthrown the elite upper class as you point out. The best examples are India and Mexico (both have large number of names on the Forbes 500 for examples but the majority are as poor as the peasants in China.) USA may be a good example of failed democracy as well. They are not against democracy, they just say it will actually hinder the progress toward a prosperous and egalitarian society.
Thailand, for example, still has a king.
By your token, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, etc. are not democracies either.
Taiwan is nothing like the PRC. In the PRC, corruption permeates to even the most petty of bureaucrats, who must be bribed for simple things like marriage licenses and being allowed to continue to farm your own meager plot of land. The difference is that: in China, corruption is wide spread but illegal and can carry stiff punishment; whereas in Taiwan *and* in the US, corruption is not wide spread but it is mostly legal and little punishment, because it has been renamed to political contribution etc.
As I talked to people in China while I lived there 2003-06, most people know about democracy of the Western world; they do complain their country's lack of democracy, but at the same time, they believe it does not necessary make things better and it is only something good to have in the future when the country gets prosperous. Think about it, they do have a point. Which of the following democratic countries (at least more so than China) are much better off than China: India, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and many easter European countries? These countries are not doing better in terms of corruption, equality, development, environment protection, education, health care, etc.. How do they fare comparing to Singapore and Hong Kong, both of which have little democracy to speak of?
Their belief is that democracy won't work unless the country has reached higher level of prosperity -- i.e. massive middle class, otherwise democracy could be damaging.
I'm a citizen of the USA and after I lived in China for a few year between 2003-06, I made this observation:
In China, corruption is widespread but mostly illegal (and people complaint about it rather loudly.)
In the US, corruption is not as widely spread but it is mostly legal because it has morphed into "political contribution" and "job opportunity" (and few people complaint about it -- hey, we vote this government -- we are democratic -- how can corruption happen in a democratic system.)
Designed to function as a high-tech memory aid, these 'Cyber Goggles' promise to make the act of losing your keys a thing of the past. I just wish the goggle knows the whereabout of itself and whereabout of its owner.
Slashdot Mirror
But have you read the article? Isn't this problem they claim to solve in their research?
I'm watching a report on this issue by Hong Kong's ATV as I'm typing this. Another cause of the exodus of factories (probably >50% are owned by Hong Kong business people) is blamed on the new Chinese labor law enacted this year which closes many of the loopholes of the old one and causing labor cost to rise. On one hand, it is good for the Chinese laborers are getting more protection from the government; on the other hand, the factories just close down, move and fire the workers. (Contrary to popular belief here, Chinese labor laws are tougher than that of the U.S.; just that few private companies, owned by HK, Taiwan, and Japanese, obey.)
Every year, there are estimated 2 million new college graduates entering the job market in the Guangdong province. How many non-college-graduates are entering job markets across China? I can't estimate.
That's why if anyone live in China long enough would be getting sympathized on how hard their government's job is.
That's exactly what's happening, as reported by Chinese and HK media. The clothing factories in southern China are closing in large number and relocated to Vietnam.
I'm sure if that relocations are completed, we will see all criticism of Vietnamese human rights and labor abuses rather than that of Chinese, in our mainstream media.
You can't fight with money!
That was exactly the message I tried to convey as well. Many of accusations of the Chinese government did happen but they happened during Mao's era and to all of China.
Today, there are still some problems but it is vastly improved, in Tibet and in the rest of China.
Whereas the mainstream Western media still have their mind stuck in the past, relying solely on anti-China groups for information, and downplay any progress happening in China. Don't tell me that the government restrictions forbid them to know anything -- they should at least notice some positive progress, shouldn't they? And if you follow media coverages from Hong Kong (which still has a lot of freedom in expression,) those are usually a lot more neutral.
Like it is portrayed that the Chinese government try to eradicate the culture or language of Tibet today. But how? Are the Tibetans not allowed to speak their languages? Not allow to celebrate their holidays? No. Not allow to worship Dalai Lama publicly? Yes. Do they have to use Chinese currency? Yes. Do their children need to learn Mandarin like children in Guangdong province? Yes. Are capitalistic economy being introduced to the region? Yes. But should these be considered as "eradication of culture/language" or just as "development"? As I said, the government and Han are less effective eradicating Tibetan culture than we mainstream Americans eradicating Indian culture today.
All I said is that both sides have some facts -- it is just that what they want to exaggerate are different -- and that are motivated by who pays, for both sides.
That could be the case for the Chinese people, but conversely, after years of hearing anti-China media coverage, it is hard for you to make a distinctions between myths announced by the Tibetan movements and facts in Tibet, between past and present, between Tibetans in exile, Tibetans supported by political influences/CIA, and Tibetans in Tibet.
It is wording like the summary and your comment that angers Chinese people who take actions on themselves. In fact, from the events in the past few years, like the bombing of Chinese embassy in Kosvo in 2000, Chinese fighter jet's collision with the US spy plane in 2001, and the anti-Japanese protests in 2004, it was the Chinese government who was afraid of overrun patriotism. Just yesterday, the Chinese government mouth piece published a statement asking for calm and ration in patriotic actions, like what they did after the earlier mentioned events. You could say the Chinese government is freaking about destabilized society, whether that is caused by Tibet, Falun Gong or patriotism. Blaming every anti-West protest as government sponsored is exactly what humiliate those who are patriotic.
In general I feel that whenever 'weapons' (DoS attacks, censorship, physical force) are used to end a discussion, it means that party has run out of reasonable arguments (and in a way, admits moral defeat). Are you referring to the physical attacks to the Olympic torch relay by the pro-Tibetan?That could well be the case, but so are the ones supporting the Tibetans. Sadly, historical, or even current, truth on hot topics are rarely available. Like, I actually try to figure out who's right on Tibet by reading the Wikipedia entry on Tibet (and, please, don't start the debate on Wikipedia here.) I still have little clue which side is right.
The furors of Chinese (including those residing oversea and having access to all free media) over this matter are grounded on their patriotic instinct. For examples, they can easily point out, from their own experience living in China, that many of the critical coverages on China by the Western media, from human rights to product quality are exaggerated, biased or incomplete. I, for one, clearly see those issues are true yet they are exaggerated. While I know next to nothing about Tibet's situation, except people are still poor, but it is probably safe to say that the issue is also exaggerated outside while suppressed inside.
It seems that most normal people will have some patriotic instinct to rebut bad things are said or exaggerated of their country, even though at the same time they have lots of complaints. For example, I don't like or agree the Iraqi war (and many other aspects of this country) but I found myself defending the American invasion back in 2004 and American way of doing things in general, while I was residing in China.
So who's right? As always, both have the point but neither is 100% correct.
While we can't rely on what the Chinese government tells us, it is just as risky relying on what the Tibetan-in-exile tells us. For one, the Tibetan movements are backed by some influence like the CIA behind the back which, of course, would be very interested in having the US to deploy missiles over in Tibet.
The Chinese government have acknowledged atrocities occurred in the 1960's and 70's but those were due to Mao's Cultural Revolution which affected all of China and not just Tibet. In the current times, the Chinese government or Han Chinese probably eradicate Tibetan culture/language/religion probably no more effective than the mainstream Americans eradicating the culture/language/religion of American Indian.
It seems that the central government fears that if it gives too much autonomous political power to one province (or even HK/Macau,) the rest will demand that power. and they also fear of interference from the West behind the back should the people have more political freedom and power.
Many of the movements against China have been linked to foreign influences, like the Tibetan resistance was/is supported by the CIA. Falun Gong may also be supported by the CIA. Basically, for any cause to become any significance in the general public, large amount of money is needed on a continuous basis.
I would think it is very hard for us average joe to see all the facts and intricacy of these political matters. We certainly can't rely on what the Chinese government tells us, but it is just about as risky to rely on accusations from these movement groups.
Fortunately, these really aren't our matter, other than their entertainment values to us.
I wish D becomes more popular. It allows the low level efficient coding without the craps of C++. it also borrow and improve many ideas found in java/C# such as javadoc-style documentation.
Unfortunately, the US is now only better in terms of allowing free speeches that nobody cares. See my previous comment about free speech in China. The good thing is that in China you are now allowed speak more and more freely while people care about what you have said less and less, just like here. For other matters in life, I found the differences are getting smaller and smaller -- the US is stagnant or declining while China is improving. That's why I pitch people I know in China not to immigrate here anymore -- it is just a waste of their times and money to re-adjust.
Won't work because your average English web pages are not blocked at all -- not even coverages of Tibet/FLG/Taiwan from CNN/NYT/WSJ. They don't care about English content much -- read some other comments I have posted. they blocked mpstly Chinese contents. Those who know English are the better-off class and not against their government.
As I have lived in China for a few years, these evictions with inadequate compensations do happen. However, the severity of the cases depend greatly where it occurs. Sometimes the old area was so bad and you wish someone will come to ask for your house in exchange for a new one. For example, my mom inherited an old house in the city of Guangzhou; about 10 years ago, the area was demolish, rebuilt and my mom get a condo of the same size. You can't ask for a single-house anymore but the values probably go up as the neighborhood is anew. Generally, in the city, you will see people keep adding illegal extensions to their houses in the old neighborhoods because they know the compensation is based on the footages and even though those extensions have no permits, they can still make more claims.
In the suburb villages, unvalued compensations by corrupted officials have happened often, especially a few years back, and it is the main causes of protests in China. BTW protests are allowed in China as long as it is not too large or involve political topic -- and it works probably as often as protests in the US.
I meant they talked about democracy, freedom, equality in discussions of the other news. Got it? Most news themselves, released by the various news agencies, would refrain from direct talk of democracy and freedom, but they do talk about equality directly, that's not a restricted topic.
I will suggest you to do two things: (1) get a travel visa to China, go to a large city like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and visit some English corners (if you don't know where to find one, try google; (2) start learning written Chinese and visit the discussion forums of Chinese news website like sina.com for sometimes, especially for discussions about corruption cases, housing prices, or even news when the stock market heads down.
(1) will show you who and how many people are fluent in English; (2) will show you if people there know about "democracy", "freedom" and "equality" and if people can criticize the government or not. don't take my words here. go try the above two things. Of course, you can also choose just to listen the mainstream opinions you have heard from CNN and Slashdot -- that's your right as well.
Yeah... it is like most U.S. presidential candidates of the Democrat party are millionaires. Even bin laden is a millionaire. The mass of the revolution are the poor people.
As I lived in China for 3 years, you can surf most English foreign media websites like CNN, New York Times, etc., most of the times. They don't really care. Because if you are so fluent in English, you already know all about human rights and you are likely a member of the better-off class. In China, like everywhere else, the people that want to and will revolve against the government are the poor people -- never the middle class or rich people. Remember who in the U.S. joint the L.A. riots in the 1990's?
In China, they are most interested in blocking oversea/HK/Taiwan Chinese sites. Like sina.com is a Chinese company operating two sites -- one for domestic and others for oversea with contents not allowed in China.
The US interest in Tibet and Taiwan is for its own strategic interests, rather than genuine concern over human rights. Back in 1970's, China was still under Mao and was in a period known as the Cultural Revolution; it was one million times more oppressive than it is now and over half million people died for political reason (comparing to maybe tens to hundreds, depending on the reports you read, of people are under arrest for political views today.) YET , it was at that time the US gave up on Taiwan to foster closer tie with China in order to fend off the Soviet Unions. And now, China has opened up and has much better human rights landscape comparing to the pre-reform era, but the US started pressing China on the human rights and gave Taiwan much more supports. Why? Because China becomes so strong now and Taiwan is known as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" of the US to contain China's expansion. The US cannot afford to lose it -- not to mention the billions of dollars of weapon sales. To the best of our interest, Taiwan should neither go independent nor re-unify with China, we should continue to provoke the war of words between China and Taiwan and enjoy the billions of weapon sales 9along with the Russian defense industry.)
Similarly, Tibet is such a remote mountainous region with very limited resources and capability, it is only good for deploying missiles. Tibet cannot be truly independent -- it must rely on some big country for foods and supports. either it can rely on China or it relies on the US. The US can then deploy missiles along its food supplies -- like what we do in easter European countries.
And for your last question, nothing bad will happen to either places after the Olympics or in the future, unless the US start stirring up again. They are just two pieces on the chess board played by China and the US -- just like China used to be a piece on the board between US and Soviet Unions. Oh... by the way, Taiwan just elected a pro-China president over the weekend, ditching the pro-independent DPP.
Very true. The books of all radical religions deliberately contains wide range and subtle contradictory verses so that the leaders and clergies can easily justify whatever they want you to do. On some times and places, like religious sessions with their own people, they can pitch use of whatever means to defend the believe; on other times and places, like photo-ops with American politicians, they can pitch peace and appear as good people.
The bottom line is that somebody will try to doctor the "democratic process" somehow. It can be the king. It can be big corporations and mainstream media (the US?) It can be rich businessmen (Philippine? Thailand?) It can be the church (Iran?) It can the CIA (Kosvo? Ukraine?) It can be the ruling party (Russia?) It can be the competing parties using questionable means (Taiwan?) It can be the drug lords and mafia (Mexico?) It can be the poor people who just vote for anyone who can bring them fringe extremely short term benefits (India?) (I think people in china are worrying about the last one given the mass of poors there.)
Also as seen in India and the US, open and highly competitive democratic elections do not guarantee the change of status quo either. Whereas in Singapore, though the election is not considered open or competitive, people still mostly satisfy with the resulting government (which is one of the cleanest and less corrupted in the world.)
Democracy is an ideal, all current form of practices are far away from the ideal and will likely remain so forever. Election, even a true competitive ones, will not necessary overthrown the elite upper class as you point out. The best examples are India and Mexico (both have large number of names on the Forbes 500 for examples but the majority are as poor as the peasants in China.) USA may be a good example of failed democracy as well. They are not against democracy, they just say it will actually hinder the progress toward a prosperous and egalitarian society.
Thailand, for example, still has a king.By your token, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, etc. are not democracies either.
As I talked to people in China while I lived there 2003-06, most people know about democracy of the Western world; they do complain their country's lack of democracy, but at the same time, they believe it does not necessary make things better and it is only something good to have in the future when the country gets prosperous. Think about it, they do have a point. Which of the following democratic countries (at least more so than China) are much better off than China: India, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and many easter European countries? These countries are not doing better in terms of corruption, equality, development, environment protection, education, health care, etc.. How do they fare comparing to Singapore and Hong Kong, both of which have little democracy to speak of?
Their belief is that democracy won't work unless the country has reached higher level of prosperity -- i.e. massive middle class, otherwise democracy could be damaging.
I'm a citizen of the USA and after I lived in China for a few year between 2003-06, I made this observation:
In China, corruption is widespread but mostly illegal (and people complaint about it rather loudly.)
In the US, corruption is not as widely spread but it is mostly legal because it has morphed into "political contribution" and "job opportunity" (and few people complaint about it -- hey, we vote this government -- we are democratic -- how can corruption happen in a democratic system.)