Albano Martins
China has in recent years gained a huge international profile, despite being a country with a single-party political system.
Elsewhere, the capitalist system grew, modernized, and expanded in search of new markets. Its economic and political logic focuses essentially on maximization of production and profit. But the colossal growth of wealth, in the hands of a handful of “entrepreneurs,” with almost no special control, led them to turn to other “poorer” states to produce what they could no longer do in their own countries at competitive prices.
The so-called socialist countries grew and appeared as “alternatives” to this state of affairs which was “exported” by the intellectuals of the capitalist countries. As the market was the devil that had led to a high disparity in wealth, it was administratively demonized and replaced by a centrally planned economy.
History tells us that if this helped with the initial growth of these economies, it also ended up causing significant stagnation. The socialist states stagnated, in poverty and lack of freedoms, as against a more modernized west which remained full of social injustice and much hypocrisy hidden under the cloak of a so-called “democracy”.
All these one-party systems have fallen or are gradually dying.
China has grown, “fed” by the West and has seen its population attain levels of “individual wealth” it had never imagined, but has done so in an environment different from that which a Westerner aspires to, one without political freedom and free press and free opinion, which does not really feed the populations their basic needs.
This mismatch of cultures and life values – which comes first and which comes after – can perchance only disappear by external hand or intervention.
The truth is that Western hypocrisy demonizes a one-party system, but not a system in which parties are corrupted from within and feed their own clientele.
I am for a democracy based on equal opportunities, where the organs of power are not beholding to powerful economic interests nor promote themselves to positions with benefits other than those that are bestowed on them by their own populations. I stand against this democracy that is not based on fraternity nor on the values of true justice. I am for a democracy that is based on honorable men, who respect others, not hypocritical moralists and the religious, but men who always have in their sights the well-being of their fellow men and other beings, men who command respect because they respect others and are bold and persistent!
I am for a democracy that is based on progress, and progress is not and can never be against other humans, nor against other species – animals or nature itself.
A democracy that relies only on voting is an abomination.
Today we have a startling world, without great leaders or men of great example, in constant uproar of religious fanaticism and scandals that should shame them, using their values only when it suits powerful economic or political interests.
China will take its time to find more noble ways, in my view, to grow, but it is up to its people to decide!
Tiananmen happened in China. Nobody must or can forget!
But how many Tiananmens have we missed at the hands of the West all over the world?
China is growing and developing steadily and, I trust, smartly in this global world.
A centralized democracy, the political option of the Chinese system, teaches that nothing can be sustained if it is against the will and without the conviction of its population!
Politics has to be a noble exercise, coming from the most profound ethics, and not just an exercise in mediocrity or from a fear of not pleasing the powerful!
Hong Kong in recent days has shown us an example of political mediocrity and a lack of core values! Listen to the people, please!
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