I read an interesting post at Pajamas Media written by Stephen Green.
In Egypt Should Employ the ‘Turkish Solution’, Green explains what confuses many in the West and especially Americans.
The gulf between American beliefs and the reality of the developing world is often wide and foggy.
In fact, the average American cannot understand why the rest of the world isn’t up in arms demanding democracy such as the one that exists in the US today.
It is as if the average American is ignorant of their history, which is probably true.
In 1776, the United States was not what it is today. Many act as if all it takes is to flip a switch and the citizens of any country may form a democracy similar to those in Europe and North America without consideration that it took more than two centuries for the US to evolve from a republic into the democracy it is today.
That’s why Stephen Green’s “Turkish Solution” is worth reading.
The United States started with leaders such as George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. No other country applied pressure on the US to become a republic. It was an internal decision.
Like Atatürk, the father of Turkey’s Republic, Deng Xiaoping was the father of China’s current one party republic. Under his guidance, China wrote a new Constitution in 1982 setting term and age limits for officials serving in the Communist Party, which has more than 70 million members.
Today in China, decisions are made by consensus and not by one man as they were under Mao’s leadership for twenty-six years and China is building a legal system that did not exist 30 years ago.
In the early 1980s, China also embarked on a goal of improving education and raising literacy to well above 90%. That goal has not been reached yet but China is close to achieving it.
Deng Xiaoping was correct in 1989 when he said China wasn’t ready to become a democracy.
In 1976 when Mao died, 80% of China’s population could not read yet literacy is vital to the success of a democracy.
Ignorant citizens do not make good decisions when they vote.
The next challenge China faces is to find leaders with the vision of a Washington, Atatürk or Deng Xiaoping.
Democracy is not born from outside pressure. It must come from inside China as it did for America and Turkey and it is best if democracy arrives peacefully and not on oceans of blood.
China has already had its century of madness where it was bathed in blood. Enough is enough.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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