Western form of democracy not a universal choice

Despite being praised to the sky, Western-style democracy has not changed its nature of being subservient to capital. Liu says many recent happenings, most noticeably the 2008 global financial crisis, is evidence of the helpless state of democracy in Western countries, abused and manipulated as it is by capital at the direct cost of society's economic health and people's welfare.

In the second article, Zhang Shuping, Liu's colleague and deputy director of the Institute of Politics and Public Administration Studies, argues that for too long, the West has sold its style of democracy as the only right system of government, if not the modern-day political orthodoxy, and stigmatized attempts to seek an alternative as hearsay.

But when the West claims time is on the side of democracy, it should be aware of the deep flaws in Western democracy, especially the contradictory phenomenon of an internally incapable and externally hegemonic state that it promotes.

Western democracy's drawbacks also include money politics or the lack of regulation to ensure a balanced distribution of economic resources, the tendency to reduce elections to near rituals and even mockery, the lack of people's supervision on the post-electoral government and government behavior, people's declining interest in taking part in and subsequent distancing from politics, and limits of the state especially to take resolute actions to protect public interests.

Even though Western theorists tend to deny the democratic nature of the political development in China, they cannot pretend to not have recognized the gap between their imagination and reality.

In the third article, Meng Qingtao, a lecturer at Southwestern University of Political Science and Law, criticizes the US-style freedom of the press. After the expose of so many press-related scandals, which the author traces back all the way to the so-called Pentagon papers in the 1970s, freedom of the press has become just a weapon for the US to attack other countries' governments.

Freedom of the press is a value not because it is defined by US politicians. It is no different from overall freedom, which is precious because it means people can lead different lifestyles, not just the American lifestyle. The US can only be more discredited if it tries to apply to others the standards that it itself cannot follow.

The author is editor-at-large of China Daily. edzhang@chinadaily.com.cn