>Danish and Norwegian are not linguistically Germanic
Where do you get that notion? My education (and some googling to refresh my memory) has Norwegian, Swedish and Danish classed as "North Germanic" according to comparative linguistics. That is one subset of the West Germanic languages which most of northern Europe speaks.
This doesn't refer to the double-paned outer window, the pressure window. It refers to the innermost protective pane, the "scratch pane" that keeps greasy fingers and portruding camera lenses from reaching the two "real" windows. It's the hole in the scratch pane people are asking about
I much prefer democracy (the lack of large scale human rights abuses is a big plus) but one can't argue that with the fact that a multi-generational one-party system CAN encourage a refreshing degree of long-term thinking. This is a good example. (Of course, examples abound of the opposite--also in China)
The best argument for democracies, are their possibility of peaceful revolutios and this problem might become very relevant for china too.
You can compare the early US with present china. Both countries had/have great potential for economic growth, and everything went well for its citizens as long as the pie got bigger. The interests of the elites and the working class were aligned by that. Once the interests of these two groups diverge, democracies become relevant again. That's why the tech oligarchs are so afraid and politically engaged, to distract us with the have-nots below us.
Today, china just has the better aligning plan, while the west is struggling to keep it's democracies. IMO any reasonable trajectory for sustainability and social stability is a contradiction to western elites, who cannot think outside their status quo, while china just builds it. I really wish china well and that they dont develop such an arrogant international stance like the west.
I'd honestly turn the argument on its head. It's China that is being democratic, in the most literal sense. Giving the people what they want, clean energy, cheap stuff, infrastructure simply by satisfying market demand.
It's the largest western, ostensibly democratic nation that is run by some combination of occult neoreactionaries, techno-elites and pseudo-royalty all of which seem to have lost connection to immediate reality in pursuit of annexing territories, bringing about the singularity or what have you. It is ironically China who is more short termist and notably better off for it
I would actually much prefer if the US was run by people who fix potholes in the streets than something that resembles Dune's House Harkonnen
Neither is democratic. Democratic is direct rule of citizens, or at least some significant fraction of citizens. Only Switzerland is partially a democracy nowadays. Western countries are oligarchies, where elected elites are ruling however they deem necessary, but possibly with some caution because of elections. China is not even an oligarchy, it's a despotic regime, completely severed from the citizens.
It's not market demand. The government is ordering the construction of solar and wind farms without regard to the market demand or to the citizens residing in the locations where the solar farms and wind farms are to be built.
That's the exact opposite of democracy and capitalism.
It's a rational way to deal with their energy needs, reduce pollution and their impact on the climate.
They have small gas and oil reserves if I remember. Unfortunately, if they were sitting on Venezuela or Russian style reserves or oil/gas the story might be different. But unlike Europe, the Chinese can see that being beholden to foreign states to keep the lights on is asking for trouble.
They seem to have avoided the ideology the big fossil fuel companies push in the west to make fossil vs green a political/class discussion, not a rational one. Rationally it makes most sense for a nation to generate their energy needs in a way they control with wind/solar/nuclear.
you can't just go redefining terms until they mean what you want them to mean. You can say "China meets the wants of most of its citizens" (in which case, citation needed...) but that is definitionally not democratic. Democracy is a system, and a process can or cannot be democratic (within or outside a democratic system).
>you can't just go redefining terms until they mean what you want them to mean
Sure I can. There's obviously no one meaning of the term. The Democracy of the Greeks has very little to do with the Democracy of Rousseau, or the 21st century. The Chinese themselves consider their system democratic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism).
And you can make the case that a system that delivers the will of the people has a stronger claim to the term than a system that merely exhausts itself in staging democratic processes with no regards to outcomes.
This is funnily enough even happening within Western societies where people are branded pro or anti-democratic usually based on their affiliation. Laying exclusive ownership to the term is simply a rhetorical tool.
I take issue with "the lack of large scale human rights abuses."
Are you ignorant or just deliberately ignoring the genocide of the Palestinian people with an estimated 680,000 dead (~30% of Gaza) that occurred with widespread support of almost every western democracy?
China may be an authoritarian state but I would argue their large scale human rights abuses are far tamer than what these so called western democracies have been doing for the past 2 years and the direction we're headed.
Yes, I'm not including deaths in the colonial periphery. That's a rather different dynamic to the domestic question. Your criticism of this simplified view is a valid and welcome addition to the conversation, though.
The West's post-colonial exploitation and suppression of the global south does strike me as a feature of unfettered capitalism more than the political systems "back home".
Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom from abitrary detention, just to name a few.
Of course some speech, association and rule of law (as opposed to rule by law) is enjoyed by most people. But it is indisputable that China restricts speech and association severely, and silences "troublemakers" arbitrarily.
Let me preempt the inevitable replies: this comment is about China and China alone. It it factual irrespective of what freedoms may or may not be enjoyed anywhere else including the US.
A freedom does or does not exist. Some cultures have more freedom than others. If it's "Western" of me to admit I prefer more freedoms rather than less, I'll very proudly own up to that. But I don't know what that has got to do with the question I answered.
As for concrete examples:
#1: Freedom of speech -- one may not advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, criticize the ruling party, advocate for a change of government or political system in China, state that Taiwan is an independent nation, argue in favor of free and open elections in Hong Kong, advocate for workers' rights, talk about Tiananmen Square, talk about human rights abuses in Xinjiang, talk about human rights abuses in China at all... and the list goes on. Someone might manage to do so, sneaking past the firewall, but they are liable to be slammed with #3 below.
#2: Freedom of association -- contrary to what one might expect in a country with "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", one may not unionize. In fact one may not set up any civil society group outside the approval of the CPC. I could editorialize on the reasons for this but I'll refrain in the interest of brevity.
#3: Freedom from arbitrary detention -- China has a specific category of criminal offense just for this: being able to detain anyone at any time for any reason. The crime is "Picking quarrels and provoking trouble", and is used liberally on anyone who speaks out against the government and manages to catch their attention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picking_quarrels_and_provoking...
Now, Chinese people, and others, will argue that there's this reasona and that reason why it's good to restrict freedoms in this way. I obviously disagree. But what shouldn't be in dispute is the fact that these freedoms are very much restricted in China.
I wasn't saying China has those freedoms, just that China has at least as much of them as the US. Just today - or was it yesterday - an ICE agent peered into a woman's driver side window and shot her three times point blank. Because of her speech. Where's the freedom there?
I self-host a music library on Plex and use Plexamp on my phone. I have liberated music I bought on iTunes, ripped my old CDs and added more from BandCamp (and for official purposes that's the extent of my library).
It might be welcome by the majority of Venezuelans (nor not, depending what’s next) but it is not justified in a US domestic sense or indeed by international law
Finally, I am part of the 1%!
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