Ahmed Moustafa writes
“Based on research published in the American Journal of Political Science on April 25, 2015”, a growing body of Western research suggests that authoritarian regimes (from the perspective of the West) respond to actors in society, but our understanding of the sources of authoritarian response remains limited by the challenges of measurement and causality. By conducting an online field experiment among 2,103 Chinese provinces, the study examined factors affecting officials’ incentives to respond to citizens in an authoritarian context.
Basically, we found that nearly a third of Chinese provincial governments respond to citizens’ demands expressed online. Threats of collective action make provincial governments vastly more responsive. While identifying loyal longtime members of the Chinese Communist Party does not increase the response. Furthermore, we find that threats of collective action cause local officials to respond more publicly. Together, these results show that top-down control mechanisms as well as bottom-up societal pressures are potential sources of response.
The study acknowledges that the Chinese local government, together with the Chinese Communist Party, jointly made mobile-complaint applications for Chinese citizens in the study provinces. In the event that the local official refuses or becomes lazy to do what is required, or if citizens complain against him, the Communist Party has the right to dismiss or imprison the local officials as a form of punishment and to avoid any collective reaction.
Here, in a study and a quick comparison with the developed countries of the West or the so-called democratic countries, the citizen cannot punish the official in the West in the same way, and because the system is democratic, Western governments advise their citizens not to elect the same local official in the upcoming local and parliamentary elections, so neither protests nor collective action is useful.
For more than a period of time, it has become clear to us that Western officials are on one side and the people on the other, since the horrific financial fall in 2008 and the manipulation of interest rates (LIBOR) through American and British banks, and this is according to several European and American reports, whose hidden purpose was to impoverish Russia and ASEAN countries after the oil and trade surpluses were achieved. As well as the linkage of their currencies to the dollar, but this cunning trick also affected the West, as the indebtedness and impoverishment of Western citizens increased as well as slavery to banks.
China was the smartest country, and although it was at the time the second country economically, it did not link its currency to the US Federal Reserve, so that its economy would not become subject to the fluctuations of the US currency. Thus, this was the period in which China excelled over the West because of its wise monetary policies.
We have not heard, for example, according to this financial scandal, that a member of the boards of directors of any of these implicated banks or their managers has been investigated or legally held accountable before Western peoples. The testimony of Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve at the time, was ridiculous in front of Congress and unconvincing that any young child who could speak well could say. This is according to the testimony of the Russian economist Valentin Katasonov.
Therefore, where is the oversight of Western financial institutions? Where is Transparency International from this disaster? Until now, the world’s media, except for independent countries, avoid re-discussing it, in order to avoid problems with America and Britain in particular. And to avoid imposing unilateral economic sanctions from the US Federal Reserve on those who dare discuss this, as is happening now.
As for the Corona pandemic crisis, there is nothing wrong with it. While the infection was spreading in the world, the West, as usual, tried to suspend all its problems represented in telling their people that it was not ready for the epidemic, by blaming China, specifically on the Wuhan laboratory, which became famous with the crisis.
At the same time, the West imported all its medical supplies from “China” itself, which had everything available for its previous preparation for such kind of epidemics, and even deployed the army throughout the country to impose a general ban to combat the epidemic, and even built a large number of hospitals to accommodate patients., and also made the protective vaccine with Russia before the West. Where the West also tried to exploit the issue commercially, which may have been trying to compensate for its economic losses by inventing a mysterious pandemic and then inventing a vaccine to treat it at an exorbitant price.
Indeed, China was the most economically developed country in that period, and we have two testimonies in this regard, the testimony of the Japanese professor himself, Dr. Ivao Ohashi – who works on developing industrial zones in the Russian Federation, as well as the testimony of Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari – the regional director of the World Health Organization in Cairo – in His testimony to our project Eye on the Orient, which refuted this hypothesis, which failed to prove.
However, if we enter and search in the heart of Western democracies, we will find that the oligarchy and the economic and political dogma are the ones that bring the candidates, and it does not mean that we go to the ballots and constituencies that this is the only democratic process. Because in most Western countries, the influential parties are linked to major companies or banks, or both, that are influential in the state, to support the candidates’ campaigns financially and to implement their agenda in the ruling.
According to the writer / Karl Evers-Hillstrom on the (Open Secrets) website, in an article, he published in February 2021, what was spent only in the presidential elections and the campaigns borne by voters or billionaires, amounted to the most expensive amount in the history of all elections, at a value of 14.5 billion dollars.
Where the competition was between two elderly people, and the American citizen did not feel a difference in their policies, in order to serve the intervening lobbies in the two largest parties, the Republican and Democratic, and the absence of an independent party representing the youth group, who was nominated one of his grandpas to lead the country, so the competition became between “bad and worse.”
The same scene is repeated in all of Britain, in which the Conservative Party loyal to the royal palace and major companies, especially energy companies and banks, dominated power for a long period of more than ten years. It began with the time of (David Brown), who was the architect of Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit) after the initial vote in 2016, which was achieved in 2020 and which the British themselves regretted. Then there are failed conservative governments that cannot currently solve the inflation, high prices, unemployment, and food crisis at the present time.
With a deliberate corruption of (the Labor Party) so that it does not have a president like “Jeremy Corbyn” who is left-leaning against the oligarchy. He also seeks the interests of the workers, sympathizes with the Arab causes, including the issue of the century (the Palestinian cause), and has an opinion contrary to the royal palace regarding the (Ukrainian crisis), despite the pursuit of shame for the former labor leader (Tony Blair) who falsely participated with America in striking Iraq in support of his rulers (the Americans) in 2003. Especially since we are close to the twentieth anniversary of the illegal attack on Iraq, killing a million and a half innocent citizens, with disregarding British public opinion.
Based on the foregoing, why do they still call the West “democratic countries” despite all these disguised repressive failures, and the terrible media pressure on citizens in the West to persuade them falsely to vote for a candidate, then we do not find this media pushing the citizen to think critically and objectively about this or that candidate.
And if they accuse China of (oppression), then China, according to the above application, is considered to be in a higher position than them in democracy, and through the two-session conference held annually in China at the beginning of March, all parties in society are invited with the aim of China’s economic, social and cultural advancement. As we follow, even intellectuals and representatives of religions in China, as well as non-communist parties and journalists from inside and outside China (as reported by the Chinese Xinhua Agency) are invited to participate in the work of this annual general conference to benefit from different ideas.
When China, which is the largest country in economic growth at a rate of 3% now, promises to reach growth rates of around 5% next year, especially after the end of the forced closure. As well as interest in real reduction and unprecedented rates of unemployment and poverty in a country with a population equal to 1.5 billion people supported by the testimony of the World Bank itself recently. Where about 800 million Chinese were transferred from the stage of extreme poverty to a proper standard of living during the past ten years, which is a typical experience for the whole world, in which the poverty rate is increasing daily in all countries.
This denies all kinds of Western demonization of China on the grounds that it is (a repressive and authoritarian country) because what China provides to its people is not available in other countries.
In the end, we say that if democracy does not come from within and according to the prevailing culture – it can never succeed because all imported democracies have been proven to fail. Any democracy imposed with tanks never succeeds, and Iraq, Syria, and Libya are the biggest examples of this in our Arab reality.
Be guided accordingly,
Ahmed Moustafa
Director of the Asia Center for Studies and Translation, and
(Eye on the Orient) a joint project with Al-Ahram Gate
MSc in Political Economy and Russian Studies from
the Higher School of Economics – Moscow
Member of the Council for Developing Research of Social Sciences in Africa (CODESRIA), Dakar, Senegal
And Group of Strategic Vision Russia and the Islamic World
Cellphone: +201009229411
