|
When China Rules the WorldThe fact that China ’s true European counterpart, the European Union, is similarly without democracy only serves to reinforce the point. Fifth, the nature of the Chinese polity is highly specific. Unlike the Western experience, in particular that of Europe, the imperial dynasty was neither obliged, nor required, nor indeed desired to share power with other competing institutions or interest groups, such as the Church or the merchant class. China has not had organized religion in the manner of the West during the last millennium, while its merchants, for their part, instead of seeking to promote their interests by means of a collective voice, have sought favour through individual supplication. The state did not, either in its imperial nor in its Communist form, share power with anyone else: it presided over society, supreme and unchallenged. The Confucian ethos that informed and shaped it for some two millennia did not require the state to be accountable to the people, but instead insisted on its loyalty to the moral precepts of Confucianism ...» |
Код для вставки книги в блог HTML
phpBB
текст
|
|