China Is a democracy

Scientific articlesI reject the idea that because the people approve of the government, that the government is democratic. This is flawed, because suppose a country like Nazi Germany had a high approval rating for its government. We would all agree(I think) that Nazi Germany was not democratic. Or better yet, let's take a monarchy. Suppose the monarch has a high approval rating. This doesn't suddenly mean the monarchy is a democracy, because it isn't. Now, my opponent claims that these articles could be subject to confirmation bias. Claiming they are doesn't prove that they are though. Also, if anything, they would be left-wing skewed. I always hear people complaining how universities and academics are left-wing biased. If they're left-wing biased, they should be all claiming China is democratic, not authoritarian, since China is left-wing. They should be claiming positive things about China. So, perhaps they don't actually have a left-wing bias, but I've seen plenty of evidence that they do, such as liberals almost always agreeing with their professors, and conservatives almost never agreeing with them(at least in my experience as a university student). There are exceptions to this rule, such as professors at Liberty University, Brigham Young Univerity, and a few others would have right-wing bias, but majority of universities are left-wing I believe. Especially public universities. It's mostly private universities that have the right-wing bias and public universities which have a left-wing bias. This may have to do with the fact that privately owned universites(which are, by definition, capitalist when you think about it) would attract more right-wing professors, and public universities(having something owned by the government is typically a more left-wing concept) would attract left-wing professors. It makes sense when you think about it. I mean, let's take a look at healthcare. Let's suppose we had government-run healthcare running simultaneously with privately-run healthcare. I'm sure the left-wing doctors and nurses would want to work for the government-run healthcare services because that is what they agree with, while the right-wing doctors would want to work for the privately-run healthcare services, as that is what they agree with. So, it would make sense to conclude that most of the sources on google scholar would be left-wing in bias if they had any bias. Recall and nominationsOh, now I see that. I don't know why I didn't see that before. However, it doesn't state that the people have the right to recall the lowest government officials. This chain of power is thus broken. Only the lower levels of government seem to be allowed to recall the higher up level of government in China. Since the people cannot recall a lower government official, there's no reason why the government official would need to do what the people want. I see one problem here, suppose candidate A runs for the lowest level of government in China. They run on promises that are popular among the Chinese people, but then does none of them and does the opposite. They could then run for the next higher up level of government, to avoid being voted out the next election since then it would be the lower level voting for him or her, instead of the people. All they would need to do to stay in power is promise to do things that the lower level of government wants, and then not deliver, then go up in level of government again, and keep repeating this. There doesn't seem to be anything that holds them to do what the people want. Alright, so it looks like it's probably the case that you only need 4 people to nominate a person. It actually says one voter and at least 3 others on the wikipedia, so it wouldn't be 3 but 4 people, but that doesn't really make a difference. However, even though anyone can run as long as you have 4 people wanting you to, there is still the problem with the government getting involved in the election to prevent that candidate from winning, which makes it less democratic.Also, now that I looked back in my debate, I did link to a wikipedia page talking about how the party has to approve of the candidate. So which is it? Can 4 people just nominate a person, or does the party have to approve of the candidate? As is said here[5], " Starting in the 1980s, in the period of opening and reform, the government organized village elections in which several candidates would run. However, each candidate was chosen or approved by the Party."This seems to be a contradiction between the two wikipedia articles. Actually, I suppose it could be both. Perhaps 4 people can nominate a person, but the candidate still has to be approved by the party. If that's the case, then it's still not democratic since, over all, it has to be approved by the party, so not just anyone can run. Multi-tiered systemYou don't see any problems with this though? I'm sure you're familiar with the game, telephone correct? What inevitably happens probably in majority of games of telephone, is that as each person repeats the words they heard, it gets jumbled up and changes over each time a person tells another person. Why wouldn't multi-tiered "democracy" be subject to the same thing? The local representatives might get the desires of the people correct, but then the next level might get it wrong because as the information travels from person to person, it gets altered, and not necessarily on purpose, this is just what happens due to human error. The few humans who are involved in the system of getting what the people want, the better and more likely it will represent what the people want. If people voted directly for the national government, then the national government would know directly what the people want and there would be almost no cases where they get it wrong due to miscommunication from one level of government, to another level of government, to another. For the second paragraph that my opponent said in this section, just look up what I said under the "Recall and nominations" section, the first paragraph. Go about a quarter of the way to where I said "I see one problem..." This problem I pointed out would refute what my opponent said here.Is China Socialist?My opponent claims China is socialist because "The primary authority over the economy is still the government... You will notice there are still many state-owned enterprises. 98% of China's banking assets is state-owned, for example. 75% of state bank loans go to state-owned enterprises."This is not socialism, it's state capitalism. Go back to my previous round of debate where I talked about the differences between socialism and state capitalism. They're not the same thing. State capitalism is not democratic in any way, shape, or form in most cases. My opponent seems to be accepting the idea of calling state ownership of the means of production to be socialism, but that's not true in majority of cases. For this reason, countries like the USSR, North Korea, China, etc were never actually socialist. We call them socialist, and many people believe they are socialist, but this is because America was fead propaganda that they are. The countries themselves even claim to be socialist, but they are socialist in name only. Again, socialism is the democratic control of the means of production, and that is even why my opponent and I agreed that sociaism is more democratic, because, by definition, it is since it's the democratic control of the means of production. The people do not own those enterprises in China though, as my opponent said, they are "state-owned enterprises" not "people-owned enterprises". Democratic means "of the people", not "of the state". So, I suppose state capitalism and socialism can overlap(which is odd, I never thought a form of capitalism would overlap with a form of socialism, but they appear to do so), but it only does so when you have a democratic government which owns the means of production.Now my opponent says that China is socialist because the state is democratic. Yes, if the country is actually democratic, and the state is the one who owns the means of production, then it would be the case that they are socialist, though they would simultaneously be state capitalist. Only in this instance, where the state owns the means of production, can state-ownership of the means of production be called socialism: only when the state, itself, is democratic.However, as I've been pointing out, there is significant evidence to believe China is not a democratic country. Since the state owns the means of production while not being democratic, then they do not have a democratic means of production. Basically it needs to first be established that China is a democratic nation in order to argue that they are socialist. I don't personally think my opponent sufficienty refuted the scientific articles pointing to China as being authoritarian though as they claimed they would be subject to confirmation bias, but this would need to be proven. Sources:[5] https://en.wikipedia.org... [12] https://en.wikipedia.org... (I'm providing this here, since I somehow didn't in my previous round)