China Is a democracy

Re: Democracy IndexSince my opponent objects to the Democracy index, I'll present a google scholar search of many scientific, peer-reviewed studies mentioning China as an authoritarian state or measuring its authoritarianism[7]. In addition, when google scholar searching for "China Democratic" very few of them claim China is democratic[8], where some of them are measuring how China might be somewhat democratic on the local level, but very authoritarian nationally. Most of them don't say China is democratic over all. I completely agree that many western nations are not actually democratic. I do agree that the democracy index ranks several nations too high, but I think it's pretty accurate for the countries that are authoritarian though. As the peer-reviewed scientific studies I linked to show, China is in fact authoritarian and the democracy index would be approximately correct in ranking China where it did.Re: Recalls in ChinaI'm looking for evidence that China allows recalls, but I am not finding any. China is also not listed as a country that does recalls on the wikipedia page about it[9]. Perhaps my opponent can offer evidence that China allows recalls? "Con doesn't seem to understand my argument for why multi-tiered democracy is in fact better. It's because at the level where an office is directly elected there are fewer people within that politician's constituency. Therefore one individual can make more of an impact than they could have if the constituency were bigger. That encourages more confidence that their voices will be heard and so encourages more participation in politics."I think this is largely dependent on who has more power though: the local governments, or the national government? If the local governments are so weak that they can't really do much for their constituents, then this point doesn't matter, since the national government may be the one with all the power. China, is, for some reason, one of those countries I can find little information on... probably because of them being authoritarian. Seriously, just try to look up information on which level of government in China is stronger, and it doesn't really come up with anything. The same can be said of a lot of other things about China too if you try to look them up. I say the fact that one can find very little information on China is evidence that helps me out for trying to prove that they are authoritarian lol."If the national level were directly elected the constituencies would by necessity have to be bigger, diluting the impact of an individual voter. By having a multi-tiered system each level is campaigning for the votes of a smaller number of people, so at the next level up politicians must campaign for the votes of people who are directly elected and not only that directly elected by small constituencies of people"But, since they are directly elected by the smaller government officials, wouldn't they only care about the desires of the smaller government officials? Why would national level government officials care at all what the people want when the people are not the ones who vote for them? By having smaller government elect the next tiered government, the people have no say in what the national government does. So, would you rather have a diluted vote, or not being represented directly at all?What you're saying in this paragraph assumes that the more local authorities will vote for a national authority who wants to do what the people want, rather than what the local authority wants. I suppose you could argue that the people can recall the local authority if they do that, but I still don't even know for sure China can do recalls... again, that seems to be something that is not easily found about China on the internet, like most things about China. RE: A socialist system is more democraticI agree that a socialist system is more democratic, but I contend that China is not socialist in any way, shape, or form. At one time China could be argued to be socialist, but they've been becoming capitalist for decades now[10], there's room to argue that the form of capitalism China has now is state capitalism[11], which is when the government owns the means of production, or controls it to a very large degree. Socialism is defined as the democratic control and social ownership of the means of production[12]. I contend that these two ideologies are incompatible, as a state owning the means of production, or controlling it through other means, means that the people do not control and own it through social means. RE: not that hard to run for office" A person can run for office even if they are approved by just three people."Do you have a source for this? Again, a lot of the things you're claiming I cannot find myself online and you're not offering your own sources, so I think it makes sense to dismiss any claim that doesn't have evidence. Sources:[7] https://scholar.google.com...= [8] https://scholar.google.com... [9] https://en.wikipedia.org... [10] https://www.researchgate.net... [11] https://en.wikipedia.org... [12]