(part 2) So, back to your question of how to ensure that the system keeps working for the people. The answer is two-fold:

1. Meritocracy. Many believe that proving yourself for 30 years is a better way to select for a good leader (and prevent the selection of a bad leader) than voting through popularity.

2. Active solicitation and being responsive to protests (!)

This latter probably sounds very surprising. Consider this: freedom is expression is not necessarily correlated with results. In many western countries, we talk about all sorts of things, but politicians don't deliver.

The inverse is also true: censorship does not necessarily correlate with not delivery results. China censors from time to time, but at the same time they actively listen to (and address) grievances. In the past 15 years or so, they've developed a robust monitoring & feedback system to find social issues and address grievances. They make extensive use of polls. They monitor social media. There are official channels for sending feedback. Both the feedback and the replies by government officials are published for the public for read. There are 16000 (!) protests in China each year — not to protest against the government, but to ask the government to address their grievances. Censorship happens in parallel to all of this. See also:

- A thread about monitoring & feedback systems: https://twitter.com/willehelmwonka/status/130976009462460006...

- Expat Cyrus Janssen, who has lived in China for many years: speaks about how the government listens to protests and is very active in addressing grievances. He gives concrete examples of recent social issues that have been addressed as a result of widespread protests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqcScSCTgbM

- "Why protests are so common in China": https://www.economist.com/china/2018/10/04/why-protests-are-...

- "How to legally protest in China": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VKRQQkq51I TLDR: protest, but don't incite ethnic hatred, don't incite overthrow of government

Another concrete example: there were large-scale protests in Guangdong in 2019 over the a crematorium plans. This raged on for days. In the end, the government gave in to the demands of the protesters. Very few people were arrested, and of the arrested people a few were quickly released. https://mothership.sg/2019/12/news-china-protests-wenlou-hua...

What happens if a bad president does get elected? It'll certainly be harder to oust him than in western democracies, but it's not impossible. The president is not elected by the NPC, but it's elected by the Central Committee. This is one of the highest political bodies, consisting of other high officials that climbed their way up through the meritocracy ladder. The president can be voted out by this body, just not directly by the people. Furthermore the president doesn't make decisions by himself, but together with other top officials, so it's not accurate to say that the president is a dictator.

Neither the western system nor the Chinese system are perfect. Each one has its own merits and problems. Many western countries are suffering from decreased trust nowadays. Despite the fact that the government can be replaced, many social issues are never solved. In China one can say that the opposite is true: you can't replace the president but social issues are solved all the time.

With regards to your comment on power & corruption: there is the issue of regulatory capture and state capture by entrenched interests. These interests can't be voted out, but they are a big reason why government changes so often yet few things get resolved. It doesn't appear that democracy have a good answer to this yet.

The Chinese government is also worried about capture by entrenched interests. Xi Jingping's anti-corruption campaign is both a real campaign to root out corruption (with great results), as well as a power-consolidation move. This latter does not have to be a bad if you consider that it's necessary in order to defeat entrenched interests which hold the country back. Chinese leadership believes that entrenched interests which do not work for the benfit of the people is one of the reasons why the Soviet Union failed. See this analysis by Kevin Tellier, expert on China matters: https://twitter.com/kevtellier/status/1441774309652025346

The Chinese system is also constantly evolving. The CCP, and the system from 30 years ago, is very different from how they are today. There are constantly new reforms. For example the whole meritocracy thing is relatively new: it was introduced in the 90s. The monitoring & feedback system only really took off in the past 15 years or so. These are key aspects that are often overlooked by China watchers.

I'd say the Chinese system and western systems can learn a lot from each other. And China is learning from the west all the time. Unfortunately it seems the other way around doesn't happen that much because many people don't see China for what it is, but only for what they think it is.

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Regarding VPNs: yes it's easy. Every time I visit China I buy a VPN subscription before I enter the country. It works fine even though connectivity can be flaky. On my last visit in early 2020 I even setup my own Wireguard server.

I haven't figured out how to get a VPN working after you enter China, but it's evidently pretty easy if I look at how many people from China are on Twitter, Youtube and Quora. There are various vloggers in China that publish to Youtube.

Here's what I understand about the legality of VPN. The Dutch have a "gedoogbeleid" against soft drugs, which means that soft drugs are officially illegal, but the government chooses not to enforce punishment against owning soft drugs. I believe China's position regarding VPN is similar. From time to time they close down VPN providers but by and large they don't go after VPN users.

I've heard of a story where a police officer notices that a citizen has a VPN installed on his phone. The police officer then confiscated his phone. Later on, that officer's superior apologized to the citizen and gave back his phone, saying that his junior is new and doesn't understand China's laws very well yet.

If someone is arrested for VPN'ing then it's usually tied to something else, such as high-level political dissent. From what I understand, you don't get arrested just for dissent: you'll have to be on the level of Julian Assange in order to really get in trouble.

Businesses can apply for a VPN license if they need to avoid the firewall in order to do business with foreign countries.