What is going on in the West is unique to the West. Do not project it on the East

Most Chinese clearly understand that China’s current system is in fact the result of a passive choice, and a pragmatic one.

Many of the respondents here with Chinese cultural backgrounds mentioned the Chinese civil bureaucratic tradition, so I don’t need to explain it in detail, but I would add that China is probably the only country that had a strong civil bureaucratic tradition before modernization, and that the later system had to adapt to the civil bureaucratic tradition rather than the other way around, which leads to an innate limitation in terms of viable institutional choices for China now and even for the future.

I still have to mention two famous emperors, the first of course being First Emperor of Qin, Ying Zheng.

It is well known that King Zheng did two main things in China, the first being that he de facto unified China, and the second being that he unified Chinese writing. These two crucial facts offered all subsequent Chinese powers that be the possibility that if their power was sufficient, he would definitely unify China. This led to a unique historical phenomenon, as the opening chapter of “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” states, “That which is long divided must unify, and that which is long unified must divide.” This also led to the loss of the roots of China’s feudal aristocratic tradition similar to that of the West, and after numerous struggles and natural selection, you could only have one aristocrat, and that aristocrat was the emperor.

Well, we then introduce another emperor, Emperor Wen of Sui, Yang Jian.

Soon, the emperors ruling China realized that any nobleman with a fief and a private army, whether he was a relative or a brother, was aiming to “unify China,” so all nobles would in fact become enemies of the emperor. A wise emperor, or Yang Jian as we call him, quickly figured out that if he did not rely on the nobility to rule the country, he would have to rely on the commoners. Obviously, making the commoners the ruling class would require teaching them the knowledge of the ruling class and setting the threshold for the best talent to become the emperor’s servants. From then on, Yang Jian set up the imperial examination system to give the commoners the possibility to leap up the ladder of the commoner class and to destroy the aristocratic tradition completely.

When the imperial examination system was established, there were several factors that needed to be noted.

• The avenue of upward mobility for the commoner class was opened and could never be closed because the commoners had a strong desire to change their fate, the bureaucratic clique was extremely powerful, and no ruler dared to challenge this, which I think is easy to understand.
• No matter how dynasties change, they only change the structure of the ruling class for a short time, and when power is rebalanced, it is still the same people who become the actual managers of this country through exams, and no matter who becomes emperor, those who have the ability and will to become civil bureaucrats always become civil bureaucrats, and they always make the same decisions.
• A large number of the commoner class became part of the bureaucratic group by learning the knowledge of the ruling class, that is, the Confucian doctrine, which was the only way for the commoners to break through the class. This led to a near overlap between the intellectual and bureaucratic classes in China, and at the same time, it meant that in China, learning knowledge and preparing to be an official were equated, so there was no ground for the birth of natural science in China. In the West, the early scientists were usually aristocrats or missionaries, and there is a reason for that. Because they were provided for, they did not have to think about survival and had extra resources to complete their scholarship. Their Chinese counterparts during the same period, on the other hand, despite being no less talented and capable, needed to devote more energy to taking exams, handling government affairs, and completing their higher authorities’ KPIs, and when they did their jobs well, they would be promoted. There are always unfamiliar environments and more complex challenges waiting for them. Of course there were certain geniuses who did a better job of governance by summarizing techniques, such as Shen Kuo, but of course, technique is not the same as science.

• Since the position of officials in the bureaucratic group depends only on exams and KPI’s and has nothing to do with their own wealth, this leads to the fact that mercantilism has never appeared in China and capital has never been strong enough to confront the bureaucratic class, only because the former holds the economy and the latter holds the state apparatus, they may become allies for short-term interests, but once the interests go against each other, it is always the businessmen who are deprived of power. Thus, capital is always a vassal of the bureaucratic group.
• The ruling class was constantly on the move because of examinations, and the official in a high position knew this, he had no other choice but to provide his offspring with better educational resources, however this did not guarantee that his family would always retain this advantage, so he had to try to reinforce the class advantage by buying land, therefore the fall of every Chinese dynasty was always due to excessive land annexation, which could not be avoided.

To be fair, a strong bureaucratic system is a double-edged sword. First of all, the system is extremely executive and feasibility, with every policy being passed from the center to every corner of the empire with the precision of a cog. At the same time, this system was always able to screen the most capable geniuses into the management system of the empire, which was the core advantage of China to remain competitive for thousands of years. However, people are always selfish, especially the geniuses who rise to power among the commoners always want to cash in on power as quickly as possible, which leads to shocking corruption. Once the country is in crisis and control decreases, officials will always prioritize their own interests, so they will quickly push the country into an irreparable abyss, as was the case in the late Ming Dynasty.

Because of the strong bureaucratic tradition you cannot reject and which will always exist, China’s attempts at Western-style democracy will always fail. The reason is also simple, because of checks and balances. As other respondents have said, the British Empire also borrowed from the Chinese bureaucracy to form a modern civil service, and it didn’t have problems. This is because their civil service system emerged after the aristocratic tradition, and elected officials were usually aristocrats because the established resources of the aristocracy gave them a higher probability of being elected, and even if they were not competent and experienced enough, they could use their original large resource system against powerful professional bureaucrats. The same is true in the United States, except that big capitalists have replaced the aristocracy. However, China’s aristocratic tradition has long been destroyed, and there has never been a mercantile tradition, so capitalists cannot get involved in politics. Elected officials with no roots and only speeches will only become puppets for powerful bureaucrats. When the power of the bureaucrats cannot be checked, the country will quickly be consumed by corruption and division.

This situation was clearly reflected in history after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, when Sun Yat-sen, the father of the nation, never effectively took control of the country and his governing philosophy was considered naive and impractical. Yuan Shikai, a representative of the powerful bureaucratic class, quickly took control of the country and proclaimed himself emperor. After Yuan’s death, the bureaucracy was completely out of control and warlords were formed, who in order to consolidate their power could only sell out the interests of the country in exchange for support from foreign powers… Until the most powerful warlord, Chiang Kai-shek, completed his nominal unification, at which point he met the Communists.

The Communists were in some ways a natural fit with the bureaucratic tradition.

• They are both anti-aristocratic but not anti-elite, and they both believe that the elite represent powerful productive forces, while the aristocracy are the assholes of society
• Both encourage a strong government that runs the state with precision and science through smart policies and strong enforcement
• The Chinese bureaucratic class, or intellectual class, has long been influenced by Confucianism and believes that “social commonwealth”, or egalitarianism, is the ultimate political ideal, which happens to be compatible with communism
• Since China had no aristocracy and the capitalists had no power, there was no resistance to communism in China and it was easily accepted by the masses.

After that, the Communist Party naturally and unstoppably became the ruling party in China.

Of course, problems also in the early communist confrontation with bureaucratic traditions. Since the means of production, such as land, could not be bought and sold, the bureaucrats finally realized that their power cannot be turned into wealth and that the governor and the peasant did not get much difference, and they became dissatisfied.

Mao was keenly aware of this, who was a staunch communist with romantic and idealistic beliefs, could not tolerate the theft of revolutionary gains, so he launched the Cultural Revolution in an attempt to confront the bureaucratic tradition.

Contrary to the perception of most Westerners, Mao was not the same as Stalin, who had the ability to act because he had the power to do so. By the time Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, he had been out of control of the country for some time and was basically retired, with Liu Shaoqi as the country’s leader at the time. However, Mao used his great popularity among the people to overthrow the government in power with a single “big-character poster”, calling Liu Shaoqi and others “those in power who have taken the capitalist road” and reawakening the public’s vigilance of the bureaucratic class. As the officials in power feared Mao’s great prestige, the government dared not confront them as long as people held Mao’s quotations, so Mao’s quotations and the “loyalty dance” became the symbols of the era. Bureaucrats, elites, and intellectuals were beaten down and criticized, someone even went to college because he scored 0 on his exams, and Confucian doctrine was seen as evil and incomprehensible. It was the ultimate revolution against the bureaucratic tradition.

As it turned out, when the bureaucracy collapsed, the country did not get better but fell into complete chaos, with schools closed, factories shut down, and the whole country in trouble, and the Cultural Revolution ultimately failed. Before his death, Mao became a “Don Quixote” type of brave man and took a huge blame, of course, he was responsible for it, but it should be admitted that it was not as he wished.

When the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping reorganized the country in ruins, he should have realized that if he couldn’t beat it, he should join it. In fact, Deng’s series of policies was to restore the tradition of civil bureaucratic since ancient times. He restored university entrance exams, civil service exams, land deals, and the top-down monitoring and assessment system… In this way the country started to function smoothly and China entered an era of rapid development, but of course, corruption followed.

Until now, Xi Jinping has been able to control corruption through a series of powerful measures, and the bureaucracy and the state have once again reached a certain balance. If the bureaucracy is an unstoppable sword, then there must be a strong wielder of the sword to use it. After countless trials and errors, the Communist Party replaced the imperial power as the sword-bearer, and as most Chinese people perceive, this was the choice of history. Even if the Communist Party is overthrown, it will not change for the better, but will only bring chaos, until the next powerful sword-bearer appears.

Bureaucratic tradition and power politics, like the thorn apple, are both beautiful and dangerous, and as Chinese, we have no choice. Maybe the success of the CPC is just part of the cycle of governance and chaos that has been going on in China for thousands of years, maybe not. We don’t know, but most of us think it is not universal and that each nation should find its own path according to its own history.

Looking back at this answer after some time, I realized that this article seems to be more inclined to describe the negative aspects of the civil bureaucratic tradition. Obviously, I wrote this answer thinking from a Chinese perspective, and I tacitly assumed that people understood the advantages of the civil bureaucratic tradition, which may have been a small misunderstanding, and I am in fact neutral about the phenomenon. So I decided to make a small update, which I had mentioned in other comments, and I’ll post those here as well:

Earlier, I argued why the only form of politics that can eventually be stabilized in China is “bureaucratic dictatorship”.This means that you have to accept the tactics that any authoritarian regime would use, such as speech control, censorship, party bans… This is because authoritarian regimes do not have good enough mechanisms to release pressure, and holding all the power means taking all the pressure（With great power comes great responsibility）, and the media is usually a multiplier of negative emotions, and when you receive bad news every day through all the information channels, especially in a country as big as China, the legitimacy of the regime will have no footing. When English becomes the de facto world language, China also de facto loses the ability and possibility to challenge the world’s mainstream political consensus, which makes a firewall at the national level inevitable.

Yet China’s political ecology is not anti-democratic, even if it is not Western-style democracy, it still has the core of democracy.

First of all, you need to acknowledge that any civilian, regardless of background, can prove his or her ability to become the ruler of the country in China through exams and hard work, and that ensuring this upward mobility is at the heart of Chinese culture. In the Chinese bureaucracy, this ability stratification effect is visible to the naked eye; almost every official at the appropriate level has the appropriate level of ability, and except for young people starting out, mature civil servants have a clear sense of the gap between their abilities and those of their superiors.

Second, officials are under constant pressure from both their superiors and the public, and if their performance is poor or causes more discontent, not only does he lose the possibility of promotion himself, but his superiors’ political careers are also affected. This is something that is endless in the Chinese political ecology (e.g. COVID-19, where hundreds of officials were dealt with for not performing up to expectations despite a natural disaster), so this accountability mechanism ensures that most of the time the interests of the officials and the people are aligned.

Third, because of the hierarchical promotion mechanism rather than elections, there is a greater preference for outcome justice rather than procedural justice to justify the bureaucracy in China. This forces officials to confront problems with more pragmatic strategies rather than empty promises.

In fact, our current system is more akin to a mega-corporation in which the shareholders are all the people, the National People’s Congress is the shareholders’ meeting, the Central Political Bureau is like the board of directors, and the general secretary is like the chairman. As a leader, Xi Jinping is not a “dictator” as Westerners think of him, but more like a coordinator of interests and political forces. You can easily understand how a company works, so you can understand how the CPC works. Obviously, there is not that much freedom in this system, you can’t get a position by simply promising it, you have to prove your suitability for a position through your working experience. If you somehow attack the leadership in the company, usually your career will also be affected…and the corporate system, which happens to be the most competitive form of the system that evolves through full business competition after survival of the fittest.

Of course, some people prefer the Western style of one-person-one-vote democracy and free social atmosphere, which is fully understandable and not to be criticized, and they can choose their preferred lifestyle through immigration. Those who are more pragmatic will choose to stay and build this huge country and make it better.