A Free Logic Lesson for China's Online Red Guards
@zhousheng6688 says China is "simple": leaders are elites filtered layer by layer, so nobody bothers worshipping politicians. Do well, you stay. Screw up, you're replaced. Clean and efficient. The West, meanwhile, supposedly doesn't care about competence at all, as long as you tattoo "hope," "change," "democracy" and "freedom" on your forehead.
Let's take it apart, line by line.
"Leaders are elites filtered layer by layer"
Filtered by whom? By the layer above, which was filtered by the layer above that. Why are they elite? Because they were selected. Why were they selected? Because they're elite. That's circular reasoning. You've gone in a full circle and said nothing.
And "all" of them are elites? Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Sun Zhengcai all made it through every filter to the Politburo, and all went down for corruption. That's not Western propaganda, that's the Party's own disciplinary commission. One counterexample kills a universal claim. Here you get a whole lineup.
"So nobody bothers worshipping politicians"
There's no causal link here at all. It's a textbook non sequitur. He also quietly swaps one idea for another: having no vote isn't "not bothering." It's having no choice. Someone locked outside the door saying he just didn't feel like coming in.
"Do well, you stay. Screw up, you're replaced."
Who grades the performance? The same people doing the filtering. The player is also the referee, scoring his own game. A claim like that can never be falsified, because the verdict was written before the match started.
Apply his own standard anyway. The Great Leap Forward starved tens of millions of people to death. Mao stayed Party Chairman until the day he died. In 2018, the constitution was amended to remove term limits. If good performance keeps you in office anyway, why tear up the rule that lets you be replaced first?
"The West doesn't care about competence"
Classic straw man: build a fool, then knock the fool down. No voter walks into a booth thinking competence doesn't matter.
He goes on to claim Western voters don't care whether they elect "rapists, pedophiles or junkies." Fine, say voters get it wrong. Then what? They vote them out next time, or impeach them, or prosecute them.
And here's the best part. His own post ends with this: "After the election everyone gets to complain for four years, then elect someone who talks better. Rinse and repeat." So by his own account, Western leaders can be replaced every four years. That's literally his "screw up and you're replaced, clean and efficient." He wrote my rebuttal for me. The ideal system he describes is the one he's mocking.
Since he won't take my word for it, here's Mao. In 1945, Huang Yanpei asked him in Yan'an how to escape China's endless cycle of dynasties rising and collapsing. Mao answered: "We have found a new path. We can break this cycle. That new path is democracy. Only when the people supervise the government will the government not dare to slack off."
Even Mao knew the answer was democracy. And you're here telling me having no choice is a virtue?
Lu Xun asked it a century ago: "It has always been this way, but does that make it right?"
Class dismissed. Tuition's on me.