The negative media coverage of China has risen almost in perfect correlation with their economic development and relative power. A cynic might say the two are related.
China conjures up the thesis from Chomsky and Herman’s book Manufacturing Consent; repeat anything often enough and it becomes assumed truth without question. Xi Jinping is an autocrat. China has no freedom and especially not freedom of speech. No right to choose leaders. Uyghurs are experiencing genocide. Constant surveillance by the state. Dissent crushed instantly. Beijing is an oppressive regime—and any country the West doesn’t like automatically has a “regime” instead of a government.
The first thing to untangle with China is the nature of a one-party system. The ruling party of a Marxist-Leninist state does not operate like a party in a liberal state. The Communist Party of China is a mass party with 101 million members. 31% are women, roughly a third of members are farmers or workers and another third comprise of professionals and public administrators. There are about eight million cadres working to carry out national programming, implement anti-poverty measures and run community services centres. From this membership base, delegates are elected who, in turn, elect members to higher leadership posts.
State power in China is decentralized, with municipal and provincial governments holding considerable autonomy. There are local, direct elections of representatives who then choose the governors or mayors or congresspeople for the next level up. Aside from local elections, consultative democracy is employed through online government feedback portals, continuous surveying of the population and hot topics of social media discussion.
The data collected from the citizen body are used to define issues that need improving, set a government agenda and establish key performance indicators that politicians must reach in order to hold onto their jobs. Because the main levers of the economy are under public ownership—including banking, resource extraction and construction—the government actually has the necessary tools to fix quality of life issues for those in their jurisdiction.
China does not have multiparty national elections factionalizing society. They have a system of steady citizen input and government redress. The major advantage of this system is the continuity of government; long-term development plans can be seen through rather than getting thrown out the window every four years.
The adherence to long-term economic planning under continuous government is the reason why China was able to eliminate absolute poverty within their borders, guarantee housing and utilities and basic needs for 1.4 billion people, dominate global rare earths production, vertically integrate their strategic industries, and pivot to constructing the world’s first ecological civilization.
With all of these great things the West can’t have under current management, here comes the copium: “China won’t let you speak your mind!” Well, that’s not really true either. Speaking your mind is encouraged to set the government agenda and there are tens of thousands of protests each year in China that result in activists obtaining most or all of their demands.
Western media routinely blames their new favourite boogeyman, the CPC, for very typical Asian norms and legal customs. Asia, and the East in general, approaches politics from radically different philosophical lineages than the West does. Eastern religions along with Confucianism, Legalism and Daoism place heavy emphasis on collective well-being over individualistic impulses. One must also consider that eastern countries including China bear deep collective scars from a past era of brutal colonial subjugation. Additionally, the security threats and military tensions in Asia are far more difficult than anything Western Europe or North America currently faces.
Once the existence of a different social reality is accepted, we can see that the civil liberties and political priorities of Asia are the popular byproduct of unique ancient histories and cultural sensitivities rather than government oppression.
In Thailand, it is a 3–50 year sentence for disparaging the king. In South Korea, it is prison for praising any element of the North’s society and it is prison for questioning painful historical memories. India, likewise, has strict laws against depreciating national heroes. Publicly insulting Indian political leaders or cracking jokes about religion on stage will lead to arrest. Japan, plagued by political apathy, is a de facto one party state largely run by unelected bureaucrats. Political messaging is highly restricted and insulting language is banned from the digital and public sphere. Singapore notoriously punishes offenders with “judicial caning” for everything from bullying to theft to violent crime. They also run one of the strictest censorship regimes in the world against content deemed contrary to the public interest. Taiwan has laboured to silence pro-unification voices like CUPP and CTi and Indonesia has outright bans on a wide range of political activity deemed subversive. These are just a few examples of illiberal policies in nominally liberal Asian states but the list could go on and on.
Whether these laws offend our western sensibilities or not is irrelevant to the sovereignty of these countries. They enforce laws to maintain social harmony and balance individual rights with collective well-being and security. In this regard, China is no different from any government in Asia.
China even compares favourably to the freedom-loving United States on many issues for which they are criticized. For example, surveillance in China holds an 82% approval rating because it has virtually eliminated the petty thefts and scams that were once rampant in cities. By contrast, in the heavily-surveilled United States, only 38% of Americans support community surveillance while 46% oppose it. Both countries have it but only one wants it. Which is more democratic?
Separately, China stands accused in western media of detaining up to one million ethnic Uyghurs after a spate of lethal terrorist attacks over the course of the Xinjiang conflict.1 While many western claims about Xinjiang are questionable propaganda, China’s Islamic deradicalization program has been wound down. Long-term solutions have been found with poverty reduction efforts in Xinjiang and the successful implementation of regional development strategies. Compared with western actions in Gaza, it is clear where moral authority lies.
Meanwhile, mass incarceration in the United States persists. There is no poverty reduction effort. Many times more Black and Hispanic people face arrest and imprisonment each year in America than Uyghurs ever have. The same is true of Romani in Europe or First Nations in Canada. Furthermore, the per capita prison population of the United States is almost five times larger than the prison population of China. Being arrested in China is a rare occurrence; a Chinese citizen is far less likely to be arrested in their lifetime than a British, American or Australian is.
One could make a defensible argument that any state government is an inherently authoritarian institution. But to claim that China’s popular socialist system is authoritarian relative to liberal countries in Asia or the West falls apart upon scrutiny.
It’s been said that, in Asia, “many citizens prioritize stability, economic growth and effective leadership over individual freedoms.”2 Still, let’s not forget the pernicious fact that liberal tenets in the West are frequently only promoted by capitalist oligarchs as a means to divide public opinion and smuggle corporate dictates into our governing system, much to the detriment of ordinary people and workers.
The East is rising while the West declines. Given the divergent trajectories between the two civilizations, the West should find out what it can learn from other systems instead of fixating on what it can criticize.
Thanks for reading!
Carlos Martinez describes the economic motivations behind western propaganda narratives about Xinjiang in chapter five of his book, The East is Still Red: Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century (Praxis Press, 2023): 109–126. ↩︎
Diego Fossati, “Beyond the liberal model in East and Southeast Asia,” East Asia Forum, May 26, 2025. ↩︎
