Reply #47: China IS a dictatorship

[liberalpragmatist]

There is looser control than there was, say, 20 years ago, and you can now criticize the regime between two people (whereas 20 years ago, you would have been imprisoned for even cracking a joke about politicians).

However, there is still little freedom of press and the Chinese Communist Party remains exclusively in power. There are no elections, except for some (heavily rigged) local and village councils elected on a nonpartisan basis.

And I would probably say China is actually more capitalist than Socialist. Although it claims to be socialist and on the way to communism, that's certainly not the case. The poor receive few welfare benefits or government services, esp. in rural areas. There was an excellent recent NYTimes article about the rural poor in China and it quoted one economist as saying that China probably has the biggest social inequality of any nation on earth - the rural are still dirt poor and the city-folk on the coasts are thriving.

So I would list China as the following:
Capitalism <---X-------> Communism
Democracy <---------X-> Dictatorship