The Chinese model of non-democratic excellence in government

This guy gives a persuasive presentation on the alternative offered by the world's most popular government with its own people, China. But he does not seem to be aware of the influence of his own culture on what we now think of as Western democracy. Confucius, Mencius and other Chinese thinkers were highly influential among political theorists in Europe when they were translated back in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Without them, there would be no enlightenment and no civil service exams, the basis of the bureaucratic structures that uphold rule of law, the skeleton of democracy. About that you can read more at, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/song/readings/inventions_ideas.htm 
under the headings, "Political and Economic Theories" and "China and the Age of Enlightenment."

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