Actual working-class democracy is so incomprehensible to westerners that they can’t imagine a system that’s responsive to its people without riots. This is because governments are not neutral, multi-party bourgeois democracies are in fact capitalist dictatorships, while one-party socialist states are worker’s dictatorships. I suggest reading this thread on worker’s congresses to learn about just one such organ of China’s responsive democracy.

please, don’t call me westerner, altough i live in such a country. This term doesn’t differentiate between any political spectrum and simplifies a lot. Please don’t use it, at least not for me.

For instance i organize in some leftist anarchocommunist organization and therefore i know how alternative decision making systems can work. I have experienced difficult times where these alternative form of organizing can survive. (so no power abuse and such).

So its not about lack of imagination, its about trust. Belief in anarchism means for me the belief that every person with big power probably will abuse this power in some kind of another. I don’t think this is different in any countries.

An actual example from i think soviet russia: i think emma goldman as well as other anarchists have visited the early days of the russian revolution (so i refer here to a book from 1924). There, she writes that there have been some politicial disputes in the communist party and instead of solving them with good consensus the bolshewiki tried to remove those people from power positions.

The above mentioned anarchocommunist organization has not done that even with heavy conflicts. That’s the reason i trust them.

But i don’t trust regular stalinist/leninist organizations because they have the political history of solving dispute with power abuse. I don’t trust them because the only way of preventing power abuse from any person is to simply not give one person much political power. That’s the reason why i don’t trust stalinist/leninist organizations, because they usually have a very centralist strategic approach.

I don’t trust them because they have a strong belief that their viewpoint is the correct one, for instance when i view the work of the local Marxist leninist party. So when faced with criticism, instead of trying to understand the criticism and fixing it, they react with “this divides leftists”.

Because of this political history, i have deep deep trust problems. It’s not about excluding rich people (that would be fine for me), it’s about actual decision making power by workers.

The NPC is currently 25% women, so they do have some work yet to do in that area.

I am not sure who “they” refers to, but in case it is women: i disagree, i see the most responsibility in the people having most power. Xi Jinping or Li Keqiang could stepping down from their position with the condition that a poor working class female worker can fulfill this position.

But they don’t do it because then they would have much less political influence. And that is what i mean by political power. Xi Jinping or Li Keqiang have political power and they use it for their moral beliefs, as long as they don’t loose political power.

That’s the reason why i am anarchist. i think many many people would act very similar as Xi Jinping or Li Keqiang in this position. Therefore the only good alternative is to reduce such positions of power or at least regularly change it.

According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang this person has had political power for 10 years. That is a very long time, very similar to for instance some western government. So china has to me very similar problems in terms of power and democracy.

Also doing better than the US, Ireland, Greece, and a lot of others. And of course socialist Cuba is the model for all countries to emulate with respect to women’s rights.

Yes, that is no suprise and i completely understand that. But still, i see structural sexism in casea of china because i expect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang or some person in a similar powerful position to be replaced by a female worker.

in the above anarchocommunist organization, it is very common to regularly change positions of power (for instance people talking to the press or something). This is active work against power abuse because people are not used to be in positions of power. But when you are 10 years in the same position of power, this changes your viewpoint.