When living in China, I used to look at democracy with envy and affection too, and see great statesmen of democracy like Sir Winston Churchill as wearing a bright and mysterious halo. After learning the whole story, I realized that Sir Churchill was not that great after all. First he was an imperialist and second, he was a monarchist. The kind of democracy he wanted was for his elite and civilized English speaking people only, although he was always able to phrase his ideas with grace and elegance.

He also wanted to "stare in the eyes of the French" and get a favorable exchange rate for the British people after World War I. Such a blunder contributed greatly to the rapid economic development of the continental Europe especially Germany, after World War I and weakened then British economy. Therefore Mr. Churchill was not that big of a fan for free trade or market economy either. To be fair to the old gentleman, not that many people understood those things that well back then.

After seeing many years of free elections, they did nothing but discredit Mr. Churchill's famous remark that 'democracy is the worst possible political system, but it is the only system that works'. In many cases it does not work, especially in international politics when people try to export democracy. The first part might be true though, that democracy often displayed its ugly side. You now see Chinese starting to believe things such as "no publicity is bad publicity". In Taiwan, politicians figured out the often became famous for getting into a fist fight during public debates. You also see people in Taiwan talking about wanting democracy, more than their cultural roots, historical and biological connection with China. If sons or daughters do not acknowledge their mothers and fathers, do you believe they were striving for the good of the 'people'?

If there's ever an award for the most awkward impersonation contest of the American Revolution, the struggle for so called Taiwan Independence has to be nominated in the history books. Americans struggled for independence because British levied heavy taxes on them. The Taiwan independence advocates strive for independence because People's Republic of China never taxed a penny from the island, and they are still enjoying the contributions from the people on the island who still view themselves as Chinese.

When I first arrived in United States, one day I heard Zig Zigler's motivational speech and I was quite moved by his joke: 'What is democracy? If I see a young man with long hairs, I might not give him a job, but would I die to defend his rights to have long hairs? You bet I would . . .' But that was when I was ignorant about Western culture. An innocent child is always easily convinced, persuaded and touched.

Now I am getting more sophisticated about Western democracy and in the process have learned speeches from more greats. One of the reasons Athenians were proud of their democracy was 'we don't resent the fact of being in poverty, but rather the fact of surrendering to it'. If you look around today's Western style democracy, most of them simply give one vote to one person no matter that person fight or give up fight against poverty. Neither do any of the democracy care too much about whether elected officials are bringing financial responsibility or irresponsibility, moral discipline or indulgence, knowledge or ignorance to an office. While borrowing to greatness, lack of moral standards and dismissing intellectuals can win popular votes or even wars, things that gratifying human nature could easily bring long term disasters. Don't forget human nature has tendency to slide downhill, if you remember the fall of Communism, an ideology built on unselfish devotion among one another?

What's really evil about a government is the intention to mesmerize general public. Of course, government is not totally at fault according to another greater thinker in the West -- James Allen: Traditionally people despise the master if one man is the master and many others are slaves. But master and slaves are cooperators in the relationship. No matter democracy or totalitarianism, the real evil of a master lies in making people ignorant and then trying to take advantage of them. The real fault of the slaves lies in letting the master think for them instead of using their heads. No matter what kind of social systems, devaluing knowledge and giving others less than divine social values and making others ignorant can not be a good social system.

I hope China does not idolize all the garbage from the western culture as God send. I hope people build democracies that are based on consent of the governed, but hope they do not become too foolish, ignorant and blind enough to lose sight of who really are the governed.

What good is it, if a democracy encourages 'no publicity is bad publicity' or 'I don't listen to intellectuals'. Those people who advertised to have humble roots and listen to common men are often the rich and well educated.

The Chinese social system today is quite possibly not even as good as the Western Style democracy in many aspects, but it is pointless to compare because as Sir Churchill said 'it's the only system that works' at least in present day China. At least the system still encouraged 'knowledge is power' (知识就是力量) on paper, when I was in school and it introduced ideas such as 'stability overrules everything' (稳定高于一切), 'development is the real deal' (发展才是硬道理).

No matter Chinese style capitalism/socialism or the Western democracy, the real reason for the rapid development of China is really because that area had been too poor for too long. It's like a half bottle of cold water is destined to be heated by the other half bottle of hot water, when the insulation dividing the bottle is removed. When Western countries are ahead in the game, they like to pin their success on something and that something happened to be pinned to Christianity in the past and now to democracy after separation of Church and State and its demonstrated success in America.

If one truly believes in God, a country's prosperity is not the work of political systems, but the work of God. Western religions had burned many heresies alive from the Medieval Ages onward, but there was a Chinese who chose to be burnt for his belief in God a while back. There was a talented guy who lived several hundred years before Christ named 介子推. Since his first name means "push" in Chinese, let's call him "Push". Push helped a prince to go through many arduous journeys until the prince became the king of his country, pretty much like 'Return of the King' in 'Lord of the Rings'. When the king wanted to hire him as an important minister, Push refused. He felt sick and tired of his colleagues who took it for granted that it was them that brought the king to the throne. He went home to live with his mother and said: 'it was upon God's glory that the prince became the king. But my colleagues thought the glories belong to them. 贪天之功'. Then Push moved away from the king and the capital to live in the country. The king led a small army to try to hire Push from the country side. Push tried to hide into the mountains. The king ordered his army to light a wild fire to force Push coming out of the hiding. Push chose not to come down the mountain from the route left for him by the king and eventually got burnt with his mother after the wild fire became out of control. You probably won't remember and probably would scorn at the story of such a fool as I did first time I heard of the tale. But if this story was a like a bubble buried underneath the mud at the bottom of a river, it rose higher and higher throughout the years and grew bigger and bigger when there had been more and more stirs in the water.
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Terry was obviously not paying attention to the story about Push and said: "well, Clippers are not that weak after all". David followed: "Rockets need both Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady to be healthy to make the playoffs. Without either, they are simply a below average team". Speaking of that, David thought: "that was my points exactly: hero means little within the context of historical events. Historical events often take their own courses. China or Yao Ming are both developing fast, but not at the level of the best players yet, and far from their potentials."