U.S. President Joe Biden, the Western media, and American academics seek to rally Western democracies against China, allegedly the leader of the world’s authoritarian countries. They charged that China is not democratic. Is this charge true? How so?

China is known to have a long history during which scholars played a central role in society while their ideas about politics prevailed. One of these was the Mandate of Heaven, the gist of which was the ruler was to be considered legitimate if the people were happy and well off. If they were not the ruler would lose the Mandate and it was proper for his subjects to revolt and he would be replaced.

Confucius and other of China’s ancient sages spoke and wrote of politics in China. They advanced the themes of upright officials and honesty in government and their working for the people. Historically, China was more democratic than most other places in the world.

China’s recent history indicates Western democracy appealed to China. Various reform movement in China emulated the political systems of Western Europe and the United States. Sun Yat-sen, the father of republican China, was a champion of U.S. democracy and oversaw adopting a constitution modelled after the U.S. constitution that gave the U.S. its system of government.

But there were also contradictory lessons China learned from America and Europe. The West declined to support Sun’s democratic movement and instead threw in with Yuan Shih-kai, who was a dictator and sought to make himself emperor. Chinese were seriously disappointed.

In 1914, China supported the Western democracies, or the Allied Powers, against Germany and the Central Powers comprised of authoritarian nations. China was clearly on the side of the victors and deserved the spoils of war—most important getting back Germany’s leasehold in China. Most expected this.

But President Woodrow Wilson, known as America’s, most racist president, when Japan asked that opposition to racial discrimination be added to his famous 14 points, refused and instead allowed Japan to seize the German leasehold in China that should have been vacated and........

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