China transitions towards a democracy...

...in 2049.

And the World in 2050:

The main players in the world today are the USA, China, the EU, India, Japan, Russia and Brazil (in that order*). For China and India, the immense population of these two nations means that, per capita, their incomes remain relatively low. Nevertheless, they now wield huge economic influence...

But back in 2025, it was like this:

China's economy continues to boom

Much of China is now highly urbanised and densified. Its booming economy has led to the construction of literally tens of thousands of new skyscrapers all over the country. There are now over 200 cities with more than a million inhabitants, compared with just 35 in the whole of Europe circa 2010.* Even many remote and isolated places are beginning to see development on an unprecedented scale. Large-scale infrastructure such as maglev trains, airports, bridges and tunnels is forming an extensive network to all corners of the nation, leaving few areas untouched. China is well on its way to becoming a developed country.

Some of the largest metropolitan areas - such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen - actually begin to overlap and form "hyper cities", rivalling Tokyo in terms of population and land area. Many of the world's tallest buildings can now be found in China, including a number of kilometre-high "supertalls".

All of this has a considerable impact on the price of steel and other materials, which leads to cutbacks of many large-scale development projects in Europe, America and elsewhere. The rise of neighbouring India is adding to this. The West is now having a greatly reduced influence on setting the price of metals. Meanwhile, vast profits are being made by construction and mining firms, which leads to many high profile takeovers and acquisitions. At the same time, record numbers of accidents during this time - as a result of so much construction activity - lead to tighter regulations and improved safety in the industry. Better pay and working conditions for employees are subsequently introduced.

As China booms, its power requirements are soaring. The country has been preparing for this, however, by strengthening relations with Central Asian countries and importing more oil and gas from them, especially Turkmenistan which has made significant new discoveries. China’s entry into Central Asia was also partly motivated by the need to reduce its dependency on (a) the Middle East, and (b) the Malacca Strait for shipping oil from the Persian Gulf and Africa; a stretch of water that was becoming increasingly vulnerable to pirate attacks, and was the subject of ongoing political tensions regarding its control.

As well as strengthening its oil imports, substantial gains have been made from energy efficiency and conservation programmes, along with greatly increased use of nuclear power. By 2025 its nuclear power generating capacity is nearly 150 billion kilowatthours (khwh), passing that of Canada and Russia.* In the coming years, this will increase still further, as 4th generation nuclear power plants become available. Demands for environmental protection also lead to increased solar, wind and hydro-electric power.


Welcome to The Future...

democracy is a load of shite, there is no point in being able to choose between elites with the same ideology

elections in the west are a bit like choosing how many lumps of sugar you want in your tea while they piss in it

One interesting thing reading through characterisations of upper level power struggles in China is that there sort of already exists two parties: the hardliners and the reformers.  They sort of parallel the existence of Republicans and Democrats, Tories and Labour, Lib+Nat coalition and Labor.  But it's not formalised.  And it exists in the context of one monolithic party in which there are no clear traditions for the transition of power.

cool links!

Excellent point.  The only real difference between the 2 systems is that of transparency.  But that's such a huge difference.

ON the whole I prefer the Canadian parliamentary system to the American presidential one.  Yes, it's always one of the 2 parties that always forms the government, but other parties win seats, and often hold the balance of power, which guards fairly well against an effective biopoly.

You can see I'm not cynical about democracy.

i should clarify in a more sober fashion lol

PR could work, the germans seem to have a pretty good democracy although i think a lot of that is down to them being german (france and italy have similar systems but they don't work at all)

english and american fpp 'democracy' is a joke, it's a total crapshoot who ends up running the country, you affect your life more by putting money on horses voting