Why China is not Worse than Germany
At first, I guess I have to say that I do not want to put Germany down, but instead try to rise China’s image in our Western culture a bit. You will see that I can only do this with regards to you the people, because the German government will still consider my assumptions totally wrong.
The State Defending Itself
We have to consider what the state’s own aim is and come to the conclusion that it always means self-defension and self-preservation. This is usually written in constitutions in such words as that the consitution might not be abolished or similar.
The Basic Law for Germany (our constitution) mentions that each step against the liberal democratic order is to be considered illegal and must be punished. Thus, the communist party was called illegal in 1956, mainly because of the conflicts with the GDR. The GDR was a socialistic state and like a child of the UdSSR. This socialistic approach was too much for West Germany and they wanted to prevent themselves from a putsch as seen in other countries around the world, e.g. Afghanistan some years later (1978) which was supported by the UdSSR then.
We know that the prohibition of something always has to do with fear. Government is afraid of a takeover and wants to strike down each chance of hostile win. This approach cannot only be seen in—as our media always mentions—“evil countries”, but also in Germany as soon as something seems dangerous enough to harm the state.
Sovereign States
Of course, there are differences between Germany and China on how much people are allowed to say against the state, but we have to go one step backwards to see the whole incident more general.
Both China and Germany are sovereign states and thus have full rights to act on their own territory as they want to do, however since they both joined the United Nations they have to adapt to some rules and guidelines of the United Nations. Yet, I do not want to discuss the pros and cons of United Nations and its rules here, but instead I want to follow the image of sovereign states.
As a sovereign state each state wants to impose its rules on the people and also continue these rules, especially the form of government. This means that Germany is willing to maintain its pluralistic democracy with many parties while China is willing to hold a one-party-system.
Perspective on Democracy
Germany and China have their own methods to do this, but both of them are forbidding communcation with the enemy or criticism. Germany allows more criticism, but becomes strict when it comes to terrorism. There are some cases nowadays in which people are accussed for having supported terroristic organisations. This is in my eyes not different from the Chinese point-of-view of supporting the opposition, just because of the different views on politics.
Germany wants—as already mentioned—different parties and thus also opposition, while China needs only one party. Therefore, Germany is not able to forbid opposition, but they can forbid other opposing organisations who are against the democratic order. This is pretty much the same as China’s prohibition of opposition. While in Germany we need the opposition, but we do not need people who are against our form of democracy, China does not need groups who are against their form of democracy either (and since they have only one party, they also do not need other parties).
We can see that from the perspective of each state’s comprehension of democracy (Germany: a posteriori; China: a priori) we can understand the prohibition of other opinions and see that both states have their reasons for forbidding other opinions and especially why China is not as evil as it is shown in Germany. They just have another comprehension of demcracy and German media or politics only analyzes China’s acting from our point-of-view.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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