Yes sure but China has never been anything remotely like a Western democracy. It would be difficult to keep the lid on a billion people if they really wanted to live differently. Political culture runs deep.
If they want to defer to authority, they can just keep voting in the ruling party. Democracy doesn’t mean no choices.
Voting? Democratic elections are literally not a thing in China, at least not higher than the level of the village. There are no political parties other than the Communist Party. But for Western democracies I do agree. We have no excuses.
My later comment was misunderstood. If being ruled by strong Communist leaders is the “political culture” of China, then fine. Give them a choice every few years and they will keep selecting that.
But we all know that the “revolution” needs to maintained by not giving the people the choice. If given a choice, the people might be “fooled” by Western influence and select someone other than the Communists. So the Communists pick all the candidates and then let the people choose only between them.
The fact is that the “political culture” that supposedly backs authoritarianism would not survive free and open elections. The political culture being unwaveringly Communist is a sham and a lie.
