While Xi’s move to remove term limits and humiliate his predecessor is worrying and very much dictator moves, china is still more democratic than most people realize. It’s just another model of democracy. Democracy happens within the Chinese Communist party, which anyone can join and participate in to elect local officials, which elect regional officials and so on.

Obviously not perfect, but not completely dictatorial eitherr.

If I go in a public square and liken Xi to Winnie the Pooh for several hours, will I be returning home untouched by the government and continue to live without government reprisal?

I think we could learn a lot from their more restrained capitalism system. But that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize the authoritarian dictatorship.

There’s an old Soviet Russia joke that applies here. They had freedom of speech too – in the US you can rant about Reagan all day and the government won’t do any reprisal, and in the USSR you can also rant about Reagan without any reprisal!

Recently in the UK, we had a lot of “not my king” protests where people were arrested for blank signs after people had signs mentioning Prince Andrew’s misdeeds.