Socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics is deeply rooted in China's past and present and has a great legitimacy and historical inevitability. By comparing it to Western capitalist democracy, people will obtain a deeper and more accurate understanding of the superiorities of socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics.

Characteristics, defects of capitalist democracy

Capitalist democracy was shaped by social conflict and political struggle during the development of capitalism and is a political system featuring legal recognition and protection of civil rights as well as application of the principle of balanced power and majority rule in resolving social conflict. Modern Western capitalist democracy mainly has three political functions: gaining legitimacy for a regime, ensuring reasonable competition among interest groups and maintaining a balance of power.

Capitalist democracy is subject to historical limitations and has three major systematic defects.

The first defect is money-based politics. The control of private capital over public power has been a perennial problem in Western capitalist democracy. The rich in capitalist societies can translate the economic and social resources in their hands into political power by rigging elections, manipulating public opinion, influencing decision-makers and other complicated social and political measures.

The second defect is bloc politics. While creating a relatively fair environment for competition among various social and interest groups, the multi-center, multi-level decision-making model of capitalist democracy provides these groups with more opportunities to influence decision-making, thereby increasing the complexity of decision-making and reducing the efficiency of law-making and administration.

The third defect is political corruption. Due to the inherent shortcomings of capitalist democracy, Western political activity requires massive financial support from rich people, which has inevitably caused gross political corruption.

Superiority of socialist democratic system with Chinese characteristics

The socialist political system with Chinese characteristics is made up of the system of people's congresses, the system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the Party's leadership, the system of regional autonomy for ethnic minorities and the grass-roots mass self-government system and is a democratic system guaranteeing the rule by the people. China's democratic system has its evident superiority over the Western capitalist democratic system.

First, the system can promote the formulation of the guidelines and polices that represent the general, long-term and fundamental interests of the Chinese people. Under China's democratic system, the Communist Party of China as a ruling party is the political representative of the Chinese people from all ethnic groups. Therefore, to maximize the interests of the entire society and all ethnic groups, the Party can properly adopt guidelines and polices that meet the objective conditions and requirements of China's social development, are in the fundamental interests of all Chinese people and are in line with the law of scientific development.

Second, the system can promote the comprehensive coordination in the interests of various parties. China's democratic system can not only respond to the opinions and voices of the masses but also view their varied opinions from the big-picture perspective. Thus it can enable national laws and policies to take into account the interests of all parties, properly resolve the contradictions among the people and maximize the coordination between the partial interests among the people, individual and collective interests and fundamental interests.

Third, the system can promote political and social stability. Under China's democratic system, the regime is highly stable and the national policies are remarkable consistent, the evident advantage of which can ensure the country's long-term and stable development.

Thanks to the aforementioned characteristics and institutional advantages, China's democratic system has provided China's successive industrialization and modernization with effective and reliable institutional guarantees.