Article: China model as alternative to democracy

The news portal "The Malaysian Insider" today published an article by its reporter Yow Hong Chieh titled "Dr M promotes China model as alternative to democracy".

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/dr-m-promotes-china-model-as-alternative-to-democracy/

Excerpts: "Former prime minister [of Malaysia] Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today called democracy a 'failed' ideology and held up China's model of authoritarianism as an alternative 'worth studying'. He said China's political model [...] showed that a nation could develop well even in the absence of freedom, liberty and equality [...]. 'If you find good people to run a country, even dictators can make a country develop and develop very well.' [...] The former premier also criticised the very premise of democracy, arguing that no issue could achieve total consensus, leading to an electoral split that will promote poor governance. 'Democracy ... has failed in many countries,' he said. 'It is not the perfect thing it is touted to be. You find that some of these democracies really cannot work. People cannot make up their minds.['] [...] 'We see a lot of democracies where leaders change every two years and the country cannot make any progress at all,' he said. 'Even the countries that have made progress find sometimes that democracies hinder the development of the country, make the country unstable and difficult to develop.'"