<https://www.guancha.cn/ZhuYunHan/2021_06_19_595020.shtml>

... Democracy .. our understanding is different from that of the West ..

So let's see, how do most people in East Asia understand democracy? ..
Many people understand democracy as freedom, but more people understand
it as social justice and good governance, which is very special. ..
In other words, many Asian people's understanding of democracy is a
very substantive understanding of what democracy brings to me, not what
kind of guarantees or opportunities democracy provides. This is the
political concept of the general public in East Asia. Scholars have a
big gap in the definition of democracy. Scholars define democracy from
a procedural perspective ..

....

The Chinese professor emphasizes that it seems "very special" that the
east-Asians tend to value Social Justice and Good Governance more than
Freedom, whereas the Westerners seem to rate Freedom higher than Social
Justice and Good Governance, while I think it is not really so special,
if one recalls history.

Freedom <---> Liberty
Social Justice <---> Equality
Good Governance <---> Fraternity (social comfort)

The slogans of the French Revolution in the late 18th century included
Social Justice and Good Governance into the fundamentals, along with
Freedom. The French at the time also valued Social Justice and Good
Governance, not only the east-Asians nowadays do so. Also, as I sought
to tell before, the three components make little sense separately from
each other, but they make sense as three-in-one. No true Freedom
without Social Justice and Good Governance, and no true Social Justice
without Freedom and Good Governance, and no Good Governance without
Social Justice and Freedom.

The problem with those unwise scholars seeking to define democracy too
narrowly is due to the fact that the French revolution happened quite
long ago, so the original concepts managed to turn into fetishes, so
that the unwise scholars tend to mindlessly repeat some cliches instead
of looking at the basics substantially.

The east-Asians may be special in the sense that they are coming from
"the other side", but they seem to be coming to the same understanding,
because all people(s) are basically the same. The Capitalist/Bourgeois
European/Western style democracies don't implement the mentioned Triad
truly and completely. Indeed, they declare Freedom in procedural terms,
but their established/institutionalized economic and cultural practices
still don't allow to implement Equality and Fraternity in the original
meaning the French Revolution in the late 18th century was inspired by.
So there's a field for creative development and improvement.

2020-11-12 .. <https://tinyurl.com/yzyq3j8h>

>> 5 friends vote to decide where to have lunch.
>> Two of them insist to go to a restaurant which serves bad food and
>> expensive
>> according to objective measures. They would be mad if their wish were no
>> honored. Why?
>>
>> One could say they don't believe in voting and majority rule. But it would
>> be more understandable if one is the son of the owner and one has a girl
>> friend working in that restaurant.
>
> Originally democratic vote is not supposed to be a ritualistic fetish.
> It's supposed to be a workable and practicable decision-making method
> based on collective-communal consent without coersion and oppression.
> For that a few principles-conditions are supposed to be met, which is
> laconically summarized in the well-known French revolutionary motto:
> liberty, equality, fraternity. And it's easy to see, the elements of
> this trio make sense only in supplement to each other, but not alone.
>
> Liberty ideally means, people allow each other to do what each other
> wants, and mutually refuse to seek use of force / oppression to coerce
> each other into an action / inaction. But such 'free people' shouldn't
> harm each other while exercising their individual freedoms. Also, they
> need to combine individual efforts for common goals, they face various
> issues to solve together, so they need to somehow influence each other
> for coordination of their personal actions within a joint effort. What
> kinds of someone's influence to some another one should be considered
> just, non-oppressive, compartible with the idea of liberty? What kinds
> of conditions people put on each other should be considered fair and
> non-discriminatory? Here the "equality" concept comes in demand.
>
> Equality implies, inter alia, that a particular private interest of
> some member of the community is neither less nor more respected versus
> a particular private interest of some another member of the community.
> Basically, none of those five friends is supposed to be obliged to
> substantiate why he or she wants to go to this restaurant rather than
> to that restaurant. Such equal respect to particular private interests
> provides basis for the majority decision making.
>
> But if among these 5 some have different preferences, why should they
> go to a restaurant together? Let each of them go to a restaurant he or
> she personally likes. This is where "fraternity" comes into play.
> It's supposed that even if members of the community may have different
> particular preferences and mutual disagreements with regard to certain
> issues, there are still some more basic things making them stick
> together and searching for a consensus among themselves.
>
> That's a rough schematic description, but you can get the idea.
>
> From the practicable perspective, "fraternity" is not necessary to be
> universal. Say, 4 fellows can, - democratically, by a majority vote, -
> oblige their fifth fellow to pay for their lunch in a restaurant 7 days
> of the week. For the latter fellow, it would be natural to refuse such
> a dictatorship of the majority and simply leave the community. But it's
> possible only if the fellow has where to leave. If the four don't find
> basic reasons to keep the fifth one within their community of equals,
> and they have a way to stop his or her escape, then they can simply
> strip their fifth fellow of voting rights and make him or her a sort of
> their communal slave. 'Equality' is no longer the case, but it doesn't
> matter since the person is, in effect, not a member.
>
> It's not actually a contrived speculative example, all known functional
> democracies since ancient to modern times were always supplied with some
> groups of disenfranchised (the slaves in the ancient greek city-states,
> as well as in the not-so-ancient America, the populations of colonies in
> addition to the European democratic metropolies). The very fact of the
> presence of disenfranchised groups makes the fraternity principle among
> the full members even more functional [..]