How each model solves the same problems
Instead of “democracy versus anarchism”, compare the concrete ways collective problems get solved.
| Question | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How are decisions made? | Party congress, Central Committee and Politburo; power shared among general secretary, president, prime minister and National Assembly chair; Assembly elections with more candidates than seats, vetted by the Fatherland Front. | Power concentrated in the party centre and in Xi Jinping as 'core'; central commissions chaired by Xi; presidential term limits removed in 2018; party bodies absorbed government functions. | A stratified random sample of 523 voters deliberated in moderated groups and plenaries and answered questionnaires before and after; no decisions were taken.Sortition / citizens' assembly | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Party inspection commissions, courts under party leadership, citizen petitions; prosecutions of critics under national-security articles of the penal code. | Party discipline commissions and supervisory commissions with extrajudicial detention (liuzhi); courts under party leadership; online petition and complaint platforms. | Balanced briefing materials, trained neutral moderators and competing experts structured disagreement. | |
| How are public goods funded? | State budget and state enterprises with growing private and foreign investment; provincial governments deliver services, measured annually by the PAPI survey. | State-led industrial policy, poverty-alleviation campaigns, infrastructure; local governments squeezed by debt and reduced land revenue. | Privately funded; produced published results, media coverage and a peer-reviewed study. | |
| How is AI used? | No significant AI role in governance; e-government services are expanding. | AI-enabled surveillance (facial recognition, big-data policing, IJOP in Xinjiang); algorithmic routing of citizen complaints. | No AI role. | |
| What are the main risks? | Corruption and cronyism, concentration of power through anti-corruption campaigns, repression of dissent, and inequality linked to access to party-state networks. | Unchecked personal power and succession uncertainty, mass repression in Xinjiang and Tibet, surveillance, reduced local initiative, and policy errors without public correction.CLM-1095 | Self-selection into attendance; artificial setting; analysis by the method's designers; no institutional uptake. |
This illustrates differences in design; it is not a universal claim about outcomes. Each cell links to mechanisms and the claims behind them.