Understand you point of view.
Thank you all for allowing me to express some of my thoughts in this forum. Please forgive my obtuse writing.
If any of the you want to enlighten me on issues related to China or America, I frequently post my view on soc.culture.china.

Are the people round up randomly?
If not, they had to be round up according to some criteria.
If Xi's experiment in sending officials to live with Uighurs was part of the identification process. There could not be too many. No matter how careful, these anthropological studies would inconvenient the families involved. This naturally limits the scale of the project.

Physically build the structure to house 10,000, let alone 1 million people, is not a small project. It takes a lot times and space, a lot of labor and money. After all , Xinjiang is not Afghanistan. Sporadic terrorist acts once or twice every few years. Yes. But in no way a huge threat. Improving people's living hood has a longer time horizon. If the experiment was successful, such reeducation school could continue year after year. No reason to build all the housing units all at once.

"Whether or not A is rubbish has nothing to do with whether B is rubbish."

You are absolutely right if A and B do not communicate with each other.
But currently A insists and many believe certain procedure X will make a country not rubbish. The claim is that a fair procedure X confers the government the consent of the governed.

According to the above thinkng, if fair procedure X is carried out in A --> A is not rubbish.
If fair procedure X is not carried out in B -->B is rubbish.

How could an indifferent third party determine whether A is right? He compare what happen to A and B in the real world.

Observations:
1. A carried out procedure X
Results: People do not think their government has the consent of the governed. Large number of people are unhappy and the majority do not trust their government.
2. B does not carry out procedure X.
Results: People think their government has the consent of the governed. Most are happy and trust their government

Conclusion, procedure X is irrelevant to whether a country is not rubbish

How else could one determine whether procedure X is relevant of irrelevant to preclude being rubbish?

How so?

Are you suggesting a double standard?

"Last, there's the federal government. It's not so much that it's not functioning. It's just that we have problems we don't currently know how to solve."

When could it be solved?

"Whether or not the US is a democracy - it is not - has no bearing on whether or not China is. Not one bit."

The issue is how to really judge whether a country is democratic or not. Democratic would be vacuuous if the same standard could not be used. Is American criteria set a good criteria set. To the extent the the US America is not a democracy, its favor set of criteria cannot stand as universal.

Practical concern. Currently America is using it democratic credential to unite US society and to act hostilely to China internationally in the name of saving liberal democracy.

G John Ikenberry, had published a new book entitled "A World Safe For Liberal Internationalism."

The following is how this is book is introduced by Amazon.com:
"One of [the Biden team's] chief manifestos for change, as some of the incoming Bidenites have already privately conceded, will be G. John Ikenberry's new book, A World Safe for Democracy. . . the crowning achievement of the Princeton University's scholar's decades long work explaining and defending the liberal international order."

Again, you have a valid point.

I met Hong Konger in discussion forum who complained that the Chief of Hong Kong government was somehow appointed by China. I suggested to them. Hong Kongers should ask for the right to fire him or her before the term's end? If China keeps sending wrong people to lead Hong Kong, they all would be fired by the Hong Kong people. China would be embarrassed and would make sure its candidate would meet Hong Kongers's demand in the future.

However, I would distinguish between voting a person and voting a person out. The two are not the same. Voting in is mostly based on expectation, voting out is based on experience. No one can really tell the future. But they mostly know what have already happened to them, good or bad.

Again, the Chinese have decide themselves how to remove bad leaders.

"I don't think much of US democracy, and have pointed out several times that you might learn more about democratic process by looking elsewhere."

Whatever you think or don't think, most in the US, especially politicians, still think US is a democracy, perhaps the best. Again, the US is treating China as evil because it is not "democratic" like the US. The more the US not democratic, the most it would emphasize its democratic credential. This is the seed of a hot war. A war of good and evil.

"It's odd that you know a lot about Trump's supporters but you don't know what's happening to the Uighurs."

Not at all. I am not living in Xinjiang. Of course, I don't a lot about Xinjiang. Especially for made up events. I am living in the US. Hence I know a lot about the US.

In contrast, people who did not live in X and don't know the local language but somehow get the idea that they know everything about X is odd or worse. A certain American professor had written a book with the title of "How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society."

OK, that book 1999 book written before the digital age may be dated. The newest versions are "How America lost its mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy," and "The Death of Expertise:The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.

US media is indeed more entertaining than Chinese news. But also exacts a heavy price. IF the US is in decline, US media is partly to be blamed.

" I am just pointing out that China claiming to be democratic is laughable. "

Many Chinese also think the US is not a democracy. And Trump is the symptom rather than the cause of undemocratic US. Unfortunately, some Americans also agree this assessment.

The difference, China does not criticize American democracy. Yet the US keeps making Chinese democracy an issue as if as long as China is not an America look alike, it must be evil.

"A demonstration - what dd it take to remove Trump? What would it take to remove Xi Jinping?"

Who in China is comparing Xi to Trump? In addition, Trump might win handily if not for the pandemic. As a matter fact, some three percenters in Trumps rally yesterday had promised future violence unless the presidency is reverted to Trump, the legitimate winner.

Any way, a better comparison would be with FDR. And you have a good point.

I would say settling term limit is a process of trial and error. No reason not to have a great leaders holding on to the job longer. It took the US more than 100 hundred to settle on term limit. Shouldn't one cut China some slack on this issue?

On the contrary. I think China would lose badly in the beginning IF there is a war between the US and China.

Of course, everyone can say "Two legs bad, four legs good."
Again, the question is whether such opinion is based on knowledge or expertise. Wishful thinking has no value for anyone.

Jimmy Carter said, "America is not a democracy." I believe him.

Please tell you conception of dictatorship.
Then ask yourself this question:
If you don't accept dictatorship, what make you think Chinese including me will accept dictatorship, HERE and NOW?

5. Earned and unearned legitimacy

One may naturally ask, given that U.S. voters had already given their consent to the winning administration, how come only 1/4 said the U.S. government had consent of the governed? If they didn't vote, were they not given implied consent?

Well, the answer lies with how legitimate is legitimate.

The Ash Center policy brief "Understanding CCP Resilience" has the following title for its conclusion:
"Conclusion: Continued Resilience through Earned Legitimacy"

The implication is that CCP resilience is earned by delivery what the people want and desire. As soon as it fails to deliver, it would have no legitimacy.

Popular voting gained rapid ascendancy for one reason. It is supposed to give the government natural legitimacy. Or legitimacy by origin. In contrast to earned legitimacy, legitimacy by origin is in reality unearned but still accepted. We the people create the government not unlike parents give birth to a child. Of course, the government is legitimate by origin. And naturally resilient.

How about a couple of ethnic background E keep having kids of non-E complexion features? Would one or both partners not doubt their kids' legitimacy?

Chinese democracy passes Chinese people's smell test.

In contrast, the US claims to be democratic. Does it pass the American's smell test?

4. One reason for the rapid ascendancy of voting based representative democracy is that voting confers the government the consent of the governed.

Realty check: During the past 10 years Rasmussen had carried out multiple polls asking likely voters whether the U.S. government had consent of the governed. The following headline is typical.

"Only 21% Say U.S. Government Has Consent of the Governed".

Look like some in this forum do not think China is democratic.

1. Please distinguish between Democracy and Western Democracy.
China does not claim its version of democracy is Western Democracy. Rather, Wang Yi, China's Foreign Minister, noted, “Democracy is not Coca-Cola, which, with the syrup produced by the United States, tastes the same across the world. The world will be lifeless and dull if there is only one single model and one single civilization.”

2. What is the must have for a system to be must have?
Democracy simply means "rule by the people." To the extent that direct democracy is unworkable and/or not desirable, representative democracy is inevitably. It also means rule or govern according to the will of the people.

3. Is ritualistic voting the ONLY way to access the will of the people?
My answer is "NO". I agree that voting could be a way for a group of people to access the will of the people. But this is not the only way.

As another poster had pointed out, voting for representative is really new. Greeks often did not vote for their representatives for obvious reason. The procedure favor the rich and the powerful. Western style representative government is, a relatively speaking, new invention.

Some background information is in order for those who insist that democracy must be narrowly tied to voting.

"In the early 1990s, the intellectual historian Bernard Manin
described one of the quickest, most striking changes in the history of
constitutional theory: in a matter of decades in the eighteenth
century, elections became universally accepted as the sole strategy
for selecting leaders.39 In Rome, order of voting among the tribes was
partly determined by lottery.40 In Renaissance Florence, simple
lotteries and multistage mixed lottery-election systems were used to
choose leaders.41 Republican Venice continued to use lottery into the
late eighteenth century, when its government finally fell.42
Philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—Harrington,
Montesquieu, and Rousseau—all devoted attention to selecting officials
by lottery.43 And yet, in debates after the American and French
Revolutions, lottery is almost completely absent.
Lost in this transformation from lottery to election was an important
argument about economic class. From the Athens of Aristotle to the
eighteenth century, political philosophers believed that elections
were inherently aristocratic, and lotteries inherently democratic.44"
(The CRISIS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS CONSTITUTION)

What if one's free speech is another person's broken record?

New speech should be accorded free speech. How about repetitive speech? Ad infinitum?

What they do if they have nothing to lose?
Wont they fight to the death? What next? River of blood.

So far the so called genocide is still bloodless. Are you sure you are not a CCP secret admirer?

↪ltlee1

Frank, "The US is backing down from military intervention right now. And though Americans are at one another's throats continuously, there's not really any significant threat of social breakdown at this time."

The following from article excerpted from MSN article "A quiet battle is raging in Congress over how the US will respond to China's growing power."

"Prominent among these are measures and rhetoric that appear to create a fundamental change in US policy toward Taiwan.
...
The bill clearly implies that a separate Taiwan is a vital US national security interest, and even critical to the defense of Hawaii. It also calls for joint US military training and exercises with the Taiwan military, an unprecedented step which would directly escalate tensions in the Taiwan strait.

Such fundamental changes in US policy not only risk military conflict, but also make progress with China more difficult in every area of mutual concern, including trade, climate change, and managing future pandemics."

US domestic situation is still very bad. I wish I could be as optimistic as you. Mass extremism. Gun sales up. Still large percentage of Republicans believed Biden had stolen the election. And of course, still unresolved racial issues.

MSN article:

"U.S. gun sales in the first five months of 2021 surged 26% to 19,188,494. This makes it among the largest figures since sales were first recorded in 1998. ...
Growing civil unrest may have prompted people to buy guns for personal and family protection, many social scientists have posited, although this remains a matter of debate."

Please read my first post.
I was searching response to China's "Whole Process Democracy".

Why?
No long ago, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had declared that democracy was not Coca-Cola that promised the same taste everywhere in the world and the United States should respect the path and system independently chosen by China. He said that it was wrong to describe China as “authoritarian” because the country’s democracy “takes a different form than that of the United States.” At the same time, Washington should refrain from using democracy and human rights as a pretext to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs or provoke confrontation that can lead to “turmoil or disaster,”

I found it odd that major media in the US had no response. Given that the US has treated China with great hostility. Shouldn't it watch like a hawk what Chinese government does and speak all the time?
Does silence mean the US does not know how to respond?

Well, this time, China fleshes out its democracy. Hint: Chinese democracy is as good if not better.

Oh, no.
Xi does do something new to the Uighurs. Xi himself was sent to live with peasant to learn about how they lived and how to lift them from poverty. Likewise, Xi sent some officials to leave with the Uighurs according to dissident websites.
This is not unlike US government sending anthropologists to Iraq to understand the local people better.
More intrusive, yes. But then the families were given to incentive to accept them. One of the recommendation is More training is needed. Hence the re-education school. According to what I can get from Chinese media. The total number of students should be hundreds to one thousand. And they had all been graduated. What they should have done is to have graduation ceremony.

It is impossible to put one million in some kind of jail for long. Too expensive. In the US, it costs about $35,000 to keep one prisoner. China would be lower. But no matter how low, that would be too high.
In addition, there were about 6 million Uighurs in Xinjiang. The region would immediately explode if 1 out 6 were suddently locked up.

One can ask the same question about the US.
Americans, left and right, are not happy about the political system. Yet they are still proud of their democracy.

Looking backward, Chinese people see steady improvement of their lives. Looking forward, they see something better ahead.

I am Chinese. I do understand that there are a lot of misunderstanding about China and things Chinese in the US. Your comment did not bother me at all.
Chinese do eat all kind of animals. However, I never heard about bat soup.
Bat sounds like "Blessing." Upside down is the homophone of "arrived".
So, some Chinese pin the picture of an upside down bat to their doors wishing for the arrival of blessing.

I read the following from a monograph on democracy. I cannot recall the name of the author.
Democracy is satisfying most of the people's needs and/or desires most of the time.

Western democracy is for reform retail.
At present, China's per capita GDP is about 1/6 to 1/5 to US. Per capita income is still lower. Implication, China still quite a lot of reform wholesale.

Chinese, like all other people, want good life or happiness which is an intrinsic good.

Political liberty like voting, at most, is an instrumental good.
Anyway, Chinese can join the CCP if they want to be involved politically.

The more I think, the more I get to the conclusion that rather than: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, "Life and pursuit of Justice" may work fine if not better.

Give them education and hope for a better life: now you have a problem. — frank

"Correct. And China's communist rulers know this. Hence the regime needs economic, political, and military expansion abroad to keep the developing internal tensions as well as international pressure under control. "

The US has military budget several times that of China. In addition, it is clear that the US is currently highly polarized. It badly need an external enemy to achieve domestic unity.

Conclusion: What you had attributed to China is actually more applicable the US.

It seems to me that posting a link would trigger moderation.
I won't post the link. Search youtube with
v=_tOtVQ7cNWY

The video clip was made by the US government during WWII entitled
Why we fight: Battle of China 1/5

The clip clearly shows the Tibet was considered part of China.

Marven Minsky's Society of Minds is decades old.
The new idea is "A Thousand Brains" by Jeff Hawkins. The book is based on Mountcastle's work on cerebral columns Are these kind of works relevant to what is on your mind?

Let me say this, the oneness of the self is the result of continuous reconciliation. That is, one compares the sensory inputs of last moment t with sensory inputs of the current moment t+x. The sameness of sensory inputs maintain the oneness of the self.

If one paints a red dot on the forehead of different species of animals, some species would notice the red dot as something new. Some don't.

For human baby, he or she would also to find an explanation to reconcile the different between the current self and the last self. Of course, the simplest way to reconcile is to rub it off. She is the old self again. If the dot persists over time, and if other humans also have the similar red dot. Then she will incorporate the red dot into her self. This is, of course, another kind of reconciliation.

Babies also notice the difference between her point of view and other people's point of view. And they would undergo similar process of reconciliation. When successful, they would incorporate other viewpoints. And from this kind of experience, the theory of mind.

In this sense, I agree with no solipsism. At least, being a successful member of the society requires one to constantly reconcile the difference with other people.
.

How about contend?
One writer had differentiated between pleasure means "I feel good. I want more."
And contend means "I fee good, I don't want more."

Different versions oneself play different roles, But is this a manifestation of more than one mind?

I thought ego, superego, and id are referring to one's consciousness and subconsciousness. All of them are parts of ones self. If they were independent minds, one do not have A mind in the beginning.

Whether we aware brain activities or not, the brain is always active spontaneously. If any such activities trigger neural network in the language center, it would appear as stream of consciousness per William James. If not, one behaves as if he or she is an automaton.

Do you know that one billion of Chinese had travel outside of China during the last decade?
And every years about 300,000 students had been studied in the US. About 100,000 more in the rest of the world. In general, I think Chinese know America and the rest of West well.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not true.

Regarding Tibet, it was recognized as part of China since all countries since the establishment of the ROC.

We all have a self. But A mind?
What is an undivided mind?
Or in what sense a mind is an integrated one?
Is a mind of a supposition because TOM.

1. When is a dictatorship a dictatorship?
Are you implying Chinese are dumb? Hence they live happily under dictatorship.
2. Don't agree.
3. "militaristic and aggressive in its rhetoric and foreign policy and expanionist."
a. Every politicians make a lot noise. And it is their job to make a lot of noise to maximize China's gain.
b. Expanionist? Had China fired any shot?

In the sense of no one should shout "Fire" in a crowded theater with normal movie goers. Harmony is important.

1. The US did not have opposition party at the beginning too. There were factions. Political parties was a later invention.
2. Post war Japan is largely an one party system. It is out of power for only 6 years from a total of 70 years.
3. Election is realistically speaking neither necessary nor sufficient for democracy. Not according to the Greeks. In addition, election did not confer the government the consent of the governed according to polls.

Of course one can pass any judgement as one sees fit. My question is this:
Does he/she judge from a position of knowledge and expertise?
Or does he/she judge from a position of ignorance?

James Bovard, the author of "Attention Deficit Democracy" told the tales of American election is just reverse slave auction during which Americans are offered a choice between masters. I cannot tell whether James Bovard is totally right. However, I can say that he make the statement from a position of knowledge and expertise. After all, he is an America and he knows American people and politics well.