Its unfortunately not well known here in America, but China, at least from the 1980s until recent years (Xi et al. are have been trying hard to change this), has been much less of a technocracy than we are these day, in fact its decision making has had deeply populist features, in fact, in some key ways it has been closer to the American Old Republic than contemporary America is. Its had very strong local governments with moderate local trade protectionism and forms of moderate local capital flow inhibitors. Local governments are strong and engaged in a wide range of policy areas that America decades ago made almost the sole purview of our national center. And the local parties' membership is often around 10% of the local population and reflects a fairly broad amount of the local population spectrum, many dont have degrees and many of those that do have what people here would likely dismiss as "trade certificates". And while it can be exaggerated, and it varies place to place in how much its there, the CPC does actually have intraparty democracy.
In fact, China has been the most economically and politically decentralized country in the world.
The USA used to be even more populist. The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, meaningful participation, and a level of public accountability in both economic and political decision-making.
However, due to the dirty deeds of an assortment of powerful special interest groups, our parties have transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This shift has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
It's certainly true that the fractured nature of Chinese authoritarianism has inadvertently resulted in decentralisation. I think it is however a little much to claim China is the most economically and politically decentralised country in the world. My read on the system is that this has been mainly a matter of limited state capacity rather than choice. Xi's revitalisation of the mass line is imo the best clue that this read is correct. We see similar trends in wannabe authoritarian states with limited state capacity which tighten up as the capabilities of the state improve - see: Vietnam. I think this all comes down to the extent to which you believe Xi is either a break from or continuation of the post-Mao leadership. I haven't made up my mind on that topic yet!
Similarly, I think you are over-egging the pudding a little on the question of technocracy and centralisation in America. It's certainly true that powers reserved for Congress have been usurped by the Presidency and that local governments are considerably less willing and able to assert themselves. I also think the parties have calcified in ways the Founders foresaw and would have hated. But it's still true that the United States is considerably less decentralised and considerably more participatory, representative, and accountable across many metrics than many other democracies.
HI and good morning, thanks for the interesting reply! I think you're misreading the structural causes of China’s decentralization and also missing just how centralized the us has become, not just in public governance but in private sector architecture as well.
China chose to design a highly decentralized economic and administrative system after Mao. The architects of reform (Zhao Ziyang, among others) empowered local governments with policy discretion, control over enterprise reform, land, and credit flows would spur development, competition, and adaptation. And it worked.
Local governments in China have since had agency, and even the ability to protect their economic base with moderate trade and capital flow inhibitors. They’ve shaped their own industrial policies, built science parks, steered land use planning, and directly invested in firms. Even the structure of local party organizations shows decentralization: wide membership, relatively non-elite in composition, and involved in daily decision making. In many areas, the CPC membership includes 10%+ of the local population, and not just university grads, but welders, nurses, technicians, artists, etc. That’s not window dressing. That’s a form of participatory populism, however imperfect.
The USA used to have something like this but even far more so. Our old parties were mass-member organizations that actually let the public steer things. The Democratic Party was a democratic institution in form and function. Same with the Republican Party, in the republican sense. That world’s mostly gone. What we now call “decentralization” in the US is often just for show, local governments that have very little personafiscal space, local areas with zero ability to manipulate capital flows, state parties that are mere brands run by centralized consultant networks, and federalism that’s undermined by centralized finance, centralized industry, centralized information ecosystem in ed + media, and forced uniformity in regulatory and legal architectures.
Today, we the two usa parties are in effective terms a party of centralized technocracy and a party of centralized conservatism and they both are built arounds highly professionalized, inaccessible structures that the public doesn’t really control and cant even personally access. Thats deep centralization
The USA is still more participatory than many other democracies? 1) even if true that doesnt really say much since most other democracies in 2025 also have very little participation as well (and that seems linked, capital "G" Globalization and all that), and 2) more importantly, we have reached a point with very little participation ability, on almost all major policy areas , almost all people have effectively zero ability to effect or manipulate policy not matter how much they may want to. But compare that to the effective control local Chinese officials and communities have had over investment, land, enterprise governance, and industrial design for most of the last 40 years (although, Xi et al. are trying to change this), that kind of real input and control far exceeded what Americans have had access to.
Xi and the powerful interest groups around him in the national center are indeed trying to change all this and the era of Chinese decentralization is under siege. But it existed, it was intentional, and in many ways, it came closer to the ideal of democratic-republican governance than what we currently have in the contemporary USA
I agree with a lot of what you mention here; the only further contribution to make is that I think you're vastly underselling the continued ability of British and American citizens to make a difference locally. I don't know enough about local democracy in America - let me comment on Britain, though.
People in Britain have a heck of a lot of ability to change their environment, whether through demanding entitlements from local councils, voting on the basis of council tax rises, or being able to effectively block development (part of the reason we're in the state that we are!). And in Scotland and Wales, there's even more ability to make change with elections to Holyrood or the Senedd.
On the flip, I think you oversell the ability of the average Chinese person to participate, even prior to Xi. In fairness, you did say that this is imperfect, but imperfect is too weak of a word. This is inter-elite competition for power, which is fair enough and beats the heck out of the alternatives, but I think it's going to far to tag that process as populist.
What I'm getting at is that I think your observation about the existence decentralised power is broadly correct, but I think you overclaim on access to that decentralised power. Particularly as access to power is gated by Party membership in the first place!
You might be right about America. No idea. I doubt it but don't want to get too deep into the weeds because I simply don't know enough.
HI. Interesting! Yes, I do agree that they retain some policy space. I'll speak only for America here and I’ll argue that the real constraint is the range and depth of policy areas where the public can still exercise meaningful influence especially in the economic domain, which is both foundational and interconnected nearly every other aspect of life.
An acute example of direct central meddling is back in the early 1980s, during the airline deregulation wave, US cities and states, who had been or sometimes did when needed subsidize their airports so they could have them for life-benefit but also few different economic reasons, tried to subsidize or preserve regional airports and route access to maintain business connectivity, tourism, and local economic ecosystems etc., the newly empowered federal Civil Aeronautics Board essentially stepped in and said "no you can’t". Federal deregs didn’t just remove national rules it stopped local governments from funding it themselves which was unheard for the 200 years of the country's existence up to that point
This story is representative. Local and state governments used to have real tools to shape economic goings ons, including trade policy (state-level trade frictions, industrial policies, other things), and they held a limited but still substantial power to engage in economic planning and even more so in the case of banking policy (through restrictions on interstate banking and requirements for local lending and reserves). That was part of a broader design: the USA system is supposed to be a political AND economic federation and for two hundred years it operated with deliberate governmental, economic, scientific, etc. redundancy
The economy is the entirely of the physical world around us, to strip almost all agency from places regarding it is to disenfranchise those places
Great thread guys. I know a little about the way China works and I’ll just say the benefits of being in the party really kick in at the high levels. For example, Beijing has special party hospitals that are only accessible to higher party members. They are free, little wait times—a stark contrast to healthcare for the masses. This is why it’s a big deal to get kicked out late in life.
In terms of managing local situations. Mike’s made it sound very rosy and perfect in China, unintentionally afaict. Depending on what side of the wrecking crews you end up being, your home can be destroyed for little reason than a local official trying to look good in Party central’s eyes. It can be a nightmare, where you are told by friends and family to keep quiet, and even if you muster the courage to fight it, there’s little outlet. If the relevant department won’t accept the case, you have no case. It’s a bit like screaming into a pillow.
This passage from Over Ruled reminded me of many such stories in China:
“It’s a reflection that poses this question: What happens when we forget what that stimulus feels like; when we lose our appetite for participation in public life; when we become so accustomed to taking directions from a “bevy” of experts that we cannot imagine doing things any other way? For her part, Hannah Arendt answered that question with a warning, one about a world in which “there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. . . . [T]he rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.””
Hi. Thanks, yes, that pushback is valid and I should keep all that in mind. What I was referring to -- because the initial context was about technocratic governance -- is the decision making architecture of the system, their system was or is (depending on Xi et al.'s success rate) one with significantly decentralized decision making architectures that were or are enabled by the allowance of limited but still substantial policy variability and the CPC is actually a semi-mass member party with strong local parties that have so much policy purview and inherent real-power political heft, and those local party's composition, while not at all the the 100% full spectrum of the local populations, are actually quite diversified, many party members really do study and dialogue on policy and their are rights one can claim to force substantive debate.
It should be noted that there is something called the "Party School" and people as they go along can get bachelors, masters, PhDs from them and lol their almost entirely very-light-work correspondence courses on the party's interpretation of history. Many of the people in recent decades who were in charge of policy design in many places within the country's (and most policy design is at the local level) in instances that span the whole range of policy areas, if you actually look at their background didnt have degrees, for example, were technical trades, or entrepreneurs, or people who worked up into management
And this system operates a, on balance, far more decentralized and competitive and therefore decision-making private sector (and much of the governance decision making that effect our lives -- not just big sutff but importantly a great many of tiny things -- is done by business managers) means that space is far less technocratic than ours is
And its super important to note that most all of its state companies, are in actually effective terms in some of the most important ways actually many different companies as the local parties hold immense power over their functions and decision making
Given that party is ~10% of the pop, the party is so more diversified, and their members represent geographic (and sub-local geographic) areas and various sectors, and their decentralization and policy variability (and this is super key!!!) by definition lets a far larger amount of people have input, well, then compared to the contemporary USA they were or are (again, depending on Xi et al's success rate) both far less technocratic the contemporary USA and much more small "p" populist than it as well
Its unfortunately not well known here in America, but China, at least from the 1980s until recent years (Xi et al. are have been trying hard to change this), has been much less of a technocracy than we are these day, in fact its decision making has had deeply populist features, in fact, in some key ways it has been closer to the American Old Republic than contemporary America is. Its had very strong local governments with moderate local trade protectionism and forms of moderate local capital flow inhibitors. Local governments are strong and engaged in a wide range of policy areas that America decades ago made almost the sole purview of our national center. And the local parties' membership is often around 10% of the local population and reflects a fairly broad amount of the local population spectrum, many dont have degrees and many of those that do have what people here would likely dismiss as "trade certificates". And while it can be exaggerated, and it varies place to place in how much its there, the CPC does actually have intraparty democracy.
In fact, China has been the most economically and politically decentralized country in the world.
The USA used to be even more populist. The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, meaningful participation, and a level of public accountability in both economic and political decision-making.
However, due to the dirty deeds of an assortment of powerful special interest groups, our parties have transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This shift has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
Thanks for your interesting comment.
It's certainly true that the fractured nature of Chinese authoritarianism has inadvertently resulted in decentralisation. I think it is however a little much to claim China is the most economically and politically decentralised country in the world. My read on the system is that this has been mainly a matter of limited state capacity rather than choice. Xi's revitalisation of the mass line is imo the best clue that this read is correct. We see similar trends in wannabe authoritarian states with limited state capacity which tighten up as the capabilities of the state improve - see: Vietnam. I think this all comes down to the extent to which you believe Xi is either a break from or continuation of the post-Mao leadership. I haven't made up my mind on that topic yet!
Similarly, I think you are over-egging the pudding a little on the question of technocracy and centralisation in America. It's certainly true that powers reserved for Congress have been usurped by the Presidency and that local governments are considerably less willing and able to assert themselves. I also think the parties have calcified in ways the Founders foresaw and would have hated. But it's still true that the United States is considerably less decentralised and considerably more participatory, representative, and accountable across many metrics than many other democracies.
HI and good morning, thanks for the interesting reply! I think you're misreading the structural causes of China’s decentralization and also missing just how centralized the us has become, not just in public governance but in private sector architecture as well.
China chose to design a highly decentralized economic and administrative system after Mao. The architects of reform (Zhao Ziyang, among others) empowered local governments with policy discretion, control over enterprise reform, land, and credit flows would spur development, competition, and adaptation. And it worked.
Local governments in China have since had agency, and even the ability to protect their economic base with moderate trade and capital flow inhibitors. They’ve shaped their own industrial policies, built science parks, steered land use planning, and directly invested in firms. Even the structure of local party organizations shows decentralization: wide membership, relatively non-elite in composition, and involved in daily decision making. In many areas, the CPC membership includes 10%+ of the local population, and not just university grads, but welders, nurses, technicians, artists, etc. That’s not window dressing. That’s a form of participatory populism, however imperfect.
The USA used to have something like this but even far more so. Our old parties were mass-member organizations that actually let the public steer things. The Democratic Party was a democratic institution in form and function. Same with the Republican Party, in the republican sense. That world’s mostly gone. What we now call “decentralization” in the US is often just for show, local governments that have very little personafiscal space, local areas with zero ability to manipulate capital flows, state parties that are mere brands run by centralized consultant networks, and federalism that’s undermined by centralized finance, centralized industry, centralized information ecosystem in ed + media, and forced uniformity in regulatory and legal architectures.
Today, we the two usa parties are in effective terms a party of centralized technocracy and a party of centralized conservatism and they both are built arounds highly professionalized, inaccessible structures that the public doesn’t really control and cant even personally access. Thats deep centralization
The USA is still more participatory than many other democracies? 1) even if true that doesnt really say much since most other democracies in 2025 also have very little participation as well (and that seems linked, capital "G" Globalization and all that), and 2) more importantly, we have reached a point with very little participation ability, on almost all major policy areas , almost all people have effectively zero ability to effect or manipulate policy not matter how much they may want to. But compare that to the effective control local Chinese officials and communities have had over investment, land, enterprise governance, and industrial design for most of the last 40 years (although, Xi et al. are trying to change this), that kind of real input and control far exceeded what Americans have had access to.
Xi and the powerful interest groups around him in the national center are indeed trying to change all this and the era of Chinese decentralization is under siege. But it existed, it was intentional, and in many ways, it came closer to the ideal of democratic-republican governance than what we currently have in the contemporary USA
I agree with a lot of what you mention here; the only further contribution to make is that I think you're vastly underselling the continued ability of British and American citizens to make a difference locally. I don't know enough about local democracy in America - let me comment on Britain, though.
People in Britain have a heck of a lot of ability to change their environment, whether through demanding entitlements from local councils, voting on the basis of council tax rises, or being able to effectively block development (part of the reason we're in the state that we are!). And in Scotland and Wales, there's even more ability to make change with elections to Holyrood or the Senedd.
On the flip, I think you oversell the ability of the average Chinese person to participate, even prior to Xi. In fairness, you did say that this is imperfect, but imperfect is too weak of a word. This is inter-elite competition for power, which is fair enough and beats the heck out of the alternatives, but I think it's going to far to tag that process as populist.
What I'm getting at is that I think your observation about the existence decentralised power is broadly correct, but I think you overclaim on access to that decentralised power. Particularly as access to power is gated by Party membership in the first place!
You might be right about America. No idea. I doubt it but don't want to get too deep into the weeds because I simply don't know enough.
HI. Interesting! Yes, I do agree that they retain some policy space. I'll speak only for America here and I’ll argue that the real constraint is the range and depth of policy areas where the public can still exercise meaningful influence especially in the economic domain, which is both foundational and interconnected nearly every other aspect of life.
An acute example of direct central meddling is back in the early 1980s, during the airline deregulation wave, US cities and states, who had been or sometimes did when needed subsidize their airports so they could have them for life-benefit but also few different economic reasons, tried to subsidize or preserve regional airports and route access to maintain business connectivity, tourism, and local economic ecosystems etc., the newly empowered federal Civil Aeronautics Board essentially stepped in and said "no you can’t". Federal deregs didn’t just remove national rules it stopped local governments from funding it themselves which was unheard for the 200 years of the country's existence up to that point
This story is representative. Local and state governments used to have real tools to shape economic goings ons, including trade policy (state-level trade frictions, industrial policies, other things), and they held a limited but still substantial power to engage in economic planning and even more so in the case of banking policy (through restrictions on interstate banking and requirements for local lending and reserves). That was part of a broader design: the USA system is supposed to be a political AND economic federation and for two hundred years it operated with deliberate governmental, economic, scientific, etc. redundancy
The economy is the entirely of the physical world around us, to strip almost all agency from places regarding it is to disenfranchise those places
Great thread guys. I know a little about the way China works and I’ll just say the benefits of being in the party really kick in at the high levels. For example, Beijing has special party hospitals that are only accessible to higher party members. They are free, little wait times—a stark contrast to healthcare for the masses. This is why it’s a big deal to get kicked out late in life.
In terms of managing local situations. Mike’s made it sound very rosy and perfect in China, unintentionally afaict. Depending on what side of the wrecking crews you end up being, your home can be destroyed for little reason than a local official trying to look good in Party central’s eyes. It can be a nightmare, where you are told by friends and family to keep quiet, and even if you muster the courage to fight it, there’s little outlet. If the relevant department won’t accept the case, you have no case. It’s a bit like screaming into a pillow.
This passage from Over Ruled reminded me of many such stories in China:
“It’s a reflection that poses this question: What happens when we forget what that stimulus feels like; when we lose our appetite for participation in public life; when we become so accustomed to taking directions from a “bevy” of experts that we cannot imagine doing things any other way? For her part, Hannah Arendt answered that question with a warning, one about a world in which “there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. . . . [T]he rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.””
Hi. Thanks, yes, that pushback is valid and I should keep all that in mind. What I was referring to -- because the initial context was about technocratic governance -- is the decision making architecture of the system, their system was or is (depending on Xi et al.'s success rate) one with significantly decentralized decision making architectures that were or are enabled by the allowance of limited but still substantial policy variability and the CPC is actually a semi-mass member party with strong local parties that have so much policy purview and inherent real-power political heft, and those local party's composition, while not at all the the 100% full spectrum of the local populations, are actually quite diversified, many party members really do study and dialogue on policy and their are rights one can claim to force substantive debate.
It should be noted that there is something called the "Party School" and people as they go along can get bachelors, masters, PhDs from them and lol their almost entirely very-light-work correspondence courses on the party's interpretation of history. Many of the people in recent decades who were in charge of policy design in many places within the country's (and most policy design is at the local level) in instances that span the whole range of policy areas, if you actually look at their background didnt have degrees, for example, were technical trades, or entrepreneurs, or people who worked up into management
And this system operates a, on balance, far more decentralized and competitive and therefore decision-making private sector (and much of the governance decision making that effect our lives -- not just big sutff but importantly a great many of tiny things -- is done by business managers) means that space is far less technocratic than ours is
And its super important to note that most all of its state companies, are in actually effective terms in some of the most important ways actually many different companies as the local parties hold immense power over their functions and decision making
Given that party is ~10% of the pop, the party is so more diversified, and their members represent geographic (and sub-local geographic) areas and various sectors, and their decentralization and policy variability (and this is super key!!!) by definition lets a far larger amount of people have input, well, then compared to the contemporary USA they were or are (again, depending on Xi et al's success rate) both far less technocratic the contemporary USA and much more small "p" populist than it as well
*less centralised obviously, whoops.