At the end of a previous post I mentioned how China in the late 1970's sought and received advice and expertise from the West on how to run a market economy. In this post I suggest that maybe we can learn something from China about governance.

One of the foundations of our society is that the legitimacy of a government is determined by the ballot box -- by 'freely' held elections -- even when the 'wrong' people win such as the Hamas in Palestine or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. How often have we experienced the 'elect and regret' results from our own local and national elections? I am not suggesting we adopt the China Party system since we have a different cultural background from the Chinese mandarin society but alternatives exist and the plurality of a hybrid model should be considered. The basis of legitimacy should be competency. The Chinese seem to have found a better way of achieving this than our 'pork-barrel' style of politics.

In a provocative, boundary-pushing TED talk, Eric X. Li, a Chinese investor and political scientist asks his audience to consider that there's more than one way to run a successful modern nation.