In a democracy, people decide the leader

Judging by the unanimous vote that he won in his bid to bypass the two-term limit for CCP General Secretaries by Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping is as popular in China as Kim Jong Un is in North Korea. By definition, a vote against Xi would have been a vote of no confidence in the Chinese people, given that in Xi Jinping Thought, the CCP General Secretary represents the entire Chinese people. What he believes in is what the Chinese people believe in, or ought to. What he wants is never for his own benefit, but is intended solely for the benefit of the Chinese nation. Alfred P. Sloan claimed that what was good for the company he headed, General Motors, was good for the United States. Following that altruistic example, Xi Jinping Thought goes that what is good for the CCP General Secretary is by definition also good for the PRC. The young in China are being schooled in such thought from an early age, in much the same way as worship of the Kim family is drilled daily into young minds in North Korea. That any deviation from such a mindset would likely result in a visit by the security establishment followed by what could be a longish stay in a government facility has been very persuasive. Somehow, people in China do not fancy the free room, board, experience and exercise that they would get at such government facilities, especially now that the regimen has been further tightened during the Xi era.
So much for the People’s Democracy. What about the other superpower, the United States? Despite the hard work and tension involved in being the occupant of the Oval Office in the White House, Joe Biden has announced that he will offer US voters the chance of four more years of his administration. Some of his policies, notably the taxpayer-funded flow of lethal assistance to Ukraine, have resulted in blowback such as inflation and a sharpening loss of confidence in the US dollar as a safe reserve currency. However, the good news for Biden is that fiascos such as the abrupt pullout from Afghanistan have pushed only the Afghan people under the bus, and how many votes in a US election do Afghans have? None, so it hardly matters that as a consequence of the Trump-Biden pullout, girls there are being deprived of any kind of education or any work other than household chores and boosting the population of Afghanistan. Whatever President Biden does from now onwards will from now onwards be examined from the lens of political self-interest. The expectation in the Biden camp is that Donald Trump will succeed in becoming the Republican candidate for the US Presidency this time around as well, and that there will be a Biden-Trump showdown that would once more end in the former’s victory. A shadow over such sunny optimism is that several Democratically inclined voters may simply stay at home rather than vote for Biden. US elections represent quite a change from China and its fixed electoral matches. Will it be a Trump-Haley ticket or a De Santis-Don Junior ticket on the Republican side? The next few months will show. Meanwhile, there are other democracies gearing up to vote next year, including Taiwan and India, the two countries that are on the front line of kinetic actions by the PLA. In Taiwan, the ruling DPP has firmed up its Presidential candidate, the telegenic Vice-President of Taiwan, William Lai, who has to convince voters that his oft-expressed views on independence will not create a reason for Xi to unleash the PLA in a frontal attack on the island country. Lai is being helped by the hesitation of the KMT bosses to choose their own nominee. Should it be KMT Chairman Eric Chu, who ran last time as well? Should it be Mayor Hou of New Taipei City, a native Taiwanese from the south who is very popular with the KMT base but is as a consequence disliked by the party elites ? Or should it be Terry Guo, the billionaire who owns Foxconn, a company that did very well in both the US and China but is facing headwinds now that Washington and Beijing are going separate ways geopolitically? Every month that the KMT fails to settle on a candidate is an additional month for the DPP nominee to campaign, so William Lai must be hoping that the KMT nominee will be chosen very late in the year, and after a slanging match between the principal candidates.
That leaves out India, the country that is on track to be the third superpower. While elections are always less than 100% predictable in any democracy, in the 2024 contest for the Lok Sabha the BJP has the advantage of overwhelming public support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, K.C. Reddy and Arvind Kejriwal have been moving around the country seeking to convince voters of their credentials for running the government, the prospect of another unstable coalition government dominated by multiple parties and interests is not attractive to the voter. As in 2014 and 2019, the verdict is expected to go in favour of PM Modi and his party. Unlike in China or North Korea, in India, the US and other democracies, it is the people who decide what government under what leader, they favour.
MDN