Not the North-Korea we have come to know?

I was mostly directing it towards Imperial, and partially you, but if it was a joke can you ever forgive me?! lol

Forgiven.

Where did I say that?
I was pointing out that, no matter what you think of them, dictators do not have an easy job, especially nowerdays.
The assumption being made was that dictators are stupid, which makes no sense.

Well they could just, you know, stop being dictators and actually let the people elect someone. It's not that hard...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2061830/Chinese-artist-Ai-Weiwei-pays-800-000-tax-bill.html

1. Sounds like he forgot to pay his due taxes.
2. And one example is not proof of such a wide range of allegations.
3. The article is infuriatingly vague. "many supporters?" How many is that?
4. And it sounds like a dispute over tax policies, which occur everwhere. That rich Chinese dislike having to pay taxes is nothing new under the sun.
5. In many countries *cough* the U.S. *cough*, the police can be sent in to arrest you for things that have nothing to do with the government. Take the taxes on April 15th for example: many ex-Federal Reserve employees don't do it because they know that in reality, its not actually federal and the "Federal Reserve" is 'as federal as Federal Express'.

To be clear: it DOES sound like the CCP is making the taxes up, but the article itself is too vague and insufficient to claim the wide-spread corruption that the West continually alleges against the Chinese government.

And for that matter, it sounds more like corruption than oppression. Have you seen the Occupy movement lately? Looks like there are a lot more dissenters in the U.S. against U.S. corruption than in China. So I would hesitate to point fingers.

Disclaimer: I am not stating my position on the Occupy movement, I am simply comparing it to the Weiwei scandle.

@ Warburg
1. There is Democracy in China... within the party.
2. CCP members: 76-80 million. Democractic-supporting party members [drawn from at least 8 parties: >500,000. Isa seeing a problem here.

No they are made up. He never owed taxes and he was arrested and interrogated for speaking out against the government the only reason he was freed was due to international pressure. In another case one China's most wanted criminals was in custody here in Canada but we refused to give him to China till the government promised he would be treated fairly and Canadian inspectors can surprise inspections of the prison. You want to see corruption it's easy to find YouTube and Google are your friend.

1. Reread my post. I already stated that I agree that the charges sound made up
2. Sounds like Canada is just annoying. If it was the U.S., than they would probably give him up in a nanosecond after the U.S. threatened to commence sanctions of some kind. And don't give me the 'the U.S. is better with its prisoners' crap. I and everyone else knows about Guantanimo where quite a few 'America Most Wanted' ended up. The Canadian government is just picking on China and turning a blind eye to elsewhere in the West.
I hope that in the future China returns the favor. Justice is justice, no matter who is giving it out. If the Chinese were after him, the Canadian government should have asked why, not give some **** reason for withholding him based on human rights when they [sound like] had no solid grounds for claiming that the Chinese would mistreat him.
And how am I to evaluate the story further if you don't cite it? Provide the proof of this case.
And again, do you have a plura of cases to present, or just individual, blown up, cases?
And make sure that they are up-to-date and cite the Canadian story.
3. Yeah. Youtube is a great site for information. And so is Google. That is why my teachers told me to go there...
And for that matter, if I chose to use those sites to look up Western cases of oppressive rule, how many do you think that I'd find?
Don't tell me to look the stuff up. Provide it to me. The Burden of Proof is on you, not me. You want to prove that the Chinese government is especially corrupt and oppressive, provide the proof.
4. Keep in mind that no government is free of corruption. China is dealing with theirs, deal with your own. They make 'progress' from time to time and blips occur. The same as any other government.

"The West isn't completely perfect so that makes China's horrific and barbaric policies all justified. We shouldn't do anything to change China's corrupt, draconian system because hundreds of millions of people in China haven't organized to change it. Purely because they don't want change, of course, not because they will be sent to labor camps, disappeared by the government, or otherwise have their lives destroyed if they try." - A day in the life of Imperial

"Life in the West is perfect. Sure, the politics suck and make it so nothing works properly, you are guarenteed rights that are later denied 'in times of war' and 'in the name of the war on drugs, terror, immigration, ponies, you know, all that bad stuff', and the legislatures scarace actually represent their people anymore, but hey, we're a Democracy in name, so its all good. Sure, there are some couple thousand people that are protesting in the streets over the corruption of the system, but they are all crazy without a ligitimate complaint between them. I mean, hey, the West isn't infinging on any country's soverignty or forcing its standards on anybody or anything like that. And if they aren't following the standards of the West, they are automatically oppressed and we need to incite a revolt against their government using the handful of Democratic supporters in their borders that we have even though the vast majority clearly have no interest in Western ideals." - A day in the life of Kalalification
"P.S. we deeply, deeply regret Guantamimo, but it was for the Greater Good. What's that? Are we releasing them? Pff, of course not. I mean, who would take them at this point. Sure, we STILL don't have any evidence on any of them, but we like to keep stuff. We're clingy like that."

Oh and

The 'standards of the West,' also known as guaranteeing of basic human rights, aren't subjectively valuable. There is no such thing as a legitimate government that doesn't guarantee those rights. I have my own criticisms of our policy, but our political model, our democratic ideology, those are righteous. You can't say the same for China, at all.

1. Unless they are accepted by everybody they are and will remain, standards of the West. You can go boo-hoo and claim them to be universal all you want [and be filthy hypocrites simultaneously], but they are standards of the West. That isn't saying that I don't agree with some of them, but they remain what they are: standards of the West.
2. A ligitimate government is and always will be based on the consent of the people. This is not disputed by your side. The Chinese people as a whole have done nothing on a recognizably large enough scale to even suggest that there is enough discontent within the population to de-ligitimize the government. For the most part, the people of China seem content with their existence. Unless you can provide real proof of widespread desire to overthrow the government, the Chinese government is as ligitimate as the governments of the West.
3. I can and will always lay claim to my own opinion. You cannot take that from me without being overly hypocritical and as oppressive as you continually accuse the Chinese government of being. If I chose to defend some of the actions of the Chinese government despite other actions that they have taken, are taking, or plan to take that I disagree with, then that is my choice. Do I agree with everything that they do? No. But I uphold their right to determine their own course and the course of the country so long as the people support them.

They're universal because they stem from being human, not because they're popular. They don't come from society, culture, government, or any other source. By virtue of being a human (or, more accurately, person) you have certain inalienable rights.

I suppose that all governments are legitimate unless there's an active revolution going on in their borders, then? The Nazi party carried out the express will of the people of Germany. Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jung-il, and al-Assad are all shining examples of legitimacy. Your idea is just completely ludicrous.

When have I ever said that you aren't entitled to your own opinion? I'm going to criticize you for it, obviously, but here in the West, at least, the freedom of expression is protected.

No shit.

That there isn't an ongoing rebellion doesn't mean that the people support the government.

I really wanted to respond to you Imperial, but then I found out that Kali already did that (better) for me.

Clearly the thinking is different in China. If they choose to reject Western standards, then there is absolutely nothing that you can do to force those standards on them without becoming the very definition of hypocrite.

So the very founding principals of American Democracy are ludicrous, huh? Under that logic I can draw the conclusion that no government is ligitimate.

That there is no revolution going on means that, in spite of all your claims, the people of China seem content with their lives, even though those lives do not contain your vaulted Western standards.

You need proof of China oppressing people, how about slavery:

You know convict labor isn't exactly a rare concept.

It is slavery and made worse by the fact the Chinese deny it. These are mostly political prisoners not criminals.

No it's convict labor and some of their convicts happen to be political prisoners. It's not like the jails are a majority political activists.

Convict labour is slavery and no they are mostly all political prisoners it's rehabilitation through labour.