Mike Dilger on Nostr: I can take any system, and I can define the "set of all things" on that system. For ...

I can take any system, and I can define the "set of all things" on that system. For example, I could consider my desk a system and define the set of all things on my desk. By making such a definition, do I change the system? No. The definition about the system doesn't affect the system.

Then I could name this set. I could take the country of China as a system and the set of all people in China and I could call that set the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Now, by defining such a thing into existance, does that have any real world effect on the ground? No. It's just an abstraction.

Of course the real CCP is not the set of all people in China.

My point is that the longer single-party rules goes on in China, the larger that party grows, the closer it resembles a zero-party system. Rather than political debate happening between parties with firm stances, political debate happens between different political camps that all reside inside of the party, and eventually the party itself is meaningless when it includes everybody.

I don't know if that will happen, but I have it on good authority that China is somewhere in between. Which makes it trickier to think about. There are 8 parties outside the CCP whose leaders are chosen by the CCP and whose roles are limited to making proposals to the CCP. This is scarcely different from being inside the CCP.

I think this is China's path out.