Is China more legitimate than the West?

A really interesting article at bbc.co.uk contrasts the recent selection of top leaders in the United States vs. China, and asks whether in fact China is more together.

Think about this: In China the choice for the top leaders happened in a very civilized kind of way. In comparison, in the United States, the process of choosing the president could hardly be more disgusting. The entire election was like a farce. The candidate Romney is not even like a real leader with a real platform. He’s just a shill for powerful elites who want to control the country and revert most of the progress made along social and other lines.

The group that Romney represented basically would like to be free to exploit and pillage America without regard to the welfare of its citizens, the environment, nor the rest of the world. They would write laws to allow them to do what they want and use the goverment to promote and provide cover for their endeavors.

There was not one serious debate about anything at any point in the “campaign”. Not one. At no point were serious philosophical, political, or policy questions earnestly asked. That is not what the election was really about, because America is not really a democracy. It is a farce and a repugnant one at that.

America is one step away from where Germany was with the National Socialists. Only small shifts would put very sick people in power with the potential to cause vast destruction. Oh wait, that already happened!

This is in stark contrast with China. Despite what gets filtered and pumped at the US public through its highly controlled media, the article goes on to state how the Chinese national goverment enjoys vast popular support.

Perhaps America does have democracy. I think it has vestiges of it. But its electoral system was created in the era of the horse-and-buggy and we are in the age of supersonic jets and interplanetary probes. There is no serious discussion going on at large about how utterly broken government is and how dire the need to drastically reform it is.