AHC: Make China the oldest/longest democracy

RousseauX

Donor
With a POD essentially at any point during the spring-autumn/warring states era, make China the oldest, largest (even if not as one country) and longest lasting democracy in the world.
 
I would assume "a state in which political power derives mainly from the outcomes of votes of a segment of the population not greatly limited by class". It's subjective, but what reasonable definition would't be?
 
If the POD is during the Spring and Autumn period, then it's close to ASB for China to have decentralized power *and* be a single nation-state. China could eventually unite at a much later time, but not at such an early POD.

Ironically, Confucianism could have served as a groundwork for democracy, since it preaches a noble government and a duty to listen to public concerns. It was later established by Confucian scholars that people have a right to overthrow unjust governments. This might eventually develop into a Confucian/Taoist axis around which debate is made.
 

RousseauX

Donor
If the POD is during the Spring and Autumn period, then it's close to ASB for China to have decentralized power *and* be a single nation-state. China could eventually unite at a much later time, but not at such an early POD.
It doesn't have to be a single nation-state, "China" could be in the geographical sense like how "Germany" was before the 1871.
 
I agree with EternalCynic, Confucianism seems the most likely tradition out of which democracy (however defined) could be evolved.

Mohism -- radically more egalitarian in many respects, but also much more silent on political decision-making. Taoism -- really dubious to me. To the extent it deals with the political sphere, it seems to be more about 'how to make the populace silent and compliant by nature' (IMO... but seriously, try reading the Daodejing as a 'statecraft manual' and not get creeped out.)
 
Taoism -- really dubious to me. To the extent it deals with the political sphere, it seems to be more about 'how to make the populace silent and compliant by nature' (IMO... but seriously, try reading the Daodejing as a 'statecraft manual' and not get creeped out.)

That's somewhat mistranslated. In Classical Chinese, there was no punctuation, and readers assumed from context whether breaks occurred. Depending on whether a comma was intended, that quote from the Daodejing can either mean it's best to dumb down the population, or it's best for the population to be intelligent. Either way it does seem to dovetail with the "order by disorder" theme of Taoism.
 
@EternalCynic, I wasn't trying to quote the text itself, that was my paraphrase. And yeah, the text is open to interpretation to say the least... I've worked through the received text in Chinese and one of the commentaries, as well as a couple modern annotated versions... honestly I don't get the appeal of it, compared to say Zhuangzi. But that's neither here nor there for purposes of this thread :)

If it's not too much of a cop-out, how about an entirely OTL philosophical tradition? There were certainly a lot of them running around at one point, and we really don't know much about most of them.
 
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