Recently, I've been doing a lot of study on China and one of the opinions I've come across multiple times is this idea that collectivism is encoded in China's cultural DNA the same way that individuality is encoded in the western cultural DNA. In the west, civilization was born from merchants competing with each other to sell there wares that made them look out for themselves, while the Chinese had to cooperate to accomplish large scale tasks like rice cultivation. The need for collective action seems to form the basis for all of the despotic rule that the Chinese have endured over the past centuries.
But what if rice cultivation was the basis for Chinese democracy? It doesn't seem that far fetched that Chinese farmers might try to vote on local leaders and thereby establish a precedent for elected leaders. What would happen if China established democratic precedents from the beginning of their history? Could an elected leader unite the lands the same way someone like Qi Shi Huang could?