Yes, also true that the CPC is more effective in their decision-making. However, I'd like to claim that a free democracy never existed in the west -- at least not in a way that deserves to be described as such. This varies from country to country, but to put it in general terms, there is democracy in the west insofar that the populace doesn't stray too far away from capitalist doctrine.

The past two-three decades have shown that. No single people would like the housing prices to be as high as they are, or to live in societies where essential services are slowly picked apart by capital. When we vote, we can get the change we want as long as it's acceptable within the bounds of what the country's oligarchy want. And we are steadily under the assault of desinformation campaigns that demonise anything thats left of center -- something you can see in effect with every piece of propaganda hurled at China.

Every single mainstream party within every single western country has turned rightward, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a politician that runs on -- or delivers -- on leftist principles. That is the effect of capital in action. Capitalism cannot exist within democracy -- it will devour the will of people, soon or late.

And this is not to mention the extent to which supposedly free countries have oppressed their peoples for speaking up for the plight of the Palestinians.

What you see in the US is the inevitable result of letting capital exist within democracy.

So no -- "free democracies" don't exist in the west. The CPC, for all its faults, seems to do good by its people. They have high approval within the Chinese populace. And as long as it's American/Western actors accusing the CPC of whichever offense that they themselves were guilty of, and for fear of the emerging superpower that disproves their profit-driven economic models, then I won't believe it. And neither should you.

You and so many are so deluded by propaganda about China. I used to believe it until I saw how these same sources lied so they effortlessly about Gaza and Palestine. Then I went to China to see it for myself -- and it rocks. Housing is cheap, jobs are good and it's hard to believe this was sold to me as a dystopian dictatorship.