Here, my message, to it very simply, you'll find a lot of the data, I'm going to use a lot of data, in case you're wondering where to get the data, the data is taken from chapter seven of my book “Has China Won?” And I’m happy to announce it has also been published in Chinese now. The main case I’m going to make to you is that the country that claims, clearly, that it is a mother ship of democracy, is the United States of America. And, I’ll say, for many decades, the United States was, in many ways, the gold standard for democracy in many areas. But in recent times, clearly, the United States is not functioning as a democracy. It is functioning as a plutocracy.
I can tell you that many Americans themselves feel that something has gone wrong with the democracy. And, by the way, just yesterday, literally 24 hours ago, the Harvard University Kennedy School Institute of Politics came out with a new poll showing that 52%, believe that the country's democracy is either in trouble or a failed democracy, and only 7% said that democracy in the United States is healthy. And, I would say, this poll from the Harvard Kennedy Institute of Politics is a very significant warning sign, because quite often, young people can see things more clearly than old people like me can. You know the old fable, of the child who could see that the emperor was wearing no clothes, that's an old western fable, Aesop’s fable. So, in the same way, you also find that the young people can see through very clearly what has fundamentally gone wrong in the American political system.
The key point I want to make is that while you may think that this may be just a temporary downturn in the performance of American democracy, it actually may be much more serious, and my case is that it has become a structural problem. What I say is, “under the surface guise of a functioning democracy, with all the rituals of voting, America has become a society run by moneyed aristocracy that uses its money to make major political and social decisions”. This is a difference between a democracy and a plutocracy. A democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. A plutocracy is a government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.