Chinese search engine

[John F]

Just now I looked at the bottom of the page and besides myself and 17 guests, I saw Baidu (Spider). Say what? Wikipedia to the rescue. Baidu is a Chinese web services company headquartered in Beijing. As of 2017, Baidu Search released Spider 3.0 which is capable of indexing over trillions of web pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu

So whatever we write here may be found and read in China! If it isn't censored by the bureaucrats there.

[jbuck919]

And I'll bet the word "democracy" doesn't occur on a single page, or at least is not searchable as a term.

[jserraglio]

And I'll bet the word "democracy" doesn't occur on a single page, or at least is not searchable as a term.

71,000,000 hits searching Baidu on the term "democracy", this one at the top of the hierarchy.

民主 [min zhu] democracy
The word democracy comes from the Greek word "demos," meaning the people. It is defined as a system of states that jointly manage state affairs within a certain class and in accordance with the principle of equality and minority compliance . Under the democratic system, the people have the supreme sovereignty over the legislators and the government, and despite the subtle differences among the democracies in the world, the democracies have certain principles and methods of operation different from those of other government forms. Democracy is the government exercised by all citizens - either directly or through their freely chosen representatives - the exercise of power and citizenship. Democracy is a series of principles and modes of behavior for the protection of human freedom; it is a free and institutionalized manifestation. Democracy is based on the principle of majority decision while respecting the rights of individuals and minorities. All democracies, while respecting the wishes of the majority, strongly protect the fundamental rights of individuals and minorities. Democracies pay no attention to the supremacy of the Central Government and the dispersal of government power to regions and places, and understand that local governments must maximize their openness to the people and respond to their demands.

Democratic governments know that their primary function is to protect fundamental human rights such as freedom of expression and religion , to protect the equality of all persons before the law and to protect people's organizations and their full participation in the socio-political, economic and cultural life. Democracies hold regular, free and fair elections involving the participation of all citizens. The election of democracies will not be the facade decoration for dictators or single parties , but a real struggle for popular support. Democracy has enabled the government to follow the rule of law and ensure that all citizens receive equal legal protection and that their rights are protected by the judicial system. The diversity of democracies reflects the particular political, social and cultural life of each country. Determine the democratic system is its basic principle, rather than a particular form. In democracies, citizens enjoy not only their rights, but also their responsibility to participate in the political system through which their rights and freedoms are protected. Democracies pursue the values ​​of tolerance, cooperation and compromise. Democracies recognize that a consensus needs to be compromised and often a consensus can not be reached. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: "Intolerance is in itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the development of a truly democratic spirit."

[jbuck919]

j, I'm delighted to hear it, but you do know that I was not making this up. It was not very long ago that it was literally publicized that Chinese firewalls routinely screened out the word "democracy."