PRESS RELEASE
IMMEDIATE 25.08.2025
CROSSING THE OTHER DIVIDE
A CALL FOR THE MEDIA AND ACADEMIA TO AT LEAST QUESTION MAJORITY VOTING,
the ancient and most divisive decision-making voting procedure ever invented; yet it is ubiquitous… and often iniquitous.
Dr. Peter Emerson gives university lectures in Tiānjīn and Táiběi.
In the West, we say, democracy is freedom. In Beijing, they say, western democracy produces Trump. We practice majority rule. But so too, in its local councils, does China, where they say, “the minority obeys the majority,” 少数 服从 多数，shǎoshù fúcóng duōshù.
The world, it seems, is plagued by majoritarianism, the Russian word for which is (or at least was) bolshevism, большевизм.
On the mainland, the People’s Republic of China has the Communist Party of China; across the water, Taiwan, the Republic of China, has two main parties: the Kuomintang KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party DPP, majority rule… and currently, no majority.
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In his farewell address of 1796, George Washington warned that [majority voting and] a two-party system [with FPTP] might produce “a frightful despotism.” Sure enough, the USA now has Trump, a 'frightful despot.'
It would be at least sad if Taiwan’s two-party system – the ‘blue’ KMT versus the ‘green’ DPP – were to produce a Taiwanese Trump. Safer by far would be a more inclusive polity: preferential decision-making in the Yuàn, Taiwan’s Parliament – (it uses majority voting) – along with preferential and proportional elections – (currently a parallel system, 70% FPTP with 30% PR-list).
Máo Zédōng was a majoritarian, as in his anti-Rightist campaign of 1957-9. So is Trump, (and despots don’t like consensus). So too are others:
- like Netanyahu, whose majority coalition is a cause of war;
- like Putin, whose majority vote referendums set fire to Ukraine.
And majority rule, of course, led to The Troubles.
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WILL THE MEDIA AND ACADEMIA AT LEAST QUESTION MAJORITARIANISM?
URGENTLY: BEFORE COP30?