Daniel A. Bell has a piece today in the CSM, arguing that the PRC political system is, basically, a meritocracy that holds lessons that might correct the flaws of US democracy. Bell is a philosopher and he tends to operate in normative terms (i.e. what a meritocracy ought to be; what a democracy ought to be; how the ideal of meritocracy might improve democracy). I do not want to engage with the normative questions because there is a rather glaring empirical problem: the current Chinese political system is not a meritocracy by the definition Bell puts forth. And I think we could push a bit further to say that, in fact, the imperial Chinese system was not a meritocracy either, if we consider a somewhat broader definition of that term.