China: Assessing the Goodness of a Political System with Chinese Characteristics

Applying the Hartman-Easton Synthesis this paper illustrates how the goodness of China’s political system can be assessed. Using David Easton’s theory of the political system as if it were an automotive engineer’s blueprint for the expected operation of a motor, the operational goodness of any political system can be assessed as an empirical, rather than moral, matter. Robert S. Hartman, the founder of the science of values (“value science”), has shown that goodness can be assessed in three dimensions. As those pertain to political science, they are, the systemic, or constitutional; the extrinsic, or operational; and the intrinsic, or public sentience. The conclusion addresses the challenge of rendering an over-all, or general, assessment of a political system’s goodness.