China's economic growth relies on citizens' hard work. People work days and nights, weekdays and weekends to overcome the obstacles created by the political system. It's a very difficult success. Just imagine, if the cost of the system could be greatly reduced and if the daily hard work to cover the system cost could be shortened by several hours a day, how much more income could the hard working Chinese create, and how much it could improve people's life quality? We could analyze this from following aspects:

Firstly, the "physical" part of the system costs high. It is known that the U.S. government spends 73% of annual expenditure on social security, health, education and other public service. Administrative costs account only for 10%. While the Chinese government spends only 25.5% of government expenditure on social security, health, cultural, education and scientific research, and administrative costs accounted for 38%. This shows that Chinese have to afford a huge bureaucratic body. The huge government agencies, plus their luxury office buildings and many "image building projects" wastes Chinese people a lot of money, which should have been used towards social welfare for Chinese people. This leads to a very weak social security system in China.

Secondly, the government's administrative control over all areas forces people to ask for approval for virtually everything. Enterprises and individuals, even university professors have to "spend money with government officials to make things happen". People have to spend time and money with the governmental or non-governmental officials in power, buying them luxuries or expensive dinners to get an approval for virtually anything they need to do. Therefore, the development of enterprises is seriously delayed.

Thirdly, because contracts are not honored, private properties are not well protected, and law enforcement agencies lack credibility, many start-ups and transactions either can not be done, or have to be done at very high costs. This limits the development of private enterprises.

To cover these "systematic costs" and overcome obstacles created by political system, Chinese people have to work more. Several hours of each day's hard work goes to the system's cost, and then for their own income. That's why Chinese people's annual total work time is the highest in the world, with an average of about 2,200 hours. In Argentina, people averagely work 1,903 hours per capita year, Brazilians work 1,841 hours, Japanese 1,758 hours, Americans 1,610 hours, British 1,489 hours, and the Dutch work for the least which is 1389 hours a year. Among these Countries, Chinese people's annual income is the lowest. In such circumstances, as long as Chinese people are willing to work harder than any other countries', even without no democracy, Chinese economy can still increase because of economic globalization. However, if we want higher quality of life and more time with our families, we must reduce the cost of political system, and reduce the barriers created by the system. Therefore, diligence decided whether we can feed ourselves, while democracy decides our quality of life. It decides whether we have the freedom to choose a smarter way to use our diligence to increase income. Democracy creates more opportunities to increase revenue. Today China has come to the point where democracy has to be established. Although this fiscal year, the government spending has reached 4,000 trillion, public services and public welfare are still at lower percentage. Administrative expenses and the spending on "image projects" soars, while money spent on public welfare is only a small part. Why so? The final reason the lack of accountability mechanism over governmental administrative power and budget. Without public hearing on budget, the government will not spend most of its money to improve public welfare. The National People's Congress did not play their role effectively in control of the government's executive power. Corruption runs rampant, social injustice, inequality among social groups and regional/urban differences increases. The reasons of these problems are, firstly, government's power is not under the control of a democratic system. Secondly, the state ownership of public property allowed the government to control too much wealth, and their administrative power is almost unlimited over these properties. The two combined to create the best environment for corruption and inequality. Since the Government has no restraint over its power, and we also give the government power to allocate wealth instead of the market through state ownership, it means putting all citizens' money and future in the powerful one's hands, without even a hearing on it. So whom do you think these centralized resources and opportunities will go to? Certainly to the areas or individuals who have power or a good relationship with the powerful. The areas with more power get more governmental investments, and the officials' relatives get the best opportunities. Chinese people's savings are controlled by state-owned banks, which result in the powerful or their relatives to obtain the financial resources to become rich. Lands are controlled by government officials in the name of "state-ownership". The results are, those related to the officials gets the opportunity to develop the land and become super rich. On the other hand, an individual's relation with the power also decided his/her opportunity to find a higher income job. Since the government officials have virtually all the power of granting projects, those who want to make a fortune have to collude with officials. If, say, the Chinese have a tradition of government-orientation, then these years the state ownership and government control rose "government-orientation" to unprecedented high level. When the government controls all the resources and meanwhile, its executive power has no constraints, the redistribution of resources through Government instead of free market would be neither efficient (because they are not allocated according to market values and rules), nor fair (because there are no representative of the people democratically elected to watch over the government's behavior). It only works according to the power's rule. Such economy is "power economy", not free market, not utopian-like welfare economy. All of these have seriously harmed the public interest of citizens, and affected the people's lives.

So, democracy is no abstract value. It is a practical choice that involves the essential benefits of the mass public. It decides whether we have an equal opportunity to make a good income, and Chinese people's quality of life, it's not an abstract idea at all.