If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memory when China and India start becoming major players.

How can a democracy successfully emerge when you have the potential to introduce great divergence and even possibly civil war?

But I don't think population totals tell the whole story. One thing I like to quote is when a friend of mine visited China and noted that the "small towns", which still had 2-4 million people but were smaller than the big cities, still felt like small towns. They were less culturally interesting, less alive. The point is the cultural dynamic of "cosmopolitan centre" against "sleepy provincial town" exists despite multiplying the populations by 10; it's more about where the "centre of culture" is I imagine. So maybe democracy can survive scaling as well.

As for geography, China is very flat. It was flat 5000 years ago, and peasants (the occasional ruler with a civil engineering fetish) have been making it flatter for millennia. There's nowhere for an army to hide. Dissenters can hide in the concrete jungle, but you can't make any real strongholds. Also anyone who holds the Yellow River and Yangtze River will have strategic control of most of China, and the two rivers have been linked since (IIRC) the Qin dynasty.

As for the "small towns" being a little, well, dead, that's partly a result of rural poverty (and taxes redistributing wealth to the capitals); but also (as you said) of the bigger cities being of interest to young ambitious people.

As individual entities, perhaps. As a bloc? NATO member countries total population is about 800 million, if I'm not mistaken. The Western world is hardly going to disappear.

And of course the US, unlike China, has immigration as its foundation. They could accept, say, 20 million educated and/or wealthy immigrants from China over the next 20 years, with no shortage of takers ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2660178 ), which would strengthen America and weaken China.

The current major issue with SCO though is it needs either India or Pakistan or both as its members to make it a formidable military alliance. But since India and Pakistan are archrivals there are differences between Russia, which has always backed India, and China, which has always backed Pakistan.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisati...

This is true. In the long term, Russia needs to decide whether it wants to be a satellite of China, or part of NATO / the West.

Bear in mind that SCO isn't actually a military alliance (with mutual defence obligations) yet, although it may become so in the future.

This is the best way to weaken China. In fact, it's the best way to weaken any poor country. Just pay the best people they have to come to your country and become permanent citizens. It's still not too late. Within 20-25 years, there may be no advantage for them, but right now, there is still something for the Chinese to gain by moving here.

Civil war is not more likely in a democracy than a non democracy. Civil wars (I'm perhaps controversially excluding revolutionary wars such as the current Libyan or Syrian wars because they are usually wars between a regime and the The People) are rarely over political disagreement.

Most civil wars are a result of either: (1) two or more competing elites competing for power (eg James vs William; Augustus vs Anthony). (2) Ethnic/confessional divides that supersede everything else politically. For example, Lebanese Maronites are politically Maronites. They will not vote for a Druze Social-Democrat even if this is their political belief because that identification is much weaker than the Maronite one. Lebanese politics is about dividing political pies between sects.

China is probably in greater danger of 1 today than it would be if democratic and it probably wouldn't be under greater danger of 2, Chinese minorities don't want to be Chinese but they are too small even if they do identify politically entirely along ethnic lines.

Most of the time, the government is trying to appease the peasants while encouraging the yuppies. It's a tough balance.

Additionally, in recent years the population of China's cities has grown to be around half or more of the total Chinese population. It's not just farmers vs yuppies anymore, its non-local immigrants vs native locals. I saw this big time in Beijing, where a lot of the general working class were pissed because they had to work and ended up with crap for housing while the "natives" didn't work nearly as much - not because the natives were rich, but because they received state-funded stipends and discounted premium housing which immigrants to the city (from other parts of China) aren't eligible for.

I suppose you could consider my second point "economic", thought it's not really in the way most people would think of that term. It's a general side-effect of communist policies which still exist, though are far less publicized within the country.

The urbanisation figures in china are highly suspect. Given one child policy is primarily policed in the city and intentionally lax in the countryside. This coupled with the fact their census seems (unconfirmed) do NOT count unofficial residence (i.e second/third/etc children). It makes it very hard to get a real picture of China's urbanisation stats.

The distinction you're looking for is "Han Chinese" versus "everyone else." China's outlying rural provinces have significant populations -- often pluralities or majorities -- from ethnic groups which are not Han Chinese, which is the dominant economic group in China and which is the portion of China largely winning from economic growth. For example, there are several large, predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the border provinces, by the *stans and what have you. Plus Tibetans, etc, etc.

It is possible that this ethnic conflict eventually gets resolved like the Yamato vs. Everyone Else conflict in Japan: the nation of Japan became coextensive with Yamato Japanese and everyone basically pretends that Japan is monoethnic. (This would have been Serious News To Us for most of Janaese history.) It is also possible that China goes along a more Russian or Balkan path.

It is also possible, I suppose, that China resolves its ethnic issues by some combination of ethnic cleansing and genocide, which would not be new.

It is true that they're much more prominent in the outlying areas; e.g. 60% of Xinjiang is non-Han. Those areas have relatively few people compared to the more populous parts of China, though; Shanghai alone has more people than all of Xinjiang. China's current strategy seems to be to take advantage of that numerical imbalance to Han-ify the outlying areas, since the smallish (in absolute numbers) non-Han population can be swamped by moving only a few percent of the people from the central cities out there.

Back to the original point: the Han peasant class is far greater than any other demographic. That demographic has been responsible for the dynastic cycles for thousands of years. It's still the case today, and the Chinese government is well aware of that. At the same time, the government has to keep stoking the economic fire, promote innovation, etc.

Any serious civil strife that could effect the political direction of the country is most likely to be of the revolutionary kind. The most likely (though still not that likely) scenario I can think of is post economic downturn combined with political scandal. It would probably be a nebulous combination/coalition of demands/factions. Pick a basket of anti regime, pro peasant, anti corruption, pro democracy, human rights. Maybe Christianity or religion in general plays a role.

I think you need to draw a line though between civil strife and revolutionary agitation. I think the urban/rural divide will most likely manifest in the latter.

OP was saying that democracy doesn't stand a chance in highly populated countries. According to the Democracy Index [1], it's working better in India than in 15 European countries.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_index

Yet China and India's population are so astoundingly out of proportion with the rest of the world, I am surprised it isn't them that we hear more of. I haven't even place India into my 'understanding the world' mental picture yet.

My main point is about moving a highly populated country TO a democracy. I look at the American civil war and how many lives were lost during that, and then wonder about the implications of allowing opposing ideas to rise. My initial reaction to the 'communist' regime in China is that it's wrong. But I then look at how large the population is and how well the government is working, and wonder if it's any worse or better than America's capitalist version of democracy.

What happens when China or India decide that they need to police the world in what is an appropriate way to run a country?