Sri Lanka, March 24 -- In a couple of weeks, nearly a billion Indian citizens will begin casting their vote in General Elections to their National Legislature in what is claimed by liberal democrats as the "world's biggest" exercise in democracy. But such a claim would be forgetting China, where a good billion citizens also regularly vote to elect their National Legislature.

The difference is that India practises a competitive multi-party system while China practises a single party system. Readers are advised to carefully appreciate the differences between these two systems, one being Liberal Democracy (India) and, the other being Social Democracy (China).

In China's national elections, voters still do have a choice between individual c...