Democracy in China

. . . This is a view [the view that democracy can become a problem because it can lead to violence] the government has propagated for a long time. It’s like saying you can’t practice swimming until you can swim and you can’t swim because you can’t practice. . . 

. . . I think that what we’re seeing is the loss of hope by a lot of people in change taking place, so they’re making excuses about why it can’t happen. The decline in morals has lead to an increase in violence—violence against opponents, protesters, and others—not because we’re having a revolution but because we are not.

That is from an interview of Chang Ping, "one of China’s best-known commentators on contemporary affairs." It was published in the "New York Review of Books."