The Beijing based journalist Josh Chin reports about the speach of Chinese current president Xi Jinping at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium on April 1st 2014. In his article "China Has Already Tried Democracy. Or Has It?" in The Wall Street Journal of April 4th he writes:

Mr. Xi told the assembled crowd that the world's most populous nation had considered virtually every form of government from constitutional monarchy and imperial restoration to parliamentary and multiparty democracy.
"We considered them, tried them. None worked," China's leader said.

The writer further says that this sentence can be seen as true. Just Xi's conclusion if the current Chinese system would adopt democracy from the Western countries it would have "disastrous consequences" is somewhat misleading.

My comment to this worth reading article is - 10:21 am PST April 5th, 2014 JuergenMeyer wrote:

Is it democracy? Yes, it is! – But not only!
After democratic elections in Palestine the result was not accepted as people were too much manipulated before. So democracy goes along with freedom of ... goes along with what?
What belongs to democracy? When it now turns out that G.W. Bush has claimed for democracy while badly kicking human rights, his call for democracy becomes scary. Democracy alone is by far not enough! And that is what Xi Jinping is hiding and what needs to be mentioned. Free press, freedom of journalism, enforcement of law respecting equal rights of everybody, protection of property rights. And what else? What needs to go along with democracy? I don't think this list is complete.
I am still missing a scientific or journalistic built up of what our (Western accepted and successful) society is built of.