Should this discourage Chinese from further experiments with democracy?

I certainly hope not, but I also think democracy will only flourish if China's citizens deal with the (largely cultural) issues raised by this film, frankly and squarely.

China has long been afraid of luan, or chaos, and as this film shows, it also has trouble figuring out how to curb it within the framework of a democratic society.

China sorely needs protracted public dialogues about power - what it's for and how it should be exercised in the home before much progress can be made.

Among the striking features of this film:

*The teacher encouraged "factions" to form. Rather than treating the class elections as an exercise in rhetorical skills alone, the teacher instructed each candidates to appoint assistants who would assist in the formation of networks or factions.

*The teacher did not immediately stop the faction-based efforts to humiliate the various candidates. She waited so long to intervene that her later efforts to console the humiliated students smacked of insincerity and hypocrisy. What's more, some days later, she had the candidates stand up in front of the class and engage in mutual recrimination. Thus the teacher, through her example, presented a schema of politics that was highly personal and characterized by a struggle for personal gain.

I believe democratization in China is all but inevitable, not out of any Fukuyama-esque faith in the inexorable winds of history, but because Chinese governments at all levels, national, provincial and local suffer serious crises of legitimacy (due to rampant corruption and favoritism in some cases, and due to dissatisfaction with economic progress in others.) As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Only through democratic transparency and accountability can the Chinese leadership provide adequate governance and political stability. Many Chinese leaders recognize the importance of developing laws and institutions; what gets less attention is the way in which authoritarian socialization of children, at home and at school, interferes with those efforts.