with China is, the powered tai zi dang is a group that most people in China have no power at all to replace them.
in US, people can choose who is the leader, even they are not ideal, but they have the power to replace them, 08 is not from a family that have a background, Clinton neither.
The differenc is:
In China, the powerful group choose one of them to be the boss of Chinese people, the system give them the extreme power that they can do whatever they want, people can't do anything except rant on the internet.
In US, people choose who can be their leader, they can remove them if the leader do somethong they don't like, everyone's vote counts, so the leaders have to be good, or pretend to be good.