At least one person thinks western democracy is better. In 1849, a Chinese official and geographer by the name of Xu Jiyu wrote a world geography book called A Short Account of the Maritime Circuit. He described British Parliamentary system as:

"...a meeting house, divided in two. One room is full of aristocrats and teachers of the Christian religion. The other is full of men of knowledge endorsed by the people. If the kingdom needs to make a decision, the aristocrats will be informed and make a decision, it is then passed to the house of commoners for their approval otherwise the matter will not be discussed further. If a commoner would like to solve the ills of society, he shall take the matter with the house of commoners, then he will be passed to the aristocrats, if he meets their approval then the king will be informed. If a commoner would like to make an accusation, the same process are to take place...this system is used in countries all over Europe, not unique to England..."

His description of George Washington:

"Washington is an impressive person. He fought for independence with his people, more brave than Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, more effective than Cao Cao and Liu Bei. After independence, he has acquired control over a large territory but he still refused to establish a dynasty or pass his title to his children for the sake of morality and justice. He made the precedence of refusing more than two terms."

(The paragraph on Washington is carved in the Washington Monument.)

In 1866, I suspect that in most cases you'd get a complete rejection of the notion that "barbarian" ways could ever be compared to the Chinese system. Knowledge of Western politics was not particularly widespread at that time and assumptions of cultural superiority were still strong.

The Self-Strengthening movement (the first in a series of ill-fated attempts by the Qing dynasty to reform) had begun in 1861, so there was certainly a recognition of a need to learn from the West - but at this stage, borrowing was very much technical in nature, with a focus on acquiring Western military technology. This bias was encapsulated by the Qing aristocrat Zhang Zhidong's principle for reform - "Chinese learning for the essence/base, Western learning for practical matters". （中學為體，洋學為用). The question of the day (to generalise a bit) was how to "strengthen" China to match the West while preserving its superior cultural system.

I'm curious as to why you chose 1866. Had you picked only a slightly later date (after the Sino-Japanese war in 1895, for example), you would get a very different answer, with a much greater appreciation of constitutional government and representative legislatures, and far less confidence in the Chinese system. But at this point in time, you'd probably get a flat assertion of cultural and by extension political superiority.