In this blog, and with my students (I have only one more term to engage with them!) I have often discussed my concerns about the China model for development and its superficial attractiveness not only to developing countries but even to "thinkers" right here in the US. In 2013, for instance, I wrote in this post against the backdrop of a federal government shutdown:
It is tempting, in such situations, to look across at Russia and China and note that their governments are more “efficient.” A few months ago, well before this partial shut down, even the New York Times columnists, Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, had written about how the Chinese get things done while we squabble here. When Valdimir Putin effortlessly pushes ahead with his agenda, there are appreciative comments as well.
The Chinese model looks "efficient." The American model of democracy, on the other hand, has always seemed messy, and the past five years of tRumpian politics has only worsened the standing of American politics and governance.
No wonder then that I was attracted to this essay in The Atlantic, in which the author argues that when Joe Biden worries about China it is not merely about the economic competition. Nope. His worry is something much bigger. "In Biden’s view, the United States and other democracies are in a competition with China and other autocracies."
The old rules-based international order has come apart, and two broad constellations of countries are emerging in its place—one consisting of democracies, the other autocracies. Each side is motivated more by insecurity than by an ambition to transform the world in its image. Xi and his fellow autocrats worry that the free flow of information, the attractiveness of democracy, and economic interdependence would destabilize their regimes. Biden and America’s allies are concerned that Xi’s attempt to make the world safe for the Chinese Communist Party will undermine freedom and democracy, pushing international rules in an illiberal direction and empowering autocrats worldwide.
Sure, there are other interpretations of China in the global stage. Biden gets my vote on this with his concern that the China model is a serious threat to liberal democracy.
And, yet again consistent with my world view, another essay argues that the fate of democracy in the world depends on the fate of democracy in one country--India, where liberal democracy has been rapidly losing ground to authoritarianism that is favored by mOdi and his toadies.
And the rest of the world doesn't even need a microscope to examine what the tRumpian Republicans have been doing in the states that are governed by them: Democracy is already dying in those states!
As Biden says, we are at an inflection point. What we do and say have immense implications for the global future of liberal democracy.
