What does China want?
Many say global primacy the goal – but rumors of the West’s demise may be wildly premature
Many scratch their heads wondering what was China thinking in flying an easy-to-spot low-tech balloon over US nuclear installations. Did they want to get caught? Was one branch of a fragmented autocracy trying to embarrass the other? As Western leaders gather for the annual Munich Security Conference they should be asking a shorter question that may be harder to address: What is China thinking?
It is widely assumed that China seeks global primacy sometime soon, perhaps by the middle of the 21st century (by the Gregorian calendar, to be clear). What makes that interesting – what makes it less vulgar than just nations grasping for advantage – is the ideological clash. Ours is an era of growing competition between liberal democracy and authoritarianism (whether it pretends to be democratic, as Turkey and even Russia and Iran very feebly do, or not).
Liberal democracy went through a spasm of great arrogance after the West’s victory over the Soviet bloc. Three decades later it’s clear what we got wrong: it was a victory over communism (an economic system that is antithetical to human nature), but not over authoritarianism (a political system that, alas, is not).
Today liberal democracy is not only under renewed external attack but even attacking itself from within. In the US, the Trump Administration represented an assault on the system which by now appears to have infected the Republican Party base; in Europe, Poland and Hungary have installed authoritarian regimes democratically, each for its own sad reasons; Israel may follow in their footsteps at great peril to itself.
All over the world, the political divide has shifted from one based on socioeconomic class to one based on education – which correlates but is different. By attaching even somewhat to intelligence, the thing that humans see as rendering them unique among the creatures of the earth, it becomes radioactive. A pincer movement presents: many among the working class never really signed onto the finer points of liberal democracy, like minority rights; many so-called elites are concluding that democracy doesn’t work, because mobility is low and the less-educated have more kids.
With that as a background, smugness about democracy’s superiority is misplaced. It is best left to glad-handing politicians and other liars. The truth is that developing world is watching – I experienced this recently during years spent in Egypt – and many there see democracy as under evident duress.
The fact that even some democratic countries are leaning toward elements of autocracy gives the Chinese Communist Party something of a leg to stand on when it argues that its system is better — that in some way, despite cruelty and despotism, it is not random but strangely and effectively meritocratic.
The proposition is that the party, at 96 million members accounting for a tenth of the adults, is big enough to represent the people. And that advancement through its ranks is not just a function of mindless servility (though this is certainly a factor) but also of genuine merit of a sort that will yield a competent ruling class.
Do Western democracies yield a competent ruling class? I’m not sure we can handle the truth on that one.
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