Democracies Shouldn’t Gloat About China’s Stumbles
The country still boasts a technocratic elite capable of recovering from even calamitous policy errors. How many of its neighbors can say the same?
Sri Lanka’s woes continue.
Photographer: Abhishek Chinnappa/Getty Images
As China’s death toll mounts and its economy slows, the country seems to be reaping the bitter fruits of Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy. Ill-informed and arbitrary decision-making looks to be, in the eyes of many in the West, the fatal weakness of China’s autocratic political system.
But a self-righteous contrast between democracy and autocracy cannot explain away the challenges of governance that confront many nations today. After all, terrible political decisions have brought the United Kingdom, the world’s oldest democracy, to the point where its hollowed-out state is struggling to offer even basic services to citizens.