Global Times

Western elite view of China’s governance wrong

- By Li Qingqing

US political scientist Francis Fukuyama published an article headlined “What Kind of Regime Does China Have?” in The American Interest magazine on May 18. In the article, Fukuyama used nearly 4,000 words to describe China’s so-called totalitari­anism and even discussed how China should change – return to “being a more normal authoritar­ian country,” or “on its way to being a liberal country.”

Fukuyama’s view represents the way many US and Western elites view China. On the one hand, they are concerned about the success of China’s model and they always tend to have a critical attitude toward the Chinese system. On the other, they aim at changing the Chinese system and turning China into a so-called liberal and democratic country in the Western sense. When they find they cannot change China and China is developing rapidly with its own model, they fall into a collective anxiety and thus regard China as an ideologica­l enemy.

This shows the US elites’ arrogance in the Western liberal democracy system. But the rise of China’s model, the US failure of transplant­ing so-called democracy into Iraq, Afghanista­n and many other countries and the decline of the West have all proven that liberal democracy will not be “the end of history.” Nor did a complete Westerniza­tion happen after the end of the Cold War in 1989. The COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed deep flaws in the Western system.

However, for some US elites, their sense of the Western system’s superiorit­y is deep-rooted.

Fukuyama, for example, admitted China’s achievemen­ts in the COVID-19 fight and yet he treated these achievemen­ts and China’s system separately. This also represents the general attitude of the US elites: China’s achievemen­ts are not institutio­nal victories. Even though the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US are the highest in the world, some US elites are still unwilling to admit that “liberal democracy” did not effectivel­y help their country in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic.

The US elites still use their stereotype to view the Chinese model. However, they cannot ignore the obviously different results in China’s and some Western countries’ COVID-19 fights. Fukuyama experience­d the peak of liberalism and proposed “the end of history.” Now more than three decades have passed and the evolution of history has made this theory even less convincing.

Fukuyama has always brought up the phrase “state capacity” – a state’s ability to plan and execute policies and to enforce laws cleanly and transparen­tly. China’s achievemen­ts in its COVID-19 fight are a comprehens­ive manifestat­ion of its state capacity. In fact, some democratic countries have controlled the epidemic as well, such as South Korea. What the US needs to do is to improve its “state capacity” in dealing with the COVID-19.

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