China Gloats After U.S. Midterms: The World Is Tired of Democracy

Annabelle Gordon/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images China’s state-run Global Times wrote in the wake of the U.S. midterms that “the ‘myth’ of Western-style democracy is losing its appeal, even in the West.” The Chinese Communist paper did not explain why it decided to put its own cheap shot of “myth” in scare quotes, as the word was not quoted from any other source, and the point of the editorial was that democracy is mythical because the citizens of the U.S. and other Western nations do not actually believe their votes bring them better government. WATCH — Anti-CCP Activists Hold Up Winnie the Pooh’s Head on a Pole to Protest Chinese President Xi: The Global Times was enthralled with public opinion polls that showed deep cynicism among Western voters: A poll released by the Pew Research Center this year shows that public satisfaction with how democracy works in their own countries is declining dramatically. Dissatisfaction rate stands at 69 percent in France, 68 percent in Spain, 62 percent in Italy, 47 percent in Poland and 69 percent in the US. In fact, sustained tracking by several other prominent Western polling organizations, including Ipsos and Gallup, points to the same trend: Dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy in Western countries is evolving from isolated discontent into a widespread public sentiment. According to a relevant OECD survey released this year, 68 percent of respondents believe that voting in an election has a significant or moderate influence on what government does, but only 31 percent are confident that people like them have a say in what government does. When people seeking to have their concerns addressed find that their votes often fail to translate into policy responses, their confidence in democracy naturally erodes in the face of reality. The Global Times argued that Westerners’ “dissatisfaction with democracy” flows from “the failure of existing democratic institutions to respond effectively to public demands and meet societal needs.” “Meanwhile, institutional corruption has increasingly permeated political processes, further exposing the inherent flaws of Western democratic systems,” it added, which is pretty bold talk coming from a totalitarian dictatorship that just got finished sacking half of its top officials for corruption. WATCH — Chinese Protester: Xi Jinping Is the Biggest Dictator in the World: The point of the editorial was not so much an effort to convince Westerners to give up their franchise and embrace single-party authoritarian rule like China’s, but to bully the West away from criticizing China’s model of government. “For most countries, the truly beneficial insight from the Western reflection on ‘what has gone wrong with democracy’ is that there has never been a one-size-fits-all institutional form, nor is there a democratic model that can operate independently from its local soil and the genuine needs of its people,” the Global Times lectured. “Unfortunately, some Western politicians and media continue to use democracy as a political instrument for export, seeking to arbitrarily draw ideological dividing lines, form blocs and provoke ideological confrontation on the international stage,” the authors complained. The Global Times’ latest jeremiad against democracy calls to mind a witticism made famous by Winston Churchill: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” For all the hard feelings people in the Western world might have about the outcome of any given election, at least we get another chance to vote again, and another after that. One can only wonder what the Chinese population might do with a fraction of the freedom the Global Times found so useless and distasteful.