After months of insisting that no one died of Covid in Shanghai, China finally admitted this week that three people had succumbed to the deadly virus. This was the first official acceptance by Chinese authorities of COVID-related fatalities across the country since March 2020, although media reports regularly show a rising toll in China. Shanghai has been under strict lockdown for the past few weeks due to the Omicron-led outbreak. Yet it has been an arduous journey for local authorities, with more than 20,000 new cases being reported in a single day. Aggressive restrictions to contain the outbreak in the typical Chinese style have caused widespread anger among city residents with reports of shortages in food supplies and other essential items. Equally shocking is that despite all the uproar by China over vaccine manufacturing, only 38% of residents over the age of 60 in Shanghai have been fully vaccinated.
On the other side of the world, too much pride in Russian military prowess is finding it difficult to achieve even limited success in Ukraine. There the challenge of Moscow is increasing day by day. After failing to bring the Ukrainians to their knees in Kyiv, the focus of Russian military misadventures is now on the eastern provinces. This has been a failure of enormous proportions for Moscow as it not only reckons its operational and strategic costs, but is also a massive strategic failure.
Much of the discussion surrounding the Ukraine crisis has centered around a broad authoritarian versus democratic divide. The idea that a new iron curtain is being drawn across the world along this fault-line is now believed in the West and pushed by sections of the Western intelligentsia. And yet, on the question of isolating and publicly condemning Russia, some of the world’s major democracies, including India, have been rather cautious. Despite being pushed by the West, these nations are resisting this simplified dichotomy, recognizing full well how the West is adept at shaping the global consensus in its favor, regardless of the domestic political ideologies of different nations. In the turmoil and turmoil of global politics, national interests have become the driving force, not domestic political ideology.
The real story of these times is actually one that surprisingly few people are talking about. Just a few years back, we were being told that democracies are inefficient. The Chinese model, it was argued, was one that other nations wanted to emulate. It was more efficient, provided a higher rate of economic growth, and also appeared to be stable. At a time of many disruptions, socio-political stability has been at a premium. The Chinese model seemed highly appealing at a time when Western democracies were failing to provide solutions to the myriad problems they faced. The growing polarization in Western politics, particularly in the US, became a rallying cry against democracies.
Beijing tom-tomed its model as a genuine response to the needs of our times. In response to the Summit on Democracy hosted by US President Joe Biden in December 2021, Beijing issued a white paper titled ‘China: Democracy that Works’, which called for ‘true democracy’—so-called whole-process democracy— is present in China. Chinese Communist Party. Underlining growing concerns about the state of democracy in the US, as reflected in opinion polls, Beijing has reportedly waged an information war on the idea of democracy being a cover for the ignorant population to exercise control over the elite. is teasing. For Chinese campaigners, belief in one’s own model is something that legitimizes China’s rise as a legitimate power in the international hierarchy.
Russia has been a junior partner of China in this exercise, helping China to make a case for autocracy around the world. In response to the Biden Summit for Democracy last year, the ambassadors of China and Russia wrote a joint op-ed that the summit was “democratic”, even as one Russian political commentator compared the US initiative to “brothel teaching”. of “Mistress”. Courage [sic] for schoolgirls” in an official Chinese newspaper. More than rhetoric, it was a perceived display of models of Chinese and Russian governance that were expected to challenge democratic models of political management.
Yet, today as China struggles publicly to manage its COVID crisis and Russia is trying to contain the high cost of its aggression against Ukraine, democracy is actually doing a lot for them. . Despite all its challenges, Western democracies have been able to meet the challenge posed by Russia. Long considered anarchic and unable to shape long-term strategic goals due to competing domestic demands, the democracies of the West have been able to form a relatively united front as a push-back against Russia. And China’s ‘zero COVID’ strategy doesn’t look that great, now that the dismay of Shanghai residents is clearly growing.
In all this, India stands out as a country that not only managed to control COVID relatively effectively but was also able to mobilize the requisite national resolve to produce vaccines for the world.
Democracies, by their very nature, are good at self-flagellation. It is this self-critical approach that attempts to better them. But, sometimes, it is also important for democracies to celebrate their achievements. Otherwise, there is always the danger that autocracies will be able to shape the global narrative in their favor. World’s democracies may or may not unite against a single threat, but this is a moment for them to underline that there is no real alternative to democracy.
Harsh V. Pant is Professor of International Relations at King’s College London