"ARE WE entering the age of the autocrat?
It's certainly tempting to think so after watching
Russia's recent clobbering of Georgia. That invasion
clearly marks a new phase in world politics, but it's
a mistake to think that the future belongs to Russian
strongman Vladimir Putin and his fellow despots."

When Amnesty International criticizes China for breaking vital human rights, it sounds great in our western ears. But in a large amount of countries this criticism falls on deaf ears. China stands as a model of how a state should be organized. A strong centralized government that does not allow political opposition or individual freedom in the political field, still manages to keep the wheels spinning. Ten percent economic growth, year after year, is an argument hard to match.

Once upon a time - that is during the aftershocks of the ending of the cold war and the collapse of Soviet -practically everybody thoguht that the western democratic model would become the standard model for governments. The american philosopher Francis Fukuyama gained world celebrity in 1992 by postulating: "what we may be witnessing is (...) the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government".

[...]

China is in many fields today most likely the worlds most capitalistic society. Workers without independent unions to protect themselves, the capitalist have very little to worry about. Competition between children, even at kindergarten-age, are extreme. And even the most competition-oriented western parents would be apalled if they got to see what their children would have to go through to gain success in the Chinese system. The chinese leaders are not just holding their 1.4 billion citizens together with the help of suppression and control, but also patriotism. how much support the system has nobody knows, but its not unlikely that the communist party would have won an free election.

200 years ago Great Britain became the world's leading superpower. throughout the entire medieval age and up to that time china had the biggest amount of power. the biggest amount of citizens, the biggest territory, the most developed economy, the most advanced industry, the most sofisticated government, no other nation could reach China. Although China have been invaded many times and its influences and borders have varied in size, the central government have been very stable, compared to the chaos of royalties and kingdoms in Europe.

The Olympics shows us that this 200 year break has now ended. the Chinese are back, and it should not surprise anyone that they have returned. The Chinese model works, its a neat package og market economy, suppression and nationalism. Russia under Putin adopted a related form of this model and it worked out alot better for them than during Jeltzins west-european democracy-model. A large number of countries looks up to China. The countries of the middle east especially. What makes matters worse is that the Chinese model looks alot like Fascism, and its this beast that we see the contours of under the waving Chinese flag. It takes time to realign and see the world as it really is, but the fact is that its about time to give up the dream that China will become like us, and rather admit that Fascism is the ruling system of the 21st century.

1. Spreading knowledge of democracy and freedom to the grass-root of such countries, making the wish for more freedom an dangerous undercurrent to the aforementioned countries.
2. Keeping up our own economic growth and influences with more and more hard-line and neoconservative thinking, ultimately gazing into the abyss long enough to become a monster ourselves.