Quick Take | China may crow as US shuts down, but death of the West is greatly exaggerated
Triumphalists in Beijing take note: America will bounce back after Trump. And when your only real allies are Kim Jong-un and Hun Sen, you might want to rethink your ‘soft power’ strategy
The good news about last weekend’s ill-advised US government shutdown, otherwise known as the Great Democratic Climbdown, is that it was so brief – it lasted just two and a half days, mostly over a weekend. You may be forgiven for having missed it entirely.
That’s about where the good news ends.
For those who have been bemoaning Washington’s political dysfunction, and for those gleefully rooting for it as well, the shutdown was just another data point proving that America’s vaunted political institutions simply no longer work effectively.
And who exactly would be rooting for such dysfunction? Just look up North, where the Communist Party officialdom in Beijing, and its erstwhile cheerleaders here, have lately been making the case that all the Western democracies are coming apart at the seams. China, according to this world view, has built a successful alternative governing model that works and can be emulated.
