April 13, 2022
For two weeks, China has had its largest, richest, and most Western-style mainland city on lockdown. Coronavirus has been spreading through the city at a rate of 25,000 new cases per day. This outbreak is China’s largest since Covid-19 first appeared in Wuhan 28 months ago. Yet despite having two years of mistakes from the rest of the world to learn from, China is making the same catastrophic blunders that the U.S. and others did, and in the process jeopardizing all the economic and political gains it has accrued over the past two years.
Still, in an era that has been toxic and dispiriting for American patriots, there is a small glimmer of light. The modern American regime is corrupt, incompetent, stupid, and proudly mentally ill. The regime must change, or America will collapse, and it will deserve to collapse. But America’s clear and obvious failures do not mean that foreign rivals are immune to the same human failings. Their leaders are also capable of arrogance, delusion, tunnel vision, and commitment to the sunk cost fallacy. Sure, America can learn a lot from how Chinese elites view America. But China is far from an unstoppable juggernaut of competence or good sense.
For everybody who hopes that America can right itself and remain the world’s preeminent power, China’s baffling misstep on “zero Covid” is a reason for hope. Our rivals are not beating us as badly as we feared, and we have more time to fix the system than we previously thought. Still, the system must be fixed. China won’t be shooting itself in the foot forever.
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