TOPSHOT – China’s President Xi Jinping waves during the introduction of members of the Chinese … [+] Communist Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee, the nation’s top decision-making body, to the media in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 23, 2022. (Photo by WANG Zhao / AFP) (Photo by WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)
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I am in the middle of writing a book on French democracy, and not for the first time I wonder if I have the wrong country. Often in recent months I have felt I should have been scribbling about America or the UK, but now unrest is bravely picking up in Iran, and then, surprisingly we have the most political, widespread and angry outbreak of protests across China. It might well be too bold a view to say that the democratic recession is coming to an end or has troughed, but a ‘Spring’ in autocratic countries would be a welcome development, provided it ends well (please note…
