By Chris Matthews
Polls show China’s international reputation deteriorating
The twenty-first century had been one of triumph for the Chinese Communist Party.
As governments in the U.S. and Europe mishandled one calamity after another — from the 2008 financial crisis to botched efforts to contain COVID-19 — even champions of liberal democracy looked on with envy as China’s policy makers navigated the same troubled waters with apparent ease.
But the cracks of China’s governing model are beginning to show as its real estate sector deals with the ramifications of a bust in the property market and as its zero-Covid policy falters in the face of fast-spreading new variants.
“There has been a certain sort of envy in the West of what appeared to be the extraordinary competence of China’ policymakers, but at the moment the emperor has no clothes,” said Jeremy Mark, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an…