ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬

Covid-19 and the events that followed from it are the greatest shock to the global political economy since the Second World War. While Asian, Australasian and some Central and Eastern European countries largely succeeded in preventing both loss of life and most economic damage, much of the rest of the world was devastated. This is triggering an acceleration of the discrediting of political economic systems in much of the ¡°West¡± and creating a powerful opening for a technocratic authoritarian ideology promoted by, among others, the Chinese Communist Party. To survive, advocates of pluralism will need to find models more effective than the increasingly discredited West. Asian and Australasian liberal democracies, especially Taiwan, offer an attractive route based on technologically-enabled democratic consensus-building. Defenders of pluralism should elevate those important stories.

scoco@ceibs.edu