5 days Ago By The Straits Times
Ben Rhodes US President-elect Donald Trump speaking at a meeting with House Republicans in Washington on Nov 13. In December 2019, I travelled to Hong Kong, where a heavy unease hung in the air. For months, young people had taken to the streets to protest against the encroachment of the Communist Party of China on what was supposed to be a self-governing, democratic system.
On walls, they had scrawled: “Save Hong Kong! If we burn, you burn with us!” All the protesters I spoke to knew their movement would fail; it was a last assertion of democratic identity before it was extinguished by a new order that saw democracy as the enemy within. I met a government official preparing to resign and told him I was writing a book about the rise of authoritarian nationalism. “The nationalism in the US and Europe is somewhat different,” he told me.
“Yours started with the financial crisis in 2008. That’s when liberalism started to lose its appeal, when people saw this wasn’t working. The narrative of liberalism and democracy collapsed.
This spilled over into China, too. This is when China started to think – should we really follow a Western model?” Already a subscriber? Log in Get exclusive reports and insights with more than 500 subscriber-only articles every month $9.90 $9.
90/month No contract ST app access on 1 mobile device Subscribe now All subscriber-only content on ST app and straitstimes.com Easy access any time via ST app on 1 mobile device E-paper with 2-week archive so you won't miss out on content that matters to you Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you. Read 3 articles and stand to win rewards Spin the wheel now.
