This is a very "outside" take on what all these countries are doing.
It's measuring their velocity on a linear path towards integration into a US-dominated global economy with a specific (classically) liberal, individualist, humanist vestigially-Christian culture and then characterizing deviations as mistakes or compromises or fallbacks.
The "inside" reality is that many of these countries and their people are skeptical or hostile towards that economy and culture for legitimate historical or cultural reasons of their own. These are largely countries with accomplished, strong histories in the modern era and they are taking informed, principled bets on a different future than the West is pursuing. They have their own development and continuity objectives that sometimes compete with or are otherwise incompatible with docile integration into the Western hegemony.
I don't even dispute that it all amounts to the same thing on the surface of effects: China is at a crossroads as their chapter of rapid industrialization comes to a close, some countries that do have lagging economies, military conflict and aggressiveness is ripe, etc -- but I think it's worth giving credit to the people of these countries for making their own informed decisions that are different than what we might make, instead of writing them all off as simply mismanaged or whatever.
It's measuring their velocity on a linear path towards integration into a US-dominated global economy with a specific (classically) liberal, individualist, humanist vestigially-Christian culture and then characterizing deviations as mistakes or compromises or fallbacks.
The "inside" reality is that many of these countries and their people are skeptical or hostile towards that economy and culture for legitimate historical or cultural reasons of their own. These are largely countries with accomplished, strong histories in the modern era and they are taking informed, principled bets on a different future than the West is pursuing. They have their own development and continuity objectives that sometimes compete with or are otherwise incompatible with docile integration into the Western hegemony.
I don't even dispute that it all amounts to the same thing on the surface of effects: China is at a crossroads as their chapter of rapid industrialization comes to a close, some countries that do have lagging economies, military conflict and aggressiveness is ripe, etc -- but I think it's worth giving credit to the people of these countries for making their own informed decisions that are different than what we might make, instead of writing them all off as simply mismanaged or whatever.