China looks remarkably well-governed now

The fallout from Brexit, the failed Turkish coup, the racial and anti-police violence and volatile presidential election in the US, and so on and so forth, all make China appear to be a remarkable island of relative sanity and comparatively good governance.

Long gone is the rumor-mongering about infighting within the communist party ranks that supposedly threatened Xi Jinping's grip on power which flared up in spring; in its place, Xi has had a quiet few months, while premier Li Keqiang has unspectacularly but steadily taken firmer reins of economic policy without appearing to be out of line with his boss.

The attempted coup in Turkey was doubtless concerning to Beijing: it's just the kind of usurpation of centralized authoritarian power that China and Russia automatically associate with Western or Western-sycophant meddling, so its rapid crushing by Ankara and massive wave of reprisals are as reassuring to Moscow and Beijing as it's troubling to Washington and Brussels.

The ongoing crisis also offers yet another vindication of the communist party's view that multi-party democracy simply isn't worth the trouble and risk - definitely not now and not yet. Ironically, the very suggestion that Erdogan staged the coup himself to consolidate power has done more than anything to expose his enemies both domestic and international who in fact do want him eliminated - including by violence if necessary. Indeed, it's difficult to see in the current situation how a country as complex and diverse as Turkey can be held intact except by such a sheer force of personality.

In the decadent West, however, the delicate balance between freedom and security has been taken for granted for decades, and now that it's cracking even a little, it's driving more than a few folks on both ends of the political spectrum nuts. Of course, we have a buffer of general prosperity and plenty that the non-Western world doesn't have, ensuring that our strife remains psychological except in the scattered (if even more frequent) bursts of physical unrest.

That's not to understate the genuine risk of overreach in a conservative regime or society's reactionary retrenchment: it's always contingent upon the leadership of such countries to forcefully lock down the immediate systemic threat only so such coercion can be relaxed - in careful and deliberate stages - as soon as possible.

That's what "crossing the river by feeling the stones" is all about: this brutally simple, common-sense approach that China has taken in nearly four decades of reform and opening will only continue to garner respect and practical interest as the post-post cold war world earnestly seeks a rectified path now that unbridled neoliberalism has reached its logical dead end.