The Legitimacy Barrier

How American reluctance to accept China's political system shapes the relationship

In April of 2019, over lunch near my home in Chapel Hill, a senior U.S. diplomat in town to give a talk gave me what I recognized immediately as a litmus test.

I had just finished pitching an informal group I was helping to organize, which I hoped she would join. It was a group of policy professionals, analysts, and scholars focused on China. We hoped to influence the next administration's approach — and yeah, that whole “influencing” idea didn’t work out so well. After listening to my high-minded mission statement, she looked at me and said, "I have two questions for you.”

“First,” she began, “do you believe U.S. policy can positively impact China's development?”

I answered with an emphatic and immediate yes. What would be the point, after all, of wanting to help shape U.S. policy if I didn’t believe it could have a positive effect?

But her second question caught me off guard: "Do you believe the rule of the Chinese Communist Party to be legitimate?"

After a moment's hesitation — mostly to process her intent — I also answered yes. She smiled, nodded, and said, "Good. I'm in."

She understood immediately what many in Washington do not: that the refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of China’s political system isn’t just an ideological stance but also an obstacle to crafting effective policy. It ensures that American engagements with China are as often about moral posturing as about smart strategy. And more profoundly, it reflects an American mindset that has never truly had to confront the possibility that legitimacy might not be universally defined.

This question of legitimacy — how governments earn and maintain their right to rule — lies at the heart of mounting tensions between the United States and China. For decades, if not indeed centuries, Americans have operated under a simple assumption: political legitimacy derived primarily from democratic processes — in particular, free elections as an expression of popular sovereignty. Other mechanisms like checks and balances and the rule of law helped maintain that legitimacy by preventing abuse and ensuring accountability. This wasn't just one way to organize political power — it was seen as the only truly legitimate way.

In this way of thinking, China was supposed to follow this trajectory. As it grew wealthier through market reforms, as its middle class expanded, as its citizens traveled abroad, and as its students filled Western universities, political liberalization would inevitably follow. This wasn't just wishful thinking: it seemed to be backed by sophisticated theories about modernization and democratization, supported by case studies from South Korea to Taiwan.

This is not to suggest that all or even most proponents of engagement operated under this assumption, as the strawman version of the longstanding American policy has it. But even if that were the case — if China’s “becoming more like us” were, in fact, the premise and the goal of engagement — any fair-minded observer must acknowledge that one society's “master narrative,” the American one, has shaped the other's development much, much more than the other way around. Not, to be sure, in the way many hoped or expected. But compare China today with China on the eve of Reform and Opening: The transformation is staggering, and much of it reflects the absorption of core elements of American market capitalism, entrepreneurial culture, and certain individualistic values. From its hypercompetitive business culture to its celebration of self-made entrepreneurs — Wang Xing, Lei Jun, and yes, even Jack Ma (who appears to be back in good graces with the Party), and from its embrace of consumer culture to its cultivation of global brands, China has selectively but extensively absorbed elements of the American mentalité.¹ Yet it has done so while maintaining — and in some ways strengthening — its distinct political system and many features of its political culture.

And yet something unexpected has begun to emerge. China's development is starting to challenge core American assumptions about political legitimacy. It’s not doing so through push so much as through pull. The longstanding American belief that China would inevitably democratize rested on an assumption of gravitational inevitability: the liberal order was the center of global development, and all nations were drawn toward it. But today, that gravitational pull is weakened and perhaps might indeed be in the process of reversal. Instead of China orbiting the American model, a growing number of Americans now look at China’s governance — not, perhaps, with admiration, but with a reluctant recognition that it works, at least for China: a state that over several decades has delivered growth, stability, and more recently, even cleaner air. This is not just an ideological embarrassment; it could prove to be a profound rupture in the American self-conception.

It doesn’t have to be. China’s rise and this (grudging) admiration now offered by a growing segment of Americans has exacerbated an inherent tension between two core values in the American political culture — that between universalist claims about electoral democracy as the sine qua non of political legitimacy, on the one hand, and a commitment to pluralism on the other. Pluralism, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is something that the U.S. has, at least until very recently, prized in its domestic political order: the laudable belief in diversity and tolerance of multiple perspectives. The question is whether Americans can accept political pluralism at the global level.

Dialing down the universalism and leaning into pluralist traditions in our international outlook depends first on jettisoning deeply entrenched ideas of legitimacy. The big question, then, is whether the U.S. will continue to insist that legitimacy belongs only to those who adopt its political model. China's staggering ascent is forcing that question.

The Coming Collapse of Procedural Legitimacy?

The American conception of political legitimacy is fundamentally procedural. Power is legitimate when it follows established rules: regular elections expressing the will of the people, transparent institutions, and codified laws. This framework has deep roots in Western political thought, from the Enlightenment's emphasis on rational systems and social contracts to Protestant ideas about covenant and consent. It sat in superficial harmony next to pluralist values, but their compatibility had never really been stress-tested. America could see itself as a pluralistic society that welcomed different cultures, religions, and viewpoints while also believing its political system was the inevitable endpoint of history, a model toward which all other nations would eventually gravitate in part because of that tolerant pluralism. It’s an internal logic that’s hard to assail.

In the last century, it was never meaningfully assailed. America faced either outright ideological adversaries (e.g., the Soviet Union) or societies that largely assimilated into the liberal order (e.g., postwar Germany and Japan).

But China presents a wholly different challenge — not because it rejects liberal democracy, but because it does so while succeeding on its own terms.

This procedural view now faces a potential crisis on two fronts. First, China's success could challenge the assumed link between democratic procedures and effective governance. When a non-democratic system — or what China insists is "whole-process democracy" — delivers sustained economic growth, technological innovation, and rising living standards, it raises questions about the relationship between political processes and outcomes. In January of 2025, a wide swath of American youth seemed suddenly to have become aware that China has, to an impressive extent, delivered those things. The “TikTok refugees” on Xiaohongshu and the startling arrival of DeepSeek may prove to have been the catalysts for a narrative shift: one that sees China more positively and sees the power of its technocratic state as a feature, not a bug.

This challenge is arising at a particularly vulnerable moment, as faith in procedural democracy is already eroding within democracies themselves. When American democratic institutions seem incapable of addressing pressing challenges — climate change, inequality, gun violence, an oligarchic takeover of democratic institutions themselves — citizens begin questioning whether following the right procedures is sufficient justification for political authority. China's rise could accelerate this erosion by presenting, even if only passively, an alternative model. Or American institutions, especially the judicial branch, could ride to the rescue and restore faith. That seems depressingly unlikely at the time of writing.

Performance and Political Legitimacy

China’s conception of legitimacy rests on foundations different from America’s. While it does not reject democratic values outright — indeed, it formally embraces “whole-process democracy” and regards democracy as one of its “core socialist values” — it prioritizes outcomes over procedures. Economic development, social stability, and this abstract goal of “national rejuvenation” are the key metrics by which governance is judged.

It’s tempting to see this emphasis on performance legitimacy — the idea that a government’s right to rule is validated by its ability to deliver material improvements and maintain stability — as having deep roots in Chinese political thought. I think, however, that it would be a mistake to see this simply as a warmed-over version of the imperial Mandate of Heaven. The Party’s claim to legitimacy is rooted not just in historical precedent but in the practical experience of a century of upheaval (and, yes, humiliation). The collapse of the Qing dynasty, the chaos of the Republican era, and both the successes and failures of the Mao era all reinforced a national ethos that prioritizes order and effective governance over abstract procedural ideals.

By this measure, China has delivered. The country’s transformation from widespread poverty to the world’s second-largest economy is central to the Party’s legitimacy narrative. Even as economic challenges mount, the Party continues, so far, to maintain public trust through rapid adaptation — investing in technology, social programs, and economic restructuring. China’s unprecedented rise as a manufacturing superpower, going from about 6% of global manufacturing value-add in 2000 to over 30% today, has produced material abundance domestically. It’s not all for export. Meanwhile, the Party’s ability to correct mistakes and respond pragmatically to crises — whether financial shocks, pandemics, or environmental disasters — reinforces its legitimacy among much of the population, at least so far.

This model, however, has inherent contradictions. A government that derives legitimacy from performance must continue to deliver or risk undermining itself. If economic growth slows, if social expectations outpace policy responses, or if corruption erodes public trust, the very foundation of legitimacy is threatened. For now, China’s leadership is acutely aware of these risks, which is why maintaining economic dynamism and social stability remains paramount — and why I would caution against placing too much faith in self-soothing narratives of an inevitable Chinese economic collapse.

Of course, critics will argue that China’s legitimacy is tenuous — tied too closely to economic growth, sustained through repression, or propped up by state-controlled narratives. These are not trivial concerns. But the assumption that legitimacy in China is purely coercive or that it will inevitably unravel misunderstands both the resilience of its governance model and the adaptability of the Party. Even in moments of crisis, China has shown an ability to course-correct, even if belatedly, whether through policy shifts, technocratic adjustments, or selective political reforms. The bigger mistake would be to assume that legitimacy in China functions exactly as it does in the West — or that it is so fragile that one economic downturn will bring the entire system into crisis

So China’s success also raises that uncomfortable question for the United States: If a government delivers prosperity, order, and technological progress, does it matter whether it holds competitive elections? The real danger to democracy is not that authoritarian states are actively challenging the belief that the ballot box is the only path to political legitimacy. The danger is that this is being quietly challenged within democracies themselves. But when elections yield gridlock, when legislatures fail to tackle urgent crises, and when policy is dictated by corporate lobbies rather than public will, who can blame Americans for questioning whether electoral legitimacy is enough?

The rise of “performance legitimacy” as a concept in American discourse — whether in the form of industrial policy, skepticism toward absolute free speech, or the embrace of state intervention in the economy — suggests that, perhaps unintentionally, aspects of China’s governance model are gaining traction.

This shift is particularly visible among younger Americans. Polls show growing disenchantment with democratic institutions, skepticism about the fairness of capitalism, and openness to alternative governance models. The question now is whether this emerging mindset represents a passing disillusionment or the beginning of a deeper ideological shift.

While the American conception of legitimacy is overwhelmingly procedural, it bears noting that the reality is more complex. In moments of national crisis, U.S. governance has often relied on performance legitimacy, implicitly recognizing that procedural democracy alone is not always sufficient to maintain public trust. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal fundamentally reshaped the social contract, securing legitimacy not just through elections but by delivering economic recovery and social security. Abraham Lincoln, in the face of existential war, suspended habeas corpus and centralized executive power, arguing that preserving the Union was the ultimate test of legitimacy. More recently, the expansion of executive orders, the rise of the administrative state, and even pandemic-era emergency measures suggest that Americans, too, place weight on outcomes.

This raises an uncomfortable question: If Americans have historically accepted performance legitimacy in times of crisis, why is it considered illegitimate in China’s case? The answer likely lies in selective acknowledgment. When performance legitimacy operates within a procedural framework, it is accepted as a necessary adaptation; when it exists outside that framework — as in China — it is often dismissed as mere authoritarian expediency. This cognitive dissonance prevents a more pragmatic approach to China’s governance, in which legitimacy is understood not as a binary (democratic or illegitimate) but as a dynamic negotiation between process and outcomes.

The Stakes of Legitimacy Recognition

The reluctance of many Americans to recognize the legitimacy of China's political system has consequences far beyond academic debate. It shapes policy choices, constrains diplomatic options, and could even make conflict more likely. When a rising power is viewed as fundamentally illegitimate by the established power, every action it takes — from military modernization to economic development — tends to be interpreted in the most threatening light possible.

This dynamic becomes particularly dangerous when combined with what political scientists call the "security dilemma" — where measures taken by one state to increase its security are interpreted by others as aggressive, leading to an escalatory spiral. When filtered through the lens of legitimacy, this spiral can accelerate: If China's system is seen as illegitimate, then its efforts to secure its interests appear more sinister than similar actions taken by democratic states. The assumption of illegitimacy is the fuel for the fire of escalation.

Consider how this plays out in specific domains. When China develops advanced technologies, the response isn't simply about competitive advantage or security implications — it often includes an assumption that these technologies will inevitably be used for authoritarian control because they emerge from an "illegitimate" system. When China builds international institutions or development frameworks, they're frequently dismissed as attempts to undermine the "rules-based order" rather than being evaluated on their merits. Even China's efforts to combat corruption or poverty can be interpreted cynically as mere attempts to shore up illegitimate rule rather than genuine governance improvements. The political scientist Iza Ding has given this tendency a name: authoritarian teleology.²

The Historical Context

This legitimacy gap didn't emerge in a vacuum. The American conception of political legitimacy as primarily procedural evolved through specific historical experiences: the Revolutionary War's rejection of monarchy, the Civil War's preservation of democracy, the triumph over fascism in World War II, and the Cold War victory over Soviet communism. Each of these moments reinforced the belief that democratic procedures were not just preferable but necessary for legitimate governance.

China's emphasis on performance legitimacy similarly reflects its historical path. The Century of Humiliation, the chaos of the Republican period, the trauma of the Cultural Revolution — these experiences helped shape a political culture that prioritizes stability and material progress over procedural democracy. The Reform and Opening period's success in delivering unprecedented economic growth further reinforced the idea that performance could serve as a primary source of legitimacy.

But here we encounter another asymmetry: While China's leadership has studied democratic systems extensively and understands their internal logic, American policymakers and thought leaders have, in general, invested less effort in understanding how China's system functions on its own terms. This knowledge gap compounds the legitimacy gap, making it harder to engage constructively with China's political reality.

Ironically, as America remains fixated on China’s supposed lack of legitimacy, it has quietly begun to absorb aspects of the Chinese mentalité. Performance legitimacy is creeping into American political thought, with Americans of both parties (and those who are understandably frustrated by the two-party system) now asking whether elections alone are enough if they do not produce competent governance. Skepticism toward absolute free speech is growing, with both the left and right advocating for more controlled information environments. The return of industrial policy and state intervention in the economy signals a move away from neoliberal assumptions — an approach that, while still a far cry from China’s state capitalism, moves in that direction.

This is not an ideological conversion but a pragmatic adaptation. As American institutions falter, elements of the Chinese model become more intellectually respectable, even if few openly advocate adopting them wholesale.

To be clear, I see this as a positive development only to a limited extent. Taken far enough, it can dissolve the shackles of universalist thinking on political legitimacy and remove a major obstacle to better relations not just with China but with other less-than-fully-democratic states. Taken too far, it can destroy the intellectual and institutional foundations of the United States.

Beyond Simple Binaries

The legitimacy question becomes even more complex when we look closely at how political systems actually function. No system derives its legitimacy from a single source. Democratic procedures alone don't guarantee good governance, just as economic performance alone doesn't ensure political stability. Most successful systems combine multiple sources of legitimacy — procedural, performance-based, and even traditional or charismatic.

Consider how this plays out in practice. The United States, while primarily relying on procedural legitimacy through elections and constitutional processes, also depends heavily on performance legitimacy in areas like national defense, economic management, and disaster response. A president elected through impeccable democratic procedures who fails to deliver on these fundamental tasks will quickly face legitimacy challenges.

Similarly, China's system, while emphasizing performance legitimacy, has increasingly incorporated procedural elements — from village elections to administrative law reforms to public consultation processes to sophisticated digital sentiment analysis systems. Without claiming some moral equivalence with Western democratic procedures, we can recognize that they do represent efforts to create predictable, institutionalized channels for public input and accountability.

The Role of Narrative and Identity

The legitimacy gap between the U.S. and China is widened by how it intersects with national narratives and identity. The American self-image as leader of the "free world" requires, to some degree, a belief in the universal applicability of democratic legitimacy. Accepting alternative sources of legitimacy might seem to undermine this core aspect of American identity.

For China, the situation is different. Its historical experience as a civilization-state that, at least in its own telling, absorbed and transformed foreign influences while maintaining its essential character makes it more comfortable with the idea of multiple legitimate political systems. This oft-observed habit of syncretism helps explain why China can recognize the legitimacy of democratic systems while insisting on its right to develop differently.

This asymmetry presents both challenges and opportunities. While it can exacerbate tensions when Americans question China's legitimacy, it also means that China's recognition of democratic legitimacy provides potential common ground for engagement — if American policymakers can move beyond a purely procedural understanding of legitimate governance.

Practical Implications

The legitimacy gap has immediate practical consequences for international relations. It affects how disputes are handled, how cooperation is structured, and how each side interprets the other's actions. When American policymakers view China's system as fundamentally illegitimate, they may:

• Discount Chinese diplomatic assurances or agreements, assuming they come from an illegitimate actor

• Interpret Chinese domestic policies primarily through the lens of regime survival rather than governance (more authoritarian teleology)

• Overestimate the fragility of China's system, leading to miscalculations about its behavior under pressure

• Undervalue opportunities for cooperation where interests align, and

• Miss chances to influence Chinese behavior by failing to engage with its actual governance mechanisms

Similarly, when Chinese officials encounter automatic questioning of their system's legitimacy, they may:

• Become more defensive and less willing to engage in substantive dialogue

• Focus on short-term performance metrics rather than longer-term reforms

• View American criticism as fundamentally hostile rather than constructively intended

• Emphasize nationalism as an alternative source of legitimacy

• Invest more in alternative international institutions where their legitimacy isn't constantly questioned

The legitimacy gap takes on new significance in the context of rapid technological change. As artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and other advanced technologies reshape governance capabilities, questions of legitimate use become increasingly urgent. Yet the legitimacy gap makes it harder to develop common frameworks for responsible innovation.

When Americans view China's political system as illegitimate, they may assume that any advanced technology in Chinese hands will inevitably be used for authoritarian control. That lens of authoritarian teleology is hard to displace. This can lead to — indeed, has led to — overboard restrictions that harm innovation and cooperation. Meanwhile, Chinese developers may feel compelled to pursue technological autonomy at any cost, seeing Western criticism of their governance model as a pretext for containing China's rise.

The Challenge for China Specialists

The legitimacy barrier creates particular challenges for American China specialists, who often find themselves caught between competing imperatives. On one hand, their deep knowledge of China's system leads them to recognize its functional legitimacy — its ability to govern effectively and maintain popular support through mechanisms beyond elections. On the other hand, publicly acknowledging this reality can invite accusations of being an "apologist" for authoritarianism or of failing to uphold democratic values.

This tension distorts the policymaking process in subtle but profound ways. When the legitimacy of China’s system is treated as a settled question — rather than as an evolving political reality with internal debates, pressures, and points of leverage — it constrains U.S. options. Policymakers who see China’s system as irredeemably illegitimate tend to adopt a stance of rejection rather than engagement, limiting their ability to shape its trajectory in ways favorable to U.S. interests. Instead of seeking to understand how China’s governance mechanisms operate and where they might be influenced, Washington defaults to a strategy of containment, pressure, and denunciation — usually with little effect except to galvanize Chinese resolve.

This self-imposed intellectual straitjacket has tangible policy costs. If U.S. officials refuse to engage seriously with China’s evolving governance structures, they forfeit opportunities to shape how those structures interact with the world. Whether in areas like regulatory transparency, judicial reforms, corporate governance, or environmental policy, dismissing the Chinese system outright cedes influence to those who are willing to work within it. More concerning, it may lead American policymakers to miscalculate the resilience of the Chinese state, basing strategy on the faulty assumption that internal instability or ideological contradictions will eventually bring about its unraveling.

A more pragmatic approach would acknowledge that political systems are dynamic rather than static. Engaging with China’s governance structures in targeted areas — without explicitly endorsing and certainly not embracing its ideological foundations — would allow Washington to better anticipate shifts, exploit points of leverage, and influence outcomes where interests align.

The Multilateral Challenge

The legitimacy barrier between the U.S. and China creates particular complications in multilateral settings, where other countries may have different views on political legitimacy. Many developing nations, for instance, may place greater emphasis on performance legitimacy, having experienced their own struggles with imported democratic systems. Even among established democracies, there can be significant variation in how political legitimacy is understood and validated.

This becomes especially apparent in international institutions. When the U.S. frames issues primarily in terms of democracy versus authoritarianism, it may find less resonance than expected among partners who view legitimacy through different lenses. This can create gaps that China has sometimes been able to exploit, not by challenging democratic legitimacy itself but by emphasizing practical cooperation and mutual benefit — the Belt and Road Initiative being only the most conspicuous example. Looking at the strides in international diplomacy across the Global South that China made during the Biden years, while the U.S. convened “Democracy Summits” while continuing to arm Israel, it’s hard not to conclude that China has done just this.

Consider the response of many Southeast Asian nations to U.S.-China competition. While many of these countries generally value democratic institutions, they often take a more pragmatic view of legitimacy that encompasses both procedural and performance elements. Their willingness to engage with China's system on its own terms, while maintaining democratic practices domestically, presents a model of pluralistic engagement that American policymakers might learn from.

Domestic Politics and the Legitimacy Barrier

The legitimacy barrier is complicated by how it interacts with domestic politics in both countries. In the United States, questioning the legitimacy of China's political system can serve domestic political purposes, rallying support around shared democratic values and providing a clear framework for competition with China. This can make it politically costly to acknowledge the functional aspects of China's governance system, even when doing so might lead to more effective policy. It’s hard to imagine a member of the House Select Committee on U.S. Competition with the Chinese Communist Party standing up and candidly stating something so simple as, “I recognize the legitimacy of the CCP.”

In China, American reluctance to recognize the legitimacy of its political system can strengthen — indeed, does strengthen — nationalist narratives about Western hostility and the need to maintain a distinct political path. This can make it harder for Chinese leaders to pursue reforms that might be seen as concessions to Western pressure, even when such reforms might serve China's own interests.

The interaction of these domestic dynamics can create a negative feedback loop. American questioning of Chinese legitimacy strengthens nationalist reactions in China, which in turn reinforces American skepticism about China's system, and so on. Breaking this cycle requires leadership willing to risk domestic political capital for the sake of more constructive engagement.

When Legitimacy Barriers Become Policy Barriers

The legitimacy barrier manifests concretely in specific policy domains, often in ways that harm both American and Chinese interests. Consider three areas where this dynamic plays out with particular clarity:

Technology and Innovation: When American policymakers frame China's technological development primarily through the lens of regime legitimacy, they often miss crucial distinctions. Not every Chinese innovation is a tool of authoritarian control, just as not every American technology inherently promotes democratic values. This framework can lead to overbroad restrictions that harm scientific cooperation and economic growth while doing little to address genuine security concerns.

Global Warming: The existential threat of global warming requires unprecedented global cooperation, yet the legitimacy barrier complicates even this shared challenge. When American politicians cast doubt on China's climate commitments based on its political system rather than its actual performance, they risk undermining crucial collaboration. Meanwhile, China's impressive deployment of renewable energy and electric vehicles — achievements that would typically bolster performance legitimacy — are often viewed skeptically through the lens of strategic competition.

Global Health: The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated how the legitimacy barrier can impede vital cooperation. Early Chinese successes in containment were often dismissed in the U.S. as authoritarian overreach rather than evaluated on their public health merits. Conversely, American pandemic responses were sometimes characterized in Chinese media as evidence of democratic dysfunction rather than specific policy failures. Both characterizations missed opportunities to learn from each other's experiences.

The Media Mirror

The way media in each country covers the other both reflects and reinforces these legitimacy dynamics. American media coverage of China often frames stories through the lens of regime legitimacy, even when covering non-political topics. A new infrastructure project becomes a story about boosting Party legitimacy; an anti-corruption campaign becomes primarily about internal power struggles; economic policies are viewed mainly through the prism of maintaining social stability.

This framing, while not entirely incorrect, can miss important details and developments. When every Chinese action is viewed primarily through the lens of regime preservation, it becomes harder to recognize genuine governance improvements or policy innovations that might be worth studying or even adopting.

Chinese media coverage of the United States, while critical of American policies and social problems, rarely questions the fundamental legitimacy of the American political system. Instead, it tends to focus on specific failures of governance or policy implementation — a framework that, ironically, might allow for more practical learning from American experiences.

The Language of Legitimacy

The very language used to discuss China's political system often carries implicit judgments about legitimacy. Consider the term "regime," frequently employed in Western media and academic writing. While technically neutral, its use in modern English, when applied to a national leadership, carries distinctly pejorative connotations, suggesting illegitimacy and temporariness. To Chinese ears, describing their government as a "regime" rather than a "government" or "administration" signals a refusal to acknowledge its legitimacy.

Similar issues arise with phrases like "Chinese Communist Party rule" or "CCP control," which not-so-subtly connote coercion rather than governance. Even seemingly neutral terms like "authoritarian" or "one-party state," while accurately describing certain features of China's system, can — depending on context — often be deployed in ways that suggest inherent illegitimacy rather than simply describing different organizational principles. We need not even mention “totalitarian.”

This linguistic framework shapes how we think about and discuss China's political system. When Western analysts describe Chinese leaders as "clinging to power" rather than "governing" or frame domestic policies primarily as efforts to "maintain control" rather than to "govern effectively," they're employing language that presupposes illegitimacy. This framing makes it harder to analyze Chinese governance objectively or engage with it constructively.

Even more problematic is language deployed in domestic discourse that reinforces unwillingness to accord legitimacy to China's system. The reflexive addition of "Communist" to "Chinese" in contexts where it serves no descriptive purpose ("Communist China's Olympic team," "Communist China's solar industry") serves mainly to delegitimize. The insistence on referring to "the CCP" rather than "the Chinese government" even in discussions of routine governance implies that every action, no matter how mundane, is primarily about Party control rather than normal statecraft. Phrases like "China's rulers" or "Beijing's grip on power" carry similar delegitimizing freight.

Some China specialists have begun advocating for more neutral language that describes rather than implicitly judges Chinese governance. This shift isn't about apologizing for real problems or concerns, but about creating space for less normative analysis and productive dialogue. The challenge is to maintain the ability to criticize specific policies or actions while avoiding language that automatically delegitimizes the entire system.

The Generation Gap

Younger generations in both countries may offer some hope for bridging the legitimacy barrier, though not necessarily in ways their elders would prefer. Many young Americans, having come of age during a period of democratic dysfunction and economic inequality, are more open to questioning whether electoral democracy alone confers legitimacy. They're more likely to judge political systems by their outcomes — addressing climate change, ensuring economic fairness, providing healthcare — than by their procedural characteristics. It’s not hard to see signs of disillusion with proceduralism on the left and right alike: the lionization in some quarters of Luigi Mangione and the rise of “Doomerism” are manifestations of a growing pessimism regarding the American system that polls seem, depressingly, to bear out. We may look back on Trump’s electoral victory as both a symptom and an accelerant.

Meanwhile, young Chinese, while still generally supportive of their political system, often take a more cosmopolitan view than their parents' generation. They may defend China's right to its own political path while still appreciating aspects of other systems. This perspective might seem contradictory to older observers but reflects their experience of growing up in an increasingly complex, interconnected world.

The Path Ahead

The legitimacy barrier between the United States and China presents no easy solutions. I don’t anticipate that this essay will persuade a single individual wedded to the idea of electoral democracy as the sole basis for legitimacy to reconsider, even if they’ve read this far. In many, China’s successes will doubtless galvanize ideological commitments to procedural democracy.

I’d love to see Americans open up to the possibility that other forms can enjoy legitimacy without turning on democracy at home, disparaging it or becoming too cynical, fatalistic, or defeatist. Meanwhile, it’s clear to me that China's leadership, and even most of its ordinary people, will show little interest in adopting Western-style democratic procedures, convinced as they are that their current system better suits China's circumstances and development needs, and watching the American dumpster fire burn.

Still, it would be nice if more Americans and Chinese alike started evaluating specific policies and actions on their merits rather than through predetermined ideological frames and acknowledged the obvious truth that both systems face serious challenges and might benefit from learning from each other's experiences.

As China’s surge continues and the domestic American political crisis continues, the legitimacy barrier between the two nations will grow into a philosophical and ideological crisis for America itself.

Three possible paths lie ahead. We may see a hardening of universalism, with the U.S. doubling down on the democracy-vs.-autocracy framing as the competition with China hits home even harder, escalating ideological confrontation with China. That, to use the term of art from political science, would suck.

We might instead witness a fragmentation of the American mentalité — a divided America, with one camp clinging to universalism and another rejecting many facets of American exceptionalism, embracing aspects of pragmatic governance models, Chinese or otherwise. Interestingly, as far as I can tell, that cleavage would have little to do with partisanship; it might emerge along generational lines or between populists (whether of the left or right) and more establishment and “elite” Americans, between self-identified “winner” and “losers.” Fragmentation or division would arguably be a better option, but far from ideal.

Finally, in what I personally would see as an optimal outcome, we could see a rise of global pluralism, in which Americans accept that different societies have different legitimacy models, recognize that procedural democracy is a great fit — really, the only fit — for the American political culture, and work to preserve and protect it while shifting toward a more pragmatic, priority-pluralist approach in dealing with China and other countries.

The question for America is simple: Can America accept that it is not the sole arbiter of political legitimacy? If America refuses to acknowledge China's legitimacy, how does this story end? Does Washington believe that denying legitimacy will bring about China's collapse? Or is it willing to accept that engagement must begin from the reality of plural political models? A great deal hinges on the answers to these questions.

1. I agonized over whether or not to use the word “mentalité,” and in the end, decided that it captures best what I intend here: that amalgam of both consciously-held beliefs, values, and preferences along with subconscious or tacit assumptions, habits of mind, mental frames, prejudices, and attitudes. Worldview or Weltanschauung describes something much more conscious. In this essay, I use mentalité and words like “mindset” more or less interchangeably.

2. As she explained it on the Sinica Podcast, “Authoritarian teleology is a style of thinking. It interprets everything an authoritarian government does as a strategy to stay in power. It has two features. First, a functionalist feature — teleology is the explanation of something through its design purpose rather than the actual cause… the second feature of authoritarian teleology is the assumption that the primary driver of an authoritarian regime is to stay in power or “survive.” And therefore, anything they do is to survive. And okay, this may be true, but we can never truly know if it’s true or not so long as the regime is still in power. And just because a regime has collapsed doesn’t mean whatever it was doing before collapsing was a source of its fragility.”