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1. Who’s on the ‘wrong side of history’ now?
Every political system has advantages and disadvantages. The downside of electoral democracy is that leaders without any political experience who appeal to people's worst instincts can get elected. We have just seen that happen in the United States. At the very least, we won't be hearing too many lectures from American intellectuals about China being on the “wrong side of history", as former president Bill Clinton put it, because the country has not yet moved toward electoral democracy as a method for selecting top leaders.
2. Does the Chinese model offer an alternative to this political crisis?
The Chinese political system, no matter what its flaws, retains an openness to learning from the best political practices of other countries. American political leaders have never shown, or even articulated, such a willingness. Hopefully that will change. Chinese-style political meritocracy may offer some insights, but so do the ideas and practices of American founding fathers who tried to combine democracy and political meritocracy. The problem is that it's very hard to put in meritocratic checks in the political system once they are taken away, except through the use of military force. Some of my Chinese friends argue that the US can re-establish an electoral college system where the state representatives use their own political judgment rather than simply reflecting the preferences of the electorate, but that's a non-starter now.
