Isn't the old adage that democracy was never good, it was always just better than all the other forms of government. It got more done. It advanced economies more. Etc etc etc.

Then we torched it at just about the same time as the Chinese came along with a new form of government that I'm not sure the world has as yet even given a proper name. (I guess we can call it Communism? But everyone kind of knows that it's nothing like.)

So to global generations that have grown up viewing all these changes, democracy by comparison to what they have in China has started to look not so all powerful. To many of the planet's young people the assertion that "democracy is the worst except for all the others", is by no means obvious. That change in view is going to have profound implications on the world going forward.

China’s ‘new’ form of government is basically their old form of government with some communist rhetoric sprinkled over it.

>Then we torched it at just about the same time as the Chinese came along with a new form of government that I'm not sure the world has as yet even given a proper name. (I guess we can call it Communism? But everyone kind of knows that it's nothing like.)

I think the term is "state capitalism." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism)