Overestimating China’s political system has been somewhat fashionable in recent years. A 2020 CNN “analysis” of the Chinese Communist Party’s response to Covid-19 claimed that the viral outbreak “highlighted the benefits of a strong government and centralized planning.” And last year, Niall Ferguson entertained the possibility that, if we’re in a second cold war, this time it’s America in the Soviet role: the aging, decadent, doomed power.

The problem with such assessments is reality. Yes, our country has its troubles. But it retains vast reserves of inner strength to rejuvenate, a product of the greatness of its people and of our decentralized culture and politics. Meanwhile, the CCP may be able to project an illusion of strength, but this masks immense inner weakness.

Even CNN, whose past analysis praised China’s model, has now noticed another big problem for the CCP: a precipitous decline in marriages. The number of newly registered couples collapsed by 20 percent in 2024 from the previous year, a record low for the country. China’s 6.1 million figure is half what it was at its peak in 2013. Our country needs more marriages, too, of course. But this is yet more evidence that the Chinese model is not all it’s cracked up to be and that we shouldn’t look to a decadent and declining totalitarian state for guidance. Nor, however, should we underestimate the danger it poses, even in such a condition.