NEW YORK — It will be China's year in 2008. The Olympic Games — no doubt perfectly organized, without a protester, homeless person, religious dissenter or any other kind of spoilsport in sight — will probably bolster China's global prestige.
While the American economy gets dragged down further in a swamp of bad property debt, China will continue to boom. New buildings designed by the world's most famous architects will make Beijing and Shanghai look like models of 21st-century modernity. More Chinese will be featured in annual lists of the world's richest people. And Chinese artists will command prices at international art auctions that others can only dream of.
To come back from near destitution and bloody tyranny in one generation is a great feat, and China should be saluted for it. But China's success story is also the most serious challenge that liberal democracy has faced since fascism in the 1930s.