Floods in Europe end myth of West's governance

From the Texas power outages in February to the condo collapse in Florida in June, to the floods in Germany, a series of devastating disasters this year have proven that there are serious shortcomings in Western countries' mechanisms in responding to natural disasters.

In fact, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been signs showing that Western governance is failing.

In the face of disasters the central government needs to play a strong role. But Western society has found that it cannot do so.

There is a very serious problem of decentralization in the West. The West attaches importance to local, individual, and non-governmental factors in society. When a disaster occurs at the local level, it needs to be solved by the local authorities first because the central government is not able to intervene in time. In the West, it's almost a tradition for people to oppose the government.

In contrast to the West, China has demonstrated its great advantages in governance in recent years, whether facing COVID-19 or natural disasters. China has a powerful central government and ruling party. Moreover, the Chinese people have a strong sense of trust in the government. The interaction between people and the government is seamless - even when disasters occur.

As Russian scholar Gevorg Mirzayan commented in a recent article, "Western elites understand that while they are playing at democracy, the countries with a real order (for instance, China) are marching ahead orderly, bypassing Europe and the US at the twists and turns of history."

The West has always believed that its governance model is superior. But its inability to handle various disasters has revealed its governance flaws. The governance of other countries cannot stop developing just because the West is facing governance chaos.

Times have changed. The West should humbly learn from the experiences of other countries in terms of political methodology.