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The new conventional wisdom about China is that the old conventional wisdom was completely wrong. The old wisdom, from the 1990s and 2000s, said that if China were welcomed into the rules-based international order, it inevitably would become a democracy. We know how the story played out. China joined the World Trade Organization and the G20, gained more representation in international financial institutions and United Nations bodies, and more. It got richer and much more powerful. But far from democratizing, China has become more authoritarian.

Yet, the old wisdom did get one thing right. The international environment, heavily engineered by the United States, did press China to democratize. It imposed a dilemma on China’s ruling Communist Party: Your country will either become democratic, or else it will never rise very far. What the old wisdom missed was that the Party would figure out how to evade the dilemma. Today, its ruling Party is trying to reengineer global order to favor authoritarianism. If it succeeds, America and other democracies will be under pressure to become more authoritarian or else accept national decline.

Countries exist in a social and political environment, just as surely as organisms exist in a natural environment. The environment can select for some traits over others; when wars are common, states tend to centralize power so as to be able to fight better and deter attacks. Systems of government can be selected for or against as well: Social science has shown that countries located near a powerful democracy tend to become more democratic over time.

The great powers often try to manipulate this selection logic by shaping the international environment to favor their type of country. They set up beneficial international rules and institutions. They promote their own system of government abroad or block the spread of rival systems. They flood the world with information about the superiority of their type.

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