The West's Envy of Efficiency

When French authorities deployed facial recognition software to monitor unruly pension protests in 2023, they did so with little fanfare and less irony. The software bore a striking resemblance to the surveillance infrastructure long associated with Chinese urban governance—precisely the kind Paris had publicly condemned just months earlier.

This, in short, is the West’s evolving relationship with China’s political technology: critical in speech, quietly admiring and adopting in practice. Faced with the populist tumult of the past few years, Western governments are coming to see China’s digital statecraft not merely as a tool of repression, but as a toolkit for preserving stability. And that, more than any rivalry over chips or trade routes, may be the most consequential convergence of the century.

From Copycat Factories to Copycat Governance

It is a historical irony that the country once derided for intellectual piracy is now setting the pace in the architecture of governance. COVID-19 was a tipping point. While European governments debated over curfews and testing rates, Chinese authorities rolled out QR-code health passports, AI-based fever scanning, and grid-style lockdown enforcement. For all the unease it provokes, the Chinese model delivers visible outcomes—swift crisis response, resource coordination, and a degree of social compliance worth studying.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Western AI regulation is becoming increasingly deferential to China. The European Union’s much-lauded AI Act categorises systems by risk tier and places them under centralised oversight—an approach strikingly similar to China’s 2022 Algorithm Regulation. One speaks of “human dignity,” the other of “social stability,” but both seek to bind innovation within a political architecture.

Across the Atlantic, the US has ventured into digital governance with less coherence but similar intent. The Department of Homeland Security has spent $155 million since 2021 on digital misinformation monitoring. Predictive policing, a once-taboo phrase, returned in 2023 under the gentler banner of “urban risk mapping.” Los Angeles alone tested out such tools in over 6,000 cases before public outcry forced a temporary pause, for now at least.

Fighting Populism with Panopticism

Beneath the adoption of these tools lies a more urgent rationale: the fear that the governments of liberal democracies are losing control over their populations. In Europe, 23 of 27 member states now host at least one major populist party polling above 20%. In the United States, confidence in public institutions has fallen to post-war lows. Parliaments are paralysed, presidents embattled, platforms flooded with invective and conspiracy.

Much has been made of China’s “social credit system”—a sprawling matrix that, depending on the observer, is either a prudent civic scorecard or a proto-Orwellian nightmare. And yet, governments now speak openly of “prebunking” misinformation and “content hygiene”—technocratic euphemisms for preemptive speech control.

The irony is hard to miss. In an attempt to suppress movements deemed anti-democratic, liberal regimes are deploying technologies that edge toward illiberalism. Populism, like it or not, is a symptom of democratic energy. Suppressing it algorithmically may preserve appearances, but not legitimacy.

Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, and even LinkedIn employ opaque scoring systems to determine access, visibility, and pricing. A user can be digitally excluded from a platform—or penalised—without recourse or explanation. The algorithms used by these companies are private rather than public, but no less consequential for users.

The Democratic Identity Crisis

All this leaves liberal democracies in an uncomfortable position: clinging to democratic values while quietly outsourcing judgment on what speech is permitted to machines. Freedom House reported declines in civil liberties in 42% of democracies between 2020 and 2023. In the US, just 39% of Gen Z believe free speech should protect all speech, even if offensive.

China, for its part, benefits more from this erosion of confidence in liberal democracy than from any act of propaganda. In Africa, 70% of young people now view China as a “model for development.” It is not authoritarianism they admire—but capability. As democracies tie themselves in regulatory knots, the Chinese model—flawed, to be sure—gains by comparison. Beijing does not need to export its ideology; the West appears to be importing Chinese methods of its own free will.

Statement

A 2024 study by the Oxford Internet Institute found that AI-driven extremism prevention tools reduced radical content by just 4%, but lowered institutional trust among targeted users by 12%. This is the quiet tragedy of authoritarian temptation. In trying to insulate liberalism from its own contradictions, Western democracies are deploying systems that look eerily similar to the autocratic ones they once hoped to displace. Democracy, when functioning, is resilient precisely because it is open, pluralistic, and unruly. By seeking to tame that unruliness with tools of technocratic control, liberal societies may find themselves governed less by the will of the people than by the logic of the algorithm. If the West continues importing China’s tools without grappling with their philosophical cost, the question will no longer be who wins the contest between democracy and authoritarianism. It will be whether anyone can tell the difference.

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